Paul Ansell, who is speaking to the news for the first time since Nicola’s death was discovered, says the family thought the early flurry of interest in the case was a good thing.
According to him, they thought it would maintain the pressure on Lancashire Police to continue looking for her. However, that was swiftly eclipsed by a surge of untrained social media “sleuths” who made harsh and blatantly false statements about the case, drawing hate from the public.
“I think anything like that is a double-edged sword,” he continues. “That is the issue. You’re stabbling at a beast.”
The mother-of-two from Lancashire vanished on January 27, 2023.
After her body was discovered in a river on February 19th, an inquest held in June of last year concluded that she had drowned accidentally.
The Search for Nicola Bulley is a documentary that includes interviews with Lancashire Police and Nicola’s family and examines the media attention as well as the effects of amateur online detectives doing their own research.
