The Decibel - The disappearance of Jack and Lilly Sullivan

Episode Date: September 19, 2025

On May 2, 2025, Lilly and Jack Sullivan were reported missing from the small community of Landsdowne, Nova Scotia. The disappearance of the siblings quickly became a story of national interest. And despite the massive search and police investigation with detection dogs, divers, helicopters, drones and search teams of experts and volunteers, the 6-year-old girl and 4-year-old boy have not been found.The Globe’s Atlantic reporter Lindsay Jones and investigative reporter Greg Mercer have been reporting on this case from the start. In this special episode, they’ll share what they’ve uncovered. We’ll also hear from Lilly and Jack’s family members to piece together their lives before the disappearance.Questions? Comments? Ideas? E-mail us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My name is Lindsay Jones, and I'm the Atlantic Reporter for the Globe and Mail. I'm Greg Mercer, and I'm an investigative reporter for the globe. Lindsay and Greg have been reporting on the disappearance of Jack and Lily Sullivan. The two children went missing on May 2nd, 2025, from the rural community of Lansdown, Nova Scotia. I was working on the Sunday shift at the Globe and Mail, and the children. had gone missing on Friday. When I first heard about it, I thought, oh, most cases of missing children

that we hear about are wrapped up within a day or within a few hours when kids go missing. By Sunday, when I started my shift, the children still weren't found. And to this day, they still haven't been found. Their disappearance and the massive efforts to find them has become a national news story. So today, we have a special episode of The Decible.

Lindsay and Greg will take you through the active investigation, what they've learned, and we'll hear from some of the people closest to Jack and Lily. I was first involved in the reporting a few days after Lindsay. She was on the ground doing a lot of great work, and I was asked to basically come and assist her at first from afar and then later joined her in Nova Scotia. On a story like this, it's often helpful to pair up, especially when you've got somebody who's doing the labor-intensive stuff like, you know,

driving around and trying to find people. And, yeah, we've been out of ever since. I'm Cheryl Sutherland, and this is the decibel from the Globe and Mail. The first thing I did was try to understand what was happening on the ground that day. So we learned that Jack and Lily are two siblings. Lily is six and Jack is four. And they were living in the home of their stepfather's mother. So it's a trailer in the community of Lansdown, which is about 100 people in a remote area with no cell phone service in Picto County.

I also reached out to both parents. Malaya is the children's mother and I got a reply. from Daniel Martel, the children's stepfather. And Daniel and I got on the phone that afternoon, and we had quite an emotional conversation. Can you take me through sort of what happened? Like you guys heard the kids playing in the morning, and how did that call?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Lily came into the room multiple times. I mean, me and my and the baby were just in the bedroom. Uh-huh. And Lily came in multiple times, so, you know, I've seen her that morning, and Jack was out playing in the kitchen, I'm guessing, and they slit open the back sliding door. It's almost like silent to hear it slide open.

But they slid it open. Their boots were right beside the door. I just perceived, I'm guessing, play outside, and then they just got out to the back fence, And then they were, they were gone. As soon as I seen that, they were gone. I immediately jumped in the car, I did all the dirt roads, did all the culverts. I checked over the rivers.

Streams, I did everything. Any of the vehicle could take me, I did. Yeah. And as soon as I got back home, like 10 minutes later, I immediately went out in front. So the officers got here. What were the conditions like? the woods when you were running.

Conditions are thick. My cousin said that she talked to, talked to some searches, and they said they've been over 500 different churches in, and this is one of the hardest ones they ever seen. What makes it so difficult? Is it the thick woods, or what is it? Thin thick woods is the train, elevation throughout the train. Okay. It didn't matter to me.

I was going up through water after I waist and with the whole consequences you're just sitting there watching me hovering above me so all three adults that were on the property at the time the children disappeared have the same story Malaya has said virtually the exact same thing Daniel has said and Daniel's mother Janie McKenzie also told police she heard the children playing in the yard that morning So police essentially began a massive search and rescue operation initially. Within the next following days, hundreds of people were brought to this part of Picto County and began searching the forest.

It's a densely wooded area with a lot of mine shafts. It's abandoned mines. Difficult searching, they were aided by guide dogs and helicopters and drones. A lot of people scanning out in a grid around. found the home, found no trace of the kids. And then we learned that the day after the children were reported missing, that the RCMP's major crime unit was brought in to take on the case. One thing the RC&P are emphasizing is that all options are part of their investigation right now.

