Day-by-day diary reveals what really happened during Nicola Bulley search

A new documentary about the disappearance of Nicola Bulley will reveal key new information from her family and police, the Mirror reports. The Search For Nicola Bulley will air next week on BBC One and the makers worked with the family on the project, which also has involvement from the police who were key to finding Nicola's body.

Mother-of-two Nicola disappeared on 27 January 2023 while walking her dog in St Michael's on Wyre, shortly after dropping her daughters at school.

Her body was found in a river on 19 February 2023 and an inquest in June last year found she had died due to accidental drowning. The documentary goes through the search day-by-day to show what really happened:

Day 1

Nicola's partner Paul Ansell describes the Friday morning as "normal as any other" up until Nicola left in the car with their two children heading to school at 8.26am. Viewers hear the 999 call made by Paul.

READ MORE: Nicola Bulley's partner makes heartbreaking admission 18 months after her tragic death

On the 999 call, Paul says: "I'm was getting concerned because she is normally back by 9.30. I thought she must have got chatting to somebody. I have been trying to call her since about 10.30. The school has just called me to say somebody's found the dog, and my partner's put her phone down on a bench and the dog lead, and she's nowhere to be seen."

Later in the 999 call he then mentions she has been struggling recently. He adds: "She has been struggling with a mental health so it's very concerning. She's been going through the pre-menopause, and that's given her a lot of issues. She has been struggling and been a bit up and down."

He tells the documentary he said this on the call as he thought it would make the police jump into action. He explains: "I knew that that would make them act immediately." Paul says he had "like a panic attack" when the school called him and he then drove to St Michael's On Wyre where Willow the dog had been found with Nicola's phone. He made the 999 call on the way.

He started to look and shouting her name, the police then arrived and sent Paul home. Nicola's dad Ernest goes and joins the search alongside police, describes it as being "like a film set" with multiple emergency services on site looking for her.

James Pinder, search advisor at Lancashire Police, says his first instinct was Nicola was in the water. He explains: "In my mind, she was in the water. You've got a woman who disappears next to a river at the top of a steep bank. But the biggest thing was the dog Willow.

"She was off the lead. There was nothing to keep her in that location physically, but she wouldn't leave the area between the bench and the water. If Nikki had walked off in a different direction and maybe climbed over a fence and gone across fields, then why would Willow still be between the bench and water?"

Divers look in the water but the area is clear and there is no sign of Nicola. Late in the evening Lancashire Police release a Facebook post asking if anyone has seen Nicola.

Day 2

James Pinder says: "The plan for the Saturday was to extend the search operation on the land out several kilometres. The water based searches, there was a dive operation on the downstream of the weir into the tidal range."

All of the Bulley family are together with Paul Ansell at his home, whilst his two daughters stay with friends. Police questioned Paul about his whereabouts, although he was not a serious suspect. Looking back at that time, Paul says: "They do ask you where you were. You get it. It's horrible, but you understand. You're just trying to work out what the heck has happened. You're in a state of shock."

Day 3

On Sunday Paul and Nicola's two daughters need to come home but there is still no news. Paul explains: "They knew something was wrong, because all the family was at the house. So I told them mummy was missing, but the same time I said 'we're gonna find her, you know'. "And that's when they were looking, like at helicopters asking 'Are they looking for mummy?' "I was like, Yeah, you know, we're gonna find her."

Day 4

Senior investigating officer Becky Smith at Lancashire Police takes over the case and went to meet the family. Becky says: "It was highly unusual. There didn't seem any reason for that to happen. And obviously you think the worst." She also confirms Paul was never a suspect. She explains: "Any investigator would corroborate everybody's accounts, which I did very early on.

"At no point was Paul ever a suspect. He had not left the house until he was contacted by the school. Very quickly, I was able to build up a tight timescale of Nikki's movements and the witnesses movements."

Police give their first update to media, at this stage it is not a national story. But the phone left on the bench gives an air of mystery.

Day 5

If Nicola is in the water there is a chance she would now not surface for a few weeks.

James Pinder explains: "If the river was our likelihood, at that point, that's difficult, because I knew she would be subsurface. And I knew the likely reflow time when the body would come to the surface of the water. There was very little likelihood of it being on the surface for the next couple of weeks."

The local community begin searches. Nicola's parents say friends were bringing food parcels too and they stayed with Paul as they all wanted to be together.

Paul says: "We would sit there every day just going over everything. You feel like you're cracking up because you just constantly, constantly going round around every single scenario in your head. "The nights were the hardest, the end of the day where it goes dark. Because in the morning, the hope would be strong, and then it used to go dark at like four.

"It gets to about three o'clock, and I used to start panicking that I knew that it started going dark in an hour, so we had an hour to try and find her. And then, obviously, I then have the girls, you know, the first thing that they do when they come out of school was run over and say 'Have we found mummy?'."

Nicola's mum Dorothy tearfully says the children were really worried about their mum around this time and said: "I hope mummy's not cold and hungry".

Day 6

The disappearance of Nicola Bulley begins to get large media coverage including online. One TikTok video gets three million views.

Senior investigating officer Becky Smith says they had to look at foul play and whether Nicola could have been taken away from the bench. There were four exit points and three were covered by CCTV. They could rule out three but the only one remaining was the river path. There were no sightings on hundreds of hours of dashcam footage. Becky believes at this point she has fallen in the river.

Day 7

Becky Smith goes to the family home and tells them she believes Nicola has fallen in the rive.

Becky: "It's never going to be an easy conversation, and they didn't want to believe what I said. And I understand that. Would any family want to know or think that that's what had happened? I don't think I would if I was in that position."

