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Corrie Mckeague

Age: 23

Sex: male

Date: 24 Sep 2016

Place: Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

Corrie Mckeague went missing after a night out on 24 September 2016 in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk.

It was thought that he had gone to sleep in a bin near a Greggs bakery and that the bin was later collected, along with him and taken to a landfill in Milton, Cambridgeshire, where he was then buried. It was also said that he might have been crushed by the bin lorry when it collected the waste from the refuse bin. However, his family doubted that that was a certainty and claimed that the police were withholding other evidence and said that they had been informed in a tip that he had been murdered and buried in the landfill. Corrie Mckeague's mother also said that she thought that Corrie Mckeague might also have been drugged.

Corrie Mckeague had been in the RAF at the time.

He had been out for the night in Bury St Edmunds on 24 September 2016 and was seen in CCTV footage at 1.20am eating takeaway food and then again at 3.24am taking a nap in a doorway in Brentgovel Street shortly before entering a cul-de-sac containing a number of wheelie bins at 3.25am. He was also said to have responded to a text message from a friend shortly beforehand.

It was suggested that he got into a large recycling bin there belonging to the Greggs bakery and gone to sleep and that the bin was collected about 50 minutes later and that he was crushed in the process and taken to a trading depot before being taken to the Milton landfill.

The police said that they had been able to trace Corrie Mckeague's mobile phone going from Bury St Edmunds to the Barton Mills area, which was twelve miles away at a speed indicating that it was in a vehicle.

The police said that his mobile phone was last active at 8am at which time it was either switched off, ran out of battery power or was broken and added that it had never been found.

There was no trace of Corrie Mckeague throughout the day of Sunday 25 September 2016 and he was reported missing the following day, 26 September 2016, when he failed to show up for work at RAF Honington. Later that following morning, at 4.10am, the police informed the media that Corrie Mckeague was missing and a helicopter was allocated to join the search for him, with special units from the Suffolk police, Suffolk Lowland Search and Rescue (SULSAR) and RAF Police searching the route between Bury St Edmunds and RAF Honington for him.

On 4 October 2016, the police appealed for people that might have found his phone. The following day the police appealed for three teenagers that had been seen in the area around the time that Corrie Mckeague went missing and they later came forward on 9 October 2016.

Later on 10 February 2017 the police said that they had decided to search the Milton landfill site for his body. A second search was also made at Milton landfill site for his body in October 2017.

Suffolk Police later stated on 26 March 2018 that they were standing down the search for Corrie Mckeague.

The police said that the typical weight of a bin from the Greggs bakery was mostly between 20 to 30 kg, but that on the morning concerned the bin from the Greggs bakery had weighed 116kg. The police said, 'Our findings were that the weights of these bins were consistently low (mostly between 20-30KG) and it was extremely unusual for the Greggs bin collection on a Saturday to be anywhere near 100kg let alone over this figure. In the whole of this yearly period we identified only one other occasion where the weight exceeded 100kg, other than a date where a system error had occurred which recorded a weight in excess of 1000kg which is known to be impossible'.

However, it was also noted that there was no DNA at all on the bin or the refuse lorry that had taken it away belonging to Corrie Mckeague.

Corrie Mckeague's grandmother also said, 'The Biffa raw data was interfered with. It is NOT a conclusive fact that the bin was 116kg'. She went on to say, 'Even if we accept it was, in the year from Jan 2016 to Jan 2017 the Greggs bin WAS regularly over 80kg and frequently over 100kg. Regardless of what day of the week this was it was still over and Suffolk police have stated as a FACT that it was over 100kg on a previous Saturday but this is to be ignored as are all the failed readings and the ones were it was over 500kg or 1000kg. Suffolk police being baffled as to why they did not find Corrie and cannot explain it. Nor are they trying too'.

It was also reported that initially, on 7 March 2017, that the weight of the rubbish collected by the bin lorry from the site where Corrie Mckeague was last seen, by the Greggs bakery, had initially been recorded as being just 11kg, but was only later found to have been much higher, being then reported as 100kg, meaning that the load was heavy enough to have contained a human body and justified a search of Milton landfill as the next logical step. It was also reported that a man was arrested over the error, but was released without charge after it was determined that it was a genuine mistake.

