The mother of Lilly and Jack Sullivan, the two Nova Scotia children missing for more than a year, says she believes her kids are alive and that it’s possible they were snatched off their backcountry property.
Malehya Brooks-Murray sat down for an interview with The Globe and Mail and the CBC late last month, her first public comments since the early days after her children’s mysterious disappearance.
The case of the missing children has confounded RCMP and led to widespread speculation and finger-pointing, both locally in the wooded hamlets and industrial towns of Pictou County, across the country, and on Facebook and YouTube channels in the online true-crime community around the globe.
Much of that conjecture and blame has been directed at the children’s mother, who moved away from the remote settlement of Lansdowne the day after Jack and Lilly went missing. She has never returned to the trailer where they lived.
In the wide-ranging interview, the 28-year-old Ms. Brooks-Murray defended her silence over the past 15 months and demanded answers from police about her missing children.
“At the end of the day, the accusations – I can’t let them bother me because I know the truth, that I would never do anything to harm my children and that I love them very much and that I want nothing more than for them to come home,” she said.
“And so, I mean people can take it how they want, but their opinions don’t matter. What matters is getting them home.”
Ms. Brooks-Murray, speaking in a soft and sometimes halting voice, said she hasn’t spoken out until now because police had told her that talking to the media could jeopardize the case. “But as time goes on, it just feels too long, and we still don’t have any answers. So, I just want to scream their names to the world.”
She said she has co-operated with police and done everything they’ve asked her to do, including taking two polygraph tests. She says she still trusts the RCMP but has become frustrated with the lack of answers and dwindling communication from investigators.
“I keep asking for new avenues and they keep saying ‘We’re working on it,’ and I just don’t feel like that’s enough,” she said. “I feel like I deserve more than that, and I deserve answers on where they’re at and I need them home.”
Nova Scotia RCMP Major Crime investigators declined an interview and did not respond to e-mailed questions about the case. However, a spokesperson did say that specialized teams have been engaged in detailed police work over the past 15 months and that investigators remain committed to establishing, with certainty, what happened to the children.
“As with any ongoing investigation, many of the investigative steps being taken, and the progress being made, can’t be shared publicly,” Allison Gerrard said.
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Ms. Brooks-Murray defended her silence over the past 15 months and demanded answers from police about her missing children.Darren Calabrese/The Globe and Mail
Ms. Brooks-Murray’s recollection of May 2, 2025, when she reported her children missing, was the same as what she and her now ex-partner, Daniel Martell, told police in the early days of the investigation – accounts that have appeared in court documents and have been previously reported by The Globe and others.
In a sombre voice, she spoke of hearing Lilly, who was six, and Jack, who was four, laughing in their shared bedroom, and said she saw Lilly pop into the bedroom where she was dozing with Mr. Martell and their infant daughter. Court documents show that she told police it was about 8:20 a.m., a couple of hours after she had marked them absent from school for the second day in a row because, she said, they had coughs.
The next thing she says she remembered was “waking up, seeing Daniel next to me and I didn’t hear them. And I woke Daniel up and said, ‘I don’t hear the kids.’ So, we both went out and that’s when we started looking for them.” She told police that this was at 9:40 a.m., according to court documents.
Around 10 a.m. Ms. Brooks-Murray called 911 and reported that her children were missing and that their boots were gone.
She said she has trouble remembering the next few hours. “The trauma is so severe – to the point where I block it out because it’s hard to sit with it. … I just don’t know how it even happened.”
That morning, and over the following hours and weeks, teams of volunteers, helicopters, sniffer dogs and divers scoured the dense forest, swamps and waterways. The only potential clues were a smattering of boot prints that police later found to be from the same type of boot that Lilly wore, and a pink blanket that was Lilly’s found strewn on a tree a kilometre from the home.
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A homemade sign for Jack and Lily Sullivan in the backyard of one of Ms. Brooks-Murray’s friends in Brookfield.Darren Calabrese/The Globe and Mail
During the interview, Ms. Brooks-Murray said the pink blanket was actually a strip torn off a larger blanket that had been in the garbage. The strip, she said, had been hanging on a railing outside the front porch. “I don’t even know how it even got there,” she said, referring to where it was found up the road.
Ms. Brooks-Murray defended her decision to leave Lansdowne on May 3, the day after Jack and Lilly were reported missing, and offered a few reasons for why she felt compelled to move away from the property during the search.
She said she had a panic attack at the command post set up for the search during a police briefing and, while sitting in the back of an ambulance, she told her mother she wanted to leave with her.
“The police had said that we should go and told my family privately to take me out of there, and I was in too much of a state of shock that I just wanted to be with my family and my daughter. So, we got out of there and the police met us back at mom’s.”
When asked why she hasn’t gone back to Lansdowne, she said, “I don’t think I can touch on that right now.” Ms. Brooks-Murray declined to discuss what life was like inside the trailer or any details about her former relationship with Mr. Martell, whom she blocked from communication the day after Jack and Lilly disappeared.
