What Happened to Lord Lucan?

hello everybody welcome back to another episode of decoding the unknown as always hello i'm your host simon what happens here is we decode the unknown it's all there in the title this is what happened to lord lucan says it right there on the page in front of me if you're watching this if you're listening to this hello as well this does go out as a podcast if you're on youtube thinking oh i don't have that premium so i can't listen to it in the background well go grab it as a podcast why not it's all good and i think there's probably less adverts as a podcast as well if you don't have premium so that's a plus i guess i don't know why i'm saying that because brilliant work simon brilliant business work gay people not to listen to adverts good job um what happens here is katie the wonderful writer of this channel writes me a script did i say it's called what happened to lord lucan i have no idea who lord lucan is so uh yeah this is a cold read and then jen our wonderful editor is going to add some uh some audio some video afterwards that's what editors do yes let's jump into it [Music] richard john bingham baron bingham baron luke and baronet bingham of castlebar the seventh earl of lucan lucky luke and the notorious rjb i might have made that last one not myself how many titles does one man need wait all of those were actual titles this guy's got some idiom in [ __ ] going down you guys know that that um the guy the dictator of i to say uganda but i could be wrong he's in that he's in he's uh the the focus part of the focus of that last king of scotland movie with eddie uh with idiom in with boris whitaker and uh his title was like seven line lines long on wikipedia like noble sir god king lord of all beasts of the land it it went on um anyway we're two lines in and i've already gone off on a tangent that happens here if you're new um i'm sorry about that how about best moustache of 1974. again i made that one up although this guy was definitely a candidate if some of these are ringing bells then they will refer to one person who is today most popularly referred to as lord lukan and it seems that he did add one more title to his roster that of murderer i feel like we're getting into an episode of casual criminalist here but this is decode in the unknown that doesn't necessarily have to be murder although i could see why people get these sh those two shows confused because well they're really similar just this one's not just about true crime it's about all sorts of mysterious stuff that uh turns out to be not mysterious because we critical many times it's like ghosts did it no they didn't because ghosts aren't real are they turning off the primary audience as you may have guessed from his many titles he was a british aristocrat who made global headlines when in 1974 he disappeared into thin hair after the brutal murder of his children's nanny but how oh maybe i do know this story now this is ringing bells but how involved was he in the killing and what might he have done what might have happened to him in the aftermath could he still be alive just to note that this story does contain details of a murder and also talk of suicide later on if that's not your bag no hard feelings here let's take it that is a what we call these days a trigger warning you're welcome they're very rare in my videos and uh sometimes they're probably needed and everyone in the comments is like simon a trigger warning would have been nice uh and i'm like well you're listening to a true pr with casual criminals you're listening to a true crime podcast aren't you mate i feel like the whole thing should be a trigger warning let's take a dive into the story that scandalized and fascinated the british public and still makes occasional headlines to this day that's probably why i'm vaguely familiar with this uh it's like this is the murdering of the nanny by the aristocrat does feel like a story i know i couldn't remember the dude's name anyway hopefully i won't spoil anything some backgrounds born into the wealthy bingham family in 1934 richard john bingham was set up for success before we get going properly just a note from now on that i'm going to refer to him as lord lucan or luke and as that's how he's known in popular culture he didn't inherit the title until his father died in 1964. that's such a weird british thing being able to inherit titles like really really written i mean can we get over the heritage thing but i don't think there's going to be any confusion as to who we're talking about it's basically going to be him all the time lucan is an area in ireland and the earl of lucan is a title that's been recognized legally since 1795. recognized legally implies that there's some sort of benefit to it i mean you get to write lord on your like passport and credit cards i guess but it's like sir i made a whole video about the benefits of knighthood and you know you'd think you're going to get some money for that are there going to be some like perks do you get to go to the queen's birthday party and turns out no basically you just get to use sir in front of your name and the biggest benefit seems to be like restaurants really like that if you're like uh yes sir booking for mr whis i said sir sir simon actually and they're like come this way sir we've got a corner table just for you he was the eldest son although not the eldest child of an irish peer so he's in line there at his father's titles and his seat