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The puzzling disappearance and death of Nicola Bulley in Lancashire
Nicola Jane Bulley, disappeared January 27, 2023, near River Wyre in St Michael’s on Wyre, Lancashire, United Kingdom. Body found February 19, 2023.
Revised October 2023
On Friday, January 27, 2023, 45-year-old mortgage advisor and mother of two girls, Nicola “Nikki” Bulley, dropped off her daughters at school before setting out along a towpath by the River Wyre in St Michael’s on Wyre, Lancashire, in the United Kingdom. She was planning on going on a regular morning walk she did with her spaniel dog called Willow. After that, she vanished in mysterious circumstances!
Nicola's friends, family, police, and specialist teams had been looking for her, and despite an extensive search operation that started on the day she disappeared, no trace of her was found.
Although the police were convinced she fell into the nearby River Wyre, underwater search experts, using specialist sonar equipment, had not located anything, and they began looking as far out as the Irish Sea. The area close to a bench where her cell phone and dog’s harness and leash were found had reasonably shallow water, no deeper than three feet, and was covered with jagged rocks, but heavy rain had fallen during December and January, swelling the river.
Search experts have said it is the most puzzling case they have ever worked on and were convinced that Nikki did not drown in the river, given extensive searching with sonar equipment. Search expert Peter Faulding described the case as “baffling” and told reporters that he was “absolutely 100 per cent” sure that Nicola’s body was not in the stretch of river scoured by his team of divers and sonar equipment. A claim that was later proved to be wrong.
Nicola’s partner, Paul Ansell, said, “We're never going to lose hope, but right now, it’s as though she vanished into thin air. It’s just insane. I can’t believe we're a week on, and of yet, it seems we're no further on. It seems absolutely impossible. It’s like a dream, and I can’t get around it.”
Many, including hundreds of armchair detectives, wondered what happened to Nicola.
Then, on February 19, 23 days after she went missing, remains were finally discovered around one mile from where she disappeared in an area of reeds close to the River Wyre. The case appeared close to a resolution, albeit not the positive outcome the family and friends had hoped. Why was the body located in an area searched many times by underwater drones, searchers on foot, divers, and specialist boat teams? The remains were discovered by two members of the public, including the apparent psychic, Jason Rothwell, not the Police.
Former Met Police commander John O'Connor said, “These search teams couldn't find a currant in a rice pudding. I find it pathetic that a body has been found a mile from where she went missing.”
Late on February 20, 2023, Police confirmed the remains found on February 19 were those of Nicola Bulley. Despite the resolution of the disappearance, many questions remain, mainly why it took so long to find the body in the river, given the massive search in the area.
At the end of June 2023, the senior coroner for Lancashire, Dr James Adeley, ruled that Nicola Bulley drowned after accidentally falling down a steep river bank into cold water.
Who was Nicola Bulley?
Nicola Bulley and Willow
Nicola Jane Bulley was a mortgage adviser who had lived in Lancashire in the northwest of the United Kingdom for 25 years in the small village of Inskip. She had two daughters, Harriet, 9, and Sophia, 6. Known as Nikki, she moved to the area from Chelmsford, Essex, and spoke with an Essex regional accent.
She was born in 1977 and was 45 years of age as of 2023. She studied at William de Ferris School and Thurrock Technical College.
As well as her children, her family includes her partner, Paul Ansell, her mother and father, Dot and Ernie, and her sister, Louise Cunningham.
She was briefly married to local businessman Simon Booth, now engaged to actress Jodie Prenger, who plays Glenda Shuttleworth in the long-running ITV soap Coronation Street, before meeting her partner, Paul Ansell, in a pub in 2012.
Timeline of events relating to Nicola Bulley’s disappearance
January 27, 2023
8.26 am Nicola left her home with her two daughters, aged six and nine, dropping them off at school and engaging in a brief conversation with another parent around 15 minutes later. She wore a black Engelbert Strauss coat and black jeans and had long green walking socks tucked into her trousers under ankle-length green Wellington boots.
8.43 am Nicola took her Spaniel, Willow, for a walk along the path by the River Wyre, heading towards a gate/bench in the lower field. She was seen by a dog walker who knew her at around 8.50 am.
8.53 am She sent an email to her boss at Exclusively Mortgages, followed by a message to her friends six minutes later, before logging on to a Microsoft Teams call at 9.01 am where she kept her video off and was muted.
The bench where Nicola Bulley’s cellphone was found and the nearby River Wyre
9.10 am A second witness saw her, the last known sighting.
9.20 am Nikki’s phone was back in the area of the bench before the Teams call ended ten minutes later, with her mobile remaining logged on after the call.
9.33 am Another dog walker found Nicola’s phone on a bench beside the river, with Willow distressed. Crucially, Willow was dry and did not appear to have entered the water.
