Nicola Bulley: ‘We know her family’s pain’ say Preston family who lost a son in the same stretch of river - on the same day 45 years ago

It was 45 years ago - to the very day - that 16-year-old Roger Jones vanished in the River Wyre after being catapulted into the water in a motorcycle crash.

The student from Fulwood was swept away in a fast-flowing brook which fed into the Wyre just yards upstream from where Nicola's mobile phone was found. His body was not discovered until two months later, washed up on a sandbank at low tide near to Shard Bridge, seven miles from St Michael's.

And as the mystery surrounding the disappearance of the 45-year-old mother-of-two has been hitting the nation's headlines, it has brought back harrowing memories for the Jones family who lost the youngest of their three sons on that January night back in 1978.

"We feel so much for Nicola's family and friends - we know just what they must be going through," said Roger's brother Don Jones, who now lives in Caton, near Lancaster.

"By some bizarre coincidence it was January 27 when Roger went missing - the same day as Nicola. And he would have been washed past the spot where her phone was found.

"There was no social media back then, so we didn't have to put up with some of the nonsense that Nicola's family are having to deal with. At the moment the world and his wife are having their say on it - trotting out all sorts of conspiracy theories - and that must be a nightmare for them to deal with.

"That sort of thing is really unhelpful. We didn't get any of that, although we had clairvoyants and spiritualists getting in touch, which proved very upsetting, especially for our mum."

Roger was a pupil at what was Fulwood High School and had been hoping to go to Myerscough College to study agriculture to follow his dream of becoming a farmer.

He had been returning home one night as the pillion passenger on a friend's motorbike when they crashed into a car on a narrow bridge in Woodplumpton, near Preston. The bike rider was badly injured and unconscious when emergency services arrived and was unable to tell them he had a passenger.

It was 3am before police were alerted that someone was missing and returned to the bridge which was over a fast-flowing stream in flood. They found one of Roger's gloves on the banking, but there was no trace of the teenager.