Nicola Bulley update: Police seal off path by bench where missing mother was last seen

Police have sealed off a path by a bench where missing mother-of-two Nicola Bulley was last seen a week ago – as specialist divers scour the area for clues. 

Officers are combing the riverbed near to the bench on which Ms Bulley’s mobile phone was found and where her dog was later retrieved by a local resident.

Trees and foliage which overhang the river are also being checked for any items of interest.

A solo police diver spent an hour in the River Wyre this morning, using a head torch to search through the murky water.

She emerged onto the bank just after 12.30pm this afternoon without finding anything of note.

Another police diver was seen being readied to enter the river and is due take over the underwater search this afternoon.

A police source told MailOnline: ‘The underwater teams are performing what’s known as an arc search, whereby they monitor the riverbed by moving in a side-to-side motion from bank to bank.

‘As of yet nothing of significance has been found but it’ll be a long, thorough process.’

The stretch of river close to where Ms Bulley was in the village of St Michael’s on Wyre is about nine miles east of the estuary in Fleetwood.   

Ms Bulley, 45, was last seen walking her spaniel Willow at about 9.15am last Friday along the River Wyre in Lancashire while dialled into a business call.

The night before her disappearance, she had been planning a spa trip with her sister, Louise, and discussing what treatments they’d get – according to her mother, Dot.

At the time, her parents were looking after her daughters while Ms Bulley took a business call. She was ‘upbeat’, having recently secured a new client at work.

Recalling their last conversation, her father, Ernest, told The Mirror: ‘I said we better go now and Nicola came to the front door, and I gave her a kiss and told her I loved her and that was the last conversation I had with her.’ 

Both Ernest, 73, and Dot, 72, said their daughter’s disappearance was out of character and revealed that they asked police if ‘there is any chance’ she has been abducted.

Asked about their daughter’s state of mind in recent days, the couple said there had been absolutely nothing out of the ordinary.

She had no health problems that they knew of and was enjoying her job.

Ms Bulley, who ‘lived for her children’, had also bought tickets to watch them perform at choir and gymnastics shows in recent weeks, Dot added. 

Ernest broke down as he told how hard it was to be in the same room as his granddaughters, aged six and nine, as they continue to ask questions about their mother’s whereabouts.

‘When I look at the kids, I have to go out of the room because I can’t hold it together,’ he said. 

‘They are asking where Mummy is and when is Mummy coming home? It’s so hard.’    

The family say the girls were ‘sobbing their hearts out’ when their father, Paul Ansell, tried to explain to them that ‘Mummy is lost’. 

‘We don’t know how long we can keep going before they realise. They think Mummy is coming home soon, but if this keeps going on I don’t know what we’re going to say to them.’ 

Ernest and Ms Bulley’s extended family have questioned whether she was taken from the river bank, given there were ‘no signs’ that she’d slipped or fallen into the water and zero clues as to where she could be.

The family have vowed to never give up their search.

Ms Bulley had dropped her two daughters off at primary school in the village of St Michael’s on Wyre, Lancashire, at about 8.45am last Friday. 

She then walked Willow to a nearby towpath by the River Wyre but has not been seen since. 

Willow was spotted by a woman near a slippery riverbank, by a bench where Ms Bulley’s phone was later found still dialled into a business call.

The dog was ‘bone dry’ meaning that the animal had not entered the water – but appeared to be distressed by something.

Police say they remain ‘open-minded’ as to Ms Bulley’s disappearance but do not believe at present that she was attacked.

Rescuers have so far focused their efforts on a tidal stretch of the river amid fears she may have fallen in and been washed out towards the coast at Fleetwood, some nine miles away.

Friends of Ms Bulley say that the doting mother would have never willingly left her family. 

Rescue teams have scoured the area near Garstang Road for clues over the 45-year-old’s mysterious disappearance.

While the river is just 18 inches deep in some areas, the section where Ms Bulley’s phone was found is near a sign which reads: ‘Danger – deep water.’   

A local told MailOnline: ‘I know the woman who found Willow. She said the dog was near the river bank and close to the bench that Nicola’s phone was found.

‘Willow was bone dry and so hadn’t been into the water but the dog was in an agitated state.’

Ernest noted there was ‘no sign’ of someone slipping or falling into the river – leading the family to question if someone has taken her.

He added: ‘I asked the sergeant from Fleetwood a few days ago, ”Is there any chance of her being taken?” and she said, ”I don’t think that’s the case”.

The grandfather was not entirely convinced by the response as the location his daughter went missing in is ‘such an isolated area’. 

‘We just dread to think we will never see her again, if the worst came to the worst and she was never found, how will we deal with that for the rest of our lives?’

The couple, who are joint owners of a freight transport company, have split their time between caring for their grandchildren – Nicola’s two young daughters – and looking for Nicola.  

Ms Bulley’s mother, Dot, said the nights were the hardest.

She told The Mirror: ‘Our worst time is when it gets dark. We find it really hard to think about wondering ‘Is she OK’ and ‘Where is she?”’

Even though police have assured the family they’re working on it ’24 hours a day’, Dot and Ernest ‘wake in the night and can’t get back off to sleep’ as they’re wracked with fear. 

