Found Deceased UK - Nicola Bulley Last Seen Walking Dog Near River - St Michaels on Wyre (Lancashire) #9

[DazN]

IMO I agree with you & I’m not trying to deliberately be argumentative with other people, however, I’ve owned Fitbits for nearly 15 years. At one stage, after a couple of years of use, I had one that I could not charge, I tried everything the Fitbit website told me to do, I couldn’t get it to charge. I contacted Fitbit & within a day they called me & whilst it had a completely flat battery, they somehow remotely accessed my Fitbit data & told me when I had last synched it & the last time I had charged it successfully. They were able to do something to it that fixed it so that it started charging again & it was done over the phone. I’m in Australia & there are no Fitbit shops in this country to take them to for fixing. MOO

"they somehow remotely accessed my Fitbit data & told me when I had last synched it & the last time I had charged it successfully."

This data will be in the app and therefore on the Fitbit servers. LE will have had this info from NB's phone. IMO

 

[cottonweaver]

This stuff annoys me so much!

Why do they keep publishing images of the house and describe it as 'abandoned'

spooky!

whole case feels like news media trying to view a ( probable) accidental drowning thru the true crime lens. For clicks, for £££
( Media could've focussed eg on the appeal to 700 vehicles for dash cam, that would have been more constructive imo)

 

[Deleted member 320164]

It's very difficult because often these will not be found in accidental drownings in open water* but a coroner will still later find it's death by misadventure or accidental death, drowning ( if no criminal evidence or hinting towards suicide)

* Just cause of the nature of such cases, their location etc. ( remote or less busy than this one) and because moving bodies of water also move debris as well as literally wash-away signs of slips & struggles etc

Here's a case, discovered 2 days ago, poor guy ( Completely different river risks & location, Yorkshire , but another case where there seems to have been no witnesses. Went missing walking in December. Fit 45year old walker)

Man's body found in search for missing North Yorkshire man

A BODY recovered from the River Ure in Ripon is that of a missing man Gavin Dhont.

www.yorkpress.co.uk

And yet in the case 45 years earlier a glove was found on the bank.

It really depends on the scenario - if you fall off a jetty into deep water, it’s understandable if there’s no trace.. In many cases in which people go missing and turn up drowned, no-one knows if or where that person may have entered the water let alone done thorough search of the area.

The police narrative here is that they know where she “fell in”and she got into some kind of difficulty with the dog at the river’s edge and fell in. But the harness is up by the bench and the dog is dry. And there is zero trace of her ever having been at the water’s edge.

 

[msmarple99]

I've been close to drowning twice. One time was in the middle of a busy swimming pool. I went under and back up several times. I was fighting for breath and it was all totally silent because I couldn't breathe. On possibly my last surfacing, someone, totally unaware, happened to be going past with a life belt which I grabbed.
Another time I got swept out into the North Sea by an undertow. There was no point in shouting - was just trying to stay afloat and not swallow too much water. I was rescued after an hour.

You have been very lucky, how terrifying

 

[Seattle1]

A mom took her dog for a walk in northern England last week. Her partner says she 'vanished into thin air'

On a cold January morning, a mother-of-two dropped her young daughters off at school before taking her springer spaniel for their usual walk by the river.

www.cnn.com

Specialist search teams from Lancashire Police beside the bench where Nicola Bulley's phone was found.

Retracing final steps​

Others out walking their dogs that morning were the last people to see Bulley before she vanished – and it seems there was nothing unusual about her manner.

According to Lancashire Police Superintendent Sally Riley, Bulley was familiar with the area and would often do the same walk.

A friend of Bulley’s told the Mirror that she had since spoken to two dog walkers who had seen Bulley that day, saying that she had been “laughing and joking” with them as she passed by.

• She was sighted by one dog walker in a field with Willow at around 8.50 a.m., police said. Willow was not on the lead.
• At 8.53 a.m., Bulley sent an email to her boss.
• She logged into the Teams work call at 9.01 a.m. “All of this was normal behavior for Nicola,” Superintendent Wiley told a press briefing on Friday afternoon.
• Her last confirmed sighting was at 9.10 a.m., when another dog walker known to Bulley saw her walking with Willow on Upper Field.
• Police believe her phone was on the bench near the riverbank at 9.20 a.m. after tracing telephony records.
• The work call ended 10 minutes later, at 9.30 a.m.
• A passerby discovered the phone at around 9.35 a.m. It was still connected to the conference call. Her brown spaniel was found running loose between the gate to the field and the bench. Lancashire Police confirmed to CNN that the dog was dry and did not appear to have entered the water.

Bulley’s partner of 12 years, Paul Ansell, rushed to the scene after receiving a call from his daughters’ school that the family dog had been found, Bulley’s friend told the Mirror. He quickly phoned the police.

