Richard John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan, more commonly known as Lord Lucan, doesn’t really fit the criteria of someone who could just vanish into thin air. Yet he did.

Just before 10 p.m. on November 7 1974, Lady Veronica Lucan burst into The Plumbers Arms in Belgravia, London. She was hysterical and covered in blood. She screamed she had just escaped an attempted murder and that her children’s nanny had been killed.

At approximately 9 p.m. on the 7th of November 1974, Sandra Rivett was down in the basement of the Lucan family home making tea. It was taking a while, so Veronica Lucan went down to check on her. She found the basement in darkness and Sandra Rivett, the children’s nanny, dead. She had been beaten to death with a pipe. Veronica was then also attacked by the assailant, whom she would later say was her husband Lord Lucan. She recognised his voice when he told her to ‘Shut up’. Some reports say she fought him off and ran, but others say he beat her and left her for dead. Either way, just before 10 p.m. that night, Veronica Lucan staggered into the nearby pub to get help.

Veronica had recently won a court battle giving her custody of the couple’s children and Lord Lucan was rumoured to be heavily burdened by debt. He also had a history of domestic abuse. He had also recently moved out of the family home. Had he finally reached his breaking point?

Police soon arrived at the house to arrest Lord Lucan, but he was nowhere to be seen. Lord Lucan had borrowed a Ford Corsair and drove to see his friend Susan Maxwell-Scott. He told her his wife had accused him of hiring a killer. Maxwell-Scott didn’t call the police because at the time she had no idea he was a wanted man. Lord Lucan also posted two letters to friends and apparently called his mother.

He was last seen leaving Maxwell-Scott’s home in the early hours of November 8th. The Ford was found not far from Susan Maxwell-Scott’s house in Newhaven three days later. Inside, police found a metal pipe, almost identical to the weapon found at the murder scene in the Lucan family home. There were also blood stains inside the car.

The letters Lord Lucan had posted to his friends were handed in to the police and one of the letters had droplets of blood on it.

A warrant was issued for Lord Lucan’s arrest and Interpol was notified in case he had fled the country. An international manhunt was undertaken, but Lord Lucan was never found.

A year after Sandra Rivett was murdered, in June of 1975, a coroner’s inquest returned a verdict of ‘willful murder’ and Lord Lucan was named as her killer. 

In 1999, Lord Lucan was officially declared dead by the High Court and his family was granted probate over his estate. A death certificate was not issued. It wasn’t until 2016 when his son George Bingham won a court battle, that his death certificate was finally issued. This allowed George Bingham to claim the title of Lord Bingham and inherit the title of Eighth Earl. He believes his father is innocent.

In 2017, aged 80, Lady Lucan was found dead in the same Belgravia family home she once shared with Lord Lucan, she killed herself with a mix of drink and drugs after wrongly self-diagnosing herself with Parkinson’s. She hadn’t spoken to her children since the 80s and spent her final years as a recluse.

Theories:

So, what happened that night, and what happened to Lord Lucan? There is a theory that he killed Sandra Rivett by mistake, something believed by some of his friends. Sandra was killed on a Thursday, which was usually her day off, but she ended up working that night. Apparently, he had been wanting to kill his wife Veronica, and when he saw someone in the dark basement, attacked thinking it was her. When Veronica came down into the basement, he realised his mistake, but it was already too late. He had killed Sandra. One of Lord Lucan’s friends believes he was so wracked with guilt after killing the wrong woman, that he committed suicide by “filling his pockets with stones” and drowning himself in Newhaven Harbour.

Another theory believed by Hugh Bingham, Lord Lucan’s brother, is that he is innocent, but had to go into hiding because he knew he would be blamed. Hugh never disclosed where his brother went, but he did say that the police investigation didn’t add up and so Lord Lucan’s friends helped him flee.

Shirley Robey who worked for John Aspinall (the owner of the Clermont club where Lord Lucan would spend his evenings gambling), came forward in 2012 claiming that she often overheard Aspinall talk about Lord Lucan hiding out in Africa. She said she didn’t know about the murder at the time and thought he had just had a falling out with his wife. She didn’t know any of the details of where he was staying but said if she had known a murder had occurred she would have said something sooner.

A friend of Lord Lucan was told that after the murder, he had driven to a private zoo in Kent, owned by John Aspinall, where he met friends who advised him on what to do. They told him that without proof of death, probate could not be granted on his estate. His friends then gave him a gun and he shot himself. His body was then fed to a tiger. Police investigated this after Aspinall’s mother, Lady Osborne, told them “The last I heard of him he was being fed to the tigers at my son’s zoo.” Aspinall apparently said “My tigers are only fed the choicest cuts. Do you really think they’re going to eat stringy old Lucky?” Lucky was the nickname given to Lord Lucan by his friends at the Clermont Club.

Sightings:

In January 2020, Neil Berrinman, the son of Sandra Rivett, claimed that he tracked down Lord Lucan in Australia, where he was living as a Buddhist. He is apparently ‘in his mid-80s, seriously ill, awaiting major surgery, and virtually housebound in a large shared detached house in the suburbs. A neighbour confirmed that someone who looks like Lucan and is also English lives in the house and their background story doesn’t quite add up. According to Berriman, Scotland Yard said they would look into the matter.

Lord Lucan would be 85 years old. There have been over 70 reported sightings over the years in India, the Maldives and South Africa.

Sources:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/0/happened-lord-lucan-still-alive-likely-theories/

https://www.businessinsider.com/lord-lucan-bingham-murder-mystery-sightings-sandra-rivett?r=US&IR=T

https://www.harpersbazaar.com/uk/culture/culture-news/a30699584/lord-lucan-found-australia/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-41409597

https://www.crimeandinvestigation.co.uk/crime-files/lord-lucan

https://www.darkhistories.com/the-disappearance-of-lord-lucan/

https://murderfriends.com/true-crime-101-the-murder-of-sandra-rivett/

https://mysteriesrunsolved.com/2020/12/lord-lucan-disappearance.html