An expert diver involved in the case of formerly missing mom Nicola Bulley has reportedly been removed from the National Crime Agency’s (NCA) list of experts.
Peter Faulding had been one of the more outspoken experts involved in the case of 45-year-old Bulley, who disappeared on January 27 after dropping her two young daughters off at school and heading on a walk with the family's dog.
The mom's disappearance garnered international headlines, as a weeks-long search for the missing mom repeatedly hit dead ends. Then, on February 20, police confirmed in a press conference that Bulley's body had been found the day prior by a dogwalker - less than a mile away from where she was last seen.
Her body was found and recovered from a river, and eventually identified via dental records.
Faulding, who took on the underwater search with his Specialist Internationalist Group firm early in the search, spoke to the Daily Mail prior to Bulley's body being discovered in the river.
He is quoted as saying: "'I have this natural ability to find things" and "if she was there, I would have found her."
In the same interview with the Mail, Faulding spoke about what he believed was the police's "worst mistake" amid the search for the mom.
"I think the worst mistake the police have made was to declare early on that she’s in the river rather than saying 'let’s keep lines of inquiry open,'" he said. "This is a lady who knew this area intimately, she was slim and fit, and if she had fallen she could have grabbed on to the bank."
And in a subsequent interview with TalkTV, Faulding claims that certain information regarding Bulley was never presented to him - information that he claims would have changed his strategy.
He explained: "If I had been given that information it wouldn’t have been given to the media. It would have been confidential and I would have changed my whole search strategy.
"I assumed that Nicola had slipped into the river and it’s only two foot deep at the bottom of the bank - that’s why I’ve been so adamant that she’s not in that part of the river, we thoroughly searched it.
"If she had jumped in, or intended to take her own life, or walked off, or wherever she is, that would change my whole plan. She could have ended up in the sea. But it’s changed this and it’s really annoyed me."
Additionally, after Bulley's body was recovered, Faulding said (via The Independent): "All I can say is when we searched she was not on the bottom of that river [...] We weren't searching the reeds, our job was to search the water."
Faulding also appeared on GB News earlier this week to explain that he is being used as a "fall guy".
"There's always a fall guy, it looks like it's trying to me, but I'm not accepting it," he said. "We done the best with our ability, but it was not our remit to search the reeds, that was the land search team."
Now, The Times has reported that law enforcement sources have confirmed that Faulding's Specialist Group International (SGI) had been suspended while a review is carried out and he has been removed from the NCA’s Expert Advisers Database (EAD).
The Times adds that the EAD is constantly changing based on reviews and findings, and that Faulding and the SGI could be put back on the list depending on the results of the review.
Our thoughts continue to go out to Bulley's family, friends, and loved ones at this time.
