Six months have passed since Lilly Sullivan, 6, and her little brother Jack, 4, disappeared from their rural Nova Scotia trailer in the pre-dawn darkness of May 2, 2025, and the official line from the RCMP has stayed eerily consistent: “We are not treating this as a criminal matter at this time.” Yet behind that carefully neutral language lies a case so baffling, so stubbornly resistant to explanation, that even the parents’ clean polygraphs haven’t been enough to close the door on the darkest possibilities.

Malehya Brooks-Murray and her common-law partner Daniel Martell sat for voluntary polygraph examinations within the first week of the disappearance. According to heavily redacted search-warrant documents unsealed in August 2025, both “exhibited no deception” when asked if they had harmed the children, hidden the children, or knew where the children were. The examiner’s conclusion was blunt: “Results do not indicate involvement.” On paper, that should have been game over for the foul-play theory. In reality, it only made the silence louder.

Because everything else about the case screams wrong.

No coats were taken. No shoes. No favorite toys. Lilly’s pink unicorn pajamas and Jack’s Spider-Man footies were folded on their pillows like they’d been tucked in by a ghost. The back door was unlocked (normal for the country), but there were no footprints in the wet grass, no drag marks, no disturbed dew. The family’s two dogs never barked. One-year-old Meadow slept through whatever happened just feet away. And then there were the neighbors: two separate households who insist they heard a vehicle arrive and leave between 12:45 and 2:50 a.m., an engine idling right beside the trailer before creeping away without headlights.

Cameras? Nothing. Tire tracks? Washed away by days of torrential rain. Footprints of two small children wandering off into hundreds of square kilometers of dense Acadian forest? Also nothing, despite the largest ground search in Pictou County history.

So if the parents are telling the truth, and someone or something did come in the night, how did they pull off the perfect abduction in a trailer with paper-thin walls, two adults, three kids, and two dogs, all without leaving a single trace?

That question is why the RCMP’s Major Crime Unit has never stood down.

Sources inside the investigation, speaking on condition of anonymity because the file remains active, say the polygraphs were only one piece of a much larger puzzle. “Passing a lie-detector test doesn’t mean you’re innocent,” one veteran investigator told CBC off the record. “It means you believe what you’re saying, or you’re very good at convincing yourself. We’ve seen both.”

Court documents reveal that police executed no fewer than nine search warrants in the first three months: the trailer, the septic tank, the burn barrel, Daniel’s work van, Malehya’s car, even the woodpile. Cadaver dogs hit on nothing. Ground-penetrating radar found only old tree roots. Divers dragged every brook and beaver pond within a five-kilometer radius. Zero.

Yet the file has never been reclassified as a simple “lost children” case. The Major Crime Unit still leads. The reward, quietly bumped from $50,000 to a staggering $150,000 in October 2025, is specifically for information leading to the children’s whereabouts, not their recovery, a subtle but chilling distinction.

And then there’s Daniel Martell’s own words.

In his first public interview in early November 2025, the stepfather stood on the porch of the same trailer and told Global News, “They’re not in those woods. We’ve walked every inch. If they were out there, we would have found something by now.” When pressed on what he believes happened, he paused for a long time before saying, “Somebody knows more than they’re telling.”

The internet took that quote and ran with it.

True-crime communities on Reddit and TikTok have dissected every pixel of the family’s social media. They’ve mapped the exact route a vehicle would have to take to avoid the only two security cameras within twenty kilometers. They’ve timed how long it would take to carry two sleeping children from their beds to a waiting car without waking the dogs (under ninety seconds, if you know the layout). They’ve pointed out that Daniel’s criminal record, while minor and old (a 2014 mischief charge), still exists. They’ve zoomed in on Malehya’s calm demeanor in early press conferences and called it “suspiciously detached.”

None of it is evidence. All of it is fuel.

Meanwhile, the biological father, Cody Sullivan, who lost custody years ago and lives hours away, posts near-daily pleas on Facebook. His alibi is ironclad: GPS on his ankle monitor (from an unrelated matter) never left his property. He passed his own polygraph. He has begged the RCMP to “look harder at the house.”

And still, nothing.

As winter creeps back into Pictou County, the forest that swallowed every trace six months ago is turning bare and silent. The volunteer search teams have dwindled to a hardcore few who refuse to quit. The reward posters are fading on telephone poles. And the RCMP, despite the clean polygraphs, despite the exhausted searchers, despite the official line, keeps the Major Crime Unit on the case.

Because sometimes the absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence.

Sometimes it’s evidence of something much worse.

Lilly and Jack Sullivan have been missing for 208 days. Their unicorn pajamas and Spider-Man footies are sealed in evidence bags in a climate-controlled room in Bible Hill. Their mother still sets two extra places at the dinner table every night. Their stepfather still insists they’re not in the woods.

And somewhere in the Nova Scotia darkness, a case that two polygraphs should have closed refuses to die.

Because until someone explains how two little kids can vanish from their beds without a sound, a footprint, or a single witness who saw anything more than the red glow of taillights disappearing into the fog, the darkest question will keep every light in Lansdowne Station burning all night long:

If the parents didn’t do it… who did? And why hasn’t a single person come forward for $150,000?