Police call off search for remains of Muriel McKay 55 years after her murder
The family of Muriel McKay are said to be unhappy with the decision to stop the search for her remains and strongly felt the killer should have been brought back to the UK to assist police at the scene in Hertfordshire.
Monday 22 July 2024 20:50, UK
The family of murdered Muriel McKay say they will apply to the Home Office to bring her killer to the UK to help find her remains after a police search was called off.
Ms McKay's family have been calling for convicted killer Nizamodeen Hosein to be brought to the excavation site from his Caribbean home to show detectives where he buried her body in 1970.
They believe the search cannot be completed without his presence at the farm in Hertfordshire.
After police called off the search for her remains on Monday, Ms McKay's son Ian said: "My reaction is - it's hardened my heart in one sense that we will go on.
"They haven't managed to satisfy us in any way that they have conducted the search properly."
Ms McKay's grandson Mark Dyer: "They've got the perpetrator, the man who kidnapped my grandmother who's saying again, tonight, two and a half years later, I'll help you.
"Your mother's at the farm. I'll take you to the spot, but the police won't ask for him to be brought over from Trinidad.
"We were going to have to make an application to the Home Office as the victims to bring... Ian's mother's murderer to London. The optics of that don't look great, I have to be honest."
In a letter to Ms McKay's family, the Met Police's Det Supt Katherine Godwin said: "We have now completed the search of the area set out in the agreed parameters, along with an additional strip which we identified was not covered by the 2022 search or the 2024 parameters.
"I am so sorry to say that the search has not been successful in finding Muriel's remains or any evidence relating to her kidnap and murder."
According to the family, police have admitted they forgot to dig part of an agreed excavation site at the farm in 2022, when they found nothing.
That was the area that has now been searched.
Ms McKay's family had campaigned for a new search for two years and had to persuade the police and the farm's owner to approve it.
The 55-year-old was taken from her London home by Nizamodeen and his brother Arthur Hosein in December 1969.
They mistook her for Anna, the wife of media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
Ms McKay's husband was Alick McKay, who was Mr Murdoch's deputy in the company which had just bought The Sun newspaper.
Read more:
Muriel McKay's family want Met chief to intervene
Murder victim family's concerns over farm search
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The kidnappers realised their mistake, but still demanded a £1m ransom for her safe return.
They were eventually identified and arrested, by which time Ms McKay was already dead.
The pair were jailed for life, denying any part in the abduction and refusing to say what had happened to their victim.
Arthur died in prison, but after meeting the family, Nizamodeen told them Ms McKay had died of a heart attack within days of her kidnap and, in a panic, the brothers had buried her behind a barn at the back of the farmhouse.
Using old maps and photographs to identify the burial site, he told them in a meeting filmed by Sky News: "I came out of the farmhouse, through the gate and turned left. Three feet from the fence, that's where the body is."
Police won't be going back to site
Police have defended the decision not to bring Nizam Hosein, saying he was inconsistent in his recall of detail where he buried Muriel.
"When we interviewed him there were clear gaps in his memory. That could be due to the passage of time, it could be due to his personal circumstances and I have to consider it could have been due to the fact that he was deliberately withholding certain bits of information from us. The information was inconsistent and we had to treat it with a degree of caution," a spokesperson said.
"We can now conclusively say the information given by Nizam in the last few years is not correct material and she is not in the location he has indicated."
The spokesperson said they drew the parameters of the search to give a margin of error.
"Nizam has come up with new information this morning, but it doesn't actually take you to a different location.
"Our final thoughts are with Muriel's family and I'm so sorry this is not the outcome they wished for."
Police said they would not go back to the farm.
The search in 2022 search cost 拢160,000. This is likely to be more.
Family 'very unhappy'
Reporting on the latest developments, Sky News crime correspondent Martin Brunt, said: "I think the family view is that they're angry that the search has been called off and as far as they are concerned this is unfinished business.
"The sum up is that it's the conclusion of a search that's been going on for Muriel's remains for the past eight days.
"I've spoken briefly to Mark Dyer, who is the grandson of Muriel McKay, and he is, to put it mildly, very unhappy.
"He describes this decision to call off the search as 'stupid' and the main contention of the family is that the police would not agree to bring over from his native Trinidad, where he was deported after his prison sentence, Nizam Hosein - one of the two brothers who was convicted of Muriel's murder.
"He, earlier this year, looking at old maps and photographs, pointed quite precisely to where he says he buried the body of Muriel McKay."
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Brunt added: "The family say, 'how can you carry out a search like this without him there?'
"But the police felt in their conversations with the killer that he'd been inconsistent with his information and so they felt there was no need to bring him over to help in the search."