Police resume landfill search for missing RAF serviceman Corrie McKeague

A police force is resuming a search of a landfill site in an effort to find a missing RAF serviceman, Corrie McKeague, after calling off the hunt three months ago.

McKeague, 23, vanished after a night out with friends in Bury St Edmunds last year. He was last seen on CCTV in the early hours of 24 September walking into a bin loading bay in Brentgovel Street.

A bin lorry was seen on CCTV near Brentgovel Street around the time McKeague was last seen, and it took a route that appeared to coincide with the movements of McKeague’s mobile phone signal.

Suffolk police called off the search of a landfill site at Milton, Cambridgeshire, after four months of excavating turned up no evidence of his body. The decision was met with criticism from McKeague’s mother, Nicola Urquhart, who said it showed the force had “given up on finding Corrie”.

This month the force said that after rechecking the available information, officers had concluded the area was “still the location where there was the highest likelihood of finding Corrie” and it would resume the search.

The latest phase will will concentrate on an area next to the site of the earlier search and could take six weeks, the force said.

Suffolk police have already spent more than £1m investigating the disappearance.

Det Supt Katie Elliott said: “We have spoken to Corrie’s mum and dad to explain our decision and share in detail the reasons behind it. We will, of course, continue to work together with Corrie’s family as the inquiry progresses. We can only hope that over the coming weeks the resumption of the search brings the answers that we are all hoping for and especially, of course, for Nicola [Urquhart, McKeague’s mother] and [his father] Martin.”

McKeague’s girlfriend, April Oliver, announced in June that the missing serviceman had become a father with the birth of their daughter.

Last month, a year after he went missing, his mother led a group of about 30 people around the town centre in an attempt to generate new leads. CCTV images of four men believed to have interacted with McKeague on the night he disappeared were released in September.