Roadblocks

I am on a lonely road and I am traveling, traveling, traveling, traveling. I time-travel back to England every day via X. It's not the same. The same as being there, or the same as it was before. The gooey days of December Twentysomething usher in this kind of reflection. Maybe brooding is a better word. I'm thinking of what drew me in to this, and how I might be drawn back out. Was it because it brought me, digitally at least, back to my old home? The place I always "got" more than America. Now I am in that just-right in-between place, Canada, and that is as it should be. But I'm living on UK time, sending emails across an ocean that are almost never replied to, getting fantastical answers now and then, feeling I know exactly what happened most days, and then changing my mind because of something someone put on X. This is no way to live, late-December me says. And yet.

They—the powers that be—told me two days ago that releasing information about how the "working hypothesis" around missing Nikki was formed would put her "close family and friends" at risk. I hadn't asked anything, in my latest FOI request, about the whole family, or the friends. I'd asked about her partner, whose 999 call, seemingly tardily coughed-up CCTV footage and foot-dragging and blame-casting over other details, were instrumental in the police forming their hypothesis that Nicola "fell in the river for some reason" (later changed to "went in" by Becky Smith). I was told releasing information about those early days would "significantly interfere with the safeguarding of [the family's] mental health and ability to continue to grieve and apply closure."

I only wanted to know whether her partner's words on the 999 call on January 27 that she was "suffering from mental health, had been experiencing the menopause and had been suffering from depression" was corroborated while she was missing, by her GP or the mental health professional that attended her home on January 10, and if so, when. (While I'm at it, did the entire rest of her family know that this was the information PA provided on the 999 call? Recall that her parents didn't find out "the nature" of the January 10 visit until February 15.)

I only wanted to know what day the Ring footage of January 27 was obtained by police, and how it was obtained.

I only wanted to know if anyone else made 999 or 101 calls regarding Nicola, her phone or Willow, on January 27.

I only wanted to know when police received a photo of Nicola to distribute, as the College of Policing report states that the Lancashire Constabulary media and engagement team found it "difficult to secure the relevant information and a photograph to circulate" during the first 72 hours of the search (the "golden hour" of a missing person case).

And I only wanted to know when they first learned Nicola had been wearing a Fitbit (surely not February 3, when it was first mentioned publicly), and if or when they began trying to use the technological methods available to try to locate it and her—the Fitbit wouldn't need to be synced to her phone (which it apparently wasn't anyway) to do so. All they needed was to download a Bluetooth device locator app on a phone, any phone, and wander around with it. This method might not have worked anyway, if she was miles from the river, or in any body of water, where Bluetooth signals can be lost, but it would be great to know if they at least tried.

But the Data Protection gatekeepers at Lancashire Constabulary did their "balance test" and proclaimed that releasing the above information would just open old wounds. That it would "provide a reminder of a traumatic event to the family members and friends of Nicola" and "would be likely to cause distress."

Here is my November 29 FOI request, and the December 28 response, in full:

My knee-jerk reaction, a familiar one: Who are they protecting? Your mind can run wild with theories. That PA has connections with police, or some giant BAE Systems-led conspiracy, or that he was an informant, or that she was, or whatever you want to think. But the truth is likely that they're just protecting themselves. When you reexamine DCS Pauline Stables' statement outside the inquest on June 27, it becomes more clear. At the inquest, SIO Becky Smith stated her position on Adeley's conclusion of accident was "neutral." But outside the inquest, Stables' position—recall she served as a family liaison officer during the case—was clearly anything but (in bold are words she emphasized in her speech):

You can watch Stables' statement here, beginning at 13:40:

What happened behind the scenes? If I had to guess, words suggestive of a threat to bring legal action. Or simply, Lancashire Constabulary's fear that the "family" would bring legal action, because of the debacle of February 15 and 16, when the prepared press conference words of "medical history" were changed to the words "a number of specific vulnerabilities provided to us by her partner Paul" without the family's consent. Lawson and Smith were instrumental in that change; it's not clear whether Stables, then acting as one of the four (!) FLOs, was present in the meeting where the decision was agreed upon. From page 87 of the CoP report:

In Stables' post-inquest statement, it felt as if she had been asked to serve as a FLO to the family in perpetuity. The FOI denial I received this week seems to confirm that. They are going to keep this under wraps forever, unless a family member decides they want a second look.

Back to the Fields

In the meantime, theorizing on X about potential witnesses' and dogwalkers' field movements of the morning of January 27 continues, helped by Truth Finders' thorough rundown of the inquest witness statements, which they put out on YouTube on December 28:

I take part in the field movements discussion, but it's also the thing that tends to make me feel most defeated. Because it's simple really: If Nicola was actually there that day (I think you must believe the grainy 10-second home CCTV clip, with its missing wheelie bin wheel, smudgy timestamp, and a host of other problems is genuine in order to believe that) the reason why no witness saw anything is because a perpetrator (or perpetrators) would have made sure of that. If Nicola was grabbed on the towpath while leaving the area, which is a very credible theory recently put forth by Tarmaa, a perpetrator, or multiple, would have waited until the towpath and side path leading to the back of the Grapes Pub were clear. If they were acting some time around 9:23, they would have waited until PF had made her way across the towpath to do her walk in the Huws area before they staged Willow, her harness and the phone at the bench area.

But there's a roadblock again: We not only have to believe the home Ring CCTV was authentic (I have strong doubts), but we have to believe that PF actually did walk around the Huws area that day, before hopping over the stile and finding Willow, the harness "bundle," and the phone on either the floor or bench (my vote is floor). There's no proof of any of that. It's not like we were provided her cell phone data at the inquest. All we can say is that she left her home at 9:23, because she was captured on CCTV doing so. She may have created the Huws scenario to move herself away from the towpath and bench area for the period of 9:23 to 9:33. (Relevant to this, Nicola's phone apparently pinged at the bench area at 9:30 and 9:33).