It is a missing person's case. It remains a missing person's case, which can pivot to a criminal investigation. Well, the key thing is they haven't found the bodies of these children, right? It's difficult for there to be criminal charges without the bodies of the children being discovered. No one who's been involved in the investigation is pretending that the kids are alive somewhere. They don't seem to believe that theory at all. So they're trying to find the bodies. And until they do, it is difficult for this case to go to that next step.

The day after the children went missing, that Saturday of May 3rd, there was an argument at the home between Malaya's family members and some of Daniel's family members. One of Malaya's family members hurled an accusation that Daniel had something to do with the children's disappearance. And this stem from discussion about Matthews in the home. Daniel told me about the fight on the first day I met him. And I also learned that his mother, Janie McKenzie, kicked Malaya's family members off the problem. property. After that point, at a briefing, a police update that Daniel and Malaya attended together, Malaya left the briefing in tears. And when Daniel tried to speak to her alone,

her mother would not let him. And that there was also an altercation there that resulted in Malaya leaving with her mother, cutting off contact with Daniel and the two have broken up. She's changed her Facebook status to single. And she has not come back to the community. We had been asking him questions about these allegations of drug use, and he responds essentially saying, look, he's got nothing to hide. He acknowledged yes, he's done meth and other drugs in the past, but he doesn't struggle with them. And the way he explained it to us was he was attending Narcotics Anonymous, essentially to clear his name. What do you make of all of the speculation that's going on? So many people who are waiting on this. Well, I can already tell you

The drug party is absolute bullshit. Yep. And I even asked the AirCMP, give me drug test. I asked CPS give me drug test. They said, no, it's not a concern. We're not going to do that. I even go to Narcotics Anonymous. I do everything.

Like, I go to three times a week just to clear of the air for all that bullshit. I mean, even when it comes down to Jack and Lily, I'm the only one from both sides of the family that is actually doing anything. I'm doing media all the time. They probably, they probably refuse to do media with you guys, I'm guessing. Yeah, they're not talking. Yeah, they won't do anybody. We learned through our reporting that Nova Scotia's Child Protection Office had been contacted by the kids' school out of concern about the way they were showing up at school. We don't know the specific details of what the concern was that prompted that call, but we do know that that caused a child protection worker to go to the children's house and interview their parents.

And this was in the months before their disappearance. I was looking through the Facebook page of the children's school to understand what their school life was like. I was really just curious about the types of things they did at school and what their lives were like there. And I came across a photo of Jack with a black eye. And so that photo was dated December 13th, 2024. It was five months before he and live. I asked Daniel how Jack received the black eye in December, and he didn't respond, but in private Facebook messages that were shared with me, he acknowledged that Jack had many black eyes.

He said Lily even had a black eye when Jack and Lily disappeared from an incident that happened on May 1st the day before the children went missing. He said, a tonka truck that she pushed down on swan. up and hit her in the face. We know that Scott Armstrong, Nova Scotia's minister responsible for child welfare, has looked into this case. He will not discuss the specifics of it, but he says he's cooperating with the police. And if there will be a time when we can question how the system responded, he will discuss that publicly. But he said, for now, he wants to focus on getting a resolution and finding these kids.

But there's a lot of questions about how the system may or may not have missed warning signs around the home life of these children. And we do know Nova Scotia is one of the few provinces in Canada that does not have a child and youth advocate. And that is a specialized position that can look at how a child welfare system acts and where it fails and where it has flaws. And there's a lot of folks who are saying maybe this is time that Nova Scotia should get one and improve the way. that it handles child welfare. And that's the shame of the stories that there were people who were concerned about what they saw,

who tried to do something about it. And while it's unclear how the system responded, we know that child protection officer went to the house and talked to the parents. You know, so the system, in some ways, did try to act as it should, but this is happening in an environment where the child protection system

knows what's ghost appears to be very broken. So there's a lot of questions that still need to be answered about what exactly happened after that visit of the kid's home. before they disappeared. Well, four and a half months later after Jack and Lily disappeared, the country is baffled,

and frankly, the online community is obsessed with what happened to Jack and Lily. There are so many conspiracy theories. There are a lot of theories as well, based on some of the facts, some of the interviews that have been out there. And all of it has just led to this, voracious demand in the face of what really is a vacuum of information from police in the case. All of a sudden, there's more vehicles coming through the area, people slowing down in front of

