Crime Weekly - S3 Ep308: Crime Weekly News: The Search for Missing Siblings Lilly and Jack Sullivan

Episode Date: June 4, 2025

6-year-old Lilly Sullivan and her brother, 4-year-old Jack Sullivan, were reported missing from their home on Gairloch Road in Lansdowne Station, Nova Scotia, on May 2, 2025. Despite extensive search efforts involving volunteers, drones, and canine units, the children remain missing. We're coming to CrimeCon Denver! Use our code CRIMEWEEKLY for 10% off your tickets! https://www.crimecon.com/CC25 Try our coffee!! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.com Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod ADS: 1. https://www.WildGrain.com/CrimeWeekly - Use code CRIMEWEEKLY to get $30 off your first box, plus FREE croissants!

Hey everyone, welcome back to Crime Weekly News. I'm Derek Lavassar. And I'm Stephanie Harlow. And today we're talking about the heartbreaking case out of Nova Scotia. This is a town that I actually have plans to go up and visit in a couple months. My good friend Emmett lives out there and he's been asking me for years to go up there. He actually owns a river rafting company and every year he comes down to see me but I don't go up there. But I really do gotta get up there soon. It's a beautiful place but obviously we're talking about it for not so great reasons. So for

anybody who doesn't know, two siblings, Lily and Jack Sullivan, have gone missing and so far no one knows where they are. The search is still ongoing, but there's a lot of questions and not many answers. So we're going to break down what we know so far, what's been reported and where the investigation stands right now and potentially what we can do moving forward. But at minimum Crime Weekly News, it's a vessel for information sharing. We talked about Grant Hardin last week. We wanna make people aware of it.

We want people to be safe. Here's another opportunity to use our platform, share a message where maybe this community together can help bring these two kids home. That's what we're really hoping for. So Stephanie, break it down for us. Yeah, and the community has been searching for them tirelessly.

We're going into, I believe we're in the fourth week, the fourth week of this search. So this happened on the morning of May 2nd, 2025. Six-year-old Lily and her four-year-old brother Jack were reported missing from their home on Gerlach Road in Lansdowne Station, Pictou County. This is a very isolated area, I have to say that, especially where they lived. It's it's pretty isolated and the children were in the home with their mother and their stepfather and A baby sibling that the mother and stepfather share So according to the stepfather Daniel Martel the children were last seen around 10 a.m

He said that he and the children's mother Malia Brooks Murray were in their bedroom with their one-year-old daughter when they realized Lily and Jack were no longer in the house. Martel reported that the backsliding door was closed, but the children's boots were missing, leading them to believe the siblings had wandered outside. And Martel's given a lot of interviews. The mother, up to this point, has only given one. And then it was reported that after they did a sort of, um, gathering, a community gathering for the children, the mother was there with Dan Martel and then she left and then she left this event. She left him, she took their daughter and she

went and kind of moved in with her mother. So it's obviously a little like, Hmm, why did you do that? What's going on here? There's suspicion that the parents know more. It doesn't really make sense to me, their story either. Now I'm not jumping to the gun and, you know, jumping conclusions and making huge speculations, but the story really doesn't make sense to me. You've got a four year old,

you've got a six year old in the house. You, the two adults in the house, along with the baby are in the bedroom sleeping at 10 still. The baby is sleeping because Martel said that Lily poked her head in once and he had to keep telling the kids to be quiet because the baby was sleeping and I just don't know what kind of baby is still sleeping at 10 a.m. Like usually babies of that age are up at six or seven and then maybe they're going down for another nap at 10.

But the way that Dan Martell and Malaya have kind of made it out is that they were sleeping and then kind of woke up around nine when the kids were kind of being loud and then they went back to sleep. And Martell keeps saying, you know, I don't know how they got out of the house without me hearing.

The screen door is very squeaky. The screen door is squeaky. I don't know how they got out of the house without me hearing. The screen door is very squeaky. The screen door is squeaky. I don't know how they possibly gotten out. The backyard is fenced in, so they would have had to have actively left the fenced in area of the backyard. And Dan Martel has once again said, they never leave the backyard.

