Murder of Muriel McKay

Muriel McKay (1914–1970) was an Australian woman who was kidnapped on 29 December 1969, and presumed murdered in the first few days of 1970.[1][2][3] She was married to Alick McKay (died 1983 aged 73),[4] then an executive at News Limited and deputy to Rupert Murdoch, and was targeted after being mistaken for Murdoch's then wife, Anna Murdoch.[5] Two Indo-Trinidadian brothers, Arthur Hosein (34) and his youngest sibling Nizamodeen (22), were convicted of the crimes of murder and kidnapping in September 1970. The case was significant in that it was one of the earliest cases of a trial and conviction in a murder without a body case in the United Kingdom.[6]

Muriel McKay
Born4 February 1914
Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
Diedc. 1 January 1970
Unknown; possibly Rooks Farm near Stocking Pelham, Hertfordshire, England, UK
NationalityAustralian
OccupationHousewife
Known forHer kidnapping and disappearance

Disappearance

Muriel McKay and her husband, Alick McKay, were born and raised in Adelaide, South Australia, Australia.[7] By 1969, after moving to London for her husband's job as a newspaper executive for Rupert Murdoch's News Limited, they lived in St Mary's House on Arthur Road in Wimbledon. Their three adult children, Jennifer, Diane and Ian also lived in the United Kingdom.

On 29 December 1969, assailants broke into the home and abducted McKay while her husband was at work. Returning home at 7:45 pm – and finding the front door unlocked, the telephone ripped from the wall, the content of his wife's handbag scattered on the stairs, and the house empty – Alick McKay reported her missing at 8 pm. The attack was especially troubling given that jewellery had been stolen in a burglary incident three months earlier, and McKay had become increasingly careful of her personal safety.[7]

Investigation

When police arrived, the burglary case was quickly upgraded to a kidnapping after investigators found items that were foreign to the house: Elastoplast, twine, a newspaper, and a billhook. After the phone was repaired, at 1 am, a caller identifying himself as 'M3' (short for Mafia 3) contacted the house and demanded a £1 million ransom. Over the next forty days, M3 made eighteen more calls, demanding to speak to either Alick, Ian, or Diane, and sent three letters (postmarked in Tottenham or Wood Green) demanding the money while repeatedly threatening to kill McKay. Five letters written by McKay and pleading for compliance were enclosed as 'proof' that she was alive, as were three pieces cut from her clothing.[7]

However, two successive attempts to deliver half of the money were unsuccessful. The first one, on the A10 on 1 February 1970, was abandoned due to a large police presence in the area.[8] A second attempt was then made on 6 February. Following M3's detailed instructions, two disguised police officers placed £500,000 (primarily composed of fake banknotes) in two suitcases and left them at a telephone box in Church Street, Edmonton. The police conducted surveillance in the area and noticed that a blue Volvo sedan with a broken tail-light, registration XGO994G, and with a single occupant, slowly passed the box four times between 8 pm and 10.30 pm. At 10.47 pm it passed again, this time carrying two men. However, a local couple noticed the suitcases and became concerned. The woman kept watching while her husband reported the cases to the police, who were unaware of the drop-off and took them to the local station.

The investigation then shifted to the Volvo, registered in the name of a man from Rooks Farm near Stocking Pelham, Hertfordshire.[7] Reviewing previous reports, they noted that some witnesses had also described seeing a dark coloured Volvo sedan driving near Arthur Road in the hours before McKay's disappearance was reported, and another one reporting it as parked in the McKay driveway around 6 pm. Police also noted it acting suspiciously at the first drop-off attempt but had assumed it was either undercover police or a local.[7] Rooks Farm, which covered eleven acres and was considerably run down, was then raided by police on 7 February at 8 am. The owners of the farm were Trinidad-born Arthur Hosein (34) and his German wife, who also lived with Arthur's youngest sibling, Nizamodeen (22), who had worked there as a labourer since August. A notebook was found inside with torn pages that matched the tear patterns in McKay's letters. Further, twine and a matching roll of tape were found, and the billhook was revealed as belonging to a neighbour. The brothers' physical descriptions also matched those of the men seen in the Volvo, and Arthur's fingerprints also matched those found in the ransom letters and a newspaper found in the McKay house. Similarly, Nizamodeen's voice matched that of recordings of M3 when he was tested on a telephone. However, no trace of McKay was found at the farm, even after it was searched for several weeks.[2]

Trial

Based on the evidence, the Hosein brothers were arrested and sent to trial on 14 September 1970, with the prosecution led by Peter Rawlinson. At the trial it was learned that Arthur, a tailor in Hackney, was experiencing financial difficulty after buying the farm in May 1968.[8] The farm, originally established in the 17th century, was used to raise cattle, pigs and chickens. The Hoseins decided to kidnap Anna Murdoch after watching her husband being interviewed on television by David Frost about his recent purchase of the News of the World and The Sun newspapers on 30 October.[9][10] The confusion arose when the Hoseins followed Rupert Murdoch's chauffeured Rolls-Royce to the house in Arthur Road, which they assumed to be his family's residence, but it was actually the McKays. Unbeknownst to the brothers, Murdoch had loaned the car to Alick McKay for a few weeks while he and his wife were in Australia.[11]

