CANADA Canada - Jack, 4 & Lilly Sullivan, 6, Vulnerable, wandered from home 10am, Gairloch Rd, Landsdowne Station, Pictou County, NS, 2 May 2025 #7

Bigditch · Mar 12, 2026

su5ie said:
I've always felt the kids are in water at the closed down recreational centre ,down the road from the trailer on the opposite side of the road and despite a search there by Sars I feel it might not have been throughout enough without the use of sonar equipment

Was it the place that when searchers went back a second time they were denied access to the property?

BCSleuth · Mar 12, 2026

Vern_S said:
My thoughts on this case is the children are in water or they are not in the area at all. Possible foul play. Early May is is still really cold in Novia Scotia, especially water. Jack could have gone into water and Lilly went after him. The cold shock alone could have incapacitated them. In cold water and with small children, they probably did not go through a float cycle. Even drainage ditches only a few feet deep are difficult to search manually.

I use remotely operated sonar search boats, some as small as a boogie board, to search ponds, creeks, drainage ditches etc. In December, I helped locate a missing man who was in 4ft of water using one of my remote operated sonar boats. The local authorities did not use sonar. They could not get their large manned boat with sonar into the small body of water. They tried using poles from rubber rafts to sweep and poke the water to find him. They suspended the search after 2 weeks. Using remote controlled sonar search boats, we found him in under 2 hours.

Searching water is ALWAYS a difficult proposition unless you have the right tools, training, and experience. I have seen no indication that a proper water search was ever conducted for Jack and Lilly.

This is just an opinion.

Float would have happened when the weather warmed, though. And the waterways around there are not really large enough to carry a body away. They would have been seen at some point. Two of them.

Also, my kids could swim by that age. And if they could not then one is not going to go in after the other.

And then, of course, there's the blanket.... that blanket piece sure looks planted.

Vern_S · Mar 12, 2026

BCSleuth said:
Float would have happened when the weather warmed, though. And the waterways around there are not really large enough to carry a body away. They would have been seen at some point. Two of them.

Also, my kids could swim by that age. And if they could not then one is not going to go in after the other.

And then, of course, there's the blanket.... that blanket piece sure looks planted.

A float cycle is not guaranteed. Many conditions determine if a body will float during decomposition.

musicaljoke · Mar 13, 2026

BCSleuth said:
Float would have happened when the weather warmed, though. And the waterways around there are not really large enough to carry a body away. They would have been seen at some point. Two of them.

Also, my kids could swim by that age. And if they could not then one is not going to go in after the other.

And then, of course, there's the blanket.... that blanket piece sure looks planted.

If it was planted, then surely, considering the muddy spring conditions, there would have been footprints, or tire tracks, or both, leading to the spot.

Sjöberg · Mar 13, 2026

I can see the blanket being planted or being left by the kids, but most likely imo it is unrelated and just happened to be there for one reason or the other. Because if you would want to stage a kid getting lost in the woods would you place a strip of an old blanket you never even mentioned before in the trees near the road? Or would you put the backpack you said the kids had with them somewhere in the woods? One of the wellies you said they were wearing in a body of water? A hat, sunglasses, a glove thrown on the road to stage an abduction? Or place the bigger part of the blanket by the side of the road at least? IMO a piece of blanket you did not say the kids had hanging in a tree by the road makes no sense for trying to indicate that the kids were lost in the woods, drowned or were kidnapped. It indicates nothing. It is not even something the kids had in active use, as far as we were told.

I think it is quite likely that people in that hood were eermh not terribly careful with discarding their old items properly. (Additionally, what it first reminded me of, was how we mark "entry/exit points" in the woods - you tie something to the trees at around 1-1,5m high, to mark, that this is the turn, either something reflective for car drivers to see narrow service roads properly or some string or similar in the actual woods to mark your walking trail - but as no trail was mentioned and it was not tied, I don't think this was the case here.)

