The police search for the remains of murdered Muriel McKay is being extended into a second week today - with her family planning a last-minute appeal for help to Scotland Yard commissioner Sir Mark Rowley.
They want Ms McKay's convicted killer Nizamodeen Hosein brought to the excavation site from his Caribbean home to show detectives where he buried her body in 1970.
He's already indicated to police and her family the burial site using old maps and photographs, but her relatives believe the search cannot be completed without his presence at the farm in Hertfordshire.
His flight to the UK can't happen without police asking the Home Office to lift a deportation order imposed on Hosein when he was freed from jail and sent back to his native Trinidad in 1990.
The family have written to Sir Mark, urging him to intervene personally after detectives again rejected their pleas.
In a video message to the Met's Commander Stephen Clayman, who met the family on Sunday, Hosein said: "Clayman, I am quite willing to come to England tomorrow, to help search for the body."
Ms McKay's grandson Mark Dyer said: "Nizam is only nine hours away and it is nonsense not to bring him over. We would pay for it, it won't cost the public purse anything.
"It's a rare thing to have a killer willing to show police where he buried the body, so why on Earth is he not being allowed to come and help the search?
"We sent police Nizam's video message asking to visit the farm, but they hadn't even watched it and had made up their minds not to ask for Nizam to fly in before we met them."
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Ms McKay's son Ian McKay, 82, who has travelled from his Australian home to visit the excavation site, said: "Nizam was confident he could lead us to the place, and we think he could be more precise if he's actually back at the farm. Being there is likely to trigger his memory. But even if he comes and is not certain exactly where she is, surely, it's worth trying?
"I would find it extremely hard to meet him face to face, but I'm prepared to do it if he is allowed to come over."
According to the family, police have admitted they forgot to dig part of an agreed excavation site at the farm in 2022, when they found nothing.
That area is now being searched.
Mr Dyer said: "That demonstrates sheer incompetence and hardly inspires our confidence that everything possible is being done to find my grandmother."
Photographs obtained by Sky News show how much police have excavated since the new search began last Monday.
Some areas appear to have been dug to a depth of around three or four feet.
The search is expected to last a few more days.
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Tap hereHosein and his older brother Arthur kidnapped McKay, who was 55, from her London home just after Christmas in 1969 and held her at the farm in the village of Stocking Pelham while they tried to negotiate a £1m ransom.
They mistook her for Anna, the wife of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who was in London to buy The Sun newspaper.
Ms McKay's husband Alick McKay was Murdoch's deputy.
The bungling brothers were arrested and convicted at the Old Bailey in one of the first murder trials without a body.
Hosein denied any involvement until four years ago when he told the McKays' lawyer in Trinidad that Muriel had died of a heart attack and he buried her behind the farmhouse, close to a barn.
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