Corrie Mckeague’s mum: ‘I’ve given myself closure; my son’s dead’

“We definitely did all we could and I can honestly sleep at night knowing there was nothing I physically could have done any different.”

It is 10 years since Nicola Urquhart’s son, Corrie Mckeague, disappeared on 24 September 2016 after a night out in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk. For the months and years that followed, she embodied a mother’s love and determination to find the truth: to never give up.

The RAF gunner’s body has never been found but he was officially declared dead in 2022, when an inquest ruled he had died after climbing into a commercial waste bin before it was tipped into a waste lorry.

Nicola is composed and reflective as she recalls when her son went missing. He had just turned 23 and within months would become a dad.

She says her son would be forever in her thoughts, but adds: “I’ve given myself closure; my son is dead.”

She spoke to the BBC after what would have been Corrie’s 33rd birthday and ahead of the 10th anniversary of his disappearance.

She says she last saw her son when she went for a birthday meal with him at Cheers in Bury St Edmunds, adding he was a “social hand grenade” who “really did live every moment at a hundred miles an hour”.

A decade on, she says there is “never an end” to losing somebody but it is about “managing each day”.