Nova Scotia’s rural heartlands, where dense forests meet modest trailers, have always cradled stories of resilience and routine. But for Janie Mackenzie, a 68-year-old retiree whose life unfolded quietly on a 26-acre property in Lansdowne Station, the morning of May 2, 2025, etched itself into a narrative of profound loss and unrelenting scrutiny. As the step-grandmother to six-year-old Lilly Sullivan and four-year-old Jack, Mackenzie’s account of that day—shared publicly amid a swirl of speculation—remains a pivotal thread in one of Canada’s most baffling missing-persons cases. Six months on, with no trace of the children and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) still sifting leads, Mackenzie’s words echo as both a beacon of innocence and a magnet for doubt.

Born and raised in the tight-knit communities of Pictou County, Mackenzie has called the Gairloch Road property home for over two decades. The sprawling lot, hemmed by thick evergreens and winding trails, served as a family anchor. Her son, Daniel Martell, a hardworking sawmill employee, had returned to the land years earlier, building a life there after his own marital split. Two years before the disappearance, Martell welcomed his partner, Malehya Brooks-Murray, and her two children—Lilly and Jack—from a previous relationship. The couple’s one-year-old daughter, Meadow, completed the household in the main home, while Mackenzie resided in a modest camper trailer just steps from the backyard swingset. It was a blended family navigating the ebbs and flows of rural existence: school runs along bumpy roads, weekend barbecues, and the occasional worry over black bears prowling the perimeter.

Mackenzie, described by neighbors as a warm, no-nonsense matriarch with a soft spot for her grandchildren, quickly embraced her role as step-grandmother. Photos scattered across her trailer—cluttered with knick-knacks and faded family snapshots—capture Lilly’s bright smile and Jack’s wide-eyed curiosity for dinosaurs and bugs. “They were full of life, those two,” she told CBC News in a rare July 2025 interview, her voice steady but laced with the weight of absence. Despite the children’s undiagnosed autism, which made them trusting to a fault—prone to wandering off with friendly strangers if offered a snack or promise of adventure—Mackenzie recalled days filled with simple joys. Jack would toddle after fireflies at dusk, while Lilly, ever the big sister, organized tea parties under the pines. The property, owned outright by Mackenzie, felt secure: a bear-proof wrench wedged in the front door at night, and the back sliding door’s quiet glide posing little barrier to indoor-outdoor play.

That sense of safety shattered on a crisp Friday morning. The children, sidelined from school for two days by Lilly’s lingering cough, had retired early the night before—tucked in around 9 or 10 p.m., per Brooks-Murray’s varying accounts. Martell and Brooks-Murray slept in with baby Meadow, while Mackenzie, recovering from a restless night, dozed in her trailer. At approximately 8:50 a.m., she stirred to the sharp bark of her dog—a sound she instantly linked to the children’s arrival at the swingset. Peering through her trailer’s window, Mackenzie caught the heartwarming sight: Lilly in her pink sweater, pants, and boots; Jack in his blue dinosaur sneakers, the pair giggling as they swung side by side. “I heard them, just being kids—pure joy,” she later recounted, the memory bringing a flicker of warmth to her eyes before dissolving into sorrow. Reassured, she slipped back into sleep, the laughter a gentle lullaby.

Those intervening 20 minutes—bridging Mackenzie’s nap and the moment panic erupted—form the emotional core of her testimony. Around 9:10 a.m., she awoke to a stark contrast: Martell’s voice, sharp with alarm, calling “Lilly! Jack!” from the yard. Rushing out, Mackenzie found Brooks-Murray in the driveway, Meadow on her hip, face drained of color. The children were gone. Their boots and Lilly’s small backpack had vanished from the house, pointing to an unmonitored exit through the back door. Martell, in a frenzy, had already scoured the nearby roads by car and plunged into the woods on foot, convinced he’d heard a faint cry swallowed by the trees. Brooks-Murray placed the 911 call at 9:40 a.m., igniting a massive response: over 160 searchers, drones, dogs, and divers combing 8.5 square kilometers of rugged terrain, ponds, and Lansdowne Lake.

