Nicola Bulley’s partner breaks silence after two years with heartbreaking family update

Paul Ansell, the partner of Nicola Bulley, has opened up about his devastating loss and the trauma their young family suffered after the mum-of-two vanished while walking the dog

The partner of the late Nicola Bulley, Paul Ansell, has opened up about his ‘horrible’ loss for the first time in two years, giving a rare insight into what came next for the family.

The morning of January 27, 2023, should have been an ordinary, busy morning for 45-year-old mortgage advisor Nicola, but tragically, her family would never see her alive again.

The mother-of-two dropped her young daughters off at their primary school in the picturesque Lancashire village of St Michael’s on Wyre. She then walked her pet springer spaniel, Willow, along the banks of the River Wyre, texting a friend to arrange a playdate before taking a Microsoft Teams call with work shortly after 9am.

The conference call ended at 9.30am, but Nicola stayed logged on. Around five minutes later, another dog walker passed by the bench where Nicola had been seated, facing the freezing river.

Worryingly, her phone had been left on the bench, along with a harness and lead belonging to Willow, who was found running loose. It was clear that something was not right, and a passerby raised the alarm. At 10.50am, Nicola’s family, including her two little girls, were informed of her disappearance. An investigation began, with drones, helicopters and police search dogs all deployed as part of the major missing person operation.

Those in the village came out in force to help find Nicola, while the case also captivated those across the country, with ghoulish TikTok ‘sleuthes’ taking it upon themselves to solve Nicola’s disappearance, even travelling to St Michael’s on Wyre to retrace her final steps. Cruelly, many tried to falsely implicate Paul in the tragedy.

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The disappearance of Nicola Bulley ignited a frenzy among armchair sleuths(Image: Lancashire Police / SWNS)

Now, Paul has given a rare update about the trauma his family experienced and his utter devastation as he desperately tried to find his wife.

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Paul found the astonishing level of public interest to be ‘very, very intrusive’(Image: Julian Hamilton/Daily Mirror)

“It was the 27th January, 2023, and Nikki left for school with the girls, and never came home. I became a subject with the media, in the sense of, ‘where’s the partner? Why’s he not talking?’ sort of thing,” he said at a lecture held at the London School of Economics (LSE) on Monday.

“I got out of the car, and I don’t think I knew what I was doing, really. I got out of the car, then I got collared by Sky, and the next minute, I was doing this interview. But then of course you’re, you know, psychoanalysed, analysed. Your eyes aren’t right, you’re smirking. It wasn’t the papers or the news. It was more TikTok.”

“It’s very, very intrusive, which was a horrible thing to experience on its own, let alone when you’re experiencing everything that we were. It can engulf you.”

For those who knew and loved Nicola, the intensity of this fascination only added to their anguish, with her best friend Heather Gibbon telling reporters it felt as though the village had turned into a macabre “tourist spot”.

A report published by the College of Policing (COP) in November 2023 concluded that staff in the Lancashire Police press office struggled to cope with the tidal wave of interest the missing person’s case had generated.

Indeed, at the height of the search, 6,500 news stories about Nicola were published worldwide in the space of just one day. TikTok videos on the topic amassed more than 270 million views, while negative social media comments on Lancashire Police’s pages soared by more than 450 per cent. With this came various baseless conspiracy theories, including bizarre rumours about underground tunnels and those vile accusations levelled at her partner of 11 years.

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As Nicola’s partner, Paul found himself at the centre of cruel and unfounded rumours(Image: PA)

Alarmingly, armchair detectives were granted access to police briefings – despite having no qualifications. Early on in the investigation, an oversight by Lancashire Police meant social media influencers were able to attend both the first and second press conferences without accreditation or press passes being checked.

The COP review, which considered this to be a “significant mistake”, also determined that negative social media attention “had a significant impact on levels of confidence in Lancashire Constabulary among the local community, as did the on-the-ground presence of social media influencers promoting conspiracy theories about the investigation in St Michael’s on Wyre”.

Horrifyingly, even after Nicola’s body was found in the river, following a desperate 23-day search, macabre interest continued to swirl. In one particularly grotesque incident, a TikToker filmed Nicola’s lifeless body being pulled from the icy river. Hairdresser Curtis Arnold, of Kidderminster, West Midlands, later confessed to earning almost £900 in royalties from the vile clip, which was shared across his multiple platforms.

In the 2024 documentary, Paul spoke of his “disbelief” after realising his beloved Nikki wouldn’t be returning home to him. “I got a call from one of Nikki’s friends to say there was a lot of activity going on that there’s a couple of people that look quite traumatised. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Yeah, just disbelief,” he said. “I always expected like Nikki to come walking through the door. I expected it to be just a horrendous nightmare that we were 100 percent gonna wake up from at any minute. Nikki being found in the water is horrific, but it ends that hell of not knowing. I had to accept it quite quickly. For them. I can’t ever imagine having to sit your children down to say something like that.”

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Even in death, Nicola wasn’t afforded privacy from prying eyes(Image: PA)

An inquest into Nicola’s death, which concluded on June 27, 2023, determined the beloved mother had fallen into the cold water and drowned almost immediately. But by this point, however, interest had long spiralled wildly out of control, with some conspiracy theorists even going as far as to suggest Nicola’s body had been planted in the reeds, in a supposedly ‘faked’ crime scene.

Following the inquest, Nikki’s family released a statement, detailing how “extremely tough” the last few months had been, reflecting: “The emotional impact will stay long in our hearts, and whilst we’ll never get over the loss of our Nikki, we will forever remember her as the brilliant mum, partner, daughter and sister that we all knew and loved so very much.”

The statement thanked family, friends and complete strangers for their support and said “Nikki and Paul’s girls have already taken great comfort in the deeply thoughtful gifts sent to them in goodwill”. It ended by asking for privacy and time for the family to grieve privately. “Now we need to be allowed time to comprehend all of the events leading up to this day. We ask that you all respect our privacy at this time, let us rebuild and take time to heal,” it finished.

As shown in the documentary where the family sit talking in Paul’s garden, they all remain close. Nicola’s dad, Ernest, told the documentary makers: “There are nasty people out there who conjure up rubbish.” Nicola’s mum Dorothy added: ‘Nicola and Paul were happy as a couple and as a family.”

As for Paul, he spoke of how he “still struggles” to come to terms with the fact that Nikki is gone forever, and heartbreakingly told how he still sees her in their daughters. “I still struggle talking about Nikki in the past tense. I see her in the girls every single day, you know? I see all these little mannerisms, and then I just stop sometimes, and I’m, like, flipping heck. That was mummy, you know? And that is worth everything, I think.”

Paul, who continues to work as an engineer in Lancashire, remains determined to give his daughters a “normal” childhood as possible. The children continue to attend school in the local area, and receive support from a close-knit community of friends and family.

In the conclusions of its report, the COP said the issue of social media is a growing problem for UK police forces. asserting: “It is well beyond the scope of this review to express a view or make recommendations relating to the role of social media, its management or regulation. However, the evidence gathered as part of this review suggests that the impact of social media on police investigations is a serious and growing problem, which must be addressed by forces across the UK and policing centrally.”