They were the two twisted brothers from Trinidad who murdered a mother-of-three in a botched kidnap so shocking their waxworks were later displayed in Madame Tussaud’s.
Nizamodeen and Arthur Hosein were found guilty of killing Muriel McKay in 1969 after carrying out a convoluted but error-strewn abduction before inflicting torturous cruelty on their helpless victim.
The pair had snatched the mother and demanded a £1million ransom after mistaking her for media mogul Rupert Murdoch ‘s first wife Anna in December that year.
They killed Ms McKay at a farm in Hertfordshire – with Nizamodeen believed to have placed her body in an unmarked grave and yet her remains were never found.
Fifty five years after the murder, her bereaved family has now been confronted with a new dilemma.
Nizamodeen – from his squalid shack in Trinidad – has offered to help Scotland Yard find her body, which he is thought to have buried three days after her kidnap under a manure heap.
Yet the last resting place of Mrs McKay remains a mystery haunting her family in the years since her abduction and killing.
The mother-of-three, 55, was grabbed from her London home and taken to a farm which was owned at the time by killer brother Arthur Hosein.
The Hosein brothers mistook Mrs McKay for Anna Murdoch after seeing their car by her house.
Murdoch and Anna had loaned their chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce to Mrs McKay’s husband Alick, an executive at News Limited and deputy to Murdoch’s deputy, while they were on holiday, unaware a £1million kidnap plot was under way.
The scheme was the brainchild of Arthur Hosein, who had arrived in Britain in the 1960s and borrowed heavily to buy his farmhouse.
His brother Nizam, 12 years younger, followed him here in summer 1969 and became embroiled in the kidnap plan.
The pair spent several days following the Rolls-Royce, thinking they were tracking Anna Murdoch – but instead seized Muriel as she returned to her home from dropping off her cleaning lady on December 29.
Her husband arrived later to find the front door open, lights on and no sign of his wife – while in the hallway, the phone had been pulled from the wall.
The contents of his wife’s handbag were strewn across the stairs and a rusty meat cleaver was on the floor.
Mrs McKay’s daughter Dianne, then 29 and a mother of two young children, took a phone call the following day from a man she now knows was Nizamodeen.
He told her they were ‘the mafia’ and had Dianne’s mother, before the family then received a scribbled note in Mrs McKay’s handwriting begging them to ‘do something to get me home’ and a ransom letter demanding £1 million.
After a bodged attempt to pick up a suitcase of ransom money, the kidnappers were arrested at the farm in January – but there was no sign of Mrs McKay.
The Hosein brothers refused to say where she was, leading to grisly speculation that her body had been fed to the pigs on the farm – and when they took the stand at their Old Bailey trial in September 1970, each tried to blame the other.
Both were found guilty of kidnapping and murder and sentenced to life imprisonment, though Nizamodeen was released in 1990 and deported.
On Wednesday the McKay family offered a farm owner $50,000 (£39,000) to let them dig up land which could prove to be her resting site, according to The Times – only for him to snub the suggestion, Scotland Yard has now revealed.
Ian and Caroline De Burgh Marsh, who bought the farm in 2007 for £2.2million, previously said they would only allow a search if the police forced them to.
Nizamodeen refused for years to give details about Mrs McKay’s fate – yet now claims she collapsed and died of a heart attack at the remote farm where he and his brother were holding her.
The killer, now 75, was 22 when he and older brother Arthur – who died in prison in 2009 – kidnapped Mrs McKay.
Hosein, convicted in 1970 of her kidnap and death, only put his name to a legal document confessing his involvement for the first time two years ago – and he accompanied it with a diagram including an X pointing to the supposed burial site.
Scotland Yard detectives were unsuccessful when searching a small section of a field near the farmhouse near the village of Stocking Pelham in 2022 – but the family insists they dug in the wrong place.
Hosein now claims to be certain he could remember the spot where he buried Mrs McKay’s body – despite the buildings and surrounding farmyard and fields having significantly altered since the kidnap in 1969.
He says he panicked and buried her body under a dung heap behind the farmhouse.
His new nine-page affidavit – a legally binding document witnessed by solicitors – describes in painstaking detail the events of the night of December 29, 1969.
That was when Mrs McKay, wife of News International executive Alick McKay, was ambushed on the doorstep of her home in Wimbledon, south-west London.
The papers pinpoint what the convicted killer insists is the exact location of her body at Rooks Farm, where she was taken after the fumbled kidnapping.
Mrs McKay’s grandson, property investor and inventor Mark Dyer, 59, has said in response: ‘This document has been 54 years in the making.
‘It has taken Nizam more than half a century to admit his part in what happened and now he has given this full admission, it is an enormous step forward.’
The two brothers were locked up in 1970 for Mrs McKay’s kidnap and murder, in one of the first times a murder conviction was brought without a body – though both then refused to admit their part in a crime which made headlines around the world.
He and his brother were depicted in waxworks in the ‘Chamber Of Horrors’ at the Madame Tussaud’s museum in London.
But there has been more co-operation in recent months from Hosein, who prefers to be known as Nizam, and he rejected the offer of $50,000 (£39,000) to tell the truth – insisting he would do so for free.
Mrs McKay’s daughter Dianne, 83, has told The Times how ‘time is running out for me to give my mother the burial she deserves’.
And in a newly-sent letter, the family said: ‘We have new information as to the exact location which has been provided by the perpetrator.
‘We now wish to search a small, targeted and specific area with minimal police attendance. That way there will be no unnecessary searching.
‘In October 2021, we decided to offer the perpetrator the sum of $50,000 under the terms of a settlement agreement in order that he provide us with information as to the whereabouts and the exact location of burial. He will not accept any of this money.
‘As a family we now offer you this sum for any inconvenience caused and any legal fees incurred by a second search.’
In a letter seen by Sky News last November, Hosein asked the Home Office to lift a deportation order which still bars him from Britain.
Nizamodeeen wrote: ‘I admit my involvement in the kidnap and death of Muriel McKay, and I have been attempting to assist her daughter Dianne in locating her body.
‘I believe I am the only living person who knows where Muriel’s body is and would like her body to be found before I myself die.’
A deportation order insists an individual leave the UK while also barring them from re-entering the country and invalidates any leave to enter or remain in the UK before the order is made or while it is in force.
A person can apply at any time for revocation of a deportation order.
A Home Office spokesman said in response to the killer’s claims: ‘We express sympathies with Muriel McKay’s loved ones. While we do not comment on individual cases, we work with the police on any requests pertaining to ongoing investigations.’
Investigators called off their week-long search after failing to find any evidence of the remains.
The Metropolitan Police said: ‘We most recently met some members of Muriel’s family in May 2023 and continue to keep in contact with them.
‘An extensive search for Muriel’s remains was conducted in March 2022 at a site in Hertfordshire, unfortunately it concluded unsuccessfully. We continue to review any opportunities to recover Muriel’s body and return her to her family.’
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Aidan Radnedge