Throughout the case, each brother tried to put the blame on the other, although it was soon determined that the older brother was the more dominant of the two.[7][8] The Hosein brothers were convicted on the charges of murder, kidnap and blackmail at the Old Bailey on 6 October 1970.[2] Giving them life sentences, plus twenty-five years in Arthur's case, and fifteen in Nizamodeen's for kidnapping, the trial judge, Justice Shaw, said their "conduct was cold-blooded and abominable".[12] Despite investigation, it was never established what happened to McKay's remains, though there was speculation that the Hoseins had fed them to their guard dogs or pigs.[7][13]

Aftermath

The Hosein brothers were sent to Winson Green Prison where they appealed their sentence in March 1971. In November 1987 and September 1994, Arthur unsuccessfully applied for parole.[14] Arthur died in 2009 in prison, whereas Nizamodeen served twenty years and was deported to Trinidad after his release.[5]

The nature of the case led to widespread media coverage alongside numerous hoaxes and prank letters and calls to the McKay home.[7] Psychic Gerard Croiset, who was involved in a number of famous missing person cases, also became involved. Based on its notoriety, likenesses of the brothers were displayed in the Chamber of Horrors in Madame Tussauds alongside that of living murderers, Donald Neilson and Graham Young.[15]

In 2017, Kelvin MacKenzie's review of Ink, a play about the history of Murdoch's British tabloid The Sun,[16] described the portion of the play about McKay's kidnapping as its "most dramatic moment".[11] Jane Martinson, in her review for The Guardian, described that portion of the play as its "most uncomfortable moment".[17] She quoted playwright James Graham on how to decide how to "ethically and morally report on these difficult stories", like McKay's kidnapping and murder.

References
  1. Nash, Jay Robert (2004). The Great Pictorial History of World Crime, Volume 2. Scarecrow Press. pp. 710–711. ISBN 9781461712152. Retrieved 26 September 2017.
  2. Joseph, Francis (3 April 2009). "Englishwoman missing for 39 years". Archives. Trinidad and Tobago Guardian. Archived from the original on 20 October 2017. Retrieved 25 September 2017.
  3. "Two bumbling kidnappers get life prison terms". The Montreal Gazette. UPI. October 7, 1970. p. 45. Retrieved 2019-07-08 – via news.google.com.
  4. "Sir Alex Mackay, a director and former deputy chairman..." UPI. Retrieved 2019-07-08.
  5. Kennedy, Dominic (14 September 2015). "Britain gives killer's ex wife £50,000 to fight death penalty". The Times. London. Retrieved 27 September 2017. (subscription required)
  6. Tarver, Nick (2012-04-03). "Body of evidence but no murder body". Retrieved 2019-07-08.
  7. Casefile: True Crime Podcast. "Case 110: Muriel McKay". Retrieved 8 July 2019.
  8. PANGEA (2018-06-27), The McKay Kidnapping | Great Crimes & Trials, retrieved 2019-07-08
  9. Nash, Jay Robert (2004). The Great Pictorial History of World Crime. 2. Scarecrow Press. pp. 710–711. ISBN 9781461712152. Retrieved 26 September 2017.
  10. Honeycombe, Gordon (2011-02-07). Murder of the Black Museum – The Dark Secrets Behind A Hundred Years of the Most Notorious Crimes in England. John Blake Publishing. ISBN 9781843584414.
  11. MacKenzie, Kelvin (1 July 2017). "Almeida's new play about the Sun is exactly as I remember it, says Kelvin MacKenzie". The Spectator. London. Retrieved 26 September 2017. For me the most dramatic moment in the play came with the true story of the kidnapping and murder — although the body has never been found — of Muriel McKay, the wife of Rupert’s trusted deputy chairman Sir Alick McKay.
  12. Borrell, Clive (7 October 1970). "Life sentences for Hosein Brothers". The Times. London. Retrieved 27 September 2017. (subscription required)
  13. Tarver, Nick (3 April 2012). "Convicting a murderer with no dead body". BBC News. Retrieved 27 September 2017.
  14. Burrell, Ian (7 September 1997). "Death row millionaire may be set free". The Independent. London. Retrieved 26 September 2017. Adam Hosein was questioned but not charged over the McKay killing, which stemmed from a bungled attempt to kidnap the wife of Rupert Murdoch. Instead the 55-year-old wife of the newspaper executive Alick McKay was abducted.
  15. Pilbeam, Pamela (2006-08-10). Madame Tussaud: And the History of Waxworks. A&C Black. ISBN 9781852855116.
  16. "The meaning of Rupert Murdoch". Financial Times. Retrieved 2019-07-08.
  17. Martinson, Jane (3 July 2017). "James Graham: 'Rupert Murdoch? He has a weird kind of loneliness'". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 26 September 2017. The play’s most uncomfortable moments are those involving the real-life kidnap and eventual murder of Muriel McKay, the wife of the Sun’s deputy chairman.
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