in the house of lords that's right everybody this thing is not british there is a part of parliament in the uk or there's the house of commons the house of lords it's broken up into two parts and the house of lords is just for people who inherited their jobs how wild is that it's not very important anymore and house of commons which is the elected officials can totally override them they just can delay it for a little while or at least they could a while ago it's largely pointless i think it should absolutely got rid of but then again i'm you know i mean i'm pretty republican in general like not american republican like for republicanism like the idea of you know electing a head of state rather than having a royal the sort of stuff that would have got my head chopped off a few hundred years ago lucan went to school at eaton the only place proper posh boys are allowed to go i couldn't find out anything about what he studied but the main takeaway was that while at college he started gambling and became a bookie for the other students legend i love i i don't know i always got like a bit of a respect for the kids who like hustle at school okay he made quite good money with his side hustle but according to his mother his grades were far from credible a creditable sorry that's a new word to me still that doesn't really seem to matter if you came from the british upper class the only other thing i saw was he was good at racing speed boats which feels like the biggest rich person thing ever what does your child do a zombie he races speed boats oh i feel like racing like super expensive fiberglass catamarans might be like also up there but um yeah that's a that's a that's some rich person right there ah yes the old school speedboat races after officially eating in 1953 he did his national service stint in the army which was still a requirement for physically fit males at the time oh my god i mean i always say that i'm really glad that there wasn't conscription and stuff but i was in the cadets at school like in the navy cadets and it was i felt that was really good for me and i kind of think that conscription in general like not so you have to go and fight in a war but that you have to do i don't know maybe a year after school before you go to university in like the military getting trained up and stuff i generally think that'd be quite a good idea like teach people discipline i mean i know it hammers out like creativity and stuff but i don't know it works really well and i made a video ages ago about how in israel where they have like mandatory um like conscription for like it's like two or three years or something crazy and they have to go fight because you know israel um but one of the benefits of that was like all the like rich kids would go or like all of not not just the rich kids but all of the kids would all blend together so they'd go from like you know you'd have some from like like israeli eaton or whatever and you'd somehow from like some from you know school in the middle of nowhere where only poor people go and they're all mixed together in the armed forces and it would be great for like innovation and you know people with good ideas getting money from the rich kids and all of this stuff and apparently it was good for like innovation and yeah kind of i don't know this was a massive tangent no one cares about is probably an unpopular opinion so well done whistle boy let's get back to it while in germany in the cold stream guards coolest name of some guards ever he diversified his gambling portfolio by playing lots of poker ah which is different though like playing poker i always feel like if you're the bookie at school who is taking bets you're the house you've got an edge and then you graduate to play and graduate to playing poker i feel like that's just you know maybe you just cover a rich family and whatever venue doesn't matter moving on after the army he was a merchant bank of a few years but his true passion was definitely gambling he won big but he also lost big i guess that's how gambling works it is and usually you lose a little bit more than you win he fell in with a set of other rich gamblers and in 1960 he won 26 thousand pounds playing a version of the card game baccarat known shimonda faire according to the bank of england's inflation calculator this was about 612 000 pounds in 20 20 pounds or around 841 thousand dollars holy sh in 20 20 a pretty good pot i think you'll agree and it was one of the main reasons luke can then quit his job at the bank to become a quote quote uh quote unquote professional gambler which basically means an obnoxious playboy yes this is exactly what i talked about before in 1962 zoo owning gambling lover john aspinall founded the exclusive clermont club london's first casino in fashionable mayfair lucan was a frequent visitor to the clement club where he was in the company of many other people with hereditary titles and also big names like actor peter sellers and james bond creator ian fleming in fact it said that lucan was approached to play the iconic english spy even though he had zero acting experience but where does a lack of talent ever stand in the way of the entitled yeah that also sounds like just some that he made up doesn't it is there any evidence to say that was he like no no they asked me to play james bond they'd be like yeah yeah honestly they asked me to but i turned it down i was busy doing my youtube thing and i just didn't have time i