homes, taking photos, sending up drones. You know, for the people in the community, it's become unnerving in other ways. Daniel's father, Earl Martel, for instance, has been followed and, you know, videoed, had an altercation, a verbal altercation with an online creator. This same online creator showed up at the home of Malaya's mother, pretending to buy a horse trailer that was advertised online. And surreptitiously recorded a lengthy conversation with Wade Paris, who is Malaya's mother's partner, about the case and then posted that online on TikTok. And, like, it's totally different from the rules that we subscribe to, that we adhere to as journalists.

And that became fodder for many YouTubers who have dedicated their shows, their crime shows, to solely focusing on Lily and Jack. So people are very cagey. of the media and outsiders driving around, looking at the so-called crime scene or the scene of where the children went missing and it's created a lot of suspicion in the area. It jeopardized an investigation, right? People have already made up their minds.

Yeah, I know. I know. What does that like? Well, I get messages every day. People still call me child killer. You kill the children. We're the bodies. I get that every day. I can show you guys, and it's absolutely disturbing, what people say. People are sending you Facebook Facebook?

Yeah, constantly. I'm sorry, Daniel. Constantly. I just ignore them. What do you want those people to know, those folks who are reaching out to you? Are these strangers, or these people to know you? No, they're all strangers from all over the world.

It's worldwide, yeah. And just sending you a message on Facebook saying? Yeah, because I always keep my messages open so anyone can message me. That's why it takes me so long to get back to everybody because they have hundreds and hundreds of messages. And it's complicated for things for us, right? Trying to do actual reporting on the ground.

Some of the folks in this community, they don't see a big difference between a YouTuber in the U.K. or the U.S. and someone reporting for a Canadian newspaper. And so there is a trust that we have to build up with some of these folks because, you know, in their view, YouTubers and people who are trying to get clicks for their true crime podcast who are less concerned about getting it right and are more concerned about just drawing traffic, we have to convince the folks who are talking to us that we're doing things differently, that this is. actual journalism and getting it right is important to us. We'll be right back. One of the questions that kept coming up was, where is the children's biological father? And so in searching for him and his role in their lives, we found his mother, Belinda Gray.

when we arrived she was out with her son hat on in her gardening clothes and that's what she does all day to help take her mind off her missing grandchildren and as soon as she saw us and i introduced myself just tears came to her eyes she knew what we were there for and um you could tell she's just carrying carrying the sadness of of this mystery with her every moment of the day and and you could tell she's just carrying carrying the sadness of this mystery with her every moment of the day We haven't seen the kids in almost two years now. I'm sorry. That we had a pretty good relationship up until that point. That after the separation of Malaya and my son, it was not a good separation. That my son distanced himself from the children. We didn't have to agree with that.

It was his decision to make. But Malaya knew that this will always be a second home for that they were our grandkids. So she was more than welcome here whenever she wanted to come by. What do you remember about the kids? Like, how do we describe them to people who never met them? They're lively little ones that Lily is full of life. She's into everything. She's into everything, and she's really girly, girly.

But, yeah, she used to, whenever she come to visit, she got so used to seeing me and my hats and wearing glasses, so I had to take an old pair of glasses and break the lens out of them so that she could wear them around the house. She liked dolls. She liked stuffed animals, and she just had this prim and proper way, almost like she was posing all the time. But she always reminded me.

me of a little girl that lived in her own dream world. She'd play with her toys and she's chattering away to herself. Now, Jack didn't overly talk a whole lot. He was a very quiet little boy. Okay. That, yeah, he was a very quiet, shy little boy, very reserved, at least up until that age, very reserved. But he quietly played with the toys and he liked the stuffed animals.

He played with him. and he loved the toy horse I had there for them. How did you hear that they had gone missing? We were in Halifax when we got the news. The mother of another grandchild I have, I guess she's seen it on social media. So right away, she sent a message. It was quite a shocker.

I don't think you could. can make anybody understand. What struck me about Belinda is that she understood and described a change in Malaya that she noticed over the last few years. I thought her gift was being a mom. That I really thought that was her God-given gift

that she seemed to just breeze through it. She was actually everything a grandmother could want for a mom. Really? Okay. She was an excellent mom. An excellent mom. She didn't raise her voice. She had more patience than I had as a mom.

