Danni King
Nicola Bulley's partner Paul Ansell has spoken out for the first time about her disappearance and death in an emotional interview.
Paul has opened up about the reality of the tragic search for Nicola after she went missing in January 2023. The police search lasted for a total of 23 days and attracted huge media attention, especially on social media.
Sadly, Nicola's body was found in the River Wyre on 19 February, 2023, around one mile from where she vanished. A coroner recorded the 45-year-old's death as accidental, saying she had fallen into the river.
A new BBC documentary, The Search For Nicola Bulley, is due to be released next week on 3 October.
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The programme will look into the media frenzy that ensued after her disappearance was reported and how her loved ones were impacted.
In a tearful interview, Paul describes the media coverage as initially being a good thing, but soon enough things turned bad as internet sleuths begin looking into Nicola's sudden disappearance.
"On top of the trauma of the nightmare that we're in, to then think that all these horrendous things are being said about me towards Nikki - everyone has a limit," he says in the documentary.
"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.
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"Just messages like 'you b******'. 'We know what you did'. 'You know you can't hide Paul', that kind of stuff."
Paul goes on to say he felt 'silenced' as he feared if replied to any of the messages, his responses would then be shared on social media.
He also speaks about the moment he received a phone call regarding Nicola's disappearance.
He was called by his children's school to say that somebody had found their dog and Nicola's phone by a bench, and Paul immediately knew 'something wasn't right there'.
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Paul says: "I mean, that's not a normal phone call to get. She would never have left Willow. 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."
Paul recalls how trying to explain to their children that Nicola was missing was understandably difficult during the search.
Tearfully, he says in the interview: "The nights were the hardest. 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?"