In today's new episode, we speak with Jordan Bonaparte, our old friend from the Nighttime Podcast, who is here to give us updates in the mysterious disappearances of Lily and Jack Sullivan, who are six and four years old, and they went missing from Pictou County, Nova Scotia, on May 2nd, 2025. Jordan has been covering this story in depth on his show, which is now called The Canadian Gothic. Lance, how'd you like this conversation? Always a pleasure speaking with Jordan. We love having him on the show. And he can actually come on the show and talk about whatever he wants, whenever he wants. He is such a great guest and such a good friend. And he's so well prepared. He'll always come with some news clips. So you're going to hear some actual news clips from people involved in Jack and Lily's disappearance. This is probably the third time that he's come on to discuss the disappearance of Jack and Lily. And we have him on and we're never nervous that he has misinformation or he's poorly researched. He always comes with as much backup to his story as possible.
Really no one better in this industry, in the podcasting, true crime industry to cover Jack and Lily's disappearance than Jordan. Yeah, he's great. So check out everything that he's got going on on his podcast at the Canadian Gothic dot com. There are new links in the show notes that will take you there as opposed to the nighttime podcasts old website. So hope you enjoy this conversation. This is still a tragic and mysterious case. And there are some updates that Jordan is here to share with us. So we are going to break quick for commercial here and we'll be right back with Jordan Bonaparte. Don't forget to follow us on social media at Missing CSM. And please give us any comments on YouTube or Spotify.
Welcome back to the podcast, Jordan Bonaparte. Jordan, how are you today? I am doing great. Not as excited as you are, though, Tim, based on the sounds of it, but I am happy to be here with you both. We're happy to have you. Yeah, Tim was very excited. I'm very excited to have you on as well, but it's not...
It can't be the new year without getting Jordan Bonaparte on the show. It's a good way to kick off 2026. You do such great work on your show. Can you introduce yourself? I don't think anyone really needs to know who you are. I think they all know already, but can you give a little background on you? Yeah, let's do it. I'm Jordan Bonaparte. I host the Canadian Gothic, which is a podcast that covers Canadian crime, mystery, and weird stories is the way I put it out. I've been doing it almost as long as you guys have. I just recently had my 10th anniversary as a podcaster, and upon my 10th anniversary, I rebranded my show. Previously, I used the name Nighttime. Now I use Canadian Gothic.
The next question often is, why did you change the name after 10 years? Well, I'll tell you, since I started, there's this new genre of podcasts that are designed to put you to sleep. And it seems like all of them have night or nighttime or sleepy time in the title. And so that was an issue. But also, since I can cover Canadian stuff exclusively, I want a Canadian in the title. So Canadian Gothic is the show title after my 10th anniversary. They were both great titles. Canadian Gothic does have this ring to it that is super appealing. Like when I get the alerts that say a new episode, you know, it's the Canadian Gothic. When you came up with that, did you know instantly? Did you have other runner-ups for the title? Or did you know instantly, like, that's the one?
toying with that name for like five years and I was going to use it as a series of episodes within nighttime. But then when I started thinking about changing the name, I was like, I don't think I can do better than Canadian Gothic. That's what I want to go with. Because I like it because it implies like dark stuff. It also implies like history. It has Canada in the title. So it's just the perfect name. I wish I had a thought of it 10 years ago when I originally launched. But here we are. I guess you guys did the same kind of thing. You guys went through all your careers and different names.
Yeah. Yeah. Some different styles, you know, you got to shake it up. These podcasts are living, breathing entities. So, you know, they, they need their own pulse check. You know, you need to change it up here and there once in a while. So I love the new title, the Canadian Gothic.
And you have been covering the very mysterious disappearances of four-year-old Jack and six-year-old Lily Sullivan, who went missing on May 2nd, 2025 from Lansdowne Station, Nova Scotia. And yeah, this story has some twists and turns, and we really appreciate your coverage. So we'd love to hear the updates in this story. Yeah, a lot's happened. You and I did an episode on Crawl Space about Jack and Elise several months ago. And I'll tell you, in the last probably month and a half, more has happened in this case than has happened since the children were reported missing. It's a case that has got attention from across the world, like this idea of two children just disappearing without a trace, no trail left behind. It's got people hanging by every little thread of information. And for the longest time, there's been next to no information or developments. But as I said, in the last month or so, there has been so much.
