Nicola Bulley’s local council has been forced to take steps to protect its members after some received “vile” phone calls over the mother-of-two’s disappearance.
Police have been searching for the 45-year-old mortgage adviser since she disappeared while walking her dog along the River Wyre after dropping her two daughters, aged six and nine, at school on 27 January.
Extensive searches of the river – where police believe Ms Bulley may have fallen in – have so far proven inconclusive, and her disappearance has sparked intense speculation and even vigilante searches.
Wyre Council has now been forced to remove contact details for councillors in Ms Bulley’s local ward of Inskip with Sowerby from its website, after some received a flurry of late-night phone calls.
Five of the parish council’s six members received calls between 12.45am and 3am on Saturday, with all but one simply ringing off as they answered, a council source told The Mirror.
Lancashire Police told The Independent that they were investigating the matter, with a copy of an “offensive” voicemail referencing the missing dog walker being handed to the force.
“I wouldn’t say it was abusive, I would say it was offensive,” the council source said, adding that the councillor who received the call had not been left shaken by the experience.
Wyre Council leader Michael Vincent described the calls as “vile” and begged members of the public to let the local community “return to some sort of normality”.
“We appreciate the emotional gravity of the situation, however, we will not tolerate any form of abuse of any of our elected members of Wyre Borough Council or any of the town and parish councils within our borders or our staff,” he told the BBC.
“It is a shame we have had to take this step at such a difficult time and appropriate steps are being taken to ensure that residents are still able to contact their elected representatives.”
Reiterating appeals for people to stay away from the village, he said: “It has been busier than ever this weekend.
“People seem to want to play detectives but please stay away and leave it to the police. The community want to return to some sort of normality.”
Searches of the river by Lancashire Police, the Coastguard and specialist divers using high-tech sonar equipment have so far yielded no sign of the 45-year-old, whose phone was discovered still connected to a Microsoft Teams call on a bench near the riverbank last month, along with her dog’s lead.
Officers were seen on horseback surveying elevated paths in the village of Knott End-on-Sea on Monday, as boats continued to scour Morecambe Bay for a fifth day, where the river empties into the sea.
Ex-Surrey Police officer Mark Williams-Thomas – who exposed Jimmy Saville’s history of abuse and has investigated the disappearance of Madeleine McCann – has also joined the search this week, vowing to “explore all the options, bring you a factual evidence analysis and dismiss some of the inaccuracies”.
