The mystery of Lord Lucan: How a British aristocrat accused of murdering his children's nanny vanished into thin air
In 1974, Lord Lucan disappeared after he was suspected of murder, but was never found.
On November 7, 1974, a violent crime shattered the sheltered existence of those living inside 46 Lower Belgrave Street.
WARNING: Readers might find some details in this story distressing.
Two women inside the luxe townhouse were bludgeoned with a lead pipe by a mystery man.
One was 29-year-old nanny Sandra Rivett, who died from her injuries.
The other was her employer, Lady Veronica, the countess of Lucan, who survived the attack and fled down the street to the nearest pub in search of help.
Veronica believed the assailant was her estranged husband, Lord Lucan, with whom she was mired in a bitter custody battle over their three children.
She claimed he had been lurking in the dimly-lit kitchen basement of their home, when he attacked their nanny, mistakenly believing Sandra was his wife and killing her by mistake.
He was interrupted by Veronica, who he strangled and beat multiple times until she collapsed to the floor.
She convinced him not to kill her, and when her husband went to the bathroom to get a towel for her injuries, she seized the opportunity to escape.
According to UK newspaper The Telegraph, she burst into the nearby Plumber's Arms "head to toe in blood", shouting: "Help me, help me, help me, I've just escaped being murdered. He's in the house. He's murdered my nanny".
Police were called but when they arrived at the scene, they found Sandra's body in a canvas bag, but no sign of Lucan.
Officers searched far and wide in the ensuing manhunt, combing through marinas, abandoned parks and sparse cliff tops.
Police with tracker dogs searched cliff tops for Lord Lucan after he disappeared in the early hours of November 8, 1974.
But the seventh earl of Lucan seemed to vanish into thin air, leading some to believe that a network of powerful friends helped him flee Britain — and justice.
Lucan was legally declared dead in absentia in 1999, though he has remained an object of fascination for bounty hunters and conspiracy theorists for five decades.
Sightings of the earl have been reported everywhere, from the beaches of India to an ex-Nazi colony in Paraguay, and even a commune outside Brisbane.
But in the years since the murder and assault, Veronica's life and struggles have been overlooked in the quest to solve the mystery of the man accused of trying to kill her.
The disintegration of the glittering life of Lord and Lady Lucan
Richard John Bingham was the very definition of an English blue blood, blessed with a rakish charm, titles and an enormous inheritance.
The Eton-educated aristocrat was known for two things: his impressive moustache and astonishing wealth, the latter of which he used to indulge in the finer things in life — soft-top Aston Martins, thoroughbred racehorses and luxury power boats.
If John had been born with a silver spoon, then his early adulthood was a swim in rivers of gold.
After graduating from one of the most prestigious schools in Britain, the future earl completed his national service with the Coldstream Guards in Germany and walked into a job as a merchant banker.
"He wouldn't have known how to be poor," former Scotland Yard detective Roy Ranson wrote in his book, Looking for Lucan: The Final Verdict.
John Bingham had expensive tastes and nicknamed his power boat 'White Migrant'.
John was a regular on London's party scene in his 20s, earning the moniker "Lucky Lucan" after gambling his way into the Claremont set, a club of right-wing aristocrats who drank and participated in betting suppers held by millionaire bookmaker John Aspinall.
His taste for adventure and dogged pursuit of a playboy lifestyle once saw him considered for the role of James Bond.
But at 29 years old, John gave up his bachelorhood when he met 26-year-old model and former arts student Veronica Duncan.
She was staying with her sister and brother-in-law at their country house when she noticed the-then Lord Bingham, agreeing to date him despite her objections to his family's politics and gambling habit.
After a brief courtship, involving dinners and driving trips around the countryside, the seemingly happy and carefree pair announced their engagement on October 14, 1963.
"To marry a peer of the realm was a coup," Veronica later said.
