Richard Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan
Encyclopedia
Richard John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan (born 18 December 1934), popularly known as Lord Lucan, as Lord Bingham before 1964, and sometimes colloquially called "Lucky" Lucan, was a British peer, who disappeared
in the early hours of 8 November 1974, following the murder of Sandra Rivett, his children's nanny
, the previous evening. There has been no verified sighting of him since then.
On 19 June 1975, an inquest jury named Lucan as the murderer of Sandra Rivett, the last time that an inquest was allowed to name the person they suspected of committing such a crime. He was presumed deceased in chambers on 11 December 1992 and declared legally dead
in October 1999.
, his father supported the Labour Party
in the House of Lords
. He had two sisters and one brother. He was educated at Eton College
and served as lieutenant in the prestigious Coldstream Guards
. A compulsive gambler through his adult life, Bingham accrued significant debts.
On 28 November 1963 Bingham married Veronica Mary Duncan, the daughter of Major Charles Moorhouse Duncan, MC. They had three children: Frances (born 24 October 1964), George Charles
(born 21 September 1967), and Camilla (born 30 June 1970).
On 21 January 1964 Bingham's father died and he succeeded to the earldom.
neighbourhood. In September 1974, Lady Lucan engaged Sandra Eleanor Rivett (born 16 September 1945) as a nanny for the children.
The police were summoned, and arrived at the Lucans' home 15 minutes later, forcing open the front door. They found a bloodstained towel in one bedroom and a large pool of blood with a man's footprints on the floor of the basement. They searched the basement and discovered broken crockery and walls splashed with blood. They found a canvas mailbag, inside of which was the body of Sandra Rivett, who had suffered head wounds. They also found a bloodstained length of lead pipe wrapped in surgical plaster. The bulb had been removed from the basement stairs light fitting and was resting on a chair.
on television, Sandra Rivett had put her head round the door and asked Lady Lucan if she would like a cup of tea. This was unusual, but Rivett went downstairs to the kitchen at around 8.55pm to make some tea. The 9 o'clock news came on soon after this and, after about a quarter of an hour had passed, Lady Lucan began to wonder what had happened to the tea. Lady Lucan went to look for the nanny. The basement was dark and, when she called Mrs Rivett's name, a man emerged from the cloakroom and hit her with a heavy object. She screamed, and when he told her to "shut up", she recognised her husband's voice. The attacker shoved three gloved fingers down her throat to silence her. She managed to calm him and he stopped his attack; they both collapsed on to the stairs. Lady Lucan asked him where Mrs Rivett was and Lucan, after some prevarication, said that she was dead. They went upstairs to the second floor bedroom where Frances was still watching television. He sent her to bed and switched off the television. Then Lucan went into the bathroom to get a cloth to clean up his wife's face. Upon hearing the taps running, Lady Lucan seized her opportunity to flee from the house and ran to the Plumber's Arms pub in Lower Belgrave Street.
Lady Lucan's statement differs from that of her 10-year-old daughter, Frances, who had been watching television with her mother. Her statement was taken by a WDC in Cornwall several days after the event. Roy Ranson described Frances's statement as "always slightly muddled" and didn't know how much reliance he could place on it.
, was awakened by someone ringing her doorbell. She ignored it, blaming local youths, and twenty minutes later received a phone call from an agitated Lucan, who soon hung up. Police later found bloodstains on her doorstep.
A few minutes after he called Mrs Florman, Lucan called his mother and told her that he had been passing by his wife's house when he noticed a fight going on inside. He said that Lady Lucan had been injured and there was a lot of blood. "There was something terrible in the basement," he said. "I couldn't bring myself to look." He asked her to go to 46 Lower Belgrave Street to look after his children, then hung up.
, East Sussex
. He drove a Ford Corsair
he had borrowed from Michael Stoop, a gambling friend, while his own Mercedes-Benz was being repaired. He found Susan Maxwell-Scott home alone. He related an expanded version of the story that he had told his mother, claiming that after seeing the fight he had entered the house and gone to the basement, where he had slipped on a pool of blood. The assailant had already fled. He also said Lady Lucan had cried out that the man had killed Mrs Rivett and had accused Lucan of hiring the man to kill her.
Lucan used Susan Maxwell-Scott's phone to call his mother, who told him his children were safe at her flat and asked him if he wanted to talk to the policeman who was with her. He replied that he would call the police in the morning.
Before leaving, Lucan tried to ring his brother-in-law, William (Bill) Shand Kydd, but could not reach him. He wrote two letters to him, which he gave to Susan Maxwell-Scott to post, then left at 1.15am. Lucan has not been confirmed as having been seen by anyone since.
In September 2004 Mrs Maxwell-Scott, living in London, gave her final interview about her husband's close friend John Lucan to a private Investigator, Ian Crosby. Crosby had been visiting her regularly for several years. Crosby's book The Lucan Emails reveals more details of their relationship. It also includes details and location of an encounter Crosby claims to have had one month later with Lucan in Namibia.
. There were bloodstains in the front seat, and in the boot a length of lead pipe wrapped in surgical plaster was found matching the one in the Lucan basement.
It was not until five days after the murder that a warrant was issued for Lucan's arrest. The story as it appeared in the newspapers focused on Lucan's disappearance and did not mention the possibility that he might have been the killer.
