Janie Mackenzie was asleep on her trailer when she woke up with the sound of her dog barking, a revealing sign that her two young grandchildren were playing in a swing in the backyard.
She said she listened to the voices of Lilly and Jack Sullivan. Your room is just a few steps away.
“After that, I didn’t hear anything,” Mackenzie said on the morning of May 2, when the two children disappeared from the property at Lansdowne station, a community scarcely populated in New Scotland County in Pictou County.
The next thing he heard was his son, Daniel Martell, shouting the names of the children.
A short time later, he left the trailer to find the children’s mother, Malkya Brooks-Murray, standing on the entrance path with her one-year-old daughter in her hip.
Extensive searches have little evidence
Brooks-Murray told him that the children were missing, Mackenzie recalled, and had left for about 20 minutes.
“I closed the door, put my boots, left here, ran in the forest,” Mackenzie said in an interview outside his trailer. It is the first time that CBC News receives access to the property from which the children disappeared.
Mackenzie said she was talking to her brother on the phone for about two minutes at 8:48 am local time and then fell asleep before the dog’s barking, so the children disappeared at some point after that.
What followed were days of extensive searches of the property and the surrounding forests that appeared little evidence, apart from two starting impressions and a piece of blanket. In the last 11 weeks, almost a dozen RCMP units, including important crimes, have been working in the case, but have published few details about what could have happened with Lilly, 6 and Jack, 4.
Mackenzie has decided to share his side of history in the hope of providing more clarity to what happened that morning and helping to dissipate the burst of rumors that have been circulating online.
“I blame for not getting up that morning to see the children because … this would never have happened,” he said through tears.
Mackenzie described the scene on his property, where he has lived for 26 years, as chaotic that first day of disappearance as RCMP officers, the search and rescue reporters descended on the rural community.
Two years before, Martell and Brooks-Murray came to live there with Jack and Lilly, whose biological father had chosen a few years before to not be part of their lives. Shortly after, Martell and Brooks-Murray welcomed their daughter.
Mackenzie said he gave the young family the mobile house and that she began to live in a small rolling house. She built the wood swing in the backyard, which equipped with a blue slide and a sand box.
Months after two young children disappeared in Nueva Scotia, we are having access to the property from which they disappeared for the first time. Janie Mackenzie, Lilly’s babysitter and Jack Sullivan, took Aly Thomson from CBC through the property at Lansdowne station.
“They were part of my life for two years. When they came to live here, they became part of this family,” said Mackenzie, 59.
Mackenzie said that she and her family have been more than cooperatives with the police since the children disappeared, all while attracted an intense international interest.
Mackenzie said there was an instance on the first day of the search when an officer tried to enter his trailer and stopped the officer, but just because he wanted to take his dog first.
Since then, the property has been exploited. Both RCMP officials and the search and rescue have registered the mobile house and the property trailer several times. The well and septic tank have been sought. A drone even flew under the mobile house. Martell also received a polygraph test, which says it happened.
And yet the accusations that she or her son are involved in some way in the disappearance continue to be launched online, he said.
“My life has been upside down, inside and out,” he said. “It had nothing to do with any of this … I want them to be safe at home and sound as much as everyone else. I want to know what happened.
“I want rumors to stop. I just want everything to stop. For me, for the sake of other children, my grandchildren. They don’t deserve this. They are innocent of everything. Jack and Lilly are innocent of everything. They don’t deserve this.”
At first, his family was receiving regular updates about research. But that has almost stopped in recent weeks, leaving her already Martell with many unanswered questions. She feels that the case now lacks the urgency she deserves.
It is also critical of the initial response of the RCMP to the case, questioning to what extent two children could have reasonably traveled by thick forests in the period of approximately 20 minutes. After having lived on the property for decades, he is very aware of how dense it is the forest, which worsened the fallen trees during the post -oxy storm Fiona in 2022.
“We have went for a walk in the forest. I had to practically … take Jack through the forest because there was no way to walk through all the falls and bushes of the trees,” he said, then taking news from CBC through a path that children often used, full of cross -linked trees.
RCMP research questioned
“I don’t think they are in the forest. We were looking for in this place … They had helicopters. They had drones outside. They had search engines. They spent this place with a fine -tooth comb.”
An extended family member of Brooks-Murray also criticizes how RCMP research has developed.
Darin Geddes, a Brooks-Murray grandmother’s cousin, said he had been talking to many members of both families in the weeks after disappearance and believed that he had information that could be pertinent for the investigation, but that the Mounties rejected him.
“He is not injured. He’s anger. And I’m trying to control him,” Geddes said in a recent interview, adding that he eventually tracked an officer to take his statement.
On Wednesday, RCMP said the units of New Scotland, New Brunswick and Ontario are working in the case.
CPL spokesperson. Carlie McCann said that a pink blanket that was seized in Lansdowne Road the first day of the search is being examined forensously. McCann said the family has confirmed that the blanket belongs to Lilly.
McCann said that the police are following more than 600 tips from the public, reviewing 5,000 video files and interviewed more than 60 people.
When asked if the police are investigating the possibility that children are still alive, McCann said: “We have not closed any doors in the investigation at this time.”
He also said that an RCMP family link is in regular contact with a designated relative of Lilly and Jack, providing continuous updates and support. She would not say who is the designated relative.
Mackenzie said she lived a quiet life before the disappearance was already launching her family at the center of attention, while the warriors and podcasters of the keyboard dissect all aspects of the case.
She said the cars will drive and decrease the speed, looking at the entrance of gravel flanked by the mobile house and the trailer. Nor is it uncommon for drones to be flown over their home, that media members call their door and be recognized wherever they go.
“Above all I stay here and if I go to face anything, I usually have a low head because I don’t want people to see who I am,” he said, sitting in front of a green fence that separates his trailer from the rest of the property.
“It’s not because I’m hiding from anyone … I am only a quiet person who only wants them to leave him alone.”
The day after the children disappeared, Martell and Brooks-Murray attended an RCMP informative session. After that, Brooks-Murray did not return home at Lansdowne station and has not returned since then.
The disappearance of two children in Nueva Scotia has caused large searches that so far have presented little evidence, since almost a dozen RCMP units try to reconstruct what happened to young brothers. Now, his grandmother has decided to share the history of her family in the hope of maintaining the case of Lilly and Jack in the public eye.
Mackenzie said he has not seen his two grandchildren, Martell’s children in a previous relationship, since the disappearance. She commented that she went from seeing her five grandchildren regularly not to see any of them, and long for her to be “Granny” once again.
Brooks-Murray did an interview with CTV News the day after the disappearance, but since then he has not talked to the media. His mother told CBC News that the police told them not to talk to the media.
In spite of everything, Mackenzie does not believe that children are dead.
“Do you know that if something bad happens, you get how your heart falls? Mine has not fallen,” he said.
“At the bottom of my heart, I think Jack and Lilly are alive.”
