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. She was married to Alick McKay (died 1983 aged 73), then Rupert Murdoch's deputy, and was targeted after being mistaken for Murdoch's then wife, Anna Murdoch. 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 UK.

Muriel McKay and her husband, Alick McKay, were born and raised in Adelaide, South Australia. 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 two adult children, Ian McKay and Diane Dyer, also lived in the UK.

On 29 December 1969, assailants broke into the home and abducted McKay while her husband was at work. Returning home at 7:45pm, 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 8pm. The attack was especially troubling given that jewellery had been stolen in a burglary incident 3 months earlier, and McKay had become increasingly careful of her personal safety.

Police soon arrived and it quickly became a kidnapping case 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 40 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.

However, two successive attempts to deliver half of the money were unsuccessful. The first one, on 1 February 1970, on the A10 was abandoned due to a large police presence in the area. 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 the local station.

Investigation then shifted to the Volvo, registered in the name of a man from Rooks Farm near Stocking Pelham, Hertfordshire. 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 the 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. The 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 Arthur Hosein (34) and his German wife, who also lived with his 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 was found, and the billhook was revealed as belonging to a neighbour. The brother’s physical description also matched that 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.

Based on the evidence, the pair were arrested and sent to trial on 14 September 1970, with the prosecution led by Peter Rawlinson. At trial it was learnt that Arthur, a tailor in Hackney, was experiencing financial difficulty after buying the farm in May 1968. 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 David Frost interview her husband about his recent purchase of News of the World and The Sun on 30 October on television. The confusion arose when the Hoseins followed Murdoch's chauffeured Rolls-Royce to the house in Arthur Road, which they assumed to be the residence of the Murdochs, but it was actually the McKays. Unknown to the brothers. Murdoch had lent the car to his deputy for a few weeks while he and his wife were in Australia.

Throughout the case, each brother tried to put the blame the other, although it was soon determined that the older brother was the more dominant of the two. The brothers were convicted on the charges of murder, blackmail and kidnap at the Old Bailey on 6 October 1970. Giving them life sentences, plus 25 years in Arthur's case, and 15 in Nizamodeen's for kidnapping, the trial judge, Justice Shaw, said their "conduct was cold-blooded and abominable". 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.

The 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. Arthur died in 2009 in prison, whereas Nizamodeen served 20 years and was deported to Trinidad after his release.

The nature of the case led to widespread media coverage alongside numerous hoaxes and prank letters and calls to the McKay home. 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 serial killers, Donald Neilson and Graham Young.

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