Lucan's relatives and friends were united in the belief that he was innocent and acted more quickly than the police. The day after the murder, John Aspinall
organised a lunch for Lucan's friends where they discussed how they could help Lucan when he reappeared. The police were later to accuse the Clermont Set
(as they were named by the media) of obstructing their investigation.
Susan Maxwell-Scott did not immediately report Lucan's late night visit to her. When her husband, Ian, returned to Uckfield on Friday evening, she told him what had occurred. On Saturday morning, he rang Bill Shand Kydd and told him that Lucan had written two letters to him, addressed to his London house in Cambridge Square. Mr Shand Kydd then rang his London home and was told that two letters with Uckfield postmarks had been delivered that morning. He immediately drove to London and, after reading them, gave the letters to the police.
The Queen's Counsel
, acting for Lucan's mother, spoke of Lady Lucan's alleged hatred of her husband, but forensic evidence supported Lady Lucan's account. The blood found in the basement had been mainly Group B
(Sandra Rivett's group), while that found on the basement stairs was mainly Group A (Lady Lucan's group), and both types had been found on the lead pipe. There was no evidence of another assailant.
On 19 June 1975, the inquest jury
took just half an hour to reach their verdict, naming Lucan as the murderer of Sandra Rivett. He was the last person ever to be declared a murderer by an inquest jury, shortly before the procedure was outlawed by the Criminal Law Act 1977
.
reviewed the case to examine the existing police evidence using modern DNA profiling. Police also prepared a computer-generated image of how Lucan might have looked if he were still alive (he would have been 69 years old) using "age progression
" software.
The review, codenamed Operation Habberton, was led by Detective Superintendent Lewis Benjamin of Scotland Yard
. Benjamin said that he believed Lucan was helped by friends to escape from Britain and began a secret life abroad. However, the DNA testing failed to provide any conclusive evidence.
Investigator Ian Crosby was visited by policemen conducting the review. The police were particularly interested in the relationship he had built with key people, such as Lady Lucan, Lord Lucan's son, Mrs Susan Maxwell-Scott and Mrs Rivett's son Stephen Hensby.
in November 2009, reporter Keith Dovkants claims that had Lucan ever been captured it would be quite likely that a trial jury would have found him "not guilty" of Sandra Rivett's murder.
He based this conclusion on claims made by Detective Chief Inspector David Gerring, who, with Detective Chief Superintendent Roy Ranson, had led the original investigation, and lawyer James Harbridge. The argument is that inconsistencies in the evidence would have enabled a good defense barrister to produce enough reasonable doubt to get Lucan acquitted. These include the claim that:
Although Lady Lucan, convinced of her husband's guilt, described Frances as "not a very bright 10-year-old", DCI Gerring believed that her evidence would have been invaluable to a defense lawyer and that it may have been enough to clear Lucan, even though DCI Gerring himself was certain of his guilt. The defense could also use the same argument that Lucan gave Mrs Maxwell-Scott for going on the run: that his wife's hostility would be enough to have him accused of the murder.
In his book, Trail of Havoc, author Patrick Marnham suggested that Lucan hired a hitman. He noted that the Lucans' daughter Frances put the events of the night 20 minutes earlier than her mother, using the beginning and end times of certain TV programmes as reference points. If Frances's timetable was accurate, Lucan would not have had time to return to the house from the Clermont where he was seen earlier that evening. However, a professional killer would be unlikely to use a lead pipe as a weapon, which led Marnham to suggest the killer hired by Lucan was unable to perform the murder and sent a last-minute replacement who bungled it. Mr Marnham further claims Lucan had planned to dispose of the body and, arriving to find that the wrong woman had been killed, attacked his wife.
arrested a man they believed was Lucan but who was in fact the British MP
John Stonehouse
, who had faked his suicide a month earlier.
suggested this was a mistaken identity of a man nicknamed Johannesburg Jeff (aka James Chilton).
said, "I'm more of a friend of his after that than I was—though I haven't seen him—because if he wanted me to do something, I'd do it for him," which the interviewer interpreted as a slip of the tongue suggesting that Aspinall had had some contact with Lucan even after the murder.
Shortly before his death in 2000, Aspinall gave an interview in which he re-stated his opinion that Lucan had committed suicide by scuttling a boat that he kept at Newhaven. Aspinall said he had no doubt that Lucan had mistakenly killed the nanny, having intended to kill his wife, and had then killed himself out of shame.
detective, claimed to have solved the mystery of Lucan's disappearance. The author claimed that Lucan fled to Goa, India
, arriving there a year after Rivett's death. The book includes photos taken there in 1991 of a man who bears a resemblance to Lucan. The man, who died in 1996, was known in Goa as Barry Halpin (or, according to the book, "Jungle Barry").
However, these claims were almost immediately dismissed. BBC Radio 2
presenter Mike Harding
said in a letter to The Guardian
newspaper that he knew Barry Halpin from his days as a folk musician in Liverpool
in the 1960s, and that he had gone to India "as it was more spiritual than St. Helens
".
