May 2 will mark one year since four-year-old Jack Sullivan and his six-year-old sister Lilly went missing from their home in a rural community in Nova Scotia’s Pictou County.
The children have yet to be found, and Nova Scotia RCMP issued an update on April 30 about where the investigation into the high-profile case stands 12 months later.
RCMP Staff Sgt. Rob McCamon spoke to reporters for about 15 minutes on Thursday.
Below is the full transcript of the news conference, which has been edited for length and clarity.
Staff Sgt. Rob McCamon: Thank you all for coming today. As you can see by our news release, we don’t have new information to put out there. Our investigators continue to actively drive this investigation forward and follow up on every tip and lead that we receive. I will answer a few of your questions.
Reporter: So year-long investigation now, still not much information. Do you feel there are people out there that might be able to give you information that can lead you somewhere?
Staff Sgt. McCamon: Oh, absolutely. We really would like the public to consider if they do have any information, real factual-based information, to please contact us at the numbers provided. We seek anything we can find so that we can follow up and find new leads, new avenues to find information.
Reporter: What sort of level of new information or new discovery do you need for this to potentially move from a missing person’s case to something else, potentially something criminal or suspicious?
Staff Sgt. McCamon: It’s hard to really put a label on what exactly we’d need, as you can imagine, but we just need facts and evidence that support criminality, and once we have that, we make all of our decisions based on the evidence that we collect. Once we have the evidence, then we’ll move forward in those areas if that’s appropriate.
Reporter: In your news release this morning, you talked about wanting to have more fact-based tips from the public. Can you tell us what you meant by that?
Staff Sgt. McCamon: I mean, everybody is exposed to social media through their daily lives and sometimes social media can get fairly speculative and sometimes not necessarily based in truth or fact. The information we need isn’t necessarily speculation or thoughts or theories. We’d like information that actually points us in a direction to try and find out things that have taken place. So I just find sometimes social media can be a little bit murky.
Reporter: On social media, can you talk to us about how, when tips come from that kind of a source, people are relating tips that they’ve heard on social media, the impact that that has on the investigation? Because I understand you have to chase those down.
Staff Sgt. McCamon: Well, obviously, when we investigate something, we try and gather every piece of information we possibly can about the situation. So when we get a tip, a speculative tip, then we’re required, we’re duty-bound to follow down all leads to either corroborate or uncorroborate that particular tip. So when we get things that really are very speculative, it creates work for us that, of course, takes away from maybe better areas that we could focus on sometimes, so it just helps for people to consider, ‘Is this something that is factual, something the police can find more information on?’
Reporter: What does approaching the one-year mark mean for the investigation? Does it change any of the results?
Staff Sgt. McCamon: Well, it has, of course, been a long investigation, so over the last number of months we’ve gone through a lot of the information we have and, of course, new leads, but I guess this investigation is always going to take time. There’s been a lot of tips, a lot of interviews and a lot of video that we’ve had to review and, of course, other avenues of different areas where we want to collect and things. So it takes a long time to go through all that and do it, but that’s where the investigation stands.
Reporter: You mentioned the amount of content you guys had to go through, and we know there’s been this kind of rise of AI-generated content. Could you kind of speak a bit more about that?
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Staff Sgt. McCamon: Well, obviously, whenever you collect any electronic data, you have to make sure that there’s integrity related to that data, so of course that creates extra steps, but we have the capabilities in the RCMP to deal with those things.
Reporter: Are there particular challenges that some colleagues talked about, like AI content, social media — are there specific challenges in your investigation right now that you’re facing that maybe weren’t there at the beginning?
Staff Sgt. McCamon: I can’t speak to a specific challenge, I think it’s more of a general comment about social media and AI impacts on policing, right? So it’s just things that we have to consider nowadays.
Reporter: To the outside world, seeing this press release today, many people might assume that the case is at a standstill, that the investigation is at [a] standstill. What can you say to tell the public or convince the public that what you’re doing, that you’re making progress, if you’re making progress at all?
Staff Sgt. McCamon: Ever since this began, the RCMP has been actively engaged in pursuing the answers as to what happened with Jack and Lilly. This is a critical question for our community when two young children go missing and we have no answers. So, we’ve not let up the steam and we won’t. Our investigators are parents, as I’ve said before, we’re families and we want answers as much as everybody else. We haven’t stopped and we won’t. We’ve engaged units from across Canada, we continue to engage those units to support us where needed. We’ve brought in specialized services for any area that’s required, whether it be testing or looking at our social media for AI or whatever other specialized areas, human remains, detection dogs, and we won’t stop. If we see something we can leverage that’ll help us find answers, we’ll take that.
Reporter: But are you any closer to knowing what happened to the kids? When I spoke with you in December, you said you were forming pictures of what may have happened, but we still don’t know. There’s still no evidence of abduction or foul play or anything?
Staff Sgt. McCamon: Yeah, we continue to gather information to develop that picture, and we have to review all the information that comes in when we make decisions. Of course, there is an active investigation, I’m not going to get into all the details of it, but we are pursuing all avenues available to us.
Reporter: I know the press release says fact-based tips, but what exactly are you looking for when you mean facts?
Staff Sgt. McCamon: Well, something that can be corroborated, something that’s less than a rumour or, you know, this person said, that person said. Something that we can find facts to follow up on to show whether things are true or false. Things like that. Perhaps there’s evidence or hard, tangible evidence of some kind. Maybe I’m just tossing out possibilities. But something that we’re able to work with to find something out, not necessarily just some random theory that we have to piece through.