that has come out. To get it started, I think what I should probably tell you, and this may be a difference between the way things happen in the U.S. and the way things happen in Canada with storytelling and understanding a police investigation. So in Canada, generally one of the first steps towards an investigation is the police will apply for search warrants or seizure warrants. So like they'll apply to the courts to take someone's cell phone and review it or search someone's home or whatnot. And a part of that application process is they need to apply to the courts with almost like a document that will outline everything they've done so far in the investigation and what parts of that investigation justify a search of a property or a seizure of a phone or bank records or whatnot. So all that stuff gets sent.
the courts. The courts will use that information to make a decision on whether or not they're going to allow the search and seizure. In Jack and Lily's case, just days after the kids went missing, the police applied for several search and seizure warrants, all of which were successful. But it wasn't until several months later that the courts started releasing those applications to the public and doing so with heavy redactions. So almost like the Epstein files, like these search and seizure warrants or applications months later will come out with huge parts of it redacted.
Those search and seizure warrants are really what give the public and the media the first glance at the scope and nature of the investigation. So several months back, we received the search and seizure applications and learned a lot about... who spoke to the police and what their different opinions and theories were. We learned about what items were being searched and seized. And it was all the stuff you would expect. Like they're going to search the children's property. They're going to seize the children's guardian cell phones, bank records, computers. They also got CCTV footage from some businesses that the children and their family were at in the days prior to the disappearance. So all that stuff is pretty obvious and expected, but there was a lot of redactions.
And what ended up happening is several Canadian media companies applied to the courts to lift some of these or loosen some of these redactions to give us more information on the investigation. And only recently, the courts agreed to do that and revealed more information about what people said to the police in the days after the children's disappearance. And now that was a long explanation as to what's going on, but that's important because this is really what seems to start blowing the lid off this thing. So in this new wave of releases, what we've learned is that, so again, for people who are unfamiliar with the story, when Jack and Lily went missing, they were in a trailer with their... biological mother, Malaya Brooks, and their stepfather, Daniel Martell. In the backyard of the trailer, there's like an RV where Daniel's mother, Janie, lived.
In the morning that the kids went missing, Daniel and Malaya, who said to the police that they were in bed with their baby, they both described hearing Jack and Lily in the other parts of the trailer before they went missing. Daniel's mother in the backyard, Janie, described hearing the kids as well. So all three of the adults on this property said like, you know, half hour or so before they realized the kids were missing, they all separately heard them on the property. So a lot of people who look at this case think like if, you know, if any one of them were involved in the disappearance of the kids, all of them would have to be because they all kind of, you know, heard and described hearing the same thing. So anyway, getting now to the new release of information. One thing that has come out.
is a bit of the interview with Daniel's mother, who was in the RV in the backyard. She described from the very beginning to the RCMP that she had a belief that Malaya's family was involved in this. I'm going to quote directly from the documents now is the police officer summarizing the interview with Janie said, she said she's of the opinion that Malaya's side of the family had something to do with it because they didn't take part in the search and were not letting them see the baby. So that was just a minor kind of release. But for people closely following this case, it shows that from the very beginning, there was finger pointing between both sides of these families, the stepfather's family and the biological mother's family about who is responsible for what happened to the children. But the more interesting revelation in this whole thing is that the children's mother, Malaya Brooks,
In an interview days after they went missing, explained to the police or described to the police what sounds like an abusive relationship between her and the children's stepfather. I'll read a little bit about that because, you know, this is really important to get because this is what sets the scene for everything that's going to happen. So when asked if Daniel, the stepfather, was physically abusive, Malaya said he would try to block her, hold her down. He once pushed her and she said he would also take her phone from her when she tried to call her mom, which would sometimes be physical and hurt. So as you can imagine, in a case like this with missing children, when the mother starts accusing the stepfather, physical abuse you know all hell breaks loose for the most part for people following this great great job with uh recapping that and and the work you've done on this have they actually like declared this and i don't know if this is how it works but has it actually been declared a criminal investigation it's an interesting question and it hasn't been publicly confirmed or classified as a criminal investigation by the police our police force that's investigating this is the rcmp the royal canadian mounted police they haven't said it's criminal in nature yet they're still being investigated as a missing persons case but that may not be as it sounds because here in nova scotia where i live and where the children went missing there's a piece of legislation called the missing persons act and that gives police a lot of authority to investigate a missing person the kind of authority that typically would only they would only have if it's a criminal investigation so in nova scotia you can apply for search warrants and do these kinds of investigations in a missing persons case so a lot of people think that there's not
a big benefit for the police to move this into a criminal investigation because the Missing Persons Act in Nova Scotia allows them to do whatever they want to do anyway. But all that to say is they have said since the very beginning that it's being investigated as a missing persons case and there's nothing that makes them classify it as a criminal case. But that said, what they say and what they do seem to be two very different things. Because when you look at the way the RCMP are investigating and handling this, it's pretty clear to me that they're looking for who did something to these kids. Maybe they're not calling it criminal just because they haven't found that piece of information yet. One thing I will play here that'll maybe explain a little bit about it.
