Three takeaways from the BBC's new Nicola Bulley documentary

The disappearance of mother-of-two Nicola Bulley, her family's anguish, media coverage and the impact of social media sleuths that followed has been detailed in a new BBC documentary airing this week.

Bulley, 45, vanished on 27 January, 2023, after dropping her daughters off at school and then taking her dog for a walk along the River Wyre in St Michael’s on Wyre, Lancashire.

The mortgage adviser seemingly vanished without a trace, with her phone sitting on a park bench – still on a Teams call – and the family dog running loose.

Bulley had no obvious reason to leave, fuelling a host of conspiracy theories on social media, and an army of TikTok sleuths who became a thorn in the side of Lancashire Police during their three-week search.

Here, Yahoo News takes a look at three key takeaways from BBC One's new documentary, including claims police changed a statement about her mental health without telling her family; and her husband's claim that an amateur TikTok sleuth filmed him at the school gates.

Nicola Bulley's husband hounded by trolls

Already dealing with the shock of his wife going missing, Paul Ansell reveals how he received a barrage of messages from internet trolls convinced he'd played a part in Bulley's disappearance.

Having given a media interview appealing for help, TikTokers and streamers were quick to give their opinions on his body language and facial expressions – fuelling conspiracy theories that he was somehow responsible.

“I was getting direct messages from people that I’ve never met – they don’t know me, they don’t know us, they don’t know Nikki,” Ansell said, revealing that he'd received messages saying "You can't hide" and "We know what you did".

Ansell says people were also suggesting he was having an affair with one of Bulley's friends, and that a woman caught leaving the house on CCTV on the morning of the disappearance wasn't her.

He also reveals how he agreed to the interview with Sky News after receiving scrutiny on social media for not joining Bulley's parents for a previous interview.

"You release something to try and squash something and all it does is then spiral into something else," he says, adding that if he replied to the trolls, he feared it would be posted online and used against him.

"You can't do anything about it.. on top of everything else, on top of the trauma of the nightmare we're in - to then think that all of these horrendous things were being said about me - towards Nicky - everyone has a limit don't they?"

Bungled police statements

When rumours began circulating online about an incident at the family home involving alcohol and the police, the force called a press conference in an attempt to counter the misinformation.

As it turned out, Bulley had gone through a period where she'd struggled with her mental health, perimenopause and with alcohol. Ansell says during the incident being discussed online, the call was made to a mental health team – not to police, although officers did attend.

Bulley's sister, Louise Cunningham says the family called 999 on January 10 when Bulley had been drinking and had fallen over and hurt her arm, with the documentary hearing how she'd stopped drinking and was "getting a lot more stability" in the days before her death.

"We were just hoping and praying that none of that would come out – because no one gets the story, no one understands the background," he added.

However, Lancashire Police unintentionally added fuel to the speculation, when the force called a press conference and used the vague term of "a number of specific vulnerabilities" to describe why Bulley was deemed "high risk".

Ansell says the family were expecting police to mention "private medical history" and that the statement had been changed.

"Obviously the press conference didn't go as I hoped it would," Detective Superintendent Becky Smith tells the documentary, adding that police had caught wind of a number of papers planning to publish a story "imminently".

Police quickly pivoted, with Smith saying her team worked with the family on a new statement and an agreement of words. "By that, I don't mean they were happy about this, they absolutely weren't, but neither were we."

The family say they wanted certain paragraphs to be "tweaked" but that before they knew it, while they were still working on it, it had been released. Police then received more criticism and accusations of "victim blaming" after detailing Bulley's struggles with alcohol and the menopause in their statement.

"I understand in hindsight, it might seem we didn't need to do that, but in the moment, when you are being told people are threatening to publish stories you know will damage the family, you have to take some action."

Conspiracy theories and social media frenzy

The BBCs new documentary also explores how rapidly the case spread across social media, inviting a number of armchair conspiracy theorists and TikTok detectives to get involved.

Ansell recalls how he was picking his daughter's up at school when TikTok-er Curtis Arnold was stood in the school car park filming him. "I thought to myself, you've got to be kidding me."

Dan Duffy, who was arrested and fined after joining the search for Bulley uninvited, is also featured in the documentary, with a video showing him walking through the woods at night, describing himself as a "paranormal investigator".

Holding a device, he's heard saying: "Nicola, are you here? Have you passed away?"

Journalist Inzamam Rashid, who'd covered the case for Sky News, tells the documentary how details of the investigation appearing on TikTok "really turns the dial" because "people believe 'well it was on TikTok, and its now in the newspaper, so it must be true'.

"There was a real hunger for new lines on this story, and so you felt that pressure on the ground to deliver and to provide content that would do well."

Ansell tells how heavy mainstream media attention kept pressure on police, but that it also fuelled the unfounded speculation on social media. "I think anything like that is a double-edged sword," he says, "That's the problem. You're poking a monster."

The Search for Nicola Bulley will air on Thursday, 3 October at 9pm on BBC One.

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