think uh you know i'd have made a great success of daniel craig but i just honestly though you know the time wasn't there it was just not enough time money wasn't very interesting i only offered like 20 million pounds never happened mate he was living the bond's life though with his jet-setting lifestyle love of aston martins and the aforementioned speed boats schmidt affair was also bond's preferred car game card game in the books and was shown in several of the films luken and bond both also enjoy vodka martinis and as a tall good-looking and charismatic man lucan definitely looked the part although with the addition of his famous tash in his career as a professional gambler luca wasn't really that great he was known as lucky lucan after his original big win but it turned out to be pretty ironic he was extremely good at backgammon and even won tournaments including a championship in america but in total he lost far more than he won the nickname stark though and it's not a bad nickname to have better than loser luke and i suppose definitely definitely in 1963 lucan met veronica duncan an art school graduate model and a secretary sounds like exactly the sort of guy that in the 1960s this dude's supposed to marry doesn't it the two headed off and got married the next year shocking news lucam was going through a bit of a bad patch in his gambling results at the time so it's pretty convenient that his father gave him a whole bunch of money to basically start his own family must be nice luke had bought 46 lower belgrave street that which sounds i don't know anything like belgrave belgravia belgravia how do you say it belgravia expensive part of london so i imagine that's a very expensive address and the couple had three children over the next six years also adding a nice bump to lucan's finances was the fact that his father the sixth earl of lucan had died shortly after the wedding leaving the now seventh earl of luke and with an inheritance of around 250 000 pounds which in today's money is over five million pounds or seven million dollars all was not rosy in the land of the lukans though lord lucan spent a lot of his time at the clermont club gambling away his family's money that is so depressing this guy i mean i know it's like he's probably like his great-great-grandpappy's money or whatever but it is depressing that it could all just be destroyed in one generation it's uh brilliant so i worked super hard then you gambled it all away drinking martinis with ian fleming i mean that does sound awesome but also god damn man i worked a long time for that money or your great great grandpappy did his wife or maybe they didn't maybe they were just like some of these english families where it's just like they were given money back in the day because one of them was a night or something and then that la or land and that land became a lot of money and you know that kind of stuff so who gives a sh let's move on his wife veronica now the countess of lucan had been badly affected by postnatal depression and a mental condition why am i reading this so jolly sorry his wife veronica now the countess of luke had been badly affected by postnatal depression and a mental condition supposedly alarmed lucan as it should if your wife is depressed you should do something about that it should be alarming fix it sources vary on whether he tried to have a committed or just sought out psychiatric treatment for her but either way she refused to stay in any kind of clinic and was not forced to go their relationship deteriorated with veronica increasingly relying on nannies to look after her children and lukan spending all his time losing at the club in 1972 the couple separated with lucan moving out while a lot of emphasis had been put on the state of his wife's mental health at this point it seems that he too had gone into something of a mental decline i mean his life sounds like super playboy-ish and stuff a point it's got to be a bit like what's the point you're just going to a club and just gambling all day and losing money it's just even if you've got infinite money it's really depressing i mean it would be like just play it's just you know it's just depressing there's another way to look at it is it it would be like playing a gambling game where the money's not real and you just play it every day and you always lose that would get boring real fast he was dead set on getting custody of his children the point of hiring private investigators and spying on his family himself from his car on the street in trying to prove veronica was not capable of looking after the children though link luke and totally shot himself in the foot and instead proved his behavior was unwarranted and just a bit weird yes veronica was awarded custody of their three children with lukanovic visitation rights every other weekend oh no dude you shouldn't have spied on them you did this to yourself this was a huge blow to luke and who really did love his children his family now taken from him coupled with his gambling woes led to even bigger money issues as lucan had lost a lot of money on the court case and still had to pay towards his family's expenses as well as living in one of the prices area's priciest areas of the country they were used to things like regular food orders from harrods and veronica shopped for clothes on savile row due to being diagnosed with depression and anxiety it was ruled that veronica had to have a nanny to help her look after her