Nicola Bulley’s partner said the online fixation and obsession with her disappearance was a "monster" that got out of control.
Paul Ansell said his family initially welcomed the huge public interest after the mother-of-two, who was originally from Essex and had been a pupil at William de Ferrers School, in South Woodham Ferrers, vanished in Lancashire.
But her disappearance soon attracted a wave of amateur social media “sleuths” posting hurtful and wildly misleading claims about the case – with the family receiving online hate.
“I think anything like that is a double-edged sword,” Mr Ansell told the BBC.
“That’s the problem. You’re poking a monster.”
Her body was found in the river on February 19 and an inquest in June last year found she had died due to accidental drowning.
A BBC documentary, called The Search For Nicola Bulley, explores the media coverage and the impact of amateur internet sleuths conducting their own investigations, as well as hearing from Lancashire Police and Ms Bulley’s family.
The documentary hears the turmoil the family went through as the search for Ms Bulley intensified – as well as the impact it had on Nicola and Paul’s young children.
“The nights were the hardest,” Mr Ansell said.
“In the morning the hope would be strong. It used to go dark at like 4pm.
“It used to get to about 3pm and then I’d start panicking that I knew it would start going dark in an hour. So we had an hour to find her.
“And then obviously I’d have the girls. The first they’d do when they came out of school was run over and say: ‘Have we found mummy?'”
The ongoing search prompted frenzied speculation and multiple conspiracy theories online, with amateur detectives travelling to Lancashire to “help” police.
“I was getting direct messages from people that I’ve never met – they don’t know me, they don’t know us, they don’t know Nikki,” Mr Ansell said.
He was also told: “You can’t hide,” and: “We know what you did.”
Mr Ansell added: “On top of the trauma of the nightmare that we’re in, to then think that all these horrendous things are being said about me towards Nikki – everyone has a limit.”
The family said she had stopped taking her HRT over that period and began drinking to deal with it.
“It was literally (a) normal, weird blip. That’s the most honest answer I can give you,” Louise Cunningham, Ms Bulley’s sister, told the documentary.
Mr Ansell said he still sees Nicola in the faces of the couple’s two daughters.
“I see her in the girls every single day. I see all these little mannerisms in them and I’m like: ‘That was Mummy, you know?’ And that is worth everything, I think.”
Police accused people on TikTok of “playing private detectives” in the area, and said they had been “inundated with false information, accusations and rumours” relating to the case.
The release of personal information about Ms Bulley’s health struggles was “avoidable and unnecessary”, and police and media need to rebuild trust, a report into the case concluded.
The independent College of Policing report found in policing terms the missing persons investigation was well handled, but that the force had lost control of the public narrative at an early stage.
Senior officers failed to brief mainstream accredited reporters because trust between police and media had broken down – leading to an information vacuum and unchecked speculation.
The Search For Nicola Bulley will be broadcast on BBC One on October 3 at 9pm BST and on will be available on BBC iPlayer.
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