Peter Faulding, a world-renowned forensics expert who is a diver for the police and has worked on hundreds of cases across the southeast, believes it is unlikely the river bank is the correct answer as a friend of the missing mother shared 11 key details about her disappearance on social media.
He claims that the missing dog walker, who disappeared on January 27, is ‘not in the river at all’, and investigators should have found evidence by now if she were.
Unfortunately, the only CCTV camera at a residential caravan park ‘that would have seen Nikki’ is allegedly not working.
This comes after a close friend of Ms Bulley, Tilly Ann, shared the unbearable toll the mother’s disappearance has taken upon her family – along with 11 key points she says the public should be aware of in a Facebook post following the 45-year-old’s disappearance. Â
The 11 key details written by Nicola Bulley’s friend:
1 Paul and Nikki both mostly work from home which is why he was at home that day. They have CCTV and there is a reason why Paul has never been a suspect. Family and friends need these accusations to stop immediately. The fact that I’ve had to write this is disgusting to be honest.
2. They both do this walk regularly and Paul is very well known in the community and very well recognised.
3. The dog never has her harness on for a chunk of that walk, it’s removed at the gate of the top field and then put back on at the gate when they leave.
4. They very rarely take the ball out for walks with willow now because she is very very protective over the ball and haven’t done for a while.
5. Nikki quite often would put her phone on loud speaker when talking.
6. The dog was found very close to the bench and the harness. The harness was found on the floor not on the bench.
7. Nikki is an incredibly strong swimmer.
8. Nikki drove to the school and then left her car there and walked to the river.
9. The dog was dry when found.
10. The dog has since been back.
11. There’s CCTV at the back of the caravan park. The only camera that isn’t working is the one that would have seen everything.
She wrote that the dog would never have a harness on during the familiar walk and is removed at a gate at the top of the field. When the dog was found, it was very close to the bench along with the harness on the floor.
And forensics expert Mr Faulding told GBNews: ‘The amount of searching that’s gone on in this river, I would have thought she would have been found by now. Normally when a person drowns, if they are left a number of days they don’t move very far.
‘This is not a fast tidal river. So I would have expected her to be found by the police divers by now… It’s as clear as that. And you know, none of this rings right to me. My belief is she’s not in not in the river at all.’
Mr Faulding said that not enough factors added up in his opinion, suggesting that Ms Bulley‘s phone could have been left on the bench as a ‘decoy’. He continued: ‘I personally think this phone could be a decoy.
‘We dealt with a drowning a couple of years ago where a gentleman went into a river and Ripley, his dog, was screaming by the riverbank when we got there.
‘When we arrived it was howling, and literally pointing exactly where he was. He stayed with his owner.
‘The phone on the bench, I mean, you have to ask, normally someone would have a phone in their hand especially if they were walking around.
‘The forensics worker said it ‘feels odd’ that no one spoke of the fact that Ms Bulley was not wearing clothes that would have absorbed water quickly, there were no marks at the scene and that not one person heard screams.
Additionally, he criticised the fact that the location has not remained cordoned off.
