Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Ver missing peer to his grave?
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’.” Aspinall and his confidants explained that he needed to vanish without a trace - a move which would delay probate on his estate for at least seven years - by which time his children would be old enough to handle their financial affairs. Dismissing smuggling him out of the UK as he was “not cut out for a life on the run”, a pistol was placed in front of Lucan. The fugitive, the story goes, then walked into the next room at the Kent mansion and shot himself. His body was then fed to a tiger called Zorra.
It wasn’t the first time the police had heard the theory. Possibly somewhat tongue-incheek, Lady Osborne - Aspinall’s mother - had once told them: “The last I heard of him, he was being fed to the tigers at my son’s zoo.”
When police visited Howletts, Aspinall is said to have responded: “My tigers are only fed the choicest cuts - do you really think they’re going to eat stringy old Lucky?” However, according to a former secretary of Aspinall, Shirley Robey, the old Clermont gang knew far more than they ever let on.
She worked for one of Aspinall’s casinos from 1979 to 1985 and claims she was privy to confidential meetings about the Lord’s whereabouts. Tasked with taking notes, she sat in on conversations between Aspinall and the billionaire James Goldsmith - one of the Clermont set - as they apparently discussed flying Lucan’s two children to the Gabon in order for their father to see them, secretly, from a distance. According to Ms Robey, Aspinall had told Goldsmith in the meeting: “It won’t be a problem. They won’t recognise him, he won’t make himself known to them, nobody will be aware of that.”
She added: “Mr Aspinall was pleased with it.”
Both Lady Lucan and her eldest son deny the trip to Africa ever took place.
Ms Robey added that Aspinall had also revealed a code which would reveal when the fugitive had died on the run.
She claimed that as long as Aspinall publicly stated Lucan was guilty of murder and had committed suicide immediately after the crime, she would know he was still alive.
She explained: “He told me that there would come a time when Lord Lucan would pass away and at that point he would give a message through the press and I would know that it was OK to speak.”
In his final interview, before his death in 2000, Aspinall continued to maintain the same line - which Robey takes to believe that Lucan was still alive in 2000.
She added: “He had certainly made it clear to me that he believed Lucan was innocent of whatever he was accused of. He just agreed wholeheartedly, as did Sir James Goldsmith, to stand by him and support him. I think he genuinely believed a mistake had been made, he was innocent, and he was doing the best he could to help him.”
Aspinall himself perhaps gave a little more away than he wanted in an interview to the Independent on Sunday in 1990 when he tantalisingly revealed of Lucan “I’m more of a friend of his after that [the murder] than I was”, before quickly adding “though I haven’t seen him - because if he wanted me to do something, I’d do it for him. Because he needs one and, like everyone else in life, I like to be needed. What’s the use of a friend who, because you make one mistake, suddenly... I don’t believe in that.” Another theory, apparently sourced from those close to Aspinall and the Clermont set, came from the author Peter James. He claimed they had arranged a private jet and flown Lucan to Switzerland where he was hidden in a chateau. But the plan unravelled when they became increasingly anxious their role in his disappearance could drag them all down with his increasing insistence he contact his children.
He claims he was told: “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 2003, a book was published which suggested Lucan had lived out his final years in Goa and had been using the name Jungle Barry. This, however, was dispelled as nonsense by friends of the man pictured who claimed he was, in fact, a former busker from Lancashire, Barry Halpin, who left the UK in the 1970s to “hit the hippy trail”. And as if to demonstrate the Lord Lucan story continues to fascinate all these years later, the son of the murdered Sandra Rivett earlier this year sensationally claimed he had finally uncovered evidence to point to Lucan living in Australia. Apparently now 85, Neil Berriman said he had tracked Lucan down and that he now lives as a Buddhist and is currently housebound as he awaits a major operation.
He said it was just one of “six” identities the fugitive has assumed since disappearing all those years ago. Mr Berriman, who was adopted following his mother’s death and only discovered his true identity in 2008, told a national newspaper: “Lucan is a deceitful conman and he is the man who murdered my mother. “There is absolutely no doubt in my mind he escaped that night, with the help of friends who helped him get across the Channel and get a new passport, and incredibly he is still alive. “He has been alive all this time. Lying about who he is. Lying about it to his new friends. “They are fully aware he is a mystery elderly Englishman and not who he is claiming to be.”
The Met Police, who insist the case remains ‘open’, say they are following up on the claims. Lady Lucan, who survived the attack, died after taking a “cocktail of drink and drugs” three years ago at the home where she had survived the attack from her husband. She had convinced herself she was suffering from Parkinson’s Disease. She was 80. George Bingham, the killer’s eldest son, is now 52. He says he remains “very sceptical” about the latest claims his father was found in Australia. Adding: “My father has been found many times over the years only to be wrong.”
The reality, of course, is that there is every chance we will never know the truth of what happened to Lord Lucan after that last sighting in Uckfield in November 1974.
And potentially the only man who could have provided the answers is now buried within the grounds of Howletts - within sight of the magnificent mansion which sits at the heart of what has now become one of the county’s premier attractions. Following John Aspinall’s passing from cancer in 2000, at the age of 74, it may prove to be the final resting place of the only man thought to be able to shed any light on the mystery. But, then again, perhaps it is simply as Aspinall himself described it: “Lucan was very skilled at motor-boat racing, and I think he had a boat there at Newhaven, where his car was found, and I think he jumped into one of his little motor boats, went out to sea, put a big weight round his body and jumped overboard. And scuttled the boat. That’s what happened.”
‘Aspinall and his friends panicked and thought they were done for. They had him bumped off in Switzerland, Mafiastyle, and the body buried’