A dive search specialist with years of experience says missing mum-of-two Nicola Bulley is not in the river - as she would have been located by police divers by now.
Peter Faulding, who has dealt with similar missing person hunts, said: "I don’t think she fell in the water."
He told breakfast show host Nick Ferrari on LBC: "That's just my opinion with all the drownings I've dealt with over the years.
"They normally go down and the police dive team are brilliant, they know what they're doing, professional, they would have found her, as we would've done.
"We locate people quickly. That's what I'm shocked with, that she's disappeared."
Mr Faulding, who runs search group Specialist Group International, arrived to much media fanfare as he carried out a sonar sweep this week.
There has been no trace of the missing woman since she vanished while walking her dog by the river in St Michael's on Wyre, Lancashire, on January 27.
Her phone was found on a bench by the waterside and had recently connected to a work call. Her dog Willow was running loose.
Police launched an extensive search of the area and said their "main working hypothesis" was that she fell in a river but a body has never been found.
Ms Bulley had dropped her two daughters, aged six and nine, off at school and then gone on her usual dog walk alongside the river before she disappeared.
Mr Faulding told TalkTV yesterday: "After 25 years of doing this kind of work, after hundreds of cases, I am well and truly baffled.
"Normally you would expect the divers to find them easily. The police have nothing to go on.
"All they have is a mobile phone at the moment and they said it could possibly be a decoy."
Mr Faulding said that police had searched the immediate area of the bench on two occasions, and his teams are planning to search there again yesterday.
At the time he said police divers have already thoroughly searched that stretch of the river and wouldn't have missed anything. However, specialist equipment used by his team could help to "completely rule out anything".
Speaking on ITV's Good Morning Britain, he said: "I personally think, if I rule this stretch of river out today where we are working, I don't think she is here and there is probably a third party involved."
