Family of murdered Muriel McKay urge police to launch new search for her remains on remote beach

The family of murdered Muriel McKay has urged police to begin a new search for her remains on a remote beach after the discovery of a long-lost “confession” by her killer.

According to a letter hidden among old court files, Arthur Hosein told his solicitor he buried her body at Jaywick Sands near Clacton, Essex.

It is believed the information was never followed up.

Arthur and his brother Nizamodeen Hosein kidnapped Mrs McKay, the wife of a newspaper executive, in 1969 and held her for ransom before they were arrested and charged with her murder.

Mrs McKay was married to Alec McKay, the deputy to Rupert Murdoch, who had just bought the Sun newspaper.

The Hosein brothers mistook her for Mr Murdoch’s first wife, Anna. The Murdochs were abroad and the McKays were using the boss’s limousine.

They were convicted in one of the first murder trials without the evidence of the victim’s body, denying their involvement and refusing to say what they did with her.

But in a letter to the Appeal Court in 1972, Arthur’s solicitor, George Brown, who was trying to get legal aid for his client, wrote: “I have received information that the body of Mrs McKay, who was the alleged victim in this case, was buried at Jaywick Sands, a fact which I have communicated to the local police.

“It may be that there is some merit in what this man says…”

Mrs McKay’s daughter Dianne McKay told Sky News: “In many ways I’d like to halt the whole thing and personally I find it’s an ongoing agony.

“I learned to live with it a long time ago, the loss of my mother and the way it happened.

“I don’t really want to go on and on forever. But if someone is willing to have a quick look or a proper look for us on this huge beach area maybe that’s a good idea.”

Simon Farquhar, an author who discovered the letter at the bottom of a box of official documents, said the plea for legal aid was rejected and there was no appeal hearing. The solicitor and the killer are now dead.

In three years of research for his new book about the case A Desperate Business, Mr Farquhar said he found no evidence that anyone had acted on the solicitor’s information.

“The solicitor says he informed the local police, but we don’t know whether that’s the police in Essex, or local to Arthur’s prison in Wakefield, or his own office in Birmingham or whatever,” he said.

“But as far as I can tell, no police officer was ever given this information. There was no visit to see Arthur in prison, either by the police or by that solicitor. There was no record of any police force having informed Wimbledon CID about this.

“In fact, right up until 25 years later, whenever someone anywhere in Britain went into a police station with some information about this, it was relayed to members of the CID and any officer who was connected with a story looked at it again.”

In April, Scotland Yard detectives reopened the case in the search for Mrs McKay’s remains after Nizamodeen Hosein, who is still alive but had always insisted he did not know what happened to her, told her family she had died of a heart attack at the brothers’ Hertfordshire farm and he had buried her there.

Police found no trace of her and stopped the search after a few days.

The officer in charge said the latest revelation did not justify a new search because he could not verify the information or be sure where it came from.

He said in an email to the McKay family: “We are aware of this letter and have copies of the letter and other related documents.

“We have reviewed, considered, analysed and assessed the information and unfortunately this is one single strand of intelligence.

“In the letter the solicitor states that he has information which suggests that Muriel was buried at Jaywick Sands, which we can assume has come from Arthur. Nonetheless we have done some research on the solicitor and it seems he has since passed away.

“We have no way of knowing exactly where that information came from and therefore unable to attribute, verify or assess the validity of the information. It is with regret that I will not be able to progress this line of enquiry.”

Scotland Yard was asked for an official response.