A former detective crucial to the investigation of both the Jimmy Savile and Madeleine McCann cases is set to join the search for Nicola Bulley.
EB understands that Ms Bulley was last seen walking her dog in a field near the river in St Michael’s on Wyre on 27 January.
Journalist Mark Williams-Thomas, who both exposed the prolific sex offender and investigated the missing girl’s kidnap suspect Christian Brueckner, said he hoped to ‘dismiss some of the inaccuracies’ aired by armchair detectives as he is set to travel to where she was last seen to assist.
According to DailyMail, he plans to help rule out a number of theories.
It comes after a witness told police he saw two men acting suspiciously near the route that Ms Bulley regularly walked her dog on the day before her disappearance.
The witness, who did not want to be named, said the ‘hooded’ men were ‘carrying fishing rods’ and ‘were trying to hide their faces’.
‘It was very strange. It made me uneasy,’ the witness told The Sun.
The two men were spotted at around 7.45am on the day before Ms Bulley vanished, per Independent.
The witness said ‘they could just have been two normal fishermen’ but ‘they seemed to want to hide their faces, which struck me as odd’.
Journalist Mark Williams-Thomas said: ‘I will be spending time up in St Michael’s on Wyre next week to pull together a quick turnaround report of what exactly is known about the disappearance of Nicola Bulley.
‘I will explore all the options, bring you a factual evidence analysis and dismiss some of the inaccuracies.’
He added: ‘Within 48 hours I would have treated this in the same fashion as a murder or abduction. I think police have been right to say they have an open mind – the problem that they have got is that they also said it wasn’t criminal.’
Williams-Thomas new effort comes as a leading murder detective claimed police searching for missing mum Nicola have made a number of crucial errors.
Former Met Police detective chief inspector Simon Harding says the trust from the family and the public is plummeting because of how police have handled the process, according to Mirror.
He says by sticking with their ‘hypothesis’ that the dog walker fell in the river, they have harmed the search.
Her partner Paul Ansell said in an interview on Friday night that he ‘100% knows’ she is not in the river.
Mr Harding also wants to know why there was no cordon put in place around where Miss Bulley went missing last month.
