The 85-year-old was convicted by a US court in 1986 and sent to Death Row. In 2002, after spending 17 years awaiting a lethal injection, Maharaj's sentence was overturned and commuted to life. In 2019, with the help of anti-death penalty lobby Reprieve, co-founded by Clive Stafford Smith, a judge ruled that he had proved his innocence.
Smith disclosed that Maharaj's body will be returned to England as per his and his wife's wishes, and that the funeral will take place in Bridport "in due course". Following his death, his wife Marita said: "I promised Kris in 1976 that we would be together until death us do part, and I am devastated that he died alone in that horrible place."
Mr Maharaj's brother is desperately seeking the return of his body to the UK and stated, "I want him brought back to the UK for burial as the last place he would want to be is where he was falsely charged with murder.
"Then I will devote the rest of the time that God allows me to clearing his name, so I can go to meet him in heaven with a clear conscience that I have done my best for him.
Paying homage, his brother and former attorney general of Trinidad and Tobago, Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj said, "Kris always maintained his innocence."
He went on to say: "Based on the information he gave me at the time when he was charged for the offences, I formed the opinion that he was innocent. In my conversations with him during the period of time he was incarcerated and during my visits to see him in the prison, I was further convinced that he was innocent.
"I witnessed the trial in Miami and realized that all the requisite evidence which should have been led before the jury was not produced to the court. All efforts thereafter to fight that conviction and get a new trial failed.
"He was, however, successful in getting a ruling from a judge that he was innocent. The US Appeal Court, however, ruled that the evidence of innocence was not enough to free him. He was successful in getting the death sentence commuted to life imprisonment.
"It is unfortunate that those who were responsible for his first trial did not take steps to have all the relevant evidence put before the jury, That error led to him not being able to get a second chance at a retrial to produce all of the evidence.
"He found this legal battle to assert his innocence for approximately 37 years and during that period of time. He continuously maintained his innocence."
Maharaj, originally from Trinidad but having relocated to England in 1960, was held accountable for the murder of a father and son pair. The Briton had consistently fought to prove his innocence, claiming he was set up for the killings, despite prosecutors arguing he committed the murders over an unpaid debt.
The British man had some business dealings with one of the victims, Derrick Moo Young, who Maharaj claimed had swindled him out of £315,000. At the time of Young's death, Maharaj was pursuing a lawsuit against him.
Young and his son Duane were discovered dead in their hotel on the same day Maharaj had arranged to meet a business associate, who never showed up. His fingerprints were found in the hotel room where the shootings took place.
Maharaj claimed he was present for a meeting but had left before the Moo Youngs were murdered. According to the defence, nineteen fingerprints discovered at the crime scene still remain unidentified.
Maharaj's legal team has claimed that evidence indicates former members of a Colombian cartel are actually responsible for the murders. His US lawyers filed a motion in 2014, disclosing: "A Colombian drug cartel member confirmed that the Moo Young murders were committed at the behest of Pablo Escobar."
The defense motion stated: "The Moo Youngs were laundering money for the Colombian cartels," suggesting this led to their demise.
An ex-member of the cartel has corroborated that "Maharaj was not involved in the murders of the Moo Youngs and that they had to be eliminated because they had lost Colombian drug money," as per the defense motion. The discovery of fingerprints in the Muriel McKay murder files might have helped exonerate Maharaj.
Stafford Smith, his lawyer, is certain his client was set up by an acquaintance who actually carried out the crime in a Miami hotel room in '86. This suspect, Adam Hosein, was interrogated by British police in '69 regarding Muriel's murder but then left the country soon after.
Hosein was a neighbor to Muriel at the time she was kidnapped from her London home, mistakenly for Rupert Murdoch's wife. Hosein's brothers, Nizamodeen and Arthur, received life imprisonment for her kidnap and murder, yet her body has never been found.
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Recently, the case came back into the spotlight as police conducted a search at the Hertfordshire farm where Muriel was believed to have been held. Stafford Smith has been campaigning for the vintage prints taken from Hosein in 1969 to be compared with unidentified fingerprints found at the grisly Miami murder scene seventeen years later.
He expressed his shock, stating: "The idea that Adam Hosein (now deceased) may have got away with murder in Britain and then got away with another murder in America in between all his drug dealing, and resulting in Kris going to death row and spending 38 years in prison is absolutely shocking."
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