children a decision that wrangled with luke and he tried his hardest to interfere with the process dude if you love your children it sounds really good that she should have a nanny there because she's not mentally stable right she was going to be committed but they didn't force her to go it sounds like you know there's more than just light to breath light depression there's more mild depression more than just mild depression going on there several well done simon you psychologist really solving all the problems here aren't you several nannies came and went through the luck and household some reporting that had disturbing anonymous phone calls and others being investigated by private investigators again luke looking for a nanny might carry some risk of being hounded by private investigators and having all of your personal looked into in case there's anything wrong so that you could be fired brilliant yeah sounds like an appealing job luke had even tried to get information about his wife out of them but it didn't do him any good eventually in 1974 sandra rivet joined the lucan family as their nanny recently divorced from husband and the mother of a boy who had been adopted short after birth shortly after birth sondra used to take thursdays off to see her new boyfriend meanwhile friends began to become concerned about lucan's apparent obsession with his children his increase in drinking and the huge amounts of money that he was regularly losing he's even remembered as saying things like he could murder his wife and put an end to all his financial worries holy sh dude it sounds like you should murder your gambling habit to be honest i mean i'm sure her habits are expensive like savile rows no joke but also um your gambling's probably the bigger issue on the 7th of november 1974 all of these things came to a head [Music] the murder i feel like this definitely belongs on casual criminals doesn't it i'm like absolutely confused about what i'm reading but here we are it happens sometimes on the night of thursday november the 7th 1974 little lucan's estranged wife veronica was at their home on lower belgrave street with their three children and the nanny sandra rivet as we said just a minute ago sandra used to have thursdays off to see her boyfriends but unfortunately for her this particular week she had seen him on wednesday instead so was at work when she normally wouldn't have been just before 9 pm after some of the lucan juniors were in bed sandra rivet asked veronica if she wanted a cup of tea if this was me i would have said no as any caffeine passed about 6 pm will keep me up all night but apparently this is not the case for sandra and veronica yeah too same same for me like i drink coffee all day like a monster but it gets to around four or five and then i'm like no no more because i gotta you know sleep and i also go to bed at nine o'clock because i have two small children and they wake up extremely early in fact not this morning but yesterday morning they decided let's get up at four o'clock i'm like great thanks guys really happy to be up at four it's not gonna make me tired throughout the day at all no problem no problem it's not i've got busy schedule or anything ah please stop i love you though the layout of 46 lower bell grave street meant that the kitchen was in the basement of the house so sandra of it went downstairs to make the tea it was very dark and the light going down to the kitchen didn't work i was total tangent but i've been like uh shopping do you shop houses no you look for houses i saw a house a couple of months ago where the kitchen was upstairs it was so strange walked into the house and it's like you're wandering around the downstairs and i'm like there's no kitchen and then go out there and they're like no no it's upstairs and i'm like what is this an upside down house who the hell is their kitchen upstairs so it was and there was a bedroom downstairs i'm like why isn't this the kitchen and i don't want this house i'd have to swap these two bedroom for a kitchen it's like why why did you do this it was very dark and the light going down to the kitchen didn't work sandra probably thought the bulb had blown but it was later discovered that it had been removed as she reached the dark basement sandra was attacked by a man wielding a lead pipe beaten brutally around their heads she suffered major trauma and choked to death on her own blood after the sabbage attack her body was stopped into a large male sack that meant to be lying around she was 29 years old not having realized there was an intruder in the house veronica came to the top of the stairs to see what sandra was doing down there as she started coming down a man rushed up and hit her several times with the pipe after fighting with him she grabbed his testicles oh my and managed to make her escape i thought like kicking people in the testicles was a new thing grabbing though that's uh that's that's something like through the trousers you're like rummaging around like i don't how's that work i don't know rushing into the nearby plumber's arms that's the name of a pub not a burly heating engineer who was hanging around outside a bloodied veronica screamed help me i've just escaped from being murdered my children my children he's murdered by nanny by the time the police arrived the attacker had long scarped leaving the lucan children unhurt a few hours later lord lucan turned up at his friend's house the maxwell scots and he told