Лорд Лукан: История аристократа и загадочного убийцы.

British peer and missing murder suspect

Richard John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan (born 18 December 1934 – disappeared 8 November 1974, declared dead 3 February 2016), commonly known as Lord Lucan, was a British peer and an Anglo Irish aristocrat, the eldest son of George Bingham, 6th Earl of Lucan, and Kaitlin Dawson. He was the great great grandson of George Charles Bingham, 3rd Earl of Lucan, who led the disastrous Charge of the Light Brigade. An evacuee during the Second World War, Lucan returned to attend Eton College, and served with the Coldstream Guards in West Germany from 1953 to 1955. Having developed a taste for gambling, he played backgammon and bridge, and was an early member of the exclusive group of rich British gamblers at the Clermont Club. Lucan's losses often exceeded his winnings, yet he left his job at a London based merchant bank and became a professional gambler. He was known as Lord Bingham from April 1949 until January 1964, during his father's lifetime. Considered for the role of James Bond, Lucan was known for his expensive tastes; he raced power boats and drove an Aston Martin. In 1963, Lucan married Veronica Duncan, with whom he had three children. The couple moved home to 46 Lower Belgrave Street in Belgravia in 1967, paying £17,500 for the house. After the marriage collapsed in late 1972, he moved out to a nearby property. A bitter custody battle ensued, which Lucan eventually lost. Apparently obsessed with regaining custody of the children, Lucan began to spy on his wife and record their telephone conversations. This fixation, combined with mounting legal expenses and gambling losses, had a dramatic effect on Lucan's life and personal finances. On 7 November 1974, Sandra Rivett, the nanny of Lucan's children, was murdered in the Lucan family home. A wounded Lady Lucan burst into the Plumbers Arms saying she had been attacked by her husband and that he had admitted to killing Rivett. Lord Lucan had, by then, telephoned his mother, asking her to collect his children, and drove to visit a friend in Uckfield, East Sussex; to his mother and friend, he said he had intervened with an assailant attacking his wife. Lucan also penned a letter. Lucan was declared legally dead in 1999, and a death certificate issued in 2016 allowed his titles to be inherited by his son George. Lucan's involvement in Rivett's murder and his fate remain a subject of debate, various theories, and continuing research.

Richard John Bingham was born on 18 December 1934 at 19 Bentinck Street, Marylebone, London, the second child and elder son of George Bingham, 6th Earl of Lucan, an Anglo Irish peer, and his wife, Kaitlin Elizabeth Anne Dawson. A blood clot found in his mother's lung forced her to remain in a nursing home, so John, as he became known, was initially cared for by the family's nurserymaid, Lucy Sellers. Aged three years, John attended a pre prep school in Tite Street with his elder sister Jane. In 1939, with the Second World War approaching, the two were taken to the relative safety of Wales. While in the US, John and his siblings lived in grandeur and wanted for nothing, but on their return to England in February 1945 they were faced with the stark realities of wartime Britain. Rationing was still in force, their former home at Cheyne Walk had been bombed, and the family's house at 22 Eaton Square had had its windows blown out. Despite the family's noble ancestry, the 6th Earl and his wife were agnostics and socialists who preferred a more austere existence than that offered by Tucker, an extremely wealthy Christian. For a time, John suffered nightmares and was taken to a psychotherapist. As an adult he remained an agnostic, but ensured that his children attended Sunday school, preferring to give them a traditional childhood. At Eton College, John developed a taste for gambling. He supplemented his pocket money with income from bookmaking, placing his earnings into a "secret" bank account, and regularly left the school's grounds to attend horse races. According to his mother, John's academic record was "far from creditable", but he became captain of Roe's House before leaving in 1953 to undertake his National Service. He became a second lieutenant in his father's regiment, the Coldstream Guards, and was stationed mainly in Krefeld, West Germany. While there, he also became a keen poker player.

