Nearly a dozen RCMP units are trying to piece together what happened to Lilly and Jack Sullivan.
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Polygraphs, a blanket and a bootprint: New details of investigation into missing N.S. children revealed
Nearly a dozen RCMP units are trying to piece together what happened to Lilly and Jack Sullivan.
Did you kill Lilly and Jack?
That was the first question Daniel Martell says he was asked during a polygraph test in the case of two missing Nova Scotia children.
I was extremely nervous, said Martell, the stepfather of Lilly and Jack Sullivan, who vanished nearly seven weeks ago.
It's like your stress level is just astronomically through the roof and your body doesn't know what to do because it's not every day the way you're hooked up to machines in an interrogation room where someone asks you questions like that.
Six weeks after two children went missing in Nova Scotia, Lilly and Jack Sullivan's stepfather says he passed a police polygraph related to their disappearance. He spoke with the CBC's Kayla Hounsell.
Martell had offered to take a polygraph test early in the investigation, realizing investigators were likely looking his way in the mysterious disappearance of Lilly, 6, and Jack, 4.
Martell said he's gone above and beyond to help police with the investigation, encouraging them to search his family's property, offering up his cellphone and banking information and asking for a polygraph test.
The stepfather is always a prime suspect right off the beginning, said Martell in a recent interview.
About three weeks ago, he sat in a large chair and had sensory pads placed under his forearms, buttocks and feet as part of a polygraph test.
He said all the questions were presumptive that the children are no longer alive, such as: Are you an accessory to the murder of Lilly and Jack?
None of the questions assumed the children were taken, he said.
In Canada, polygraph tests are used as an investigative tool and are not admissible in court.
Martell was informed of his results immediately after. He said the investigator told him: You did a good job. You passed.
The stepfather is one of 54 people who have been formally interviewed as part of the investigation. Some have received polygraph tests, although RCMP will not confirm how many.
On the first day of the search, emergency responders speaking over a non-encrypted radio channel mention a canine unit being dispatched to a blanket.
Families brought us to a location there not far away that there's a piece of a blanket which the mother says she believes belongs to her daughter, just off the road here, an official said over the radio.
Martell confirmed it was a piece of Lilly's blanket.
There is more evidence than what the public knows, but I can't elaborate on any of that, said Martell.
He did say it was found on Lansdowne Road near the location of a child-sized bootprint that was discovered around the same time by searchers in the area of a pipeline trail, just over a kilometre from the children's home.
RCMP refused to answer questions about the blanket, however the force did confirm the bootprint was believed to be child-sized.
Tremblay said they have received more than 500 tips from the public.
Whether it's a tip that indicates that there could be something that happened elsewhere in the province, elsewhere in the country, we have to follow up on those investigative tips to rule them out. And to this date we haven't had any confirmed sightings, he said.
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