Dogs specially trained to pick up the scent of human remains did not find two children who have been missing from rural Nova Scotia for more than five months, RCMP announced Wednesday as they renewed calls for information in the disappearance of Lilly and Jack Sullivan.
Lilly, 6, and Jack, 4, were reported missing on May 2, when police received a 911 call from their mother saying they had wandered away from their home in Lansdowne, a sparsely populated community in Pictou County about 140 kilometres northeast of Halifax.
Staff Sgt. Rob McCamon said two dog teams that travelled from British Columbia searched a total of 40 kilometres over three days in late September.
Insp. Luke Rettie and his police dog, Narc, as well as Sgt. Dave Whalen and his police dog, Kitt, searched the property the children went missing from, along with a nearby pipeline and intersecting trails, and in the area where a pink blanket was previously found.
McCamon, the officer in charge of major crime and behavioural sciences in Nova Scotia, said those locations had the highest probability of finding the children, but they were not found.
“It doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s no possibility that there isn’t human remains there,” McCamon said in an interview Wednesday. “But we feel we’ve exhausted the areas as best as we can.”
The children’s disappearance in early May previously sparked an extensive grid search that spanned 8.5 square kilometres of mostly dense woods and involved about 160 ground search and rescue volunteers, service dogs, drones and helicopters.
The mysterious nature of the case, fuelled by a lack of answers, has garnered international attention.
RCMP say the Northeast Nova major crime unit continues to follow up on information that has been gleaned from the more than 860 tips, 8,060 video files that have been reviewed and forensic testing. A slew of units are working on the case and have been since May, said McCamon.
He said the case is still being investigated under the Missing Persons Act and is not a criminal case.
McCamon also renewed calls for tips from the public, noting that people may have information they think is insignificant, but “everything is important to us.”
“We can make the decision on how pertinent it is and how much effort needs to go into validity and followup,” said McCamon.
He added that RCMP are still considering all possibilities, but would not discuss their investigative theories.
“This is not something that we stopped working on…. We are grinding as hard as we can,” he said.
“There’s a lot of legitimate public concerns about how two children go missing and we can’t find them. So we’re going to continue until we have answers.”
McCamon said the dogs could always be called back if new information or evidence suggests it would be beneficial to the investigation.
In an interview Wednesday, the children’s stepfather, Daniel Martell, detailed how the dog teams searched around the property and inside the home during the week of Sept. 22.
“They ran from one side of the house to the other waiting for the dogs to bark or pick up a scent. Nothing was located. Same with all the property. There was no indication of anything,” said Martell.
Martel said at one point he had a tense interaction with one of the handlers who questioned him about whether something had happened the day before the children went missing, accusing him of “doing something to the kids Thursday night.”
He said the handler also told him he didn’t provide enough details about that day.
“And I said to him … Thursday was just an ordinary day until I woke up on Friday morning. And that’s when like life changed,” said Martell.
“It was a little bit heartbreaking and saddening to hear the words that came out of his mouth.”
Martell said he fully co-operated with the dog teams, as he has with all police since the children went missing.
He said he contacts police regularly to receive updates about the case.
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