The search for the remains of Muriel McKay who was murdered 55 years ago has been called off.
Nizamodeen Hosein, with his brother Arthur, abducted and killed Ms McKay after he mistook her as the wife of Rupert Murdoch.
They took her to Stocking Farm, then known as Rooks Farm, in Hertfordshire, to ransom for £1,000,000, but both refused to tell police where they buried her body.
Detective Superintendent Katherine Goodwin revealed during a press conference this afternoon: ‘What we can now conclusively say is the information given by Hosein in the last two years is not correct.
‘Muriel is not in the location that he has indicated.’
She said there had been inconsistencies with the information Hosein had given, who deliberately withheld information potentially due to memory lapses.
Commander Steve Clayman expressed the force’s ‘absolute, heartfelt sympathy’ for the family and friends of Ms McKay.
He also confirmed that the latest search for her remains had been unsuccessful.
Mr Clayman acknowledged that her relatives had ‘done everything they can’ to try to find where she was buried.
He added: ‘The whole team are disappointed that this was the outcome.’
Last month Hosein told Ms McKay’s daughter Dianne where he hid her body after she flew out to see him in native Trinidad.
He was deported after serving 20 years in prison, while his brother Arthur died in 2009.
Hosein told them: ‘Go through the kitchen door, come through the open land, turn left and it’s two feet from the hedge, that’s where the body is.’
But police have revealed they have been unable to find the remains, despite Hosein’s claim.
In a letter to her family, Ms Goodwin, said: ‘We have now completed the search of the area set out in the agreed parameters, along with an additional strip which we identified was not covered by the 2022 search or the 2024 parameters.
‘I am so sorry to say that the search has not been successful in finding Muriel’s remains or any evidence relating to her kidnap and murder.
‘I appreciate that this will be devastating for you, especially after all the work you have put in to trying to find her.
‘As you can imagine there is a lot of detail in terms of the search which I can’t set out here, so I will be happy to arrange a meeting later in the week to discuss in more detail.’
Her family have insisted Hosein should be brought to the excavation site to show where he buried the body.
This afternoon Ms Goodwin addressed the question of whether the force should have agreed to Hosein coming to the UK.
She said: ‘He’s already provided us with quite a lot of detailed information about the location of Muriel, which has unfortunately been proven to be incorrect.’
Ms Goodwin added there is a ‘high threshold’ for bringing a murderer back to the UK and this is not done lightly.
Mr Clayman said the family do not accept the force’s reasoning behind this though.
He said: ‘There has to be a point in which we have to say we’ve now done what we can do.’
The family have also claimed in the past that police admitted to them they forgot to dig part of an excavation site at the farm in 2022.
They were also invited to the site four times during the latest eight-day search and police tried to fix search parameters in collaboration with them.
Hosein has been in touch with police as early as this morning through his lawyers with potential new information about where Muriel might be.
The Hosein brothers broke into Muriel and Alick’s home in Wimbledon, south London, on December 29, 1969.
They had mistaken Muriel for Anna Mudroch as they had loaned the McKays his Rolls Royce.
Alick returned from work to find the front door unlocked, the house phone ripped from the wall and the house empty.
Only hours later after the phone line was reconnected, the brothers called the house identifying themselves as ‘M3’ and over the next 40 days reportedly phoned and sent letters to Alick demanding the ransom money.
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