THE TIMES UK: Muriel McKay’s kidnap killer reveals burial place after 51 years

In 1970 the brothers, who had demanded £1 million for her return, denied killingher but were sentenced to life imprisonment in the country’s first conviction for a murder without a body. Nizamodeen Hosein has now given directions to the body which, he said, is buried on the 11-acre Hertfordshire farm where Mrs McKay was held. The family have informed Hertfordshire police and the Metropolitan Police of his claims.

Last night her daughter, Dianne, 81, said: “I’ve been haunted by this. It is a relief to think we may get her back soon and that she died relatively quickly.”

Nizamodeen Hosein maintained throughout the trial that he was not involved. However, he told the family that Mrs McKay collapsed and died while watching a television news report with him about her kidnapping.

The killer, 21 at the time, said: “I panicked and I dug [the grave] . . . Five and a half, six feet . . . I lifted her on my shoulder . . . I jumped down the hole … [It took] a couple of hours.”

Mrs McKay was pounced on at her home in Wimbledon on December 29, 1969 by the brothers, who mistook her for Anna, then Murdoch’s wife. That year he had purchased The Sun. He is now executive chairman of News Corp, the ultimate owner of newspapers including The Times.

The brothers followed his chauffeured Rolls Royce, unaware he had lent it to his deputy at News Limited, Alick McKay, Mrs McKay’s husband, while he was away in Australia.

After Mrs McKay was dropped at home the brothers, armed with a billhook blade and twine, forced their way into the house and abducted her in their Volvo.

Her husband came home to discover the front door open, the contents of her handbag strewn in the hall and the billhook on the floor.

The brothers took Mrs McKay to Rooks Farm, where they lived with Arthur’s wife and children, who were on holiday at the time.

That evening they called the McKay home and spoke to Dianne McKay, demanding the equivalent of £20 million today. It was thought to be the first kidnap for ransom in Britain.

They claimed they were a mafia group called M3 and over the next 40 days they made 18 more calls and sent three letters demanding the money and threatening to kill Mrs McKay. Five letters written by her were enclosed as proof as well as three pieces cut from her clothing.

In one letter in shaky handwriting she wrote that she was cold and blindfolded.

Two attempts orchestrated by the police to deliver fake banknotes to the men in early February were unsuccessful. During the second attempt police noticed the brothers’ blue Volvo circling the area and traced it to the farm.

The Hoseins protested their innocence but a notebook was found with torn pages that matched Mrs McKay’s letters. The billhook was revealed to belong to a neighbour and Arthur Hosein’s fingerprints matched those found in the ransom letters.

Nizamodeen Hosein’s voice matched recordings of the ransom calls. Police searched the farm for several weeks but did not find the body.

Arthur Hosein died in prison in 2009. In August this year a film crew recording a documentary about the case tracked down the surviving killer in Trinidad. He continued to maintain his innocence but his appearance led the family to hire Matthew Gayle, a British barrister in Trinidad, to ask Hosein to disclose the body’s location.

He told Gayle he wanted to give the family “closure” before he died and revealed fragments of what happened, including that he had fed Mrs McKay “fried rice”. He said that she had not been injured.

Hosein said where he remembered burying the body after Mrs McKay’s grandson joined the interview over the phone.

Hosein told him: “At the farmhouse there’s a wooden gate, there’s a few wooden gates, it has barn beside, barn beside, and ten foot forward, ten foot this side [left], the body’s somewhere around there. Next to the barbed wire fence, about three foot [from the fence].”

Asked who buried the body he replied: “It was only me.”

He claimed that Mrs McKay collapsed in the lounge downstairs and died from a “heart attack”, adding: “I never killed her.”

At one point he said: “This will forever haunt me for the rest of my days.”

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.”

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 owners have been unreceptive to requests from the family to allow them access to analyse the spot with ground-penetrating 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,” she said.

“The police have the right to do what they want to do, but they will have to go through 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.

“It gave me a sense of comfort, just to think she was buried somewhere. There was so much horrible speculation, about being fed to the pigs.

“I’m desperately keen to find her body.”

She added: “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 sad because he had been so unhappy. He wanted to be with her.”

Dianne McKay’s life has never been the same since her mother’s abduction either.

“It froze me emotionally and my marriage broke up within about two years of it happening,” she said. “I had three children and they were also affected. My eldest daughter was very fond of my mother — she was ten years old. It does affect them, really badly. What do you tell a child without terrifying them for the rest of their life?”

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 Met, which is leading the case, said: “The Met were contacted in December 2021 by the family of Muriel McKay regarding information they had obtained in relation to her murder.

“Officers are liaising with them to arrange a date to meet and assess the information.”