Corrie McKeague (16 September 1993 – 24 September 2016) went missing in the early hours of 24 September 2016 in the Bury St Edmunds area of Suffolk, England. Before disappearing, he worked as a Royal Air Force Regiment gunner.
McKeague was last seen, on town centre CCTV footage, entering a cul-de-sac which contained a number of wheelie bins. His mobile phone was tracked by masts along a route between Bury St Edmunds and a landfill site near Barton Mills. Suffolk Constabulary were initially reluctant to search the site for McKeague's remains because a bin lorry that had travelled that route at that time had been estimated to have been carrying a load of only . In March 2017, however, the police discovered that the lorry had a significantly larger weight; more than .
McKeague's disappearance remained under investigation and the case attracted widespread publicity, with the authorities believing that he was crushed to death by the bin lorry and that his remains were somewhere at the Barton Mills landfill site.
Suffolk Constabulary spent more than £2.1 million investigating McKeague's disappearance, making it one of the most expensive missing persons investigations that the force has conducted and, in the words of Suffolk police, one that brought unique pressures on the force. The search for McKeague was stood down in March 2018, and an inquest in March 2022 concluded that he had died, after climbing into a commercial waste bin, as a result of "compression asphyxia in association with multiple injuries".
Life
McKeague was born in Perth in September 1993 and was raised in Cupar, Fife, before moving to Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland at the age of nine, following his parents' divorce. McKeague and his two brothers, Darroch and Makeyan, were raised by their mother and attended St Margarets Primary School and St Columba's High School in Dunfermline. McKeague joined the RAF Regiment in 2013 and was posted to No. II Squadron Royal Air Force Regiment based at RAF Honington after his initial Regiment training at the same base. McKeague was a Senior Aircraftman gunner and medic on the squadron.
In January 2017, April Oliver, aged 21, announced that she was pregnant with McKeague's baby. Neither she nor McKeague were aware of the pregnancy at the time of his disappearance. They had only been dating for five months. Miss Oliver was on a holiday in the United States when McKeague disappeared, but cut the holiday short to return to the UK. On 18 June 2017, Oliver announced that she had given birth to a daughter, Ellie-Louise, on 11 June 2017.
Disappearance
On the night of 23 September 2016, McKeague was out drinking with friends in Bury St Edmunds. He had driven himself to the town with the intention of leaving his car overnight. He separated from his friends in the early hours of 24 September, after leaving the Flex nightclub on St Andrews Street South. The doorman at Flex recalls asking McKeague to leave because he was too drunk to stay. He remarked that McKeague was 'no trouble' whatsoever and that they chatted afterwards on the street outside. McKeague was in the Mama Mia's takeaway restaurant, reportedly his usual takeaway restaurant, between 1:15 am and 1:30 am. The last known sighting of McKeague was on CCTV at 3:25 am on Brentgovel Street, walking into the "Horseshoe area" where there were a number of wheelie bins. There was no footage of him ever emerging. CCTV footage also suggested that McKeague had slept briefly in a doorway before waking up and moving on. It is not believed that he intended to walk back to his base, RAF Honington, which is north east of the town along minor unclassified roads.
Nicola Urquhart, his mother, said in a statement dated 3 October 2016, which was released to the public and reported on by Evening Standard, that her son has never walked back to Honington on any previous occasions, and that leaving on his own, getting food and sleeping for a short time were all things McKeague had done in the past.
As he had the weekend off, McKeague was not reported missing until the 26 September (the following Monday) when he failed to report for work. After he was reported missing, the Suffolk Lowland Search and Rescue team (SULSAR) helped the police search the area around Bury St Edmunds and Honington alongside the RAF's own search and rescue teams which were bolstered by searches involving police helicopters.
There was one unconfirmed sighting of McKeague at the back of a sugar factory at Bury St Edmunds at 4:20 am, but police stressed this had been investigated and the person involved was not McKeague. The last authenticated sighting was on CCTV at Brentgovel Street.