| The Right Honourable The Earl of Lucan |
|
|---|---|
| Born | Richard John Bingham 18 December 1934 |
| Disappeared | 8 November 1974 (aged 39) |
| Status | Presumed dead in chambers 11 December 1992 Declared dead in absentia October 1999 |
| Nationality | British |
| Education | Eton College |
| Occupation | Coldstream Guards officer |
| Known for | Murder of Sandra Rivett, subsequent disappearance |
| Title | Lord Lucan, 7th Earl of Lucan |
| Spouse | Lady Lucan (née Veronica Mary Duncan) |
| Children | Three |
| Parents | George Bingham, 6th Earl of Lucan, Kaitilin Elizabeth Anne (née Dawson) |
Richard John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan (born 18 December 1934[1]), 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.[2] He was presumed deceased in chambers on 11 December 1992[3] and declared legally dead in October 1999.[4]
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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 peer, his father supported the Labour Party in the House of Lords. He had two sisters and one brother.[1] He was educated at Eton College[5][6] and served as lieutenant in the prestigious Coldstream Guards.[1] 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).[1]
On 21 January 1964 Bingham's father died and he succeeded to the earldom.[1]
In early 1973, Lucan and his wife separated; the three children lived with their mother in London's wealthy Belgravia neighbourhood. In September 1974, Lady Lucan engaged Sandra Eleanor Rivett (born 16 September 1945) as a nanny for the children.
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.
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 Mastermind 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 did not know how much reliance he could place on it.
At around 10pm, Lucan's friend Madeleine Florman, who lived nearby in Chester Square, 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.
Lucan drove 42 miles to the house of Ian and Susan Maxwell-Scott, his friends in Uckfield, East Sussex. He drove a Ford Corsair he had borrowed from Michael Stoop, a gambling friend,[7] 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 'Lord Lucan Africa a new beginning' 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.
The following Monday, 11 November 1974, the Ford Corsair was found abandoned on the south coast in Newhaven. 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.
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, 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.[8] 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.[9]
In October 2004, the Metropolitan Police Service 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.[10]
The review, codenamed Operation Habberton, was led by Detective Superintendent Lewis Benjamin of Scotland Yard.[11] Benjamin said that he believed Lucan was helped by friends to escape from Britain and began a secret life abroad.[12] 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 an article published in ES Magazine 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.[2]
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.[2]
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.
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 Australia 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.[13][14]
During the 1990s Lucan was allegedly sighted in South Africa. In 2007, the Daily Mail suggested this was a mistaken identity of a man nicknamed Johannesburg Jeff (aka James Chilton).
During a 1990 interview, John Aspinall 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.[15]
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.[16]
In September 2003, a book titled Dead Lucky: Lord Lucan, The Final Truth,[17] written by Duncan MacLaughlin, a former Scotland Yard detective, claimed to have solved the mystery of Lucan's disappearance.[13] 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".[13]
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[18] (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.
In August 2007, the Auckland-based New Zealand Herald 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 could not 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.[14]
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 Bingham, 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.[4]
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.
Lord Lucan's disappearance has become a part of popular culture. Significant references include:
| Peerage of Ireland | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by George Charles Patrick Bingham |
Earl of Lucan 1964 – unknown year |
Status of title uncertain |