The Lucan murder

SIR – In 1988, I had occasion to interview the late Lady Lucan (Obituaries, September 28) when I was a reporter at London Broadcasting. She had accepted an invitation to appear on our late-evening hour-long phone-in after a book had appeared claiming her husband was “not guilty”. The author of the book had never even met Lady Lucan and declined an invitation to appear with her.

After the programme, I took her into a side studio and recorded a shorter interview for the morning. The pleasant lady I met was, though inevitably a bit nervous, fully in possession of her faculties and gave no impression that there was anything awry with her account of events.

She had quite voluntarily agreed to submit to an hour of interrogation by listeners in addition to my interview. Had she anything to hide, I think it most unlikely she would have agreed to all this.

Rodney Bennett

Richmond, Surrey

SIR – What induced your obituarist to say that “the only real mystery unexplored is why the highly strung Lady Lucan herself was never considered a suspect” in the murder of her children’s nanny, Sandra Rivett?

What would have been her motive? Why was the murder weapon found in her husband’s abandoned car? Why should he have disappeared if she were the murderer? Who inflicted the wounds she suffered that night? Why would she have rushed to her local pub to report the murder if she were the murderer?

David Elstein

London SW15