I am still most intrigued by the Lilly-sized boot print. That is IMO more likely to be either a sign of the kids or something planted. How many 5-7 year old kids could there be in such an isolated place that just so happened to be walking in the wilderness near the Sullivan home? If this was one of the searchers, they would know and have ruled it out in no time. While a piece of blanket can end up on a tree with the help of wind or a crow or a squirrel, a boot print indicates human presence at the very least. Now it is possible it is, say, made by Lilly but notably older than the day the disappeared. But even then it is interesting - had the kids been wandering that far away previously? It is also possible it was made earlier by someone else, but I have a feeling they would know that as well, as there are just so few people around. It is also possible it was a planted imprint - in this case, one can think when this could have happened, who could have been at the location alone and where would the boot have been hidden (maybe before and) after. It would still be way easier to just chuck the backpack in the woods, though. But then again, a backpack left behind would indicate the kids are not fine. A print is a happier sign - they are somewhere here, they were just walking here.

Dunno. All this essey to say, that IMO a childs bootprint in the woods is more interesting than trash in the trees.

BCSleuth · Mar 13, 2026

Sjöberg said:
I can see the blanket being planted or being left by the kids, but most likely imo it is unrelated and just happened to be there for one reason or the other. Because if you would want to stage a kid getting lost in the woods would you place a strip of an old blanket you never even mentioned before in the trees near the road? Or would you put the backpack you said the kids had with them somewhere in the woods? One of the wellies you said they were wearing in a body of water? A hat, sunglasses, a glove thrown on the road to stage an abduction? Or place the bigger part of the blanket by the side of the road at least? IMO a piece of blanket you did not say the kids had hanging in a tree by the road makes no sense for trying to indicate that the kids were lost in the woods, drowned or were kidnapped. It indicates nothing. It is not even something the kids had in active use, as far as we were told.

I agree with a lot of this. What I absolutely do not agree with, however, is that it is not connected to the case. It's a large piece of blanket thrown up in a tree. A piece of blanket that just happened to belong to a little girl that went missing that day. It is clean, not muddy. It didn't blow there. It didn't fall off a garbage truck. An animal didn't place it there. None of those explanations are reasonable given its size, location and condition.

Yes, it doesn't really make sense to plant it there, either. Right after my last post saying it looked planted I started thinking about what it the children did put it there. It's possible the kids took it with them, got tired of carrying it, and threw it up in the tree. Either thinking it was funny or to retrieve on the way back.

It is still possible the children perished in the wilderness. They put the blanket there. They made the boot prints. They hid from searchers because they thought they would be in trouble and/or simply wanted to continue their adventure. It was apparently quite a nasty night that first night. Heavy rain, windy, and very cold.

Sjöberg said:
[...snip...]

I am still most intrigued by the Lilly-sized boot print. That is IMO more likely to be either a sign of the kids or something planted. How many 5-7 year old kids could there be in such an isolated place that just so happened to be walking in the wilderness near the Sullivan home? If this was one of the searchers, they would know and have ruled it out in no time. While a piece of blanket can end up on a tree with the help of wind or a crow or a squirrel, a boot print indicates human presence at the very least. Now it is possible it is, say, made by Lilly but notably older than the day the disappeared. But even then it is interesting - had the kids been wandering that far away previously? It is also possible it was made earlier by someone else, but I have a feeling they would know that as well, as there are just so few people around. It is also possible it was a planted imprint - in this case, one can think when this could have happened, who could have been at the location alone and where would the boot have been hidden (maybe before and) after. It would still be way easier to just chuck the backpack in the woods, though. But then again, a backpack left behind would indicate the kids are not fine. A print is a happier sign - they are somewhere here, they were just walking here.

Dunno. All this essey to say, that IMO a childs bootprint in the woods is more interesting than trash in the trees.

The blanket was found 1 km up the road and the boot prints are apparently a further 0.6 km in the same general direction, on a pipeline right of way. So if the boot prints do belong to the kids they tend to corroborate the blanket.

Lexiintoronto · Mar 13, 2026

I was thinking that the sad irony or coincidence is that the strip of blanket is in a way similar to the ties placed all over the search area by SAR members who were looking for them.

It looks to me like they tied it to say ‘we’re here’, however unlikely.

su5ie · Mar 13, 2026

Lexiintoronto said:
I was thinking that the sad irony or coincidence is that the strip of blanket is in a way similar to the ties placed all over the search area by SAR members who were looking for them.

