A year after Jack and Lilly Sullivan disappeared from their Pictou County home, some statistics from the RCMP shed light on just how rare their case really is.
The four- and six-year-old reportedly walked away from their family’s home on May 2, 2025, and have not been seen since.
It is very rare for a missing person case to hit that one-year mark.
According to the RCMP, they received 2766 reports of missing people from April 1, 2024, to March 31, 2026.
That is:
- 1133 in 2024
- 1389 in 2025
- 244 up to March 31, 2026
But not all of those have been solved. That includes three cases from 2024, 17 from 2025, and 7 from 2026. In total, out of the last two years, there are 27 reports still under investigation.
In total, there are 260 people reported missing in the province who have not been found.
The oldest case, according to RCMP, dates back to 1962. A 92-year-old man from Amherst went missing in the Lake Ainslie area in Inverness, where police believe he was hunting.
The police said they could not provide statistics on exactly how many reports they get of missing children 10 years old or younger, because that would require them to review all of the reports they have received in the last two years.
“I can advise, however, that the overwhelming majority of missing persons reports we receive are youth (over age 10) or adults,” wrote Cindy Bayers, a spokesperson for the RCMP, in an email to our newsroom.
These statistics come with one caveat: they do not include cases from local police departments. Nova Scotia has ten, and you can see a list here.
We are in the process of reaching out to those departments for similar statistics.
Police still searching for information
Many have speculated online about what could have happened to the children, and the RCMP addressed that directly on Thursday, speaking to reporters at their headquarters in Halifax.
They have maintained that there is no evidence to suggest anything criminal, but all potential options are open.
In a press conference on Thursday, Staff Sergeant Rob McCamon said at this point they need facts to prove the case may be criminal in nature.
“We make all of our decisions based on the evidence that we collect,” says McCamon. “Once we have that evidence, then we’ll move forward in those areas if that’s appropriate.”
They have reviewed a massive amount of evidence, and they are still investigating with no plans to let up, according to McCamon.
A helicopter flies over Lansdowne Station in Pictou County, N.S., as part of the search and rescue operation to find Lilly and Jack Sullivan, two children who went missing on May 2. (Jacob Moore/Acadia Broadcasting)
On top of that, the RCMP say they have not received any reports of human trafficking involving a child younger than 12 in the last two years.
In general, they investigated 60 incidents of human trafficking in 2024 and 50 in 2025, according to Bayers. She added that those numbers only reflect cases outside of the Halifax Regional Municipality.
Missing person vs. criminal case
Despite the technical label on the case, Major Crimes has been leading the investigation since early on.
Missing person cases often stick with the local detachment of police, but in many cases Major Crimes will take over the investigation, according to Chris Marshall, acting Non-Commissioned Officer in Charge of Major Crime Operational Support.
“These investigations are assessed on a case-by-case basis and criteria for an investigation to be turned over to a Major Crime Unit include, but are not limited to, the belief that criminality may be involved in the disappearance, complexity of the investigation, and the requirement to apply new technologies or novel investigative techniques to support moving an investigation forward,” he wrote in a statement to our newsroom.
This happened, for example, in the case of Zachery Lefave, who disappeared in the Yarmouth area in early 2021.
Major Crimes took over the investigation because of the case’s complexity and the size of the investigation, said Marshall.
“In summary, just because a Major Crime Unit is leading a missing person’s investigation, it does not mean that investigators have confirmed that criminality is a factor.”
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