A convicted killer signed an extraordinary $50,000 contract with his victim’s family to reveal what happened to her body.
Nizamodeen Hosein had kept the secret of Muriel McKay’s fate for more than 50 years, long after his release from prison, until her family made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.
But after signing an agreement that would have rescued him from a life of poverty, he turned down the money (the equivalent of £43,000) and told the family how and where Muriel died.
Image: Muriel McKay. Pic: SkyUK
At his squalid, remote home in Trinidad he explained to their lawyer: “I don’t want the money. Money wasn’t my objective, it was peace of mind.
“Talking about it now breaks my heart. I was young, 22, I didn’t feel the pain like I’m feeling now.”
Hosein, aged 75 and in poor health, has offered to return to the UK, from where he was deported at the end of his life sentence in 1990, to show Mrs McKay’s daughter Dianne and her grandson Mark Dyer the site of Muriel’s remains.
He claims she died from a heart attack at a Hertfordshire farm owned by his brother Arthur a few days after they kidnapped and held her for a £1m ransom at Christmas in 1969.
Mr Dyer, a businessman who drew up the contract with lawyers, said: “It may seem odd to many people that we should pay Nizam Hosein for the information, but our offer unlocked everything after many years of his silence and our sadness and frustration.
Image: Mark Dyer
“It seemed our last chance of ever finding out what happened to my grandmother.
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“Nizam could certainly have made good use of the cash because he is living in a hut with rotting floorboards, no proper sanitation and poisonous snails climbing the walls.
“He seems to have rejected the money because he wants closure. He’s getting old and he’s frail and it was perhaps his chance to atone for what he did.
“Our lawyer gave him the first $500 and he just pushed it away. For me, that gave him legitimacy.”
Muriel was aged 55 and the wife of newspaper executive Alick McKay, deputy to press baron Rupert Murdoch – who had just bought the Sun and News of the World.
The bungling brothers mistook Muriel for Murdoch’s first wife Anna after following the wrong car, Murdoch’s Rolls Royce, to the McKay home in Wimbledon, South London.
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After days of playing cat and mouse with the police – and a bodged attempt to pick up a suitcase of ransom money – the kidnappers were caught and arrested at the farm.
However, there was no sign of Muriel and they refused to say what had happened to her.
They were jailed for life after one of the first murder convictions without the discovery of the victim’s body. Arthur Hosein died in prison in 2009.
Image: Arthur and Nizamodeen Hosein. Pic: SkyUK
Last year, Scotland Yard searched part of the farmland near the village of Stocking Pelham after talking to Hosein on a video link, but he later insisted they had dug in the wrong place.
Some of the farm buildings, fencing and gates have been changed in the intervening years since the murder, which gripped the public and made worldwide headlines at the time.
Image: The Hertfordshire farm where Muriel McKay was kept prisoner by the Hosein brothers
Detectives have sent Hosein a list of more than 80 questions in a bid to check his story and narrow down the true burial site.
They are in contact with the McKays and considering applying for a warrant for a new search at the farm.
The family has launched a petition calling on the Home Office to lift Hosein’s deportation order temporarily so he can revisit the farm.
He said: “If I go back to the farm, I will remember where I put the body. I am sure I can go to the spot directly.”
Labour’s welfare reforms bill has passed, with 335 MPs voting in favour and 260 against.
It came after the government watered down the bill earlier this evening, making a dramatic last-minute concession to the demands of would-be rebel MPs who were concerned about the damage the policy would do to disabled people.
The government has a working majority of 166, so it would have taken 84 rebels to defeat the bill.
In total, 49 Labour MPs still voted against the bill despite the concessions. No MPs from other parties voted alongside the government, although three MPs elected for Labour who have since had the whip removed did so.
Which Labour MPs rebelled?
Last week, 127 Labour MPs signed what they called a “reasoned amendment”, a letter stating their objection to the bill as it was.
The government responded with some concessions to try and win back the rebels, which was enough to convince some of them. But they were still ultimately forced to make more changes today.
In total, 68 MPs who signed the initial “reasoned amendment” eventually voted in favour of the bill.
Nine in 10 MPs elected for the first time at the 2024 general election voted with the government.
That compares with fewer than three quarters of MPs who were voted in before that.
A total of 42 Labour MPs also voted in favour of an amendment that would have stopped the bill from even going to a vote at all. That was voted down by 328 votes to 149.
How does the rebellion compare historically?
If the wording of the bill had remained unchanged and 127 MPs or more had voted against it on Tuesday, it would have been up there as one of the biggest rebellions in British parliamentary history.
As it happened, it was still higher than the largest recorded during Tony Blair’s first year as PM, when 47 of his Labour colleagues (including Diane Abbott, John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn, who also voted against the bill on Tuesday) voted no to his plan to cut benefits for single-parent families.
The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
A 92-year-old man has been sentenced to life with a minimum term of 20 years in prison for the rape and murder of an elderly widow nearly 60 years ago.
