the times | Saturday December 18 2021 21
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fence, about three foot [from the
fence].”
Asked who buried the body he
replied: “It was only me.”
He claimed that Mrs McKay col-
lapsed in the lounge downstairs and
died from a “heart attack”, adding: “I
never killed her.”
At one point he said: “This will for-
ever haunt me for the rest of my days.”
The current owners of the farm
bought the property in 2007. Following
the kidnap, the farm’s name was
changed.
Since Hosein’s revelations, the own-
ers have been unreceptive to requests
from the family to allow them access to
analyse the spot with ground-penetrat-
ing radar.
When a Times reporter visited the
farmhouse, a young woman said they
“don’t want anything to do with it” and
were concerned that it could become a
focal point for tourists.
“We’ve moved into the house after
the incident and as far as we’re
concerned there’s nothing that needs to
be talked about,” they said.
“The police have the right to do what
they want to do, but they will have to gothrough the correct procedures to
make it happen and we’ll of course
accept [that], but until that happens,
quite frankly, we’re not interested.”
Dianne McKay said that if the
remains are recovered she would have
to decide with her brother and sister
what to do with them.
She said: “It would just be nice to
know she wasn’t on that awful farm. It
completely destroyed my father, he was
never the same.
“He suffered from terrible guilt. He
felt it was all his fault.
“When he died I didn’t feel sadbecause he had been so unhappy. He
wanted to be with her.”
She added: “I want to get to that farm
by Christmas. Knowing she may be
there and yet there’s nothing we can do
is incredibly frustrating.
“It’s upsetting that we can’t get on
with it. We’ve got so far after 51 years.
We’ve already done the work for the
police. I appreciate they have live cases
but it shouldn’t take long.”
Gayle said: “I was in total disbelief
when he started being so candid. He’s
gone 51 years not telling a soul where
the body is. It’s very, very convincing.“I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if
he was telling the truth and that body is
exactly where he said it is.
“Nizamodeen seemed to age ten
years before me — it seemed to have a
profound effect on him.”
A spokesman for the Metropolitan
Police, which is leading the case, said:
“The Met were contacted in December
2021 by the family of Muriel McKay
regarding information they had ob-
tained in relation to her murder.
“Officers are liaising with them to
arrange a date to meet and assess the
information.”News
child without terrifying them for the
rest of their life?”
On that fateful night, Dianne
McKay raced to the family home
where she answered the house
telephone to a man who demanded
£1 million — worth £20 million
today — in ransom. He told her that
he was a member of a mafia gang
called M3 and they had abducted
Mrs McKay by mistake. The real
target had been Anna Murdoch,
who was then married to the
newspaper proprietor Rupert
Murdoch.
Mrs McKay’s husband Alick was
the deputy of Murdoch at News
International and Murdoch had lent
him his Rolls-Royce while he was
away on business in Australia.
Arthur and Nizamodeen Hosein,
brothers aged 34 and 21 at the time,
had seen Murdoch on TV and
hatched a plan to kidnap his wife
and hold her to ransom. They
followed the car and abducted Mrs
McKay from her house in
Wimbledon. What followed was a
series of demands from the
kidnappers made using phone calls,
letters from the
brothers and notes
written by Mrs
McKay in which she
detailed her ordeal.
The kidnapping
plunged the family
into the media
spotlight and led
the news for the 40
days before the
men were arrested.
There were
several attempts at
delivering fake
bank notes to the
brothers as a
ransom. They
insisted the money
be delivered by the
family in the Rolls-Royce, so
police pretended to be Dianne
McKay’s brother Ian while several
undercover officers dressed as Hell’s
Angels trailed behind on
motorbikes.
Suitcases were left at a drop-off
point at a garage in Bishops
Stortford. As police watched, a
concerned member of the public
reported the cases to the local
police, who had not
been informed of
the operation and
took them away.
The men were
eventually caught
when their Volvo was
spotted four times
driving near the drop
location. The
registration was traced to Arthur’s
farm and the brothers were
arrested.
It emerged that Arthur was a
violent, controlling brother who
beat his wife. Police believed he had
instigated the plan.
The men blamed each other but
neither would admit to what had
happened. However, evidence wassoon found and convinced officers
to proceed with the prosecution.
The machete found in Wimbledon
belonged to a neighbour of the farm
and Arthur’s fingerprints were on
the ransom letters. The letters
written by Mrs McKay had been
torn from a notebook at the
farmhouse.
The week before the abduction, it
emerged, Nizamodeen had looked
up the registration details for the
chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce.
Police brought search teams with
dogs to the farm for several weeks
but did not find the body.
Arthur died in Ashworth high-
security psychiatric hospital in- Nizamodeen served 20 years
and was deported to Trinidad on his
release. Dianne McKay agreed to be
in a documentary about the case
this year in the hope it might stir
someone’s memory about what
happened.
The documentary team had
located Nizamodeen in Trinidad
and although he still protested his
innocence, a comment he made
during his interview encouraged
them to contact him.
He told the documentary he was
speaking to clear his name before
he “leaves this earth to meet his
maker”. To the family’s
astonishment, during a gruelling
two-hour meeting with an English
barrister based in Trinidad they had
instructed, he revealed exactly
where he remembered burying thebody, on the farm. Dianne McKay
said: “When he told us those details,
he said where it was, how to get
there, how many steps, it was quite
a lot of detail and I thought, ‘My
God, he’s telling the truth, he can’t
be making this up’.
After Nizamodeen made his
confession to the barrister he
agreed to talk with Dianne McKay
on a video call. She said: “I was
dreading speaking with him. At first
I wrote him a letter and I couldn’t
do it, I felt physically ill. Since then
I’ve got more into it and eventually I
was able to front him up on a Zoom
call. He told me he wanted closure
before he met his maker. I felt utter
relief when he said she’s buried at
the farm.”
She added: “I’ve just thought
about it so much over the years. For
years I had terrible dreams of them
throwing my mother in the sea.
“We haven’t had a good
Christmas since it happened. To me
it’s a horrible time, it’s the
anniversary of it happening and
New Year I find particularly
upsetting. We always went abroad at
Christmas so we could avoid the
issue.
“It’s always there in the back of
your mind somewhere. It makes you
more anxious — I lock the doors
and moved abroad to somewhere in
the middle of nowhere, I retreated
to a very isolated place.
“You didn’t know whether to cry,
or to accept, it was a very confusing
emotion. You cannot grieve, you
cannot accept, because there was no
body.”
In publicity for the documentary
in August, Dianne McKay was
quoted as saying: “There has to be
somebody who knows something.
We’re not asking for anything.
We’re not looking for justice. We’re
looking for answers. Where is she?”
Perhaps she is close to finding out.Nizamodeen
Hosein, who
served 20 years
in prison, shows
where Muriel
McKay’s body
was buried at the
farm where she
was held, far leftCARAVAN MEDIA; ANL/SHUTTERSTOCKRoyce,sop
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iMuriel McKay was seized in a case of mistaken identity; left, her husband with Rupert and Anna Murdoch