susan maxwell scott that he had seen his wife being attacked and rushed in to help lady lucan had told him that the nanny was dead and then accused him of orchestrating the attack in a panic lucan had fled the house and driven to the maxwell scots he wrote some letters and called his mother to ask if he asked her to pick up the children after as there had been a terrible catastrophe at lower belgrave street according to susan maxwell scott he was in shock but composed after he left the house in the early hours of the 8th of november 1974 he was never seen again doesn't sound guilty at all does he wyatt had to be lucan the fact that he ran and disappeared immediately after the murder and attack points the finger of blame squarely at lord lucan there is a tiny bit of wiggle room that he might not have been the actual hand to wield the murder weapon which we'll go into in a bit but it's generally agreed upon that he was the murderer yeah if you're like rich i mean i want to say like you should like don't you just don't rich people like higher hit men who just murder people and then totally like get away with it and stuff or hopefully not but also yeah as i like this does absolutely feel like an episode of casual criminalist on casual criminalist i'm always saying you know don't tell other people like the biggest thing people are always getting caught because they're telling other people about their crimes they're bragging about their crimes they're you know doing crimes in pairs and the biggest thing is just don't do crime with someone else so i feel like you're less likely to get caught if you actually do the crime yourself rather than hire someone to do the crime because i don't know that just always seems to end in trouble but maybe not i don't know what the statistics bear out i mean there probably aren't statistics on assassination not assassination what's it called uh murder for hire is there a word for that like hitmen thank you myself big brain the main witness is of course lady lucan she testified that she recognized her husband's voice telling her to shut up as they fought in the dark on the stairs then after having given his grapes a good old squeezing the fight had gone out of him and she had actually managed to get him to go upstairs and start cleaning himself up he told her he had killed the nanny and she said that she would help him escape but they'd both need to lay low for a few days while the injuries she sustained healed up a bit why would she do this while he was upstairs getting tails and possibly taking some of her sedatives she took a chance and ran out for help oh i see well why would he believe this that's the thing it's like the the wife who you don't the wife who doesn't like you is helping you get away with murder i'd be like yo yo yo you stay here you're not going anywhere right now in this version it's fair to say that lady lucan would have a pretty hard press to mistake the person who admitted to the murder to be anyone other than her estranged husband one of his children also confirms that she saw him at the house that night and in his letters to his brother in law which will go over in a bit lucan even placed himself at the house that night after his wife raised the alarm luca quickly left and drove to the maxwell scott house in sussex 68 kilometers that's 42 miles away in a strong point against him lucan was driving not his own mercedes but a ford corsair that had borrowed from a friend a couple of weeks earlier wired he borrowed this particular car his friend had offered him a more luxurious ride but luke had chosen this one and the only real conclusion we can come to is that he was using it to spawn his family incognito was it already planned to be a getaway vehicle several wake weeks before the murder that's just speculation his mercedes was found after his disappearance and the battery was flat so maybe he just couldn't be bothered to replace it and had am was using someone else's car instead but it certainly doesn't look good the ford corsair was found a couple of days later on the 11th of november at the port of new haven in east sussex in the car was a lead pipe and a bottle of vodka blood found in the car was thought to be a match to both sandra rivet and lady lucan although the lead piping was not the murder weapon as this was left at the scene from the port there's a railway station and also regular ferries that cross the channel to france so it's quite a good base to start if you're thinking of running from the police yeah i mean the railway station is like less good than the ferry i feel like if you're on the run for them from the police like just immediately leave go to one of those countries where they don't um extradite like just get there quickly i mean france it's not one of those countries i guess but you know from there you can travel by car rather than the uk it's an island it's going to be hard to leave at some point once they're really looking for you especially if you're lord so and so of wherever the general consensus of this case has been that due to the lack of any evidence suggesting anything else lucan broke into his old family home or stiladaki removed the light bulb and waited for veronica in the dark when sandra whom you had not been expecting to be at the house came downstairs he attacked her thinking it was his estranged wife after trying to cover up the killing he attacked his wife on the way out but after she managed to fight back he gave it