🚨 “IT’S ALL MY FAULT – I’M SO SORRY!” Mother’s Gut-Wrenching Breakdown as Polygraph Bombshell Drops in Missing Kids Nightmare

Fresh off last weekend’s frantic river dive that unearthed a kid’s shirt and a creepy geocache with the stepdad’s name etched inside, cops just unsealed the lie detector files on the parents of vanished siblings Lilly (6) and Jack (4). Spoiler: They all “passed” – but not before one mom’s raw confession ripped the lid off family secrets that could shatter everything.

She sobbed it out: “It’s all my fault…” What guilt is she carrying? A hidden custody war? A forgotten door left ajar? Or something cops are burying deeper than the Middle River mud?

With 860 tips stone-cold and winter locking down the woods, this “truthful” verdict feels like a slap – or a cover-up. Families don’t just evaporate. Someone’s holding back. Big time.

The full court docs and her tear-streaked plea will leave you questioning EVERYTHING. Dive in before the trail goes dark forever.

The words hung in the air like a storm cloud over the frostbitten banks of the Middle River: “It’s all my fault. I’m sorry.” Malehya Brooks-Murray, the 28-year-old mother of missing siblings Lilly and Jack Sullivan, reportedly broke down in heaving sobs during a post-polygraph debrief in June, according to newly scrutinized court documents that have reignited scrutiny in one of Canada’s most baffling child disappearance cases.

The emotional outburst came on the heels of a lie detector exam that cleared her – and the rest of the immediate family – of direct involvement in the vanishing of her 6-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son, who evaporated from their rural Pictou County home on May 2 without a whisper or a trace. But in a probe that’s already sifted through 5,000 hours of surveillance footage, 860 dead-end tips, and enough forensic dead ends to fill a filing cabinet, Brooks-Murray’s raw admission has online sleuths and family allies buzzing: What exactly does she feel responsible for?

The polygraph results, first detailed in August court filings and now recirculated amid last weekend’s volunteer search flop, paint a picture of a family under siege by grief, suspicion, and relentless media glare. RCMP documents describe Brooks-Murray’s test on May 12 as “truthful” on key queries: Did she harm the children? No spikes in heart rate or respiration. Did she know their whereabouts? Steady baselines. Same for stepfather Daniel Martell, whose exam “indicated he was truthful.” The biological father, Cody Sullivan – estranged and eyed early after a frantic tip from the mother herself – aced his June 12 session outright, examiners noting his denials rang clear as a bell.

Yet it’s the aftermath that sticks like mud on boots. Witnesses in the Bible Hill detachment – where the tests unfolded under fluorescent hum and the weight of unanswered questions – recall Brooks-Murray crumpling as the wires came off. “It’s all my fault,” she allegedly wailed, tears soaking her sleeves, before clarifying through gasps: She shouldn’t have turned her back that morning, even for a minute, while tending to their 16-month-old sister in the next room. The guilt of a split-second lapse? Or the shadow of something unsaid, buried under layers of custody battles and family fractures? Investigators chalked it up to maternal torment, but skeptics aren’t buying the tidy narrative.

This bombshell drops just days after the Ontario nonprofit Please Bring Me Home wrapped a bone-chilling “last-ditch” sweep of the Middle River’s banks – a 18-mile slog through icy currents and thorn-choked thickets that yielded a haul of eerie castoffs: a faded child’s T-shirt (pink, but not Lilly’s shade), a sodden blanket sans tags, a pint-sized tricycle rusted to oblivion, and diapers galore from upstream picnickers. One standout: a geocache box, its weathered notepad bearing stepdad Martell’s name next to a “May 3, 2014” entry – tantalizingly close to the kids’ last-seen date, but dismissed by Mounties as a decade-old hobbyist’s fluke.

RCMP brass moved like lightning, swooping in to bag and tag before volunteers could snap more than a few grainy pics. By Monday, the verdict: “None of these items are relevant.” Forensic checks with the family turned up no matches – no DNA from Jack’s dinosaur-print socks, no fibers from Lilly’s favorite sweater. But the rapid shutdown has tongues wagging from Halifax diners to Toronto true-crime forums. “If it’s nothing, why the blackout?” one anonymous searcher posted in a 95,000-member Facebook group dedicated to the case.

The timing couldn’t be worse – or more poetic. As snowflakes tease the evergreens, the six-month mark looms like a ghost, amplifying the polygraph drama that’s simmered since summer. Rewind to that deceptively sunny May 2 morning in Lansdowne Station, a blink-and-miss-it hamlet 140 kilometers northeast of Halifax, where Gairloch Road dead-ends into a wall of wilderness. The Sullivans’ modest home – clapboard siding, a swing set rusting in the yard – backs onto ravines so steep they swallow echoes. Brooks-Murray, a part-time cashier with a warm smile and weary eyes, was in her bedroom with baby Meadow, soothing a cough that had sidelined Lilly and Jack from school the day prior. Martell, 30, a mill worker with callused hands and a steady gaze, hovered nearby.

