Murder victim Muriel McKay officially declared dead more than 50 years after she was kidnapped

Murder victim Muriel McKay, whose body was never found, has finally been officially declared dead 56 years after she was kidnapped for ransom.

The ruling by a High Court judge will allow her family to pursue a new search for her remains – in the garden of an East London tailor’s shop where the Kray twin gangsters had their suits made.

Muriel’s family believe her body was buried in the yard in Bethnal Green after it was dug up and moved from where her killers, brothers Arthur and Nizamodeen Hosein, first hid her on their farm in Hertfordshire in 1969.

The garden was behind a tailor’s shop run by Percy Chaplin, whose customers included Arthur Hosein and Ronnie and Reggie Kray, who lived nearby.

After Mr Chaplin died three years ago, his daughter Hayley Frais revealed her father’s long-held suspicion that a criminal associate of the Hosein brothers buried the decomposing body behind his shop.

The site is now occupied by a bookies and a block of flats and two leaseholders have refused the family permission to scan the yard.

The judge, Chief Master Karen Shuman, issued a declaration that Muriel was presumed dead and granted her family letters of administration “for the limited purpose of continuing the search for her body so that her remains can be laid to rest”.

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Muriel’s daughter Diane McKay, 85, said: “It’s a relief and another step in our journey. We are very happy we now have the papers in place to get an injunction to allow us to scan the garden.

Her son, Mark Dyer, Muriel’s grandson, said: “I hope we don’t need to go to court again for an injunction, and that the leaseholders will now just let us do the scan to see if my grandmother’s remains are there.

“All we want for now is four or five hours to do a non-invasive scan to let us know if it might be worth digging. And if we dig later, we will happily restore the site and plant it up with flowers.”

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Muriel, 55, was the wife of Alick McKay, the deputy to newspaper mogul Rupert Murdoch when she was kidnapped by the Hosein brothers from her home in Wimbledon just after Christmas.

They mistook Muriel for Murdoch’s wife Anna and demanded a million pounds for her safe return.

A phone box that stood outside the tailor’s shop was one of the boxes used by the killers to receive instructions for picking up the ransom money.

The Hosein brothers were arrested and convicted at the Old Bailey of Muriel’s murder, one of the first murder trials without evidence of the victim’s body, without ever revealing Muriel’s fate.

It was two years ago that Nizamodeen Hosein, freed from jail and living back in his native Trinidad, finally admitted that Muriel had collapsed and died from a heart attack while they held her at their farm.

Earlier searches for her body at the farm were unsuccessful.