On leaving the British Army in 1954, Lucan joined William Brandt's Sons and Co., a London based merchant bank, on an annual salary of £500. Lucan became a regular gambler and an early member of John Aspinall's Clermont gaming club, located in Berkeley Square. Lucan often won at games of skill like backgammon and bridge, but he also accumulated huge losses. On one occasion Lucan lost £8,000, or about two thirds of the money he received annually from various family trusts. On another disastrous night at a casino he lost £10,000. His uncle by marriage, stockbroker John Bevan, helped him to pay that particular debt, and Lucan repaid his uncle two years later. A colleague had been promoted before him, leading Lucan to leave his job in protest, saying, "Why should I work in a bank, when I can earn a year's money in one single night at the tables?" Lucan travelled to the US, where he played golf, raced power boats, and drove his Aston Martin around the West Coast. He also visited his elder sister Jane and his former guardian, Marcia Tucker. On his return to England he moved out of his parents' home in St John's Wood and into a flat in Park Crescent.

Some months later Lucan moved again, to a larger rented flat in nearby Elizabeth Street. Despite an early attempt by his wife at reconciliation, by that point all Lucan wanted from the marriage was custody of his children. In an effort to demonstrate that Veronica was unfit to look after them, Lucan began to spy on his family (his car was regularly seen parked in Lower Belgrave Street), later employing private detectives to perform the same task. He also canvassed doctors, who explained that his wife had not "gone mad", but was suffering from depression and anxiety. Lucan told his friends that nobody would work for Veronica – she had sacked Jenkins, the children's long term nanny, in December 1972. Of the series of nannies employed in the house, one, 26 year old Stefanja Sawicka, was told by Veronica that Lucan had hit her with a cane and had, on one occasion, pushed her down the stairs. The countess apparently feared for her safety and told Sawicka not to be surprised "if he kills me one day." Sawicka's time at the Lucan household ended late in March 1973. While with two of the children near Grosvenor Place, she was confronted by Lucan and two private detectives. They told her that the children had been made wards of court and that she must release them into his custody, which she did. Frances was collected from school later in the day. Veronica applied to the court to have the children returned, but concerned about the case's complexity, the judge set a date for the hearing three months ahead, for June 1973. To defend herself against Lucan's claims about her mental state, Veronica booked herself a four day stay at the Priory Clinic in Roehampton. While it was acknowledged that she still required some psychiatric support, the doctors reported that there was no indication that she was mentally ill. Lucan's case depended upon Veronica being unable to care for the children, but at the hearing he was instead forced to defend his own behaviour toward her. After several weeks of witnesses and protracted arguments in camera, on the advice of his lawyers he conceded the case. Unimpressed by Lucan's character, Mr Justice Rees awarded custody to Veronica. The earl was allowed access every other weekend. Lucan again began to watch his wife's movements. He recorded some of their telephone conversations with a small Sony tape recorder and played excerpts to any friends prepared to listen; he also told themand his bank managerthat Veronica had been "spending money like water". Lucan continued to pay her £40 a week and may have cancelled their regular food order with Harrods. He delayed payment to the milkman andknowing that Veronica was required by the court to employ a live in nannythe childcare agency. With no income of her own, Veronica took a part time job in a local hospital. A temporary nanny, Elizabeth Murphy, was befriended by Lucan, who bought her drinks and asked her for information on his wife. He instructed his detective agency to investigate Murphy, looking for evidence that she was failing in her duty of care to his children. This they found; he dispensed with the detective agency's services when they presented him with bills amounting to several hundred pounds. Murphy was later hospitalised with cancer. Another temporary nanny, Christabel Martin, reported strange telephone calls to the house, some with heavy breathing and some from a man asking for non existent people. Following a series of temporary nannies, Sandra Rivett started work in late 1974.

