Detectives will launch 10-week search of huge landfill site for missing Corrie
DETECTIVES investigating the disappearance of Scottish RAF gunner Corrie McKeague are to search a landfill site.
The serviceman from Dunfermline, Fife, vanished while on a night out with friends in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, last September.
The disappearance has baffled officers as the 23-year-old was last seen entering a dead end with no possible way out without being caught on CCTV.
Mr McKeague’s girlfriend April Oliver, 21, has since revealed that she is pregnant with his child.
But public intrigue soared even further after revelations that the couple had joined an online swingers’ club to hook up with strangers in casual sexual encounters.
Now detectives are preparing to trawl a local landfill for vital clues in the case.
The move has come after CCTV images showed a bin lorry made a collection in the area where he was last seen shortly after 3.25am on September 24.
The truck was seized in the early stages of the inquiry for forensic examination but did not reveal any traces of Mr McKeague.
However, investigators will now pick through the 9,900 square foot (920 sq m) site with waste up to 26ft (8m) deep in Milton, Cambridgeshire.
Police said they alerted the site early in the investigation of the possible need to search it and that no further waste has been deposited in the area used.
But the search will still be a mammoth undertaking.
It is estimated it will take a team of specialist search trained police officers six to ten weeks to complete the work required.
Preparation work for the operation is already under way and a full-scale search is likely to start on February 22.
Specially-built access to the tip is being constructed and on-site search facilities will also be installed to comb through the refuse.
Police have been forced to warn locals that the process could cause an increase in odour from the site.
Detective Superintendent Katie Elliott said: ‘This is the next logical step in the investigation.
‘Behind the scenes we have been working systematically through the options and we have
‘This is the next logical step’
examined a very broad range of evidence.
‘This has involved an extensive examination of CCTV, phone and social media analysis, searches, media appeals, talking to those who had contact with Corrie, investigating his background and social life and tracing those who were out in Bury St Edmunds at the time of the last sighting – 3.25am on Saturday September 24.’
‘We know physically searching the site has the potential to cause an increase in odour and we hope residents will understand that we and the site owners have taken this into consideration when making a decision to go ahead with the search.
‘However, we also hope they will understand why we are doing this as part of our continuing investigation to find Corrie.
‘We need to find him and discover what happened to him.
‘While the search may not provide the answers as to what happened it is something we need to do as our investigation continues.’
Police are liaising with Mr McKeague’s family to keep them informed of the plan.
The airman’s mother Nicola Urquhart – an officer with Police Scotland – has been critical of previous efforts to find her son by Suffolk Police.
In previous remarks she has said: ‘They have absolutely destroyed my belief that they are competent and they know what they’re doing.’
Last month it was also revealed that the family had hired private detectives in a bid to spur the search.
Mr McKeague’s uncle, Tony Wringe, said investigators from McKenzie Intelligence Services would start to work on the case from early January.