During Friday’s press briefing, Superintendent Riley said officers were “particularly interested” in the time between the phone being placed on the bench at 9.20 a.m. and the device being recovered 10 minutes later.

“We only have a 10-minute window in which we cannot account for Nicola’s movements,” she said.

[..]

“We believe that Nicola was in the riverside area and remained at the riverside area. We remain open to any inquiries that might lead us to question that, but at this time we understand that she was by the river.”

[..]

Meanwhile, worried locals keen to aid in the search operation have been participating in organized walks.

[..]

Superintendent Riley acknowledged there has been a high level of concern in the local community. “However, parts of the riverbank are treacherous, and we would ask that nobody puts themselves in danger and that the police and partner agencies’ efforts to find Nicola are not compromised,” she said.

 

[Fishwick]

"they somehow remotely accessed my Fitbit data & told me when I had last synched it & the last time I had charged it successfully."

This data will be in the app and therefore on the Fitbit servers. LE will have had this info from NB's phone. IMO

None of that post contradicts what I have been stating. Yes they can see when it has been synched - no they can't see data in the app that hasn't been synched. Nothing is on the servers that hasn't been uploaded to the phone, Fitbits don't have that capability - it's still local to the device.

 

[OrlandoJames]

I have seen a lot of frustration on here, about the insistence "She fell in the water" I cannot believe how frustrating it must be for the family, I really hope that the police are just keeping things close, and not just wedded to the idea and have confirmation bias (although can it be confirmation bias if there's no evidence?)

MOO Theory: Anyway, have you seen the pictures on google maps of the field? There is a dog walker in one of the pictures, and when I was looking the thought occurred, I can see the dog pretty well, I can see the colour of the coat and trousers, but that's it. I don't know if I could recognise my own child at that distance. We know Willow, and the phone were in that field at 9.10, but all we know is someone who matched NBs description was in that field with Willow off the lead. I am no longer sure we can say NB was in that field at all. We know she sent a text message at 8.53, and there doesn't appear to be anything suspicious about the text, and we know she dropped the kids off at school. But that's actually it.

I get A LOT of teams calls/ meetings. It annoyingly bleeps when a call comes in, so the fact that she signed in to the meeting at 9.01, but if we have a 9am meeting, most of us sign in at 8.59am. (I would guess they have asked is it usual shes late?)

Speculation bit: What I'm saying is, if we extend the timeline to she dropped the kids off 8.43, walked towards her normal walk, met the other dog walker and sent a text and 8.53, the chance of something happening to her becomes a lot more possible. If it was planned, an accomplice wearing black clothing, maybe not even planned just incidental, walking the dog and the phone to the "edge of the water" to place the idea shes fallen in. Would be seen at a distance as NB. But CCTV would show a completed different person, not suspiciously leaving the field. I also speculate that if you were carrying someones phone to create an artificial timeline and a teams call started, you might after a few moments of indecision decide to "join" on mute and camera off to seem that the phone was with NB later than it actually was.

She was seen in the field by people who know her. She took her usual route, which went past the bench. Her phone was on the bench and her dog was found close to the bench, which would make complete sense if this is the last place she last saw Nicola. Why would Willlow hang around in that area otherwise? It makes no sense.

And logging in to a team meeting a minute after it starts? It happens all the time. I do it. Most meetings I log into have people arriving a minute or two late.

Until a body is found, it obviously makes sense to keep an open mind. But the extraordinary scenarios that some folk will conjure up in order to convince themselves of foul play is quite astonishing to behold.

 

[hedgetog]

Does anyone remember how this case first presented in the media? I have to admit I don't remember actively reading about it until a few days after she went missing, was it a big story from the off? Or did it gain momentum on social media due to the mysterious nature and the media followed? Just interested as I cannot recall myself.

 

[Cluella DeVille]

She could - but what happened next? The police are fairly sure they have the exits covered apart from the one NB entered the fields from (albeit agree with others that an exit outside of paths is possible).

I'd encourage people to view the videos on this route - it's long and thin, with barely any places to exit and large parts of it fenced. Any abduction or similar going out via this path would be highly visible to anyone else along it.

The million dollar question of course....what happened next indeed?!
But there is a quest for explanations as how her phone and dog would have arrived at the bench via her own hand, as opposed to her disappearance elsewhere on the route and someone else depositing her phone and dog to the bench.

 

[blueangellight]

Perhaps he didn't have the resources to do so. The cost of the search must be astronomical.

I believe He was under LE instructions where he could search, LE had there own search team on the estuary part I believe, this is what I understand by his interviews, JMO

 

[JimmyBets]

Shocking and just a day after the last presser where Supt Sally Riley warned people to stop breaking into properties.
And, naturally it's the same 'newspaper' which 24 hrs earlier broadcast the erroneous information to an audience of millions.