Recently, the head of Nova Scotia's Major Crimes Unit, which is the head of the police force that's investigating this case, he appeared on Global News, a local media station, and he was answering some questions about the case. And this kind of ties in well with what I just read to you about the allegations of abuse. His name is Staff Sergeant Rob McCammon. And when asked if the family's relationship is an investigative concern in this case, the way he answered it makes it pretty clear it is. RCMP Staff Sergeant Rob McCammon confirmed the nature of their relationship at the time of the children's disappearance is part of the investigation.
Are any of the children's family members considered suspects in this case? I wouldn't say anybody's a suspect. Again, we continue to gather information and whatever evidence that we are able to find, and we'll make our decisions based on that. But we are not in a position to really comment on suspects or anything like that at this time. The case is still being investigated under the Missing Persons Act and has not moved to a criminal investigation. But in new submissions, the Crown noted that while there is currently no reasonable grounds to believe a crime has taken place, it could become criminal. When they state that there are no reasonable grounds for...
criminal offense uh what that really says to me uh is that uh there's currently not enough evidence to make an arrest for a crime but a crime is not obviously being ruled out it's a very important linguistic distinction what does that mean a linguistic distinction like just a matter of semantics i think that's what it is and i think again there's because of the missing persons act here it's not like they have this heavy motivation to move it to a criminal case because in some jurisdictions moving moving a missing persons case into a criminal case will then open the doors to better access to getting people's phones and bank records and whatnot. But this act in Nova Scotia has allowed them to do that regardless. So it really just comes down to semantics, I suppose. We'll be right back after a quick word from our sponsor.
And a thank you to our sponsors. Back to the program. For people who have been following this case, it seems like the finger is often pointed, at least publicly, by online commenters, either at the children's stepfather, Daniel Martell, or the children's mother, Malaya Brooks. And again, it's obvious why that would be because they were basically the two last people to see the children alive or to see the children on planet Earth. So as you follow the story, it seems like every development kind of pushes people a bit more towards, there's something about the mother's side of the family or there's something about the stepfather's side of the family. This development or this allegation of abuse coming from the mother.
towards the stepfather has really blown things wide open. And it's also important to understand kind of the context of this is the children's stepfather, Daniel Martel, he publicly is the face of this story. It seems like up until now, almost every week, he's been on the news answering questions and, you know, he seems completely transparent and as if he's, you know, the knight in shining armor who wants to help and, you know, and advocate for his stepchildren where the mother, Malaya Brooks, has all but disappeared. She appeared on the news maybe the day after the kids went missing, but it's been silenced since then. She's left the area, Lansdowne Station, to be with her family and has been, hasn't appeared on.
on news, hasn't made any official statements, which some people are critical of, but at the same time, I don't know how I would act if I was in that position. But the allegations being levied against the stepfather in his public situation or his public position in the story has really led to some... interesting developments in the story. One, of course, is he was willing to appear on the news and defend himself against the allegations. And again, the allegations we heard were basically taking her cell phone, holding her down, pushing her, not allowing her to call her mother. So that sounds really bad. But as I said, he was willing to go on the news and, I guess, explain himself or defend himself. Listen to how he did that.
Newly unsealed court documents in Lily and Jack Sullivan's missing persons case are raising questions about the relationship between the children's mother, Malaya Brooks-Murray, and stepfather Daniel Martell. Filed to support search warrant applications for the case, the documents lay out Brooks-Murray's and Martell's responses to investigators' questions. When asked if Martell was ever physically abusive in their relationship, Brooks-Murray said he would, quote, try to block her, hold her down, and once pushed her. She said he would also take her phone from her when she tried to call her mom, which would sometimes be physical and hurt. Brooks-Murray declined Global News' request for comment. Have you ever tried to block Malaya, hold her down, or push her?
