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The sudden disappearance of Lord “Lucky” Lucan, accused of murdering his children’s nanny in 1974, has captivated media outlets all over the world for decades. Every so often a story surfaces that the missing Earl has at last been found, but each time a solution to the mystery of his fate remains stubbornly, tantalizingly, out of reach.
“He really wanted to be rich.
To do the lovely things of life.”
Jane Griffin, Lord Lucan’s sister
At around 9:45pm on November 8, 1974, a wide-eyed woman spattered with blood flung open the door of the Plumbers Arms pub at 14, Lower Belgrave Street, Belgravia, London. With one hand partly covering a large gash on her head, she screamed, “Help me, help me, I’ve just escaped being murdered! My children, my children, he’s murdered my nanny!” The nanny was 29-year-old Sandra Rivett, and the terrified woman was Lady Veronica Lucan. Since that cold and misty night, police forces across the nation have been attempting to track down the alleged killer, her husband, Lord Lucan.
Richard John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan, commonly known as John, was born into an Anglo-Irish aristocratic family in Marylebone, a wealthy area in the West End of London, on December 8, 1934. John was the second child and oldest son of George Bingham, 6th Earl of Lucan, and Kaitlin Dawson. John’s father was the descendant of George Bingham, 3rd Earl of Lucan, who gave the order for the Charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War. As World War II was approaching, John and his siblings, Jane, Sally, and Hugh, were sent to the safety of Toronto, Canada, and then Mount Kisco, New York. “It was a very quick decision that was made in England, and they had apparently 48 hours to decide, my parents, whether they would accept the berths that were available on the ship,” said John’s elder sister, Jane.11 They remained there for five years with the Brady Tuckers, one of the richest families in the United States.
The Brady Tuckers had made their wealth in finance at the end of the 19th century; they spent their winters on New York’s Park Avenue, their summers on the beaches of Florida or on their estate at Mount Kisco.
According to Jane, when John was growing up, he was unusually restless and troubled, perhaps owing to his childhood upheavals. After his father inherited the earldom, John was sent to prestigious Eton College. “They thought that Eton would give him the extra attention needed—because he was showing signs, and I’m not sure what those signs were, of needing extra help. Not academically, but psychologically,” said Jane. “I’m no psychiatrist but I think it well could have been to do with the separation from home at a young age, because I know for a fact that he was very, very unhappy.” John seemingly thrived at Eton. It was here that he first acquired a taste for gambling and frequently bet on the dogs and horses at the nearby Windsor racecourse. “He really wanted to be rich. To do the lovely things of life,” said Jane.
After leaving Eton in 1953, Lord John Bingham spent his two years of national service with the Coldstream Guards, the oldest regiment in the British army in continuous active service, in West Germany. His father, George, had been a distinguished Guards officer in World War II and had won the Military Cross. Lord Bingham spent most of his army career skiing on the slopes of the Swiss Alps or playing poker with fellow officers. Once back in London, Bingham seemingly settled easily into civilian life, joining the merchant bank William Brandt’s Sons & Co. Over time, he became a skillful and experienced card player. After winning £26,000 at chemin de fer, a variety of baccarat, Bingham quit his lucrative position as a merchant banker to become a professional gambler. To his gambling buddies he was known as “Lucky Lucan” for his high-stakes gambling.
Lord Bingham became an early member of the exclusive Clermont Set, a group of high-stakes gamblers that met frequently at the Clermont Club, a London establishment that prided itself on its A-list membership. Founded in 1962 by gambler, businessman, and future zoo owner John Aspinall, the original crowd included five dukes, five marquesses, 20 earls, and two cabinet ministers. Among the movers and shakers who could be spotted at the club on any given night were Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond; the Hollywood star Peter Sellers; and the artist Lucien Freud. Lucan became a popular figure in London society, known for his dashing good looks, prowess at gambling, and fondness for vodka martinis. He was even considered for the movie role of James Bond at one point.
In 1963, after a six-month courtship, Lord Bingham married Veronica Duncan, the daughter of an army major from a middle-class background. “I was looking for a god,” she explained, “and he was a dream figure.” The couple went on to have three children: Frances, born in 1964—the year that Lord Bingham succeeded his father to the Lucan earldom—Camilla, born in 1970, and George, born in 1967. They settled into a lavish, Georgian-style home at 46, Lower Belgrave Street in the heart of London.