Mr Ansell tried to gently break the news that ‘mummy is lost’ to their two little girls, aged nine and six, at the weekend. 

Ms Bulley’s daughters ‘cried their eyes out’ as Mr Ansell tried to console them while stricken with fear and grief himself.

And while he is trying to be ‘as strong as possible’ for the sake of his girls, he has tried to explain the basics to them.

Mr Ansell’s father David said: ‘The children have been told, ‘Mummy’s missing’, but they haven’t been told the full details,’ according to The Sun.

‘When they were told, they absolutely cried their eyes out.’

And Ms Bulley’s mother said: ‘Paul had to tell the girls what was going on. He just told them, ”Mummy’s lost”. It’s heartbreaking.’  

Meanwhile, a business owner who raised the alarm about Ms Bulley’s disappearance has spoken for the first time of the moment she came across her ‘worried’ dog Willow by the side of the river.

The woman, who did not want to be named, spotted the brown springer spaniel on the river bank on Friday morning.

She also found Ms Bulley’s mobile phone on a bench by the side of the river, under a tree which has a sign warning of deep water nailed to it.

Bizarrely, Willow was running free and the woman found the dog’s harness on the ground next to the river.

She called her daughter-in-law who called Ms Bulley’s partner Mr Ansell, who in turn dialled 999.

The woman, who runs a business in St Michaels on Wyre, said she knew of Ms Bulley and hoped nothing ‘bad’ had happened to her.

Speaking yesterday, she said: ‘I saw the dog and I recognised it, but I suddenly couldn’t think whose dog it was.

‘There was a mobile phone on the bench and there was also something between the bench and the river so I went and looked, and it was a dog harness.

‘The dog looked worried so I tied her up and rushed home as I had to go to an appointment.

‘I then went and spoke to my daughter-in-law and she immediately knew who the dog was, alerted the woman’s partner and that was it – the police were on it.’

Specialist search teams were pictured once again searching the river yesterday, this time helped by a police sniffer dog.

The animals are able to search large areas of water, both lakes and rivers, and are able to perform a search in approximately 10 per cent of the time taken by other search techniques.

Officers combed the area for clues on the river bank either side of the water. On one side of the river is the bench where police found her phone still linked to a work conference call.

The danger sign warning of deep water is nailed to a tree behind the bench – joined now by a missing person poster appealing for information about her disappearance.

Across the way, an apparently abandoned house is visible in the distance. Officers are believed to have searched its grounds, but it’s reportedly not of any significant interest to the investigation.

And detectives probing the disappearance spoke to a ‘key witness’ who may have been the last person to see Ms Bulley as he walked his own dog.

Superintendent Sally Riley said: ‘I must stress at this time that this remains a missing person inquiry and at this time there is nothing to suggest any third-party involvement in Nicola’s disappearance.’

Meanwhile, neighbours have raised fears about the ‘slippery river bank’ near to where the missing mother was last seen.

Her disappearance comes more than two decades after a toddler drowned in the same river less than six miles from where Ms Bulley was last seen.

The body of two-year-old Reece Maybury washed up half a mile downstream from the riverside camp site he had been staying at with family.

Speaking from the family home in Inskip, Mr Ansell said he spent all of Sunday searching for his partner of 12 years.

The engineer said: ‘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. We have got to get some good news now.’

 

Villager Nicola Dewey told the The Times she’d skipped her usual river walk for two days running in the wake of Ms Bulley’s disappearance. 

‘It’s really stunned people. It’s silly, but we are now locking our doors,’ she said.

Ben Pociecha, the director of Exclusively Mortgages, said Ms Bulley had logged on to a team meeting at 9.01am. ‘It seems as if she was muted and didn’t have her camera on. She was listening in whilst walking her dog,’ he told MailOnline. 

‘There were numerous parties involved in this. A lot of people attended the call. The police are investigating the call.’

Ms Bulley has lived in Lancashire for 25 years, but is originally from near Chelmsford, Essex, and has a southern accent. 

Her brother-in-law Stephen Cunningham said: ‘The whole family, as expected, are struggling to understand what’s happened and worried beyond words.’ 

It came as a social media post emerged where Ms Bulley shared pictures of herself walking her beloved dog Willow, close to where she vanished on January 27. 

In it, she said: ‘A very foggy cold walk this morning, not a day to forget your gloves! Bit spooky too! Set me up for the day though and Willow had the best time.’

Police are appealing for any information on Mr Bulley’s whereabouts. She is described as white, 5ft 3in, with light brown shoulder-length hair.

At the time of her disappearance she was wearing a long black gilet jacket with a hood, black jeans and olive green ankle wellington boots. Her hair was in a ponytail.

Mr Ansell said he or Ms Bulley, also known as Nikki, would drop their children off at a local primary school before taking Willow for a walk along the river nearby.

Ms Bulley did the school run before heading for the dog walk on Friday, police indicated.

‘I got a call from the school regarding somebody who had found Willow, Nikki’s phone and the dog lead and harness on the bench,’ Mr Ansell, who then called the police, said.

• Anybody with information can call 101, quoting log 473 of January 27, or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.