Death of Corrie McKeague
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 15 kilograms (33 lb).
[4] He separated from his friends in the early hours of 24 September, after leaving the Flex nightclub on St Andrew’s Street South.
[19] It is not believed that he intended to walk back to his base, RAF Honington, which is 10 miles (16 km) north east of the town along minor unclassified roads.
[6][20] 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.
[24] On the morning of McKeague's disappearance, his Nokia Lumia mobile phone had moved from Bury St Edmunds to Barton Mills, some 12 miles (19 km) to the north west, along the corridor of the A1101 road.
Superintendent Katie Elliott stated in an interview to Forces TV with Nicola Urquhart that there could have been third party involvement and that the police would not rule anything out.
[30] The investigation also covered parts of the Hollow Road Industrial Estate in Bury St Edmunds and Great Livermere, a small village close to RAF Honington on McKeague's supposed route back to his base.
[32] In November 2016, a stretch of the eastbound carriageway of the A14 road, was closed between junctions 44 & 45 (Moreton Hall and Rougham) to search for McKeague.
Suffolk Constabulary installed a 'pod' at a Christmas Fair in Bury St Edmunds, between 24 and 25 November 2016, and the public were encouraged to visit the pod to help establish the identities of the 23 people.
[46] In February 2017, police started searching the landfill previously identified as being the last place his mobile phone was located when it connected to a tower.
[2] Whilst Suffolk Police stated that McKeague had gone and slept in a bin in the Horseshoe area, his family said that they did not believe this version of events.
[48] On 13 February, McKeague's mother announced that a £50,000 reward, offered for information about her son, was to be withdrawn if nobody came forward in the following week.
Nicola Urquhart also publicly acknowledged the possibility that McKeague may never be found[54] but criticised the police's decision to hand the landfill site back to the owners and sought an injunction to prevent the area where his remains are believed to be from being disturbed.
[58] On 21 September 2017, Suffolk Police released four CCTV images of people who they said could have been witnesses to McKeague's disappearance twelve months previously.
They also set up a 'pod' in Bury St Edmunds town centre to appeal for information and hopefully engender new lines of enquiry.
[65] The day after, McKeague's mother and brothers appeared on the Victoria Derbyshire show to highlight what they cited as "inconsistencies" with the raw data referring to the weight carried in the bin lorry.
[66] In April 2018 McKeague's father, Martin, acknowledged that his son was probably dead and that he hoped to hold a memorial service in the summer of 2018, following the police decision to end the investigation.
[68] This was refuted by the rest of the family who explained that the first text notifying McKeague that April Oliver was pregnant did not get sent to his phone until after he had disappeared.
[69] His father later released a statement, on social media, that said McKeague was in the Suffolk waste disposal system somewhere but that "his remains are essentially irretrievable."
[71] A retired senior Metropolitan Police detective, Colin Sutton, went on record stating that McKeague's disappearance had not been intentional, as making preparations always leaves a digital footprint.
[74] Intended disappearance was also put in doubt by McKeague's happy mood at the time; he was making plans to meet up with his brother, Darroch, on the night that he went missing,[28] with his last text being sent at 03:08 am.
[76] Although not openly discussed, some parallels have been drawn between the proximity (37 miles (60 km) away)[77] of McKeague's disappearance to an attempted kidnapping of a serviceman at RAF Marham in July 2016.
They maintain that McKeague slept in a bin, which was then emptied into the truck and he was crushed and then either buried at the landfill or incinerated at Great Blakenham.
[83] As the second anniversary of McKeague's disappearance approached, Nichola Urquhart revealed that the police only had CCTV footage on the Saturday morning up until 12:00 pm.
[84] In a Facebook post in November 2018, Nichola Urquhart states that on her last meeting with Suffolk Police, she was shown some CCTV footage of people going in and out of the Horseshoe area on the morning that McKeague disappeared.
[86] By December 2017, Suffolk Police revealed that the inquiry had cost more than £1.2 million as of July 2017[update], more than 1,400 tonnes (1,500 tons) of earth and waste had been sorted in the second search at the landfill and that they had assessed over 2,000 hours of CCTV imagery.
[88] Peter Aldous, the Conservative MP for the Waveney Constituency, petitioned Parliament in February 2018 to back a proposal to refund the Suffolk Constabulary for their costs in the Corrie McKeague disappearance.
Aldous described the McKeague inquiry and the necessity to police football matches in Suffolk as "a very difficult science as events will take place that you can never predict".
In a narrative conclusion, jurors said he had died, at about 04:20 BST, in Bury St Edmunds, as a result of "compression asphyxia in association with multiple injuries".