Losing the court case proved devastating for Lucan. It had cost him an estimated £20,000, and by late 1974 his financial position was dire. As he drank more heavily and started chain smoking, his friends began to worry. In drunken conversations with some of them, including Aspinall and his mother Lady Osborne, Lucan discussed murdering his wife. Greville Howard later gave a statement to the police describing how Lucan had talked of how killing his wife might save him from bankruptcy, how her body might be disposed of in the Solent and how he "would never be caught". refn|This conversation, which Howard thought was "drunken rambling",

Lucan also applied to the discreet Edgware Trust. On request, he supplied details of his income, which was apparently around £12,000 a year from various family trusts. Lucan was required to provide a surety and received only £3,000 of the £5,000 he asked for. Much to their managers' consternation, his four bank accounts were overdrawn; Coutts, £2,841; Lloyds, £4,379; National Westminster, £1,290; Midland, £5,667. Even though by then he was playing for much lower stakes than had previously been the case, Lucan's gambling remained completely out of control. Taki Theodoracopulos, who recalled Lucan as a close friend for more than a decade, lent him £3,000 in cash three nights before the murder. Despite these problems, from late October 1974 Lucan's demeanour appeared to change for the better. His best man, John Wilbraham, remarked that Lucan's apparent obsession over regaining his children had diminished. While having dinner with his mother he cast aside talk of his family problems and turned instead to politics. On 6 November he met his uncle John Bevan, apparently in good spirits. Later that day he met 21 year old Charlotte Andrina Colquhoun, who said that "he seemed very happy, just his usual self, and there was nothing to suggest that he was worried or depressed". He also dined at the Clermont with racing driver Graham Hill. At the time, casinos could open only between 2:00 pm and 4:00 am, so Lucan often gambled into the early hours of the morning. He took tablets to deal with his insomnia and therefore usually awoke around lunchtime. On 7 November though, he broke routine and called his solicitor early in the morning, and at 10:30 am took a call from Colquhoun. They arranged to eat at the Clermont at about 3:00 pm, but Lucan failed to appear. Colquhoun drove past the Clermont and Ladbroke clubs, and past Elizabeth Street, but could not find Lucan's car anywhere. Lucan also failed to arrive for his 1:00 pm lunch appointment with artist Dominic Elwes and banker Daniel Meinertzhagen, again at the Clermont. At 4:00 pm Lucan called at a chemist's on Lower Belgrave Street, close to Veronica's home, and asked the pharmacist there to identify a small capsule. It turned out to be Limbitrol 5, a drug for the treatment of anxiety and depression. Lucan had apparently made several similar visits since he separated from his wife; he never told the pharmacist where he got the drugs. At 4:45 pm he called a friend, literary agent Michael Hicks Beach, and between 6:30 pm and 7:00 pm met with him at his flat on Elizabeth Street. Lucan wanted his help with an article on gambling he had been asked to write for an Oxford University magazine. Lucan drove Hicks Beach home at about 8:00 pm, not in his Mercedes Benz, but in "an old, dark, and scruffy Ford", possibly a Ford Corsair he borrowed from Michael Stoop several weeks earlier. At 8:30 pm he called the Clermont to check on a reservation for dinner with Greville Howard and friends. Howard had called him at 5:15 pm and asked if he wished to come to the theatre, but Lucan had declined and made the alternative suggestion to meet at the Clermont at 11:00 pm. He failed to arrive and did not answer his telephone when called. She worked for six months as an apprentice hairdresser before taking a job as a secretary in Croydon. After a failed romance, Sandra became a voluntary patient at a mental hospital near Redhill, Surrey, where she was treated for depression. She became engaged to a builder named John and took a job as a children's nanny for a doctor in Croydon. On 13 March 1964, she gave birth to a boy named Stephen, but, as her relationship with John was failing, she returned home to live with her parents and considered giving the baby up for adoption. Her parents took on the responsibility and adopted him in May 1965. Lady Lucan later claimed that after putting the younger children to bed, at about 8:55 pm Sandra asked her if she would like a cup of tea, before heading downstairs to the basement kitchen to make one. Wondering what had delayed her nanny when she did not come back, Lady Lucan descended from the first floor and called to Rivett from the top of the basement stairs when she was attacked. As she screamed for her life, her attacker told her to "shut up." Lady Lucan later claimed at that moment to have recognised her husband's voice. The two continued to fight; she bit his fingers, and when he threw her face down to the carpet, managed to turn around and squeeze his testicles, causing him to release his grip on her throat and give up the fight. When she asked where Rivett was, Lucan was at first evasive, but eventually admitted to having killed her. Terrified, Lady Lucan told him she could help him escape if only he would remain at the house for a few days, to allow her injuries to heal. Lucan walked upstairs and sent his daughter to bed, then went into one of the bedrooms. When Veronica entered to lie on the bed, he told her to put towels down first to avoid staining the bedding. Lucan asked her if she had any barbiturates and went to the bathroom to get a wet towel, supposedly to clean Veronica's face. Lady Lucan realised her husband would be unable to hear her from the bathroom and made her escape, running outside to a nearby public house, the Plumbers Arms. Bloodstains, which after forensic examination were found to be a mixture of blood groups A and B, were later discovered on her doorstep. Lucan certainly called his mother between 10:30 pm and 11:00 pm and asked her to collect the children from Lower Belgrave Street. According to the dowager countess, he spoke of a "terrible catastrophe" at his wife's home. He told her that he had been driving past the house when he saw Veronica fighting with a man in the basement. He had entered the property and found his wife screaming. The location from which Lucan made this call, and possibly the call to Florman, remains unknown. The police forced their way into Lady Lucan's home and discovered Rivett's body before his wife was taken by ambulance to St George's Hospital. Lucan drove the Ford Corsair 42 mile (68 km) to Uckfield, East Sussex, to visit his friends, the Maxwell Scotts. Susan Maxwell Scott's meeting with Lucan was his last confirmed sighting.

