UK police find body in missing person case of Nicola Bulley that led to social media circus
- Nicola Bulley, 45, was last seen on January 27 shortly after dropping her two daughters off at school
- The case has gripped the country, attracting blanket media coverage as well as amateur sleuths
Police searching for a woman who vanished three weeks ago in northwest England found a body in a river close to where she was last seen, the Lancashire Constabulary said Sunday. Formal identification of the body is pending.
The search for Nicola Bulley, 45, has riveted Britain since she went missing on January 27 while walking her dog along the River Wyre. It also generated a circus of sorts in the tiny community of St Michael’s on Wyre as speculation on social media spurred unofficial searches and attracted amateur sleuths.
Would-be rescuers broke into derelict buildings despite police assurances that exhaustive searches were taking place. Some launched nighttime patrols, challenging locals who came face-to-face with strangers rattling their gates and prowling through their front gardens.
Confidence in the police plummeted amid criticism that police had botched the search for Bulley, a mortgage adviser who was last seen shortly after taking her daughters, ages 6 and 9, to school on a Friday morning.
The Lancashire police department, which dedicated 40 detectives to the investigation, came under increasing criticism the longer the case went unsolved.
In an apparent effort to respond, the force said Bulley was classified as a “high-risk” missing person “based on a number of specific vulnerabilities”. It later revealed she had struggled with alcohol and perimenopause before she vanished.