Given the extremely rapid debunking of the claims, The Sunday Telegraph, which serialised part of the book, was embarrassed in a manner reminiscent of The Sunday Times'
publication of the bogus Hitler Diaries
. The book was reprinted a year later in paperback entitled The Lucan Conspiracy (to much less press interest) with one additional final chapter, and displaying the tagline: How the Establishment Conned the World into Believing Lord Lucan Was Barry Halpin.
reported that former Scotland Yard
detective Sidney Ball was following up claims that Lord Lucan was living in an old Land Rover
outside the township of Marton
, apparently with a pet possum
, cat and a goat. Mr Ball says neighbours of the man, Roger Woodgate, were convinced he was Lord Lucan but said he couldn't discuss the case further until his investigation was complete. The man is said to have an upper-class English accent and may be receiving income from property interests in the UK. Roger Woodgate denies being Lord Lucan, insisting he was a photographer working for the Ministry of Defence who had left the UK five months before Lord Lucan vanished. Mr Woodgate also claims to be 10 years younger than Lord Lucan and is five inches shorter.
, to become the beneficiary of the Lucan Settled Estates. There is nothing to prevent Lord Bingham from styling himself the 8th Earl of Lucan, although he could not become a member of the House of Lords. In August 1998, Lord Lucan's son gave an interview to a national newspaper in which he said that five years ago he had obtained an order from a Chancery Court which does everything in law that can be done to treat a man as dead—so from that moment forward, given no disputed claim, he had succeeded to the title and also said that it was his intention to use it. He further stated that the Metropolitan Police had given a statement which testified to their belief that the 7th Earl is not alive and that none of the sightings in the past 24 years has been given any credence.
The High Court of Justice granted probate
on his free estate in August 1999. The net value remaining amounted to less than £
15,000.
The Countess of Lucan (Lady Lucan) has publicly stated since 1987 that she believes her husband to be dead, and sometimes uses the prefix 'dowager
' to indicate this.
. Significant references include:
Missing person
A missing person is a person who has disappeared for usually unknown reasons.Missing persons' photographs may be posted on bulletin boards, milk cartons, postcards, and websites, along with a phone number to be contacted if a sighting has been made....
in the early hours of 8 November 1974, following the murder of Sandra Rivett, his children's nanny
Nanny
A nanny, childminder or child care provider, is an individual who provides care for one or more children in a family as a service...
, the previous evening. There has been no verified sighting of him since then.
On 19 June 1975, an inquest jury named Lucan as the murderer of Sandra Rivett, the last time that an inquest was allowed to name the person they suspected of committing such a crime. He was presumed deceased in chambers on 11 December 1992 and declared legally dead
Death in absentia
Death in absentia is a legal declaration that a person is deceased in the absence of remains attributable to that person...
in October 1999.
Early life
Bingham was the eldest son of George Charles Patrick Bingham, 6th Earl of Lucan, and his wife, Kaitlin Elizabeth Anne Dawson. Unusually for a hereditary peerHereditary peer
Hereditary peers form part of the Peerage in the United Kingdom. There are over seven hundred peers who hold titles that may be inherited. Formerly, most of them were entitled to sit in the House of Lords, but since the House of Lords Act 1999 only ninety-two are permitted to do so...
, his father supported the Labour Party
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
in the House of Lords
House of Lords
The House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster....
. He had two sisters and one brother. He was educated at Eton College
Eton College
Eton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent school for boys aged 13 to 18. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor"....
and served as lieutenant in the prestigious Coldstream Guards
Coldstream Guards
Her Majesty's Coldstream Regiment of Foot Guards, also known officially as the Coldstream Guards , is a regiment of the British Army, part of the Guards Division or Household Division....
. A compulsive gambler through his adult life, Bingham accrued significant debts.
On 28 November 1963 Bingham married Veronica Mary Duncan, the daughter of Major Charles Moorhouse Duncan, MC. They had three children: Frances (born 24 October 1964), George Charles
George Bingham, Lord Bingham
George Charles Bingham, Lord Bingham is a British peer, the only son of Richard John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan, and his wife, the Countess of Lucan, born Veronica Mary Duncan. He has two sisters: Lady Frances Bingham and Lady Camilla Bloch , a barrister who married QC Michael Bloch in 1998...
(born 21 September 1967), and Camilla (born 30 June 1970).
On 21 January 1964 Bingham's father died and he succeeded to the earldom.
Sandra Rivett murder
In early 1973, Lucan and his wife separated; the three children lived with their mother in London's wealthy BelgraviaBelgravia
Belgravia is a district of central London in the City of Westminster and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Noted for its immensely expensive residential properties, it is one of the wealthiest districts in the world...
neighbourhood. In September 1974, Lady Lucan engaged Sandra Eleanor Rivett (born 16 September 1945) as a nanny for the children.
Attack
At 9.45pm on Thursday, 7 November 1974, Lady Lucan burst into the Plumber's Arms, the pub nearest to her house, appealing for help. She had blood flowing from several wounds on her head and reportedly said: "Help me, help me, help me, he's in the house, he's murdered my nanny."The police were summoned, and arrived at the Lucans' home 15 minutes later, forcing open the front door. They found a bloodstained towel in one bedroom and a large pool of blood with a man's footprints on the floor of the basement. They searched the basement and discovered broken crockery and walls splashed with blood. They found a canvas mailbag, inside of which was the body of Sandra Rivett, who had suffered head wounds. They also found a bloodstained length of lead pipe wrapped in surgical plaster. The bulb had been removed from the basement stairs light fitting and was resting on a chair.
