Excavators working for the family of murder victim Muriel McKay have discovered a bone at a site where they were told her body was buried 57 years ago.

A police forensics team is at the scene and beginning to analyse the bone, which is about nine inches long and a couple of inches wide.

The discovery was made about a metre down in the back yard of a betting shop in Hackney, East London.

The Metropolitan Police said in a statement: “Police are aware of reports surrounding the discovery of a single bone in the garden of a property in Bethnal Green Road, Hackney. The bone was uncovered during an independent search.

“Officers are now on scene and work is being undertaken to establish the origin.”

Muriel’s grandson Mark Dyer said: “It would be a great outcome to end this ghastly mystery for our whole family and all of those who’ve been interested enough to follow our story.

“Four years of intense investigation have led us here and we’re waiting to hear if the bone is human. It’s been found in a place we were told to look last year.”

Muriel, 55, was the wife of Alick McKay, the deputy to newspaper mogul Rupert Murdoch when she was kidnapped by brothers Arthur and Nizamodeen Hosein from her home in Wimbledon just after Christmas in 1969.

They mistook Muriel for Murdoch’s wife Anna, held her at their ramshackle farm in Hertfordshire and demanded a million pounds for her safe return.

The bungling brothers were arrested and convicted at the Old Bailey of Muriel’s murder, one of the first murder trials with no evidence of the victim’s body. They never revealed Muriel’s fate.

Five years ago, the family tracked down Nizamodeen to his native Trinidad and I flew with them to witness the extraordinary meeting.

Diane and her son Mark Dyer greeted the now-wizened old killer with hugs and persuaded him to confess to a crime he had always denied.

Nizam, now 79, told them Muriel had collapsed and died from a seizure within a few days and he buried her on the farm, pointing to old photographs and maps and indicating a precise spot “three yards from the fence”.

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Plea from family of Muriel McKay

On his word, Scotland Yard reopened its investigation and dug twice at the farm. They found no trace of Muriel and concluded that Nizam was wrong or was not telling the truth.

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Last year, the family issued a £1m reward for information and were contacted by Hayley Frais in Israel who told them her late father Percy Chaplin ran a tailor’s shop in Bethnal Green in the 60s and 70s.

He made suits for his neighbours, the notorious gangster brothers Ronnie and Reggie Kray, but also employed Arthur Hosein.

Hayley said that on his deathbed three years ago her father told her of his long-held suspicion that a criminal associate of Arthur’s dug up Muriel’s body at the farm and re-buried it behind his premises, which is now the betting shop.

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