Nearly two months on from police making the sad discovery of Nicola Bulley ’s body in the River Wyre, several questions remain unanswered.
The mum of two, 45, was last seen on January 27 as she walked her dog Willow near the river in St Michael's on Wyre, Lancashire.
Her disappearance sparked a massive search including police, firefighters, mountain rescue, underwater teams and the local community helping to comb through a massive area.
Finally on February 19 her body was found just over a mile from where she went missing.
An inquest into her death is to be heard on Monday, June 26, at County Hall in Preston.
A spokesman for HM Coroner said: “The investigation will take time to complete to ensure that as complete a picture as possible of the facts concerning Ms Bulley's death is presented at the inquest.
"This will assist the family in understanding what occurred."
Until then, several questions remain for police and emergency forces to answer to finally bring peace for Nicola’s partner Paul Ansell and her two children.
Why did officers take so long to find Nicola?
Nicola was last seen on January 27 this year when she dropped her young daughters at school and left the car parked up in St Michael's village.
She was last seen walking her dog on a footpath along the River Wyre at around 9.20am.
One person told the Mirror they spoke with someone who spotted Nicola before she went missing and said "She was laughing and joking with them as she went by".
They went on to say two other dog walkers came across her phone and recognised the screensaver photo.
Three weeks later she was found, a mile away from the area.
But why?
How was her body missed?
Specialist diving teams spent weeks scouring the waters around the area she was last seen but somehow did not manage to find Nicola a mile away in the river.
Friends and family will want to know why they were put through weeks of hell waiting for the sad truth to arrive.
Why was Nicola’s phone left on the bench?
One of the strangest mysteries of Nicola’s disappearance was her abandoned mobile phone found on the nearby park bench.
She had been on a Teams call shortly before her sad disappearance.
But why was the phone on the bench?
What was Nicola’s cause of death?
Possibly most pressing of all is the question as to how did Nicola die and how did she end up in the River Wye?
Until this most crucial question of all is answered there may be no peace for Nicola, her friends or her family.