No, all those allegations are false. And as I said, it was just to paint me in a bad light. That's basically why all those allegations of abuse came out. I never physically abused Malaya. Martel says he approved of these redactions being lifted, adding not much has changed when it comes to his public reputation. I've been, you know, trying to keep the public up to date as much as possible. My image hasn't changed at all. It was always Daniel's evil, Daniel's a monster. And with that painted narrative, the public automatically will just jump to the belief of guilt.
He says he provided his DNA to run forensics on Lily's blanket, which was found in the woods by family members on May 2nd. They didn't need a warrant to have my DNA, so I was willing to do it. I watched them sign on the consent form, no criminal involvement in the case of Lily and Jack. So it was nice to see that, you know, that box checked for no criminal involvement. I signed my name on the consent sheet. The disappearance of the Sullivan siblings is still being treated as a missing persons investigation, despite the involvement of major crimes. But when they do have a suspect, then they dive into investigating that suspect or group of individuals.
Then it will pivot to a criminal investigation at that point. Should guys read on that? It's rare that you get to hear someone like in almost in real time defend themselves on the news. What do you get of his response? Well, he sounds the same that he sounded months ago. Like he doesn't sound concerned, you know, but he's actually been charged. These are more than just allegations at this point. Well, it starts as allegations. And that is the big update. And so and this all happens fast. So these new lesser redacted documents come out that show these allegations against him. It all blows up in a conversation publicly. Daniel goes on the news and defends himself.
But only days later after the release of this and after that news clip you just heard, it was actually on January 26th, the Monday at 1130 a.m. Daniel Martel was arrested and this blew the lid off of this entire case. I'm going to play another clip here. The stepfather of two missing Nova Scotia siblings is now facing charges of sexual assault and forcible confinement in an incident involving an adult. RCMP say 34-year-old Daniel Robert Martell was arrested Monday morning. He was released with conditions and is due back in court in March. Martell was in a common-law relationship with Malaya Brooks-Murray, the mother of Lily and Jack Sullivan. The children, who were aged 6 and 4 at the time, were reported missing on May 2, 2025, from their home in Pictou County.
So yeah, you called it there. And they haven't said if the arrest relates to these allegations Malaya, the children's mother, made. And there is a question mark because the allegations that Malaya made that we heard about of these abuse, taking the phone and holding her down and such, that came from search warrant documents that would have been prepared days after the kids went missing almost a year ago. But now here we are with Daniel being arrested. The identity of the complainant is being protected.
and not released publicly and subject to a publication ban. But if you look at what the charges are, it does kind of line up for the most part with what we heard Malaya described to police investigators early on is there was a sexual assault. There was a regular assault as well as forcible confinement. So holding someone down and not letting them call their mom is forcible confinement, pushing them as assault. The sexual assault would be something new, but this all kind of lines up. The only information they've given about the complaint is that it's an adult female, that it happened.
on Garlock Road, which is the street that the children Daniel and Malaya lived on. And they gave a time range of when these offenses were alleged to occur. And it was when Daniel and Malaya were together. So a lot of people following this online are talking about it as if it is definitely the children's mother behind these charges. But we don't know that for sure. And even if we did, we couldn't say due to a publication ban. But two missing children's stepfather, one of the last people to see them, being charged with sex crimes and forcible confinement while the search is ongoing has created a whole lot of discussion. And you haven't had any...
information coming directly from Malaya, right? She's removed herself from any sort of media communication. So we don't know like what she's been talking about to police, if anything. No, we know nothing about Malaya Brooks. The only thing we've learned is not Malaya herself, but two of her best friends appeared on the news and gave like this kind of 20 minute sit down interview with CBC, which is like our national broadcaster. Her friends, for the most part, described like the loss of Jack and Lily and how that's affected Malaya and people within her circle. But they did describe as well that when Malaya and Daniel got together,
it was Malaya disappeared. She cut off all contact with friends and family. Even her closest friends didn't know where she was living with Daniel. They knew nothing about him or the relationship that they all had until the day the kids went missing. Malaya's closest friends to support her found out where she was and went there to get involved in the search. They described shock and just dismay at the state of
Malaya's life. She was living in a rundown trailer with the kids that was it looked almost like a hoarder's place. Like it wasn't like a nice place at all. And her friends on the news described just their shock at where she was living and justified their actions, which were basically like when we saw what her life was like there, we got her out of there. And I think they kind of explained a little bit of why Malaya is no longer in that home or in that community searching for the kids. It seems like her friends had a role in getting her out of there. So that isolation does kind of follow what we know of some.
