Have you ever met this woman?

Since I first read about the disappearance of Nicola Bulley, alarm bells started ringing. As I looked into it further, sirens went off too. 

Seeing the first interview with Paul Ansell, the man who claims to be the missing woman’s partner, gave me serious Gerry McCann vibes – the duping delight smile, the strange phrasing, the inappropriate comments, the stark lack of emotion – and his second interview, with journalist Dan Walker was even worse. During that lengthy conversation, Ansell made an effort to keep his mouth downturned but he couldn’t stop his eyes from laughing. 

I’ve now looked into Paul Ansell’s background – his work with BAE Systems, the 55 companies he’s been involved with, a company called P & N Engineering Design Ltd (I’m guessing the initials stand for Paul and Nicola) – a company, according to Companies House, that’s invested in “repair and maintenance of aircraft and spacecraft” – and the fact that the registered address is a flat in Porthcawl in Wales.

There are so many inconsistencies with this story (I’m working on a longer article which will discuss everything I’ve uncovered), but for now I want to focus on one question…

Have you ever seen Nicola Bulley? 

I’m not talking about on TV or in the papers, I’m talking about in real life. Remember that? Real life? (It seems many don’t.)

When I tweeted a few of my musings on the case last week (see link), I instantly received a deluge of online abuse. Easy-to-spot bots with their less-than-9 followers and expletive comments really went to town on me. Trolls waded in and hurled a ton of extra insults. They just love a big pile on! None of the abuse bothers me (I have the skin of a much-beaten rhino and the back of a waterproof duck), but one thing stood out: the bullying army of trolls and bots were on a single mission – to stop me asking questions. 

“Have some respect for the family”, “you’re a vile monster”, “you’re adding to the families pain”, “how do you sleep at night?” and “call yourself a journalist?” was the general gist of the comments. Twitter bots all write in a similar style and love swearing so it was pretty easy to distinguish them from the angry non-A.I. trolls: the incredible rate at which they descend and attack is a real giveaway too. 

Despite the many negative responses to my question on NB’s existence, I continued to research. I looked at her FB page which was, oddly, set to public. (Even her phone number was viewable!) I examined the bland, yawn-worthy posts: the child’s bed for sale, the pre-Christmas trip to Center Parcs, the selfies (almost all wearing the same identical expression) and the family photos and videos. Oh, and the misty winter walks by the river. THAT river. The river her partner Paul insists she didn’t fall into. 

(UPDATE: As of February 15th, the privacy settings appear to have been changed so personal info and photos are no longer available to see. This is probably due to the arrests made of two people for malicious communications on the account.) 

Her FB account was opened in March 2022 – a bit late to the Facebook party but that doesn’t really prove anything. Her posts stopped on December 7th. After posting very regularly every day or every other day, the posting suddenly ceased. Why? What struck me most about her Facebook page though was the photos of her two daughters. Paul Ansell wants to focus on and protect his kids – he’s said as much several times in his interviews – and the media haven’t published any photos of them, yet here those children were, totally exposed, on their mum’s FB page! Photos and videos. For all the world to see! How is that protecting them? 

I looked up Paul Ansell (Pauly Ansell) on Facebook. His account is set to private. I wondered about his family. Does he have any relatives? He’s certainly not mentioned any in his interviews, which is odd to say the least. Perhaps he doesn’t have any family. Or maybe he’s estranged from them. Who knows? I could write a book already on what I’ve found out about that guy and a sequel on what I’ve NOT found out about him! But I digress… back to my tweet…

The aforementioned tweet has now had almost 700,000 views. I was hoping out of all those people, a few would know Nicola. In person. In the flesh. In real life. 

In this thread and in another I started on FB, one person said they knew her, one person said Nicola was a client of theirs, another said they had work colleagues who knew OF her, and another said they once worked with her sister. All well and good. But where’s the proof? When I asked for proof, none was forthcoming. 

Call me logical, but if Nicola Bulley exists, there should be plenty of photographic evidence, apart from what we can see on her FB page – pictures of her with friends (ones who exist though, not photoshopped images of the smiling Nicola with random people). If people who say they know her could PROVE they knew her, establishing her existence would be easy. I’d like nothing more than to be proved wrong and to tick this irritating question off my ever-growing list!

Talking of lists, I checked her FB friends list. Her sister Louise is on the list. No Ansells there though. I thought that was peculiar but, as an old-school journalist friend of mine pointed out, not everyone is ‘friends’ on FB with their in-laws or, indeed, with their partners. So that’s not especially relevant. 

But where are the school photos, the news stories from friends who used to know her and people who know her now? The only friend who’s spoken out so far is lookalike Emma White (many say it’s Emma and not Nicola in the only bit of cctv footage found), whose TV interviews leave a lot to be desired. This woman has done acting jobs and video work in the past – I’ve watched one where she’s advertising her farm as a place to stay – and seemingly has many celebrity chums. Her acting skills are questionable though, as anyone who cares to watch her interviews can see, and she’s far from convincing in her role as the distraught bestie. Not a hair out of place and freshly made up (complete with startlingly lush false eyelashes), she doesn’t come across as even slightly upset. She’s also the daughter of BBC broadcaster Stewart White – make of that what you will. 

But back to whether Nicola Bulley actually exists. The knee-jerk reaction to what appears to be an extreme train of thought is to be expected. Of COURSE she exists! There are photos of her in the paper and her face appears on the TV constantly! Her partner has spoken about her, as have her parents, sister and best friend! The police are investigating her disappearance and they wouldn’t investigate the disappearance of a person who doesn’t exist, would they? Massive eye rolls all round. But let me ask you this, from your own personal point of view, from your own standpoint, do you have any solid evidence that Nicola Bulley isn’t fictitious? And if you have that evidence, what is it and let’s see it! 

(On a side note, have you ever heard of deep fake? And have you ever seen the website Thispersondoesnotexist.com Check it out. Tap on the refresh button to see thousands of deep fake faces of seemingly real folk, all born from A.I.)

Of course you all have your own thoughts on this. And you’re all entitled to your own opinions, even the ones that deem me mad. If you decide – and I haven’t come to any conclusions myself yet; I’m still wondering, still thinking aloud – that this Nicola Bulley has been fabricated, the obvious next question is ‘why?’ 

Well, I could write a third book about that and will cover it in more detail in my big article. But here’s a clue…. Remember I mentioned the registered address of Paul Ansell’s businesses in Porthcawl? It’s a flat… a flat above a chip shop. I’ll say no more. 

https://twitter.com/jacquideevoy1/status/1623515063410737152?s=46&t=IUxtkg-kh-AHVus8caozrg