About the case of Muriel McKay
Muriel McKay, the wife of Alick McKay, Deputy Chairman at News International (formerly “The News of the World Organisation”) and close friend of Rupert Murdoch, became the unfortunate victim of the tragic Murdoch / McKay kidnapping case in 1969.
Mistakenly identified as Murdoch’s wife, Anna Murdoch — Muriel McKay was kidnapped.
The perpetrators behind this heinous act were two brothers, Arthur and Nizamodeen Hosein, who were later convicted of both the murder and kidnapping in September 1970.
The case gained notoriety as one of the early instances in the United Kingdom where a trial and conviction for murder occurred even in the absence of the victim’s body, as well as one of United Kingdom’s first largest ransom case.
Mark Dyer
Muriel McKay's Grandson
Mark Dyer has led the investigation since November 2021, fulfilling a promise he made to his grandfather, Alec McKay, at the age of 18 — in the closing days of the Falklands War — that he would pursue the case if he ever got the chance.
Since then he has tracked down the kidnappers, interviewed the surviving member of M3, and traced the Israeli connection to Mr Chapman from Bethnal Green Road.
Questions answered by Mark Dyer, Muriel McKay's grandson
Who was Muriel McKay, beyond the headlines?
Almost everything written about my grandmother describes her as the woman who was taken by mistake — a footnote in somebody else’s story. That is not who she was.
She was a wife, a mother of three and a grandmother of three. She loved her grandchildren very much, and we knew it. That is the part the headlines have never carried, and it is the part that has kept this family going for almost sixty years.
She was not a public figure. She was ours.
Why did you take this on in 2021, after more than fifty years?
Because the man who took her started talking.
In 2021 Nizamodeen Hosein appeared in the Sky News documentary The Wimbledon Kidnapping, and I watched him deny the crime all over again. That was the moment for me. He was alive, he was speaking publicly, and he was still lying — which meant there was still something to be got at.
What followed took years. At one stage he wanted money from the family, and then he changed his mind and asked for a hamburger instead. I have thought about that a great deal since. I think the money was never really the point; I think he was carrying something.
When I finally sat with him in person, we talked for a long time. I bought him the hamburger. And by the end of it he had admitted the murder.
How did the police investigation in 1969 and 1970 go wrong?
In my view, they gave up.
Two men were convicted without a body, the file went quiet, and my grandmother stayed where she had been left. For decades nothing happened at all.
The only reason anything has moved in recent years is that this family made it move. My uncle Ian put money on the table when nobody else would, and that is what opened the door. Everything since has come from the family pushing, not from the case being reopened on its own merits.
You met Nizamodeen Hosein in Trinidad. What was that like, and why did you go?
I went because some things cannot be done by letter or through intermediaries. If I wanted the truth out of him, I had to be in the room.
My mother insisted on coming with me. She wanted to meet the man who killed her mother. I will not pretend to describe what that was like for her.
Sitting opposite him, I was not angry in the way people expect. I was working. I had one job, which was to keep him talking until he stopped performing — and eventually he did.
Do you believe his account of how she died and where she was buried?
Partly.
I believe him about where she was buried. That part has held up against everything else we had learnt, and it is the reason we were searching where we were searching.
I do not believe the rest of it as he tells it. His version has been sanitised — sugar-coated to make it easier to live with, and easier to say out loud. The account of a frightened woman simply slipping away is not, in my view, the whole truth of what happened at that farm.
I also believe that my grandmother’s body was moved after she was originally buried, by two men acting without Nizamodeen’s knowledge.
If that is right, it explains a great deal about why she had never been where she was supposed to be. And it has to be said that Nizamodeen was heavily under the influence of various substances at the time, which is another reason his memory of those days is not a clean record.
It is believed that Nizamodeen’s brother, Adam, along with a Polish army man, Juan, moved the body to Bethnal Green Road, which is where our search efforts have taken us in 2026.
What are the current leads, and where does the search stand today?
We are told Muriel is buried at 447 Bethnal Green Road.
What we have found there raises as many questions as it answers. My view is that two trial holes have gone missing. Evidence we have gathered has been interfered with. We have also been told — and we believe — that she may have been buried alongside a dead calf, which matters enormously for how any search should be carried out and what any find would look like.
The strongest testimony we have is from a woman who, as an eight-year-old child, saw at least two large black bags arrive at the basement of that address which had a very strong smell. She was a child; she had no reason to invent it, and no idea at the time what she was looking at.
That is where we are. It is not finished.
There have been several searches that police say found nothing. How do you keep going?
Because I do not accept that those searches were properly done.
There have been two half-hazard digs at Rooks Farm. After the first, in 2022, we were never given any evidence at all of what the police had actually done or where they had actually looked.
During the second search in 2024, I saw the flags still standing from the 2022 dig area. When the officers realised I had seen them, the search was pulled. My view is that those flags showed the first dig had not been done properly, and that once that was visible, the appetite to continue disappeared, as they knew they had messed up.
So when I am told that “the searches have not found anything”, my answer is that a search which was not done properly simply cannot find anything, and that is not the same as her not being there.
Why is the family offering a £1 million reward, and what would someone need to provide?
Because after almost sixty years, information is the only thing that will bring my grandmother home, and we would rather pay for it than lose it.
To claim the reward, we need a location and a recovery — remains found, and confirmed by DNA as Muriel’s. Anything short of that is a lead we will chase gratefully, but the reward itself is tied to actually finding her.
Full terms are set out on this website. If you are unsure whether what you know is enough, tell us anyway and let us work that out.
What do you say to someone who thinks that after almost sixty years, it is time to let this go?
I would ask them what they would do if it were their family.
If something has haunted you since you were a child, time means nothing. It does not fade on a schedule. Almost sixty years and it has not made this smaller; it has only meant that more of the people who loved her have died without an answer.
And there is a simpler point. This is a very sad story, and it deserves an ending. Bringing my grandmother home and laying her to rest properly is a good thing to do, and it remains a good thing to do however late it is.
If you know something — even something small — what should you do?
Contact the family directly.
You do not need to be certain, and it does not need to be much. A conversation you overheard. A job someone did on a cellar or a patio. A name that came up once and stayed with you. People often assume that what they know is too small or too old to matter. In this case, it is usually the small and old things that matter most.
Almost sixty years on, someone reading this knows something. Please tell us.
“The disappearance became the first high-profile kidnap-for-ransom in the UK”
—Sky News
The Search Continues For Muriel McKay 50+ Years Later
After 50+ years, the search for Muriel McKay continues with a new lead suggesting her body may be buried in the garden of an East End tailor shop in Bethnal Green.
Now, the family of tailor Percy Chaplin, an associate of one of the convicted brothers, claims he knew the truth but kept silent until his death in 2022.
Could this be the breakthrough the McKay family has been waiting for?
Ongoing Mystery – The Search for Muriel McKay Resumes In Bethnal Green, More Than 50 Years Later
Decades after Muriel McKay vanished, a £1 million reward from her family has reignited the investigation, bringing forward three compelling new leads:
• A suspected burial site behind a shop in Bethnal Green
• Human remains discovered near Rooks Farm
• A possible grave beneath a patio on Buntingford High Street
Now, the family of tailor Percy Chaplin, an associate of one of the convicted brothers, claims he knew the truth but kept silent until his death in 2022.