Although to his gambling friends Lord Lucan was known as “Lucky Lucan,” his losses often exceeded his winnings. Gambling also took a toll on his marriage. Veronica suffered postpartum depression after the birth of each of her children, and the couple’s marital difficulties were exacerbated when Lucan made her undergo psychiatric treatment. After running away from two psychiatric facilities, Veronica finally agreed to home visits and a course of antidepressant drugs.
Lucan subsequently began a campaign to brand Veronica mentally unstable, complaining to friends about her and claiming that she was violent.
Coinciding with his fast-disintegrating marriage, Lucan’s wealth was hit by the combination of a stock market crash and significant gambling losses. As his debts mounted, rifts in the marriage grew. Before long, Lord Lucan and Veronica were not only arguing about money, but also about how to raise their three children. By late 1972, Lucan had moved out of the family home to a bachelor apartment in Pimlico, just a quarter of a mile (0.4km) away.
In 1973, Lucan filed for custody of the children. In response, Veronica checked herself into the Priory Hospital in Roehampton, South West London, in order to prove that she was mentally fit and able to care for them herself. At the custody hearing, she testified that Lord Lucan was abusive and that he had tricked her into believing that she was mentally unstable in order to exert control over her—a phenomenon now known as gaslighting. The judge, Mr. Justice Rees, sided with Veronica and concluded that Lord Lucan was an arrogant liar who lived an outrageous lifestyle that was unsuitable for bringing up children. In July 1973, Veronica was duly awarded full custody.
Lucan was bitterly resentful that the law considered Veronica a fit mother. Over the next year, hoping to win custody from her, he embarked on a spying campaign, secretly recording their phone calls in hopes that she would lose her temper and he could claim she was mentally unstable. He employed detectives to watch Veronica’s every move and even made anonymous phone calls to her home.
November 7, 1974, was a gloomy, drizzly Thursday, typical of London in winter. That evening, Lord Lucan had planned a big dinner at the Clermont Club. The fact that he had successfully organized such an event was surprising because he owed the club £10,000 and his credit had been stopped by its new owners, the Playboy Club. They agreed to him holding the event there because it was good for business having such a respected and well-known figure frequenting their establishment. However, Lord Lucan never arrived for the scheduled dinner.
Around 9pm, Veronica was watching television with her eldest child, Frances—George and Camilla were already in bed—at the family home at Lower Belgrave Street. Sandra Rivett, the children’s nanny, usually took Thursdays off. However, on this particular Thursday she had asked Veronica whether she could work and take the following night off. It was Veronica’s habit to make herself a cup of tea around this time. As she was working, Rivett offered to go downstairs to the basement kitchen to make the tea while Veronica watched television. Twenty minutes passed and Rivett did not return, so Veronica decided to investigate. Standing at the top of the stairs, she heard a noise. “I walked toward the sound,” she recalled.22 As she called out to Rivett, somebody lunged out of the shadows and cracked her over the head. When she began to scream, the assailant yelled, “Shut up!”
Veronica later told police, “I recognized the man by his voice. It was my husband!”33
Unknown to Veronica, whoever had just attacked her had, moments earlier, murdered Sandra Rivett. As Rivett had entered the kitchen, she had been bludgeoned across the head several times with a lead pipe wrapped in tape. The attack was brutal and prolonged: Rivett’s skull was split in six different places. Her body was then stuffed into a canvas mail sack, which was later found in the passage at the bottom of the stairs. Her pale hand was protruding out of the top and blood was seeping onto the parquet floor.
After Veronica was attacked from behind, her assailant stuck several fingers down her throat in an attempt to strangle her as she lay on the kitchen floor. In that life-or-death moment, Veronica managed to grab her attacker’s testicles, causing him to release his grip. Veronica freed herself, got up off the floor, and turned—to see her husband standing before her. She told police that she asked him where Sandra Rivett was. At first, Lord Lucan claimed that she had gone out; then he confessed that he had “killed the nanny.”44
According to Veronica, she and her husband sat together in the kitchen for a few moments, out of breath. They then both went upstairs. Lucan told Frances—who was still watching television—to go to bed, while Veronica went into the bathroom. “We went together into the bedroom . . . and together we looked at my injuries,” Veronica said. “After we had done that, I think I said I don’t feel very well, and he laid a towel on the bed, and I got on it.” Veronica suggested to Lucan that he stay and take care of her for a few days. Once her injuries had healed, she would help him flee the country. They spoke for a few more minutes before Lucan went back into the bathroom to fetch a damp cloth to clean her face. “I heard the taps running and I jumped to my feet, out of the room, and down the stairs!” Veronica recalled.55 She tore out of the front door and ran for help at the Plumbers Arms pub, some 30 yards (27m) from the house.