relationships that are embroiled in domestic abuse. It sure sounds like it. I think any situation where someone, especially so if they have young children, and even more so if they have young children that may have some special needs, a new relationship that leads to you quickly moving in with that person, shutting off your friends and family, I don't know if that ever ends well. I believe in love at first sight, but I don't know if I believe in love at first sight at the expense of cutting off everyone you've known up to that point in your life. And it really seems like that's what's happened here. That's how her closest friends describe it.
It's really interesting because we had an expert just recently on who talked about gaslighting and she's written a book on gaslighting. She is one of the most renowned experts on that concept, on that topic. And you can hear that in his statement that he made. You can see like the flags, you know, trying to deflect and put the narrative out first that, you know, this is all designed to make me look bad. So he's turning it on you, you know, like he's turning it on people who are talking about this and saying that you need to, you know, check who you're listening to. It's all designed to discredit me. And he never mentions his kids.
And he even refers to it as a narrative, which just, it's kind of telling to be like, that's this narrative that's being cast. But, you know, you're expert on gaslighting. I have another clip here that I'd really be interested to hear what they have to say about this. So after the allegations, the arrest, and Malaya's friends coming out and saying, you know, he cut off all contact with the rest of us, Daniel made his kind of last media appearance to address that. He's been silenced since these charges, but he does address the isolation between Malaya and her friends and family. And I think this is a really telling clip, at least from my point of view. There have been allegations from Malaya's friends and family that you were abusive to her. Were you? No.
They said that when she moved in with you, she got off all contact with them and you monitored her phone. She also monitored mine. We both had the same passwords on her phone. And her friends, she blocked her friends on my phone and she blocked them on her own phone. So how would you describe your relationship before the children? Yes. I don't really want to talk on that because I don't really want to talk on too much to do with Malaya. It's best that we don't.
Could you imagine a relationship where you and your new partner decide to go on each other's phones and block all your friends like that? To me, that just doesn't make any sense in reality. Absolutely not. And that's sort of like mutually assured destruction of the relationship when you're starting off there. And yeah, and then you add to like moving to a different community, living in this rundown place, having financial troubles. But at the same time, you know what? Let's you know, let's cut everybody else off. It seems.
Seems like it's not going to end well. But all this to say is, in this case, we've talked a lot tonight about the relationship between the children's mother and stepfather. We don't know if this has anything to do with the disappearance of the kids. But what it does tell us is that in the lead up to the disappearance of the children, there was certainly an unhealthy situation happening in that home, financial troubles, a toxic relationship ruling the house. And then they go missing in the middle of this. And I can't imagine that.
one does not equal the other. Like I feel like the odds of two children together, a four and six year old siblings getting abducted by a stranger, like that's kind of like a one in a million thing anyway in a remote part of Nova Scotia. But for that to happen in a family that has all this strange stuff going on, for it to happen at the end of, you know, the kids hadn't been in school for like the two or three days in the lead up to this, like there's just too much that leans me or directs me towards like it had something to do with the trouble at home. But no matter how far you follow that thread, it... then winds you up in a position where Malaya, the mother, Daniel, the stepfather, and Daniel's mother, Janie, who was in the backyard, they all described hearing the kids at around like 9 or 9.30. 30 minutes later is when the 911 call came out that the kids were missing. So it seems like if any of them had anything to do with it, all three of them had to be in on it in some way. And that doesn't seem possible because if you're in the middle of this tumultuous breakup with finger pointing and charges being filed, why would you protect the other person and not just come forward with what happened?
Right. But it's so confusing then because what did happen? You know, like did somebody that one of them knows, you know, drive up there and I don't know, coerce the kids to get into the car. But I feel like the RCMP would have been able to track that or with the video cameras or with phone records or things like that. If there was any, you know, setup there, I feel like that would have been unearthed. But then also the amount of time that the kids were.
playing in the yard, all three earwitnesses heard, and then a half an hour later, they're calling 911. That doesn't give a lot of time for one of them to quietly, I don't know, get rid of the kids in some way. And also, even just the time that this happened, it's not like the kids went missing in the middle of the night under the cloak of darkness. Whatever happened seems to have happened between 9.30 a.m. and 10 a.m. And it seems like if you were planning the abduction of children, you wouldn't be like, let's just do it first thing in the morning when the school buses are going by and everybody's around.