Like we do go all over the place, but they're always with us. They're always with an adult. I don't know if they would have felt safe, you know, leaving the backyard on their own. But kind of a weird thing, right? Yeah. And initially, the RCMP, which is the Royal Canadian Mounted Patrol, that's their law enforcement there, they believed that Lily and Jack had simply wandered away from their home and there was no evidence to suggest

foul play. However, as days turned into weeks with no sign of the children, the investigation's scope widened. On May 28, authorities confirmed that the siblings were seen in public with family members on May 1, the day before they reported missing. And so this information narrowed down the timeline of their disappearance and prompted investigators to request any dashcam footage or video taken along Gerlach Road between April 28th and May 2nd And another kind of suspicious thing is the kids didn't go to school That the day that they were reported missing Martel He said that this was because one of them had had like a little cough or some sniffles And so he didn't send either of them into school

Because you know that was a concern. He didn't want to get the other kids sick. But that's always a suspicious thing when the kids don't go to school on the day that they go missing. And I guess the day before had been a holiday and then it was a weekend. So really nobody at the school had seen Lily or Jack for several days. And this was leading some people to speculate, you know, did something happen to them before that day? They just reported them missing on this day.

Now police are saying, no, we've seen them with family members on May 1st. But was that at night on May 1st? Could something have happened at nighttime? And then they woke up and like planned what they were going to tell the police and that the kids went missing. This is like very, very nerve wracking because these are two little kids and Derek and I've talked about this before. What was the case that we did with the little boy Dior Coons your Coons?

We've also done summer wells. Yeah A lot of people are saying this is very reminiscent of summer wells I mean if you look at the property that's very similar Yeah, and the only reason I say Dior Coons is because we talked about it You know how far can a small child like this get in unknown and wild terrain? And right around the family home, it's very wild. Lots of forest, trees. Like Derek said, Nova Scotia's a beautiful, natural, beauty sort of place.

Whenever you have a child involved, or in this case, children involved, you don't want to come after the parents right away because they may be going through their own nightmare. Yeah, exactly. It's such a tough sort of line to walk. It's a tough dynamic because you should be looking at the last people to see them. But then you also want to have some level of sympathy for them because they could be victims

in this as well. But the number one goal is to find the children and you have to go to the source and the source would be the parents because they know the whereabouts, they know the children's last activities. And just initially, and there's a lot more to cover in here, I can tell you have a lot more in this that we're gonna go over, but just off the rip, just me hearing about this for the first time, as a parent, and I'm not trying to pass judgment,

but to be honest, I am a little bit. I have two children, 12 and nine. So similar age gap there. They're a little older now, but they were similar age gaps. And I can't recall a time where Jana or I wouldn't have our eyes on the kids for more than a couple seconds.

That four years old is extremely young. It's extremely young. And the six year old isn't old enough to watch the four year old. So, so there is some judgment being passed there because things like this, not this extreme can happen. It could be more so in the, in line of them being injured inside the house. There's things all over the house. You leave them alone.

Any parents out there know what I'm talking about. You leave your kid alone for a couple seconds and all of a sudden there that you're going to the hospital. I had an incident just to, you know, make myself look bad here where I left 10 Lee alone for a couple minutes in the bedroom. It was during Christmas time to, to give you kind of an idea of what I'm talking about here. There's a shelf underneath our TV that's hanging on the wall. And on that shelf we had those like heavy statues. You'd like hang your,

um, stockings, Christmas stockings off of. Oh, they are so heavy. And this one it's kind of, it worked out good. Okay. But this one had like a edge on it. It was like iron, like, like cast iron or whatever. And all of a sudden I hear Jana, a blood curdling scream. And then I hear the Tenley start screaming and I look around the corner and Tenley looks like she's out of that movie Carrie. Like, you know, where she just covered in blood from her forehead down to her nose. And I'm like, Oh my, you know, God, what just happened? Luckily, she pulled the stocking

down and make it come down on her head? Yep, pulled the stocking down, the corner hit her head. Luckily, it was such a small cut, but your head bleeds. But the head bleeds. But initially- You must've been absolutely just, yeah. Well, that's the, anything, just a few minutes. Few seconds, and that could've been,

the reason I say all this is it could've been a lot worse. Oh my God, what if it hit her eye? Exactly, and we were fortunate, but I was more mad at myself than anything because I'm like, why would I leave her in there alone when she's moving, she's touching things, she's curious. Like, yeah, it was only a second. I went to the bathroom, I think, to grab a toothpick. But that's all it took. So people make mistakes. I'm not trying to villainize the family members here at this point, but it does raise some questions of, okay, I can see them maybe opening the door and you not being aware of it. That even to me is a lot. Why do both of the parents have to be in the bed?

