BEL MOONEY: It's appalling that nightmare of Nicola Bulley is being turned into ... trends now
Look at her photograph. It could be so many mothers – those bobble-hatted women who drop the kids off at school on a chilly morning and then take the dog for a walk. The shock of Nicola Bulley’s disappearance on January 27 and ongoing public fascination with the case are surely rooted in the very ordinariness of this 45-year-old’s routine.
Becoming in a sense a kind of ‘Everymum’, she could be our sister, neighbour, colleague. Natural human compassion reaches out to her two bewildered daughters, her partner Paul and her devoted family and friends as the search continues and the question remains: how can somebody disappear into thin air?
In contrast to, for example, the almost unimaginable horror of the earthquake in Turkey and Syria, a news story like this touches deep-seated feelings of personal vulnerability. You go out one morning and then…
Becoming in a sense a kind of ‘Everymum’, Nicola Bulley could be our sister, neighbour, colleague
The question remains: how can somebody disappear into thin air?
Paul Ansell, 44, pictured with diving expert Peter Faulding who told the anxious father 'she's not here', during a third extensive day of searching along the River Wyre in Lancashire
But if only that ellipsis marked the end of speculation. Instead, it seems to me the disappearance of Ms Bulley has turned into something approaching a ghoulish carnival of cynics, know-alls, gossips, armchair sleuths and tragedy tourists. It may be natural and right that the disappearance of one woman in such ordinary circumstances should make people feel concern and compassion for her and her family.
But is it natural or right for people to tittle-tattle on social media and distress those who love the missing woman?
Is it compassion that motivated strangers to get into their cars and drive from outside the area, break into buildings along the River Wyre where a police search is active, and poke about – allegedly searching for ‘clues’? No, no, no.
Now that the monstrous policeman-rapist David Carrick has been sentenced to spend hopefully the rest of his life in prison (a dangerous place for a rotten ex-cop), and when each week seems to break news of appalling behaviour by serving officers, public trust in the police is at an understandably low ebb.
Too many bad apples destroy any faith in the greengrocer. Yet surely it is unjust for the public to express cynicism about the competence of all police officers?
On social media, I’ve seen many a comment denigrating the police searching for Ms Bulley as ‘useless’ – and worse.
Surely that’s unfair to the 40 or so detectives, under a senior investigating officer, who are combing through an enormous amount of information to try to find out what happened? It is also less than helpful when the forensic diver Peter Faulding expresses vague ideas (the phone as a ‘decoy’, a ‘third person’ involved and so on) that can only feed mistrust of the police and add to fevered speculation on social media.
During the pandemic lockdowns, even people who had not previously bothered with social media turned to it for diversion.
It was as if every other person became an immediate armchair expert on virology, Chinese laboratories, influenza statistics, the danger of inoculations and the rest.
Pictured: Lancashire Police carrying inflatable Rib boats during the search for Nicola on Wednesday
Mr Ansell and Ms Bulley pictured together. The mother-of-two has been missing for nearly two weeks
Whipped to a pitch of anxiety, even neurosis, by those doom-laden six o’clock briefings on TV and the blitz of statistics, people swapped online views that occasionally verged on the deranged. It helped no one and it added to the miasma of fear.
This situation feels a little like that. It is disturbing that