At 10 a.m., Lilly – light brown curls framing her hazel eyes, dressed in a pink top and jeans – peeked in: “Mommy, juice?” It was the last confirmed sighting. Four minutes later: silence. No patter of Jack’s sneakers (blue boots, dino shirt, boundless energy). No clink of sippy cups in the kitchen. Brooks-Murray bolted to the living room. Empty. The sliding back door – latched, but not locked – yawned to the yard. At 10:01 a.m., her 911 plea cracked the rural quiet: “My babies are gone.”

Martell’s first move was primal: He sprinted outside, ears straining for cries amid the birdsong. He swears he caught a child’s yelp from the treeline – Jack’s, maybe – but an incoming RCMP chopper’s roar swallowed it whole. By midday, the sleepy county erupted into a frenzy: Amber Alert sirens wailed, ground teams with German Shepherds combed 40 square kilometers, drones painted the canopy in infrared reds, divers plumbed the Middle River’s chocolate-brown depths. Heat blips teased hope – one a black bear cub, another a sun-dappled log. Nothing human.

The polygraphs kicked off May 12, a week into the void, as suspicion’s shadow lengthened. Brooks-Murray and Martell sat wired to machines in a sterile room, answering the basics: “Did you cause harm?” “Do you know where they are?” Readings flatlined – truthful, per the techs. But Brooks-Murray’s post-exam collapse? It lingered in notes as “emotional distress,” not deception. Sullivan, the bio-dad holed up in New Brunswick, got his turn June 12 after Brooks-Murray’s midnight hunch – fueled by panic and a custody spat – fingered him as a flight risk. He passed with flying colors, protesting: “I was home all day May 2. Haven’t seen ’em in three years.” Even paid child support, contra her initial claim to cops.

One outlier: Step-grandma Janie MacKenzie’s June 10 test – botched by “unsuitable physiology,” leaving her in limbo. No red flags, but no green light either. An investigator’s footnote sealed the family file: “No reasonable grounds for criminality.” Yet the case clings to “missing persons” status, not abduction – a nuance that irks the grandmothers. Belynda Gray, Cody’s mom, slammed the community’s “disappointment” in a post-search interview, driving hours to join the fray only to watch hope curdle again.

Family fault lines run deep. Brooks-Murray and Martell, partners for years, painted a portrait of domestic normalcy shattered overnight. But filings reveal tugs-of-war: Sullivan’s absenteeism, Brooks-Murray’s blocked calls, whispers of financial strain at the mill. A second chunk of Lilly’s pink blanket – confirmed by kin – turned up in household trash during the initial sweep, bound for forensics but yielding zilch. Witnesses buzzed of a “tan sedan” ghosting the road that morning; highway cams at Cobequid Pass captured nada. Tips piled up: Gas station sightings in Moncton, a child’s wail by the river – all ash.

Enter Please Bring Me Home, the Owen Sound outfit that’s exhumed 50 souls from cold files since 2018. Co-founder Nick Oldrieve, a barrel-chested ex-copper with river-scarred maps tattooed in his brain, greenlit the November push after Gray’s plea and a donor’s check from Barry’s Construction. “Rivers play hide-and-seek,” he told the huddle at Union Centre Hall. “May floods buried ’em; October lows teased ’em up; now November’s rising fast.” Six teams, 30 strong, gridded the waterway – drones overhead, boots in the drink. Hazards abounded: Slips on moss-slick rocks, hypothermia nips at numb fingers, a landowner’s “No Trespassing” standoff diffused by cooler heads.

Debrief was deflating. Oldrieve tallied coordinates, prepped a dossier for the Mounties: “Impressed by their groundwork, but we grid what they can’t.” RCMP Cpl. Curtis MacKinnon echoed thanks in a terse release, but the “irrelevant” stamp stung. Aunt Cheryl Robinson, who helmed a team, clung to scripture: “Faith over facts.” Brooks-Murray, holed up with Meadow, issued her eternal vow via the group: “I’ll never stop until they’re home safe.”

As flurries dust the search grid, the $150,000 reward – upped by provincial decree – dangles unclaimed. Cadaver dogs bombed in September; spring’s the next window, Oldrieve vows, with water-tuned hounds on standby. Behavioral profilers mull patterns: Wanderlust into the wild? A rare abduction sans ransom? Or, as Martell told Global News in October, “Everything’s been searched – they’re not in those woods.”

Brooks-Murray’s “fault” lingers, a polygraph footnote turned viral hook. Was it the unlocked door, the cough-meds haze, the family feuds that frayed vigilance? In a nation haunted by Highway of Tears echoes, this rural riddle cuts cruelest: Two tots, one river, a mother’s unending apology. The line’s live – 1-800-222-TIPS. Because six months in, truth’s still playing hide-and-seek, and no one’s laughing.