It looks to me like they tied it to say ‘we’re here’, however unlikely.

To me the word planted implies it was left as a marker of some kind. Which I think the intial claimant of it being planted ,may have meant

I've thought in the past were the children placed in the woods as some sort of twisted punishment and the blanket was used as you indicate as a marker, possibly of where the children were left.

The clumps of footprints in which lillys size boot was found are also in the general location of this blanket

I had thought prehaps because the footprints were clumped together may indicate the kids were placed in this spot and for some time were afraid to move other than prehaps stamping up and down crying and frightened as little children often stomp up and down in this state of meltdown

We are not made aware of other prints like adult prints or tyre marks but prehaps this information is kept from the public so as not to pollute the investigation .

If the children were left in the woods it would be easy to pass a polygraph, if the question was ,did you kill lilly and jack ,which in a hansel and gretel situation the person did not they abandoned them .

So was the blanket the equivalent of the crumbs in the tale ?

It might tie in with the alleged vehicle movements during the early hours of the night as stated by the neighbours ??

Serononin · Mar 13, 2026

su5ie said:
To me the word planted implies it was left as a marker of some kind. Which I think the intial claimant of it being planted ,may have meant

I've thought in the past were the children placed in the woods as some sort of twisted punishment and the blanket was used as you indicate as a marker, possibly of where the children were left.

The clumps of footprints in which lillys size boot was found are also in the general location of this blanket

I had thought prehaps because the footprints were clumped together may indicate the kids were placed in this spot and for some time were afraid to move other than prehaps stamping up and down crying and frightened as little children often stomp up and down in this state of meltdown

We are not made aware of other prints like adult prints or tyre marks but prehaps this information is kept from the public so as not to pollute the investigation .

If the children were left in the woods it would be easy to pass a polygraph, if the question was ,did you kill lilly and jack ,which in a hansel and gretel situation the person did not they abandoned them .

So was the blanket the equivalent of the crumbs in the tale ?

It might tie in with the alleged vehicle movements during the early hours of the night as stated by the neighbours ??

Now I think about it, I think there must've been adult footprints all around, but perhaps so many different prints by that time that it wasn't possible to distinguish which prints were from searchers and which might have been there before the searches started

Lexiintoronto · Mar 13, 2026

su5ie said:
To me the word planted implies it was left as a marker of some kind. Which I think the intial claimant of it being planted ,may have meant

I've thought in the past were the children placed in the woods as some sort of twisted punishment and the blanket was used as you indicate as a marker, possibly of where the children were left.

The clumps of footprints in which lillys size boot was found are also in the general location of this blanket

I had thought prehaps because the footprints were clumped together may indicate the kids were placed in this spot and for some time were afraid to move other than prehaps stamping up and down crying and frightened as little children often stomp up and down in this state of meltdown

We are not made aware of other prints like adult prints or tyre marks but prehaps this information is kept from the public so as not to pollute the investigation .

If the children were left in the woods it would be easy to pass a polygraph, if the question was ,did you kill lilly and jack ,which in a hansel and gretel situation the person did not they abandoned them .

So was the blanket the equivalent of the crumbs in the tale ?

It might tie in with the alleged vehicle movements during the early hours of the night as stated by the neighbours ??

I had the exact same thoughts.

You mentioned the polygraph questions being all about death. I noticed that recently in this recent CBC video before
the 5 minute mark (stills below).:

DM speaking about the polygraph questions—

(Bottom still are the reporter’s questions with DM answering ‘no’.

su5ie · Mar 13, 2026

Lexiintoronto said:
I had the exact same thoughts.

