The partner of Nicola Bulley has described the online obsession with her disappearance as a “monster” that got out of control. Paul Ansell said his family initially welcomed the huge public interest after the mother of two vanished while walking her dog in Lancashire in January last year. However, Bulley’s disappearance quickly grabbed the attention of would-be sleuths on social media who began posting misleading theories about what had happened.
“I think anything like that is a double-edged sword,” he told the BBC. “That’s the problem. You’re poking a monster.”
Bulley, 45, vanished on 27 January 2023 while walking beside the River Wyre in St Michael’s on Wyre, shortly after dropping off her two daughters at school. Her body was found in the river on 19 February. An inquest in June last year found she had died due to accidental drowning.
The search for Bulley prompted weeks of speculation and multiple conspiracy theories online, with people travelling to Lancashire to “help” police. “I was getting direct messages from people that I’ve never met – they don’t know me, they don’t know us, they don’t know Nikki,” Ansell said. He said he was also told “you can’t hide” and “we know what you did”.
He added: “On top of the trauma of the nightmare that we’re in, to then think that all these horrendous things are being said about me towards Nikki – everyone has a limit.”
Ansell was speaking in a BBC documentary, The Search for Nicola Bulley, which explores the media coverage and the impact of amateur internet sleuths conducting their own investigations, as well as hearing from Lancashire police and Bulley’s family.
Impact on Family
The documentary hears the turmoil the family went through as the search for Ms Bulley intensified – as well as the impact it had on Nicola and Paul’s young children. “The nights were the hardest,” Mr Ansell said. “In the morning the hope would be strong. It used to go dark at like 4pm. It used to get to about 3pm and then I’d start panicking that I knew it would start going dark in an hour. So we had an hour to find her. And then obviously I’d have the girls. The first they’d do when they came out of school was run over and say: ‘Have we found mummy?'”
Public Narrative
At a news conference days before she was found, Lancashire Police made public that Ms Bulley had “significant issues” with alcohol brought on by her ongoing struggles with the menopause. The family said she had stopped taking her HRT over that period and began drinking to deal with it. “It was literally (a) normal, weird blip. That’s the most honest answer I can give you,” Louise Cunningham, Ms Bulley’s sister, told the documentary.
The release of personal information about Ms Bulley’s health struggles was “avoidable and unnecessary”, and police and media need to rebuild trust, a report into the case concluded. The independent College of Policing report found in policing terms the missing persons investigation was well handled, but that the force had lost control of the public narrative at an early stage. Senior officers failed to brief mainstream accredited reporters because trust between police and media had broken down – leading to an information vacuum and unchecked speculation.
Healing and Remembering
Mr Ansell said he still sees Nicola in the faces of the couple’s two daughters. “I see her in the girls every single day. I see all these little mannerisms in them and I’m like: ‘That was Mummy, you know?’ And that is worth everything, I think.”
Last year, a coroner recorded Ms Bulley’s death as accidental, saying she had fallen into the river and suffered “cold water shock”, and that there was “no evidence” to suggest suicide. Police accused people on TikTok of “playing private detectives” in the area, and said they had been “inundated with false information, accusations and rumours” relating to the case.
The Search For Nicola Bulley will be broadcast on BBC One on October 3 at 9pm BST and on will be available on BBC iPlayer.
