In the frantic hunt for Nicola Bulley, a former senior detective has pointed out a number of police mistakes and said that public confidence in the inquiry is “extremely poor.”
Over the course of a 30-year career with the Metropolitan Police, Simon Harding, a retired detective chief inspector, worked on a number of high-profile crimes, including the murders of Sarah Everard, Nicole Smallman, and Bibaa Henry.
According to him, mistakes have been made in the Ms. Bulley disappearance inquiry from the day she vanished.
On January 27 at about 9.15 am, the 45-year-old mother of two disappeared while walking her dog near the River Wyre in Lancashire.
However, Mr. Harding has questioned why a police perimeter was not set up right away after her “out of character” absence.
He has also questioned why investigators are keeping their investigation under wraps and why police continue to support the hypothesis that Ms. Bulley fell into the river.
In his article for The Sunday Times, he stated: “You would anticipate the location where Nicola was last seen to be roped off as well, to prevent people from flocking there as a tasteless tourism destination and Therefore destroying any possible evidence.”
Nicola’s disappearance is reportedly not suspicious, thus there doesn’t seem to be any cordon.
“I maintained the 1 million square meter cordoned-off crime scene where Nicole and Bibaa were killed for three weeks to ensure that everything had been completed.
“When you have a high-profile investigation like this, you need to have clear strategies to follow: CCTV, witnesses, learning as much as you can about the victim, securing the crime scene, logging exhibits, communicating with the family of the missing person, checking their finances, starting house-to-house inquiries and, crucially, having a robust search plan and a media plan.”
According to Mr. Harding, the missing mother’s case should have been rated “at the greatest potential risk” because of the seemingly normal activities leading up to the dog walk.
He also criticized the police’s public message, claiming that they had a “open mind” while simultaneously disclosing their main theory—that she fell into the river.
The police decided on a sad accident, and they made their decision public within days, he said. But you have to be quite positive before you tell your family and the media. It cast doubt on their subsequent claim that they were “open-minded.”
Why, therefore, have the police steadfastly maintained their original drowning hypothesis? Before stating to the public that there had been “no third-party participation,” I would have required proof and information that gave me absolute assurance that this was the case.
You simply cannot be certain that someone else is not participating if every conceivable path in and out of that location is not monitored by CCTV, as is probable in the countryside.
As the inquiry enters its 17th day, police have reiterated that their primary working theory is that Ms. Bulley fell into the river, despite claims to the contrary from friends and outside investigators.
Seven miles from the spot where Nicola vanished earlier this week, detectives were spotted investigating an area, and the search was extended to Morecambe Bay.
However, Mr. Harding has called the theory “an extraordinarily harmful message” since there is no way to be certain that she did not leave the region.
Instead, Mr. Harding argues, this makes people less likely to approach the police with possible evidence.
To assist quell lingering rumors among the amateur sleuths, he has urged Lancashire Police to share any more information it has with the public.
Police had “made up their minds” that the disappearance was an accident, the former detective further cautioned.
A day before to Nicola Bulley’s disappearance, a witness allegedly informed police that they seen two guys ‘acting suspiciously’ outside a church nearby.
In light of growing indications that authorities are starting to regard her disappearance as a crime, they claim that they later spotted one of the two males in the same location on the morning she vanished.
According to reports, detectives went to St. Michael’s Garage on Thursday to pick up CCTV footage from the moment the witness reported what happened.
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