You mentioned the polygraph questions being all about death. I noticed that recently in this recent CBC video before
the 5 minute mark (stills below).:

So allegedly and stated by DM the polygraph only dealt with questions on death not on indirect causation by abandonment or otherwise

interesting

So in effect one could answer in total truthfulness and honesty that they did not kill lilly and jack therefore" pass "

su5ie · Mar 13, 2026

Serononin said:
Now I think about it, I think there must've been adult footprints all around, but perhaps so many different prints by that time that it wasn't possible to distinguish which prints were from searchers and which might have been there before the searches started

Yes and afaik it was stated there was adult boot prints in the location where the clumps where also found

MistyWaters · Mar 13, 2026

I thought it was rather interesting for LE to say this. I wonder if it’s because they’re receiving tips pertaining to the information they’ve already released, as if it’s clues for the public to solve the case. The truth of it is we don’t know very much at all, only tidbits.
JMO

Stepfather of missing Nova Scotia siblings Jack and Lilly Sullivan appears in court on sexual assault, other charges

Daniel Martell made his first appearance to face charges of sexual assault, assault and forcible confinement in Pictou court Monday.

www.saltwire.com

BBM
In a written statement, RCMP spokeswoman Allison Gerrard said the Mounties are not releasing any new information at this time as they proceed with their investigation.

“We’ve released all the information that can be shared publicly at this stage, and continued focus on those limited details does not advance the investigation,” Gerrard wrote.

“We remain committed to providing updates when appropriate.”…..

……There was more to the investigation, but certain aspects were redacted in documents.

Ontario Mom · Mar 13, 2026

MistyWaters said:
I thought it was rather interesting for LE to say this. I wonder if it’s because they’re receiving tips pertaining to the information they’ve already released, as if it’s clues for the public to solve the case. The truth of it is we don’t know very much at all, only tidbits.
JMO

Stepfather of missing Nova Scotia siblings Jack and Lilly Sullivan appears in court on sexual assault, other charges

Daniel Martell made his first appearance to face charges of sexual assault, assault and forcible confinement in Pictou court Monday.

www.saltwire.com

BBM
In a written statement, RCMP spokeswoman Allison Gerrard said the Mounties are not releasing any new information at this time as they proceed with their investigation.

“We’ve released all the information that can be shared publicly at this stage, and continued focus on those limited details does not advance the investigation,” Gerrard wrote.

“We remain committed to providing updates when appropriate.”…..

……There was more to the investigation, but certain aspects were redacted in documents.

My first thought was that it was in response to the self-proclaimed youtuber and/or tiktok true crime "influencer/experts" deciding on what should be investigated.

We've seen this more and more over the last few years.

jmo

Lexiintoronto · Mar 14, 2026

Vern_S said:
A float cycle is not guaranteed. Many conditions determine if a body will float during decomposition.

Lilly reportedly had her backpack with her. We don’t know what she may have had in it. I had wondered if that may have created an issue in dragging her down if she ventured into water.

Lexiintoronto · Mar 14, 2026

Sjöberg said:
I can see the blanket being planted or being left by the kids, but most likely imo it is unrelated and just happened to be there for one reason or the other. Because if you would want to stage a kid getting lost in the woods would you place a strip of an old blanket you never even mentioned before in the trees near the road? Or would you put the backpack you said the kids had with them somewhere in the woods? One of the wellies you said they were wearing in a body of water? A hat, sunglasses, a glove thrown on the road to stage an abduction? Or place the bigger part of the blanket by the side of the road at least? IMO a piece of blanket you did not say the kids had hanging in a tree by the road makes no sense for trying to indicate that the kids were lost in the woods, drowned or were kidnapped. It indicates nothing. It is not even something the kids had in active use, as far as we were told.

I think it is quite likely that people in that hood were eermh not terribly careful with discarding their old items properly. (Additionally, what it first reminded me of, was how we mark "entry/exit points" in the woods - you tie something to the trees at around 1-1,5m high, to mark, that this is the turn, either something reflective for car drivers to see narrow service roads properly or some string or similar in the actual woods to mark your walking trail - but as no trail was mentioned and it was not tied, I don't think this was the case here.)

I am still most intrigued by the Lilly-sized boot print. That is IMO more likely to be either a sign of the kids or something planted. How many 5-7 year old kids could there be in such an isolated place that just so happened to be walking in the wilderness near the Sullivan home? If this was one of the searchers, they would know and have ruled it out in no time. While a piece of blanket can end up on a tree with the help of wind or a crow or a squirrel, a boot print indicates human presence at the very least. Now it is possible it is, say, made by Lilly but notably older than the day the disappeared. But even then it is interesting - had the kids been wandering that far away previously? It is also possible it was made earlier by someone else, but I have a feeling they would know that as well, as there are just so few people around. It is also possible it was a planted imprint - in this case, one can think when this could have happened, who could have been at the location alone and where would the boot have been hidden (maybe before and) after. It would still be way easier to just chuck the backpack in the woods, though. But then again, a backpack left behind would indicate the kids are not fine. A print is a happier sign - they are somewhere here, they were just walking here.

