Nicola Bulley went missing in January 2023 (Image: Facebook)
sent a haunting text shortly before she vanished sparking one of the country’s most high-profile ever missing person search.
The message was sent from her phone half an hour before the disappearance that gripped the country at about 9.10am on January 27, 2023. It led to a series of wild conspiracy theories about what could have happened to her from armchair detectives and sleuths.
Nicola, 45’s, phone was found on a bench with her dog’s harness and she was still logged into a Microsoft Teams work call that had ended at 9.30 am. But, thirty minutes before that, the mother of two had texted a friend to set up a playdate.
The text was haunting in how normal it was against the unfolding situation in St Michael’s on Wyre and led many to assume she was unlikely to have disappeared by choice.
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A woman holds up a missing poster during the search for Nicola Bulley (Image: Getty)
Locals at a village meeting were told that she sent the message at 8.57 am, just before logging into the Teams call. On that Friday morning, Ms Bulley had just dropped her two daughters, ages six and nine, off at school.
Her last recorded sighting was around 9.10 am. Her phone and the dog’s harness were discovered on the riverbank bench about 25 minutes later and Willow, her springer spaniel, appeared distressed.
Nicola’s heartbroken partner has now broken his silence to reveal the distressing messages received from strangers and voicing their children’s poignant appeals for their missing mum.
, in a moving initial interview, recounted the torment of the search for Nicola 18 months prior. Her disappearance at the end of January sparked a 23-day police operation that began after Paul reported her missing, leading to immense public scrutiny and relentless social media speculation.
It comes ahead of a new documentary which looks at the onslaught of online activity that left Nicola’s family so distraught. Paul acknowledged the media and social network interest initially seemed beneficial, but it quickly became overwhelming, likening it to “poking a monster”.
During the programme, he said: “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.”
Nicola’s sister Louise Cunningham also spoke about the heart-breaking phone call she received from Paul in which he expressed how the family felt stifled, unable to reply to online comments for fear their words would be manipulated or misinterpreted.
Describing a sense of being “silenced” by the circumstances, Paul shared the added agony of malicious rumours on top of an already harrowing ordeal, saying: “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.”
He said he got messages like “you b******’. ‘We know what you did’. ‘You know you can’t hide Paul’, that kind of stuff. There was some that I felt like replying to, but then if you reply to that, they’ll just screenshot your reply, if that’ll end up on social media. And so you’re literally silenced, and you can’t do anything about it.”
Paul Ansell has spoken about the trauma of online trolls (Image: BBC)
Despite all the wild theories, he body was ultimately found in the river on 19 February 2023 and an inquest in June last year found she had died due to accidental drowning.
The coroner recorded Ms Bulley’s death as accidental, saying she had fallen into the river and suffered “cold water shock”, and there was “no evidence” to suggest suicide.
People on social media during the search made false accusations about there being third-party involvement, including rumours about a derelict house on the other side of the River Wyre, a red van in the area, a fisherman seen nearby and a glove belonging to Ms Bulley.
Director Rachel Lob-levyt, who worked on Interviews and Hospital, told the Radio Times the “family tell their story in their own words, unfiltered”.
She said social media sleuths “felt entitled” to say anything about Ms Bulley’s disappearance.
She said: “In the past we’d have talked about these things in the pub, whereas now people broadcast it online and everything is accelerated. Opinion takes on similar weight to verified information.”
An independent College of Policing review of the investigation into her disappearance found the relationship between police and the media “to be fractured”, and urged for it to be rebuilt.
The Search For Nicola Bulley is set to air on 3 October on One.