A former Metropolitan Police officer has criticised the investigation into the disappearance of Nicola Bulley.
Detective chief inspector Simon Harding was quoted in a national newspaper saying where he thought detectives had got it wrong, losing the trust of the woman's family and members of the public in the process. He claimed that Lancashire Police started making mistakes from the very first moment they became involved in investigating the disappearance of the mother of two a fortnight ago.
And, according the article, he has said they are continuing to make errors. Mr Harding said he had observed that no cordon had been put in place in the area where the dog-walker went missing and asked why her "out of character" disappearance wasn't picked up on immediately. He said he also wanted to know why officers were adhering to their hypothesis about no one else being involved and why police were no longer sharing new information on the case as it came in.
Writing in The Sunday Times, Mr Harding Simon said: "It is now crystal clear that those closest to the investigation — her family and close friends — simply do not believe the hypothesis put to them. The trust and confidence of the family and the general public in this investigation is now very low."
He said sealing off the area as soon as the police became involved would have stopped "people descending on it as a tasteless tourist spot and trampling the area — losing any potential evidence".
In the article he referred to the out-of-character nature of the woman's disappearance, adding: "I would have hoped it would be clear from the outset that this missing person should be graded as being at the highest possible risk."
Mr Harding went on to criticise the police for making public their their main hypothesis without being certain of it. He said that as CCTV did not cover all the routes around the area, "you simply cannot be sure that someone else is not involved". Instead, he said, the police settled on a tragic accident and made their thinking public. He wrote: "To say this to the family and media, you must be 100 per cent certain."
Fearing the message this gave out could be damaging, he added: "You are inadvertently saying to the public 'don’t call us as we don’t want to know about suspicious people, vehicles or events'."
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In an article published by The Sun, it was reported that two men were spotted acting suspiciously in St Michaels on Wyre only the day before Nicola disappeared.
However, from now on, Mr Harding urged Lancashire Police to release any information they were keeping to themselves in an effort to regain public trust "rather than let speculation continue".
He added: "There is nothing to lose — you only really hold information back when it is suspicious and points to potential culprits." The former policeman made his comments shortly after Nicola's partner, Paul Ansell, had given his first television interview.
During the interview, Mr Ansell said he was convinced that the mother of his children was not in the river. The father of two said he believed a local person might be behind her disappearance — and that he expected to be a suspect.
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