Dunno. All this essey to say, that IMO a childs bootprint in the woods is more interesting than trash in the trees.

Initially the SAR leader said there were reports of adults with children on the pipeline trail during the search. As they were in the area where the prints were, they couldn’t rule them out as the ones who deposited them.

But the RCMP took a cast of the prints. I was hoping we’d hear more, but so far it has only been reported that they were Lilly’s size.

We’ve seen from other cases that a footwear impression at times can tell us the exact make and model, even match wear patterns that may be unique to the wearer.

The issue for me is that the K9s and human trackers weren’t able to trace them from the shoe impression.

From a transcript I did of SAR leader AH speaking to the CBC:

When the boot print was found, we told the team just to send us the coordinates. We got a picture: *yeah it looks like a children's
rubber boot print*, which is what we were
looking for.

(We) conversed with the incident commander: *yeah we're going to send*. We sent an RCMP K9 in first, then we sent
human tracking teams: man
trackers. We have some members that
have been trained to do tracking
themselves. We sent them in and we did
some grid searching in the area to see,
just to follow up. Then the RCMP
forensics unit went in and actually did
a cast of the boot print.

CANADA Post in thread 'Lilly, 6 and Jack Sullivan, 4 - missing from Pictou County, NS MEDIA, MAPS, & TIMELINES - NO DISCUSSION'

Jun 30, 2025

https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/9.6805395

The recent CBC interview with SAR leader Amy Hansen.

My transcription. It’s verbatim, but I have edited out some of the filler words (um, ah, like, so, etc.), and have corrected grammar in some places so as to avoid any confusion. Please excuse any typos.

Note: Initially Amy says ‘boot prints’, and later uses the singular ‘boot print’. I checked the CC and I’m also going by what I heard, so I left it the way she said it both ways.

Reporter (R): Do you think those kids are in the woods?

SAR leader, Amy Hansen (AH): From...

Traymar · Mar 15, 2026

Apologies if this was mentioned and I missed it, but was the blanket piece confirmed to have been torn, cut, or just worn to the point of falling apart? It doesn't look that worn, so one of the first two? Has it been said? MOO

LadyL · Mar 15, 2026

BCSleuth said:
So we now have an official source of the blanket piece picture I posted a while back. Good to see.

Interesting that they would polygraph one of the people who found the blanket. There were 3 of them. Highly unlikely they would conspire to plant it. Seems they are grasping at straws.

According to CBC MBM says she has passed another polygraph and DM did not respond to their request for comment. Seems DM has gone silent since the charges.

that's a much larger piece than I've been imagining
can't see a squirrel or bird dragging that around or the wind blowing that up onto that branch (I guess depending on the strength of the windstorm)
hmm ...
maybe not planted by the three who found it but someone else ...

Ontario Mom · Mar 15, 2026

LadyL said:
that's a much larger piece than I've been imagining
can't see a squirrel or bird dragging that around or the wind blowing that up onto that branch (I guess depending on the strength of the windstorm)
hmm ...
maybe not planted by the three who found it but someone else ...

I think I've missed something in this case.

Why exactly is it presumed this portion of the blanket was "planted" when the other part was in the garbage ?

That language presumes someone was attempting to create a narrative by staging evidence. Has this been confirmed by the RCMP or is this just speculation from those following the case?

LadyL · Mar 15, 2026

Ontario Mom said:
I think I've missed something in this case.

Why exactly is it presumed this portion of the blanket was "planted" when the other part was in the garbage ?

That language presumes someone was attempting to create a narrative by staging evidence. Has this been confirmed by the RCMP or is this just speculation from those following the case?

I never presumed anything
hence the 'maybe' at the beginning of my sentence

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CANADA Post in thread 'Lilly, 6 and Jack Sullivan, 4 - missing from Pictou County, NS MEDIA, MAPS, & TIMELINES - NO DISCUSSION'