Lord Lucan ‘f led on blacked-out boat day after nanny’s murder’
FRESH evidence has emerged that Lord Lucan could have slipped out of Britain on a blackedout boat under cover of darkness.
It has been known for almost half a century that the fugitive aristocrat, who was wanted for the murder of his children’s nanny at his London home, drove to the Newhaven harbour on the south coast, before disappearing without trace.
Previous reports have said there was no record of a vessel leaving the East Sussex port on the night in 1974 when Lucan’s car was found nearby.
But a local councillor who has kept his secret for decades has now revealed that the harbour’s watchman – his late father-inlaw – saw an ‘unlit boat’ leaving the harbour before sunrise.
It is a new indication that, far from killing himself as believed, the Old Etonian peer may have fled for a new life overseas, as some have suspected.
The new evidence comes from Graham Amy, a former mayor of Newhaven. Mr Amy says his father-in-law Sid Clark insisted he had noted the mysterious departure of a blacked-out boat in his log and told police but claimed the page was later ripped out. Mr Amy, 72, a Lib Dem member of Lewes Town Council, said: ‘On the same night that Lucan’s car was found, an unlit boat left Newhaven harbour.
‘ It was logged and it was reported to the police, but the page was torn out – by the police, I think – and there’s been no mention since.’
He went on: ‘My late father-inlaw was the watchman in the harbour in the west pier lighthouse and he was there the same night the car was found.
‘He told me about the boat when it came out that Lucan had been to Newhaven.’
Mr Amy added that his family had soon put two and two together because at the time he lived in Norman Road, Newhaven, minutes from the harbour.
It was on this street that police found the Ford Corsair which Lucan had used to flee London.
It was apparently parked some time between 5am and 8am on November 8, the morning after the murder.
Mr Amy was at the centre of the initial police operation, with police watching the car from his home to see if Lucan returned.
Last week the Daily Mail revealed police found three Cluedo cards in the car – Colonel Mustard, the lead piping and the hall.
Those cards were missing from a set of the game at Lucan’s former marital home in London, where his estranged wife Lady Lucan had been beaten and nanny Sandra Rivett, 29, was found battered to death.
The murder took place close to the hallway, apparently with lead piping found in 39-year-old Lucan’s borrowed Ford Corsair. He also bore a striking resemblance to the Cluedo character Colonel Mustard.
Friends say Lucan, a professional gambler, killed himself by jumping off a Channel ferry that had left from Newhaven.
But in one of the two bloodstained letters claimed to have been sent by Lucan after the murder, he said he was planning to ‘lie doggo for a bit’.
Mr Clark died aged 65 in 1980. The lighthouse from which he saw the unlit boat leaving in 1974 was demolished two years later.