Paul Ansell has spoken publicly for the first time in two years about the trauma his family experienced
Sam Dimmer East Midlands Head of Brand and Julia Banim
06:38, 26 Mar 2026
Paul Ansell, the partner of Nicola Bulley, views the spot on the River Wyre where she went missing(Image: Julian Hamilton/Daily Mirror)
Paul Ansell, partner of the late Nicola Bulley, has spoken publicly for the first time in two years about his ‘horrible’ loss, offering a rare glimpse into how the family has coped since the tragedy.
What began as a typical, bustling morning on 27 January 2023 for 45-year-old mortgage adviser Nicola would end in heartbreak, as her loved ones would tragically never see her alive again.
The mum-of-two had dropped her young daughters at their primary school in the picturesque Lancashire village of St Michael’s on Wyre before taking her pet springer spaniel, Willow, for a walk along the River Wyre.
She messaged a friend about organising a playdate, then joined a Microsoft Teams work call shortly after 9am.
The conference call finished at 9.30am, but Nicola remained logged on. Approximately five minutes later, another dog walker passed the bench where Nicola had been sitting, overlooking the icy river.
Alarmingly, her mobile phone lay abandoned on the bench, alongside Willow’s harness and lead, while the dog was found wandering freely.
It was evident something was amiss, prompting a passerby to sound the alarm.
By 10.50am, Nicola’s family, including her two young daughters, were notified of her disappearance.
Nicola Bulley went missing two years ago(Image: PA)
A major investigation was launched, with drones, helicopters, and police search dogs deployed as part of the extensive missing-person operation.
Residents of the village rallied to locate Nicola, while the case gripped the nation’s attention.
Disturbingly, self-appointed TikTok ‘sleuths’ descended upon St Michael’s on Wyre, retracing her last known movements in a bid to crack the case themselves.
Heartlessly, numerous individuals attempted to wrongly implicate Paul in the tragedy, reports the Mirror.
Paul has now spoken candidly about the ordeal his family endured and the profound distress he felt while desperately searching for his wife.
“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 revealed during a lecture 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.”
Candles are lit around a photo of Nicola Bulley (left) and her partner Paul Ansell while the search continued(Image: PA)
For those close to Nicola, the overwhelming public interest only compounded their distress, with her closest friend Heather Gibbon telling journalists it felt as if the village had been transformed into a ghoulish “tourist spot”.
A report released by the College of Policing (COP) in November 2023 found that Lancashire Police’s press office was overwhelmed by the surge of interest generated by a missing person case.
At the peak of the search, a staggering 6,500 news stories about Nicola were published globally in just one day. TikTok videos on the subject garnered over 270 million views, while negative comments on Lancashire Police’s social media pages skyrocketed by more than 450 per cent.
This led to a proliferation of unfounded conspiracy theories, including strange rumours about underground tunnels and distasteful accusations against her partner of 11 years.
Worryingly, self-proclaimed detectives with no formal qualifications were allowed access to police briefings.
Due to an early oversight by Lancashire Police, social media influencers were permitted to attend the first and second press conferences without their credentials or press passes being verified.
The COP review deemed this a “significant mistake” and concluded that the negative attention on social media “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”.
Distressingly, even following the discovery of Nicola’s body in the river after an agonising 23-day search, morbid fascination persisted.
In one particularly disturbing episode, a TikTok user recorded Nicola’s lifeless body being recovered from the freezing water.
Hairdresser Curtis Arnold, from Kidderminster, West Midlands, subsequently admitted to making nearly £900 in royalties from the appalling footage, which he distributed across his various social media accounts.