The wedding was a splashy affair at Holy Trinity church in Brompton Road, with Princess Alice, who was Queen Victoria's granddaughter, in attendance.
Lord Lucan with his bride Veronica after their marriage in 1963.
John's family gifted the newlyweds a large sum of money, which was quickly spent settling his debts, as well as to purchase and renovate a mansion in London's wealthiest suburb, Belgravia.
Six weeks after the wedding, the couple inherited $4.3 million (250,000 pounds in 1964) and new titles after John's father died, making him the new Lord Lucan and his wife, Lady Veronica, countess of Lucan.
The newlyweds settled into married life and had three children — Frances, George and Camilla.
But behind the lush facade of their stately home in one of London's eminent postcodes, things were quickly beginning to fall apart.
Lucan had a penchant for placing risky bets, an obsession that quickly spiralled into an uncontrollable gambling addiction and the accumulation of mind boggling debts.
By the late 60s, the money he was funnelling into his high-stakes hobby was drying up.
It alarmed Veronica, who could do little more than watch from the "widow's bench", snubbed by her husband and the wives of the other gamblers, as their fortune was whittled away.
"[Lucan's] attitude and treatment towards me began to deteriorate, he began to ignore me, in fact, treat me as if I didn’t exist. He humiliated me in front of other people …," she later told police in a statement.
Life had not been kind to Lady Lucan, who didn't share her husband's passion for betting or the social club he frequented.
She had been under pressure to produce a son and heir and believed she suffered from post natal depression after the births of George and Camilla — a condition that was poorly understood at the time.
"I could have been [a] better [mother], perhaps I did stay in bed too often," Veronica told an ITV documentary.
Lucan's solution was to put her on anti-psychotic medication and spread rumours about his wife's deteriorating mental state.
His behaviour also escalated into physical violence, Veronica claimed, recalling that he would drug her with high doses of a sleeping agent so he could go out gambling.
The matter came to a head just before Christmas in 1972, when John called in doctors to deem Veronica mentally unfit and take her to hospital.
But when they found nothing wrong with her, he packed his bags and moved into an apartment nearby.
Did Lucan's obsession lead to murder?
Lucan was now free to gamble as much as he wanted, but family and friends say in the wake of the separation, he became obsessed with winning custody of his three children.
He moved into a five-bedroom house in a neighbouring street on the assumption it would be big enough to fit his family, and went to extreme lengths to get Frances, George and Camilla back.
"He came to the house and he was grinning, and I thought to myself, 'he's got something up his sleeve'," Veronica told ITV.
Lady Lucan was locked in a bitter custody battle with her husband before he disappeared.
John began stalking his wife's house and hiring private investigators to prove she was "unstable" and had "gone mad".
Then he applied for a court order to temporarily keep the children in his care until a hearing could be held to determine custody arrangements.
In court, Lucan presented secret recordings he had made of his wife insulting him after provoking her into an argument.
But the judge, Sir Stanley Rees — who was rather unimpressed by Lucan's character — ruled in Veronica's favour after an 11-day case in November 1973.
The countess was granted full custody, while the earl was allowed access to his children every other weekend.
The court battle set him back another 20,000 pounds, money he did not have.
As Lucan gambled more heavily than before in an attempt to recoup his losses, he racked up approximately 65,000 pounds of debt, and only became more preoccupied with his family after the case wrapped up.
His financial abuse and stalking grew worse, spiralling into petty behaviour that ranged from recorded phone conversations, to delayed payments to the milkman and the nannying agency so that Veronica had to get a job.
The Belgravia home soon became a revolving door of carers, until 29-year-old Sandra Rivett arrived at the house just 10 weeks before her murder.
At some point, Lucan became curious about the comings and goings of his children's governess.
"Daddy asked me when Sandra had her days off. I said her day off was Thursday," Lucan's daughter Frances later said.
But on Thursday, November 7, 1974, Sandra had cancelled her weekly date with her boyfriend in favour of a night at home.
