“I have never seen anything like it,” said Det Supt Becky Smith, the senior investigating officer on the case of missing Lancashire woman Nicola Bulley, last week. Though Smith was talking about the attention on social media, where wild speculation of the case had blown up, these could have been the words of anyone after what has become one of the highest profile – and most unusual – missing persons cases in years.
To those who observed it closely, there was probably only one way that Bulley left the field where her phone was discovered, still logged on to a work call, nearly a month ago. And, sadly, after a body was found on Sunday morning in the River Wyre close to where Bulley went missing, it looks as though the police may have been right.
But that will not be vindication for Lancashire constabulary, which will be facing the consequences of its poor handling of communication with the public for years to come.
What happens behind police tape and in incident rooms across the country has become progressively harder for journalists to determine, as police communications have tightened. In the Bulley case, as in so many missing persons cases or crimes yet to be solved, so little information was provided that there was nothing “official” to report for days on end. This vacuum, as one ex-police officer explained, can lead to speculation among a public desperate for news. And once the speculation gets going, it takes on a life of its own.
The focus on the River Wyre, which had been shaped by police intelligence, appeared to many onlookers as a botched investigation. Police seemed laser-focused on only one “working hypothesis” and after criticism for not securing the scene, allowing it to be visited by all manner of TikTokers and YouTubers, they appeared to backtrack, saying they were looking at hundreds of lines of inquiry. This didn’t do much to raise hopes.
There were signs there was simply not “more to it”, as some armchair detectives supposed. Describing Bulley as high risk, saying they were not looking for a third party in connection with the disappearance and focusing on the river were all clues that Lancashire constabulary had a good idea about what happened to her, even if they were not telling us. The implicit message was: trust us.
But the public simply couldn’t. Lancashire constabulary had forgotten that confidence in police, especially when dealing with women, is at a low.
And then, in the empty silence, a loud voice rang out. When the diver Peter Faulding arrived on the scene saying Bulley could not have fallen into the river, suddenly somebody was saying something. Faulding, whose book had been published the week before, gave updates multiple times a day to the eager press – on what intel it wasn’t clear, since police had not involved him in the investigation.
Like the pied piper, the public followed and Lancashire constabulary struggled desperately to keep control of the narrative. When they eventually began releasing more details, there was nothing they could have said that would have won over the crowd. What they did say though – revealing that Bulley had an alcohol problem brought on by struggles with the menopause – was roundly criticised by MPs and labelled “as sexist as it comes”, by campaigners.
Though Lancashire constabulary’s handling of the search itself may later be proven good enough, having brought in partners including the National Crime Agency and even The Environment Agency to help find the missing 45-year-old, they will be remembered as blundering and incompetent.
Hopefully, this will be a much-needed lesson for police forces across the UK about the importance of trusting the public in the same way as they expect us to trust them.