One parent's with the baby. Why do both have to still be sleeping at 10 a.m. on a Friday when your other kids are home? Right. But let's say for a second there's an innocent thing there where he just went in there for a second to give her a kiss or whatever. Who knows? No, no, he said he was sleeping. No, they were sleeping. That's a problem, right? But I'm just trying to do a hypothetical here. Let's say for a second they went in there just to check in on them or make a quick conversation. You would think because you have a six-year-old and a four-year-old out in the main area,

at some point you'd go back out there pretty relatively quickly. And so even if they were able to open the door without being detected, you would catch them in the backyard or something before they have a chance to leave the fenced in area because you're going to walk into the living room or wherever and you're going to say, where are the kids? And you're going to immediately start to search for them. So how far can they really get? That's the point I'm trying to make. But here we have to believe that not only did they get out

of the house undetected, but they got out of the backyard and they got into the wooded area or wherever they went before anyone realized that they were gone. And that's an extended period of time. So you have to ask yourself at minimum, how long were they in the bedroom sleeping after Lily and Jack left the property? All right, so I wanted to correct something I said earlier

and also give you a little bit more information on that. But first, let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. Okay, I know we're talking about some pretty heavy stuff right now, but let's take a quick break to talk about something a little more comforting, Like warm, fresh, baked bread. And I mean, fresh from your oven in under 25 minutes, with zero prep and zero mess. Sounds too good to be true, but I promise you, it's real, it's called Wild Grain, and it's been a total game changer in my house. Wild Grain is the first ever Bake

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word. Okay. We're back from break. So I remember before the break when I was first explaining it, I said, oh, I think the stepdad said something about the screen door being really loud. No, he said the opposite. So here's what Dan Martel told the a few media outlets about what happened the morning the children were missing. He said, quote, Lily came into the room multiple times. I seen her that morning and Jack was out playing in the kitchen. I'm guessing. And they slid open

the back sliding door. It's almost like silent to hear it sliding. They slid it open, the boots were right beside the door, and they proceeded to, I'm guessing, play outside. They must have got out through the back fence and then they were gone. As soon as I seen they were gone, I immediately jumped in the car and did all the dirt roads and all the culverts, checking over the rivers and streams. As soon as I got home 10 minutes later, I headed out on foot, end quote.

So he's seeing this, the sliding glass door is almost silent, so that's why they didn't hear it open. But you look at this house and Derek, do you have it up? I have it up right here, and we're gonna throw it up for people on YouTube so they have a good image of this. It's all woods around them. It is.

This is a very huge part of this area. It is not only is it a small rural community, it's got dense forests, winding back country roads, very limited infrastructure. Cellular service is virtually nonexistentent in many areas, and the community is accessible primarily via local roads that are known mostly to residents. The closest town is about a 15-minute drive away. This is kind of gonna give you another idea of the area's seclusion.

The population is only around 100 people, and many of these people are related. They've lived there for generations. This is a close-knit community, which also contributes to how strong that they have come together to find Jack and Lily. But it also underscores the challenges faced during emergencies, such as these recent search efforts,

where they just don't know where to look. Because technically, these parents don't actually know when the kids got out, right? Because apparently this sliding glass door is so silent. I would think maybe you could hear them playing outside, maybe you'd hear their voices yelling from outside and that would sort of, I don't know, clue you in. But once again, if they were sleeping,

I can't sleep that deeply in the morning once I've already woken up or been woken up by the kids because then I feel like even If I try to close my eyes, I still have one ear open. So I'm just not I'm just not sure the property is pretty Rural it does very much feel like summer wells and also Dan Martel's mother apparently also lives on the property in a dilapidated camper with multiple cats You can see and a dog and it overlooks the fenced in backyard with multiple cats and a dog. And it overlooks the fenced in backyard

where the parents have reported that the children must have escaped from and wandered off. You guys definitely gotta go, if you're not watching on YouTube, you gotta go look at the photos. I mean, it gives you a better idea of what we're doing. It's Summer Wells all over again, right? And so look at this screen door.

If you see the picture, I just don't, I have a screen door in my house, you know, like to go out to the back. It's certainly not silent Unless you're oiling that thing Consistently no screen door or a sliding door is silent and I can't really tell is this Sliding door just a glass door or is there a screen and a glass? I would hope there was a screen and a glass But I guess it was just the sliding glass door,

it could be quieter, but the screen is never quiet. The screen part is just never quiet. So it doesn't really add up. And obviously, Dan Martell being the stepfather, being the person who's been the most vocal to the media, with the mother not really saying anything, he's been talking about what the police have been doing with him. I always get concerned when the parents do a lot of talking

because it gives opportunities for their stories to be compared, their stories to change over time, which has sort of happened. He apparently was questioned for hours at the Pick Two County District RCMP detachment in the town of Stellerton. He did that on May 6th, 2025. And he said that he was asked to go over details and timelines to the minute and then draw on maps where he thought the kids would be. And he told the media, quote,

they're easy on me because they know I'm telling the truth about everything, end quote. I always get concerned when people say that. It's like you're preemptively setting the narrative. The police have not come out and said any of this. Dan Martell is. And the police aren't really confirming anything. He's been like, yeah, I've taken a lie. I want to take a lie detector test. I want them to believe me. And this could be because he sees the chatter online because a lot of people, you know how this goes with cases like this. Yeah.