It seems like it would be so risky to do it at that point. And the RCMP, according to the search warrant applications, we see that they have thousands of hours of video from neighboring properties, businesses in the area, from the highways that connect to this part of town, from dash cams that vehicles had that were passing by. But they also looked at things like which electronic devices were trying to connect to the Wi-Fi network in the home. Because even if one of you came to my house, your phone would automatically connect with my... internet router in my house to like, you know, try to log on and stuff like it leaves a digital trail. They looked at everything, try to figure out who was on that property and they've gone nowhere. And, you know, these people, if you look at the property, their educational background, the type of people that are connected with them through, you know, friend and family relationship, this doesn't seem to be like this.
complicated game of 3D chess between some human traffickers and a provincial police force. I feel like this case, if it was that simple, somebody would have broke by now. And also, why would you do that? Let's say if you want to rescue Jack and Lily because their home life was bad, there's other ways to do it. You contact child protection agencies and make things happen. You don't abduct them and seal them away from society for a year.
Right. And that's going to be terrifying for the kids. Like if you're trying to do that for the betterment of the children, you're actually like terrifying them by taking them away from their biological mother. And I'm sorry if I missed it. Where is the biological father? Well, that's the biological father. And that's who the children get their last name from, Sullivan. He hasn't been in the children's life since the very beginning. He was with Malaya. They had the two children, Jack and Lily. They split up. And from that point on, he's had nothing to do with the kids' lives. He's been ruled out as a suspect. He was paying child support up until he lost a job, I think.
maybe like six months before the kids went missing and stopped paying child support. And him not paying child support was one of the burdens, one of the financial burdens that this family felt in the lead up to the disappearance. But he's been investigated, ruled out. And yeah, I think he, in the early days at least, his involvement in possible involvement in this story was just a huge red herring. But yeah, he's not involved in their lives. We'll be right back after a quick word from our sponsor. And a thank you to our sponsors. Back to the program.
As far as the charges against Daniel, are the RCMP, in your opinion, are they using that to get more information? You know, I thought about that is through the Missing Persons Act, they could do a lot. They can get his cell phone, his bank records and so on. But I don't know how long that would continue for. A part of me wonders if these new charges could possibly give them a fresh shot at looking at all of his information. It could be a little bit of that. I don't know what the motivation would be to lay charges, because I also think the relationship that the police would have with Daniel as their.
in the middle of this hugely high profile investigation, having these charges filed against him. Of course, they are serious charges, but they're definitely going to break down the relationship between Daniel and the police and complicate his willingness to cooperate with him going forward. So I don't like to think that people could get away with committing crimes because they can help police with other cases. But you would think that this would be one where having Daniel on their good side may benefit them for a much higher profile case. The disappearance of Jack and Lily Sullivan is easily the highest profile case in Nova Scotia right now. And it's definitely one that the RCMP's reputation can hinge on.
But that said, if you tell the police that your boyfriend abused you and forcibly confined you, they probably have a duty to lay charges. So maybe it's something where they had no choice but to lay these charges when all of this surfaced. I don't know. It's definitely interesting timing, though. No question about that. And again, sorry if I missed this part. Actually, two parts. There was a polygraph, right? Did he take a polygraph or did he volunteer to take one? He did. He did take one. It's Daniel, the stepfather, the mother took one. Daniel's mother, who was in the backyard, took one. Everybody passed with the exception of Daniel's mother's polygraph was determined to be like inconclusive.
In the search warrant applications, we see that the reason for that was because something about her physiology made it impossible to test her. I did a bit of research on what that could mean, and she appeared on the news once or twice, and she came across as really high strung and agitated. And I think maybe that's just her personality. And I think perhaps like when I read about what about someone's physiology would make you incompatible with a polygraph, that could be a part of it. Like if you took someone with specific disabilities, neurological disorders, it can make it so a polygraph doesn't work. But anyway, all that to say is everybody passed, including Daniel.