About the River Wyre
The River Wrye is a tidal river, and therefore, the Wyre's flow and level are controlled by the tides. At its deepest, the river reaches a depth of around 15ft (4.73m) but can be as low as just over a foot (0.4m).
The river bank where Nicola went missing is steep in some places, although it is not high. As well as the changing water level because of tides, the Wyre also has different water depths.
The water in that stretch of river where Nicola disappeared is very calm and relatively slow-flowing, as can be seen in the video below. Still, water levels and flow were increased by heavy rain during December 2022 and January 2023.
There is a weir a few hundred meters from the bench where Nicola was last seen. Many have speculated that it would be difficult for a submerged/partially submerged body to have moved over the weir.
The search effort
On January 28, Lancashire Constabulary deployed drones, helicopters and police search dogs as part of the significant missing person operation. Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service, the Bowland Pennine mountain rescue team and the North West underwater search team assisted them.
The next day, residents met at the village hall to organize a search involving around 100 people.
On January 30, Superintendent Sally Riley from Lancashire Constabulary said police were “keeping a really open mind about what could have happened”, and that they were not treating Nicola’s disappearance as suspicious. The following day, Lancashire Constabulary spoke with a man walking a small white dog near the River Wyre at the time of the disappearance.
On February 2. the police interviewed a second witness they had identified with the public's help using CCTV. Still, they told police they had no further information to aid their inquiry.
Officers from the North West Police Underwater and Marine support unit searched the area near the bench where the cell phone was found.
On February 3, Lancashire Police believed that Nicola may have fallen into the River Wyre, saying it was “possible” that an “issue” with the dog may have led her to the water’s edge. Family members urged people to “keep an open mind” as there is “no evidence whatsoever” that she fell into the water.
On the same day, Police said they wanted to trace a “key witness” who was seen pushing a pram in the area. The woman came forward on February 5.
Specialist private search efforts
On February 6, Peter Faulding, the head of the private diving team Specialist Group International (SGI), said his team of experts and divers, based in Dorking, Surrey, worked with Lancashire Police and searched “three or four miles” of the river until it got dark. “It’s a negative search, no signs of Nicola,” he said.
Specialist Group International, including chief executive Peter Faulding
The side scan sonar mounted in the SGI dinghy can view the terrain at the bottom of the river, and any major obstacle in its way would be detected on the film.
Faulding remains convinced that if he were to find a body, it would be in the area close to where police say Nicola fell into the water, saying, “If this is where Nicola fell in, you can see that the water is not particularly deep. There are lots of rocks, and if she was in the water, she would be able to grab hold of them. No one heard any shouts for help and I just can't see how she could drown here. The only possibility is that she fell head first and was knocked out on the rocks, but I don't see how that could happen.”
The team has extended their search 10 miles away towards Fleetwood and the Irish Sea in the belief her body has been moved by the current from the area around the bench near the village of St Michael's on the Wyre. But Faulding disputes the police theory that the body could have ended up so far away and in the Irish Sea. Based on his 20 years of experience in finding drowning victims, he insisted her body would have remained at the bottom of the river for several days, and police would have found her. His view is that another party could have been involved and had abducted Nicola.
Faulding said, “My opinion is that had Nicola gone in by that bench, she would have gone to the bottom and drifted a couple of meters. The police divers who are very professional thoroughly searched that stretch of river and she wasn't there. There is hardly any current and in my experience, bodies do not move very far. It is not feasible that she could have drifted 15km, not in my experience and this type of tidal river. Things get washed in and washed out. It is very shallow. There is nowhere to go.”
Police said on February 7 that it was still possible that Nicola left the area by one path not covered by cameras, which is crossed by the main road through the village. Officers were trying to trace dashcam footage from 700 drivers who passed along the road at the time she disappeared, around 9.20 am.
Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, February 7, Supt Sally Riley said police had been supplied with a lot of information and leads. “At the moment, there are around 500 active pieces of information and lines of inquiry that we're working on to try and find answers for Nicola's family. This is normal in a missing person inquiry and does not indicate any suspicious element to this story. The inquiry team remains entirely open-minded to any information indicating where Nicola is or what happened to her. “
But the police chief emphasized that detectives have not yet come across any evidence of foul play, “Any criminal or suspicious element has been discarded. It is important to stress that any information that comes in that indicates otherwise is being checked out all the time. We are not closed in any way to any particular line of inquiry, but all these extensive inquiries, however, have so far found anything of note.”
Detailing the scale of the police inquiry, Supt Riley said her team had received thousands of pieces of information “from the public, wider community, the Bulley family and friends”. Officers have conducted house-to-house inquiries in the village of St Michael's on the Wyre, and hours of CCTV footage were analyzed.
