Search for missing Corrie McKeague moves to landfill site

Corrie McKeague disappeared in Bury St Edmunds in September. Picture: PA

The 23-year-old, from Fife, vanished while on a night out with friends on 24 September in Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk.

CCTV shows that a waste lorry made a collection in the area where Mr McKeague was last seen shortly after the last confirmed sighting of him at 3.25am.

The lorry was seized in the early stages of the inquiry for forensic examination and did not reveal any traces of him, but police kept the waste collection line of inquiry under review.

A landfill site in Milton, Cambridgeshire, is where the waste collected from Bury St Edmunds that morning was deposited.

Police said they alerted the site early in the investigation of the possible need to search it, and that no further waste had been deposited in the area of the site where the Bury St Edmunds waste was deposited.

The area identified covers more than 1,100 square yards (920 sq m), with waste up to 26ft (8m) deep.

It is estimated it will take a team of specialist search trained police officers six to ten weeks to complete the work required.

The safety and welfare of the officers who will undertake the search and the noise and odour implications for local residents have all been factors that police have taken into consideration.

Preparation work is already under way and a full-scale search is likely to start on 22 February.

The preparation work will include building access ways to the area to be searched and putting “appropriate facilities on the site” to allow the search to be conducted in a thorough and comprehensive way.

Officers investigating the case say they have kept an open mind from the start as to what may have happened.

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 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.”

She said preparation would progress “as quickly as possible”.