I cannot imagine, let alone even begin to try to put into words, what the family of Fife airman Corrie McKeague must be feeling at the moment.
More than a year and a half has passed since Corrie was last seen on CCTV after a night out in Bury St Edmunds and his loved ones are still no closer to finding out what happened to the 23-year-old RAF gunner.
But I for one was left with a really bad taste in my mouth when Suffolk Police announced last week that the disappearance was now being treated as a “cold case”and that the investigation was being scaled back — while at the same time the Home Office was pledging to plough tens of thousands of pounds more into the search for Madeleine McCann, who disappeared from a holiday apartment in Portugal 11 years ago aged just three.
Everyone knows the two cases are vastly different, with wholly different circumstances, but something still isn’t sitting right with me after hearing last week’s news.
I don’t know Corrie’s mum Nicola Urquhart, but did speak to her and her son Makeyan at the outset of the hunt and I feel frustrated on their behalf that the police are stepping back from the inquiry.
To hand the file over to a cold case team without looking at all the information feels like an act of callousness to me, so goodness knows how Corrie’s relatives feel.
Yes, a huge amount of resource has been thrown at the hunt, with an initial 20-week landfill search at Milton and a second seven-week search of the tip failing to find any trace.
And while police insist that any credible new information will be followed up, the claim that officers have been through all “realistic possibilities in detail” and there is “nothing to suggest any foul play or third party involvement” does not ring true.
Corrie’s mum, who works with the police and is well-placed to know about procedures, still has plenty of unanswered questions, and until those answers are provided the search should surely continue.
We all appreciate there has to be some sort of a cut-off point to these cases, but when you consider that something approaching £12 million has been spent on trying to find Maddie McCann, it seems unfair to leave Corrie’s family in the dark when there are still so many lines of inquiry to be explored.
