Late on Friday evening, two dog handlers with Alsatians emerged from the blackness into the car park of the Grapes pub in the Lancashire village of St Michael’s on Wyre, where Nicola Bulley vanished 2½ weeks ago.
The dog handlers were in fields behind the pub, not far from a riverside bench where Ms Bulley disappeared while on a morning walk with her spaniel, Willow. But they weren’t searching for her. They were security guards who had volunteered to protect villagers from hordes of amateur TikTok sleuths who invaded St Michael’s, harassing locals and breaking into sheds in the hunt for clues.
The disappearance of Nikki, as she is known to family and friends, has gripped Britain and baffled police, who have a theory that she fell into the river Wyre and was washed away. Many locals are unsure. Her partner, Paul Ansell, believes the mother of their two daughters may have met foul play and “somebody in the village” of 400 souls may know something.
Whatever about the river theory, amid the murkier depths of social media would-be detectives expound wild theories and obsess over every detail, treating it like a real-life Netflix show. Many commenters are Irish. St Michael’s has attracted so many gawkers that police issued a 48-hour dispersal order at the weekend, giving them powers to break up the groups of clue hunters, clairvoyants and “grief tourists”.
[ Nicola Bulley’s partner: ‘My gut instinct has always been she’s not in the river’Opens in new window ]
“I didn’t believe people could be so horrible,” said Karen Ball, a lay minister at the local Anglican church. She sat in her front room on Saturday cradling a cup of tea and wondering how a nightmare for a local family could be an obsession for strangers online.
Ms Ball is filled with “shock and disbelief” about the disappearance of 45-year-old Nicola Bulley, a mortgage adviser, with whom she is involved in the church in this part of Lancashire. It’s 90 minutes northwest of Manchester, a flat, arable landscape where the houses are pretty and well kept.
“She was so helpful at the church’s Christmas tree festival. I saw her in the church on Christmas Eve. Nicola is a mum, a daughter, a sister, partner and friend. We need to know where she is. We need to bring her home,” said Ms Ball. “It’s like she has vanished into thin air. But ... as Christians, we have got to keep hope.”
On Friday, January 27th, Nicola Bulley left home in Inskip, three miles away (4.8km), and dropped their children at the primary school in St Michael’s. She then walked around the corner and over a humpback bridge, turning right on to a popular local riverbank walk through a copse known locally as the “Stinking Woods” due to pungent blooms of wild garlic.
At 8.53am, Nicola emailed her boss. She logged into a Teams call at 9.01am and was seen walking Willow in a nearby field 10 minutes later. Mobile phone data puts her at a riverside bench at 9.20am, where 13 minutes later a local found her phone, still logged in to the Teams call. Willow’s harness was on the riverbank, where the dog was found agitated. Ms Bulley had vanished and hasn’t been seen since. Police found no evidence of foul play after scouring CCTV.
[ Friends gather for roadside appeal two weeks after disappearanceOpens in new window ]
Fifteen days later, at exactly the same time of day, a retracing of the route from the walk’s swing gate entrance to the bench takes just four minutes. The bank that police believe Ms Bulley fell down into the river is steep, but not perilously so. Police have not cordoned it off. The water at the edge is 3ft deep, deeper in the middle.
The river meanders through a stretch known locally as Fiddleneck, then over a fast weir that runs into the tidal stretch of the Wyre. It ends in a wide estuary 10 miles (16km) away near Morecambe Bay, and then the Irish Sea.
A local man, who did not wish to be named, approached the riverside bench on Saturday to express scepticism about the police theory. “If you fell from this spot you wouldn’t even go all the way down to the water,” he said. His wife used to take the same walk but doesn’t feel safe now.
A policeman approached. He said he was there to provide “community reassurance” after the invasion of TikTok video sleuths. Lancashire Constabulary has set up a mobile police station in the car park of Grapes, as they continue their search of the Wyre. It is also to deter the unwelcome outside visitors. Across from the bench lies a supposed “abandoned house” where TikTokkers trespassed, searching for Ms Bulley. The local man said the property isn’t abandoned, but is in probate after its owner died six months ago.
Police remain focused on the river. At the mouth of the estuary 10 miles downstream, two tactical operations officers on Saturday operated drones high above the Wyre, focusing on mudflats. Police divers sped up the Wyre in a rib, on their way to search the coastline. An older, local man carrying binoculars approached police. He pointed across the water and said he could see crows repeatedly descending to a headland. The officers listened patiently.
The police’s stoic adherence to their river theory has been publicly criticised in recent days by several professional crime experts, who believe they were too quick to rule out foul play.
Back at St Michael’s, people wait and hope. Inside the pretty village church, a candle stays lit beside a photograph of Ms Bulley and Mr Ansell. This area has been touched by tragedy before. The candle is near a plaque on the church wall that remembers the Abbeystead disaster of 1984, when 16 locals died in an accidental explosion at a new waterworks station they had been invited to view.
“Some older local people still bear burn marks from that explosion,” said a man in the church.
One way or another, the disappearance of Nicola Bulley will also leave its mark on St Michael’s, and on her anguished family.
