Head Diver Says It’s ‘Impossible’ Nicola Bulley Is In The Sea As Search Continues

It’s now been twelve days since Nicola Bulley went missing in St. Michaels on Wyre, Lancashire, and investigators are no closer to discovering her whereabouts or what may have happened to the 45-year-old.

Ms Bulley had just dropped her two young daughters off at school and had taken her dog for a walk along their usual route. However, the mortgage advisor’s phone was later found on a bench by the river, alongside the dog lead, with the dog harness on the ground. Her spaniel, Willow, was later found on a footpath by the river, but Ms Bulley had seemingly vanished into thin air.

Here’s a timeline of events investigators have pieced together thus far:

The most popular theory doing the rounds was that Ms Bulley had somehow fallen into the river, and there were suggestions she could have been swept out to sea by now. This theory has now been shot down by Peter Faulding, an expert in forensic science and head of Specialist Group International (SGI); a diving group that has been heavily involved in the search.

Speaking about the baffling case, Faulding says that he doesn’t believe Ms Bulley is in the water, and claimed that it’s ‘impossible’ she made it to the sea:

‘We’ve been using the high frequency side scan sonar in this stretch today and it’s so detailed I can even see every stone of it.

She’s not in this stretch. We also sonar-ed on the other side down yesterday in the tidal river. Now if you take a football on a tidal river…when the tide goes out the the ball will go down the stream and then as soon as the tide turns it will come back in again. It’ll end up back at the same place.

For Nicola to get out to the sea would be impossible, literally, it is such a long way.

After 25 years of doing this kind of work, after hundreds of cases, I am well and truly baffled. When people drown they generally go down where they are.

We normally find them within five to ten metres of where they went down even after a few days.’

Mr Faulding said that neither he nor the authorities have a single piece of evidence to go on at this point:

‘This is the most baffling case that I have ever worked on.

The police have nothing to go on. All they have is a mobile phone at the moment and they said it could possibly be a decoy.’

Despite Faulding’s thoughts, however, police said this week that they still believe Ms Bulley fell into the river. Which is, of course, just a guess because there’s literally zero evidence she went in there at all, and zero evidence pointing to any other possibilities either. The only reason the river is a theory is because there’s a river right there, and nothing else to work with. Ms Bulley’s friends say she’s a ‘strong swimmer’, so for the theory to be true, she would’ve had to knock herself out while falling in or be seriously debilitated somehow to not be able to just climb back out.

As per the Independent, there’s a team of 40 detectives investigating hundreds of lines of inquiry, and we’re still no closer to knowing the truth. It’s just so shocking and fascinating to think that a person can go missing in the middle of the morning in a public park and leave no trace behind, with the country’s top experts working on it and coming up with nothing, as of yet. Here’s hoping there’s a breakthrough in the case sooner rather than later.