Law360 Canada (May 5, 2026, 12:47 PM EDT) --

Norman Douglas

Last week, as I write this on May 4, 2026, I watched part of a press conference that made me want to puke.

The subject was the first anniversary of the heartbreaking case of the “disappearance” of 6-year-old Lilly, and 4-year-old Jack, Sullivan.

The Nova Scotia RCMP officer in charge of major crime was giving an update on the case of their investigation, which began May 2, 2025.

Staff Sgt. Rob McCamon, smiling, coyly grinning as he dodged legitimate questions, looked as though he was thoroughly enjoying the limelight.

He will soon learn that limelight is a fickle pleasure. It can, at the flick of a switch, turn into indecent exposure.

This case has received national and international attention. It is gut-wrenching. All sad eyes are on the RCMP — what is taking so long? What are you doing?

Well, one thing their lead investigator is doing is smiling a lot.

Many Canadians are now thinking of the fiasco in April 2020, when Gabriel Wortman lit 16 fires and killed 22 people in Nova Scotia before he was finally caught.

Over those two days he was on the loose, two RCMP officers were shot, and two more fired their weapons at an innocent person who “fit the description” of the suspect

There was an outcry of how the police had mishandled that investigation.

A public inquiry severely criticized the RCMP for “failing to warn the public, poor preparation, lack of accountability, and systemic inflexibility.” There were 65 recommendations targeting the dismal performance of the force.

I wonder if Staff Sgt. McCamon ever read anything about that case.

Here is my suggestion.

The minister of justice should bring in an independent police agency to take over the investigation. Now.

Let me tell you the experience I have in taking that drastic but needed action.

I was the northeastern Ontario Regional Crown Attorney from 1987-1989. I was the Crown attorney in Sault Ste. Marie, but also had supervisory responsibilities for all the other offices in northeastern Ontario — including Sudbury, North Bay and Timmins.

I was in my office one January afternoon in 1988 when I received a phone call from the Timmins Municipal Police.

A constable needed authorization to release an exhibit but the Crown attorney in Timmins was on vacation, so he asked for mine.

I said, okay, but what’s it about? He said their yearly auction of unclaimed stolen bicycles was coming up and there was a bike found in the bush in the summer of 1987 that he wanted to add to the auction. The bike belonged to a girl who was murdered.

I said (after gasping), “Um, can you tell me about that?”

“Oh, it’s a murder case of a 14-year-old girl. We think it’s the stepfather, but he won’t confess, eh, so we can’t prove it...”

I will spare you readers the details of the rest of that phone call, though you probably guessed that the constable did not receive my authorization.

And that my next call was to track down the vacationing Crown attorney.

My third call was to the deputy director of the Criminal Investigative Branch of the Ontario Provincial Police.

I arranged for him to send a seasoned investigator up to Timmins and talk to the chief of the Timmins police.

It got a bit sticky, but after a few weeks of hurt feelings and resentment of my meddling, the Timmins police turned their files over to the OPP.

Jean Paul Leduc, 13 months after he killed her, was charged with the first degree murder of his stepdaughter.

And I had handpicked the person who would prosecute the case.

That could be the subject of a future article — the saga of young David Thomas, whom I had hired in 1984 as an assistant Crown. After he fulfilled his promise to work in the Sault (he was from Toronto) for at least two years, he went on to the Crown’s office in Toronto.

He was working there when I recruited him to take a promotion to Timmins. He moved to that northern city that most people not from Ontario have only heard of thanks to Shania Twain.

He served as the senior Crown Attorney there for several years, met and married his beautiful wife, Shelley, a child protection worker, fathered three amazing daughters (one of whom is now a lawyer), was appointed to the bench in Timmins and recently transferred to the Niagara region.

But I digress.

I assigned David to the murder case of R. v. Leduc immediately after the arrest in September 1988.

In December 1988, I went to Timmins to assist with the preliminary hearing, but David prosecuted him before a jury, and Leduc was convicted of first-degree murder in September 1989.

The bicycle was a key piece of evidence. He appealed and the Ontario Court of Appeal reduced the conviction to second degree murder and allowed him to be eligible for parole after serving 20 years (R. v. Leduc, [1994] O.J. No. 2787).

This even though Leduc had convictions for two brutal sexual assaults on young women in 1973 and 1977 for which he was sentenced to seven years and paroled after serving three. If you are shaking your head, read earlier columns I have written about our parole system.

So back to Nova Scotia.

I confess I only know about this tragedy from media reports. There are likely key facts known only to the investigators. But this is one of those cases that cries out for transparency of what the police are doing. It’s been a year — and there are two children who have probably been murdered.

Have they carefully looked at the obvious suspects, i.e., the last people to see the children? If the mom and stepdad are innocent victims of this horrible nightmare, then surely the police can stop the rumours and put the public at ease by announcing that they have been eliminated as suspects.

But what have the police done over 12 months if they are still suspects?

And above all, after the performance by Staff Sgt. McCamon, the RCMP should recuse themselves from the investigation.

The federal government has the authority, and now the duty, to bring in a provincial police force from another province and/or the Halifax Regional Police Service.

I continue to pray for Lilly and Jack. Miracles can happen. I hope I’m wrong about what my gut tells me what happened.

Norman Douglas is a retired criminal court judge with 27½ years of experience on the bench. His book, You Be the Judge, was published in December 2023.

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