{"id":222022,"date":"2025-10-18T10:46:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T10:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/222022\/"},"modified":"2025-10-18T10:46:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T10:46:10","slug":"neighbours-told-rcmp-they-heard-car-near-trailer-where-nova-scotia-children-disappeared","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/222022\/","title":{"rendered":"Neighbours told RCMP they heard car near trailer where Nova Scotia children disappeared"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Four-year-old Jack Sullivan, left, and six-year-old Lilly Sullivan, right, went missing on May 2, 2025 in the community of Lansdowne Station, N.S.HO\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

Two neighbours told the RCMP they heard a vehicle coming and going near the trailer where Jack and Lilly Sullivan lived in the early hours of the morning, shortly before they were reported missing, recently unredacted court documents say.<\/p>\n

The missing persons case of Jack, 4, and Lilly Sullivan, 6, has been the focus of an intensive major crime investigation for the past five months. In that time, police cadaver dogs<\/a> have scoured the children\u2019s rural Nova Scotia home and nearby areas for human remains, and extensive searches have been conducted using helicopters, drones and hundreds of volunteers.<\/p>\n

The children\u2019s mother told police her kids wandered away from home in the backwoods hamlet of Lansdowne on May 2. Malehya Brooks-Murray and Daniel Martell, her common-law boyfriend at the time, have said they awoke that morning to a quiet home and assumed the siblings had put on their boots, opened the sliding back door and left the fenced-in backyard. <\/p>\n

Months after Nova Scotia children vanished, a clearer picture emerges of their lives before their disappearance<\/a><\/p>\n

The documents, which were filed in court by investigators in support of a records request, detail the two accounts from neighbours about unexplained vehicle traffic near the children\u2019s trailer. Both Mr. Martell and Ms. Brooks-Murray have said they didn\u2019t leave the home that night.<\/p>\n

A previous, more heavily redacted version of the court documents was released in August, but the RCMP later agreed to lift some of those redactions at the request of The Globe and Mail, CBC and The Canadian Press. <\/p>\n

Brad Wong, who said he could see vehicle lights over the treetops from his elevated home, told police on May 9 that a loud vehicle came and went from the area of the trailer three or four times after midnight and into the early hours of the morning. He reported to police that the vehicle would drive off into the distance, and he could hear it stop and then return. Mr. Wong told police he remained in earshot the entire time that night. <\/p>\n

The Globe previously published a story including an account from Mr. Wong, claiming he heard the car coming and going five or six times, but agreed not to identify him because he said he was concerned about speaking publicly about the case. <\/p>\n

In an interview Friday, Mr. Wong said he came forward to police, and agreed to be identified by The Globe, because of Mr. Martell\u2019s account that he was home all evening on May 1 into May 2. Mr. Wong said that it\u2019s inconsistent with what he heard and saw that night. Mr. Wong lives about 300 metres across the road and up a forested hill from the children\u2019s trailer. <\/p>\n

Mr. Martell did not respond to a request for comment. <\/p>\n

Reached by phone by The Globe on Friday, Ms. Brooks-Murray, who previously told police she slept through the night, said she didn\u2019t hear any vehicles coming and going from the trailer overnight before her children disappeared.<\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Lansdowne Road, near the home of Jack and Lilly Sullivan.Steve Wadden\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n

Ms. Brooks-Murray recently issued a statement to the volunteer missing persons group Please Bring Me Home, describing how she misses Jack and Lilly and asking the public to come forward with information that might help locate them. She told The Globe that she hopes that message resonates.<\/p>\n

Another neighbour, Justin Smith, told police that he heard a vehicle in the vicinity around 1:30 a.m. He said he heard a car turn around by the railroad tracks, near the area where police found Lilly\u2019s pink blanket and imprints of child-sized boot prints. Police later determined those imprints matched the type of boot Lilly was wearing when she disappeared. <\/p>\n

Mr. Smith told police the car made a noise and then went quiet for about two minutes. After that, he said it drove towards Lairg Road, which is in the same direction as the trailer where the children lived. <\/p>\n

The court documents still contain significant redactions, including details that police say must be withheld or risk compromising their investigation \u2013 such as specific questions asked on polygraph tests, records police have sought and some of the people they had interviewed. <\/p>\n

The documents detail efforts to track Mr. Martell and Ms. Murray-Brooks\u2019s digital footprints in the days before and after the kids when missing, such as scanning their phones\u2019 images and GPS co-ordinates. That includes attempts to corroborate the mother\u2019s story about calls she made in the hours after their disappearance, a probe complicated by the fact that she later deleted the TextPlus app on her phone \u2013 telling police she didn\u2019t need it anymore. Doing so erased the data from her phone records.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The newly unredacted documents also reveal the challenges investigators have faced around online misinformation linked to the case. They detail the RCMP\u2019s interaction with Darin Geddes, a cousin of Ms. Murray-Brooks\u2019s grandmother Patti Pearson, who spread a theory that the children had been abducted by their own mother. <\/p>\n

In June, as a guest on a YouTube true crime show while using a pseudonym, Mr. Geddes speculated that Ms. Murray-Brooks had dressed the kids on the morning they disappeared and put them in a vehicle, with the intention of sending them to the Sipekne\u2019katik First Nation, where she has family. <\/p>\n

Her brother, Haiden Murray-Smith, complained to the police about this when he visited the RCMP\u2019s Bible Hill Detachment with her that same month, the documents show. <\/p>\n

\u201cGeddes got involved and was going all over the internet saying things … Haiden said nothing Geddes is saying is making sense,\u201d according to a summary of his interview with the RCMP, submitted by Corporal Charlene Curl to the court.<\/p>\n

The theory that the children are somehow alive \u2013 a suggestion that police have consistently said is without evidence \u2013 and hiding on the First Nation reserve has been repeated by Mr. Martell and others online. Reached by The Globe on Friday, Mr. Geddes repeated his belief that the children are alive and on the reserve. <\/p>\n

Staff Sergeant Rob McCamon, the acting RCMP officer in charge of Major Crime and Behavioural Sciences, has said that police are awaiting forensic results and are continuing to follow the evidence using specialty units and technology, to determine the circumstances of Jack and Lilly\u2019s disappearance. He said the children\u2019s family members are co-operating with police and there is no evidence of an abduction. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Four-year-old Jack Sullivan, left, and six-year-old Lilly Sullivan, right, went missing on May…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222023,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[901,888,902,879,877,903,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,43,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,44,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,41,39,42,40,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-222022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-headlines","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-news","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222022\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}