Eight years after he went missing, Robert Lambert’s remains have been located on the property he owned outside of Smiths Falls, according to a statement released by Ontario Provincial Police .
Last seen in July 2018, when he was 75 years old, Lambert had been living in a large house on the same wooded, 40-acre property in Montague Township where police unearthed his body.
Investigators located Lambert on July 20, according to a police statement released on Wednesday, Aug. 5. They announced their latest discovery only after identifying him.
“Foul play was suspected in his disappearance,” the release said. “This is the second set of human remains located at this property.”
Apart from a break during the winter months, the OPP Criminal Investigation Branch has been searching the Kelly-Jordan property since October, when three people were arrested and charged with first-degree murder in connection with the homicide of 34-year-old Robbie Thomson.
Police had not yet located Thomson when they laid those charges.
Thomson’s remains were uncovered the day after those arrests at the Kelly-Jordan property. Now a related probe has led police to locate Lambert’s remains on the same wooded grounds.
Lambert’s friends and family have been bracing for this news in part because Lambert’s disappearance has been linked via his ownership of the Kelly-Jordan property to Thomson’s death and to at least two of those recently arrested and charged in connection with that homicide.
“I was shocked, but not shocked,” said Lambert’s son-in-law, Jonathan Botham, who lives next door to the Kelly-Jordan property. “I’m still kind of processing right now. Yeah, but it is closure.”
Tina Sutton, a friend of Lambert’s who lives in California, wondered why it had taken authorities so long to locate the remains.
“I knew, I just knew he was gone. There’s no way he would have not been in contact with me, and it’s been over eight years,” she said. “It’s taken them two years to finally figure this all out.”
Lambert, originally from Brooklyn, N.Y., purchased the house on Kelly-Jordan in 2004, about the time he married Kathryn Ann Botham, whose parents were then living in Montague Township.
The couple met while playing an arcade version of eight-ball pool on Yahoo! Games, part of the Yahoo! website that also allowed gamers to chat with each other during play.
Lambert, who worked as a high-end kitchen appliance salesman, had never been married before.
Property records showed that Lambert bought 572 Kelly-Jordan Rd. for $233,000, with no mortgage registered against title.
Charged in connection with Thomson’s homicide are Christopher Philip Fenton, 48, Erin Lynn Mackie, 41, and Joshua Joseph Belfiori, 35, of Bath, Ont.
Fenton and Mackie were both listed on the police charge sheet as living at the Kelly-Jordan property at the time of their arrests.
Property records showed that on April 4, 2018, Fenton’s name was added alongside Lambert’s as co-owner of the Jordan-Kelly Road property.
A fourth person, 42-year-old Mark Fenton, was arrested in April and charged with accessory after the fact to murder in connection with Thomson’s death.
Mark Fenton was released on bail in July.
Mackie was denied bail in March.
Thomson, reported missing in October 2023 by his family, was one of several men to disappear from Smiths Falls over recent years, a spate of disappearances many in the small community southwest of Ottawa believe are linked despite assurances by the police that they are not.
Lambert was the first to go missing in 2018.
Another man, Lawrence Bertrim, 42, disappeared in the autumn of 2022.
Steven Tate, 34, was last seen alive on Nov. 4, 2023. His body turned up some days later at the side of Highway 15 northwest of town, in Montague Township, not far from Kelly-Jordan Road.
There was no indication that police were preparing charges in connection with the discovery of Lambert’s remains: “We cannot speculate on whether additional charges will be laid,” OPP Sgt. Erin Cranton wrote in an email.
