The Kidnapping And Murder of Muriel McKay, The Woman Mistaken For Rupert Murdoch's Wife

Daniel Holland
Dec 29, 2023
7 min read

Updated: 20 hours ago

Composite of two men and a woman over a newspaper and house background. Text reads: "The Kidnapping And Murder of Muriel McKay."

If you walk through Wimbledon today, with its leafy streets and quiet suburban confidence, it can be difficult to imagine the anxiety that settled over one family in late December 1969. Yet it was there, behind an ordinary front door on Arthur Road, that a tragedy unfolded which remains one of Britain’s most unsettling true crime stories. It is a case marked not by dramatic spectacle but by silence. There was no body, no final sighting, and no clear admission of what happened to a woman who had simply been going about the rhythms of her evening.

Muriel Frieda McKay was born in Adelaide, South Australia, and had built with her husband Alick a warm family life after relocating to London. On the evening of 29 December 1969, sometime between 5.30 and 7.45, the most ordinary of domestic intervals became the last time anyone saw her alive. She had driven her housekeeper home. Her husband was still at work. What happened in those unguarded hours would hang over the McKay family for decades.

Her disappearance became one of the most complex and publicised cases of its era, not least because it was Britain’s first major million pound ransom demand. Yet at its heart was a quiet and unassuming woman whose absence left only questions.

The Evening of the Abduction

When Alick McKay returned to the house, the scene was enough to stop him in the doorway. The front door was unlocked even though Muriel was habitually cautious. The telephone had been ripped clean from the wall as though someone had wanted to ensure silence. Personal items were scattered along the stairs. Muriel was nowhere to be found.

This was particularly alarming because the McKays had already experienced a recent burglary. The earlier intrusion had shaken Muriel, who had become more alert and more wary about her surroundings. For her family, the scene on that cold December evening was instantly distressing. Something was wrong. Something planned.

What began as a suspected burglary quickly shifted into a different category altogether.

A Kidnapping Reveals Itself

When police arrived, officers almost immediately recognised that the intruders had not behaved like typical burglars. Among the items discovered were Elastoplast, lengths of twine, a newspaper, and a billhook that did not belong to the McKays. These were objects with intent, the materials of a plan rather than an opportunistic break in.

At 1 in the morning, once engineers had repaired the torn out telephone, the house finally rang. The caller identified himself as M3, a name deliberately chosen to sound imposing. He demanded one million pounds. It was an enormous sum for the era, signalling both ambition and a striking confidence in their scheme.

Over the following weeks, eighteen more calls were made. Each one was controlled, menacing in tone, and always insistent on speaking directly to Alick or the children, Ian and Diane. Three letters arrived as well, all postmarked from Tottenham or Wood Green. The letters claimed that Muriel was alive and included handwritten lines from her pleading for cooperation. To prove she was still living, the kidnappers enclosed pieces of her clothing cut from larger garments. Whether she was alive at that point remains one of the unresolved questions.

The Hertfordshire farm where Muriel McKay was kept prisoner by the Hosein brothers

Two Failed Ransom Drops

The police attempted to follow the demands without exposing the family to greater danger. M3 instructed them to deliver two halves of the ransom. The first attempt took place on 1 February 1970 along the A10, but it collapsed because police activity in the area was too visible. The kidnappers sensed a trap and cancelled.

A second attempt took place on 6 February. This time, M3 demanded that Muriel’s daughter Diane make the drop. She had been the most vocal family member in communication and the kidnappers seemed to want emotional leverage. Instead, two disguised police officers carried out the instructions, using suitcases filled mostly with forged banknotes.

Police divers search the surrounding areas for any signs of Muriel.

At a telephone box in Church Street, Tottenham, they left the cases and waited for further instructions. At 4 in the afternoon M3 called again, ordering them to travel to Bethnal Green, then to Epping by underground, and finally by taxi to a used car yard known as Gate’s Garage in Bishop’s Stortford. The instructions were detailed and reflected a level of caution that suggested the kidnappers were watching from a distance.

Yet even the best laid schemes can unravel in unexpected ways. A local couple walking past Gate’s Garage noticed the unattended suitcases and, unaware of the covert operation, reported them to police. The local officers, not informed of the kidnap case, dutifully took the cases to the nearest station. It was an unfortunate accident that effectively ended the ransom operation altogether.

The Blue Volvo and the Trail to Hertfordshire

The breakthrough came not from the ransom but from a vehicle. During surveillance, detectives had noticed a dark blue Volvo with a broken tail light, registration XGO 994G, circling the drop off site multiple times. It appeared once with one man and later with two. It matched earlier witness statements from the night of Muriel’s disappearance, including sightings near Arthur Road and even parked in the McKay driveway.