Veronica was taken to St. George’s Hospital, Hyde Park, where she was treated for seven scalp wounds, cuts to the inside of her mouth, and shock. In time, she fully recovered from her physical injuries; however, the mental scars from her ordeal remained. Police issued a warrant for Lord Lucan’s arrest, but he was nowhere to be found.
After fleeing the family home, Lucan telephoned his mother between 10:30 and 11pm and detailed the “terrible catastrophe” that had occurred. He claimed that he had been driving past the house when he spotted, through the window, Veronica grappling with an intruder. Lucan said that he ran into the house and broke up the scuffle, allowing the alleged intruder to escape. He now feared that Veronica would accuse him of hiring the man to kill her. Lucan then drove to the country manor of a close friend, Ian Maxwell-Scott, in Uckfield, Sussex. Here, he wrote a somewhat cryptic, evasive letter to his wealthy brother-in-law, Bill Shand Kydd, that read:
“Dear Bill,
The most ghastly circumstances arose this evening, which I briefly described to my mother. While I interrupted the fight [Lucan refrained from explaining further] at Lower Belgrave St. and the man left Veronica accused me of having hired him. I took her upstairs and sent Frances up to bed and tried to clean her up. She lay doggo for a bit, and while I was in the bathroom left the house. The circumstantial evidence against me is strong in that V. will say that it was all my doing. I also will lie doggo for a bit but I am only concerned about the children. If you can manage it. I want them to live with you—Coutts (Trustees) St. Martin’s Lane (Mr. Wall) will handle school fees. V. has demonstrated her hatred for me in the past and would do anything to see me accused. For George & Frances to go through life knowing their father had stood in the dock for attempted murder will be too much. When they are old enough to understand, explain to them the dream of paranoia, and look after them.
After writing the letter, Lord Lucan left his friend’s home and drove off into the night.
In 1975, an inquest jury ruled that the person who killed Sandra Rivett and attacked Veronica was Lord Lucan. Despite what he had claimed in his letter to his brother-in-law, Veronica testified that there was no man in the house other than him. Detectives were also unable to find evidence of anybody else in the house. They added that it would be extremely unlikely for someone passing the house to be able to see a fight going on in the basement through the venetian blinds. Lord Lucan was charged in absentia: It was the first time in 200 years that a peer of the realm had been accused of murder.
In the aftermath, Veronica was shunned by her husband’s relatives and friends. She stunned the nation by saying that, despite the fact she believed the assailant that attacked her had been her husband, she still loved him. “My affections for him are as strong as they always have been.” 11
Lucan had left his affairs in a mess and Veronica was forced to sell the family home and a number of personal belongings to pay off his considerable debts. She once said that she believed that her husband was still alive and that she was fully expecting him to show up at her front door one day. She even said that she would help pay for his defense. Veronica later changed her opinion of her husband’s fate, saying that she believed he had drowned himself in the English Channel.
The most widely accepted theory is that Lord Lucan had been planning to murder Veronica that night, but mistakenly attacked Sandra Rivett. Veronica and Rivett were about the same size and build, and Veronica often allowed Rivett to borrow her clothes. A basement lightbulb had been unscrewed and placed on a chair, so Lord Lucan would not have realized he was attacking the wrong woman. According to the police, the attack on his wife was Lord Lucan’s final—and most desperate—gamble. Sandra Rivett’s murder was simply a tragic case of mistaken identity.
Eventually the two detectives that originally headed the search for Lord Lucan, Superintendent Roy Ranson and Chief Inspector David Gerring, both retired from the force. Ranson believed that Lord Lucan was lying dead at the bottom of the English Channel. “If he were still alive, I feel sure we’d have had some hard information about him by now.” Gerring, however, was sure that Lord Lucan had managed to flee the country. “I am convinced he is alive,” he said. “Somebody is sending him money . . . A job would give him away.”