At about 9pm, she was watching television with Veronica and Frances, and offered to go downstairs to make a cup of tea.
When Sandra didn't return after 20 minutes, Veronica searched through the house to find her, before hearing a noise in the basement.
As she made her way there, Veronica said she was hit four times, and when she screamed, a voice in the dark told her to "shut up".
Later, she told a police inquest she was horrified to recognise it as her husband's voice
"He thrust three gloved fingers down my throat and we started to fight," she said.
Veronica beat off her attacker, biting his fingers and grabbing his crotch until they both collapsed to the floor.
Lady Lucan was at home when a man broke in and murdered her children's nanny, Sandra, in Belgravia.
She tried to placate her husband so he wouldn't kill her and said he eventually admitted to murdering Sandra.
"He hustled me up the stairs to my bedroom on the second floor. Together, we looked at my injuries in the ensuite bathroom mirror," she said.
"I then lay down on the bed in the bedroom whilst he went back to the bathroom to get a cloth to clean up my face.
"I heard the noise of a tap running and realised that he would not be able to hear properly so seized my opportunity to escape."
The powerful friends suspected of helping Lucan escape
Hours after Sandra's murder, Lucan showed up at the house of his friends, Ian and Susan Maxwell-Scott, in Uckfield, about an hour away.
Ian was away, but Susan got out of bed to let her old friend inside.
He claimed that he had just come from the Belgravia house, and happened to be passing by when he saw through the blinds a man attacking his wife.
He told Susan he used his key to open the front door and ran in to help, only to discover his nanny dead and her assailant gone.
Susan Maxwell-Scott last saw Lucan at about 11.30pm on the day Sandra Rivett, his children's nanny, was murdered.
Apparently shaken by the ordeal, Lucan then called his mother and asked her to check in on his children before sitting down to recount his version of events in two letters to his brother-in-law, Bill Shand Kydd.
"When I interrupted the fight at Lower Belgrave St and the man left, Veronica accused me of having hired him," he wrote.
"I took her upstairs and sent Frances up to bed and tried to clean her up. She lay doggo for a bit and when I was in the bathroom, left the house.
"The circumstantial evidence against me is strong in that V [Veronica] will say it was all my doing. I will also lie doggo for a bit but I am only concerned for the children.
"If you can manage it I want them to live with you."
He claimed that his wife had demonstrated "her hatred for me in the past" and would do "anything to see me accused".
"For George and Frances to go through life knowing their father had stood in the dock for attempted murder would be too much," he wrote.
"When they are old enough to understand, explain to them the dream of paranoia, and look after them."
Satisfied with his letters, Lucan kissed Susan on the cheek and left the Maxwell-Scotts in his Ford Corshair.
He was never seen again.
The car he was driving was found soaked in blood and abandoned outside Newhaven.
Susan told police she believed Lucan would go to the authorities and straighten things out.
But she was suspected of knowing more than she let on.
Other members of the so-called 'Clermont set' who gambled with Lucan were also left under a cloud of suspicion in the wake of his disappearance.
Some believed they had helped their friend flee to other parts of the world, to Africa, Scotland or New Zealand.
"From an early stage it was known that private detectives have been employed by Lord Lucan's friends to enquire into the background and boyfriends of [Sandra Rivett] and to discredit the evidence of Lady Lucan," said a police report obtained by the Daily Mail decades later.
After her husband's disappearance, Veronica Lucan attended the High Court to discuss the future of her three children on November 15, 1974.
"It is also believed that a barrister has been retained by these friends to represent the Earl."
A prominent member of the group, Sir James Michael Goldsmith, apparently sat down to lunch with a few others the day after the murder to discuss the British peer's situation.
In an article for British magazine Private Eye, the tycoon was said to have been among the circle of friends who had not been helpful in the police investigation.
But Goldsmith sued for libel, arguing the journalist had claimed he committed a criminal offence and won a partial victory.
