The Disappearance of Corrie McKeague True Crime Documentary - videohaat.com
The Disappearance of Corrie McKeague True Crime Documentary - videohaat.com
Officers from the Suffolk Police Department were at an unusual place. A garbage disposal site.
Heaps upon heaps of trash. Some are sitting in the vast fields for who knows how long,
while some are getting dumped in the incinerator,
burning everything to ashy smithereens. Nothing left behind.
But the police were there at the Barton Mills landfill site for one specific reason.
They were looking for an RAF Regiment gunner who had gone missing a few months
back. 23-year-old Corrie McKeague. He had gone out with his friends on the
night of September 23rd, 2016, and he had not been seen since.
His bank accounts—untouched.
His social media—no updates.
His phone—silent and it was pretty much the only thing
that led the investigators here in the first place.
The detectives had spent the last two months sifting through trash in a neighboring landfill
site. Two months of searching and no answers. But they did find something 8 weeks into the search.
It was in April of 2017 when one of the police officers noticed something in a nearby pile of
trash. It was dirty, but it was too round at the top to be ordinary trash. Something
about the shape was just… off. To the police, it looked like something else. Like a head.
A human head.
The tragic case of 23-year-old Corrie McKeague is a rabbit hole of assumptions,
speculation, and some of the most bizarre stories you've ever heard.
Beginning
THE VICTIM
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Corrie McKeague was raised by his parents, Nicola and Martin McKeague in Perth, but by the
time Corrie was 9, the family had called Scotland their permanent home. The reason for this move was
Corrie's parents’ divorce. This led Corrie and his brother’s to be raised by their mother, Nicola.
Ever since he was young, Corrie was the kind of
guy who just loved helping other people. It gave him a strong sense of belonging,
knowing that others could depend on him, and knowing how much he was appreciated.
Corrie was the type of person who would give a ride to someone in the middle of the night,
just so they didn't have to make the walk back home.
Well, after high school, Corrie wanted to put his good nature to work, and joined the RAF Regiment
in 2013. He was a senior aircraftman gunner and medic in his squadron, and he loved it there.
Now, Corrie's parents were adamant that he was a single guy who was just enjoying his young adult
life. But Corrie’s relationships - at least one of them, anyway - went a bit deeper than anyone knew.
Corrie had been in a relationship with a woman named April Oliver, who ended up getting pregnant
with his child. Now, according to April, the two weren't exclusive or anything. In fact,
Corrie would visit dating websites and dating apps and meet new women
seemingly all the time. HIs family described his love life as “colorful”, and suggested he
was always finding new partners to hang out with, but none of them ever stuck around for too long.
At the time of the case, no one knew about April’s pregnancy. It
was only brought to light after Corrie vanished, which is pretty heartbreaking.
One peculiar habit of Corrie's was that he would get drunk and sleep anywhere and everywhere. Even
though his mom blatantly denied this and said that Corrie was too proud to sleep on the street, it
was actually Corrie's dad, Martin, who disclosed that Corrie had a habit of falling asleep near or
inside of garbage dumpsters and he had done this multiple times. It’s unclear wether he
would sleep in these dumpsters on purpose, or if it was just a recurring theme when he got drunk.
But one way or another, he found himself inside of a dumpster, sound asleep, multiple times.
But, aside from that, Corrie was your usual, all-smiles, sociable young man who had no
problem mingling with other people. He was just your ordinary, friendly guy.
Now, Corrie was no stranger to a fun night out, but he’d always manage to find his way
back home either that same night or early the next day… but one night in September of 2016
would be different. This time, Corrie would never make it home, and he would never be seen again.
THE DISAPPEARANCE
The Disappearance
Corrie had plans to meet up with some friends on September 23rd,
2016, in Bury St Edmunds. He had driven to the meeting spot and parked his car. He had
plans to spend the night somewhere, but we don’t know specifically where,
so he was going to leave his car overnight at the metered parking spot.
Corrie and his friends met up at Flex, a nightclub in St. Andrew’s Street South,
but Corrie had a little too much to drink, and he was visibly intoxicated—to the point
where the nightclub's doorman had to ask Corrie to leave.
According to the doorman, Corrie was cool about it; he didn't argue and left,
even chatting with the doorman on the street outside. Anyway,
this was well after midnight and was the exact time when Corrie got separated from his friends.
Between 1:15 and 1:30 am, he was seen on CCTV at Pizza Mama Mia's takeaway, and he ordered a lot
of food. A while later, he was seen walking by a place called Hughes, which is an electrical store,
where he sat down and ate his food, and he took a small nap there, right outside the store.
Now, I'm sure you're thinking, are Corrie's friends not worried at all? Well, Corrie's friends
knew that this was normal behavior. Even though Corrie would be drunk, he could navigate through
streets pretty well, and it wasn't uncommon for him to be left alone or end up on his own.