The Lord Lucan case has become a staple of British criminal history, and theories as to what happened to him have abounded. To Lord Lucan’s friends and family, he was set up by his spiteful wife. They pointed out that when Veronica burst through the doors of the Plumbers Arms pub exclaiming that “he” had attacked her, she never elaborated on who “he” was. Some speculated that, if Lord Lucan had committed murder, he would have taken his own life as “the honorable thing to do.”77 Others within his circle believed that Lord Lucan, being a professional gambler, would have assessed the odds and taken a chance on keeping his freedom, even at the cost of never seeing his children again. They also claimed that his actions after the attack were not consistent with someone planning to kill themselves.
The day after the murder and attempted murder, Lord Lucan’s abandoned car was discovered near Newhaven, East Sussex. In the trunk of the car investigators found a length of lead pipe which appeared to be part of the same lead pipe found at the crime scene. They also found bloodstains—a mix of type A and type B. Significantly Veronica’s blood group was type A; Sandra Rivett’s was type B.
Police made an extensive search around the coast, cliffs, and caves in the Newhaven area, investigating the theory that Lord Lucan could have committed suicide. However, no body was discovered.
Detectives then focused on the theory that Lucan had fled abroad and assumed a new identity. At the time, there were two daily crossings between Newhaven and Dieppe, France. Police checked the country estates of all of Lord Lucan’s French friends, yet none claimed to have seen him. The theory that Lord Lucan fled the country was certainly plausible. He had numerous wealthy friends in powerful and influential positions who would have been willing to assist him. In the aftermath of his disappearance, his aristocratic circle clammed up in a kind of conspiracy of silence that only deepened the mystery. Scotland Yard called in Interpol, and police in 119 countries were put on alert. The case was front-page news.
The most popular theory remains that Lord Lucan escaped the UK and lived a life of anonymity, and there have been numerous supposed sightings of him across the world, from Ireland and France to India, Africa, New Zealand, and Australia. One claimed that Lord Lucan was living in a Land Rover in New Zealand with a pet possum named Redfern and a goat named Camilla. Another asserted that Lord Lucan, now known as “Jungle Barry,” was living a hippie lifestyle in India. In both cases, the men were ruled out from being Lord Lucan.88
In 1978, a burglary at Veronica’s home set tongues wagging. The only things stolen were a photograph album and negatives of the couple’s children. Had they been stolen, investigators wondered, to give solace to Lord Lucan in exile? The culprit was never caught.
One of the more lurid theories concerning Lord Lucan’s fate was presented by Philippe Marcq, a friend of Lord Lucan and a regular at the Clermont Club. According to Marcq, he was told by Stephen Raphael, another Clermont Club regular that, following the murder, Lord Lucan traveled to Howletts Wild Animal Park in Kent, privately owned by Lucan’s friend, John Aspinall (the park was not opened to the public until 1975). Lucan traveled there with a group of friends that included Raphael, and they discussed what Lord Lucan should do. According to Marcq: “They told him: ‘Look, it is absolutely terrible what happened. You are a murderer. You tried to kill your wife out of desperation for your children and so they would be free from her influence. But what you have done makes absolutely sure she will be in control of your children for years to come. You are a murderer and you are going to be in a cell for the next 30 years.’ ” Lucan was advised that he needed to vanish without trace and, according to Marcq, he shot himself in the head in a room at the zoo. His body was then fed to a tiger named Zorra.99
According to the crime novelist Peter James, speaking at the Harrogate Crime Festival in July 2016, Lord Lucan escaped to Switzerland with the help of wealthy friends. James said that, once in Switzerland, Lord Lucan repeatedly attempted to contact his children and, fearful that his actions would lead the authorities to them, his friends decided to kill him. James alleged that he had been in contact with Lord Lucan’s former circle, stating that, “One friend, most likely the late John Aspinall, told him, ‘You’re never going to see your kids again.’ Aspinall and his friends panicked and thought they were done for. They had him bumped off in Switzerland, Mafia-style, and the body buried.”