By the time Detective Chief Superintendent Roy Ranson arrived at Lower Belgrave Street early on 8 November, the divisional surgeon had pronounced Rivett dead, and forensic officers and photographers had been called to the property. Other than the front door, which the first two officers on the scene had kicked in, there was no sign of a forced entry. A bloodstained towel was found in Veronica's first floor bedroom. The area around the top of the basement staircase was heavily bloodstained. A bloodstained lead pipe lay on the floor. Pictures hanging from the staircase walls were askew and a metal banister rail was damaged. At the foot of the stairs, two cups and saucers lay in a pool of blood. Rivett's arm protruded from the canvas sack, which lay in a slowly expanding pool of blood. The light fitting at the bottom of the stairs was missing its bulb; one was noted nearby, on a chair. Blood was also found on various leaves in the adjoining rear garden. His passport was in a drawer and his blue Mercedes Benz parked outside, its engine cold and its battery flat. Ranson then visited Lady Lucan at St George's Hospital. Although heavily sedated, she was able to describe what had happened to her. A police officer was left to guard her should her assailant return. Rivett's body was taken to the mortuary, and a search was undertaken of all local basement areas and gardens, skips and open spaces. After removing her corpse from the canvas sack and beginning the post mortem examination, pathologist Keith Simpson told Ranson he was certain that Rivett had been killed before her body was placed in the sack, and that in his opinion the lead pipe found at the scene could be the murder weapon. Her estranged husband, Roger, had an alibi for the night concerned and was eliminated from police inquiries. Other male friends and boyfriends were questioned and discounted as suspects. Rivett's parents confirmed that she had a good working relationship with Lady Lucan and was extremely fond of the children. Meanwhile, Lucan had yet to make an appearance, and so his description was circulated to police forces across the country. Newspapers and television stations were told only that Lucan was wanted by the police for questioning. Hours earlier, Lucan had again called his mother, at about 12:30 am. He told her that he would be in touch later that day, but declined to speak with the police constable who had accompanied her to her flat; instead, he said he would call the police later that morning. Ranson discovered that Lucan had travelled to Uckfield when he was called by Ian Maxwell Scott, who told him that Lucan had arrived at his home a few hours after the murder and spoken with his wife, Susan. While there, the earl had written two letters to his brother in law, Bill Shand Kydd, and posted them to his London address. Maxwell Scott also called Shand Kydd at his country house near Leighton Buzzard and told him about the letters, prompting the latter to immediately drive to London to collect them. After reading them, and noting that they were bloodstained, he took them to Ranson. When asked why she did not immediately inform the police of Lucan's presence, Susan said she had not seen any newspapers or television news, or listened to any radio broadcasts, that might have warned her of the importance of his visit. Meanwhile, Lucan's children were taken by their aunt, Lady Sarah Gibbs, to her home in Guilsborough, Northamptonshire, where they would remain for several weeks. On the day Lady Lucan was discharged from hospital, a High Court hearing confirmed that the children could return to live with her. Repeated press intrusions later forced the family to move to a friend's home in Plymouth. The Ford Corsair that Lucan had been seen driving, and whose details had the previous day been circulated across the country, was found on 10 November in Norman Road, Newhaven, about 16 mile (26 km) from Uckfield. In its boot was a piece of lead pipe covered in surgical tape and a full bottle of vodka. The car was removed for forensic examination. Later statements from two witnesses suggest that it was parked there sometime between 5:00 am and 8:00 am on the morning of 8 November. Its owner, Michael Stoop, also received a letter from Lucan, delivered to his club, the St James's. However, Stoop threw the envelope away and it was therefore not possible to check its postmark to see from where it had been sent. Ranson suspected a suicide, but a thorough search of Newhaven Downs was judged impossible. A partial search was made using tracker dogs, but all that was found were the skeletal remains of a judge who had disappeared years earlier. Police divers searched the harbour, and a partial search using infrared photography was undertaken the following year, to no avail. A warrant for Lucan's arrest, to answer charges of murdering Sandra Rivett and attempting to murder his wife, was issued on 12 November. Descriptions of his appearance, already issued to police forces across the UK, were then issued to Interpol. The tape wrapped around both was similar, but those too could not be conclusively linked. The letters written to Kydd were stained with blood considered to be from both women. The letter to Stoop had no blood on it, but it was later proven that the paper it was written on had been torn from a writing pad found in the Corsair's boot. A meeting that day at the Clermont between Aspinall, Meinertzhagen, Kydd, Elwes, Charles Benson, and Stephen Raphael became the cause of much press speculation. Meinertzhagen and Raphael later insisted that the gathering was just a rational discussion between concerned friends, keen to share anything they knew about what had happened, but the relationship between the Metropolitan Police and Lucan's social circle was strained; some officers complained that an "Eton mafia" worked against them. Susan Maxwell Scott refused to add to her statement, and when Aspinall's mother, Lady Osborne, was asked if she could help locate Lucan's body, she replied, "The last I heard of him, he was being fed to the tigers at my son's zoo", prompting the police to search the house and the animal cages there. Police searched 14 country houses and estates, including Holkham Hall and Warwick Castle, to no avail. Amidst concerns expressed by the Labour MP Marcus Lipton that some people were "being a bit snooty" with the police, Benson wrote a letter to the editor of The Times asking him to either identify those people or "kindly withdraw his remarks". To its cost, the satirical magazine Private Eye accused Goldsmith of being at the Clermont meeting, when he was actually in Ireland. Elwes went to see Lady Lucan in hospital and was reportedly deeply shocked both by her appearance and her statement, "Who's the mad one now?" Elwes was apparently unhappy at some of the negative press coverage of the countess, and was later ostracised by his friends for his part in an article critical of Lucan, which appeared in The Sunday Times Magazine. He died by
suicide in September 1975. Rivett's case made headlines around the world. Within days of the murder, newspapers reported on Lady Lucan's statement to the police, with claims that she had pretended to collude with her husband to ensure her safety. In January 1975 Lady Lucan gave an exclusive interview to the Daily Express. She also appeared in a murder reconstruction in the same newspaper, complete with posed photographs taken inside the house.

