The Wimbledon Kidnapping:
Part One: Rupert and Anna Murdoch
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| Rupert Murdoch, wife Anna Murdoch and their three children, (left to right) Elisabeth (9), Lachlan (6), and James (5), New York, 1977. |
Rupert Murdoch is ingrained in Adelaide’s history, having
started his empire in the City of Churches. He has never been far from controversy,
and in the late 1960s was associated with a murder. Before I get to that, a
brief background on one of Australia’s most successful men.
Born in Melbourne,
Australia in 1931, Keith Rupert Murdoch became the head of one of the largest
media empires in the world. Murdoch was the son of Sir Keith Murdoch an
Australian war correspondent and publisher. In 1952, Sir Keith Murdoch died,
leaving to his son Rupert an inheritance that included South Australian
newspapers, The Sunday Mail and The News.
Under Rupert’s leadership, The News
became a tabloid full of brash and salacious headlines. Murdoch sold The
News in 1987 to Northern Star Holdings.[1]
It was on this inheritance that Murdoch founded News Corporation, later
acquiring another South Australian newspaper, The Advertiser.
Murdoch grew his empire by
purchasing newspapers in other Australian states and running the same headlines
that featured sex and scandal.
In 1969, Murdoch expanded into the UK,
acquiring News of the World, and like his Australian newspapers, this one also
began to feature copious sex, crime and scandalous headlines, pushing sales
through the roof. In 1970, Murdoch acquired The Sun, a London daily newspaper;
and in 1973, Murdoch broke into the U.S. market by acquiring the San Antonio
News. Later he acquired the New York Post, The Boston Herald, TV
Guide, the Chicago Sun-Times, and New York Village Voice. He
bought and sold newspapers over the decades before diversifying into radio,
film, and television. He bought Twentieth Century – Fox Film Corporation, and
later founded Fox Inc, after acquiring television stations in the USA.[2]
Rupert’s profile increased through his media acquisitions,
putting him on the radar of some very shady people!
In 1969, Arthur Hosein was watching TV with his brother
Nizamodeen one night, when Rupert Murdoch and his wife Anna were featured on a
program. Arthur had a ‘get rich quick' idea and decided to put it into action.
Hosein was a tailor’s
cutter who had emigrated to the UK from Trinidad in 1955. He had big dreams of
becoming an English squire and purchased a property for him and his wife near
Hertfordshire. He applied to become a member of the local fox hunting club, even
though he couldn’t ride a horse, or afford the subscription![3]
To alleviate his money problems Arthur concocted
a plan to abduct Rupert Murdoch’s wife and hold her for ransom. They staked out
the Murdoch’s Roll Royce, and followed it to its destination at 20 Arthur
Street, Wimbledon, believing it to be Murdoch’s house.
The two men later broke into the home
and abducted 55-year-old Muriel McKay, mistaking her for Anna Murdoch. Muriel
and her husband Alick were Adelaide born and raised and had moved to London
when Alick took the job of Newspaper Executive for News Limited. Muriel had
been using the company car, the Murdoch Rolls Royce, while the Murdochs were on
holiday in Australia.
[1] SA Memory, ‘News’, State Library of South Australia, (2013), https://www.samemory.sa.gov.au/site/page.cfm?c=2627.
[2] Rupert Murdoch: Australian-born American publisher, Britannica, (2022), https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rupert-Murdoch.
[3] Rachel Scout, Arthur & Nizamodeen HOSEIN, Murderpedia, (2022), (https://murderpedia.org/male.H/h/hosein-brothers.htm.
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