Denise Welch, host of the talk show Loose Women, angered some viewers when she said viewers shouldn’t “speculate” about the disappearance of Nicola Bulley, a mother with two young children.
Denise Welch has been criticized for remarks she made about the Nicola Bulley case
Nicola Bulley has been missing since she went for a walk with her dog on January 27 after dropping off her two children at school in St. Michaels on Wyre, Lancashire.
Her phone was discovered on a bench by the river, still on a work call, and her dog, Willow, was wandering the area.
Superintendent Sally Riley, who is in charge of the investigation, told people “not to take the law into their own hands” and “not to do anything that would stop the investigation.”
Denise from Loose Women has warned viewers not to believe the rumors that have been spreading as a result of the lack of results from online searches.
Denise Welch has responded to criticism leveled at online “sleuths” who have developed hypotheses about the Nicola Bulley case. On Thursday’s ITV talk show, Denise brought up the police warnings.
Those were her exact words: “I’m obsessed with true life crime. When I was young and you had the news at 6pm and a couple of newspapers, all of these things went on and you didn’t know very much about it.
“But now we see it played out in real life and Lincoln and I are responsible for it because we know now, well we think we know, a lot about forensics.”
Denise claimed she was “screaming at the television” when people were walking by because she was speculating on the case.
She had reasoned: “That should still be a crime scene, that should still be evidence”, before adding to the panellists, “then I thought hang on a minute, there’s obviously a reason why they haven’t kept that.”
Denise claimed that viewers of crime shows, including herself, develop an inflated sense of expertise in the field.
A number of viewers vented their anger at Denise’s tweets on Twitter.
An online contributor stated: “So ‘don’t speculate about this case’ has been what ITV has said ALL morning all throughout their programmes, while they sit there doing exactly that – speculating.”
Another said: “There has to be some speculation. How is Nicola going to be found if theories are being ruled out because they make people uncomfortable to consider?”
A third added: “Why are Loose Women allowed to talk about it and we’re not?”