She also said, 'We have been misled and lied to by the senior officers investigating the disappearance of Corrie, they have played word games, played a media game and have tried to only provide us with information that fits their preferred theory at the time. Corrie is a grown man and is responsible for himself, as I said at the start, he is responsible for his own actions, we as a family are not looking for someone to blame for what has happened to Corrie, we are looking for the truth and we want to find Corrie. In Summary, it is possible Corrie left on foot and is AWOL. I do not and have never believed this is probable, Corrie made no plans, had no reason and has never been seen after the immediate sightings. Most importantly, as a family we know that if Corrie could see the way some people are behaving not a single person in the world could stop him from screaming from the rooftops about how he would feel about that'.

The police also said that Corrie Mckeague's phone signal had also followed the route that the refuse lorry had taken, but it was claimed by his family that that finding was inconclusive as it only meant that it was within five miles of the area along which it was traced.

After the police determined that it was likely that Corrie Mckeague had got into the bin to go to sleep and had then been taken away to the rubbish tip in Milton, Cambridgeshire, they spent 20 weeks sifting through 9,471 tonnes of waste, but found nothing. The search cost £2.1m. However, it was also later claimed that the police might have searched the wrong landfill site and that the waste from the Greggs bakery bin might have been taken elsewhere.

Corrie Mckeague's family later said that the police were lying and that they were concealing evidence connected with his disappearance.

Corrie Mckeague's grandmother said, 'They [police] just hope that by saying all the evidence points to Corrie being there makes it true and us the family and the public will be stupid enough to believe it'.

She said that she didn't think that Corrie Mckeague had got into the bin and said that an eye witness that had seen Corrie Mckeague close to where he was last reported to have been seen had looked in the bin and had not seen him, but said that the police wanted her to discount the statement as untrue.

When the police later released a statement regarding the claims by Corrie Mckeague's family, they said, 'Everything we have said and done has been in good faith and for the right reasons. We have sought to be as open and transparent as possible with the family. This investigation was conducted in line with the Code of Ethics. The most likely scenario is that Corrie McKeague unfortunately went into the bin which was emptied into the Biffa lorry and consequently ended up in the waste process. We have come to this conclusion based on all of the evidence we have available to us, and not just the weight of the bin. Our investigation has been reviewed by an outside force and the review agreed that Suffolk Constabulary’s preferred hypothesis of what happened to Corrie was the most likely one given the evidence available. Suffolk Constabulary has previously stated that unless new, realistic and credible information becomes available then the investigation is complete. There is no information available at this time that changes the status of the investigation'.

It was also stated that Corrie Mckeague would not have been able to have left the Bury St Edmunds area without being seen in CCTV footage, however, it was later stated that he might well have been in a vehicle that left after 7am which was the break point for the investigation of vehicles leaving the area, or that he could have walked out at any time after midday. It was said that not one of the vehicles that had left the area after 7am had been identified or traced.

Corrie Mckeague's girlfriend later revealed that she was pregnant on 9 January 2017 and later gave birth to Corrie Mckeague's daughter. It was said that his girlfriend had not found out that she was pregnant until two weeks after his disappearance, but his father claims that he knew at the time he vanished and suggested that he might have committed suicide.

It was noted that although the route between Bury St Edmunds and RAF Honington was searched, that there were also plenty of areas along its length that were not fully searched, including a large man made forest and other areas of very deep water.

The police released the following facts about the investigation:

  1. More than 1,500 people were spoken to during the inquiry.
  2. More than 2,000 hours of CCTV were looked at.
  3. A total of 529 statements were taken.
  4. The estimated size of the area searched outside of Milton landfill (i.e. open land searched etc.) Total square miles searched 20.4 miles + road 6.5 miles
  5. Size of Milton landfill site: The entire landfill site is set in 71.2 hectares. The area that was being used to take waste during September 2016 was an area known as Cell 22. Cell 22 is approximately 14 hectares in size.
  6. Size of first area searched in Cell 22: Phase 1 06/03/17 - 21/07/17, 20 weeks total 6,604 tonnes
  7. Size of second area searched in Cell 22: Phase 2 23/10/17 - 11/12/17   7 weeks 1 day 2,867.5 tonnes
  8. The search team on the landfill site consisted of a Police Search Adviser lead, Police Search Adviser team leader and eight Licensed Search Officers at any time per week.
  9. The investigation into his disappearance cost the police £2m.

His inquest, which was held in March 2022 noted that Corrie Mckeague had had a significant binge-drinking problem which had developed after a friend of his had died on a railway line when he was a teenager.


*map pointers are rough estimates based on known location details as per Place field above.