The police search for the remains of murdered Muriel McKay has been called off.
In a letter to her family, Katherine Godwin, Detective Superintendent in the Met Police, 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.”
Her family has been calling for Ms McKay’s 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.
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.
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.”
Source Agencies
