Police handling of Nicola Bulley case to be under full independent review
Diving expert Peter Faulding has been “made a scapegoat” over the investigation of the death of Nicola Bulley, whose body was found in the River Wyre three weeks after she went missing.
Mr Faulding, previously registered as an expert on the National Crime Agency’s list of experts, was struck off from the list after his team failed to locate Ms Bulley’s body in the three-mile stretch of the river, between St Michael’s and Cartford Bridge.
Leaping to his defence, former police detective and criminologist Mark Williams-Thomas claimed that Mr Faulding and his team’s ability to find bodies on land and water “is amongst the best in the world”.
“He has been made a scapegoat, Lancashire Police searched that whole area already before Pete arrived,” he said.
Mr Faulding was brought in to assist the search at the family’s request and claimed in media interviews that the 45-year-old dog walker was not in the river, adding that if she was in that river he “would have found her”.
Meanwhile, Lancashire Constabulary had been found to “require improvement” in how it investigated crime months before the force investigated Bulley’s disappearance.