Paul says: "To think of the river, it's over. I didn't let my mind go there. In my head we were going to find her."

Her dad Ernest says: "We didn't go along with it because there was no evidence she had gone in the river."

Day 8

Speculation is rife about a property and a caravan both of which James Pinder explains had been checked by police but reports were saying they had not been.

Around this time Paul comes off social media because there is a growing amount of speculation and abuse for him. He says: "I didn't want to get bogged down with any of it, so I came off whatever platforms I was on. But we had friends and relatives who are online, and some of the stuff that were being said, we were like, 'Yeah, we we agree with you. What the heck has happened?'."

Nicola's parents and sister give an interview to Sky News and speak of the pain they are facing.

Day 9

BBC reports from the riverbank which is very busy with people making posts for social media and coming up with their own theories about what has happened without evidence. Paul reluctantly gives photos to media of him driving and then gives an interview on camera knowing it will help keep the pressure on police.

"You are so far out of your comfort zone," he says looking back on giving the interview.

"Something has taken over to protect you. I think from that interview, awful things started to be said."

Social media blows up with suspicion around Paul because he is seen to have smiled during the interview.

Nicola's dad Ernest tells the BBC doc: "There are nasty people out there who conjure up rubbish."

Mum Dorothy says: "Nicola and Paul were happy as a couple and as a family."

Day 11

Having been interviewed on TV and radio as an expert in the first week and insisting he could rule out the river as a place where Nicola could be, underwater search expert Peter Faulding gets involved.

Mr Faulding, leader of underwater search experts Specialist Group International (SGI), was asked by Ms Bulley's family to help with the search.

Paul Ansell says in the doc: "I was focusing more on the fact that it said that he would be able to prove that she wasn't in the water."

Senior investigating officer Becky Smith says: "He was outside of the police investigation. You know, he was providing contradictory opinion. Who do they believe and who do they want to believe?"

Nicola's sister Louise said: "Peter was so confident. I was on tenterhooks the whole time Peter was there because he was adamant that if she was there, he would have found her."

Day 12

Peter Faulding and his team continue to search with no breakthrough.

Day 13

Peter Faulding and his team continues to search but still do not find her and he suggests this is likely to mean she is not in the water. At the time he says: "I said that if Nicola's here, I'll find her. If Nicola was in that river, I would have found her. I can guarantee you that, and she's not there."

Looking back on Faulding's comments, senior investigating officer Becky Smith says: "That is a very bold statement to make, because she was in the river." Faulding's actions lead the family to push for more searching to be done on land.

Paul Ansell says there was "conflict" with the police at this stage and he goes on to speak on Channel 5 demanding more searches.

Day 16

James Pinder describes an "escalation in social media" around this time.

He says: "We were getting reports of people hypothesizing on social media that Nikki's body was in x location. And then getting phone calls from local business owners, landowners, saying, I can now see a load of people coming down our drive with spades."

Senior investigating officer Becky Smith says: "This is a missing person investigation, where people are coming down to make money out of it by gaining clicks. We had to make arrests."

Day 19

Police hold a press conference, they say it was to try to "negate the conspiracy theories" which revolved around a rumour that Police had been called to an incident with Nicola and Paul at home.

Paul Ansell said: "The story they were running with on social media is that the police had been called on the 10th of January. The police have never been called.

"The call made was to the mental health nurses, a policeman came with them. We were just hoping and praying that none of that would come out, because no one gets the story. You know, nobody, understands the background.

"They call it pre menopause, don't they? All the horrible symptoms women get before the menopause. Nikki had been dealing with that for a couple of years. Me and Lou were helping Nikki as much as we could.

"All of a sudden she couldn't sleep anymore. The lack of sleep, irritability, brain fog, she'd be awake for hours in the night. Hot sweats every single day. You know, everything was becoming difficult. She was then having a drink to deal with it, which then it was all kind of spiralling.

"We made that call on the 10th to get her the help that she needed. At that point, they didn't deem her a threat to herself, or obviously anybody else, Nikki was very angry that we'd made that call. But over the course of like 10 days, you know, she stopped the drinking, she was back on the medication. She was getting much more, sort of a lot more stability."

The press conference went badly as Becky Smith mentions the vague term "specific vulnerabilities" which led to more questions from the media. The police then put out a more detailed statement two hours later which goes into lots of detail about Nicola having significant issues with alcohol, which were brought on by her ongoing struggles with the menopause.

Paul said: "We were sat in the living room going through the statement, and we were like, it doesn't have to say that. Doesn't have to say this before we knew it, it was just gone. We were still working on it, and then they'd released it."

Becky says: "I understand in hindsight, it might seem we didn't need to do that. In the moment when you are being told that people are threatening to publish stories that you know will damage the family, you have to take some action."

Day 23

Jason Rothwell, a spiritualist medium describes on the documentary seeing an object "floating in the water". He claims Nicola communicated with him and that is why he was walking along the river.

Search advisor James Pinder said: "The hypotheses that were drawn were proved to be correct. Ultimately, we recovered Nikki, the public involvement, the public interest did find her in the end."

Senior investigating officer Becky Smith says she waited with the body: "I could see the divers in the river with what I now know as Nikki, but I needed to make sure as well that she had privacy. So we put a tent up, and I sat with Nicky in that tent for quite a long time until she was taken to the hospital."

Paul Ansell says he got a call from one of Nick's friends to say there was a lot of activity going on by the river. He added: "I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Just disbelief."

The body was confirmed to be Nicola Bulley. Her partner Paul then had to tell their two children 'mummy's died'. Nicola's dad Ernest says he will "never forget the cries" of Nicola's children when Paul broke the news with a liason officer.