Up until last October, a mother, father and two children lived at 572 Kelly-Jordan Rd. Then the arrests were made.
In the months since, a police search has unearthed three sets of human remains on the site, all related to a series of disappearances from around Smiths Falls, Ont. dating back nearly a decade.
Now exclusive drone photographs captured by the Ottawa Citizen , as well as interviews with outside experts and people close to the OPP search, reveal the methods investigators have used to locate the remains — and hint at where the probe is focused now.
The grisly discoveries put this property, a densely wooded 40-acre parcel of land an hour outside of Ottawa, squarely at the heart of a sprawling police investigation and criminal court process.
Charged with first-degree murder in relation to the death of 34-year-old Robbie Thomson are Christopher Philip Fenton, 48, Erin Lynn Mackie, 41, and Joshua Joseph Belfiori, 35.
Thomson’s remains were the first to be located on the property last October, a day after the three arrests. A former semi-pro hockey player, Thomson had been missing since October 2023.
Fenton and Mackie, who have two young children together, are listed on a police charge sheet as residing at the property that’s now under scrutiny in Montague Township.
In more recent weeks, police have unearthed on that same property the remains of Robert Lambert, who was 75 when he went missing in 2018, and Lawrence Bertrim, who was 42 when he vanished in September 2022.
No charges have been laid in connection to these two deaths.
Lambert was the longtime owner of 572 Kelly-Jordan Rd. Some months before he was last seen alive in July 2018, Fenton was named a co-owner on the property alongside of Lambert, land records show. Related land records also indicate that Fenton and Mackie were named Lambert’s powers of attorney during the same period.
Fenton and Mackie were living on nearby Carroll Road when they are said to have befriended Lambert, a transplant from New York who had limited mobility and had recently become a widower.
Police said on Aug. 5, 2026 they had uncovered Lambert on July 20. They found Bertrim on Aug. 6.
OPP spokesperson Sgt. Erin Cranton did not address a written question from the Ottawa Citizen about whether investigators had determined a cause of death for Bertrim.
“This remains an active investigation,” Cranton said, adding that the Smiths Falls Police Service had assisted in the search alongside the OPP’s forensic, canine and aviation units.
Speaking in general terms about the size and scope of the site, Hélène LeBlanc , who teaches forensic science at Ontario Tech University in Oshawa and who is one of only three certified forensic entomologists in Canada, stressed the labour-intensive nature of such large-scale operations.
“This is a huge undertaking — they’re going to be engaged in this search for months,” she said.
The drone photographs show evidence of extensive digging across much of the property.
That digging is especially intense along the tree line where a wide clearing surrounding a large single-storey home gives way to woods and swamp to the north.
LeBlanc said police often use excavators on bigger sites and in cases where clandestine burials may be deep.
The photos also show that the property’s swimming pool, located at the rear of the home and long rumoured to have been filled in, remains intact and empty as if waiting to be filled for summer.
A barbecue sits at one end of the pool, while an upended jacuzzi has been standing on its side since last winter. The area between the pool and the rear of the home, once said to be covered with interlocking bricks and a 10-foot-by-10-foot deck-like wooden platform, has been dug up.
The original owners of the property installed the swimming pool at the same time they built the home in the 1970s.
Fenton and Mackie, who moved in sometime after Lambert’s disappearance, are said to have erected a fence around the pool, possibly to prevent children from getting near the water.
Part of that fence has now been dismantled to allow access to an excavator; a metal gazebo that was standing between the home and the pool last winter has also been disassembled and stacked at the pool’s edge.
Those close to the probe say police unearthed one set of human remains shortly after the arrival of such new pieces of equipment as a Stihl-made Cutquik hand-held cutoff machine, used to saw through concrete, and an ultra mini excavator.
That excavator is likely just small enough to operate within the sole remaining outbuilding on the property. Sheets of plywood on the ground show where the machine may have rolled in to work inside.
A nearby storage tent appears to shelter what had once been the contents of the outbuilding, including at least one all-terrain vehicle, a wooden work table and other odds and ends.
Paving stones apparently salvaged from elsewhere on the site are laid out over what must become muddy terrain following rain, allowing access to the outbuilding and home from a paved driveway.
Neighbours say the shrill sound of the concrete saw had been constant over much of the summer.
Photos show that the roof of the house is powdered in cement dust. But an old slab off the driveway leading to Kelly-Jordan Road, once the floor of a long demolished shed or garage, remains intact and undisturbed by police.
The Ottawa Citizen ‘s drone shots, taken in early 2026 while snow was on the ground and then again in August, show how the police search has evolved. But they do not show how it began.
LeBlanc said large-scale police searches of this kind typically start with police drones that can be equipped with a variety of different cameras to assess the target area from above.
The drones can also look for disturbances in the terrain that might indicate burials. Some police forces have access to underwater drones for searching ponds and other small bodies of water.
Later, canine units are often able to detect human remains interred even many years before.
Line searches, sometimes employing dozens of participants, then spread out across open stretches of land looking for anomalies.
Ground-penetrating radar, meanwhile, is not used as commonly as portrayed in some media reports.
“It can be useful but you need qualified people who know what they’re looking for,” said Joel Cahn, a forensic anthropologist and professor at Trent University. “You don’t get a printout of a skeleton.”
The Ottawa Citizen photos also show the edge of a pond in the woods beyond the yard, where those who know the property say Lambert’s guests once skated during winters.
This is not the first time 572 Kelly-Jordan Rd. has been the subject of a police search. Lambert’s disappearance in 2018 triggered several unsuccessful attempts to locate him over the years.
The discovery of his remains, on July 20, took place on the same day as bail proceedings for a fourth person charged in connection to Thomson’s death.
Mark Fenton, 42, arrested in April, is charged with accessory after the fact to murder. He was released on bail in late July. Mackie, meanwhile, was denied bail in March .
The Thomson, Lambert and Bertrim investigations came up during discussions at Smiths Falls’s most recent police services board meeting , on Sept. 1.
Chris Saumure, the board’s chair and provincial appointee, noted Smiths Falls’s elevated crime rate — nearly double those in nearby Perth and Carleton Place.
“That shocks me,” Saumure said.
“I can’t stress to you enough how busy our town is,” Smiths Falls Police Chief Jodi Empey replied.
Saumure asked whether the cases being investigated in Montague Township figured into the statistics for the town. Empey said they did not.
“Obviously, that’s more of an active investigation that we can’t discuss,” Saumure said, adding:
“We have some bad people doing bad things here in Smiths Falls and we can’t just drive them to Ottawa and drop them off, unfortunately.”
With files from Lynn Saxberg
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