Obviously he's seeing what they're saying online. Obviously he doesn't want to be, so is his consistent talking to the media and sort of like trying to let everybody know, I'm innocent, the police don't think I did anything. Is that because it's in response to what people are saying, or is it like a shady sort of thing, like Letitia Stouck, like Chris Watts,

where they're coming out and be like, we just want them found, we just want them found. We can't even tell anymore because what would his behavior be naturally if nobody online was saying anything about him? Would he still feel the need to defend himself in such a vehement way? I don't know, I can't really tell. So first off, there's a map right here

that we're throwing up on YouTube, and it's the search that's been done in that area. There's all different color coding going on there and that's a combination of things. It could be horseback, it could be drones, it could be canines, it could be people on foot doing search grids, and basically they'll wear tracking devices so that the RCMP can track what has been searched and what hasn't. So if you're on YouTube right now, you're seeing all these different lines and colors, and if you're listening on audio, I will tell you this, it's extensive.

The search is vast, it's extensive, and it's overlapping. It's overlapping. And so the likelihood of the children still being in that area is not high. I will say this, just as a silver lining before I get into my final thoughts on this. There have been cases where children can survive this long out in the woods. It's not a lot, but there are cases. I was looking up something. It was very cold. That's the problem. All the elements outside play a factor in that, but I remember reading an article. It was in, it was from June. I read it before we started recording this where there was a,

there was some children that survived a plane crash and survived in the rainforest for over 40 days. That's crazy. But again, these children were 13, 9, 4, and 11. I don't know about a 4 and a 6 year old surviving by themselves out in the elements. Well that's the problem. And in fact, let me just make sure I'm correct, there was an 11 month old baby that was out in that rainforest.

Wow. But again, circumstances different. Where did you see this? That sounds so interesting. I'd like to look into it. I'll send you the link right now and I'll also post it in the description of this episode. So... Yeah, we need a happy ending sometimes. Here's my takeaway with the limited information that I know about this case. It's one of two things.

Either there's neglect and negligence or there's something more nefarious going on here. And law enforcement is exploring both scenarios. Here's my take just from 35,000 feet. I think mom left stepdad because mom's holding stepdad responsible. Do you think it's because she knows something and suspected or just because? No, I don't, I don't. Why would she hold him responsible

when she too was sleeping in their her kids? Because here's my thing I think she's in bed with the baby or whatever. She's doing she's taking care of baby duty And he comes in and decides to take a nap as well because he's tired And if she was handling the baby, he should have been out with the other kids So he's in with her he's snoozing and it allows for this to all unfold And I think the way law enforcement is approaching it right now To just put it bluntly as like this was a major screw-up by him where he's innocent of a crime

But he's not innocent of being a bad parent in this moment. Okay, so here's what I'm my question Do you think that something nefarious happened or do you think that they truly just wandered off and something happened to them? My initial gut is just it's an accident. I will say though that Malaya's mother did post something on Facebook and it's kind of a different story than what Dan Martell is saying and she said quote the kids were last seen Thursday night when they went to bed they were heard playing in their room around 830 Friday morning mom and stepdad fell back to sleep and woke up to silence they couldn't find the kids and called 9-1-1 around 9. Search dogs couldn't find the scent past the driveway. So the search dogs couldn't find the kids scent past the driveway.

So according to Tom Martel, he actually saw Lily that morning. He said she poked her head in a few times and that's how he knew she was wearing a pink shirt. But according to Malaya's mom, neither Malaya nor Dan Martell saw the kids after Thursday night. They just heard them playing in the house. So once again, this is a little bit of like, what's the story here? Did Lily poke her head in? You saw her wearing a pink shirt, or did you only hear them playing and you didn't actually physically see them? In that case, the description of what they're even wearing and how they people should be looking for them wouldn't even be accurate Yeah, so it's kind of a concern but and that goes in line with what I'm saying where if this isn't something that's more nefarious

There's some type of Collaborative effort here and it was just a mistake That could be the reason for the inconsistencies in the story because as Daniel Martell is Telling his his accounts of what happened, he's realizing how guilty he looks in the sense of like, at minimum, you're a bad parent. You didn't do your job and because of it, the kids got out of your view and they were able to escape into the woods and who knows what happens from there. So I think at minimum, the reason for the changing of the stories is trying to soften the landing as far as culpability

Just from a parental perspective where it's like hey if you had just got out of bed We wouldn't be here right now now as far as Jack and Lily I don't want to speculate too much because it's not good But being out in the Canadian wilderness like this there are obviously a lot of dangers out there And I'm not even just talking about animals. So being out there alone at six and four years old... Yeah, there's rivers and... It's not good. It's not good.