Lady Lucan's statement
The Countess of Lucan gave a statement from hospital in which she named her husband as the attacker. According to her account, whilst she was watching MastermindMastermind (TV series)
Mastermind is a British quiz show, well known for its challenging questions, intimidating setting and air of seriousness.Devised by Bill Wright, the basic format of Mastermind has never changed — four and in later contests five contestants face two rounds, one on a specialised subject of the...
on television, Sandra Rivett had put her head round the door and asked Lady Lucan if she would like a cup of tea. This was unusual, but Rivett went downstairs to the kitchen at around 8.55pm to make some tea. The 9 o'clock news came on soon after this and, after about a quarter of an hour had passed, Lady Lucan began to wonder what had happened to the tea. Lady Lucan went to look for the nanny. The basement was dark and, when she called Mrs Rivett's name, a man emerged from the cloakroom and hit her with a heavy object. She screamed, and when he told her to "shut up", she recognised her husband's voice. The attacker shoved three gloved fingers down her throat to silence her. She managed to calm him and he stopped his attack; they both collapsed on to the stairs. Lady Lucan asked him where Mrs Rivett was and Lucan, after some prevarication, said that she was dead. They went upstairs to the second floor bedroom where Frances was still watching television. He sent her to bed and switched off the television. Then Lucan went into the bathroom to get a cloth to clean up his wife's face. Upon hearing the taps running, Lady Lucan seized her opportunity to flee from the house and ran to the Plumber's Arms pub in Lower Belgrave Street.
Lady Lucan's statement differs from that of her 10-year-old daughter, Frances, who had been watching television with her mother. Her statement was taken by a WDC in Cornwall several days after the event. Roy Ranson described Frances's statement as "always slightly muddled" and didn't know how much reliance he could place on it.
Lucan phone calls
At around 10pm, Lucan's friend Madeleine Florman, who lived nearby in Chester SquareChester Square
Chester Square is a small, residential garden square located in London's Belgravia district. Along with its sister squares Belgrave Square and Eaton Square, it is one of the three garden squares built by the Grosvenor family when they developed the main part of Belgravia in the 19th century.Chester...
, was awakened by someone ringing her doorbell. She ignored it, blaming local youths, and twenty minutes later received a phone call from an agitated Lucan, who soon hung up. Police later found bloodstains on her doorstep.
A few minutes after he called Mrs Florman, Lucan called his mother and told her that he had been passing by his wife's house when he noticed a fight going on inside. He said that Lady Lucan had been injured and there was a lot of blood. "There was something terrible in the basement," he said. "I couldn't bring myself to look." He asked her to go to 46 Lower Belgrave Street to look after his children, then hung up.
Maxwell-Scotts
Lucan drove 42 miles to the house of Ian and Susan Maxwell-Scott, his friends in UckfieldUckfield
-Development:The local Tesco has proposed the redevelopment of the central town area as has the town council. The Hub has recently been completed, having been acquired for an unknown figure, presumed to be about half a million pounds...
, East Sussex
East Sussex
East Sussex is a county in South East England. It is bordered by the counties of Kent, Surrey and West Sussex, and to the south by the English Channel.-History:...
. He drove a Ford Corsair
Ford Corsair
The Ford Consul Corsair, manufactured by Ford Motor Company in the United Kingdom, was a midsize car introduced at the London Motor Show in October 1963 and available as either a saloon or estate from 1964 until 1970...
he had borrowed from Michael Stoop, a gambling friend, while his own Mercedes-Benz was being repaired. He found Susan Maxwell-Scott home alone. He related an expanded version of the story that he had told his mother, claiming that after seeing the fight he had entered the house and gone to the basement, where he had slipped on a pool of blood. The assailant had already fled. He also said Lady Lucan had cried out that the man had killed Mrs Rivett and had accused Lucan of hiring the man to kill her.
Lucan used Susan Maxwell-Scott's phone to call his mother, who told him his children were safe at her flat and asked him if he wanted to talk to the policeman who was with her. He replied that he would call the police in the morning.
Before leaving, Lucan tried to ring his brother-in-law, William (Bill) Shand Kydd, but could not reach him. He wrote two letters to him, which he gave to Susan Maxwell-Scott to post, then left at 1.15am. Lucan has not been confirmed as having been seen by anyone since.
In September 2004 Mrs Maxwell-Scott, living in London, gave her final interview about her husband's close friend John Lucan to a private Investigator, Ian Crosby. Crosby had been visiting her regularly for several years. Crosby's book The Lucan Emails reveals more details of their relationship. It also includes details and location of an encounter Crosby claims to have had one month later with Lucan in Namibia.
Investigation
The following Monday, 11 November 1974, the Ford Corsair was found abandoned on the south coast in NewhavenNewhaven, East Sussex
Newhaven is a town in the Lewes District of East Sussex in England. It lies at the mouth of the River Ouse, on the English Channel coast, and is a ferry port for services to France.-Origins:...
. There were bloodstains in the front seat, and in the boot a length of lead pipe wrapped in surgical plaster was found matching the one in the Lucan basement.
