A local group that looks for missing people joined the search for Jack and Lilly Sullivan this past weekend in Nova Scotia.
Six year old Lilly and five year old Jack Sullivan went missing in the Lansdowne are of Nova Scotia in May. A large-scale RCMP investigation has been underway since, and the case has captured the nation’s attention.
Please Bring Me Home Executive Director Nick Oldrieve says his group made the trip on the weekend – after a donation from Barry Kruisselbrink of Barry’s Construction to look for Jack and Lilly at the request of family members. Oldrieve notes the search would not have been possible without the donation.
Oldrieve says his group was already planning to organize an arm’s length search in Nova Scotia for Jessie Morrissey, a 26 year old man who went missing in 2022, adding, “Once we spoke to Jack and Lily Sullivan’s family and you could just feel the anxiety that winter was coming and no searches were happening and the belief was that they were still in the woods.”
“The RCMP is stating that it is not criminal in nature,” says Oldrieve who says the going theory is the kids wandered off the property.
“They must have been missed. If the belief is that they wandered, the reality is that they haven’t been found which means they’ve likely been missed and because i have high confidence in the ground search and rescue team out in Nova Scotia, it’s likely because they were under water at the time of the initial searching and even the times afterwards and the elements and/or the animals are playing a factor into this.”
“If you’re telling me it’s not criminal and that they wandered and you’;ve searched everywhere well then where else could they possibly be? And it’s more likely than not underwater just like it was with Eric Spencer in Honey Harbour.”
60 year old Eric Spencer, who was from Thornbury went missing in 2018. In the spring of 2024, Oldrieve and his Please Bring Me Home group found Spencer’s remains within an hour and a half of searching a swampy, watery area not far from where his vehicle had been left in Honey Harbour. He believes Spencer’s body would have been underwater when the initial 2018 search was conducted.
Oldrieve says “We focused on the middle river of Pictou and any of the standing water areas or the little runoffs from the middle river of Pictou that could connect to the middle river of Pictou. It’s a very wet area around there especially lately.”
He says they found items they submitted to RCMP— some of which they were told by Mounties the weren’t related to the case. Oldrieve says there are other items they plan to submit coordinates for the RCMP to examine.
Items they’ve supplied and have been debunked by RCMP include a boy’s shirt that was not recognized by the Sullivan family. They found two children’s bicycles in the river, countless diapers which Oldrieve says are unlikely to be related.
The other items, he says, are not obviously items that could be theirs.
He says they did find a geocache box with their stepfather’s name in the notepad among other names, with the date beside his reading May 3rd 2014. The kids were last seen May 2nd, 2025. “It was just peculiar. There’s no conspiracy there. It’s just such a strange occurrence that happened.”
Oldrieve says he’d go back in the spring if there’s a need. “I would be very surprised if the RCMP and ground search and rescue do not hit the ground running in the springtime at the earliest possible time and treat it as if they just went missing. I would be very surprised if they don’t just start from scratch in springtime.”
Oldrieve says it has nothing to do with a poor job by police, saying, “It just means that they’re likely still in there and they were likely underwater or they’re too well hidden back there, whether that be from natural changes or water environments changing or animal activity. It has nothing to do with lack of ability on their end.”
Oldrieve plans to give an update on the weekend’s searches on Facebook live this evening at 7 on the Please Bring Me Home Facebook page.
Please Bring Me Home has found a number of local people over the last several years. They helped locate the body of 32 year old Brendan Martin of Southampton this past spring, after he was reported missing in January. They found Eric Spencer’s body in April 2024, the bodies of 33 year old Keith Campbell and 37 year old Justin Yeo, in April 2023, who were reported missing from Hepworth. Oldrieve helped find Terry Schope of Owen Sound who went missing in June of 2018 and was found deceased the following month. The group also helped find 20 year old Nolan Panchyshyn of Saugeen Shores in 2018. He disappeared in December 2017. His remains were found the following March, at a property in the Dornoch area. Two men were convicted in relation to his death.
Please Bring Me Home started locally and now conducts searches for missing people nationwide and sometimes beyond. They conduct local searches for people who are still missing regularly.