Nicola Bulley ghoul who filmed tragic mum being pulled from river is fraudster who tricked women into taking gym pics
THE ghoul who filmed Nicola Bulley’s body being pulled from the river is a fraudster who tricked women into taking gym pictures.
Body-builder Curtis Arnold, 34, duped cops and covertly filmed as officers recovered the tragic mum from the River Wyre in Lancashire.
He posted the grim footage on several social media channels, including TikTok and YouTube.
Arnold’s sickening eight-minute clip sparked a wave of condemnation – but its near million views have earned him almost £1,000 in royalties.
And last night he told The Sun: “Yeah perhaps it was a step too far, but I can’t take it back.”
Now we can reveal Arnold is a “narcissistic” and “manipulative” conman with a string of criminal convictions, including burglary, fraud, drink driving and perverting the course of justice.
Arnold, who runs a barber shop in Kidderminster, has a lengthy rap sheet going back to his early 20s and a more recent fraud charge in 2018, for which he served jail time.
He visited several gyms in the London area posing as a fitness modelling agent who needed models to promote a firm’s range of female leggings.
He then took a series of sexualised photos and videos of women which he shared on his social media to sell his own fitness products – without their permission.
He served time at the notorious Wormwood Scrubs prison in London after being convicted of fraud by false representation.
A source at the prison said he was unpopular with the staff there.
The source said: “He was a very narcissistic, manipulative individual and would regularly try to manipulate female staff, especially education staff.
“He was slimy and would tell them they were beautiful or he preferred them over another officer.
“He would say very inappropriate things and would ask for their mobile numbers and ask to see them outside of the prison.
“But when he started asking female staff to smuggle in phones and drugs for him, it all went down on his report.”
The source said Arnold was sacked from his job as a reception orderly at the prison – a trusted role dealing with incoming prisoners.
“It was discovered he was part of a group smuggling items into prison so he was sacked,” they added.
Arnold’s chequered past includes a six-month suspended prison sentence handed to him in March 2010 at Hereford Crown Court for perverting the course of justice connected with altering his car licence plate.
By October that year he was hauled before the courts again for breach of a suspended sentence when he was arrested for drink driving on the M6 when he was nearly twice the alcohol limit.
The next month, he pleaded guilty to receiving two registration plates stolen from a car parked in West Bromwich.
And that same month a court heard how Arnold broke into a house garage in Kidderminster and stole tools.
He admitted burglary, although it’s unclear what his sentence was.
But amazingly the then 22-year-old avoided jail for the breach when a judge showed leniency because was beginning to show signs of maturity by working hard on becoming a personal trainer.
Instead the judge imposed eight days specified activity for the breach and a 12-month community order for handling the stolen number plates.
For the drink driving Arnold was slapped with £500 fine and was banned from the roads for three years.
DARK PAST
Arnold, who is single and lives in a three-bedroom detached house near the barber’s shop he runs, said his criminal convictions “have nothing to do” with the Nicola Bulley case and are “old news”.
“I’ve had my punishment,” he added, while insisting “it wasn’t young women” he was taking snaps of in gyms.
Arnold also said claims he tricked a police officer to access the Nicola Bulley scene are “misleading”.
He said: “I got past there to find out what was going on, the video of the police going into the river was half an hour later on the other side of the river.”
Asked whether he was profiting from the videos he’s posted, he said: “Not really, it cost me 80 quid fuel there and back and I’m not making much more than that on the videos.
“The views aren’t millions, are they, they’re only thousands.”
Arnold says he regrets posting the video.
“Of course I do, the videos on there are very helpful to people, I have that feedback, but that particular video…yeah perhaps it was a step too far, but at the time the main media were rushing over there to film it and I just presumed that, yeah, great I can just get what they’re getting because a lot of people want to watch,” he said.
“But in hindsight perhaps I shouldn’t have posted that video, I have removed it, but I can’t take it back.”
He added that he has faced severe backlash since being exposed.
“I’ve had my house damaged, my car damaged, my workplace damaged, I’ve been assaulted, I’ve had death threats, I’ve had all sorts of drama,” he said.
But when The Sun began to press him on his criminal convictions and read some of the charges against him, including filming young women in leggings, he hung up.
‘HE WILL DO ANYTHING FOR MORE VIEWS’
Arnold’s social media claims to offer “media and journalism done differently” but hides his identity online.
He is careful not to appear on camera, and sometimes uses a picture of Nicola’s partner Paul Ansell as his profile image.
But he was unmasked after being tracked down to his barber shop from his digital footprint and channel rebrand.
The powerlifter made five, six-hour round trips from his Worcestershire home to St Michael’s on Wyre in the space of 10 days to acquire content for his online following.
Arnold’s most sickening video from the village opens with his GoPro, fastened to a harness around his neck, filming a male police officer blocking his path.
He is asked to turn back but tricks the cop into letting him through by claiming that he needs to return to his parked car and saying that he is from Blackpool.
As dozens of officers gather and a police helicopter and drone hover overhead, Arnold asks a female colleague on the other side of the cordon: “What’s going on down there? I’ve walked down and he wouldn’t let me pass.”
She also directs him to leave the area but the video then cuts to Arnold filming covertly as officers lift what appears to be a body bag.
Many viewers reacted with horror to his footage headlined “Nicola Bulley *breaking* police found something”.
One wrote: “This is disgraceful! Imagine if that was your loved one. I hope her family does not see this.”
Another said: “You need your head looking at filming this. Her children will see this one day, you vile man.”
Someone who knows Arnold well said: “He will do anything for more views to make money.
“He gives all TikTok-ers a bad reputation.”
So many sleuths descended on St Michael’s on Wyre that, at one point, cops had to issue a 48-hour dispersal order to clear the village of outsiders.
Lancashire Police has come under fire for its handling of the investigation generally.
The force now faces three external inquiries over the 23-day search for mortgage adviser Nicola.
The Independent Office for Police Conduct is probing a welfare visit to the family home made by an officer two weeks earlier.
And training and policy body the College of Policing will examine both the hunt and the decision to release information about an alcohol issue triggered by the menopause.
The Sun revealed last night that Lancashire Police was blasted by watchdogs three months before she vanished.
Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary found the force “requires improvement at investigating crime”.
It added that officers did not “always carry out thorough and timely investigations” and that “victims aren’t always updated on progress”.
Nicola was found a mile downstream from where she is thought to have fallen in.