It was not until five days after the murder that a warrant was issued for Lucan's arrest. The story as it appeared in the newspapers focused on Lucan's disappearance and did not mention the possibility that he might have been the killer.
Lucan's relatives and friends were united in the belief that he was innocent and acted more quickly than the police. The day after the murder, John Aspinall
John Aspinall (zoo owner)
John Victor Aspinall was a British zoo owner and gambler. He was born in Delhi, India, but was a citizen of the United Kingdom.-Biography:...
organised a lunch for Lucan's friends where they discussed how they could help Lucan when he reappeared. The police were later to accuse the Clermont Set
Clermont Set
The Clermont Set was an exclusive group of rich British gamblers who met at the Clermont Club at 44 Berkeley Square, in London's fashionable Mayfair district now located at 27-28 Curzon Street and called Aspinall's. It was the first London casino opened by John Aspinall after he won the gaming...
(as they were named by the media) of obstructing their investigation.
Susan Maxwell-Scott did not immediately report Lucan's late night visit to her. When her husband, Ian, returned to Uckfield on Friday evening, she told him what had occurred. On Saturday morning, he rang Bill Shand Kydd and told him that Lucan had written two letters to him, addressed to his London house in Cambridge Square. Mr Shand Kydd then rang his London home and was told that two letters with Uckfield postmarks had been delivered that morning. He immediately drove to London and, after reading them, gave the letters to the police.
1975 inquest
In June 1975, the official inquest into Sandra Rivett's death was held. Bill Shand Kydd read out the two letters he had received from Lucan. In the first, Lucan repeated his story of interrupting a fight in the house and said that his wife would blame him, adding that she had demonstrated her hatred of him in the past and would do anything to see him accused. The second letter dealt with a planned auction of some of the family silver, and Lucan asked that the proceeds be used to clear his bank overdrafts.The Queen's Counsel
Queen's Counsel
Queen's Counsel , known as King's Counsel during the reign of a male sovereign, are lawyers appointed by letters patent to be one of Her [or His] Majesty's Counsel learned in the law...
, acting for Lucan's mother, spoke of Lady Lucan's alleged hatred of her husband, but forensic evidence supported Lady Lucan's account. The blood found in the basement had been mainly Group B
Blood type
A blood type is a classification of blood based on the presence or absence of inherited antigenic substances on the surface of red blood cells . These antigens may be proteins, carbohydrates, glycoproteins, or glycolipids, depending on the blood group system...
(Sandra Rivett's group), while that found on the basement stairs was mainly Group A (Lady Lucan's group), and both types had been found on the lead pipe. There was no evidence of another assailant.
On 19 June 1975, the inquest jury
Inquest
Inquests in England and Wales are held into sudden and unexplained deaths and also into the circumstances of discovery of a certain class of valuable artefacts known as "treasure trove"...
took just half an hour to reach their verdict, naming Lucan as the murderer of Sandra Rivett. He was the last person ever to be declared a murderer by an inquest jury, shortly before the procedure was outlawed by the Criminal Law Act 1977
Criminal Law Act 1977
The Criminal Law Act 1977 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Most of it only applies to England and Wales. It is mainly significant because it defines the offence of conspiracy in English law...
.
2004 investigation
In October 2004, the Metropolitan Police ServiceMetropolitan Police Service
The Metropolitan Police Service is the territorial police force responsible for Greater London, excluding the "square mile" of the City of London which is the responsibility of the City of London Police...
reviewed the case to examine the existing police evidence using modern DNA profiling. Police also prepared a computer-generated image of how Lucan might have looked if he were still alive (he would have been 69 years old) using "age progression
Age progression
Age progression is the process of modifying a photograph of a person to represent the effect of aging on their appearance. Digital image processing is the most common technique today, although sometimes artists' drawings are used. Age progression is most often used as a forensics tool by law...
" software.
The review, codenamed Operation Habberton, was led by Detective Superintendent Lewis Benjamin of Scotland Yard
Scotland Yard
Scotland Yard is a metonym for the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service of London, UK. It derives from the location of the original Metropolitan Police headquarters at 4 Whitehall Place, which had a rear entrance on a street called Great Scotland Yard. The Scotland Yard entrance became...
. Benjamin said that he believed Lucan was helped by friends to escape from Britain and began a secret life abroad. However, the DNA testing failed to provide any conclusive evidence.
Investigator Ian Crosby was visited by policemen conducting the review. The police were particularly interested in the relationship he had built with key people, such as Lady Lucan, Lord Lucan's son, Mrs Susan Maxwell-Scott and Mrs Rivett's son Stephen Hensby.
Legal case against Lucan
In an article published in ES MagazineEvening Standard
The Evening Standard, now styled the London Evening Standard, is a free local daily newspaper, published Monday–Friday in tabloid format in London. It is the dominant regional evening paper for London and the surrounding area, with coverage of national and international news and City of London...
in November 2009, reporter Keith Dovkants claims that had Lucan ever been captured it would be quite likely that a trial jury would have found him "not guilty" of Sandra Rivett's murder.
