WHEN Nicola Bulley went missing during a dog walk in January last year, the ensuing online hysteria was unprecedented as “amateur sleuths” posted wild theories as clickbait.
Her partner Paul Ansell recently described it as a “monster” that got out of control and, once it transpired that she’d accidentally drowned, one hoped that lessons would be learned.
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But now mother-of-one Victoria Taylor has gone missing and here we go again.
On top of their anguish at her disappearance in Malton, North Yorks, her poor family have had to deal with amateur sleuths trying to cash in on the search for her.
Psychics, mediums and online sleuths have plagued a Facebook support group set up by 34-year-old Victoria’s sisters and friends — asking for money to help find her.
And just like Paul, who received direct messages from people he didn’t know saying “horrendous things”, Victoria’s fiancé Matthew Williams is also facing un-substantiated claims about the state of their relationship and accusing him of being involved in her disappearance.
READ MORE FROM JANE MOORE
One commented: “It’s sad to see people pointing the finger at her partner. It’s cruel, as he is going through enough already without people doing that.”
The wild speculation over Victoria’s disappearance on Monday last week is so bad that her childhood friend and neighbour Charlotte Cundill has felt compelled to plead for it to stop.
“We need facts, and facts only, right now,” she says. “Mediums and psychics are not welcome.”
The last confirmed sighting of Victoria, a care home nurse, is believed to be at 11.35am when CCTV shows her walking past a BP garage towards the local river Derwent where her backpack and camouflage baseball cap were later found.
Yet conspiracy theorists are already suggesting that the woman on the footage isn’t her. Seriously?
North Yorkshire Police have a hard enough job finding her without armchair “detectives” throwing doubt on such a crucial piece of information.
Divers are currently using sonar equipment to search the river, but the police force says it remains “open-minded” about her disappearance and that there’s currently “no information to suggest any form of third-party involvement” in her disappearance.
In cases such as those of Nicola, Victoria or anyone else who mysteriously goes missing or comes to harm, the role of the mainstream media is vital in helping to publicise the facts in the hope that it prompts a vital witness to come forward.
So, as the latest search enters its second week, the facts so far are these:
She was last seen at the family home at 9am and hasn’t made contact with her loved ones since.
Ten-minute window
Just over two hours later, she was caught on camera walking past the BP garage towards the river, where some of her belongings were found on the bank.
At 11.53am she was reportedly spotted at the local bus station.
The walk between the garage and the bus station is eight minutes, which leaves a ten-minute window that’s unexplained.
And that’s it so far. Any speculation is deeply unhelpful to the police officers who have a duty to rule out all lines of inquiry as well as investigate promising leads.
At least this time, as far as I know, local villagers haven’t had to employ a private security firm to keep “online sleuths” from searching their gardens and outbuildings as well as filming on and around the park bench where Nicola left her phone.
So perhaps that’s progress. But the online speculation and blaming continues apace.
And if you click on it and boost the followers of these armchair detectives, then you’re part of the problem.
You’re off your trolley, Brooklyn
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BROOKLYN BECKHAM has just launched his new Cloud23 organic hot sauce.
Here he is in PR mode, pushing wife Nicola Peltz in a trolley around a Whole Foods store in West London.
Brooklyn, 25, told his online followers that there’s a “hole in the market with luxury condiments, especially for a really good price”.
Cripes. Good luck to him, but anyone who thinks £14.99 a bottle is a good price to your average punter is in Cloud23 cuckoo land.
Joke a tired trope
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JOAN BAKEWELL, now 91, says she regrets being labelled as the “thinking man’s crumpet” by the late comedy writer Frank Muir.
You can see her point, although it’s one of the less offensive, reductive phrases deployed against women through the ages to assess their worth solely through the prism of how attractive, or otherwise, men find them.
This tired old trope was turned on its head in a rerun of the excellent TV series Frasier I saw last week, when Niles suggests his brother is only interested in a new love interest for her brains.
Frasier retorts: “How could you think I’d be so shallow?”
Letter me be
A POISON pen letter scandal is rocking the quiet village of Shiptonthorpe in East Yorkshire where residents have received nasty missives from an anonymous sender.
It started in November 2022 when a distressed resident got a letter accusing her of being “a loose woman”.
Oh come on. We’re not that bad.
Bit of a mouth fool?
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TOWIE star Gemma Collins called an ambulance after being stung on the tongue by a wasp whilst on holiday in Venice.
She said afterwards: “Wasp is the powerful female warrior and shamanic healer, prompting us to take a good look at our lives and ask if we are fighting the good fight.
“If you are stung by a wasp, it’s her way of saying, ‘Wake up! Do your spiritual work’.”
Well, stinging Gemma in the mouth is certainly the wasp’s way of saying something.
Dump ‘n’ Dumber
ISABELLE PEPIN was fined £500 for putting an Ikea cabinet outside her house for someone to take for free.
The item was snapped up, but four days later an official at Bournemouth Council said she was being done for fly-tipping.
Why? We are constantly urged to recycle and, rather than clog up landfill with a perfectly good item of furniture, she ensured it got a new lease of life with someone else.
Anonymous fly-tippers dumping unsightly rubbish is indeed a problem that needs tackling, but they often seem to get away with it.
Isabelle placed her item outside her own house (thereby making no secret of it) and her successful recycling effort has seen her hit with a hefty fine.
Go figure.
RUSSIAN crook Maksim Yakubets heads a cyber fraud outfit that, according to the National Crime Agency, has cheated Brits out of hundreds of millions of pounds.
Over the past decade, he and other members of his family stand accused of hacking the bank accounts of thousands of people and robbing them of their life savings, whilst also carrying out espionage missions that target Nato countries on behalf of the Russian state.
Thanks to his ill-gotten gains, Maksim is said to drive around in supercars, spent £250k on his wedding, and owns tiger and lion cubs.
As villains go, he makes Bond’s Ernst Stavro Blofeld look like the pussycat he’s so fond of stroking.
QUESTION: Given that Sue Gray’s son Liam Conlon – a brand new MP – is the latest to be revealed as receiving £1,660 worth of free Taylor Swift tickets…it might be quicker to ask, is there anyone among the Labour ranks who didn’t go to her recent concerts?
STAMP prices have risen from £1.35 to £1.65 in time for the festive season.
Soon it’ll be cheaper to get a first-class train to hand-deliver Aunty Gladys her Christmas card.
TORY heavyweight Mel Stride has backed James Cleverly in the leadership contest because he thinks he will “take the fight to Labour”.
Right now, it seems that Labour are doing a fine job of self-flagellation.