How he managed to find his way around town when he was nearly blackout drunk,
I have no idea. But this was pretty normal for him. He never got into trouble or anything,
he’d just always take things a little bit too far, then wander around town while making his
way home. In the grand scheme of things, it was pretty harmless. But this time would be different.
While napping outside the store, Corrie was eventually woken up and
shooed off by a passerby. So Corrie rubbed the sleep from his eyes and
made his way to the Horseshoe a couple streets over. It was around 3:25 am,
and the Horseshoe was basically an area where there were lines of wheeled garbage bins. It's
a place where all stores have their garbage bins lined up for trucks to empty them in the morning.
We know that Corrie stumbled into this area… but that was the last time he was seen. What
was interesting about the Horseshoe was that no one could enter or leave
this specific area without being seen on CCTV. Now, Corrie was seen going in,
but he never came out. He couldn't have possibly walked through the store's doors,
because they were closed. It was the middle of the night, so the only way for Corrie to go
back was to make a U-turn to where he came from, which was when he should've been caught on CCTV.
But he wasn't, and just like that, a whole day passed,
and then another, and there was no sign of Corrie.
Since September 23rd was a Friday, no one actually thought to reach out to Corrie
until September 26th, which was a Monday. Corrie's friends and family thought that he
was just having one of those wild weekends and was snoring away at home, nursing a hangover.
He was supposed to show up for work at the base the following Monday,
but as I said, there was no sign of him. He didn't show up to work,
and that was when 23-year-old Corrie McKeague was finally reported missing.
The Investigation
THE LONG INVESTIGATION
After his disappearance, the first thing that popped into Corrie's family's mind
was that this behavior was completely out of the ordinary. Corrie wasn't the type
to just skip work. He loved his job, and there wasn't any sign that he was upset,
contemplating running away from it all, or anything like that. It was just so
weird. Because Corrie's disappearance was so out of character, the investigators rushed
to form a search party and tried to find him or any clue as to where he could be.
The detectives went through all of the possibilities.
They checked missing person reports, recent hit-and-run cases, and hospitals
for any information—everything. But there was still no sign of Corrie.
The investigators also talked to Corrie's friends, who were with him the night he disappeared,
and that was when they honed in on the Horseshoe. There was a lot of footage
to go through. Almost 2,200 hours worth of footage was checked by the police,
and they all saw the same thing. Corrie went into the Horseshoe, but he was never seen coming out.
The police were going through all sorts of scenarios. Was there someone in the
Horseshoe waiting for a victim? Was Corrie kidnapped and taken somewhere out of sight?
But it was nearly impossible since there were CCTV cameras everywhere. Surely,
something would have picked up Corrie and his movements,
but there was nothing. The investigators ruled out the possibility that Corrie intended to walk
all the way home to his base, which was a long 10-mile walk from where he was with friends.
Even if he did make the walk back to base, he would've been seen by several people,
but he wasn't seen by anyone. The next thing that the detectives looked at was Corrie's
phone records. They wanted to see where his phone was and if there was any clue if he was
meeting up with someone. The investigators just wanted to tick all of the boxes.
The police found out that Corrie's phone had been moved from Bury St Edmunds to Barton Mills,
which was 28 minutes and 12 miles away. So, the investigators quickly deduced that this journey
couldn't have been made on foot. Corrie was most definitely in a vehicle. But how? His car was
found deserted near the bar, and it didn't look like he came back for it or paid for the meter.
So, how did Corrie's phone make this journey? And if Corrie's phone was currently in Barton Mills,
was Corrie there too? By 8 am, his phone was either turned off,
had run out of battery, or was damaged, because it was untraceable.
While checking CCTV footage, the detectives came across a bin lorry, which is one of those huge
trucks that take garbage from bins to a waste disposal or landfill site. Well, the truck
emptied the bins from the Horseshoe a few hours after Corrie went missing, and made its way to
a landfill site in Barton Mills—the same area as Corrie's phone and around the same time too.
When the investigators reached out to the garbage disposal truck company for details,
they found out that the garbage weighed about 33 lbs. This was their only lead,
and now it was closing in on a dead end. Corrie couldn't have possibly been inside the garbage bin
or the truck, because he weighed about 200 lbs himself, so the weights didn't match up.
Well, the police were back to square one, and they had to figure out this
mysterious disappearance. Some people strongly believed that Corrie got a lift from someone,
as he was the type to get into anyone's car, as he was also the type to offer a
ride to anyone in need. Corrie's mom, Nicola, believed that this might have been the case,
and she even appealed to everyone and anyone to come forward who could've possibly given Corrie a
lift. But no one came forward. The investigators searched along the highways, railroads,
and even villages for Corrie, and on October 10th, they found something. It was a suitcase
found off the A628 near Tintwistle in Derbyshire, and inside it… there were charred human remains.