He based this conclusion on claims made by Detective Chief Inspector David Gerring, who, with Detective Chief Superintendent Roy Ranson, had led the original investigation, and lawyer James Harbridge. The argument is that inconsistencies in the evidence would have enabled a good defense barrister to produce enough reasonable doubt to get Lucan acquitted. These include the claim that:
- Although the basement light bulb had been removed, it was still not dark enough for Lucan to mistake Mrs Rivett for his wife; however, Lady Lucan said in evidence at the inquest that "it was dark" which is why she thought that Mrs Rivett couldn't be there;
- The doorman at the Clermont Club claims to have seen Lucan outside the club at 20h45, but Lucan's 10-year-old daughter, Frances, claims that it was before then that Mrs Rivett went to the basement and was attacked;
- There are also inconsistencies in the timing given by Frances and her mother: Lady Lucan testified to have gone looking for Rivett at 21h15, but Frances claims that the time was 20h55 and that she saw her parents together at 21h5 (after Mrs Rivett's murder). Frances based some of her estimates on the timing of Top of the PopsTop of the PopsTop of the Pops, also known as TOTP, is a British music chart television programme, made by the BBC and originally broadcast weekly from 1 January 1964 to 30 July 2006. After 25 December 2006 it became a radio program, now hosted by Tony Blackburn...
, television programmes she had been watching, but significantly not on her estimate of going downstairs to her mother's room which she gave as 20h40.
- Frances also claims to have seen no bloodstains on her father's clothing, whereas expert witnesses state that whoever smashed Mrs Rivett's skull in would have been covered in blood.
Although Lady Lucan, convinced of her husband's guilt, described Frances as "not a very bright 10-year-old", DCI Gerring believed that her evidence would have been invaluable to a defense lawyer and that it may have been enough to clear Lucan, even though DCI Gerring himself was certain of his guilt. The defense could also use the same argument that Lucan gave Mrs Maxwell-Scott for going on the run: that his wife's hostility would be enough to have him accused of the murder.
Alternative theories
Others have chosen to believe Lord Lucan's story, that he interrupted an attack by someone else. As he was the only person with a known motive to kill Lady Lucan, and no-one has offered any reason for Rivett to be a target, it has been suggested that the attacker was a burglar. However, while a burglar could have killed Rivett, there seems no reason for him to wait 20 minutes to then attack Lady Lucan. This theory also fails to explain why a length of lead pipe matching the murder weapon was found in the car driven by Lord Lucan.In his book, Trail of Havoc, author Patrick Marnham suggested that Lucan hired a hitman. He noted that the Lucans' daughter Frances put the events of the night 20 minutes earlier than her mother, using the beginning and end times of certain TV programmes as reference points. If Frances's timetable was accurate, Lucan would not have had time to return to the house from the Clermont where he was seen earlier that evening. However, a professional killer would be unlikely to use a lead pipe as a weapon, which led Marnham to suggest the killer hired by Lucan was unable to perform the murder and sent a last-minute replacement who bungled it. Mr Marnham further claims Lucan had planned to dispose of the body and, arriving to find that the wrong woman had been killed, attacked his wife.
Reported sightings
Since his disappearance, many alleged sightings of Lucan have been reported from all over the world, but police have drawn a blank in their efforts to find the runaway aristocrat. In December 1974, police in AustraliaAustralia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
arrested a man they believed was Lucan but who was in fact the British MP
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
John Stonehouse
John Stonehouse
John Thomson Stonehouse was a British politician and minister under Harold Wilson. Stonehouse is perhaps best remembered for his unsuccessful attempt at faking his own death in 1974...
, who had faked his suicide a month earlier.
Johannesburg Jeff
During the 1990s Lucan was allegedly sighted in South Africa. In 2007, the Daily MailDaily Mail
The Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982...
suggested this was a mistaken identity of a man nicknamed Johannesburg Jeff (aka James Chilton).
John Aspinall's comments
During a 1990 interview, John AspinallJohn Aspinall (zoo owner)
John Victor Aspinall was a British zoo owner and gambler. He was born in Delhi, India, but was a citizen of the United Kingdom.-Biography:...
said, "I'm more of a friend of his after that than I was—though I haven't seen him—because if he wanted me to do something, I'd do it for him," which the interviewer interpreted as a slip of the tongue suggesting that Aspinall had had some contact with Lucan even after the murder.
Shortly before his death in 2000, Aspinall gave an interview in which he re-stated his opinion that Lucan had committed suicide by scuttling a boat that he kept at Newhaven. Aspinall said he had no doubt that Lucan had mistakenly killed the nanny, having intended to kill his wife, and had then killed himself out of shame.
Barry Halpin
In September 2003, a book titled Dead Lucky: Lord Lucan, The Final Truth, written by Duncan MacLaughlin, a former Scotland YardScotland Yard
Scotland Yard is a metonym for the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service of London, UK. It derives from the location of the original Metropolitan Police headquarters at 4 Whitehall Place, which had a rear entrance on a street called Great Scotland Yard. The Scotland Yard entrance became...
detective, claimed to have solved the mystery of Lucan's disappearance. The author claimed that Lucan fled to Goa, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, arriving there a year after Rivett's death. The book includes photos taken there in 1991 of a man who bears a resemblance to Lucan. The man, who died in 1996, was known in Goa as Barry Halpin (or, according to the book, "Jungle Barry").
