Corrie McKeague: Mum speaks out on tenth anniversary of disappearance of RAF gunner

A decade on from the disappearance of RAF serviceman Corrie McKeague, his mother is reflecting on her loss – and says more needs to be done to prevent a similar tragedy happening again.

Corrie, from Dunfermline, Fife, was 23 when he disappeared in the early hours of September 24, 2016 after a night out in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk.

The body of the RAF gunner has never been found but he was officially declared dead in 2022 after an inquest found that he had been crushed to death after climbing into an industrial bin.

The jury at Ipswich coroners court said the airman’s judgment had been impaired by drinking but the bin had ineffective locks and wasn’t searched properly before being uplifted and taken to landfill.

Police had believed the serviceman, who was stationed at RAF Honington, climbed into a bin which was then tipped into a waste lorry.

He was reported missing at 3.42pm on September 26 by colleagues at the airbase but no trace of him has ever been found.

“It doesn’t feel like ten years. It feels like yesterday. And then other times, it feels so long ago. It’s. It’s hard to know how I feel,” Corrie’s mum, Nicola Urquhart said ahead of the anniversary of his disappearance.

“Ten years. It just feels like so much time has gone past. But still, not much has really changed.”

Nicola Urquhart: "It doesn't feel like ten years. It feels like yesterday." — Nicola Urquhart: “It doesn’t feel like ten years. It feels like yesterday.” STV News

Despite her loss, Nicola says Bury has “never been a painful place” for her.

“When I was a little girl we used to come to Suffolk and Norfolk every year, so it’s always somewhere that I’ve had nice memories of,” she said.

“The fact that Corrie ended up coming down here to work, and his great auntie was still here.

“It’s not hard to come to Suffolk at all. It feels so comfortable coming to Suffolk. Coming to Bury.”

But she said, every time she visits, she walks to the area known as the horseshoe where Corrie disappeared from view of CCTV cameras.

“Every time I come here, I always walk round to the horseshoe. Usually on my own. And I’ll just go around and check the bins in the horseshoe. And I don’t know why I do that.

“Probably because they’re always open, but it’s something that I just do every time I come round here.”

She added that she checks the bins in the areas are locked – but said: “Every time I hope that it will be locked this time and every time I’ve been, it’s never been locked. Not once.”

One of the recommendations from the inquest was that locks should be put on large public bins to prevent people being able to get into them.

Corrie disappeared from view of CCTV cameras a decade ago Suffolk Police

Nicola has been calling for better safety around commercial waste bins ever since Mr McKeague disappeared.

She said: “I can’t understand how it’s not as simple as every day that a bin has a lock on it already.

“Some of them don’t work, and if they don’t work, the company that’s using the bin is supposed to report and Biffa will come collect the bin, fix it and give it back to them.

“If they said to the company, whichever company is using their bin, on a Tuesday, on a Thursday, we pick your bin up. If on those days when we come to pick your bin up, it is unlocked, we will not pick your bin up, we will drive away and you will be charged for us to come back and collect your bin.

“How many times would that company who’s responsible for locking the bin pay that fine before they said no? We need to make sure somebody starts locking these bins because on the Monday, the Wednesday and the Friday, the days that their bins aren’t getting picked up, somebody might still climb into their bin, but they’re not going to die in the back of a bin.

“Nobody deserves to go into a bin. And if it’s as simple as we’re not picking the bin up, if it’s not locked, it doesn’t matter if their bin driver looks carefully or not. It doesn’t matter if the windows aren’t clear on the perspex. It doesn’t matter what the weight is. None of those things matter because if that bin was locked, nobody was able to get into it because the person that locks it is the last person which just put the rubbish in it, and then nobody can get into it.”

She says waste management company Biffa has never spoken to her.

“They’ve never approached us. We’ve asked. They’ve never approached us. They’ve never apologized, they’ve never contacted us,” she said, “They said this is what we’re trying to do. They have had no contact whatsoever. None.”

Nicola said since Mr McKeague’s disappearance, around 400 people have been found in bins – not including near misses.

While some progress has been made, Nicola is calling for more to be done to prevent what happened to her son happening again.

“One of the reasons why I wanted to say something now was because when I was staying for Corrie’s birthday, I went round to the horseshoe and – it may have been there for years – but I looked up in the air, it was the first time I saw it. A massive camera right over the horseshoe, so that means someone has taken a practical real decision to say we are going to make sure this doesn’t happen again in that area. And that made me feel so, so good.

“We’ll never know what actually happened to him because there’s so many unanswered questions. But if there’d been video at that point showing him going into that bin, it would have been crystal clear.”

In the years following Mr McKeague’s disappearance, Nicola and his family were critical of Suffolk Police and its handling of the investigation.

She said: “I regularly look at things that Suffolk police have put out, on social media. As Corrie’s mum, I’m looking at things from a slightly different perspective.

“I’m looking to see if they are saying the things or using the form of words that used to cause us distress.

“After the inquest, Suffolk police kindly sat down with us for hours and listened to everything that we had to say about how we felt about the investigations, things that we liked, things that we didn’t like, phrases that were used, everything.

“And it was just recently that I saw a headline and thought, oh no, nothing’s been learned.”

A Suffolk Constabulary spokesman said: “Our thoughts are with Corrie’s family and friends at the tenth anniversary of his disappearance.

“As we have explained previously, the active inquiry into Corrie McKeague’s disappearance is now closed. Unless any new, realistic and credible information becomes available then the investigation remains complete. Currently, there remains no information available that changes the status of the investigation.”

Biffa has been contacted for comment.