Ryland Headley was found guilty on Monday of killing 75-year-old Louisa Dunne at her Bristol home in June 1967, in what is thought to be the UK’s longest cold case to reach trial, and has been told by the judge he “will die in prison”.
The mother-of-two’s body was found by neighbours after Headley, then a 34-year-old railway worker, forced his way inside the terraced house in the Easton area before attacking her.
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The UK’s longest cold case to reach trial
Police found traces of semen and a palm print on one of the rear windows inside the house – but it was about 20 years before DNA testing.
The case remained unsolved for more than 50 years until Avon and Somerset detectives sent off items from the original investigation and found a DNA match to Headley.
He had moved to Suffolk after the murder and served a prison sentence for raping two elderly women in 1977.
Prosecutors said the convictions showed he had a “tendency” to break into people’s homes at night and, in some cases, “target an elderly woman living alone, to have sex with her despite her attempts to fend him off, and to threaten violence”.
Image: Louisa Dunne in 1933. Pic: Avon and Somerset Constabulary
Image: Headley during his arrest. Pic: Avon and Somerset Constabulary
Headley, from Ipswich, who did not give evidence, denied raping and murdering Ms Dunne, but was found guilty of both charges after a trial at Bristol Crown Court.
Detectives said forces across the country are investigating whether Headley could be linked to other unsolved crimes.
Mrs Dunne’s granddaughter, Mary Dainton, who was 20 when her relative was killed, told the court that her murder “had a big impact on my mother, my aunt and her family.
“I don’t think my mother ever recovered from it. The anxiety caused by her mother’s brutal rape and murder clouded the rest of her life.
“The fact the offender wasn’t caught caused my mother to become and remain very ill.
“When people found out about the murder, they withdrew from us. In my experience, there is a stigma attached to rape and murder.”
Image: The front of Louisa Dunne’s home. Pic: Avon and Somerset Constabulary
Image: Louisa Dunne’s skirt. Pic: Avon and Somerset Constabulary
Finding out her grandmother’s killer had been caught after almost six decades “turned my life upside down,” she said.
“I feel sad and very tired, which has affected the relationships I have with those close to me. I didn’t expect to deal with something of such emotional significance at this stage of my life.
“It saddens me deeply that all the people who knew and loved Louisa are not here to see that justice has been done.”
Image: Palmprint images. Pic: Avon and Somerset Constabulary
After her statement, Mr Justice Sweeting told Mrs Dainton: “It is not easy to talk about matters like this in public.
“Thank you very much for doing it in such a clear and dignified way.”
The judge told Headley his crimes showed “a complete disregard for human life and dignity.
“Mrs Dunne was vulnerable, she was a small elderly woman living alone. You treated her as a means to an end.
“The violation of her home, her body and ultimately her life was a pitiless and cruel act by a depraved man.
“She must have experienced considerable pain and fear before her death,” he said.
Sentencing Headley to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 20 years, the judge told him: “You will never be released, you will die in prison.”
Detective Inspector Dave Marchant of Avon and Somerset Police said Headley was “finally facing justice for the horrific crimes he committed against Louisa in 1967.
“The impact of this crime has cast a long shadow over the city and in particular Louisa’s family, who have had to deal with the sadness and trauma ever since.”
The officer praised Ms Dainton’s “resilience and courage” during what he called a “unique” case and thanked investigators from his own force, as well as South West Forensics, detectives from Suffolk Constabulary, the National Crime Agency and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).
Three managers at the hospital where Lucy Letby worked have been arrested on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter.
They were in senior roles at the Countess of Chester Hospital in 2015 and 2016 and have been bailed pending further enquiries, Cheshire Constabulary said. Their names have not been made public.
Letby, 35, was found guilty of murdering seven children and attempting to murder seven more between June 2015 and June 2016 while working in the hospital’s neonatal unit.
Detective Superintendent Paul Hughes explained that gross negligent manslaughter focuses on the “action or inaction of individuals”.
There is also an investigation into corporate manslaughter at the hospital, which began in October 2023.
That focuses on “senior leadership and their decision-making”, Mr Hughes said. The intention there is to determine whether any “criminality has taken place concerning the response to the increased levels of fatalities”.
The scope was widened to include gross negligence manslaughter in March of this year.
Image: Lucy Letby was found guilty of murdering seven children and attempting to murder seven more
Mr Hughes said it is “important to note” that this latest development “does not impact on the convictions of Lucy Letby for multiple offences of murder and attempted murder”.
He added: “Both the corporate manslaughter and gross negligence manslaughter elements of the investigation are continuing and there are no set timescales for these.
“Our investigation into the deaths and non-fatal collapses of babies at the neo-natal units of both the Countess of Chester Hospital and the Liverpool Women’s Hospital between the period of 2012 to 2016 is also ongoing.”
Earlier this year, lawyers for Lucy Letby called for the suspension of the inquiry, claiming there was “overwhelming and compelling evidence” that her convictions were unsafe.
Their evidence has been passed to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), which investigates potential miscarriages of justice, and Letby’s legal team hopes her case will be referred back to the Court of Appeal.