The inquest into Sandra Rivett's death opened on 13 November 1974 and was led by the coroner for inner west London, Gavin Thurston. Two witnesses were called to the courtroom, which was packed with reporters; Roger Rivett, who confirmed that he had identified his wife's body, and the pathologist Keith Simpson, who confirmed that Rivett had died from being hit on the head with a blunt instrument. At Ranson's request, the hearing was then adjourned. Further adjournments were made on 11 December 1974 and 10 March 1975, before a full inquest was scheduled for 16 June 1975. The hearing began with introductions from various legal representatives, including a lawyer hired for Lucan by his mother. Thurston introduced the jury to the case and explained their duties. He had selected 33 witnesses to be called over the following few days, including Lady Lucan, who each day wore a dark coat and white headscarf. Thurston questioned her on her relationship with Lucan, her marriage, her financial affairs, her employment of Rivett and what had happened on the night of the attack. The dowager countess's Queen's Counsel attempted to ask Lady Lucan about the nature of their relationship or if she hated her husband, but Thurston ruled his line of questioning inadmissible. The landlord of the Plumbers Arms pub described how Lady Lucan had entered his bar covered "head to toe in blood" before she fell into "a state of shock". He claimed that she shouted, "Help me, help me, I've just escaped from being murdered!" and, "My children, my children, he's murdered my nanny!" Simpson outlined his post mortem examination, concluding that death was caused by "blunt head injuries" and "inhalation of blood". He confirmed that the lead pipe found at the scene was most likely responsible for Rivett's injuries; some, to the left eye and mouth, he thought more likely to have been caused by punches from a clenched fist. The last person to confirm seeing Lucan alive, Susan Maxwell Scott, told the court that the earl looked "dishevelled", and his hair "a little ruffled". Once the hearing had ended, Thurston made a summary of the evidence presented and told the jury their options. At 11:45 am, their foreman announced "Murder by Lord Lucan". Lucan became the first member of the House of Lords to be named a murderer since 1760, when Laurence Shirley, 4th Earl Ferrers, was hanged for killing his bailiff. He was also the last person to be committed by a coroner to the Crown Court for unlawful killing; the coroner's power to do so was removed by the Criminal Law Act 1977. Rivett's body, which had been held for several weeks following the murder, was released to her family and cremated at Croydon crematorium on 18 December 1974. A police spokesman cited Lady Lucan's desire not to upset the family as a reason for her non attendance at the cremation.

