Muriel McKay Pic: The McKay Family
The children of a woman murdered over 50 years ago have been denied a High Court order to search a Tower Hamlets garden for their mother’s body.
Muriel McKay, the wife of newspaper executive Alick McKay, was abducted in 1969 and held for a £1 million ransom at a Hertfordshire farm by brothers Arthur and Nizamodeen Hosein who had mistook her for Anna Murdoch, then-wife of newspaper mogul Rupert Murdoch. McKay was deputy to Murdoch.
Rupert Murdoch in 1969 Pic: PA Media
The Hosein brothers were convicted and jailed for McKay’s murder in 1971, but her body was never found despite multiple police searches.
Barristers for two of McKay’s children, Ian McKay and Diane Levinson, sought an injunction on Monday to allow a “ground-penetrating-radar-scan” of a shared garden in Bethnal Green after receiving new information suggesting their mother could be buried there.
A resident of the property at Bethnal Green Road, Madeleine Higson, opposed the family’s injunction bid and accused the McKay family of “harassing” her.
A notorious murder:
Muriel McKay was the wife of Alick McKay, deputy to Australian newspaper mogul Rupert Murdoch., who had recently bought the News of the World and the Sun, which he had recently relaunched.
She was kidnapped from her Wimbledon home in 1969 by Trinidadian brothers Arthur and Nizamodeen Hosein after they mistook her for Murdoch’s then wife, Anna Murdoch.
The brothers held McKay for ransom at Rooks Farm in Stocking Pelham, Hertfordshire.
In 1971, they were convicted and jailed for her murder and sentenced to 25 and 15 years in prison, but her body was never found.
After offering a £1 million reward for information in July, the McKay family received new evidence that their mother’s body was buried in a shared back garden on Bethnal Green Road, Tower Hamlets.
Arthur died in prison but, in 2024, Nizamodeen told McKay’s daughter Dianne that her body had been buried at Rooks Farm. The police searched the farm but came up empty-handed.
Arthur Hosein and Nizamodeen Hosein Pic: Getty Images
Mr Justice Richard Smith ruled in Higson’s favour on Tuesday, closing down any prospect of the search.
A representative for Higson told the hearing that multiple people connected to the McKay family had tried to gain access to the garden on false grounds.
The court was told how one woman claimed she was buying a property nearby and wanted to take a drainage survey, while another man claimed he wanted to photograph the garden for a “sentimental montage” for his grandfather.
The judge described the McKay family’s “egregious conduct” toward Higson, which he said involved “threats, deception, dishonesty, lies, bullying and harassment”.
The Bethnal Green back garden where McKay is believed to be buried Pic: PA Media
The McKay family’s injunction bid came after they had offered £1 million for any information on the whereabouts of their mother’s body in July this year.
The court heard that after the reward was offered, a woman named Hayley Frais came forward claiming her father had owned a tailor shop on Bethnal Green Road which employed Arthur Hosein.
Her father had said on his deathbed that he noticed a strange smell in the building at the time of McKay’s disappearance, Frais reportedly claimed.
Benjamin Wood, representing McKay and Levinson, told the court that police were not willing to excavate or survey the garden as it did not meet their “evidential threshold”, but were “receptive to information” coming from any scan.
Higson’s barrister said that although she had “considerable sympathy” for the McKay family, the injunction, which would have prevented her from disturbing the garden while the survey took place, had “no proper legal foundation”.
Mr Justice Smith said: “I was not persuaded that even if a survey was carried out, that it would be conclusive one way or the other, that it would produce incontrovertible data.”
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