How a police dig at a Hertfordshire farm could finally shed light one of Britain’s most shocking kidnap and murder cases
THE family of Muriel McKay, kidnapped and murdered almost 55 years ago, will today watch in hope as police carry out a final attempt to discover her remains.
A specialist police team yesterday began excavating a site at a farm where Muriel was taken after being abducted by two brothers in December 1969.
Muriel’s son Ian, now 82, said the family endured “a thousand deaths” after she was taken from her home in Wimbledon, South West London, by Arthur and Nizamodeen Hosein.
Newspaper executive’s wife Muriel, a 55-year-old mum-of-three with grandchildren, was taken by the brothers to Rook’s Farm, in Hertfordshire, and held to ransom for £1million — worth 18 times that figure today.
The bungling Hosein brothers, of Trinidad-Indian heritage, had intended to kidnap Anna Murdoch, then wife of media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, who had relaunched The Sun as a tabloid a month earlier with the help of Muriel’s husband Alick McKay, his right-hand man.
In a twist of fate, Mr Murdoch was spending Christmas in Australia, and as Mr McKay did not have a car at the time, he gave him the use of his Rolls-Royce and chauffeur — which the brothers had been tracking.
The McKays had an Australian flag in the front garden of their home, which would have added to the impression that Muriel was Mr Murdoch’s wife.
The Hosein brothers were arrested 40 days after abducting Muriel and jailed for life.
They were convicted at the Old Bailey of blackmail, kidnap and murder.
It was the first ever British murder prosecution in which no trace of the victim’s body had been found.
As he left court, Muriel’s husband Mr McKay said: “All I want to know is where my wife has been buried so that I can go and place some flowers.”
Mr McKay died in 1983 and his family have continued the quest to find Muriel’s body.
Their son Ian has travelled from his home in Australia to be with family members this week while the police do their search.
He said: “This is a highly emotional time for all of us.
“My sister Dianne and her son Mark Dyer have done a wonderful job gathering evidence.
“This is earth-shattering stuff if we are able to find her after all this time.”
Two years ago, police carried out an initial search of the 12-acre site, now renamed Stocking Pelham Farm, which is on the edge of the Herts-Essex border, close to Bishop’s Stortford.
Ian, 81, told The Sun then: “We are hoping to get some closure.
“It would help us find some peace and give us a chance to give her a Christian burial.”
The family’s hopes for an answer to the mystery rest on younger kidnapper Nizamodeen — known as Nizam — who served 20 years in prison before being deported back to his native Trinidad.
Now aged 75, and destitute, Hosein was tracked down by a Sky Crime documentary team in 2021 and later went on to reveal what happened to Muriel.
He claimed Muriel suffered a heart attack on New Year’s Eve, two days following her kidnapping, just after she had watched a TV appeal from her family and having been given powerful sedatives by the brothers.
Hosein — who has turned down an offer of money from Muriel’s wealthy family for his account of events — said he buried Muriel in her coat in a 5ft hole dug at a dung heap before placing grass and soil on top of her.
The previous search of the farm by the Met Police focused on three main areas and drew a blank.
‘Blindfolded and cold’
Muriel’s daughter Dianne and grandson Mark visited Hosein earlier this year in the hope of pinning down the exact location where she was buried, and managed to entice further information from him.
They lobbied cops for a further search and detectives flew to Trinidad to interview Hosein, leading to this week’s excavation.
Hosein has offered to travel to the UK to assist the police search but is barred by the Home Office from returning here.
Met Police Commander Steve Clayman said: “Other areas have been highlighted as being of potential interest and it is these we will search.
“The main area is where a manure heap once stood — we know now this was larger than we previously thought and therefore that area was not entirely searched in 2022.
“While we have concerns about inconsistencies in the account by Nizamodeen Hosein, for completeness we want to do this.”
Police yesterday dismantled a corrugated iron barn which now covers the area where Hosein says he remembers burying Muriel after carrying her body from the nearby farmhouse.
The joint Met and Herts Police team are being assisted by archaeologists and forensic specialists and have brought in a mechanical digger.
Previous checks of the site have been carried out with ground-penetrating radar and the police team will be sifting through the soil in the hope of finding Muriel’s remains.
Muriel came to Britain from Australia in 1957 with husband Mr McKay, her childhood sweetheart in their home city of Adelaide.
Mr McKay initially worked for the Daily Mirror group in the UK, before going to work for Mr Murdoch in 1969, and was instrumental in helping the rebirth of The Sun.
