Nicola Bulley documentary about internet ghouls

[Ursulla]

BBC documentary tonight examining the damage caused by MCE tiktok empaths and detectives.

Watched this yesterday. So interesting to see it from the other side, and just heartbreaking too.

Thought the husband was wonderfully calm when talking about people who were, in his words, "batshit crazy". There were people claiming to be psychic going to the place where she disappeared and making films of themselves! Complete strangers going on the internet and saying how devastated they were. I hope they watched and realised that these are real people with real lives, not some kind of plug-in filter for their own online presence.

I’m glad the family has had the opportunity to redress the balance. A normal family trying to cope as best they could with an awful, abnormal event, the coverage of which got outrageously out of hand in a way that they couldn’t have imagined.
Social media can be great for publicising and keeping things in the public’s consciousness, but my goodness, when it gets out of control in the way it did, the documentary showed how damaging it can be.

Complete strangers going on the internet and saying how devastated they were. I hope they watched and realised that these are real people with real lives, not some kind of plug-in filter for their own online presence

Some of the comments on here at the time were downright disgraceful and disrespectful.

I remember MN at the time had plenty of threads filled up with ghouls speculating and salivating over this case.

I only caught the last half hour, but thought they all came across well. You saw it on here, the amount of CTs it was absolutely bonkers (the same thing happened with the PoW earlier this year). I do think the police used the wrong words at times and her family said the same.

He had young children to comfort, he wasn't going to go on a media push. There were other members of the family who could do that.

The general public are awful at times.

Completely irrelevant but I liked his kitchen and dog!

The family kept saying she had been abducted and was being kept prisoner. This encouraged the Internet sleuths. And the amount of publicity didn't help either.

The amount of publicity? For a missing woman?

Yes the police shouldn't have gone into detail about her medical history. But the guy who filmed himself talking to her spirit, the woman making a podcast speculating about infidelity and murder ... these were much worse.

I can understand why the police went into the detail they did given the conversations online at the time. If MN and the like hadn't felt like it was an episode of Only Murders In The Building then they wouldn't have had to.

(I haven't seen the documentary.)

Thanks OP, off to watch this later.

But that's not what happened. She didn't commit suicide.

It was a very informative documentary and it was good to hear the families side.

I think at the time with shock and uncertainty the family and friends just wanted to find her but the absolute sick fuckers in this world picked apart every single thing and came up with the most ridiculous, pathetic, cruel things against them.

I honestly don't know how they got through those days and weeks, the main thing having Nicola missing but to read these things those nut bags were saying and posting. What's awful too, is now seeing and knowing, that they did read and see it all. All that crap from big fucking weirdos would tip you over the edge.

I think now seeing how the police handled the medical stuff and how they put out the report after asking the family to read it and edit where necessary and those poor people in the middle of reading it and making changes and next thing the news flash comes up on the TV where the police had released it without their permission !

You could feel the heartbreak coming from them, that poor man who had every inch of his face scrutinised saying he was bruised and yep, there he is still has the Shadow beside his eye which is obviously his skin and not a bruise.

I had seen some of the psychic shit at the time but fuck watching some of them on the documentary was crazy. Your woman telling the family that she had been abducted and held above garages and the poor parents driving by wondering if their daughter was in one.

Some of those who recorded everything and made those stupid 'thick tocks' need a good slap !

I hope and pray the family and friends are ok and somehow manage to continue their lives without Nicola. Having hateful stuff posted publicly can definitely ruin people's lives.

She fell in

Yes, totally agree with this!

People were almost relishing the mystery for their own personal entertainment without thinking of the family at the centre of it all with young children.

When my dad died, I'd obviously been searching for various things around that on my phone. My tiktok feed became full of mediums and card readers, having never seen or liked that kind of thing ever, I started blocking them all but they kept coming,
If I'd been more vulnerable I could have lost a shedload of money to those charlatans.

Can't imagine how much of that crap comes to anyone who is in the public eye.

I was absolutley horrified and was actually shouting at the screen at one point!
That poor man trying to keep it all together for his kids and being judged for not giving interviews, some people should be utterly ashamed of themselves

I watched it thinking some on MN should be ashamed of themselves for the way they went on over the case... but since they're generally the sort who've had an empathy bypass - they won't be.

Is it the thought that her dog got into trouble and she dropped the phone, lead on the bench and went to see if she could help?
Because otherwise what was she doing so close to the river that made her just abandon her phone..
However I thought the reports afterwards where that the dog wasn't wet.

It was an accident not suicide. She slipped in. There's been an inquest

There is no evidence she did
Its more likely an accident and given the amount of times my dog has knocked me over etc I can see how she went to help the dog and ended up in the water herself

Wasn’t she involved in an MLM so had a reasonable internet/social media presence herself? If she had followers they could easily have got dragged down the rabbit hole.

the police have explained why they released information- they felt the internet rumours were damaging the family and tried to get in front of it. Maybe it didn’t work as they hoped but this sort of internet scrutiny is still new and you can’t predict reactions.

Yes it was an excellent program however I expect the awful people who espoused all the wild theories most definitely won't feel ashamed of their actions.

Also yes the speculation on Mumsnet was out of control too. I posted on one thread (full of awful stuff) saying the most likely scenario will be the one that happened and so it was. People were becoming hysterical about it.

It was an awful accident. She fell in and drowned. Her dog refused to leave the spot where she went in (mentioned by a police officer in the program). Her body emerged approximately 3 weeks later which fits the science in these circumstances. All terribly sad and so so awful for her family and friends to go through (and continue to do so).

Some people really need to take a long hard look at themselves.

Firstly I’m so sorry for her and her poor family, what an awful situation for them all. I will watch the documentary and hope they have found some peace. I for one made no assumptions at the time and certainly wouldn’t have voiced any opinions in public whilst Nicola was missing.

My angle is purely a legal one really, especially for those who still think either ‘suicide’ or that she ‘fell in’ ( I know the verdict was an accident, but people still think one or the other even now)

Does anyone here have any experience better than mine of the coroner’s court? When I was a juror in this court for three tragic deaths, all involving sadly deaths on train lines, we concluded two to be suicide and one an open verdict.

This was because we were specifically instructed by the coroner that to reach a verdict of suicide we had to be sure. For example did the person leave a note, have previous attempts, serious mental health issues etc. Clearly in Nicola’s case it was obviously not suicide in the legal sense as none of these things were recorded. The other case we heard could have been suicide but also could have been an accident in that none of the criteria for suicide above existed. Tthe person may have been upset at the time and visited the railway in the dark, in terrible weather and could have slipped on the tracks. The key point was, there was not enough evidence either way to definitely conclude it was one or the other. I have always questioned why Nicola’s case did not result in an open verdict and wondered if anyone with any more knowledge than me would know.

It may have been an accident, of course that’s a strong possibility, but in the absence of any witnesses or evidence, we cannot know for sure, equally not enough evidence for suicide, hence an open verdict. I wonder why this was not the case here.

I am glad the family felt strong enough to do this documentary and wish them well