A recent development in the Muriel McKay case, who was abducted and killed 55 years ago, has been disclosed by her relatives.
Mark Dyer, Mrs. McKay’s grandson, unveiled that a nine-inch bone was found today around 1:45 pm, indicating signs of being “sliced with a weapon or machine.” A team of forensic experts from the Metropolitan Police arrived on the scene on Friday to examine the bone, which measures a couple of inches in width.
The bone was unearthed approximately a meter deep in the backyard of a betting shop located on Bethnal Green Road in Hackney, East London.
In a statement, the Met mentioned, “Police are investigating reports regarding the discovery of a single bone in the garden of a property on Bethnal Green Road, Hackney. The bone was discovered during an independent search, and officers are currently on site conducting investigations to determine its origin.”
Expressing hope for closure, Mr. Dyer stated, “It would be a positive resolution to put an end to this dreadful mystery for our entire family and all those who have been following our story.”
The search was initiated after the children of former Kray Twins tailor, Percy Chaplin, suggested that he suspected Mrs. McKay was buried in the yard of his former shop, where Arthur Hosein, one of the brothers responsible for the murder, was employed.
Arthur and his brother, Nizamodeen, were sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder following a failed abduction where they mistakenly targeted Muriel, thinking she was the wife of Australian media magnate Rupert Murdoch at the time.
Nizamodeen informed the family’s lawyer that he buried her on a farm in Hertfordshire where they had kept her captive, but a search in the area in 2022 yielded no results.
Mrs. McKay was taken from her residence in Wimbledon, southwest London, on December 29, 1969.
Details from a police statement archived at the National Archives revealed that after his arrest in 1970, Nizamodeen informed Det Ch Supt Bill Smith that he and Arthur had visited five tailors in London on February 6 of that year. When asked if they went anywhere else, he mentioned visiting Percy Chaplin, a tailor on Bethnal Green Road. Nizamodeen, who was deported to Trinidad after his release in 1990, claimed that his brother spent thirty minutes in the shop before departing.
Despite the family’s desire to investigate the site, which now houses apartments and a bookmaker, with radar technology, they were denied permission by the property owners. Subsequently, legal action was taken to seek approval for scanning the area.