Mackenzie’s recounting, first detailed in police interviews and later to media, has been consistent yet haunting in its brevity. Re-interviewed by RCMP in the days following, she pinpointed the laughter around 9 a.m., aligning with the family’s timeline. Yet, as the active search scaled back by May 7—authorities acknowledging the slim odds of survival in the bear-populated wilderness—her words drew sharper focus. On June 10, 2025, Mackenzie submitted to a polygraph at the Bible Hill detachment. Unlike Martell and Brooks-Murray, who passed with “truthful” results, her physiology proved unsuitable for analysis, yielding no formal opinion. The inconclusive outcome, redacted in court warrants unsealed in August, fueled early whispers but was dismissed by investigators as a technicality, not deception.

As weeks turned to months, Mackenzie emerged as an unlikely public face for the family. In August 2025, she granted a guided tour of the property to CBC reporters, her steps measured along the overgrown path to the swingset. The main house stood much as it had: the wrench still in the door, the sliding panel unlocked. Her trailer, searched three times by RCMP, held no secrets—just echoes of family life paused. “After that laughter, I heard nothing,” she said, gesturing to the woods that now loomed like silent judges. She expressed skepticism that the children remained in the forest, citing their trusting natures and the lack of evidence from exhaustive sweeps. A torn pink blanket scrap—confirmed as Lilly’s—found a kilometer away on disappearance night offered a glimmer, but forensic tests yielded no DNA or leads.

Publicly, Mackenzie has defended her son and the family against a torrent of online conjecture. Surveillance from a New Glasgow Dollarama captured the group shopping innocently on May 1, the last confirmed sighting. Yet, October court documents revealed neighbor reports of an unfamiliar vehicle idling near the property around 1:30 a.m. on May 2—hours before the alarm. Martell denied any nocturnal activity, and RCMP surveillance debunked the claims, but the details stoked amateur sleuths on platforms like Reddit and YouTube. Mackenzie, voicing frustration in a September Walrus profile, decried the “drones over my roof and reporters at my door” as invasions compounding the grief. She criticized the RCMP’s slowing updates, echoing broader family tensions: Brooks-Murray’s brief departure to her mother’s home, Martell’s stress leave from the mill, and the biological father Cody Sullivan’s cleared alibi after two polygraphs.

By November 2025, as leaves blanketed the search sites anew, Mackenzie’s life on the property feels suspended. The swingset creaks unused in the wind, a photo wall in her trailer untouched since May. She hasn’t seen Martell’s older children from his prior marriage, a rift widened by the spotlight. Community donations have swelled a $150,000 provincial reward for viable tips, funneled through Crime Stoppers. Volunteers, led by figures like retired searcher Todd Oldrieve—who draws parallels to the 2020 Dylan Ehler case—persist in off-grid sweeps, undeterred by the RCMP’s shift to investigative mode.

Experts in missing-persons dynamics point to cases like this—rural vanishings without overt foul play—as often hinging on overlooked human elements. Mackenzie’s 20-minute doze, innocent in isolation, symbolizes the razor-thin margin between normalcy and nightmare. “I wish I’d stayed awake,” she confessed in July, a sentiment rippling through a province scarred by past losses. Her unyielding belief in abduction over accident aligns with Martell’s pleas for border and airport scrutiny, theories floated early but unsubstantiated.

In the broader tapestry, Mackenzie embodies the quiet endurance of those orbiting tragedy. Not a suspect, but a sentinel—guarding memories amid the void. As winter approaches, with tips still trickling via 1-833-521-ROCK, her story underscores the case’s human pulse: a grandmother’s regret, a dog’s forgotten bark, and laughter that demands justice. Until Lilly and Jack return or their fate clarifies, Mackenzie’s trailer stands as a vigil, whispering for resolution in the Nova Scotia silence.