Missing woman

[MyOldCaravan]

BBC News - Nicola Bulley: Partner describes perpetual hell over missing mum
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-64450243

Just been reading about this. How awful for her partner and children. Really hope she is found soon

The ‘expert’ on sky news seems to be doubting the police’s perspective. I was quite shocked he said all that.

Listening to the police statement earlier, they feel certain they've covered all angles due to the exits from the area being covered by cctv or locked gates. Since when has a locked gate ever stopped anyone who is going to commit a crime? I sincerely hope they haven't ruled out any third party involvement - if this is a regular route the lady took, it wouldn't be too hard for them to construct a plan for someone to do her harm. There must be gaps in hedges etc. I just can't get my head around the fact they've ruled out third party involvement on this basis alone. Let's face it, the bench is so close to the edge of the bank that there would barely be signs of a struggle anyway. All it takes is one push.. But it seems they've gone along the lines of accidental death, so any speculating is pointless really. Just seems strange ..

@Rebel2023 the edge is steep but it's not a cliff edge so I still think there must be traces of any kind of fall.

I do agree that they ruled out third party at an early stage which is very strange.

@AppleDumplingWithCustard

I find very strange that the dog wasn’t stressed or leave the scene if she was in danger. Doesn’t look like any dog that I’ve owned or known… and dogs can sniff and hear much better than us. Strange narrative from the police.

The dog stayed near the river as it knew she was in there. It was agitated when found.

I found the boyfriends interview quite bizarre in all honesty. He didn’t mention her once !

I've just had a simple conversation with my family & said 'if I went walking with the dog near water and I disappeared, the dog was found running around shortly afterwards and my phone was on a bench beside the water, where have I most likely gone?' It stands to reason.

But then you have the likes of Wayne Couzens et al who so recently did what he did and the scope widens. I would never take my dog anywhere on my own now.

Didn't a news report say that the family can't think about any other scenario than the obvious drowning (or words to that effect)? but in another way that might be what someone wants them to believe.

Why would someone just come and push her in the river. Also no one saw anyone else there and no sightings on cctv.

@concernedalot i thought the same about the ‘locked gates’ thing! even if that is the case, maybe don’t state it in a police briefing as it does sound like they don’t consider any possibility of someone being able to climb a gate. I don’t think she has but theoretically a person could easily decide to up and leave their life and climb a locked gate also 🤔

The caravan park looks to be accessible by foot - she could have been abducted body kept there - Tia Sharp was kept in the loft for weeks with the police in and out of the house.

I hope they find her.

I find it odd that some people seem almost desperate for this to be a crime when everything points to it being an accident.

I got that impression too, it was a very interesting interview.

I think the sad reality now is she most likely is in the water somewhere. I just really hope she is found, not finding her would be the worst worst possible outcome 😔

I’ve thought about her on every dog walk alone I’ve been on since and really questioned where I’m walking. Today I even found myself making mental notes of a man’s description as I saw him coming the other way at a quiet bit. A tragic accident is a terrible way to go, especially at her age, but in some way, in time, it might be a relief to the family (and everyone else) that she actually was able to sit on a bench with earphones in, alone, in the middle of a quiet area, things you might assume wouldn’t be ‘safe’ to do nowadays but she was safe in that sense. It’s just a shame it’s turned out how it has 😢 (if that is what’s happened) but I’ve looked through her strava walks/runs in all these quiet areas and thought ‘go her’!

I also saw on her Facebook that they went to centre parcs at the end of last year and thought how many times I go to book something and decide not to because we can’t quite afford it (especially at centre parcs prices) but as I looked through her photos, especially the ones she had chosen to be in with her kids and not just all pictures of them - I found myself thinking how glad those children will be as they grow up that they’ve had those amazing memories. They could easily have put it off and said they’d go next year. Life really is too short 😔

so the police statement said that everything that happened was normal, including Willow being off the harness, email and call around that timeand phone on the bench, nothing out of the ordinary.

I still cannot understand why they did not cordone off at the beginning.

Between when she was supposedly falling into the water and when her partner rang 999, it was around 2 hours. A lot of people must have walked that stretch during that time. Yet no third party involvement ruled out at the beginning. Strange.

I think it's because if it's a crime there is a minuscule chance she may come home alive. If she's gone in the water she is almost certainly dead ☹️

Yes, I agree, it is very strange. If she has slipped down then the soft ground would show slide marks surely ? I don’t understand how there could be no traces. Even if someone jumped into the water then you would think that there would be boot marks at that point, and her jumping in seems incredibly unlikely.
Someone could, I suppose, have pushed her into the river. People have been deliberately pushed under trains on the tube.
Everything points to her being in the water I agree and yet the shallow depth and slow movement ? Really weird. I assume the Lady who first found Willow and the mobile must have looked into the water as anyone would.

I'm not sure if it was a usual thing for Willow to go in the river as part of her walk, maybe she did sometimes, perhaps Willow had never been in the river before.

I don't know, but what I'm trying to work out is if Nicola did slip/fall, would the dog have gone in the river after her?

@DillDanding I don't think people are desperate for it to be a crime, but there seems to be little evidence to proove it was an accident either.. if the dog goes in the water regularly, why would she have gone so close to the edge and put herself at risk of falling? She must have known how steep the bank was if she walks that route regularly. That's what doesn't make sense to me. But it could have been a medical episode causing her to faint I guess. We're just having a discussion about it. In all likelihood we'll probably never really get the whole truth and that will be that . It just seems odd that the police seemed to rule out third party involvement so early on.

@NothingButAWalkover i think someone else’s theory further up makes more sense where Willow had maybe gone off further than usual or out of sight and as she stood up to walk over and look for her she’s fell in, hence Willow’s confusion and the reason she didn’t go in after her. If she’s had a head injury, not made any noise (which it seems like she can’t really if people were just a few minutes walk away and haven’t heard) then willow maybe hasn’t even realised she’d gone under and was just frantically looking for her

Yes I agree that makes more sense. At the very least, if she had actually seen Nicola fall in, she probably would have been barking like crazy

If something like a tennis ball fell into a slow moving river wouldn't it float? How long would it take to go out to sea in that particular area?

Just musing on speculation that she could have tried to retrieve the dog's ball or similar toy? Would anyone really risk that though when the river bank was so steep, for a ball?

Also have mentioned before but very interested as to whether she was wearing earbuds as you'd expect her to have been if she was on a work call while in a public place,

No mention of them being found with her phone.

Wouldn't they float too if she'd fallen into a river with them in her ears.

I just can't fathom a youngish, fit and healthy, intelligent, capable woman who knew the area very well and could swim, falling into the river accidentally.

If she fallen in with coat on, surely she'd try to take it off. kick wellies off. She'd have been right next to the river bank and it's looks like it was possible to hold on to it even if she couldn't get herself up the bank. She didn't fall out of a boat or had had had a few drinks after a night out.

There have been conflicting reports of the river being 0.5 metres and 15ft deep. Do we actually know definitively how deep it was where she is suspected to have fallen in? Although it's been said there were no signs of someone falling in so what did she do, jump into it while wearing a long coat? Police seemed to be wading and when she went missing it was low tide,

I know there was a deep water sign next to the bench but was that applicable all the time or was it put there as a warning as it could be deep at certain times so safer for people to think it always was?

Pic of the dog being in the river on previous walks so certainly don't think she was worried about dog being in it, especially when it was slow moving and calm and she'd have been able to see the dog clearly from the top of the slope.

Sgt Riley ‘as each day goes by we become more concerned for Nicola’s safety’ (?)

She’s been missing a week & their working hypothesis is she fell in the river?