In the misty woods of rural Nova Scotia, a mystery that has gripped the nation for over six months shows no signs of resolution. On May 2, 2025, siblings Lilly Sullivan, 6, and Jack Sullivan, 4, vanished from their family home on Gairloch Road in Lansdowne Station, leaving behind a trail of unanswered questions and mounting suspicions. Their stepfather, Daniel Martell, has become the reluctant face of the investigation, offering updates that tantalize yet frustrate—hints of surveillance footage, polygraph clearances, and personal anguish that only deepen the enigma.

Martell, 33, and the children’s mother, Malehya Brooks-Murray, reported the kids missing around 10 a.m. that fateful morning. According to their account, the family had spent the previous afternoon in nearby New Glasgow, where video from a Dollarama store captured Lilly and Jack laughing with their parents and baby sister, Meadow, at 2:25 p.m. It was the last confirmed sighting. That evening, Brooks-Murray put the children to bed around 9 or 10 p.m., while Martell stayed up late. By morning, between 8 and 9:40 a.m., the couple was in their bedroom with Meadow when Lilly popped in and out, and Jack’s giggles echoed from the kitchen. Then, silence. The back sliding door—silent and unlocked—offered an easy exit into the dense, brush-choked woods surrounding their isolated property.

Martell’s recent updates, shared in interviews and public pleas, paint a picture of a man torn between grief and scrutiny. In a November 2025 statement to local media, he revealed that RCMP had retrieved additional surveillance clips from New Glasgow, showing the family together, but details remain sealed to avoid compromising the probe. “They’re out there somewhere,” he insisted, his voice cracking in a viral video clip, fueling online speculation about abductions or worse. Cadaver dogs scoured the property in September, finding no human remains, a detail Martell highlighted as a sliver of hope. Yet, witnesses reported hearing a vehicle idling nearby in the dead of night on May 1, a lead police dismissed after reviewing footage—no cars entered the property.

Polygraphs have been a cornerstone of Martell’s defense. He volunteered for the test early on, enduring nerve-wracking questions like, “Did you kill Lilly and Jack?” Results deemed him truthful, as were Brooks-Murray’s and even the biological father, Cody Sullivan’s. Court documents from August 2025 echo this: investigators noted the disappearance “not believed to be criminal in nature” at that stage. Still, Martell’s composure—described by some as eerily calm—has sparked “BlanketGate” theories online, where a family blanket found in the woods became a flashpoint for conspiracy. Volunteers unearthed oddities, like papers bearing Martell’s name, but RCMP labeled them irrelevant.

Beneath the headlines lies a family’s fractured dynamic. Brooks-Murray fled to her mother’s after the vanishing, blocking Martell amid heated arguments between kin. Child welfare visits months prior, prompted by school concerns over the kids’ undiagnosed autism, add layers—Martell insists they were routine, not red flags. As the case joins Nova Scotia’s Major Unsolved Crimes Program, with over 760 tips and 8,000 videos reviewed, pressure mounts. Martell, now a solitary figure on the property shared with his mother, Janie Mackenzie, vows to keep searching. “I hear their laughter in my dreams,” he confided.

Is Martell shielding vital clues to protect the investigation, or guarding darker secrets? With no ransom demands or sightings, theories range from woodland misadventure to stranger abduction. The RCMP’s “intensive approach” persists, but six months in, Lilly and Jack’s fate hangs like fog over Pictou County. For a community haunted by echoes of past child vanishings, like Dylan Ehler in 2020, Martell’s words offer solace—or suspicion. One truth remains: in the silence of those woods, answers elude us all, but the search for justice endures.