The disappearance of Nicola Bulley

Dis86 said:
As someone who regularly uses sonar I can tell you it really isn't that straight forward. It depends how far any body has travelled but also whether or not there are any other artifacts down there. Additionally the bank and bed conditions make a massive difference.
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To be fair, that guys company is used by 5 different police forces and has a very good success rate over the course of almost 2 decades. Thats a pretty good breadth of experience to consider their assessment an accurate one. All we can do now is wait and see what their findings are.
 
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Tombstone said:
To be fair, that guys company is used by 5 different police forces and has a very good success rate over the course of almost 2 decades. Thats a pretty good breadth of experience to consider their assessment an accurate one.
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Again, it depends how far the body has travelled. You can only survey as fast as the craft you are in can go. If you've got to stop to check any possible results then that drastically decreases the speed.
 
Dis86 said:
Again, it depends how far the body has travelled. You can only survey as fast as the craft you are in can go. If you've got to stop to check any possible results then that drastically decreases the speed.
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All things which I would credit the guy with being aware of in his assessment
 
Haggisman said:
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence ;)

The only way to know for sure if she's in the river or not is if she's:

A) found in the river
B) found somewhere else

Not finding her in the river doesn't mean she's not in the river, it just means they didn't find her in the river.
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I think you're making it more complicated than it is.

If shes in the river then this team is likely to find her.

But to use your logic, if they don't find her in the river, but shes still in the river, then what else would you suggest they all do?
 
MadMossy said:
The forensic expert claimed that when they have used sonar previously to find missing people they have found them within an hour. It's been 3 hours so far assuming they started scanning at 8am.
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how big was the area they searched previously?
How long did it take in other occasions?

A statement like "it only took an hour last time" is pointless, as last time they may have got lucky (started scanning near it), or it may have been a much smaller area, or it might have been much easier to search.

You can probably scan 1 mile stretch of canal fairly quickly, it's nice and fairly straight with straight sides and a flat bottom so anything like a body is going to show up fairly easily (especially if it's been maintained), try scanning a 1 mile stretch of one river and you might take 5 hours, another river might take 10, there are so many variables including such things as the depth, width, surface of the bottom of the area being scanned, how much junk is down there. To get a thorough scan you might have to redo an area several times if you're looking for something like a body on a potentially cluttered river bed, and it will still require an element of human error/interpretation of any result so one person may spot something much faster than another in some conditions.

IIRC when looking for things like wrecks with sonar it's fairly standard practice to try and go over the same spot several times by making sure each pass of the sonar is overlapping, because what you see as the return from directly overhead may look very different to what you might see from another angle.
 
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Werewolf said:
how big was the area they searched previously?
How long did it take in other occasions?

A statement like "it only took an hour last time" is pointless, as last time they may have got lucky (started scanning near it), or it may have been a much smaller area, or it might have been much easier to search.

You can probably scan 1 mile stretch of canal fairly quickly, it's nice and fairly straight with straight sides and a flat bottom so anything like a body is going to show up fairly easily (especially if it's been maintained), try scanning a 1 mile stretch of one river and you might take 5 hours, another river might take 10, there are so many variables including such things as the depth, width, surface of the bottom of the area being scanned, how much junk is down there. To get a thorough scan you might have to redo an area several times if you're looking for something like a body on a potentially cluttered river bed, and it will still require an element of human error/interpretation of any result so one person may spot something much faster than another in some conditions.

IIRC when looking for things like wrecks with sonar it's fairly standard practice to try and go over the same spot several times by making sure each pass of the sonar is overlapping, because what you see as the return from directly overhead may look very different to what you might see from another angle.
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If an expert with decades of experience, who provides his services to most of the police forces in England, says they usually find something within an hour, then I am more likely to believe them.
 
BowdonUK said:
I think you're making it more complicated than it is.

If shes in the river then this team is likely to find her.
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On the contrary, you're making it far too simple. If she's in there, then yes it's likely (assuming they look in the right place), but by no means certain.

BowdonUK said:
But to use your logic, if they don't find her in the river, but shes still in the river, then what else would you suggest they all do?
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I'm not suggesting they do anything, merely stating that them not finding her in the river does not mean she isn't in the river.
 
Dis86 said:
How can he do that when he doesn't know how far the body has gone?
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Based on his experience of locating bodies in water over 2 decades, with 5 different police forces. The bigger question is why I would doubt the assessment of an evidenced expert in the field in favour of the opinion of someone on an internet computer forum. I see no reason to doubt an expert in their assessment of the situation.
 
Tombstone said:
Based on his experience of locating bodies in water over 2 decades, with 5 different police forces. The bigger question is why I would doubt the assessment of an evidenced expert in the field in favour of the opinion of someone on an internet computer forum. I see no reason to doubt an expert in their assessment of the situation.
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Well that's a stupid route to take. Surely you have the nouse to think for example it would be impossible to survey a 28 mile river in an hour?

I mean the dude is literally quoted in the guardian as saying he thinks it'll take 2-3 days to survey...
 
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Vanquish-Storm said:
The other strange thing for me is people go missing every day. Why did this story gain traction with MSM, is it the added mystery?
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Simple - because she's good looking. On Friday a man went missing in scotland after falling in a river. They found his body yesterday afternoon, so missing almost 3 days. Hardly anything on the news about it
 
Dis86 said:
Well that's a stupid route to take. Surely you have the nouse to think for example it would be impossible to survey a 28 mile river in an hour?

I mean the dude is literally quoted in the guardian as saying he thinks it'll take 2-3 days to survey...
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I didnt say it would take an hour. All I said was that whatever his assessment is would be a fair assessment because thats what he has done for 2 decades and why would I doubt the experts opinion in preference of what someone says on a forum
 
There is no real rhyme or reason as to why some cases get picked up massively. Some just get traction and once you get that the media latch on and its guaranteed to be a far bigger case than it merits.
 
I wonder what the statistics of being found (dead or alive) are in correlation to time passed since missing. I would expect after even a few days, the chances go down massively. After a week... 2 weeks...
The poor family.
Someone posted above that the partner seems "off" in his interview. Nah not having that. Too many internet detectives out there. Seemed totally normal to me. Would it have been more normal if he cried his way through the interview? Smiled more? There is no predictable behavioural trait for anyone that is dealing with something like this.
 
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jaybee said:
Someone posted above that the partner seems "off" in his interview. Nah not having that. Too many internet detectives out there. Seemed totally normal to me. Would it have been more normal if he cried his way through the interview? Smiled more? There is no predictable behavioural trait for anyone that is dealing with something like this.
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I put it down to the Ian Huntley and Karen Matthews effect, seems that ever since their cases, where they were interviewed on tv and then later found to be the perpetrator, people now see an interview and immediately think they did it.
 
Tombstone said:
I didnt say it would take an hour. All I said was that whatever his assessment is would be a fair assessment because thats what he has done for 2 decades and why would I doubt the experts opinion in preference of what someone says on a forum
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That's what madmossy was claiming in the post I was referring to.
 
Tombstone said:
I put it down to the Ian Huntley and Karen Matthews effect, seems that ever since their cases, where they were interviewed on tv and then later found to be the perpetrator, people now see an interview and immediately think they did it.
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Quite a few people suspected Ian Huntley based on his body language, speech, hand gestures, being overkeen to want to help out and other behavioural traits. It was very obvious to a professional that he was their man following that inteview.
 
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