THE HUNT FOR NICOLA

How police blunders and internet sleuths hampered the search for a mother of two who went missing in England 

- NICOLA WHITFIELD

MISSING people don’t often make the news in a world beset by crisis and catastrophe – it’s too commonplace an occurrence, too everyday to command headlines. 

But every now and then one disappears into circumstances intriguing enough to capture the imagination of an entire country. And that’s exactly what happened when a 45-year-old mother of two seemed to vanish into thin air one frosty morning in a picturesque English town. 

As the days crept into weeks, members of the community rallied behind her family – yet, by the time the story reached its tragic conclusion, it had become about more than the search for a missing woman. Police incompetence and the morbid fascination of amateur sleuths desperate for social-media fame had been exposed too. 

Within hours of disappearing, Nicola Bulley was making national headlines. 

Photographs of her appeared on front pages of papers, on news sites and national TV, showing an attractive, smiling woman with long blonde hair and a slight chip in her right front tooth. 

She was pictured dressed up with her partner, Paul Ansell, walking her dog along the river and in outdoor selfies – an active, healthy-looking mom living a seemingly ordinary life. 

And the ordinariness of her last day made the story all the more fascinating. CCTV footage from a security system at her home in Inskip, Lancashire, showed her loading Willow, her beloved springer spaniel, into the boot of her car before taking her daughters, aged nine and six, to school.