UK
Muriel McKay’s family wants police to share communications after failed search for remains
The family of murder victim Muriel McKay are refusing to accept police did everything they could in their recent search for her remains.
They’ve submitted a subject access request (SAR), asking to see all internal emails, texts, WhatsApp messages, paper files, letters, memos and notes of meetings, anything in which the family, the excavation or Muriel’s killer Nizamodeen Hosein were mentioned.
The demand comes a month after the Metropolitan Police finished a week-long dig at the Hertfordshire farm where Hosein claims to have buried his victim’s body within days of kidnapping her 55 years ago.
Muriel’s daughter Dianne, 85, said: “The police just gave up and then they actually closed the site down a few hours after the boss said they would be there another two or three days.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
The family of Muriel McKay were unhappy after police called off the search last month
“We’re curious what went on behind the scenes. We know what went on in the front and we found out that nobody involved in the search had ever done a search like that before.”
A SAR requires public bodies to provide an applicant with details of personal information stored in their systems.
They don’t always have to provide all or any of the data and could argue certain exemptions.
The McKays believe the detectives were half-hearted in their search, perhaps because they had excavated some of the land two years earlier and found nothing – and then admitted they had not dug part of the original search site.
The family claimed they had dug in the wrong place anyway.
Muriel’s son Ian McKay, 82, said: “I feel quite suspicious that because of things we learned during this recent search that, well, first of all, we learned that they had never completed the 2022 search.
“And yet that was signed off on as being complete.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Nizamodden Hosein sends a message to the officer in charge of the search operation, Commander Stephen Clayman, saying he is ‘willing to come to England’.
“What we do after the SAR really depends on what we learn, but we do have legal avenues open to us and obviously we’ll certainly consider those options as and when we find something.
“We think that it’s just not credible or acceptable to us.”
Muriel McKay was 55 when she was kidnapped by brothers Arthur and Nizam Hosein from her London home just after Christmas in 1969.
She was married to Alick McKay, deputy to media mogul Rupert Murdoch who had just bought The Sun newspaper.
The bungling brothers meant to kidnap Murdoch’s wife Anna but got the wrong victim.
They held her at their rundown farm at Stocking Pelham, Hertfordshire, while they demanded a £1m ransom.
The brothers were caught, convicted, and jailed for life, but denied any involvement and Muriel’s body was never found.
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
Earlier this year Nizam, now 76, long ago freed and deported to his native Trinidad, told the McKays that Muriel had died of a heart attack, and he buried her on the farm behind a barn.
One of the family’s continuing complaints is that police did not ask the Home Office to suspend Hosein’s deportation order and let him fly to the UK to show them the burial site.
When the second dig was completed last month, Detective Superintendent Katherine Goodwin said she was disappointed they hadn’t located Muriel’s remains but would not go back for another search.
She said when they interviewed Hosein themselves he was inconsistent in his memory of what he did, and she saw no benefit in bringing him to the farm.
Both farm searches were done with the permission of the farm owner Ian Marsh and he insisted he would not allow another excavation.
The Met Police have 30 days to respond to the SAR. The force would not comment on the family’s request.