Paul Ansell, 44, Nicola’s partner of 12 years with whom she lived in Inskip, commented: “It is just perpetual hell. It is just utter disbelief, “We are living through this, but it doesn’t feel real. All we can say is we need to find her. She’s got two little girls that need their mummy home.”
On February 8, as Peter Faulding's search team pulled out, he said, “We are happy that the area where Nicola’s phone was found and the harness, we’ve thoroughly searched it all the way down to the weir and up to the bridge about a mile upstream, and we’ve confirmed to Paul [Ansell] that there’s nothing in that area. That’s been dived by police dive teams three times as well, and on the day that Nicola went missing, it was dived in the afternoon by police dive teams with no sign of Nicola.”
Faulding said, “I’ve worked on some weird cases, but this is a baffling case for someone whose mobile phone was found there, and I would have expected Nicola to have been found that afternoon by the police dive team.
I was determined to find Nicola, but one good thing is that I didn’t want to find a body, so I’m happy we haven’t found Nicola’s body, which can lead to other areas. We don’t know if Nicola’s alive. This is just a baffling case.”
“After the end of today, then we’ve done what we’ve come to do. We’ve cleared the area for the police and the family. We can say that in the top section of the river and some of the section going down towards the sea, she’s not in that part. Further down the estuary, I can’t comment on because we’re not searching that.”
Following the discovery of the body on February 19, it turned out that Peter Faulding was wrong in his assertions, but he blamed the error on the fact that the remains were in the reeds near the river, not in the river itself.
Strange aspects of the Nicola Bulley case
Mobile phone left on the bench
The phone was discovered on a bench, still logged on to a work Teams call with the camera and microphone switched off. Some speculated that it may have been left there as a decoy by a third party.
The behavior of Nicola’s dog
Nicola was walking her spaniel Willow when she disappeared, but the dog was found “bone dry”, suggesting it had not entered the river before Nicola vanished.
No screams were heard by witnesses
Initially, it was thought that no screams were heard at the scene despite police having spoken to several witnesses. If Nicola had fallen into the river, she would have been expected to scream for help unless she intentionally jumped into the water of her own accord. However, at the coroner’s inquest, a witness reported that she had heard a scream on the day of Nicola’s disappearance.
No obvious marks on the riverbank
There were no significant marks left at the scene, which could have given clues about what happened. However, the area remained open to the public, which may have resulted in losing key evidence.
A forensic expert said: “People have been walking past the bench. There’s no police tape up. This would normally be sealed off as a crime scene so potentially crime scene investigators can go in and see if there are any microfibres, evidence, slip marks down the bank, etc, and I don’t believe that has actually happened here.”
Why was Nicola not found in the River Wyre despite an extensive search?
The area downstream and upstream of the spot where Nicola was last seen was searched thoroughly by police divers and sonar search experts over several days but did not find anything, leaving the forensic team “baffled”.
The remains of Nicola were eventually found in reeds/foliage less than a mile from where she disappeared close to the River Wyre and were missed for three weeks despite extensive searches of the area. Why was Nikki not found earlier?
Updates to the Nicola Bullen disappearance
February 10
Police were investigating the possibility that Nicola was abducted or left the area using a path adjacent to the bench with a gate that would have prevented the dog from leaving the area. The path is not covered by CCTV and heads to a main road.
In addition, the area where the Wyre estuary enters the sea was being searched by divers, around 10 miles from where the bench is located. Also, a “shabby” red van was spotted by witnesses in the area, but it was thought it was unlikely to have been involved, and the police quickly dismissed the tip.
February 15
Late on February 15, 2023, after a press conference, Lancashire Police announced publicly that Nicola was struggling with significant alcohol issues in connection with the menopause that had resurfaced in recent months. The family condemned the decision to release this information. At the press conference itself, the police only referred to a “number of specific vulnerabilities” that caused them to treat Nicola’s disappearance as high risk. The police also said that on January 10, a response car, together with healthcare professionals, attended a report for concern for welfare at Nicola’s home. No one was arrested during the incident, and investigations were being conducted.
Lancashire Police said it was unusual to go into this level of detail about someone’s private life but wanted to avoid speculation.
Peter Faulding, who led the sonar search of the river, was unaware of this information and said it was outrageous as it would have changed how he searched the stretch of the Wyre.
Also, on February 15, Police were given a blue “stained” ski glove from the field where Nicola was last sighted. The glove was found by two walkers who found the item on February 7, close to the bench location. Detective Superintendent Rebecca Smith, the senior investigating officer, said, “A glove has been recovered that is not believed to be relevant to the investigation. It is not Nicola's, but we have got that in our possession."
Det Supt Smith also said the derelict house on the bank opposite the scene of the disappearance had been searched three times, and Nicola was not there and had not been there.
