A friend of missing mum Gaynor Lord received mysterious phone calls from the department store workers on the day she disappeared and now police have said that they may know why she “behaved in the way in which she did”. Norfolk Police released CCTV pictures yesterday of what they believe is the final sighting of Ms Lord before she disappeared in Norwich last Friday.
Officers said “everything we know is pointing to a high probability” that she entered the River Wensum, adding that “nobody knows why she’s done what she’s done” as the search reaches a crucial seven-day mark.
The 55-year-old mum vanished after leaving work early at 2:45pm. Belongings of the mum-of-three were discovered in Wensum Park, around 1.5 miles from her place of work in Norwich city centre. Her coat was discovered in the river, which runs through the green space.
Julie Butcher, a friend of Gaynor, said she got two calls from her on Friday afternoon. At 2:15pm the mum rang and asked where Julie was. She told the BBC: “I said ‘I’m at home’ and I explained I was sorting out the internet and my phone rang and it was one of my clients and I had to speak to them. I said I would call her back and she said ‘yes’”.
She revealed that she called Gaynor back seven or eight minutes later but couldn’t get hold of the Jarrold department store worker. She called again to no avail, before sending a WhatsApp message saying that she was now free to chat.
She said: “I think she was still at work when she called me, I don’t know. But maybe that’s why she couldn’t answer”.
Julie then got another call from Gaynor at 4:15pm but said it “sounded like a pocket call; I could hear movement in her pocket”.
Tormented, the mum’s friend said she was replaying her interaction with Gaynor in her head on repeat, adding: “I keep going over the conversation. If I hadn’t answered that call [from her client] would she have talked to me? I feel terrible. I feel so sorry for the family. It’s not like Gaynor to do this.”
Chief Superintendent Dave Buckley said the force is keeping an open mind about the fate of Gaynor but conceded that “everything we know is pointing to a high probability that Gaynor went into the water”.
He went on: “We’ve got some indications as to why she behaved the way in which she did but what we’re doing is we’re just working backwards now to actually truly understand what may have taken place.
“We’re just cautious of everything we know at the moment because clearly we’ve ended up in the situation we have, which is not usual.”
