Senior Reporter
anna-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt
Convicted killer Nizamodeen Hosein says his last wish before he dies is to give the family of his victim, Muriel McKay, closure by disclosing the location of her body, which has never been recovered by authorities in the United Kingdom.
Hosein made the comment yesterday as Guardian Media visited, after media reports surfaced in the UK on Thursday that he had contacted McKay’s 82-year-old daughter Dianne, with an offer to return to the UK to show her where her mother’s body was buried.
Although he has not heard from McKay’s family since the offer was extended to them months ago, Hosein said, “The ball is in their court for the longest while now,” Hosein said from the gallery of his Dow Village, Couva, home.
He was sitting alone in his porch on a broken, rickety wicker chair, shirtless and surrounded by discarded food boxes and empty bottles.
Hosein and his brother, Arthur, were charged with the kidnapping and murder of McKay, a 55-year-old Australian national, in 1969. They mistook her for the wife of business magnate Rupert Murdoch, but McKay was, in fact, the wife of Murdoch’s deputy, Alick McKay.
McKay had been held for a £1 million ransom but then disappeared, and her body was never recovered. It was suspected she had been fed to pigs on a Hertfordshire farm owned by the brothers.
Hosein spent 20 years in a British prison for the murder before being deported to T&T, while his brother, who was jointly charged with the crime, died at a psychiatric facility in England in 2009.
Remorseful over his transgression, the 76-year-old convicted killer said yesterday he has accepted his mistake.
“I am very remorseful. I have plenty regrets in life,” Hosein said.
It was suspected that McKay had been fed to pigs on the Hertfordshire, England farm then-owned by the brothers.
In March 2022, an extensive search for McKay’s remains was carried out at Stocking Farm, formerly called Rooks Farm, at Stocking Pelham, Hertfordshire, which the Metropolitan Police said had concluded unsuccessfully.
Pressed to disclose where McKay’s body was to Guardian Media yesterday, Hosein’s eyes grew faint as he looked off in the distance and said, “I don’t know, I don’t know ... is how many donkey years now.”
He later said, “I can’t tell you exactly where ... If I go to the place, I could point out the spot.”
Insisting he was “ready to go home,” Hosein said, “Nobody comes to see me or say ‘have a biscuit to eat’. I eat when I get food or I just go and sleep. Sometimes I get so hungry, I just go and pluck some vines off the wire and eat that and the Almighty turns it into enough. I have one foot in the hole already...”
Regarding reports that he had written to the British Home Office requesting they lift a deportation order that still bars him from travelling to the UK, Hosein was unclear yesterday as to the status of this.
Sighing heavily, he could not say why McKay’s family or the authorities had also not responded.
Saying he was disease-free except for arthritis of the hands, Hosein said he was still suffering.
“May be one disease ... a lack of love.”
Scotland Yard reopened the case in 2021 after they received information from McKay’s relatives which had been provided by Hosein. The McKay family’s attorney, Matthew Gayle, reportedly visited him in Trinidad in December 2021.