His mother, Janie, didn't fail, just was unable to be read by the machine. Okay. And another refresher for my memory, what were the searches like around the property and on the property? The searches are said to be the most advanced, elaborate, all-hands-on-deck searches in Nova Scotia's history. They searched the property, of course, high and low, but in the back of the children's property is just forests, old mines, old wells, not rivers, but lakes and ponds. And the amount and scope of the searches and the technology used...
I think for a lot of people, make it seem like it would be impossible that the kids are out there. But that said, it seems like every time the searches would end, not long after, they would do another targeted search looking for more information. So there always is the possibility that the kids are out there and just weren't found. But I think it's highly unlikely. But there has been situations like, again, and a part of the reason I mentioned old wells and old mines is there is the possibility that the kids ended up somewhere out of visual eyesight or out of smell distance, I guess, because they did have cadaver dogs there. They had different types of drones using heat sensitive imagery and all that stuff. They haven't found anything. But if the kids, you know, somehow fell in a well or a hole, I guess there's the chance that they wouldn't be discovered. But where there's, you know, if it was one kid that went missing, I think that's more possible or more likely, I guess. But where there's two of them, kind of hard for two people to fall in a well together. I guess it could happen.
Unless one was trying to save the other one. Yeah. And that's a possibility. Like if at the end of all this, it has learned that Jack and Lily fell in a, you know, a well or something like that, it would be such a complete shock. But just as much of a shock as if it came out that the person responsible was communicating with media weekly throughout this whole thing. Like I've said many times is if Daniel Martel, the stepfather, had some role in this, the Netflix documentary that's going to come out will be the most unprecedented thing because there would be literal hours and hours and hours of footage of him talking about this on the news. You know, it's like there's cases where people have appeared on the news and appealed for support and they're missing kids. And then it turns out that they get it. But usually it's, you know, a couple media appearances. Daniel has been from the very beginning, nearly weekly, if not biweekly, has been on the news talking about this.
Yeah. And I do just want to note, I was just looking up a story about a couple who went for a walk over the weekend and fell into ice. And one of them was deceased and one of them is still missing. So not completely impossible to go missing as a, as a couple, you know, as a pair of people. But I think all those points that you make are very valid and cadaver dog searches, you know, we've heard that they can, they can smell decomp underwater under about a hundred feet of water. So.
Yeah, I mean, depending on the dog and the trainer and all that, because there are variables there, you would assume that they have sort of checked that off the list. You would think, yeah. And I've said several times on my show covering this case, I think I've done 16 episodes at this point following every development in this case. And I've said so many times that to me, it appears impossible that the kids are out there in the woods, both because of the amount of searching that's been done, but also just the fact that so much odd stuff was going on in the house that it just seems like that would be such a glaring red herring. This ended up happening while all this trouble was happening in the house. And it's even worse than I say, like another thing that's come out is in the early days after the disappearance, there was a lot of rumors going around that there was, you know, drugs in the house and that the parents were involved in hard drugs. And I always just dismiss that. I thought, you know, until there's evidence, I'm not going to just assume that, you know, this was like this drug den or something that the kids were living in. But then not long after it came out and Daniel admitted to this online or in the news is that he did have issues with hard drugs, including meth. But he has said that.
He had stopped that before the kids went missing and that had no involvement in this. But I think that was kind of what started me really questioning Daniel. I thought, you know, I felt like. I felt in the early days, like there was no way he had anything to do with it. He seemed too transparent and willing to help. But then when I learned like a bit more about him, I thought, oh, this doesn't look good for this guy. And then it has continued to get worse and worse. And I think the next revelation is going to come when he ends up in court to answer for these sex assaults, forcible confinement and assault charges. That's at the beginning of March. So we're just about a month away from him making a court appearance. And, you know, that's going to be the next big, I guess, revelation or showdown in this story. We got to make sure that we have you back on. You have to promise that we'll be amongst your top people that you will.
you know, come on to chat about the newer updates. Absolutely. When they happen and it's, you know, at this point, almost we're approaching the one year anniversary of their disappearance. It's surprising that there are still developments, but it just seems like just when the story is about to go away and go silent, some big thing happens that just blows the lid off again. Like it's, you know, in the lead up to the one year anniversary, it's hard to say it's a cold case or it's going cold, but it often feels like that. There'll be these periods of inactivity and then, you know, boom, Daniel Martel is arrested as an example, or boom, new documents come out that, you know, open up these discussion points.