In the early 1980s, a witness on vacation in Africa told Detective Inspector Robert Polkinghorne, who was in charge of the case at the time, that he had seen Lord Lucan. However, despite the witness being thought credible, Scotland Yard refused funding for further investigations and the inquiry was discontinued.1010
Richard Wilmott, author of The Troops of Midian: Lucan’s Flight to Freedom, in 2002 added weight to rumors that Lord Lucan had sought refuge in Africa. Wilmott, who had been researching the case for more than 20 years, claimed that Lucan’s escape had been financed by several wealthy friends. Lucan was initially moved around the country from the Wellington Hotel in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, to the Crown Inn in the nearby village of Groombridge and from there to a safehouse in the Wiltshire Village of Fonthill Gifford. While hiding out there for a week, Lucan shaved off his mustache and bleached his hair. Then, using a phony passport provided to him by a former member of MI5, he boarded a flight to Athens from Heathrow airport. He traveled on to Crete and stayed at the remote Moni Kapsa monastery for several weeks before taking a boat to Africa. Wilmott claimed that his source for this information was James Gurney, a former MI5 agent. Gurney told Wilmott that he was a member of a right-wing “private army” known as the Troops of Midian—former government agents tasked to carry out “black ops” work for MI5, MI6, and even the CIA. “Everyone thought it was his wealthy chums that spirited him away, but it is just not possible to simply disappear without a trace. Normal people, even those overburdened with wealth, lack the ability to pull off such a trick. It takes the hands of professionals to disappear completely for 40 years, and that’s what he had,” said Wilmott.1111
Perhaps influenced by Wilmott’s research, Superintendent Ranson, who worked on the original investigation, would change his stance on what became of Lord Lucan. He had previously believed that Lucan committed suicide. He is now a proponent of the theory that Lucan successfully escaped to Africa and started anew.1212
In 2012, another player in the murder mystery finally broke her silence about the case after illness prompted her to review certain decisions she had made during her life. “Jill Findlay” (a pseudonym) was working as an assistant to John Aspinall at the time of the Rivett murder. She claimed that Aspinall instructed her to secretly send Lord Lucan’s two oldest children to Africa, once in 1979 and then again in 1980. “It was in Gabon, from what I understand, that their father would observe them and see them, which is what he wanted to do,” she recalled. “Just to see how they were growing up and look at them from a distance.” Lucan’s son, George, refuted this, stating that neither he nor his siblings had ever traveled to Africa.
In early 2020, Rivett’s son, Neil Berriman, claimed that Lord Lucan was alive and living as a Buddhist in Australia. Berriman had spent tens of thousands of pounds in his quest to find out what had happened to Lord Lucan after the murder of his mother. His private investigations led him to the door of an ailing Englishman in an unnamed Australian city. This Englishman, whom Berriman believes is Lord Lucan, is said to be seriously ill and awaiting surgery. Berriman maintains that Lord Lucan was living in Africa until 2002, but then emigrated to Australia. Berriman presented his findings to Scotland Yard, who said that they will be investigating the tip.1313
Lord Lucan was presumed dead in 1992; however, it was not until February 3, 2016, that his death certificate was issued, allowing his son to finally inherit the title 8th Earl of Lucan. In September the following year, 80-year-old Veronica was found dead in her London home. Police forced their way in after a friend reported not seeing her for several days. She was estranged from her sister, had five grandchildren that she had never met, and had lived alone for 40 years in a townhouse near where the crime had occurred. Cause of death was respiratory failure caused by barbiturates and alcohol poisoning. The coroner, Dr. Fiona Wilcox, recorded a verdict of suicide.1414
After her husband vanished, the lack of resolution in the case had haunted Veronica, pushing her to the brink of madness. She had lost custody of her children in 1982. On her website, ladylucan.co.uk, she wrote that her son had declared that he would find it “much more congenial to live as part of the family of his aunt and uncle.” Veronica did not attend the hearing nor did she apply for access. Veronica’s sister, Christina Shand Kydd and her husband Bill, were subsequently granted custody of George, Frances, and Camilla. As they developed into adults, they called into question her version of events.
Veronica spent her final years as a recluse, alone in a townhouse near where the crime had occurred. “I tried to commit suicide but it didn’t work. I’ve been celibate since the age of 35 and now I have no friends,” she said in a 1998 interview with the Independent newspaper. “Society has shunned me for my husband’s crime. I don’t care what happens anymore. I’m waiting to die—a nice heart attack would suit me fine.”1515 She left her £576,626 estate to the homelessness charity Shelter.1616
The “Case of the Vanishing Earl,” as it is sometimes known, shocked the British aristocracy to its foundations. For years, hardly a day went by without the name Lord Lucan appearing in British newspapers. With its glamorous aura of aristocratic excess, a dysfunctional marriage, a murder, and a disappearance, the saga captivated—and continues to captivate—the public imagination.