Lady Lucan dies decades after husband vanishes

Lady Lucan, an aristocrat who survived a vicious 1974 attack by her husband that sparked a decades-long mystery, has died.

The Metropolitan Police said officers were called to a house in London’s Belgravia “and found an 80-year-old woman unresponsive”.

“Although we await formal identification we are confident that the deceased is Lady Lucan,”whosenameisveronica Bingham, the force said.

Police said yesterday that the death is being treated as unexplained but not suspicious.

Her husband, John Bingham, the 7th Earl of Lucan, vanished after the body of nanny Sandra Rivett was found at the family’s London home on 7 November 1974. Lady Lucan was bludgeoned when she ran downstairs to investigate, but managed to escape and raise the alarm.

Lord Lucan’s bloodstained car was later found abandoned in East Sussex, but he was never successfully traced.

Lucan was never seen in public again, and his body was never found, leading to decades of fevered speculation about his whereabouts.

In 1975, an inquest jury declaredhimtohavebeenrivett’s killer. Detectives believe the aristocrat – an abusive husband and heavy gambler nicknamed “Lucky Lucan” – intended to murder his wife and killed the nanny by mistake.

0 Lady Lucan’s marriage was described as ‘grimly unhappy’

His marriage to Lady Lucan had been described as “grimly unhappy.”

The mystery of Lord Lucan’s disappearance still intrigues Britain. The High Court declared him dead for probate purposes in 1999, but there have been scores of reported sightings around the world, in countries including Australia, Ireland, South Africa and New Zealand.

Earlier this year, Lady Lucan said she believed Lord Lucan had jumped off a ferry shortly after the killing.

“I would say he got on the ferry and jumped off in the middle of the Channel in the way of the propellers so that his remains wouldn’t be found,” she said.