Corrie's loved ones were so shaken by this discovery,
but since the body was in a bad and potentially unrecognizable state,
everyone had to wait for DNA test results. It was believed that the body belonged to a young
man under the age of 50. The DNA results came out, and everyone was expecting the worst. Even
Corrie's family had mentally prepared themselves for the worst news of their son's tragic passing.
But the body wasn't Corrie's. So, this was yet another dead end for the police…
but little did they know, their search was nearly over.
Pregnancy & Landfill Search
PREGNANCY & LANDFILL SEARCH
In January 2017, the back of a cell phone case was found close to where
Corrie's phone last pinged. However, it wasn't a crucial piece of evidence because it had no
identifying components, like a SIM card or any electronic parts. This
was why no further analysis was performed on this case either.
This was around the same time when April, Corrie's non-exclusive girlfriend,
broke the news that she was pregnant with Corrie's child.
Fast-forward to June 11th, 2017, when April gave birth to a healthy baby girl named
Ellie-Louise. By February 2017, almost 4 months into Corrie's disappearance,
the investigators finally decided to look into the only tangible lead they had, and it was the
landfill in Barton Mills. This was the only place where Corrie's phone was last traced,
and even though the detectives found nothing at first, they wanted to look there again and deeper.
Their minds were going to seriously weird places, but they had to look through every single lead
before they could strike it off the list for sure. So to the landfill, they went, and all that was
left was to sift through tons and tons of garbage in hopes of finding any clue of Corrie—or himself.
The plan was to cover an area of approximately 1,100 square
yards and go 25 feet deep through the heaps of garbage. The estimated time
given by the investigators was 10 weeks. That's a lot of garbage to go through.
In the meantime, Corrie's mom, Nicola, announced that she would be withdrawing the
£50,000 award if no one came forward with information. It was a way to spark
motivation among people and jog their memory to come forward with
any credible information they had the night Corrie went into the Horseshoe.
3 months into the landfill search and well over the initially estimated 10 weeks,
the police had spent a whopping £1 million in resources to help
find Corrie. The search for Corrie, officially known as Operation Phonetic,
was considered one of the most expensive missing person inquiries of the Suffolk Police Department.
By May 2017, the investigators had gone through almost 3,000 tons of garbage. For reference,
one long ton is equal to about 2,200 lbs. That's a massive, incredible amount of trash.
Now, you might be thinking, why are the detectives going through tons upon tons of trash? Well,
they had a theory. It was a bizarre one, but it could explain Corrie's disappearance.
See, the investigators thought that, given Corrie's inebriated state and
his habit of dozing off anywhere, especially in garbage disposal bins,
Corrie had somehow fallen asleep in one of the wheeled garbage bins in the Horseshoe, and then
he was tragically hauled off to the landfill without ever waking up. He likely would’ve
lost his life on the way to the landfill, given what garbage trucks do to the trash they collect.
Only this theory could explain how fast Corrie's
cell phone traveled from the Horseshoe to Barton Mills.
But we just covered the weight of the lorry just a minute ago. It weighed 33 lbs.
Well, it turns out that there was an error in that weight,
and it all began with an arrest in March 2017.
On March 1st, a 26-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of perverting the course of justice.
Even though the person was eventually released and he had no tie with the lorry that took the
trash to the landfill the day Corrie disappeared, the police looked into some numbers. The weight
of the trash disposal truck, to be exact, and that's when they found something really
alarming. It turned out that the trash actually weighed close to 220 lbs after the trash from
the Horseshoe was dumped into it. If you do the math, Corrie weighed close to 200 lbs,
and the rest of the weight was from the trash, making the number alarmingly close to 220.
It could only lead to one assumption. Corrie was most probably inside the garbage bin taking a
nap and was ultimately dumped into the lorry, and the driver or anyone else didn't notice anything,
which led to Corrie either suffocating or losing his life while inside the truck.
Well, by April 2017, a human skull was discovered in the heaps of trash.
Investigators, for the first time in months, were finally optimistic that
they may have found Corrie’s remains, and the skull was sent off for DNA testing.
What Happened to Carrie McKeague?
What Happened to Corrie McKeague?
After several weeks, when the skull was tested for DNA, it was confirmed to not
belong to Corrie McKeague. In fact, the skull belonged to a woman and it dated back
to the 1940s. This search was a very long and tiring one, but the investigators kept going,
trying to find any useful evidence or items that might point towards Corrie's disappearance.
By July 2017, close to 5000 tons of garbage had been sifted, examined, and analyzed, but with
zero results. The detectives also shifted their focus towards incinerated waste, but that also led
them nowhere. I mean, they did find some bones, but when they were tested, they weren't human.
The investigators were still convinced that Corrie's body was still at the landfill.