Is it possible PF saw a stranger taking Willow and the phone back to the bench and didn't act on that sighting? Is it possible she did it herself? Is that why, at the inquest, she moved her timings to say she left her home "around 9:30" and got to the bench area at 9:40 at "the earliest"? Maybe. But the phone pinged three times at 9:20—three times between 9:20:39 and 9:20:42. This was before PF had even left her home. In my view, this was the perpetrator dropping the phone on the floor by the bench, along with the harness, to make the (theoretical) abduction look like an accident. They would have been loitering about at the bench for a minute or so to get the scene just right, in my opinion, and perhaps trying to decide how to stage the phone to make it look like Nicola had fallen in the water. That could be why the phone pinged three times. If PF did what she said she did, walking the Huws area (between 9:23 and 9:33, it must be said), then she likely wouldn't have seen that person walking toward the bench or staging a scene.

If Nicola was even there that morning, whatever happened to her happened after 9:15 (273 steps, or approximately 0.2 km, were recorded on the Fitbit in the segment of time between 9:15 and 9:30, at least so tech impresario DC Greenhalgh claimed). Because there was (allegedly) a heart rate spike of 100 BPM at 9:22, it's easy to say, as part of this theory, that she was grabbed by someone at or just before 9:22. The 273 steps, I think, would have been taken by Nicola as she was being led away by someone while under threat. Led away down this conveniently tree-lined, hedge-lined, CCTV-less path to a fairly discreet parking area behind the pub (thanks to Curtis, Tarmaa and Matt for making this possibility crystal clear).

The other reason this theory makes sense to me: Bruises. Nicola had a 14 cm bruise on the front and back of her upper right arm. In my view, 14 centimeters could be about the width of a man's gloved hand. The similarly sized bruise on the back of her left thigh (16 cm x 2 cm, though we don't know the orientation) could have been from being held down by someone's foot. The knee bruise could have been from being kicked, knocked to the ground, or possibly from a self-defense move on her part. For more on the injuries, watch Truth Finders' first video covering the inquest transcript.

It's easy to get lost in all this. But remember the bruises. Remember that they can only happen prior to death (or, some scientific research has shown, in the first one to two hours after death, such as when a body is recovered quickly after a drowning—I have to state that I don't believe that's what happened here, and unfortunately what I've linked to is only an abstract from a longer paper).

A little more on this abduction theory: A perpetrator would likely know that the river was very shallow, except when in flood, and might give up a body quickly (too quickly). They might also know that the river was not tidal above the weir. And they might not have intended for Nicola to die, if this potential crime involved some nefarious activities around, I don't know, debts or drugs, or if this was done by a stalker or other stranger.

Dr. Armour's autopsy findings, based on this flowchart from the Royal College of Pathologists' guidance on drownings, did not make it definitively clear that Nicola drowned following cold-water shock (as I put forth in this post months ago; needless to say, my complaints to the HOFPU went unanswered or in circles).

Based on the literally hundred pages of research papers I've read on drowning and autopsy diagnoses in the past 11 months, you could make an argument from the inquest autopsy findings that she didn't drown at all.

For a quick autopsy recap, we heard nothing at the inquest about gastric distention, only that there were 100 ml of fluid in her stomach (one resource I found states that "drowning victims swallow more fluid than they aspirate," so why was there 100 ml of fluid in her stomach, 150 ml in one lung, and 50 ml in the other? Again, watch Truth Finders' first inquest video for more detail on the autopsy findings). We heard nothing about the presence or absence of a ground-glass opacity appearance in the lungs (more common in drownings than non-drownings, per the above image). We heard nothing about fluid in the mastoid cells (in the ears). The findings we were given—namely sediment in the throat and laryx, fluid in and around the lungs, and fluid in the stomach—also occur in non-drownings, and some of them occur in non-drownings more frequently than in drownings. There were some words from Armour that sediment in the larynx helped prove that she drowned (I'm paraphrasing), but that isn't true. Sediment in and below the larynx happens in 46% of non-drowning cases, according to the above chart.

My theory on that right now is somewhere in the middle: Nicola was unconscious when put in water, possibly later on the 27th (recall the Fitbit's "reliable" heart rate data until 11:48am). I don't know what water, but I don't believe it was the Wyre. I believe this could account for such a small amount of fluid in her lungs and stomach. Armour didn't even bother with diatom testing (testing the water found in Nicola's body to help determine its composition and origin), which is another reason it can't be definitively stated that Nicola fell in at the bench and drowned in the Wyre.

But who would do this, and why? Would it have been ordered? Or would it have been done by someone close to her? Was there something bigger going on, perhaps involving drugs, county lines, debts, informants? I get stuck here. I get stuck because the abduction theory works, but the grainy home CCTV took nine days to be released to the public. I get stuck because that CCTV was in March given to an immensely popular true crime YouTuber who had been defending the "family" and friends from the get-go. I get stuck because of all the blame deflection done by the partner from day dot. I get stuck because statistically, Occam's razor here is not "fell in the river and drowned," it's, if I may be so bold, "killed by spouse." A small reminder of the most common motives behind such crimes: Separation or divorce instigated by the victim, infidelity, financial problems, and life insurance payouts (sometimes, of course, it's a combination).

Anyway, we forge on. I'll file a complaint about my FOI rejection. I'll keep reading scientific papers about drowning. I'll keep watching Deception Detective's videos on the case in the hopes that he eventually meets us where we are (and have been for almost a year). And I'll wait impatiently for the holiday period to be over so we can all get back to work (did we ever really stop?)