However, these claims were almost immediately dismissed. BBC Radio 2
BBC Radio 2
BBC Radio 2 is one of the BBC's national radio stations and the most popular station in the United Kingdom. Much of its daytime playlist-based programming is best described as Adult Contemporary or AOR, although the station is also noted for its specialist broadcasting of other musical genres...
presenter Mike Harding
Mike Harding
Mike Harding is an English singer, songwriter, comedian, author, poet and broadcaster. He is known as 'The Rochdale Cowboy' after one of his hit records...
said in a letter to The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
newspaper that he knew Barry Halpin from his days as a folk musician in Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
in the 1960s, and that he had gone to India "as it was more spiritual than St. Helens
St Helens, Merseyside
St Helens is a large town in Merseyside, England. It is the largest settlement and administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough of St Helens with a population of just over 100,000, part of an urban area with a total population of 176,843 at the time of the 2001 Census...
".
Given the extremely rapid debunking of the claims, The Sunday Telegraph, which serialised part of the book, was embarrassed in a manner reminiscent of The Sunday Times'
The Sunday Times (UK)
The Sunday Times is a Sunday broadsheet newspaper, distributed in the United Kingdom. The Sunday Times is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News International, which is in turn owned by News Corporation. Times Newspapers also owns The Times, but the two papers were founded...
publication of the bogus Hitler Diaries
Hitler Diaries
In April 1983, the West German news magazine Stern published excerpts from what purported to be the diaries of Adolf Hitler, known as the Hitler Diaries , which were subsequently revealed to be forgeries...
. The book was reprinted a year later in paperback entitled The Lucan Conspiracy (to much less press interest) with one additional final chapter, and displaying the tagline: How the Establishment Conned the World into Believing Lord Lucan Was Barry Halpin.
New Zealand sighting
In August 2007, the Auckland-based New Zealand HeraldThe New Zealand Herald
- External links :* * *...
reported that former Scotland Yard
Scotland Yard
Scotland Yard is a metonym for the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service of London, UK. It derives from the location of the original Metropolitan Police headquarters at 4 Whitehall Place, which had a rear entrance on a street called Great Scotland Yard. The Scotland Yard entrance became...
detective Sidney Ball was following up claims that Lord Lucan was living in an old Land Rover
Land Rover
Land Rover is a British car manufacturer with its headquarters in Gaydon, Warwickshire, United Kingdom which specialises in four-wheel-drive vehicles. It is owned by the Indian company Tata Motors, forming part of their Jaguar Land Rover group...
outside the township of Marton
Marton, New Zealand
Marton is the hub of the Rangitikei district of the Manawatu-Wanganui region of New Zealand's North Island. It is situated 35 kilometres southeast of Wanganui and 40 kilometres northwest of Palmerston North. The population was 4752 .-History:...
, apparently with a pet possum
Possum
A possum is any of about 70 small to medium-sized arboreal marsupial species native to Australia, New Guinea, and Sulawesi .Possums are quadrupedal diprotodont marsupials with long tails...
, cat and a goat. Mr Ball says neighbours of the man, Roger Woodgate, were convinced he was Lord Lucan but said he couldn't discuss the case further until his investigation was complete. The man is said to have an upper-class English accent and may be receiving income from property interests in the UK. Roger Woodgate denies being Lord Lucan, insisting he was a photographer working for the Ministry of Defence who had left the UK five months before Lord Lucan vanished. Mr Woodgate also claims to be 10 years younger than Lord Lucan and is five inches shorter.
Probate
The 7th Earl of Lucan was presumed deceased in December 1992 in Chambers. The trustees of the 7th Earl of Lucan's Settled Estates were then granted an order known as "the 1992 Order" which enabled them to administer the 7th Earl's estate on the footing that the 7th Earl was dead and were further granted leave to apply to the Family Division to swear death. This enabled Lucan's son, George Bingham, Lord BinghamGeorge Bingham, Lord Bingham
George Charles Bingham, Lord Bingham is a British peer, the only son of Richard John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan, and his wife, the Countess of Lucan, born Veronica Mary Duncan. He has two sisters: Lady Frances Bingham and Lady Camilla Bloch , a barrister who married QC Michael Bloch in 1998...
, to become the beneficiary of the Lucan Settled Estates. There is nothing to prevent Lord Bingham from styling himself the 8th Earl of Lucan, although he could not become a member of the House of Lords. In August 1998, Lord Lucan's son gave an interview to a national newspaper in which he said that five years ago he had obtained an order from a Chancery Court which does everything in law that can be done to treat a man as dead—so from that moment forward, given no disputed claim, he had succeeded to the title and also said that it was his intention to use it. He further stated that the Metropolitan Police had given a statement which testified to their belief that the 7th Earl is not alive and that none of the sightings in the past 24 years has been given any credence.
The High Court of Justice granted probate
Probate
Probate is the legal process of administering the estate of a deceased person by resolving all claims and distributing the deceased person's property under the valid will. A probate court decides the validity of a testator's will...
on his free estate in August 1999. The net value remaining amounted to less than £
Pound sterling
The pound sterling , commonly called the pound, is the official currency of the United Kingdom, its Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, British Antarctic Territory and Tristan da Cunha. It is subdivided into 100 pence...
15,000.
