A 40-YEAR MYSTERY
Lady Lucan breaks her silence
It’s the missing person case that has intrigued Britain for more than 40 years. Aristocrat Lord Lucan disappeared in 1974 after bludgeoning his children’s nanny to death and attacking his wife, and hasn’t been seen since.
Theories have abounded about what happened to him – and it was even claimed a few years back that he was living in a car in New Zealand.
Now his wife Veronica, Lady Lucan, has spoken in detail for the first time about what happened the night her husband murdered nanny Sandra Rivett, tried to kill her and then vanished into thin air.
In a TV documentary, Lord Lu can: My Husband, The Truth, Veronica (79) described how she fought for her life as her husband – also known as John Bingham – hit her with lead piping and then tried to strangle her.
“I said, ‘Please don’t kill me, John,’ and then I asked, ‘Where’s Sandra?’ and he said, ‘She’s dead, don’t look.’”
Veronica and John, who had three children together, had separated two years earlier and had been through a bitter custody battle. A professional gambler, John had racked up huge debts, despite being known as “Lucky” Lucan.
On the evening of Thursday November 7, Sandra (then 29) went down to the basement kitchen of the London house where Veronica lived with the children to make a cup of tea for her boss, and was repeatedly bashed around the head with a lead pipe.
It’s thought that John mistook Sandra, who did not normally work on Thursday nights, for his wife. When Veronica went to see where Sandra was, John attacked her on the staircase.
“I screamed and my husband put three gloved fingers down my throat to stop me screaming, and we started to fight,” she says in the documentary. After unsuccessfully trying to push her down the stairs, he then attempted to strangle her but she stopped him by grabbing his genitals. She then tried to talk him out of killing her.
“When your life is in danger, you’ll try and play on his psychology,” she says. “I tried to placate him. I said, ‘What shall we do with the body? Sandra has few friends, no-one will miss her. And I can stay in the house until my wounds have healed.’”
John bundled Veronica upstairs to a bedroom and tried to get her to take some sleeping pills. “Presumably, he was hoping that I would go to sleep and – well, I don’t know if this is true – that he’d be able to put a pillow over my head and smother me.”
When John went to a bathroom to get a face cloth to clean Veronica’s blood-streaked face, she ran from the house to a nearby pub to raise the alarm.
John then fled, and shortly afterwards phoned his mother, telling her he’d driven past the family home and seen his wife fighting with a man in the basement.
He then drove 70km to the home of his friend Susan Maxwell-Scott and told her the same story about seeing a man attacking Veronica. He said when she ran out of the house shouting, “Murder!” he panicked, realising it looked bad for him, and fled.
While at Susan’s house, he wrote two letters to his brother-in-law Bill Shand Kydd, repeating the story and saying he was going to “lie doggo for a bit”. Then he drove away and was never seen again.
His car was found parked near a harbour and many people – Veronica included – believe Lord Lucan then committed suicide.
“I would say he got on the ferry and jumped off in the middle of the channel in the way of the propellers so his remains wouldn’t be found,” says Veronica.
Others, however, have come up with a variety of theories, including that John
– who was declared dead in 1999 – was smuggled out of
Britain to Europe or Africa by his wealthy and influential friends.
According to another theory, those friends then had Lord Lucan killed because they didn’t want to get caught up in the scandal.
In 2007, a homeless Englishman living in a car on the outskirts of Marton in New Zealand was investigated after suspicions were raised that he was Lord Lucan. But that idea was quickly debunked.
Back in the UK, Veronica suffered severe depression after the attack and was unable to look after her children. Frances (now 52), George (49) and Camilla
(46) went to live with Bill Shand Kydd, and haven’t spoken to their mother for 35 years.
Asked if she has any regrets, Veronica replies, “I am deeply sad that my marriage caused Sandra Rivett to die. I am very sorry about that. But I cannot alter it, except not to forget about her – and I don’t forget about her.”