Corrie is gone forever, says airman’s dad
Police cite bakery bins’ heavy load
THE father of missing Scot Corrie McKeague has said he is convinced his son is ‘gone’ forever after police presented him with new evidence.
Data collected by waste firm Biffa showed an unusually high load was collected from industrial bins outside a bakery where the RAF airman was last seen.
Confirmation that around 220lb (100kg) more than usual was lifted meant there was ‘no other reasonable explanation’ for the disappearance, according to senior officers.
A massive search of a landfill site yielded no trace of Mr McKeague – believed to have climbed into a bin to sleep after a drunken night out with friends – and the scale of the facility means it could take years to find remains.
His father said on Facebook: ‘The police have confirmed the Biffa bin weight that suggests my son ended up in the Suffolk waste disposal system.
‘They also confirmed there is no new evidence whatsoever. Whatever anyone has read in the newspapers to suggest otherwise is a lie.
‘My son is gone and the McKeague family in Scotland will be holding a private memorial for him in the near future.’
Mr McKeague’s father met Suffolk Police after a visit on September 21 to Bury St Edmunds to mark the second anniversary of the last sighting on CCTV of his 23-year-old son, who was born in Perth and raised in Dunfermline.
His post included a statement from a senior investigating officer, Detective Superintendent Marina Ericson, which detailed a meeting with Biffa. This examined raw data from collections and ironed out any ‘anomalies’.
It found Saturday bin collections from the Greggs bakery were ‘consistently’ 44lb to 66lb in the year to February 2017.
They exceeded 220lb on only one occasion, when more than a ton was recorded due to a ‘system error’.
The statement added: ‘I am now completely satisfied that the data provided by Biffa can be relied upon... This investigation found no other reasonable explanation for that unusually high bin weight.’
Police have said there will be no more searches.
The airman’s girlfriend, April Oliver, was pregnant when he went missing on September 24, 2016, and gave birth to their daughter Ellie-Louise in June last year.
His father’s acceptance of Mr McKeague’s fate differs from that of his former wife, Nicola Urquhart, 49.
The Police Scotland family liaison officer claimed last month that failure to examine CCTV around the time her son vanished meant he could still have walked away or been given a lift from the area.