Online obsession with Nicola Bulley became a 'monster', family tells BBC

Nicola Bulley’s partner has described the social media fixation and online obsession with her disappearance as a "monster" that got out of control.

Speaking publicly for the first time since Nicola’s body was found, Paul Ansell tells the BBC the family felt the initial wave of interest in the case was a positive thing.

They hoped it would keep the pressure on Lancashire Police to keep searching for her, he says. But that was quickly overtaken by a wave of amateur social media "sleuths" posting hurtful and wildly misleading claims about the case - with the family receiving online hate.

"I think anything like that is a double-edged sword," he adds. "That's the problem. You're poking a monster."

The Lancashire mother-of-two disappeared on 27 January 2023 while walking her dog in St Michael's on Wyre, shortly after dropping her daughters off at school.

Her body was found in a river on 19 February and an inquest in June last year found she had died due to accidental drowning.

A documentary, called the Search For Nicola Bulley, explores the media coverage and the impact of amateur internet sleuths conducting their own investigations, as well as hearing from Lancashire Police and Nicola’s family.

The Friday morning of her disappearance was "normal", Paul tells the documentary.

He says Nicola left at about 08:30 to take their two children to school with the family’s dog, Willow.

When she didn’t return at the usual time, Paul says he wasn't overly worried. But at about 10:30 the children’s school rang to say somebody had found their dog and Nicola’s phone by a bench.

"I mean, that's not a normal phone call to get," he tells the documentary. "She would never have left Willow."

He says he immediately knew "something isn't right here" and recalls feeling like he was having a panic attack.

"It's where you feel like your legs have gone. In a situation like that, your mind is going absolutely crazy. And so I rang the police as I was driving."

"That Friday, I was just sat at my desk, and I got a phone call from Paul," Louise Cunningham, Nicola’s sister tells the documentary. "And he was panicky and frantic, and he was like, 'something's happened, something strange has happened'."

The documentary hears the turmoil the family went through as the search for Nicola intensified - as well as the impact it had on Nicola and Paul’s young children.

"The nights were the hardest,” Paul re of the search. ”In the morning the hope would be strong. It used to go dark at like 4pm.

"It used to get to about 3pm and then I’d start panicking that I knew it would start going dark in an hour. So we had an hour to find her.

"And then obviously I’d have the girls. The first they’d do when they came out of school was run over and say ‘have we found mummy":[]}