By the end of July 2017, the police had gone through over 7000 tons of trash but to no avail.
Forensic pathologist Dr. Stuart Hamilton believed that if Corrie's body was still at the landfill
and it was crushed as assumed in the theory, then the rate of decomposition would be fast,
therefore making it harder to find any uncontaminated DNA for testing.
So, it was safe to say that things weren't looking good and chances of finding Corrie
were diminishing even more. By the end of July 2017, the Suffolk investigators announced that
they would be ending the landfill search and that they couldn't find any clue of Corrie.
Two months after the first landfill search, in October 2017,
the detectives conducted another search in a landfill that was close to the previous one,
at Milton in Cambridgeshire. The investigators believed that some of the waste had been moved
from Barton Mills to Milton around the time Corrie disappeared, and they wanted to check it out too.
But that search also didn't go anywhere because, in March 2018,
it was withdrawn for reasons of not having “realistic lines of inquiry.”
Corrie's family was losing hope in the police and of ever finding their son alive. Corrie's mom,
Nicola, even said that she was mentally prepared for the worst news—that her son
was no more. Corrie's dad, Martin, also believed that the chances of finding his
son were next to none, and he just wished to hold a memorial for him.
Martin also speculated that maybe Corrie ended his life under the pressure of fatherhood, but this
couldn't be true. First of all, Corrie didn't even know that April was expecting his child. Secondly,
Corrie was not contemplating ending his life for any reason. Corrie's brother, Darroch,
claimed that he and Corrie texted back and forth the night he disappeared and a happy and excited
Corrie was making plans to meet up with him the next day. If that wasn't confirmation enough,
Corrie had also booked flights out of town, as he wanted to spend Halloween with his family.
There was no sign, no indication that Corrie was struggling or wanted out
of anything. He seemed his happy, usual self.
On the topic of theories, a lot of people believed that Corrie had gone AWOL. People speculated that
he just needed some time to regroup and wanted to go away for a while. But when the investigators
checked Corrie's bank account and social media activity, it said something completely different.
Nothing was updated. No money was spent. If Corrie was running away, then he would at least need
money, and even if he had cash, then he would run out at some point and would be left with no
choice but to withdraw money from the bank. But as of December 2016, nothing had been touched.
Some people tried to connect Corrie's disappearance to a
serviceman's kidnapping at RAF Marham in July 2016. However,
the detectives came forward and stated that there was no link between the two incidents.
The McKeague family, on the other hand, had their reservations about
the investigators and how they researched Corrie's disappearance. First of all,
Corrie's family believed that the police only checked CCTV footage from Saturday morning up
till 12 pm. Nicola believes that there could be the possibility of Corrie walking out of the
Horseshoe sometime later in the day. But sometime later, Nicola updated on Facebook that the Suffolk
Police had shown her footage from various times, and there was still no sign of Corrie.
Also, the weight of the lorry was only unusually high that one time when Corrie disappeared. Other
than that, the weight would teeter between 44 and 66 lbs on average - sometimes even less than this.
So, it only solidified that theory that Corrie was in fact in the bin when it
was emptied into the truck and that was when he tragically lost his life.
In the end, an inquest was conducted on March 7th, 2022, at Suffolk Coroner's Court in Ipswich.
It lasted a little over two weeks, and on March 22nd, it was concluded that Corrie McKeague,
unfortunately, lost his life in a commercial waste
bin after it was emptied in the truck. Although his remains were never found,
the jurors officially stated that Corrie lost his life at around 4:20 am when the
bins were dumped. His passing… was a simple accident. No one was to blame.
This case was so confusing. Our true crime brains are wired to think that whenever a
person disappears or goes missing, then there is some sinister reason
behind it. But Corrie's case—as tragic and unfortunate as it is—was really an accident.
We can only hope that Corrie's family is moving on from this tragic and unbelievable loss. Corrie
was just out having a good time with friends, as he had done multiple times before. But this time,
an accident—not a murderer or a monster lurking on the streets—took his life.
Guys, I can't stress how important it is to look out for people, especially when they've had too
much to drink. It doesn’t matter if they’ve done this a thousand times and they’re always
fine… that’s not a point. If someone is out of their mind, inebriated in any way at all…
look out for them. Don’t make assumptions. Now I’m not blaming Corrie’s friends at all,
not for one second. They had no way of knowing this was going to happen in the
slightest… but after hearing today’s story… you do. You do know what can happen. So don’t
let it happen to someone you care about, or someone you see walking down the street
blackout-drunk at an odd hour. Call for help. Even if you don’t feel like you’re personally
the best one to help them… call someone else. Be it a cab, the police, whoever.
Accidents can quickly turn lethal and what happened to Corrie is a
painful reminder that he was all alone, confused and drunk out of his mind,
and it led him to make unreasonable decisions that led to very tragic outcomes.
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