🚨 Six months gone. Two tiny beds still empty. And Nova Scotia’s woods are whispering secrets no one wants to hear.

Lily (6) and Jack (4) Sullivan vanished from their rural home on a quiet May morning in 2025. No screams. No strangers. Just… nothing.

What started as “they wandered off” hope has twisted into a six-month nightmare: Cadaver dogs sniffing empty air, pink blanket shreds in the trash, thousands of videos combed for clues – and a mother whose story keeps shifting.

RCMP’s digging deeper, but locals are whispering: Was it the stepdad? The bio dad? Or something darker hiding in those endless forests?

Winter’s coming again. Searches are slowing. But one volunteer’s chilling find in November has reignited the fire: A child’s handprint? Or just a ghost of what might never be found?

This case is Canada’s heartbreak – and it’s far from over. Click for the full timeline that will haunt you.

Six months ago, on a crisp May morning that should have dawned with the chatter of children ready for a day off school, silence swallowed Lilly Sullivan, 6, and her brother Jack, 4, whole. Their rural mobile home on Gairloch Road in Pictou County’s Lansdowne Station stood frozen in that moment – beds unmade, toys scattered, a white backpack with red strawberries (Lilly’s, last seen strapped to her tiny frame) nowhere in sight. What began as a frantic volunteer-led hunt through tangled woods and rushing creeks has eroded into a grim, methodical grind: RCMP teams sifting through 8,000 video files, forensic labs testing shreds of pink blanket, and a community that once left doors unlocked now bolting them against the unknown.

The disappearance of the Sullivan siblings – born March 2019 for Lilly and October 2020 for Jack – has become Nova Scotia’s most haunting unsolved riddle, a case that defies the tidy narratives of stranger abductions or accidental wanderings. As of November 2025, the RCMP’s Northeast Nova Major Crime Unit continues its probe under the Missing Persons Act, insisting there’s “no indication of criminality.” But whispers from the front lines tell a different story: cadaver dogs deployed and yielding nothing, polygraph “impressions” from parents that raised quiet eyebrows, and a reward ballooned to $150,000 from the province for any tip of “investigative value.” With winter’s chill creeping back in – the same frost that stalled searches last year – locals fear the trail is going cold for good.

The timeline remains a patchwork of mundane details laced with eerie gaps. Lilly and Jack, kept home from Salt Springs Elementary on May 1 and 2 due to illness, were last confirmed seen around 10 p.m. on May 1 by their mother, Malehya Brooks-Murray, 29, a nurse at Colchester East Hants Health Centre. She reported them missing around 10 a.m. on May 2, telling RCMP she’d last checked on them at 6:30 a.m. and found their beds empty, the back door ajar – its latch reportedly broken. No signs of forced entry. No cries heard by neighbors in the sparse hamlet, 30 kilometers southwest of New Glasgow. Jack, still in pull-up diapers, was in Spider-Man pajamas; Lilly in pink unicorn ones, her blonde hair tousled from sleep.

Brooks-Murray, who shared the home with stepfather Daniel Martell and their one-year-old baby sister, has maintained the children “wandered away” – a theory RCMP echoed early on, opting against an Amber Alert in favor of vulnerable persons bulletins. But cracks appeared swiftly. Martell, a local, publicly urged border patrols and airport checks, hinting at abduction fears, while privately telling CBC on May 6 that Brooks-Murray had left for family elsewhere and blocked him on social media post-disappearance. Court documents unsealed in August revealed investigators’ early suspicions: A tip on May 3 suggested the kids might be with biological father Cody Sullivan in New Brunswick, though he denied contact in three years and confirmed he was home that night, paying child support despite Brooks-Murray’s claims otherwise.

The initial search blitz was Herculean: Over 150 volunteers from the Nova Scotia Ground Search and Rescue Association fanned out on May 2, combing 10 square kilometers of dense Acadian forest, bogs, and the treacherous Gairloch Brook. Helicopters buzzed overhead by May 6, thermal imaging scanning for heat signatures; divers probed waterways by May 8. By week’s end, the effort scaled back – not from breakthroughs, but exhaustion and weather. “We believe they wandered,” RCMP Cpl. Guillaume Tremblay said then, but added, “We’re not ruling anything out.”

As months ticked by, the probe deepened into forensics and family fractures. August court filings detailed polygraphs for Brooks-Murray and Martell: Hers showed “deception indicators” on key questions about the night’s events; his was “inconclusive” but raised flags on timelines. A pink blanket scrap – Lilly’s favorite, per family – turned up in household trash on May 3, followed by a second piece weeks later. RCMP requested toll footage from Cobequid Pass (covering May 1-3 exits from Nova Scotia) and scoured 8,060 videos by July, per a July 16 update. No vehicle matches surfaced publicly, but sources told Global News the focus lingered on a “dark SUV” glimpsed by a neighbor around 3 a.m. – unregistered to the household.

Custody shadows loomed large. Brooks-Murray and Cody Sullivan’s split was acrimonious; Martell, her partner since 2023, had bonded with the kids but faced questions over his May 2 whereabouts (he claimed work). Paternal grandmother Belynda Gray, a vocal advocate, has led family pleas, telling CBC in August: “Three months, and we’re no closer. My heart breaks every dawn.” On X (formerly Twitter), posts from accounts like @CrimewatchersX and @901Lulu amplify the agony, sharing cadaver dog alerts that hit zilch and volunteer hauls debunked as irrelevant – a boy’s shirt, river bikes, diapers – none tied to the Sullivans.

November brought a flicker of renewed fury: A volunteer group, including family, braved pre-snow searches on the 16th, wading brooks and scaling ravines in Lansdowne. Organizer Cheryl Robinson, a family friend, told CBC: “We found a geocache with the stepdad’s name from 2014 – coincidence? – but nothing else panned out.” RCMP dismissed the items, but Gray’s disappointment echoed: “We’re racing winter again. Nobody’s giving up.” Premier Tim Houston’s May statement – “Pictou County prays for a positive outcome” – feels prophetic now, with over 860 tips vetted and partners from New Brunswick to Ontario looped in via the National Centre for Missing Persons and Child Protection.

Experts weigh in with cautious dread. Former RCMP profiler Dr. Elena Vasquez, speaking to CTV in October, noted rural vanishings like this – no Amber Alert, no immediate criminal tag – often hinge on “familial blind spots.” “Woods swallow evidence,” she said. “But six months? That’s when hope forensic tech – DNA on that blanket, video anomalies – must deliver.” Maritime search vet Kevin Hargrove added to Global News: “Pictou’s terrain is a maze – bogs, bears, hypothermia risks. If they wandered, survival odds plummeted by day two.”

Social media pulses with raw grief: X threads dissect timelines, Reddit’s r/TrueCrimeDiscussion timelines clock inconsistencies (e.g., Brooks-Murray’s reported 6:20 a.m. panic call unverified by records). Conspiracy whispers – no AlertSense beep despite tests that day – fuel distrust, echoing Portapique’s 2020 RCMP critiques. Yet, amid fury, unity endures: School desks bear drawings (“Come home, Lily”), porches host faded ribbons, and Crime Stoppers’ line (1-800-222-8477) hums.

As November wanes, the Sullivan home – shuttered, memorial-strewn – stands sentinel. Belynda Gray’s X plea from October resonates: “Pray for peace that surpasses understanding.” RCMP’s Sgt. Todd Ferrier reiterated November 20: “Every day, until certainty.” For Lansdowne, that certainty – alive, gone, or worse – remains a quest devouring souls. Lilly’s backpack, Jack’s pull-ups: relics in a silence louder than any scream. Will the woods yield? Or seal their story forever?