Dowager Countess of Lucan

Veronica, wife of the infamous John Bingham, Lord Lucan

Lady Lucan, a British aristocrat who survived a vicious 1974 attack by her husband that sparked a decades-long mystery, has died. She was 80.

London’s Metropolitan Police said officers were called to a house in the Belgravia neighbourhood “and found an 80-year-old woman unresponsive”. The death is being treated as unexplained but not suspicious.

Her husband, John Bingham, 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 near England’s south coast. Lucan was never seen in public again, and his body was never found.

In 1975, an inquest jury declared him to have been Rivett’s killer. Detectives believe the aristocrat intended to murder his wife and killed the nanny by mistake. His marriage to Lady Lucan had been described as “grimly unhappy”. The couple had three children.

The High Court declared Lord Lucan dead for probate purposes in 1999, but there have been scores of reported sightings around the world.

In a television documentary 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 ferryandjumpedoffinthemiddle of the Channel in the way of the propellers so that his remains wouldn’t be found,” she said, calling what she believed to be his final act “brave”.

A British court last year issued a “presumption of death” certificate for Lord Lucan, a ruling that cleared the way for the couple’s son, George Bingham, to become the 8th Earl of Lucan.