A body has been found in the search for the missing woman Nicola Bulley after a tipoff by members of the public, police have said.
Bulley, 45, a mortgage adviser from Inskip, Lancashire, vanished while walking her dog after dropping off her daughters, six and nine, at school more than three weeks ago, on 27 January.
Lancashire constabulary said on Sunday no formal identification had yet been carried out on the body, but that Bulley’s family had been informed.
On Sunday evening Bulley’s partner Paul Ansell spoke of his “agony” at the discovery. “No words right now, just agony,” he told Sky News’s Inzamam Rashid. “We’re all together, we have to be strong.”
The police force said it received a call at 11.36am on Sunday about a body in the River Wyre, close to Rawcliffe Road, within a mile of where Bulley was last seen.
“An underwater search team and specialist officers have subsequently attended the scene, entered the water, and have sadly recovered a body. No formal identification has yet been carried out, so we are unable to say whether this is Nicola Bulley at this time,” Lancashire constabulary said in a statement.
“Procedures to identify the body are ongoing. We are currently treating the death as unexplained. Nicola’s family have been informed of developments and our thoughts are with them at this most difficult of times. We ask that their privacy is respected.”
The discovery came three days after the Lancashire force was heavily criticised for releasing a statement referring to Bulley’s struggles with alcohol and the perimenopause.
It was these “vulnerabilities”, coupled with the numerous sightings before she went missing, which led detectives to believe that she was more likely to have fallen into the river than been harmed by a third party.
The body was found just after a sharp bend in the river, about half a mile downstream from the village of St Michael’s. Police divers were seen searching an area of undergrowth at the river’s edge on Sunday morning, several metres below the banking on Rawcliffe Road.
A dead tree appeared to have fallen into the river there some time ago, with decaying reeds obscuring the water’s edge.
Within a week of her going missing, police said they believed she had fallen into the river while walking her dog, Willow, along the Wyre.
Piecing together CCTV footage, mobile phone data and sightings from people who knew Bulley, detectives believed there was only a 10-minute window when she was out of sight. Her phone, which was still connected to a work call, was found on a bench by the river, alongside Willow’s harness.
Bulley’s disappearance sparked unusually strong public interest, with amateur detectives and YouTubers making ghoulish pilgrimages to the area as they shared their unsubstantiated theories on the case.
Some were served with dispersal notices, forcing them to leave the area, amid reports that properties near to the river had been broken into by would-be sleuths.
Rawcliffe Road was closed for several hours on Sunday so that the body could be recovered and removed. As soon as the road reopened, a steady stream of local people and crime scene tourists visited the spot, after seeing photographs of the search on social media.
For more than three weeks, the community in this small Lancashire village had been desperate for news of the missing mother. Every other lamp-post and telegraph pole bears laminated “missing” posters, appealing for information about Bulley’s disappearance.
Photographs of her smiling face were printed on banners placed at road junctions, in the hope of jogging the memories of motorists who may have seen her the morning she went missing.
A footbridge over the Wyre in St Michael’s has become a focal point in the hunt for Bulley, with well-wishers encouraged to leave messages on yellow ribbons tied to the ironwork. “We will never give up” reads one. “We all miss you so much. Please come home Nikki,” reads another.
A child’s drawing is attached to one ribbon, showing a big red love heart and a bright yellow sun. An eight-year-old has written: “I hope you get found today!”
But as the days went on and detectives stuck to their hypothesis that the river had claimed Bulley, the chances of her being found alive grew ever slimmer.
Though the identity of the body had not been confirmed on Sunday night, there was widespread acceptance that it was almost certainly Bulley.
The home secretary, Suella Braverman, tweeted: “These are heart-breaking and distressing developments. My thoughts remain with Nicola’s family at this extremely difficult time.”
On Friday Braverman demanded that Lancashire constabulary explain why it released personal information about Bulley.
Police took the unusual step of revealing last week that Bulley had previously had “significant issues with alcohol which were brought on by her ongoing struggles with the menopause and that these struggles had resurfaced over recent months”.
A response car staffed by both police and health professionals attended the family home on 10 January amid a “report of concern for welfare”, the force said.
The disclosure of such personal information prompted widespread consternation, with the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, saying he was “concerned” about the disclosures.
Lancashire constabulary admitted that it was “an unusual step for us to take to go into this level of detail about someone’s private life”, but said it did so to avoid speculation or misinterpretation.
Midway through the investigation, the force released a statement decrying “the huge amount of commentary from so-called experts, ill-informed speculation and conspiracy theories which is damaging to the investigation, the community of St Michael’s and, worst of all, to Nicola’s family”.
The case had resulted in the “groundless and hurtful abuse of innocent people, including witnesses and local businesses, which is totally unacceptable”, the constabulary said.
As night fell on Sunday, some locals asked why it had taken so long to find a body when police divers and drones, including a private contractor who conducted extensive searches of the riverbed using sonar technology, had failed to find any trace of the missing woman.
Earlier in the search, Ansell said he was “100%” sure she was not in the water. Her family also felt police were too quick to reach their conclusion that she had most likely fallen into the river.
Peter Faulding, chief executive of Specialist Group International, whose dive team joined the search for a number of days using sonar scanners, said last week that he did not think Bulley was in the river.
Had she fallen down the bank, she would have been easily able to stand up and wait for help rather than be swept away with the current, he told the Daily Mail.
But he changed his mind after hearing of Bulley’s issues with alcohol and her mental health.
“I can confirm that my usually trusted team and I were not passed this crucial information during our search, which would have changed search strategy,” he tweeted.
The hunt for Bulley was one of the most substantial missing person searches in England for years, involving underwater search teams, drones, mounted police and a police helicopter.