Lucan's friends and family were critical of the inquest, which they felt offered a one sided view of events. His mother told reporters that it did not serve "any useful purpose at all". Veronica's sister, Christina, said that she felt "great sadness and sorrow" at the verdict. Susan Maxwell Scott continued to press the earl's claims of innocence and claimed to feel "awfully sorry" came only from the letters he authored and the people he spoke with soon after Rivett's murder. While his fingerprints were not found at the scene, his assertions make no provision for the lead pipe discovered in the boot of the Corsair, the claims by some that he discussed murdering his wife, or the lack of a viable suspect for the man he claimed to have seen fighting her. No sign of a forced entry was found, and officers attempting to demonstrate that Lucan could have seen into the basement kitchen, from the street, could only do so by stooping low to the pavement. The light in the basement of 46 Lower Belgrave Street was not working, making it even more difficult to see into the room; its lightbulb (which was tested and found to be in working order) was found removed from its holder and left lying on a chair. Furthermore, Lady Lucan claimed not to have entered the basement that night, contradicting the earl's version of events; his wife's account is supported by the forensic examination made of the blood splashes and stains around the property.

The 1994 alternative history TV film The Trial of Lord Lucan, starring Julian Wadham, depicts what may have happened if Lucan was arrested in Newhaven and stood trial. The 1998 film Bloodlines: Legacy of a Lord starring Richard Lintern, depicts theories regarding Lucan's involvement in the murder and fate. Producer Jeff Pope wrote the 2013 TV series Lucan, adapted from the John Pearson book The Gamblers, starring Rory Kinnear as Lucan and Catherine McCormack as Lady Lucan.