Reporter: I know that there was a volunteer search this weekend. Does the RCMP have any plans of doing another search at Lansdowne Station?
Staff Sgt. McCamon: We don’t have any plans at this time. We appreciate the efforts from the different groups that are trying to support our community with locating these two missing children, and we’ve been in contact with them. So, you know, it’s good to see communities step up, but we don’t have anything planned at this point.
Reporter: Reading the release, there’s been 106 interviews and polygraphs done. Can you get into the specifics of those?
Staff Sgt. McCamon: Generally, we’ve interviewed different people related to the circumstances here. I’m not going to get into specifics of it, but there’s been a few different polygraphs done. And that’s, of course, a tool that we use as part of our investigation. But not just family, but, you know, there’s just been different people polygraphed.
Reporter: I spoke with a criminologist from St. Thomas University and he stated that with a case like this, it’s hard on the family, it’s harder on the community, it’s hard on investigators. Can you just offer a comment on how pressurized an investigation like this is, because there’s obviously a lot of emotion injected into it because of these two young children.
Staff Sgt. McCamon: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, I’ve mentioned this a couple of times, our investigators feel the pressure. And they put it on themselves. You know, as much as everybody is pressuring us, we pressure ourselves almost doubly as much as that. But they’re committed to finding answers. Everybody wants answers to what’s happened here. And we’ll continue to follow all avenues that are available to us until we have those answers.
Reporter: This case is extremely rare. For two siblings to disappear without a trace, no answers one year later, it’s virtually unheard of. What challenges does that present to the RCMP?
Staff Sgt. McCamon: Well, you know, of course, as time goes by, you know, there may be evidence lost or information that doesn’t get found. It, of course, affects people’s memories and stuff, too. When we go to do interviews, there are impacts on the length of the investigation, but at the end of the day, investigations sometimes take time, especially when you’re dealing with the volume of information that we’re dealing with in this particular case, and we have to get it right.
Reporter: What is your plan to find Lilly and Jack Sullivan?
Staff Sgt. McCamon: Again, we continue to gather and look for any avenue to find information that will help us. Again, if there’s members of the public who have factual, evidence-based information that they feel they can support us in our investigation, please call us. And we will make our decisions based on that. I can’t really say what exactly the plan is other than to keep working, finding the information we need, and then we will find the answers to what happened with Lilly and Jack.
Reporter: You talk about how hard your officers are working and how much pressure there is, and there may be a perception out there that this investigation has been stalled and is not getting anywhere. Could you comment on the idea, I’m not asking you to reveal anything, that there are things happening behind the scenes that the police just cannot talk about?
Staff Sgt. McCamon: Well, in any criminal investigation, in order to protect the integrity of it, we don’t talk about those things, right? But in this particular case here, we’re gathering the information and there’s operational security related to the information we gather. If people learn different things, that can impact our ability to gather things in a general sense, right? But it’s just, we have to maintain the security of what we’re doing too, right? It could impact our ability to gather things later.
Reporter: You mentioned investigations like this take time. Besides the volume of tips, what can you say about why investigations like these do take time?
Staff Sgt. McCamon: Well, even when it comes to just interviewing people, sometimes that doesn’t happen immediately. Sometimes it takes time to make arrangements. There’s all kinds of things that can get in the way, delays here and there, whether you’re dealing with people. So sometimes some of the tips take a lot longer to follow up with because we’re just more in-depth, the things we have to do, right? So without getting into a bunch of details, there’s just a lot of work to be done.
Reporter: Are you confident that you’re going to get there?
Staff Sgt. McCamon: We will continue to work, we’ll gather all the information we have and on those answers we’ll make our decisions to move forward. I’m confident we’ll be able to gather the information that we need to move this investigation where it needs to go.
Reporter: Do you have any information on how families cope with this?
Staff Sgt. McCamon: I’m not going to talk specifically about the family impacts, but in general, in any circumstance like this, there’s impacts on the family, and you know, my heart goes out to them. They’ve been working with us, and, you know, engaged with our team, and we appreciate that, and it’s not an easy time for the family, that really comes back to the social media point — that that can cause a lot of pain and grief for our grieving family members. Yeah, I don’t have any specific comment, just in general, that it does have impacts on families.
Reporter: Can you confirm that, as of today, there is no evidence of an abduction?
Staff Sgt. McCamon: We don’t have any evidence of an abduction at this point in time.
Reporter: And by the same token, you have no evidence or reason to believe that this is a criminal matter?
Staff Sgt. McCamon: Again, we continue to collect information. We will make our decisions based on that. But as of right now, we’re still investigating this as a missing persons investigation. Again, we have avenues that we’re travelling down and we’re considering all potential.
Reporter: I think the last time you spoke with me it was somewhere in the fall, and would you say from then to now that you’ve made any progress?
Staff Sgt. McCamon: Oh, we’ve definitely made progress on going through the things we need to go through. Like, we’re working every day to go down the roads we need to go. So we have made forward progress, but it does take time.
Reporter: Do you believe Jack and Lilly are alive or dead?
Staff Sgt. McCamon: I think the chances that Jack and Lilly are alive are very slim.
N.S. missing kids: Full transcript of RCMP’s comments on Lilly and Jack case
