Monday 22 July 2024 2:35pm, UK
The police search for the remains of murdered Muriel McKay has been suspended.
In a letter to his family, Metropolitan Police Detective Superintendent Katherine Godwin said: “We have now completed the search of the area defined within the agreed parameters, as well as an additional swathe which we have identified as not being covered by the 2022 search or the 2024 parameters.
“I am very sorry to say that the search has failed to find Muriel’s remains or any evidence relating to her abduction and murder.”
His family called for Mrs. McKay Convicted murderer Nizamodeen Hosein will be brought to the excavation site from his Caribbean home to show detectives where he buried his body in 1970.
They believe that the research cannot be completed without his presence at the farm in Hertfordshire.
According to the family, police admitted to forgetting to dig up part of an agreed excavation site at the farm in 2022 when they found nothing.
This is the area where the research was conducted.
Mrs McKay’s family had campaigned for two years for a new search and had to persuade police and the farm owner to approve it.
The 55-year-old woman was abducted from her London home by Nizamodeen and her brother Arthur Hosein in December 1969.
They mistook her for Anna, the wife of media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
Dianne McKay meets her mother’s killer
Mrs McKay’s husband was Alick McKay, who was Mr Murdoch’s deputy at the company that had just bought The Sun newspaper.
The kidnappers realised their mistake, but still demanded a ransom of £1 million for his safe return.
They were eventually identified and arrested, after Mrs McKay was already dead.
The couple were jailed for life, denying any involvement in the kidnapping and refusing to say what happened to their victim.
Arthur died in prison, but after meeting the family, Nizamodeen told them that Mrs McKay had died of a heart attack a few days after her abduction and, in a panic, the brothers had buried her behind a barn at the back of the farm.
Using old maps and photographs to identify the burial site, he told a meeting filmed by Sky News: “I came out of the farm, went through the gate and turned left. A metre from the fence, that’s where the body is.”
