The detective leading the hunt for Nicola Bulley has stressed the force is doing all it can to find the missing mum-of-two. But on Wednesday night there was another sad milestone in her disappearance as the specialist search team left the scene saying it had not been able to find anything in the river.
Peter Faulding, who was called in by the family to help find Nicola, met her partner Paul Ansell to deliver the difficult news and described the case as a "complete mystery".
Thursday marks day 14 of the search in St Michael’s on Wyre, Lancashire, after the mum-of-two went missing while out walking her dog Willow on the morning of Friday, January 27.. Live updates as search reaches day 14.
Lancashire Police continue to work on the hypothesis that the 45-year-old sadly fell into the river for some reason, but added that they "remain open minded", and are continuing to carry out a huge number of enquiries.
They say: "Our priority throughout this investigation has been on finding Nicola and providing answers for her family. They are being supported by specially trained officers."
This is the timeline Lancashire Police have put together of Nicola's known movements on the morning of January 27:
8.26am: Nicola leaves her home address with her children
8.40am: Nicola drops the children off at school and has a brief conversation with another parent
8.43am: Nicola walked along the path by the River Wyre towards the gate/bench into the lower field, having dropped her children off at school
8:47am (approximately): A dog-walker – somebody who knows Nicola – saw her walking around the lower field with her dog. Their two dogs interacted briefly before the witness left the field via the river path
8.53am: She sent an email to her boss
8.59 am: She sent message to a friend
9.01am: She logged into a Teams call
9.10am (approximately): A witness – somebody who knows Nicola – saw her on the upper field walking her dog, Willow. Work is ongoing today to establish exactly what time this was.
9.20am: Her phone was back in the area of the bench
9.30am: The Teams call ended but Nicola stayed logged on
9.33am (approximately): Nicola’s mobile phone and Willow were found at a bench by the river by another dog-walker.
This map from Lancashire Police shows the area where Nicola went missing:
Nicola’s phone was left on the bench near the river, still connected to a work call, with the dog lead and harness found close by.
Police have said that CCTV enquiries have focused on Nicola’s movements and whether she could have left the fields near to the river, whether that be via Allotment Lane, the river path leading to Garstang Road, or by Rowanwater at the top of the upper field.
Most of their sightings of Nicola have been by witnesses who knew her and that has enabled them to plot her movements from the school, along the river path and into the field.
Police have said: "We can say with confidence that by reviewing CCTV, Nicola has not left the field during the key times via Rowanwater, either through the site itself or via the piece of land at the side.
"Also, we can say that she did not return from the fields along Allotment Lane or via the path at the rear of the Grapes pub onto Garstang Road."
Mr Faulding and his team, from rescue operation Specialist Group International (SGI), have been searching the area around the bench, the “entry point” where it is believed by police Nicola fell into the water.
But he said their three-day involvement ended on Wednesday (February 8) after a “thorough and extensive search of the areas we were tasked with by Lancashire Police” found “no sign of Nicola”.
On what he thinks happened to her, he said: “It’s a total mystery for me, I really don’t know.
“In all the searches I’ve done, this is one which will stick with me. Normally we get tasked with, you know, searching for a knife or a body and there’s been a witness to a drowning or we’ve got really good intelligence.
“The sort of information we’ve got here is a mobile phone on a bench but we don’t know anything else. I’m glad really that we haven’t found Nicola because I didn’t want to recover another dead body..
“It just opens it up, is she alive, is she dead? Did she go in the river or didn’t she? And I can’t say one way or another. I’m baffled by it and I think most people are.”
Search teams from Lancashire Police and the Coastguard, including divers, are now focusing on the 10 miles or so of river downstream of the bench, where the River Wyre empties into the sea at Morecambe Bay.
Superintendent Sally Riley, of Lancashire Police, described the search as “unprecedented”, with 40 detectives following 500 lines of inquiry, with thousands of pieces of information coming in from the public.
And officers were trying to trace dashcam footage from 700 drivers who went through the village on the morning Nicola disappeared. But Supt Riley ruled out criminal or third-party involvement and on Tuesday reiterated the police’s belief that Nicola had fallen into the river, with her body still unrecovered and police treating the incident as a missing person inquiry.
Police have also reportedly handed a dispersal order to a group of men who had travelled 50 miles from the Liverpool area to the Lancashire village on Wednesday night. They apparently tried to search a property close where Nicola went missing - but her friends said today that the property has already been "searched from top to bottom by the police".
* Anyone with information or footage is asked to call 101, quoting log 565 of January 30.
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