NICOLA Bulley may have been targeted and taken or could have run off with a lover, an expert involved in the missing person case has claimed.
Dive expert Peter Faulding, 60, has been searching the River Wye for the mum-of-two who disappeared 14 days ago.
Lancashire Police believe the 45-year-old fell into the river while she was out walking the family’s dog Willow.
However, Faulding remains unconvinced of this theory which has put him at odds with the force’s Superintendent Sally Riley who made it clear at a press conference that Faulding wasn’t included in on all the details in the case.
He has revealed that he had a “blunt conversation” with Nicola’s partner Paul Ansell after he was asked by the dad to help in the search.
Faulding told the Daily Mail: “I told him I had to be completely frank with him, and that he needed to confront all options, hard though it was. Nicola was a pretty lady, she was a creature of habit, and she could have been targeted and taken.”
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While there is no evidence of this, he also suggested: “She could have run off with a lover, she could have walked from the bench to the main road and into a car. It may seem unlikely — but everything about this case seems unlikely.
“It’s important to be upfront about these things, upsetting though it is. The cases I have worked on — you can’t rule anything out. That’s why I have been brought in.”
During his 28-year career, Faulding has located hundreds of bodies, including cases where the police failed.
In November 2011, his team found the body of Kate Prout, a 55-year-old woman from Gloucestershire, who had last been seen alive four years earlier.
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Her husband Adrian was later convicted of her murder and he confessed he had buried her body on their farmland.
Faulding said the missing person case of Nicola Bulley was one of the most baffling he had been involved in since setting up his own search and rescue company Specialist Group International in 1995.
It comes as…
- Heartbroken Paul begs Nicola Bulley to "just come home" in an emotional message
- Cops confirm they are hunting the owner of a red van seen in the area where the mum vanished
- Paul Ansell reveals a major twist over how his partner's phone was found
- The morning Nicola vanished felt "different" to others, says Paul Ansell
- Nicola Bulley's children ask if "mummy is famous" as search continues into 14th day
- Nicola's partner Paul says that he expected to be a suspect in her disappearance
Nicola went missing on January 27 having dropped her two daughters off at school.
She was last seen by a fellow dogwalker at 9.10am.
Just ten minutes later, her phone and her dog’s harness were discovered on a bench by the river, leading investigators to suspect she disappeared during the “ten-minute window”.
However, Faulding pointed out that the ten minutes mark the time from when she was last seen to when her phone was found, “which doesn’t actually mean that much”.
Faulding added he had spoken to Nicola’s friends who told him that as far as they knew she rarely walked by the river bank.
He claimed one of them had shown him her Strava app which recorded her walking activity and it showed she didn’t walk by the river but in the fields.
Faulding believes this could have been a decoy, as with the case of Laura Tom.
The 18-year-old disappeared in 2003 having celebrated passing her driving test at a pub near her home in Owston Ferry near Scunthorpe.
One of her white stilettos was discovered close to a nearby river bank.
However, her body was found buried in a haystack 11 days later.
Pub landlord Guy Beckett, Laura’s on-off boyfriend, was later convicted of her murder.
While Faulding may not disagree with conducting a thorough underwater search of the River Wye, he remains puzzled that, to his knowledge, the search hasn’t been extended to the surrounding fields where Nicola was last seen.
Faulding wants the cops to “keep lines of enquiry open”.
It comes after Nicola’s partner Paul said he believed a local was responsible for her disappearance.
In an extensive interview with Dan Walker on Channel 5, Paul said: "People don't just vanish into thin air. It's absolutely impossible. So something has happened.
"Whatever has happened, in my eyes, has to be somebody who knows the local area.
"You would only know that area, by local, it's a local area."
Paul insisted that he is "100 per cent" sure that she did not fall into the river, as police believe.
The dad said: "People don't just vanish into thin air, it's absolutely impossible.
"So something has happened. Something has happened. Find out what it is. Find out what it is.
"There has to be a way to find out what happened, there has to be.
"You cannot, you cannot walk your dog down a river and just vanish into thin air. Something happened that day, something."
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In the interview, Paul also revealed how he expected to be a suspect in the case.
The dad begged Nicola to "just come home", and also shared the moment "panic" set in on the morning Nicola vanished.
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