A former Nova Scotia police detective says he believes the search for two missing children in Pictou County that has lasted more than a month is now a criminal investigation.
Siblings Lilly and Jack Sullivan, aged six and four, were reported missing on May 2 from their home on Gairloch Road in Lansdowne Station, N.S.
Jim Hoskins, a retired Halifax Regional Police officer and former major crimes staff sergeant who is not working on the case, says the actions from police and the agencies involved have led him to this conclusion.
“They’re looking at this with some criminal aspects as well. They just haven’t said so,” he said.
“In my personal experience, if this is not a criminal investigation now, I’d be totally surprised.”
In an update Wednesday, RCMP said finding out what happened to Lilly and Jack may take longer than they had “hoped.”
Police revealed that several national agencies, including the National Centre of Missing Persons and Canadian Centre for Child Protection, have joined the investigation.
“We’re accessing, evaluating and analyzing a significant volume of information from a variety of sources,” Cpl. Sandy Matharu, investigation lead, Northeast Nova RCMP major crime unit, said in a release.
“We have a very coordinated and deliberate approach to make certain all information is meticulously scrutinized, prioritized and actioned to ensure nothing is missed.”
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Police also revealed they’ve conducted interviews with 54 people and administered polygraph tests to “some of the individuals.”
The children’s stepfather, Daniel Martell, previously told Global News he offered to take a polygraph and that it had been administered.
“If they’re giving polygraphs, then they want to see if people’s statements are truthful as far as they can interpret it from the polygraph. But to me, it’s a criminal investigation. And that’s how I interpret this right now,” Hoskins said.
How polygraph tests work
Tom Mauriello, a forensic consultant and lecturer at the University of Maryland’s criminology department, says it’s important to understand how a polygraph test works and why it might be used.
“I need you to understand that the polygraph is not a lie detector. It doesn’t detect lies,” he said.
“It simply detects when a person responds with their sympathetic nervous system to relevant questions.”
He points out that police departments will use polygraph tests as an investigative tool, but it isn’t a foolproof way to find who is guilty.
“Not passing the test doesn’t mean you’re guilty or you’re involved. It simply means that there’s some issue there, maybe some knowledge, guilty knowledge, etc.,” he explained.
He adds that if police have a suspect, they may also use the polygraph test as a “psychological tool” to draw out a confession.
“I’ve done about 1,200 polygraph tests when I was an examiner for the federal government back here in the United States and there were times when before I even put the attachments on the person, the person admitted things,” he said.
“So you create this psychological environment for them to be truthful and honest, and sometimes it works.”
‘A nefarious take’
As a police officer who has taken part in similar investigations in the past, including searches for children, Hoskins says he knows there’s a lot of behind-the-scenes work going on in this case.
“They’re not sitting around in a nice, cool, air-conditioned boardroom all day talking about this and strategizing,” he said.
“They’re out there. And the only way they’re going to see or get results in this is to be out there talking to people, looking at videos, looking at topography…. They’re not in offices doing this by a laptop, let’s put it that way.”
RCMP have said searches of the property where the children went missing have included “every aspect” of the home, grounds, outbuildings, nearby septic systems, wells, mineshafts and culverts.
Hoskins says investigators will be going “on the balance of probabilities,” and consider the fact that multiple searches of the heavily wooded area around the home have not turned up any evidence.
“If you can’t find them, somebody has to say, ‘Enough is enough right now for searching those areas.’ So now we move to where? There’s only one other option. A nefarious take to this. In other words, a criminal type thing. That’s only my personal opinion,” he said.
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