In June 1975, an inquest was conducted into Sandra's death, and the jury concluded she had been murdered by Lucan.
For the next 50 years, however, wild theories spread about Lucan's fate.
"He could be in this country, he could be anywhere. I just don't know," Mr Ranson, who was working on the case, claimed during his investigation.
At one point, rumours surfaced that he was living in Melbourne, but when police went to visit the man in question, they discovered a British MP called John Stonehouse.
It turned out he had faked his own death so he could start a new life with his mistress on the other side of the world.
Another theory suggested shadowy underground financiers helped Lucan escape, but then decided he wasn't worth the risk, so they killed him and buried him in Switzerland.
There were countless sightings of Lucan in the Philippines, Hong Kong, Mexico, Australia and South Africa.
A folk musician in Goa called "Jungly Barry", a waiter in San Francisco and an expat living in the back of his van with a goat in New Zealand were among those mistaken for the missing lord in the desperate search for him.
In 2020, an elderly British Buddhist living in a commune in Brisbane was accused of being Lucan after a facial recognition expert claimed AI technology had found a match.
Police later confirmed it wasn't him.
For her part, Veronica said she believed her husband died by suicide soon after the murder of Sandra.
"He was not the sort of Englishman to cope abroad," she told the UK Telegraph in 2012.
"He likes England, he couldn't speak foreign languages and preferred English food. These are people making a fast buck. It's so obvious he's dead."
But what was forgotten in the mad search for Lucan was the woman he killed, Sandra, and his wife, Veronica.
The mysterious death of Veronica Lucan
Lady Lucan underwent surgery for wounds suffered during the assault in her home, as investigators searched far and wide for her husband.
She was re-granted custody of her children in a special court case but they were later fostered by her brother and sister-in-law after she developed an addiction to anti-depressants.
"I think one day Camilla said 'I don't think daddy is coming back,'" Veronica recalled.
"I think I just said 'no, I don't think he's coming back'. But nothing more than that … she obviously did miss him."
The dowager countess died in 2017 after she was found by police on the dining room floor of her home. A friend had tipped authorities off after failing to see Veronica on her regular walk in the park.
Lady Lucan's children described her as an intelligent and brave woman.
An inquest into the circumstances of her death was told she had died from a cocktail of drink and drugs after diagnosing herself with Parkinson's disease.
She had been estranged from her children for three decades and left her wealth to a homeless shelter.
On her passing, Frances, George and Camilla described Lady Lucan as an intelligent and brave woman.
"Although Veronica severed relations with her family in the 1980s, and continued to decline contact with them right up until her death, all of them remember her lovingly and with admiration," her family said in a statement.
"She had a sharp mind, and when she spoke it, she did so eloquently. She was courageous and, at times, outrageous, with a mischievous sense of humour.
"She was, in her day, beautiful and throughout her life fragile and vulnerable, struggling as she did with mental infirmity. To us, she was and is unforgettable."
As for Sandra, her legacy lives on through her son Neil Berriman.
He was 40 years old when he discovered the nanny murdered by Lucan had given him up for adoption at birth.
He has spent decades searching for her killer and lives in hope justice will be delivered.
"My mission is to keep my mother's memory very much alive and to seek justice," he wrote on a website devoted to the case.
"She is not 'just the nanny', she is a victim of violent crime who became secondary because her killer was a lord, a lord who was protected and who vanished abroad with the aid of his rich and powerful friends rather than face justice."
Veronica and John's son, George Bingham, is now the eighth earl of Lucan after succeeding in a court battle to reclaim the title in 2016.
"To hear that your father is racist, a snob, a poster boy for the aristocracy in the '70s didn't sit very well with the rather charming, rather lovely and kind man that I knew," he recalled in later years.
"Nevertheless, people, if they leave a party early, get to be speculated about, don't they?"
By：ABC(责任编辑：admin)
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