When police traced the registration, it led them to Rooks Farm, later known as Stocking Farm, a neglected eleven acre property near Stocking Pelham in Hertfordshire. It belonged to Trinidad born Arthur Hosein, who lived there with his German wife and his younger brother, Nizamodeen. The farm was run down, the outbuildings were weathered, and the business had been struggling.

Arthur Hosein, left, worked at a tailor's shop in Bethnal Green and the tailor had also visited Rooks Farm

The police raid took place on the morning of 7 February. Inside, officers found a notebook with pages torn out that matched the fragments enclosed with the ransom letters. They found twine identical to the material left in the McKay house. They found a roll of tape consistent with the bindings. The billhook, it turned out, belonged to a neighbour who had loaned it to Arthur. Fingerprints matched. Voice recordings matched.

And yet, even with all the evidence in place, there was no trace of Muriel herself.

The farm was searched exhaustively for weeks. Outbuildings were examined, fields were dug and sifted, bogs were drained, wells were inspected. Nothing emerged except more silence.

The Hosein Brothers and their Misguided Scheme

The story that emerged at trial was one of mistaken identity and flawed imagination. Arthur Hosein, a tailor from Hackney who had taken on the farm in the hope of a better life, was in financial difficulty. He and his brother devised a plan they believed might bring the means to revive their fortunes.

Their target was Rupert Murdoch’s wife, Anna. They had watched Murdoch appear on television discussing his acquisition of the News of the World and The Sun. From this, they concluded that his wife would be a valuable kidnap target. They followed a chauffeured Rolls Royce that they assumed belonged to the Murdoch family. In reality, Murdoch had loaned the car to his deputy, Alick McKay, while he and Muriel stayed in Australia temporarily. The house on Arthur Road belonged to the McKays, not the Murdochs, yet the brothers did not realise this.

It was an extraordinary and tragic case of mistaken identity. The Hoseins targeted the wrong family, abducted the wrong woman, and set in motion a chain of events from which there would be no return.

When Alick rand Muriel married, Anna and Rupert Murdoch attended his wedding.

The Trial and the Verdict

The trial began on 14 September 1970 at the Old Bailey, led by prosecutor Peter Rawlinson. It was a detailed and often grim examination of the evidence. Both brothers attempted to deflect blame onto the other, yet it became clear that Arthur was the dominant figure in the planning.

They were charged with murder, kidnap, and blackmail. On 6 October they were convicted. Justice Shaw, passing sentence, described their actions as cold blooded and abominable. Arthur received a life sentence plus twenty five years. Nizamodeen received life plus fifteen.

But the central question, the fate of Muriel, remained unanswered. Without a body, there was no physical closure. Speculation grew that her remains might have been disposed of on the farm, possibly fed to pigs or guard dogs. These theories were never proved.

Public Fascination and Media Intrusion

As the case closed in court, another one opened in public. Interest became intense. Hoax letters arrived. Prank calls were made. Psychics, including the well known Dutch medium Gerard Croiset, claimed involvement. Although Croiset’s predictions were widely publicised, none led to meaningful discoveries.

The Hosein brothers were eventually included in the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussauds, placed alongside other notorious figures. Their wax figures became part of the visual memory of a case that had unsettled the public imagination.

New Revelations and the Search for Closure

More than fifty years after the disappearance, the story returned to prominence. In 2021, Nizamodeen Hosein, speaking from Trinidad, claimed that Muriel had died soon after the kidnapping from a heart attack. He said her death was unplanned. He said the burial site was on the Rooks Farm property. These were claims he had not made during the trial.

In 2023 he expressed willingness to return to the United Kingdom to guide investigators to the location. Muriel’s daughter, Dianne, appealed for cooperation from the Metropolitan Police, stating that even after half a century, the family deserved the dignity of knowing where her mother lay.

It remains an open question whether the final answers will ever be found.

A Lasting Absence

The name of Muriel Frieda McKay is often overshadowed by the dramatic contours of the case. Yet behind the police files and court transcripts was a real woman, a mother of three, a wife, and a family member deeply loved. Her life was lived quietly and without spectacle. Her disappearance, however, became one of the most enduring mysteries in British criminal history.

What remains today is a sense of unresolved sorrow. A family still waiting. A daughter still searching. And a case that reminds us that the most haunting true crime stories are not always the most violent, but sometimes the ones defined by silence.