The Countess of Lucan (Lady Lucan) has publicly stated since 1987 that she believes her husband to be dead, and sometimes uses the prefix 'dowager
Dowager
A dowager is a widow who holds a title or property, or dower, derived from her deceased husband. As an adjective, "Dowager" usually appears in association with monarchical and aristocratic titles....
' to indicate this.
In popular culture
Lord Lucan's disappearance has become a part of popular culturePopular culture
Popular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the...
. Significant references include:
- The film Bloodlines: Legacy of a Lord is loosely based on the life and disappearance of Lord Lucan.
- The Trial of Lord Lucan (1994) was a fictional dramatisation of how a trial might have proceeded had Lucan been arrested soon after Rivett's murder, starring Julian WadhamJulian Wadham-Career:He has appeared on television as both Charles II and George V...
as Lucan and Lynsey BaxterLynsey BaxterLynsey Baxter is an English actress. Born in London, she began as a child actress in 1974 and later trained at Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts...
as his wife. It was one of a number of fictional TV court cases which had included the trial of Richard IIIRichard III of EnglandRichard III was King of England for two years, from 1483 until his death in 1485 during the Battle of Bosworth Field. He was the last king of the House of York and the last of the Plantagenet dynasty...
, the court-martial of George WashingtonGeorge WashingtonGeorge Washington was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of...
and an inquest into the death of Wolfgang Amadeus MozartWolfgang Amadeus MozartWolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
. - An early story in Psycops, a comic strip published in The SunThe Sun (newspaper)The Sun is a daily national tabloid newspaper published in the United Kingdom and owned by News Corporation. Sister editions are published in Glasgow and Dublin...
in the 1990s, had the detectives in Australia trying to track down Lucan on behalf of a cable TV crew. - Dame Muriel Spark's novel Aiding and AbettingAiding and Abetting (novel)Aiding and Abetting, is a novel by Muriel Spark published in 2000, six years before her death. Unlike her other novels, it is based partly on a documented occurrence; however, as the author states in a note, she takes liberties with the facts....
(2001) is a fictionalised tale of Lucan's clandestine life years after the murder. - Lucan was depicted as a bartender in the Spitting ImageSpitting ImageSpitting Image is a British satirical puppet show that aired on the ITV network from 1984 to 1996. It was produced by Spitting Image Productions for Central Television. The series was nominated for 10 BAFTA Awards, winning one for editing in 1989....
song "I've Never Met a Nice South AfricanI've Never Met A Nice South African"I've Never Met a Nice South African" is a satirical song originating in a sketch on the British television series Spitting Image. It was written by John Lloyd and Peter Brewis and was sung by Andy Roberts. In 1986 it was commercially released as the B-side of the chart-topping "The Chicken Song"...
". The Lucan puppet was used in many episodes in various roles. - The bands the Dodgems and Black Box Recorder both performed songs called "Lord Lucan is Missing".
- Lucan has become a byword for something unlikely to happen, such as when Andy Parsons said that if William Hague won in 2001, "the results will be counted by Lord Lucan". It can also be used to refer someone who is rarely present, for instance, if one member of a group is regularly absent other members may say to each other, "let me know if you see him or Lord Lucan"
Non-fiction
- Lord Lucan: The Final Verdict by Roy Ranson with Robert Strange.
- Lucan, Not Guilty by Sally Moore
- Lord Lucan: What Really Happened by James Ruddick
- Dead Lucky by Duncan MacLaughlin
- The Lucan Mystery by Norman Lucas
- Troops of Midian by Richard Wilmott
- Trail of Havoc by Patrick Marnham
- Lord Lucan: The Lucan Emails by Ian Crosby ISBN 978-0-9565337-0-8
Fiction
- Lord Lucan: My Story by William Coles, ISBN 1906558116
- Aiding and Abetting by Muriel SparkMuriel SparkDame Muriel Spark, DBE was an award-winning Scottish novelist. In 2008 The Times newspaper named Spark in its list of "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945".-Early life:...
, ISBN 0-14-100990-X - Get Lucky by Dickon Whitfield ISBN 0-7522-0745-8
- Maxwell Lives by Jim Paterson ISBN 0-9530953-0-4
- Nobody's Fault by Nancy Holmes ISBN 0-553-05732-4
- The Butterfly Man by Heather Rose ISBN 0-7022-3535-0
- The Day Lucky's Luck Ran Out by Allan Prior, in London After Midnight, edited by Peter HainingPeter HainingPeter Alexander Haining was a British journalist, author and anthologist who lived and worked in Suffolk...
ISBN 0-7607-0345-0
External links
- extensive story about Lord Lucan on the crime library
- "A Murder for Mayfair", Time, 25 November 1974
- "A Downstairs Murder", Time, 30 June 1975
- The Countess of Lucan's website
- LordLucan.com
- Channel 4 links for Lucan
- Lord Lucan My Story
- The BBC's Inside Out offers new evidence in October 2009 on the case of Lord Lucan
- Lord Lucan The lucan emails. For thirty five years Investigator Ian Crosby has followed this story. He was the last person to discuss the Lucan case with Susan Maxwell Scott. Just weeks before her death She told him " they never went to Portugal." In October 2004 he encountered Lord Lucan in Namibia. But why had Lucan's children also been visiting Namibia?