Police documents filed in court paint a picture of a strained relationship and financial difficulties. Ms. Brooks-Murray told police in the early days of the investigation that Mr. Martell was at times physically violent with her in the home, though he has denied this.
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Ms. Brooks-Murray said she has co-operated with police and taken two polygraph tests. She says she still trusts the RCMP but has become frustrated with the lack of answers and dwindling communication from investigators.Darren Calabrese/The Globe and Mail
At the time of the children’s disappearance, Mr. Martell told police that the two had been fighting about money. He has also acknowledged in an interview with The Globe that he used drugs, including methamphetamine.
Their home life had also been assessed by a provincial child protection social worker several months before their disappearance, around the same time Jack went to school with a black eye.
In late January, Mr. Martell was charged with sexual assault, forcible confinement and assault against a woman in Lansdowne. Her identity is protected by a publication ban.
In the interview, Ms. Brooks-Murray said she no longer believes that her children could be lost in the woods. Nor does it ever cross her mind that her children came to harm on the property or that they met foul play, she said.
“All I think is positive because it’s the only thing that helps me cope, helps me to get out of bed every morning is to be continuously positive and know that they’re coming home. It’s just a matter of when.”
To her, this leaves only one possible theory: “The only thing I can assume is someone took them,” she said. “But for what reason – I don’t know.”
As time goes on, it just feels too long, and we still don’t have any answers. So, I just want to scream their names to the world.
— Malehya Brooks-Murray
She said she is disappointed that on the day Jack and Lilly were reported missing, police ignored her request for an Amber Alert, a public-emergency notification for abducted children. Instead, RCMP issued a vulnerable-missing-persons alert.
Police have repeatedly said they have no evidence of an abduction. At a press conference this past spring, RCMP Staff Sergeant Rob McCamon, acting officer in charge of major crime and behavioural sciences in the province, said all possible scenarios related to the disappearance of the children are under consideration. He said the chances of Jack and Lilly being alive are very slim.
Ms. Brooks-Murray says police have told her that she’s not considered a suspect in the case, nor are any of her family members.
Court documents say she was found to be truthful in her first polygraph. She said the question was about whether she killed Jack and Lilly. She said she recently did a second polygraph and police later told her she passed. The question in the second polygraph was focused on whether she put Jack and Lilly in a vehicle, she said.
RCMP declined to verify any of this: “At this stage of the ongoing investigation, all information that can be released publicly has been shared,” Ms. Gerrard said.
Mr. Martell did not respond to a request for comment but in early January told The Globe that he had nothing to do with Jack and Lilly’s disappearance. “I will happily say that because I believe the kids are 100-per-cent alive and I will always believe that,” he said.
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Ms. Brooks-Murray has hung on to her children’s things, among them are small runners with Lilly S written on the side and a white, worn stuffed unicorn.Darren Calabrese/The Globe and Mail
The case has ignited a furor on social media among self-styled true-crime commentators who, often anonymously, peddle misinformation and attacks. It is on these sites where Mr. Martell and some of his family members have suggested that Ms. Brooks-Murray had something to do with the disappearance of her children. She says she doesn’t even look at the theories and accusations that can be found online.
“I honestly don’t know what to say because we were in the same bed that night so I don’t understand why they would make up stories.”
Recently, she walked in a Canada Day parade in the town of Westville, 15 minutes from Lansdowne, handing out Jack and Lilly keychains and holding a handmade neon sign that said, “Jack & Lilly. Help Bring Them Home!”
“I just held my breath and kept looking straight and telling myself, ‘I’m doing this for them, to keep their faces out there, to know we’re still looking for them and that we’re not giving up.’ ”
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Malehya, centre, wearing a pink hoodie and holding a sign that reads ‘Jack and Lilly,’ and her supporters and family march in the Canada Day parade in Westville, N.S.Supplied
She said what she misses the most is tucking her children into bed at night – along with their laughter, their smiles, their hugs and their smells. “They were both mama’s kids,” she said. “They loved their mom.”
She lives in a one-bedroom apartment with two recently adopted cats in Indian Brook, part of Sipekne’katik First Nation. She takes medication to help her sleep, attends therapy sessions and spends as much time as she can with her youngest daughter. Next month, she said she plans to start studying to become an addictions counsellor – something she said she has long wanted to do.
She envisions Jack and Lilly, wherever they are, together and being well looked after. She has hung on to their things – small runners with Lilly S written on the side, her rainbow bedazzled bike helmet and white worn stuffed unicorn, Jack’s dirt-encrusted sneakers and his blue and green toy brontosaurus.
She says her bedroom is full of the children’s missed milestones: Easter baskets, valentines, Christmas and birthday gifts for them “to open when they get home.”
“And I continue to get more – because it’s what helps me cope.”
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Darren Calabrese/The Globe and Mail