There have also been reports of two anglers supposedly behaving oddly on the day of her disappearance. Still, Det Supt Smith said, "I myself don't find it suspicious that fishermen would be in the area of a river that morning or carrying fishing rods”.
As of February 16, the authorities continued to search on land and in the sea for Nicola.
February 19
Police released a statement that two members of the public reported they had found a body at 11.36 am. One of these was an apparent psychic called Jason Rothwell. The location of the body was on the banks of the River Wyre in some reeds close to Rawcliffe Road, and the authorities are still confirming the identity. Despite the extensive search of the river, Nicola’s body, if the remains are confirmed as hers, seems to have been missed by the many Police and private investigations including sonar technology.
Witnesses described a man and a woman talking to two police officers on the embankment in front of an area of shrubbery and undergrowth on the river. The man, Jason Rothwell, was overheard telling the first response officer: “It was a body. It is down there. It was the body of a woman. There is definitely a body down there.” A short time later, a helicopter was in the air as police cars arrived with drones.
Some critics have questioned how police and specialist teams failed to find the body less than a mile down from the village of St Michael's on Wyre despite weeks of extensive searching.
Former Scotland Yard Superintendent Nusrit Mehtab said, “If that is Nicola, then how did they miss that? Some serious questions need to be asked of Lancashire Police's decision-making”.
Search expert Peter Faulding said he had only cleared the area around the bench where her mobile phone was found and that the tidal section beyond the weir was “an open book.”, “All I can say is when we searched, she was not on the bottom of that river. We weren't searching the reeds. Our job was to search the water”. He said a side scan sonar his team used “does not penetrate reeds above or below the water'“
Lancashire Constabulary said it was unable to confirm whether the body was Nikki’s. Formal identification could take several days.
Members of the public pointing to the location of a body presumed to be Nicola Bulley
February 20
Lancashire Police confirmed at around 5.30 pm UK time that the remains found on February 19 at 11.36 am were those of Nikki Bullen. The disappearance was, therefore, solved, but many commentators and former Police officers have found it very strange why it took around three weeks to find the body after such a thorough search operation in and around the River Wyre.
April 20
On April 4, 2023, police divers were seen carrying out further investigations in the River Wyre. Divers were seen wading through the water next to the weir.
Subsequently, Lancashire Police issued a new statement confirming why divers returned to the river and criticized speculation around the case. A spokesperson said: “There has been misinformed speculation over the past few days relating to police activity in the River Wyre. As previously stated, police divers were acting under the instruction of HM Senior Coroner and had been asked to assess the riverbanks in the vicinity of where Nicola Bulley went missing. They had not been tasked either to perform any further searches within the river or along the banks or to locate any articles. This activity is to assist with the coronial process.”
An inquest into Nicola Bulley’s death is due to be heard on Monday, June 26, at County Hall in Preston.
June 27
On June 27, 2023, the senior coroner for Lancashire, Dr James Adeley, ruled that Nicola Bulley drowned after accidentally falling down a steep river bank into cold water.
Adeley said she suffered “cold water shock” and said there was “no evidence as to why Nikki entered the water”, but there was no evidence of suicide, and he had been able to rule out foul play. “Whether or not Nikki's first breath was above or below the water, she would have lost consciousness before reaching the first point in the River Wyre where she could have touched the bottom.”.
Nicola’s Fitbit, which was recovered from her body, charged and synchronised, recorded a “substantially increased heart rate' at 9.22 am and stopped recording steps after 9.30 am.” She had adjusted the volume on her iPhone at 9.18 am.
Ruling out third-party involvement, Dr Adeley said that no one in the vicinity at the time had seen anyone suspicious and stated that Nicola had been acting normally before her death. There was no indication she meant to take her own life.
Explaining why he had ruled out suicide, Dr Adeley said, “Her behaviour in the week before her death was back to normal. She had restarted her HRT therapy, stopped drinking some time before, was making plans for play dates and spa days with several people, was becoming increasingly successful at her new career as a mortgage broker and behaved entirely normally during her parents’ visit of the night before and with Paul Ansell on the morning of her death. The circumstances found after her death would also be extremely unusual for suicide where Nikki left Willow, a dog to whom she was devoted and was described as a third child, alone on the river bank.”
'Nikki would also had to have had sufficient knowledge of cold water shock to realise as to how rapidly a death may occur as otherwise she may be spotted and saved; that she chose to do so at the main intersection of paths where she could be interrupted at any point would be unusual and to leave her car keys in her pocket with the car in the school playground where her children, to whom she was devoted, would see it would be cruel. For these and many other reasons, I discount a conclusion of suicide as there is no evidence to support this conclusion. There was also no natural disease that contributed to Nikki's death. The remaining conclusion is that of accidental death”.
Further viewing
Nicola Bulley - Visiting The Scene (Crime Scene 2 Courtroom)
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Sources
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