He discovered Muriel was missing when he arrived home at 7.45pm on December 29.
The telephone wire had been ripped from the socket and its centre disc with the number on was missing.
An internal door was damaged and a knife and twine was left on a desk. A bill hook was lying on the floor.
Nizam Hosein has now revealed that he and brother Arthur — who died in Ashworth high-security psychiatric hospital in 2009 — grabbed Muriel outside her home as she returned from a dental appointment.
They took her inside the property on Arthur Road and grabbed her jewellery before driving Muriel two hours across London to Rook’s Farm.
Mr McKay called police and his three grown-up children.
Daughter Dianne, now 84, told The Sun: “Police initially didn’t believe my mother had been abducted.
“They thought she had a boyfriend and had gone back to Australia.
“They were confused as they had never had a kidnapping in this country before.”
At 1.15am the next morning, Nizam made a call to the house from a phone box in Epping, Essex, which Dianne answered.
She recalled: “He said, ‘We wanted Mrs Murdoch but have got your mother. We are M3. Mafia M3’.
“Then he said we want £1million to hand my mother back to us.”
Over the next 40 days, the Hoseins made a further 17 calls, some lasting an hour and a half, and sent four letters demanding money and posted three snippets of Muriel’s clothing.
We have endured a thousand deaths. This is earth-shattering stuff if we are able to find her after all this time
Muriel's son Ian
During one call, Mr McKay pleaded: “Take me instead.”
Police were hampered because numbers could not be traced in those days and the Daily Mirror had published the McKay home phone number on its front page.
The family were plagued by crank callers, many asking for money, which were mostly fielded by the McKays’ son Ian, who had flown from Australia to be with his father and two older sisters Dianne and Jenny.
Ian told a BBC Radio 4 podcast: “We were absolutely dying a thousand deaths every day because we were hanging on every telephone call.”
The Hoseins sent notes purporting to be from Muriel.
One read: “Alick Darling, I am blindfolded and cold. Only blankets. Please do something to get me home.”
Ian got the Hoseins to reduce their demand and insisted on proof that his mother was still alive by asking them to get her to write down a headline from the Evening Standard.
There were two abortive handover attempts, in which suitcases filled with £500,000 in fake notes were left at countryside spots marked with white paper flowers.
Arthur and Nizam insisted the money should be dropped off by Mr McKay and his daughter Dianne.
Bizarrely, a male cop dressed as a woman posed as Dianne as there were no female officers available.
The first attempt, on February 1, floundered after the Hoseins spotted a massive undercover police presence.
A further attempt on February 6 failed when a couple unwittingly picked up the suitcases and handed them in to local police.
‘Missed vital evidence’
But a Volvo was seen circling the latter drop-off at Bishop’s Stortford, Herts, which led cops to Rook’s Farm.
Tailor’s cutter Arthur, then 34, who came to Britain in the mid-1950s, lived at the farm with German wife Elsa, their daughter and two children from a previous relationship.
Elsa was visiting Germany with her children at the time Muriel was taken to the farm.
Arthur’s brother Nizam, 21 at that point, had come to the UK in June of that year and had a girlfriend, a nurse, who saw no sign of Muriel when she visited on January 1.
Twine identical to that found at the McKays’ home was discovered in the farmhouse, along with paper flowers.
Arthur’s prints also matched those found on a newspaper in the driveway of the Wimbledon address.
And it was discovered that registration checks had been made by Nizam on Mr Murdoch’s Rolls-Royce.
But there was no sign of Muriel.
Retired publisher Ian McKay said: “The police say they went through Rook’s Farm with a fine-toothed comb. Yet according to Arthur’s daughter, her mother subsequently found a brick behind a bar in the farmhouse where my mother’s jewellery was. They missed a vital piece of evidence.”
The Hoseins’ older brother Adam, linked to organised crime in the US where he died in 2021, is said to have ordered Elsa to throw the jewellery in the Thames.
Dianne said: “It has been more than 50 years of torture. It has affected me very much, worrying and wondering about where my mother is.
“I used to think my mother was still alive and I would go to Knightsbridge, because she loved it there.
“I only realised for certain she was dead when my father died because she would not have missed his funeral.”
The McKay family accept this will be the last chance to find Muriel.
Dianne’s son Mr Dyer said: “We are hoping for resolution for ourselves and also the Murdoch family, who have also been greatly affected by what happened and have always been a great support to us.
“Finding my grandmother is something our family has waited more than 54 years for. It would be fantastic to find her.”