Sky Documentaries

The Wimbledon Kidnapping

Britain’s first kidnap and ransom case galvanised the nation in 1969. On 29th December, Muriel McKay disappeared from her suburban home in Wimbledon. Such was the strangeness of the case that everyone from the police, family, Fleet Street, and hundreds of clarivoyants all struggled to decipher the vanishing of the respectable 55-year-old housewife. Now, one of the men convicted for this extraordinary crime, and the families of both the kidnapped woman and the convicted murderers speak for the first time.

The Wimbledon Kidnapping reveals the jaw-dropping story behind a case which would rewrite the police rulebook. Kidnapping was an unheard of crime in the UK. The wife of a News of the World executive, Mrs McKay had been mistaken for Rupert Murdoch’s wife and was being held for a huge ransom by the mafia – so the headlines claimed. But the following negotiation, investigation and trial of two Indo-Trinidadian brothers presented a very different version of events. Fifty years on, the search for the truth continues.

Rich in evocative historical archive, this is a tantalising mystery riddled with racial tensions, police bungling and the wild west of Fleet Street. The story is told through haunting ransom calls made to the McKay family, fresh analysis of original evidence by forensic experts, and the first-hand testimony of family members, police, lawyers, journalists, and witnesses – many speaking for the first time. The McKay family, one of the convicted kidnappers and his relatives break their silence on the terrible events and their experience of the police and press, revealing new details about the case.

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