Muriel McKay: Family offer £40,000 to dig land thought to burial site of murder victim

The family of murder victim Muriel McKay have offered a landowner £40,000 to let them excavate the farm where they believe her body was buried 54 years ago.

They hope the money would compensate the banker for the inconvenience and any damage and repairs to his land.

The offer was made in a letter hand-delivered to Ian de Burgh Marsh’s home at Stocking Farm in the Hertfordshire village of Stocking Pelham.

He has always refused to give the family access but did agree to let Scotland Yard dig up a small, restricted part of the land last year.

Detectives found nothing, but the family later insisted the police team had searched the wrong area.

The sum on offer is the same as the family had agreed to pay Mrs McKay’s killer Nizamodeen Hosein to break his silence over the 1969 kidnap and finally reveal the burial site.

Hosein, 75, who is unwell and lives in poverty in his native Trinidad since his prison release, turned down the offer but revealed the location anyway “for my peace of mind”.

In the letter, Muriel’s grandson Mark Dyer writes: “The perpetrator has admitted his part in this crime after so many years and he genuinely wishes to help us find Muriel. He has provided a written and sworn affidavit detailing the location of the burial site.

“We now wish to search a small, targeted and specific area with minimal police attendance. That way there will be no unnecessary searching.

“We agreed to a limited search previously and now the circumstances have changed as we have specific information as to the burial location from the person who actually dug the grave.”

Businessman Mr Dyer adds. “As a family, we now offer you this sum for any inconvenience caused and any legal fees incurred. Please assist us as we need to have closure on this family tragedy.”

Nizamodeen and his older brother Arthur were jailed for life for kidnapping and murdering Mrs McKay, 55, the Australian wife of a newspaper executive, after an Old Bailey trial in 1970.

Her husband Alick was deputy to press magnate Rupert Murdoch who had just bought the Sun newspaper. The bungling brothers had meant to kidnap Murdoch’s then-wife Anna.

It was one of the first murder convictions without a body being found and the killers, who claimed they were innocent, always refused to say more.

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Last year Nizamodeen Hosein told the family Muriel was held at the farm, which Arthur owned, for several days while they demanded a £1m ransom, but she collapsed one night and in a panic, they buried her behind a barn.

Hosein has offered to travel to the UK and lead searchers to the exact spot, which he insists he can identify even though the landscape and farm buildings have changed in the many years since.

To do so, he has asked the Home Office to lift, temporarily, the deportation order issued when he finished his prison sentence in 1990.

And the family is still hoping that Scotland Yard will apply for a search warrant for the farm, but detectives are concerned at what they believe are discrepancies in Hosein’s description of the burial site. They are considering formally interviewing him before making a decision.

The letter, containing the £40,000 offer, was left at the farmhouse after no one answered the door.

Sky News has asked Mr de Burgh Marsh for a comment.