Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Corrie dad: I have to accept his body will never be found
Family’s agony over RAF gunner
THE dad of missing airman Corrie Mckeague now accepts his son’s body will not be found – and that his remains are probably in a waste site.
RAF gunner Corrie, 23, vanished after a night out in September 2016.
In a moving social media post Martin Mckeague, 49, said that the past two years had been an “unbelievable and horrific journey” after the search for his lad ended in vain.
Corrie was last spotted walking into a loading bay area in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk and he is feared to have fallen asleep inside a bin – which he had been known to do.
Police traced his mobile phone signal which showed it had travelled in a vehicle shortly after 4am to Barton Mills around 14 miles away.
The movement of the phone matched that of a bin lorry which picked up rubbish in the area.
A massive search of nearly 10,000 square feet of rubbish in Milton, Cambs, ended without success. Martin said yesterday that he believes his son’s body is “somewhere in the Suffolk waste disposal system”. He wrote on Facebook: “We do know what happened to Corrie and we have to accept that it is impossible to search those areas for him now.
“Accepting that conclusion has clearly not been easy for the Mckeague family in Scotland, nor anyone else.
“That’s why we feel Corrie is no longer missing, but rather his body is irretrievable.
“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”
He said waste disposal sites are either “too toxic” or too vast to search “in order to find out where he came to rest”. In his post Martin, from Fife, added: “We want to thank you all again for standing up and standing by us.” The £2.1million search for Corrie was called off by Suffolk Police in March.
His girlfriend April Oliver announced she was pregnant after his disappearance and gave birth to daughter Ellielouise in June last year.