Mark Dyer: Muriel McKay’s Grandson
The driving force behind more than fifty years of searching for Muriel.
Mark Dyer is the son of Dianne McKay and the grandson of Muriel McKay. He was just five years old, at Christmas 1969, when his grandmother was taken from her home in Wimbledon, old enough to feel the family fall apart around him, and young enough to carry the weight of it for the rest of his life.
For more than five decades, Mark has been determined to find Muriel and bring her home. Today, he is the driving force behind the searches, the public campaign, and the long, patient work of getting people to tell the truth.
Carrying the Weight Since 1969
Mark grew up inside the aftermath of one of the most notorious kidnappings in British criminal history, among the first major ransom kidnappings in the UK, and one of the country’s earliest murder convictions secured without the recovery of a body. The legal case was closed long ago. For the McKay family, nothing has been closed at all.
Mark has spoken publicly about what it was like as a child to watch his mother, his uncle Ian, and the rest of the family unravel under the strain of not knowing where Muriel was. That experience shaped everything that followed. The unfinished question — where is she? — has never left him.
The Driving Force Behind the Search
Between 2021 and 2025, Mark led an exhaustive effort to break a 52-year silence. Working alongside his mother Dianne, his uncle Ian, and barrister Matthew Gayle, he built the trust that finally allowed Nizamodeen Hosein, Muriel’s surviving kidnapper, deported to Trinidad after serving his life sentence, to share details he had never given to anyone before.
In November 2021, after a 52-year deadlock that many had given up on, Mark secured a final admission from the Chaplin family identifying the most likely burial site at Stocking Farm in Stocking Pelham. He has gone on to lead the searches in 2022 and 2024, navigating an investigation the family believes has been obstructed at almost every turn by the authorities responsible for helping them.
His work on the case has been covered by the Mirror, BBC, The Times and Sky News, the True Criminals Podcast and his speech on the case was awarded the 2025 Cicero Non-Political Speech Award.
As Mark has said: he will not rest until Muriel is brought home, no matter the cost.
Mark’s Wider Life: Innovation and Investment
Mark’s professional life sits separately from the case, but the same resolve shows up in everything he does.
He is the founder of The Hacking Trust, a UK property and corporate acquisitions firm he established in 1997, which has gone on to spearhead more than £750 million in successful transactions across the UK property sector. More on that work is at thehackingtrust.com.
He is also the inventor of Stingblade, a British-designed and manufactured tool that safely removes jellyfish micro-barbs from the skin, born out of a near-fatal swim in the Mediterranean and his family’s long heritage of blade-making and innovation. More on that at stingblade.com.
Both ventures matter to Mark, but neither has ever taken precedence over Muriel. The search comes first.
How You Can Help
If you have any information that could help the family recover Muriel’s remains, anything at all, however small, please get in touch with the family directly:
- General enquiries: enquiries@wimbledonkidnap.com
- Press enquiries: dianneandmark@wimbledonkidnap.com
- Phone: 0333 041 1585
Muriel deserves the dignified burial she has been denied for more than fifty years. With Mark leading the search and the family refusing to give up, that day is closer than it has ever been.