The partner of missing dog walker Nicola Bulley has spoken of his "hell and frustration" over the fact that the family pet will have witnessed exactly what happened to the mother-of-two.
Speaking to presenter Dan Walker during a television documentary on Channel 5 about her disappearance, Paul Ansell said the fact their dog Willow almost certainly saw what happened added "another layer of frustration" to the mystery. He said on the programme: "It's a hellish situation with the layer of hell that, no, not knowing what's happened yet. And then also having Willow who probably does know what happened. Um, but she can't, she can't tell us, can she?"
He added: "And she’s a very sensitive dog. I did take her back there first thing on the Saturday, the day after." There, Mr Ansell desperately tried to get the animal to lead him to Nicola, but to no avail.
"I was praying and hoping that once we got to the gate, that she would do something different, you know," he said. But in anticipation of a walk, the dog simply ran through the gate.
Mr Ansell said: "I was saying to her, where's mummy? Where's mummy? You know? And she was just looking at me like, you know, let's go for a walk. I would've thought that if something had happened by the riverbank, I would've thought that she'd had gone through the gate and gone that way.
"But she didn't. Whenever we go on that walk, we go through the gate and we always go left. And that's what she did. She just went left, down, you know, ready to do the normal thing."
Mr Ansell said he remained at the scene for most of the day in a bid to try to locate missing Nicola. Quoting him from the programme, The Mirror reported him adding: "I had people obviously turning up and helping and stuff, and spent most of that day walking around and I had Willow with me and, um, yeah. . . just didn't find anything." He said Willow was "just acting like she always does".
In another part of the interview, Mr Ansell said that he did not believe Nicola was in the river but wanted to keep “all options open” about her disappearance. He said: “We’ve always been very careful that we don’t want to say, ‘oh, we think it’s that’, and then push that when it might not be.
“The most obvious thing, of course, has always been the river. It’s always been my gut instinct and her sisters', and family that, that isn’t the case. Extensive searching — as you know, is probably well aware — has gone on in that river.”
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Lancashire Police have continued to investigate Nicola's disappearance on the basis that she probably fell into the River Wyre. According to The Mirror, officers have now started trawling across Morecambe Bay, some 20 miles from where police believe Nicola fell in.
Peter Faulding, head of a private team of divers involved in the search, said he did not believe the mother-of-two was in the river. He said: "If Nicola was in that river, I would have found her – I guarantee you that – and she's not in that section of the river."
He added that he also believed it was unlikely that Nicola had drifted all the way out to sea. "My personal view is that I think it is a long way to go in a tidal river," he said.
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