John Bingham, the 7th Earl of Lucan, disappeared without trace in 1974
Around November 1974, Lord Lucan’s estranged wife won a custody battle of their three children, Lucan was in a huge amount of debt and had a history of domestic abuse. It is believed that he intended to murder his wide but ended up killing his children’s nanny instead.
On November 7th, 1974 Sarah Rivett the family nanny was bludgeoned (beaten with a heavy object or thick stick with a heavy end) in the basement of the family home in Belgravia. After killing Sarah Rivett, Lucan found Veronica and beat her repeatedly over the head with a lead piping and left her for dead. Although she was badly injured and bleeding badly, she staggered to the nearby Plumbers Arms pub on Lower Belgrave Street, calling for help, where she shared the news of Sarah Rivett’s murder.
The last sighting of Lord Lucan was at 1.15 am of November 8, 1974 when he exited the drive way of his friends Maxwell-Scott property, in his friend’s Ford Corsair. The same day detectives arrived at the family home where they find Sarah dead, they pronounced her dead at the scene. On November 13th the same year an inquest started into Sandra Rivett’s death opened by coroner for Inner West London, Dr Gavin Thurston. Lord Lucan had disappeared without any trace. The car he used was found abandoned on a residential street in Newhaven.
In August 1975, Lord Lucan’s creditors informed that he was in £45,000 of debt and his assets were estimated at £22,632. In March 1976, The Lucan family silver was sold for around £30,000.
It was not until 1999 until Lucan was declared dead, his family granted probate over his estate. He was declared dead by the High Court, but a dead certificate was not issued. Lord Lucan’s heir, George Bingham, Lord Bingham, refused permission to take his father’s title and seat in the House of Lords. There was still no trace of Lucan.
In October 2015, Lord Bingham applies under the Presumption of Death Act 2013 that had came into force in 2014 so he could inherit the title as eighth earl. In December 2015, it emerged that a new witness had come forward to claim the Lord had killed himself within hours of murdering the family nanny in 1974.
In February 2016, Lord Lucan is finally declared dead after a High Court judge grants his death certificate; his son insists the case is still a mystery and that his father is innocent.
There are many theories about what happened to Lord Lucan after he murdered the nanny, the most heard one is that he drowned himself. James Wilson, a close friend of Lucan, shared this theory and said how Lucan filled his pockets with stones before jumping off his boat and drowning himself in Newhaven Harbour. Wilson als9o claimed that Lucan had been planning to kill his wife for a long time and mentioned his murderous intentions to Wilson’s mother.
Another theory is he moved to Africa and lived in secret until 2000. In 2012, Shirley Robey stepped forward with her own story about what happened to Lucan. She claimed she overheard conversations about his whereabouts after he disappeared between two of his friends: James Goldsmith and casino owner John Aspinall, her employer at the time. Robey worked for Aspinall from 1979-85, and said she often heard him talk about Lucan, but didn’t know the gory details of the case at the time.
