LORD LUCAN

Opening

On the night of Thursday 7 November 1974, Sandra Rivett, nanny to the children of John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan, was beaten to death with a length of lead pipe in the basement of the family home at 46 Lower Belgrave Street, Belgravia. Lucan's estranged wife, Veronica, was attacked on the stairs minutes later and escaped to a pub down the road.

Lucan drove through the night to friends in Sussex, left them in the early hours, and was never seen again. His borrowed car turned up at the port of Newhaven three days later. He has never been found, alive or dead, and he has never been tried.

Timeline

7 November 1974, eveningRivett, who had switched her usual Thursday night off, goes down to the basement kitchen to make tea and is killed. Veronica Lucan comes looking for her and is attacked.

About 9:50 p.mVeronica runs into the Plumbers Arms, covered in blood. She tells the landlord she has just escaped being murdered and that her husband has killed the nanny.

Between 10:30 and 11 p.mLucan phones his mother and speaks of a terrible catastrophe at the house.

About 11:30 p.mDriving a Ford Corsair borrowed from his friend Michael Stoop, Lucan arrives at the Uckfield home of Susan Maxwell-Scott, 42 miles away. He gives his version, that he interrupted an attack, and writes letters to his brother-in-law Bill Shand Kydd. He leaves in the early hours of 8 November.

10 NovemberThe Corsair is found in Norman Road, Newhaven. Inside is a length of lead pipe bound with surgical tape, like the one at the house, and bloodstains.

June 1975The inquest jury returns a verdict of murder by Lord Lucan.

27 October 1999The High Court declares him presumed dead for probate.

3 February 2016A death certificate is issued, and his son George becomes the 8th Earl.

26 September 2017Veronica, Countess of Lucan, dies by suicide.

Key figures

Sandra Rivett was the victim, and the case starts with her. Her son, Neil Berriman, has campaigned for decades for answers about her death.

Veronica Lucan was the surviving victim and the only witness to name her husband. She was in a bitter custody fight with him.

John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan, was a professional gambler deep in debt, known at the Clermont Club as "Lucky". Friends from that circle, including Susan Maxwell-Scott and Bill Shand Kydd, saw or heard from him after the killing.

Physical and documentary trail

The sources: the crime scene, the two lead pipes, Veronica's statement, the testimony of Lucan's mother and the Maxwell-Scotts, the letters to Shand Kydd, the car at Newhaven, the inquest record, and the 1999 and 2016 legal rulings.

Still missing: Lucan. No body, no confirmed sighting, and no record of him crossing the Channel or boarding a boat.

Things you might not know

• It was the last inquest of its kind. Lucan was the first peer named as a murderer since Earl Ferrers in 1760. Soon afterwards the law was changed so that inquest juries could no longer name a killer.
• He was screen-tested for Bond. Lucan reportedly had an unsuccessful screen test for James Bond in the 1960s.
• Rivett wasn't meant to be home. Thursday was normally her night off. She had changed it that week.
• The car had a vodka bottle in it. Along with the second pipe, police found a bottle of vodka in the Corsair.
• The Australia sighting was wrong. In 2020 a documentary claimed Lucan was alive as a Buddhist in Australia. By April 2021 the man had been shown not to be him.

Competing explanations

Lucan killed Rivett by mistake and took his own life. The usual reading is that he meant to kill his wife, attacked the wrong woman in the dark, and later killed himself, perhaps at sea from Newhaven. Many of his friends believed this.

Lucan killed her and escaped. Friends with money helped him abroad. Decades of sightings, mostly in Africa, have never produced him.

Lucan was innocent. His own account, given that night and in the letters, was that he saw a man attacking his wife through the basement window and went in to help. No such man was ever traced.

Later life of the case

Lucan is one of Britain's most famous missing persons, the subject of books, dramas and endless claimed sightings. The 2016 death certificate settled the title, not the case.

Finding

An inquest found that Lucan murdered Sandra Rivett, and the evidence points strongly that way: his wife's account, the matching pipe in the car he was driving, and his own flight. He was never tried, so that has never been tested in a criminal court.

What still will not resolve: what happened to Lucan after he left Uckfield in the early hours of 8 November 1974.