And I'm hoping that this is one of those examples, like I just told you about that previous article, where it turns out, and it's a miracle, and Jack and Lily are found before this video is even released. But I guess where I would end it here is- I doubt it and- I do too, but I hope I'm wrong. But I think we have to hold our hope-

We've been looking for so long, four weeks now. No sign, Derek, no sign at all. Nothing. Not a shoe, not a piece of clothing. Nothing. Nothing, not any. And here's my thing, like I'm having a hard time believing that two kids, four and six, would leave the safety of their backyard.

When I mean, it's a pretty expansive backyard. There's lots of trouble you could get into just in the yard, okay? There's like abandoned cars and tires and there's tons of ways they could hurt themselves or get into trouble just in that backyard. I'm having a hard time believing that a four-year-old and a six-year-old would be like,

hey, yeah, let's leave the backyard that we've never left by ourselves before and journey out into the wilderness and the forest. It feels like they would be scared. I know my kids would never have done that. So it's hard for me to believe that they did that. And they got far enough because the parents estimate that it was about 20 minutes before they realized the kids were gone. That they got far enough in that time with the quick law enforcement response

and then this huge search. I mean, they got dogs, they got hundreds of people on foot, they've got drones and planes up there that they would get that far. They might have gone in and gotten scared and maybe they would have just sat down and been like, oh, we'll wait for somebody to come for us, but why would they keep going deeper into the woods?

They would have been scared. It's not a place that they're familiar with. It's not a place that they were familiar with. It's not a place that they often went. It just doesn't make any sense to me. It doesn't, and why wouldn't they have done that before? Why did they do it that day? There feels like something is really, really missing from this story.

Yeah, I'm with you. But it doesn't necessarily mean that a crime was committed, but I'm with you. There's parts of the story that are being omitted and maybe it's just for the sake of looking better. You also one more thing, because we're, you know, we could talk about this for two hours, the mother-in-law as well being on the property. What did she see?

What did she hear? I know what she's saying. You're already relaying that. No, that was the mother of Malaya. So Malaya. Okay. So that, but who else, who else is there? Who else was aware of what's going on?

Again, it has a lot of summer wells, summer well community not a lot of strangers too. And that's the thing like you'd think oh, maybe they were abducted Right, but this is a place where pretty much if you're gonna get to this area You'd have to know the back roads and the way you're not just driving by you're not getting off the highway and driving through This area as a stranger and now like oh two kids, you know, you know, like, there's like a hundred people who live here. They all know each other. So if they were taken, it would have to be by somebody who knew them. Yeah.

And in that case, it's not gonna be pretty hard to narrow that down because there's only really that many people who even live in this community. Yeah, well, that's where we'll leave it. So if you're from that area or you know any of the individuals involved in this case, Please be on the lookout. and you have information that could help bring Jack and Lily home,

please contact the RCMP or contact your local authorities. It doesn't necessarily mean you know where Jack and Lily are, but if you have information about one of the parties that we've mentioned today and you think it would be advantageous for law enforcement to know those stories, call in, Let them decide whether it's significant or not. So we're calling on everybody who's listening or watching this episode. If you have any information that could help bring Jack and Lily home, please contact the authorities immediately. And if you want to remain anonymous, you can

call the Nova Scotia Crime Stoppers toll free at 1-800-222-TIPS which is 8477. TIPS is 8477. You can also submit a secure web tip at www.crimestoppers.ns.ca. So this is if you like to remain anonymous, you don't kind of want your name mixed in this, maybe you do know something, you don't want to say it out loud, or you don't want it to be tracked back to you. Please, if you know anything, if you even think you see anything, call somebody, let them know. You see you see something say something these are two little kids four and six and if there's any chance to bring them home safely we'd like to take advantage of that absolutely guys we will be back later this week with Darlie Routier part three it's been a fascinating series a lot of discussion

about it until then everyone stay safe out there. We'll see you soon. Bye. Bye.