It seems like there are kind of multiple tentacles from the story. One is the ground search. One is the people associated with the family. And then another one is just the possibilities of what it could be. And a lot of people like to throw around concepts of human trafficking in terms of just grabbing kids off the street and hustling them away. I don't know how often that actually happens in rural Nova Scotia, but it seems like it's one of the only explanations that would make sense in the story. I just can't imagine that it would happen at 930 in the morning on a school day.
No, I think all that would sound very unlikely in this scenario. Also, you know, just want to note, like kids at that age, four and six, like they cost the caretaker money, you know, they don't provide money unless you're to find, you know, the. you know, rare Epstein seller, you know, buyer or something like that. But again, I think that is very far fetched in this case. Absolutely far fetched. But having like, you know, there are the one in a million story when it happens and just having that exist leads people to think it's possible. But this is a four and six year old sibling who went missing at 930 ish in the morning on a school day. Both kids were currently going through like autism kind of assessments. It's, you know, when you hear of human trafficking, really what it generally will be is like a teenage girl getting human trafficked by her older boyfriend, you know, that sort of thing, not scooping up at a four and a six year old and selling them to Jeffrey Epstein or similar.
Yes. No, that's much more likely. Now, my final question here, I just with the charges that Daniel faced or is facing and the, I guess, paired with the story of what Daniel and Malaya were doing the morning that they went missing, they were just laying in bed with the baby. Right. But he was charged with forcibly.
holding her yeah forcible confinement is basically like kidnapping without moving them somewhere else so if i was uh in the studio with you and i didn't want to stop recording so i held you both down and continued talking to you that would be forcibly confining you if i then dragged you to my studio that's when it becomes kidnapping but these charges um don't relate to the morning the kids went missing the charges stem from an incident months before the kids went missing but at a time when daniel and malaya were still together with the kids the police have said the incidents that incident or incidents that led to these charges did happen on garlock road which is where they lived but They didn't say, you know, the civic address of which house it happened at. So it could have been at a neighbor's property. It could have been in, you know, with some other person in the car in the driveway or something like that. But all signs to me make it a bit more likely that it does involve Daniel and Malaya, especially so given that Malaya has made these allegations to police during the search.
Absolutely. Yeah. And I guess I was just wondering if that could have coincided with the morning of their disappearances, but fair point. And it doesn't. Yeah. Also, just like logically, I struggle with it because she's accusing him of abuse before this moment. And then she's, you know, theoretically laying in bed with him and the baby. And look, I know domestic situations are very complicated and I don't understand the psychology of it completely. And I wouldn't. But that just seems like it flies in the face a little bit.
Yeah. And I think people have brought that up. I don't understand that enough to make an assessment on that, but I know there are people who are in violent relationships that still publicly and socially appear like they're a loving couple. So it's hard to say, but the fact of the matter is, is that the morning the kids went missing, both Daniel and Malaya told police that they were in bed together with their other baby named Meadow. And they were just kind of snuggling in bed, hearing Jack and Lily play in the other room. And then around 930 AM, they realized there was some silence in the house. And when they went to investigate, no sign of Jack and Lily.
And that's when the 911 calls were made, reporting them missing. And Daniel's mother, who was in the RV in the backyard, she described hearing the kids on a swing in the backyard sometime around 930 as well. So they all kind of put the kids on that property about 25 minutes, half hour before the 911 calls were made. So it's a mystery. And that tight timeline really makes it hard to come up with any theory that makes sense. And I would challenge anyone to come up with a theory that holds any water because it doesn't seem like if you talk it through, you will always get to this kind of roadblock of.
You know, if it was any of them, it had to be all of them. And if it was all of them, then why aren't they turning on each other with allegations related to the children? And how did they all pass a polygraph? That's right. And how did their stories check out? How are police who've gone through their phones and their emails and their bank records and everything else? How have they not been able to find anything? Like, unless we're talking about criminal masterminds, which it really doesn't seem like these people are. Well, Jordan, thank you so much for coming back on here and telling us about this story and these updates. We look forward to the next one. And where can listeners find your fine work on the Canadian Gothic?
Pretty easy. Anywhere you listen to Crawl Space, if you search for The Canadian Gothic, or if you go to my website, thecanadiangothic.com, you can find my 16 episodes covering all the developments in Jack and Lily's story, as well as many more stories of Canadian crime, mysteries, and just weird and offbeat events. And if you want to have something to fall asleep to... Find another podcast. Find another podcast.