Wow. And so what do you think happened? Things started to change when she made me. when she met Daniel that she had told us about meeting them and that she did believe it was going somewhere so I was happy for and I told her well as long as he makes her happy because kids are happy if mom's happy and we kept in communication that the kids birthdays and Christmas that I usually she was staying with her grandmother at that time in Toronto. So we would go there to drop off the kids' birthday gifts or Christmas gifts and visit with them.

Then we noticed that it started to change a bit. And what kind of change did you notice in her? She started to get distance. That the last visit, she had them here. That was in the summer before Jack's birthday. So that probably, would have been around July or August. She did make the comment that it bothered Daniel coming to visit us. That she assumed, he assumed that she was coming so she could run into Cody. And I thought, well, I mean, they're only young.

So we made it clear that, look, if he's got a problem, bring him too. Do you think that the reason why you haven't seen them in the last two years is because of I do feel it's because of him. I do. I mean, she was coming all the time up until she got with him. And then when she drove to the home the day after the children went missing to help look for them, she was flabbergasted at the state of the home. Malaya was appeared totally different to her than she had previously.

She wondered what happened in those two years. I was blown away when I found out where they lived. Why? What is it about that area? Well, we passed a few times in the last couple of years. And I actually remember seeing the mobile home. And I remember thinking that, my God, they should at least clean the yard up a bit. I'm awful critical of things. It's a shame, but I am.

Well, my philosophy has always been, a person can be. poor because I don't have had money that I am on the poor side of life but you fix up what you got you keep clean what you got that that's just been so I had no idea and I made a comment about the trailer twice when we have passed so Saturday me and some of my family members took a trip out Saturday to do some searching and then we Monday we had the four-wheeler and we started doing the trails and we took the trails all up through the pipelines and the power lines that we checked all the trails and the ribbons were everywhere that the searchers were all up through the areas of ribbons that you

couldn't go within four feet without seeing ribbons throughout the woods everywhere that that I didn't know they were well-searched. I still had hoped that maybe they were lost in the woods. Then when we come back to the trailer, and the cousin met me out in the yard, Daniel's cousin. Okay. She met me in the driveway, and I asked where Malaya was, and she told me Malaya wasn't there.

And I had hit me like a ton of bricks. What was it about that? If she could leave, then to me she knew her kids weren't coming back. Because I know I couldn't leave. I wanted to sleep in my car there. So I wanted to go home then because, to me, that answered my question, that she knew they weren't coming back. The longer this goes on, Brenda, how worried are you, we may not get answers?

That leaves me sick to my stomach. I don't believe my grandchildren are alive. I have resigned myself to that one. But to not get answers, it's like, no, no. There's answers out there. Two kids just don't disappear. I'm so afraid that people will stop talking about it, and they'll forget them. the Globe and Mail and other media outlets received 13 documents. Whenever police need to, you know, get a warrant or, like, make a records request access, they have to get an authorization from a judge. And in this case, police had all of those authorizations sealed because of the open court principle and anything filed in the courts is supposed to be accessible to the public. The Globe and Mail, along with two other media outlets, made an application.

to unseal those documents. And so we successfully did. Some of the information is redacted, but there is quite a bit there. And the records requests were to request parents' bank records, cell phone information, video surveillance from companies to corroborate information that they had already given police.

And so some of the information that we found that stood out for us in these documents, was that police collected the toothbrushes from the home, that they found a sock in children's boot prints in the woods, that they went to lengthy avenues to identify as being the same type of boot Lily was wearing at the time she went missing. The documents also showed that Malaya and Daniels polygraph tests were found to have been truthful,

and that at that time, police did not believe Lily and, Jack's disappearance was a criminal act. Another key thing that came out in the documents is this pink blanket that, you know, has come up in other stories we've reported on. And the key thing about this pink blanket is that it was found a kilometer from the trailer where Jack and Lily disappeared from. And it's perhaps the only physical clue in the case. So what's interesting is that Malaya's sister found this blanket, along with two other family members, the day the children were reported missing in the afternoon.

