Six months of silence. Six months of yellow ribbons turning gray on Nova Scotia fence posts. Six months of a mother’s voice breaking on every news channel: “They were right here.”
And then the RCMP quietly unsealed 127 pages of search warrants and witness statements last Thursday night, and one paragraph on page 84 detonated everything.
A neighbor walking her dog on the dirt road behind the Sullivan-Martell property told investigators she heard children’s laughter coming from the kitchen window at approximately 8:45 a.m. on May 2, 2025. Clear as day. A little girl giggling, a little boy squealing, the unmistakable sound of happy chaos. She even paused to smile because “it sounded like a cereal commercial.”
The official 911 call wasn’t placed until 10:01 a.m.
That’s seventy-six minutes of missing time that the parents Malehya Brooks-Murray and Daniel Martell have always insisted were spent sleeping while Lilly (6) and Jack (4) simply vanished from their beds.
Seventy-six minutes the RCMP previously said “contained no evidence of criminality.”
Seventy-six minutes that now have an eyewitness putting the kids alive, awake, and laughing inside the house long after the adults claim they were still unconscious.
The internet needed less than six hours to lose its collective mind.
TikTok is nothing but side-by-side videos: Malehya’s tearful press conference stitched with a slowed-down voiceover of the neighbor’s statement, dramatic music swelling while the caption flashes in blood-red: 8:45 A.M. – THEY WERE STILL HERE.
YouTube true-crime channels dropped emergency 3 a.m. livestreams titled “RCMP CAUGHT LYING?” that peaked at 1.2 million concurrent viewers. Reddit’s r/LillyAndJackSullivan pinned a megathread that hit Reddit’s front page with 142,000 upvotes in a day. The top comment, with 42k upvotes, is just one sentence:
“If someone heard them at 8:45, why did it take until 10:01 to notice they were missing?”
The neighbor – identified only by initials E.M. – gave her statement on May 4, two days after the disappearance. The RCMP report notes they attempted to corroborate with trail cams, Ring doorbells, and a passing school bus driver. Nothing. No video, no other witnesses. The file marks her account “unable to be verified at this time” and then… nothing. No follow-up interviews. No mention in any public update for six straight months.
Until now.
Daniel Martell went live on Facebook at 2 a.m. after the documents dropped, shirtless and shaking, reading the witness paragraph out loud like he was seeing it for the first time. “This is the first we’re hearing this,” he insisted, voice cracking. “We love those kids more than life.” The chat filled with skull emojis and “LIAR” spam so fast the stream crashed.
Malehya hasn’t been seen publicly since. Friends say she’s “curled up in a ball crying” after reading the unsealed files.
The RCMP’s response? A single tweet at 9:17 p.m. Friday: “Previously reported information remains accurate. The investigation is active and ongoing.” No mention of the 8:45 witness. No explanation for the seventy-six-minute black hole.
Nova Scotia’s Major Crime Unit is reportedly “re-interviewing” the neighbor this week. Sources inside the investigation whisper the original detectives dismissed her because “memories get fuzzy” and “she seemed nervous.” Translation: they didn’t believe her.
They might now.
Because Canada isn’t letting this die quietly anymore. Vigils that had dwindled to a dozen people are suddenly drawing hundreds again. Tip lines that went cold are lighting up. A GoFundMe for private search dogs hit $87,000 in 48 hours.
And in kitchens across the country, parents are hugging their kids a little tighter tonight, staring at the clock, wondering what really happened in those seventy-six minutes when two little voices were still laughing… and then suddenly weren’t.
Lilly loved unicorns. Jack loved trucks. Someone heard them alive at 8:45 a.m.
By 10:01 they were ghosts.
Find them.