So Heather Gibbons speaks for the family and says one thing regarding that house and Tilly Ann posts on FB ‘with permission’ and clearly states something else. Not only do family appear at loggerheads with LE they don’t seem to able to agree amongst themselves - Almost like someone is spinning different lines to different people and we never get closer to the truth.

 

[flysleuthD]

Does anyone remember how this case first presented in the media? I have to admit I don't remember actively reading about it until a few days after she went missing, was it a big story from the off? Or did it gain momentum on social media due to the mysterious nature and the media followed? Just interested as I cannot recall myself.






Yes from day 1 this was a media story...initially on fb I saw it hours after reported

 

[cottonweaver]

And yet in the case 45 years earlier a glove was found on the bank.

It really depends on the scenario - if you fall off a jetty into deep water, it’s understandable if there’s no trace.. In many cases in which people go missing and turn up drowned, no-one knows if or where that person may have entered the water let alone done thorough search of the area.

The police narrative here is that they know where she “fell in”and she got into some kind of difficulty with the dog at the river’s edge and fell in. But the harness is up by the bench and the dog is dry. And there is zero trace of her ever having been at the water’s edge.

OFC, every case different.
Riley keeps saying that she's loathe to speculate on the circumstances of how she might have fallen into the river. I didn't get the impression - from either presser that she/they are attached to one which involves difficulty with the dog at the river’s edge. ( Link to older press conference is the video on page 1 of this thread)

LE has a working hypothesis based on some circumstantial evidence, probability assessments and the elimination of most of the exit routes which make them believe that NB never left that area.

Have to wait for the path via Garstang Rd to be bottomed-out? That could potentially be faster than search of millions cubic metres of ever-shifting body of water & miles of riverbanks.


general point
keep noticing this ' Police now saying she could have exited Garstang path lane unseen'
That came from the Mail. If you watch the old presser - page 1 of this thread - LE had been asking for dash cam on the path to Garstang Road for over a week. This isn't a sudden change of tack afaik.

 

[Fishwick]

So Heather Gibbons speaks for the family and says one thing regarding that house and Tilly Ann posts on FB ‘with permission’ and clearly states something else. Not only do family appear at loggerheads with LE they don’t seem to able to agree amongst themselves - Almost like someone is spinning different lines to different people and we never get closer to the truth.

This is exactly why the police should be the authority on what they have searched, not SM posts from familiy friends that have at best heard 4th hand.

 

[mrjitty]

"they somehow remotely accessed my Fitbit data & told me when I had last synched it & the last time I had charged it successfully."

This data will be in the app and therefore on the Fitbit servers. LE will have had this info from NB's phone. IMO

Exactly.

To be clear the data exists in 3 places

- the remote device (i.e. the fitbit & synced via bluetooth)
- on your phone (i.e in the app)
- in the cloud (synced via the app over wi-fi/cellular)

So your phone is the middle point which syncs in both directions

 

[Belleville]

I'm not sure float would be the correct word. A d**d body sinks, it would have to be a strong current to move an object that weighed around 9 stone (just guessing at weight) for miles

She should have resurfaced by now, so unless she's caught up in vegetation, she would be floating.

 

[Nikynoo]

"they somehow remotely accessed my Fitbit data & told me when I had last synched it & the last time I had charged it successfully."

This data will be in the app and therefore on the Fitbit servers. LE will have had this info from NB's phone. IMO

yes, but they need a court order to obtain that information and then fitbit need to act on it. Are the Fitbit servers in the UK does anyone know, because if they're not, it will take time to serve that court order in the US or anywhere else outside the jurisdiction of the UK. So, in short, the police may not have the fitbit info yet.

 

[GTB72]

I believe He was under LE instructions where he could search, LE had there own search team on the estuary part I believe, this is what I understand by his interviews, JMO

Yes. I think you're right. I don't have the video to hand but he basically said his remit was to search upstream for a mile and from the bench to the weir. And that Police divers had searched the area comprehensively too. He praised the Police saying there were highly competent and would continue the search. It was the most magnanimous I had seen PF to be fair.

 

[cottonweaver]

Does anyone remember how this case first presented in the media? I have to admit I don't remember actively reading about it until a few days after she went missing, was it a big story from the off? Or did it gain momentum on social media due to the mysterious nature and the media followed? Just interested as I cannot recall myself.

IIRC as a ' mystery ' whodunnit type case in the nationals ( Mail initially)

IDK how the local press framed it but there are locals on this thread who'll know better

 

[Belleville]

That she went in the river?

A sighting
A sound
An item of clothing
A possession being found
Signs of a slip or fall down the bank
Signs of a struggle to get out
The dog 100% not being wet
etc etc

We don’t have any of that. All we have is two weeks of searches finding nothing and the expert saying she’s not in there.

Non of that is found when someone is eventually found in a canal/river. They only knew the fireman was in the canal because they found his body. Possessions were found, by the river!