And Daniel originally said that blanket was not lilies. Malaya said the blanket was lilies. Then Daniel suggested that the people who found the blanket planted it. So I spoke with Malaya's sister. sister, Haley Ferdinand, who found the blanket, and she denies having planted anything. We most certainly did not. And that's on everything I have, the person I am. I would not do that in the midst of, to obstruct a case for missing children, regardless of the related to me or not. I would never. Why do you think Daniel is suggesting that you planted it? He told that to me as well?

probably because I was the one that was hot on his ass so the whole time we were there and he didn't like me from the get-go when I got there because he would not speak to any of his family when we showed up to help the search with Lily and Jack he'd put his head down he would ignore us he would walk away from us he wouldn't engage in conversation and I kept out of I was there for Jack and Lily and I'm still here for Jack and Lily means, but it's very interesting information and perhaps the only physical clue that the public knows about at this point. And that blanket police have told us has been sent for

forensic testing. Oh gosh, I've not just gone back and forth to the community, but I've gone to many other parts of the province where people that are related to these children live. And sometimes that's just a door-knocking mission that may or may not pan out. That's one of the challenges with these stories. You can't force people to talk. And we were able to find Malaya's father. So this is the grandfather of Jack and Lily. We found him through an address we obtained from a parking ticket he had in Halifax, right, and got an address outside of Sabinacch, First Nation, and went and knocked on his door, and he was happy to talk.

I didn't hear about this that happened on a Friday. I didn't hear nothing until like a Sunday. Oh, jeez. Yeah, I was really upset. Have you been in there, like at the police come and asked? Nope. Nothing. Never asked me anything.

What do you remember about the kids? Kids, they were happy. Yeah. Very happy. Yeah? Yes, every time I've seen them. They always lived at their grandmothers in, uh, in Turrell. I got you, okay.

Yeah, well, that's their great grandmas. Yep, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's where I used to go visit. Okay. Yeah. What? I'm gonna tell this guy moved him away, and that was the last time I seen him. And so he took us to his mother's house, Connie Brooks, in Indian Brook.

It's part of Speggenegati First Nation. So we went to her home, and we saw family photos all over the wall. some of Lily and Jack, some of Malaya as a child. When's the last time that you got to see Lily and Jack? I seen Lily last year when she brought her up here. Yes, the last time I seen Lily. Yeah, we had Desmond. They took them pictures. Okay.

Yeah. Okay. Did Lily and Jack ever learn anything about their MiGMA heritage? No, no, no, no, because they lived after reserve. Okay. They didn't really come up occasionally, you know, whatever, she brings them up and vision. She brought them up, and did you show them anything? They never showed them everything, and then, you know.

And Connie Brooks told us some interesting information. Malaya had been there to get her status card updated, so she is a member of the First Nation, and she visited her grandmother and other relatives, and her grandmother asked her about her relationship with Daniel Martel. I asked her, did he hurt you? She didn't really say she heard her, but he held her down. He held her down and took her phone on her, and she couldn't talk. She couldn't let me use the phone.

Yeah, I mean, we can't remove that. The kids, you know, they have indigenous heritage, and they're on their mother's side. Their grandfather is a member of the McMaw community. The kids do not have official status. that community, but certainly the Mi'among community has been involved in the search and providing legal assistance to their mother. So it is a part of the story. I do see the cases connected to missing and murdered indigenous women and children because, well, for one, Malaya's father brought that very issue up to us and was wearing an orange shirt to raise awareness about missing children.

And while there hasn't been a specific outcry about it, I think one thing to consider is that children going missing or being murdered happens more often to indigenous kids, statistically. And so you can't disconnect that these children have gone missing for this long with no answers from their indigenous heritage. We know there's still an effort to get more tips from the public. The province offered up to $150,000 as a reward for information that could help police in this case. And that's part of a provincial program designed to kind of get tips for some of the cold cases that are, you know, some of them very historical in Nova Scotia. Police say, though, they have received hundreds of tips already and they've interviewed dozens and dozens of people.

I mean, they are getting information, but so far, you know, the kids still remain missing and nothing has been able to be that breakthrough piece that they really need. We are still very much. on this case. The school year has started back up. The children are not in their seats on the school bus. They're not in their classrooms with their peers. There's still a lot of questions, and Greg and I plan to continue pressing for answers. That's it for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland. Kashimah Milovich produced this episode. Our producers are Madeline White, Michal Stein and Ali Graham.

David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pichenza is our managing editor. Thanks so much for listening. Thank you.