John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan
Richard John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan (born December 18 1934), commonly known as Lord Lucan, a British peer suspected of murder, disappeared without trace early on 8 November 1974.
Once considered for the role of James Bond, Lucan was a charismatic man with expensive tastes; he raced power boats and drove an Aston Martin. In 1963 he married Veronica Duncan, with whom he had three children.
When the marriage collapsed late in 1972, he moved out of the family home at 46 Lower Belgrave Street, in London's Belgravia, to a property nearby. A bitter custody battle ensued, which Lucan lost. He began to spy on his wife and to record their telephone conversations, apparently obsessed with regaining custody of the children. This fixation, combined with his gambling losses, had a dramatic effect on his life and personal finances.
On the evening of 7 November 1974, the children's nanny, Sandra Rivett, was bludgeoned to death in the basement of the Lucan family home. Lady Lucan was also attacked; she later identified Lucan as her assailant.
As the police began their murder investigation, Lucan telephoned his mother, asking her to collect the children, and then drove a borrowed Ford Corsair to a friend's house in Uckfield, East Sussex. Hours later, he left the property and was never seen again.
The Corsair was later found abandoned in Newhaven, its interior stained with blood and its boot containing a piece of bandaged lead pipe similar to one found at the crime scene. A warrant for Lucan's arrest was issued a few days later, and in his absence the inquest into Rivett's death named him as her murderer. With the passage of the Criminal Law Act of 1977, the inquest into Rivett's death marked the last occasion in Britain when a coroner's court was allowed to make such a determination.
Lucan's fate remains a fascinating mystery for the British public. Since Rivett's murder hundreds of reports of sightings of him have been made in various countries around the world, although none have been substantiated. Despite a police investigation and huge press interest, Lucan has not been found and is presumed dead.
As Lucan's bankruptcy proceeded, in August 1975 his creditors were informed that the missing earl had unsecured debts of £45,000 and preferential liabilities for £1,326. His assets were estimated at £22,632.The family silver was sold in March 1976 for around £30,000. What remained of his debts was repaid by the Lucan family trust in the years
The last confirmed sighting of Lucan was at about 1:15 am on 8 November 1974 as he exited the driveway of the Maxwell-Scott property, in his friend's Ford Corsair. Since then, his whereabouts and ultimate fate remain a mystery. Detective Chief Superintendent Roy Ranson initially claimed that Lucan had "done the honourable thing" and "fallen on his own sword", a view publicly repeated by many of Lucan's friends, including John Aspinall, who shortly before his death in 2000 said he believed the earl was guilty of Rivett's murder, and that his body lay "250 feet under the Channel". Veronica Lucan believes her husband killed himself "like the nobleman he was”
Ranson later changed his view, explaining that he considered it more likely that suicide was far from Lucan's thoughts, that a rumored drowning at sea was implausible and that the earl had moved to southern Africa.
Thirty years after the murder, the detective leading a new investigation into Lucan's disappearance told the Telegraph that "the evidence points towards the fact that Lord Lucan left the country and lived abroad for a number of years."
Lucan's brother, Hugh Bingham, told the Daily Mirror much the same thing in 2012.
Speaking to author John Pearson before she died, Susan Maxwell-Scott suggested that Lucan might have been helped out of the country by shadowy underground financiers, before being judged too great a risk and killed and buried in Switzerland. A similar theory was proposed by advertising executive Jeremy Scott, who was familiar with some of the Clermont Set.