Police discover body of missing British mother Nicola Bulley in river during search
Police searching for a woman who vanished three weeks ago in northwest England confirmed Monday that they found her body in a river close to where she was last seen.
The search for Nicola Bulley, 45, had riveted Britain since she went missing on Jan. 27 while walking her dog along the River Wyre. It also generated a circus of sorts in the tiny community of St Michael's on Wyre as speculation on social media spurred unofficial searches and attracted amateur sleuths.
The body was found on Sunday and the identification was confirmed the next day.
"Sadly, we are now able to confirm that yesterday we recovered Nicola Bulley from the River Wyre," Lancashire Assistant Chief Constable Peter Lawson said. "Nicola's family have been informed and are, of course, devastated."
Her family said in a statement that she was "the centre of our world," BBC News reported. "We will never be able to comprehend what Nikki had gone through in her last moments and that will never leave us."
Confidence in the police plummeted amid criticism that police had botched the search for Bulley, a mortgage adviser who was last seen shortly after taking her daughters, ages 6 and 9, to school on a Friday morning.
The Lancashire police department, which dedicated 40 detectives to the investigation, came under increasing criticism the longer the case went unsolved.
In an apparent effort to respond, the force said Bulley was classified as a "high-risk" missing person "based on a number of specific vulnerabilities." It later revealed she had struggled with alcohol and perimenopause before she vanished.
The disclosure prompted a further backlash, with senior members of the government, opposition leaders and victims rights advocates decrying the release of such personal information.
The police department said Friday that it would conduct an internal review of the investigation. The department has also referred itself to Britain's independent police watchdog over a contact officers had with Bulley before her disappearance.