Nicola Bulley's partner told 'you can't hide' as he reveals horrifying messages sent by strangers

The partner of Nicola Bulley has shared the horrifying messages he received during the tragic search for her 18 months ago.

The disappearance of Nicola at the end of January last year led to a 23 day police search after Paul Ansell had alerted police to her being missing. What followed was huge media attention and coverage on social media. Sadly, her body was found in the River Wyre on February 19, about a mile from where she vanished.

Now, a new BBC documentary looks back on what happened during the days of the search and the frenzy of interest on social media which took its toll on Nicola’s family. Paul describes the media and social media attention as initially being a good thing. However, he admits it soon started to feel like they were “poking a monster”.

He told the documentary: "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."

He said the family felt they were unable to respond to online message as they feared a reply would be reposted or taken out of context. Paul described he felt "silenced" at the situation.

"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."

"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. They know nothing about us," he added. "Just messages like 'you b******'. 'We know what you did'. 'You know you can't hide Paul', that kind of stuff. "There was some that I felt like replying to, but then if you reply to that, they'll just screenshot your reply, if that'll end up on social media. And so you're literally silenced, and you can't do anything about it."

Paul said he had tried to remain positive throughout the ill-fated search for the sake of the children he shared with Nicola. However, he admitted it was tough at times. "The nights were the hardest," he confessed.

"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?"

A coroner recorded Nicola's death as accidental last year. They said she had fallen into the river and suffered "cold water shock", adding there was "no evidence" to suggest suicide.

* The Search For Nicola Bulley will air on October 3 on BBC One.

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