Muriel McKay: Family willing to buy Hertfordshire farm to search for murdered mum's body
The family of a woman who was kidnapped and murdered at a farm say they are prepared to buy the land so they can dig for her body.
One of Muriel McKay's killers has told police they buried her body at Stocking Farm, near Bishop's Stortford in Hertfordshire in 1969 but a number of searches have failed to find her remains.
Mrs McKay's grandson, Mark Dyer, said the family wanted to carry out a more extensive search.
He said: "We plan to assemble the world's finest search teams who have experience and trace records of finding bones of deceased.
"We feel the best would be to own the property or have control of the area we need.
"We would not plan to own it long term and would then sell when my grandma is found or not. This would then be the end."
The Metropolitan Police began a fresh dig at Stocking Farm near Bishop’s Stortford in Hertfordshire in July, but the eight-day search drew a blank.
The force wrote to her relatives, who had been pushing for the new search to be carried out, confirming that no remains or evidence relating to the crimes had been found.
At the time the family told ITV News they were disappointed but believed the police had been digging in the wrong place, and vowed not to give up.
One of Ms McKay's killers, Nizamodeen Hosein, had agreed to help the family to find her final resting place decades after his crime, but he was not present at the dig and cannot enter the UK without the police requesting permission from the Home Office.
Stocking Farm was searched at the time of the murder in 1969 and again in 2022, with 30 police officers, ground penetrating radar and specialist forensic archaeologists used, but nothing was found.
The latest search took place amid tight security, with police putting an air exclusion in place and restricting public footpath access.
Commander Steve Clayman expressed the force’s “absolute, heartfelt sympathy” for the family and friends of Ms McKay as he confirmed that the latest search for her remains had been unsuccessful.
He acknowledged that her relatives had “done everything they can” to try to find where she was buried after she was murdered in 1969, so that she could be given a respectful burial.
Mr Clayman added: “The whole team are disappointed that this was the outcome.”
Ms McKay, 55, the wealthy wife of newspaper executive Alick McKay, was kidnapped and held ransom for £1m more than 54 years ago.
The people who kidnapped her had mistaken her for Anna Murdoch, the then-wife of media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
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