Vanishing of mum Gaynor Lord: Two enigmatic phone calls preceded disappearance

Julie Butcher received two calls on Friday afternoon – one at 2.15pm and another at 4.15pm – but told her friend she’d have to call her back.

As the search for Gaynor reaches day seven, Mrs Butcher has told of her devastation at being “too busy” to take her phone call shortly before she vanished.

She said: “I feel terrible. I feel so sorry for the family. It’s not like Gaynor to do this.”

The first call came whilst Gaynor, 55, was still at work on a concession stall at Jarrolds department store in Norwich.

Ms Butcher, who owns a bridal hairdressing business, said: “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’”.

But when she called back seven or eight minutes later she could not get through so left a voicemail and sent a WhatsApp message, saying she was free to talk.

“She added: “I think she was still at work when she called me, I don’t know. But maybe that’s why she couldn’t answer,”

She received another call at 4:15pm, moments after the last known sighting on Gaynor on CCTV, but said it “sounded like a pocket call; I could hear movement in her pocket”.

Ms Butcher said she has replayed the conversation over and over again,

adding: “I keep going over the conversation. If I hadn’t answered that call [from her client] would she have talked to me?”

According to a colleague, Gaynor told him she was “feeling a bit funny and a bit off” before leaving work more than an hour before her shift finished.

A salesman who works close to Gaynor’s stand where she sold Bullards Gin said: “She’s a really nice woman. She said something about feeling a bit funny. It was very nonchalant. She said she was feeling a bit funny, a bit off.

“It was a brief conversation on either Thursday or Friday before she went missing.

“I asked how she was doing today. She said she was feeling a bit funny, a bit off. That was all I got from her. ‘I’m feeling a bit funny today’, that was it.”

The shop worker, who did not want to be named and had only met Gaynor two weeks ago, added: “She shook her hands as she said it but I didn’t think much of it.”

The revelation came as relatives told how Gaynor’s distraught husband Clive, 63, is “in bits” over the week-long mystery.

The mum-of-three left work at 2.45pm last Friday and was declared missing at 8pm after she failed to return home and police found clothing, jewellery and her mobile phone spread out across the city centre Wensum Park. Her olive-coloured coat was retrieved from the adjacent River Wensum four days later.

Local resident Rosie Richards claims she saw a woman fitting Gaynor’s description in the park around 4pm putting her coat on the ground before performing a yoga pose.

Detectives believes “it is likely” Gaynor entered the water and yesterday revealed they had “some indications”.

A huge search is ongoing by specialist divers, who are working in an “extraordinarily challenging environment” with heavy downpours in recent weeks swelling the river to capacity.

Yesterday Gaynor’s sister-in-law Susan Sinclair revealed the ongoing anguish of husband Clive, 63, – her brother – as she told how the whole family prayed she is found safe and well.

The devastated financial advisor is being cared for at home by relatives including daughters Alexandra, 22, and Charlotte, 24.

Susan 66, of Harrogate, said: “Clive is in bits, obviously, but he’s got his two daughters there supporting him.

“Our other brother Simon, like me, is just hoping for good news. We’re all just very shocked.

“There’s nothing we can do at the moment except hope that she’s found safe and well.”

Susan said Gaynor did have religion – but was still puzzled why she would have made her way to Norwich Cathedral after leaving work.

She added: “The worrying bit is that she’s discarded some clothing, apart from her phone and the jewellery. “That’s a bad sign – especially in the cold and after all this time.”

Gaynor’s half-brother Allan Weston, 43, who lives in Blackpool, said: “We are all very worried. It is out of character and we just want her home.”

Police yesterday released CCTV of the last time sighting along with a photograph of Gaynor smiling as she left her workplace.

In a CCTV clip she can be seen running along the pavement with her coat in hand. She is thought to have spent 30 minutes at the cathedral before she is spotted on CCTV again, making her way along the street, putting her coat on as she walks.

She was last seen on CCTV at 4.01pm.

Chief Superintendent Dave Buckley of Norfolk Police said: “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.”

“I don’t think any of the conversations we’ve had are completely informing us as to why her state of mind ended up being what it was.”

“It would be really premature I think if I offered too much suggestion as to what I think has happened.”

Friends said the park, around a mile from her workplace but the opposite direction from her £500,000 home, was one of her favourite dog-walking spots.

Simon Valentine, welfare officer at Stanmore Tennis Club where Gaynor is an “active” member, said: “She knew all these areas by the river. I don’t think she would have gone there if not. She is a lovely lady.”

The case has chilling similarities to that of mum-of-two Nicola Bulley’s tragic disappearance last January. Investigators are liaising with Lancashire detectives, who led to the search for Nicola, before her body was found in the River Wyre on February 19, about a mile from where she vanished while walking her dog.

Chief Supt Buckley confirmed divers faced difficulties similar to those experienced during the Nicola Bulley investigation and it would take “some days” to scour the river.

He said: “We’re putting sonar equipment across the river, which is quite detailed in allowing us to try and target divers to where we think there might be objects.

“But equally, it’s very, very challenging. The river is very, very full of water with all the rain, full of lots of debris. The divers can see about one foot in front of them.

“So it’s an extraordinarily challenging environment for them to work in so it’s slow, methodical at the moment, working with equipment and it will take probably a couple of days to get to a position where we’re kind of content with what we’ve done. It may even be longer.”