up as a bad job whether he was intending to attack her again later that night is up for debate but she stymied that plan anyway by escaping the house lucan then discovered that lucan then disappeared to avoid being tried for murder in his absence an inquest was held in 1975 and he was formally declared guilty of the murder of sandra rivet making him the first lord to be convicted of murder since 1760. the murder and disappearance understandably caused a sensation in the media with the sons rather subdued earl sought in death mystery versus the daily mail males dawn hunt for lucan's body daily mail such a piece of [ __ ] the new york times was keeping the story alive in 1979 with missing lord luke and worldwide enigma and sightings popped up all over the world don't worry we'll get into those a little bit later oh i see i see why this is on an episode of decoding the unknown rather than casual criminalist sometimes there would be an advantage to reading these head because everyone's like why is this on decoding the unknown so far including myself and that's because it's going to be the mystery is going to be is he alive i mean we did mention that really early on but it's going to be a major part of this episode because there's still a lot of pages left to go uh whether you know all these sightings is he really living somewhere else is he having some like secret life that's why that's why we're on decoding the unknown it's all making sense now according to lady lucan he had been violent with her when they lived together including hitting her with a cane wrapped in sticking plaster i don't know what stick and plaster is dude but that sounds like some nasty [ __ ] the lead pipe at the murder scene and the one found in the abandoned car had both been wrapped in a similar material it seemed pretty cut and dry that lucan was the sole perpetrator of the crimes and had somehow managed to flee from justice but was that the only story not quite why it might not have been lukan well okay we all know it was him but was it physically his hand on the murder weapon let's look at his side of the story for a moment just a moment though don't want to inject too much doubt into the story after all this time we know lucan's explanation for the bloody events because he wrote three letters after the murder and also called his mother it also did not seem to occur to his friend susan maxwell scott that he was telling anything other than the truth that she didn't call the police or think he was acting in any manner that suggested he just brutally attacked two women as susan maxwell scott's house lucan wrote two letters to his friend and brother-in-law william shand-kidd one detailed how to sort his various financial situations due to the sale of something that was coming up the last line was the other creditors can get lost for the time being it was signed rather poignantly lucky he had creditors so not only was he gambling all of his money away he was also borrowing money it seems brilliant good work his other letter went into a bit more detail about what had happened at his former family home let's read the whole thing and see what we think in case you're not familiar with the phrase that crops up twice to lie doggo it means that you keep your head down and lie low oh i had no idea i learned that phrase today great going to be very useful it's pretty obvious but just in case you've been raised on the internet and can only think that doggo is a type of cute dog i thought it would avoid confusion here's the letter from lord lucan to his friend dated the 7th of november 1974 and it's obviously quote the most ghastly circumstances arose tonight which i briefly described to my mother when i interrupted the fight at lower belgrave street and the man left veronica accused me of having hired him i took her upstairs and sent francis up to bed and tried to clean her up she lay doggo for a bit and when i was in the bathroom left the house the circumstance the circumstantial evidence against me is strong in that v will say that it was all my doing i will also lie dog over a bit but i'm only concerned for the children if you can manage it i want them to live with you coots trustees martin's lane mr wall will handle the school fees v has demonstrated a hatred for me in the past and would do anything to see me accused for george and francis to go through life knowing that the father had stood in the dock for attempted murder would be too much when they are old enough to understand explain to them the dream of paranoia and look after them yours ever john as you can see luka's story was that he was just passing by as one does when one has constantly been staking out one's estranged family for months and saw his wife being attacked by an intruder intruder he led himself into the house and saved veronica from the other man he told susan maxwell scott that he had slipped in some blood at this point his story then matches his wives and that they went upstairs to clean up and she left the house the major difference obviously being that in her version of the event it was him that attacked her maybe if you squint there is the smallest possibility that it was not lukan who carried out the attack and that in the dark his wife then assumed he was the attacker after the actual attacker fled or as per his letter she hated him so much that she would pin it on him anyway even knowing it wasn't him this is so dizzy dude you didn't have a contingency you went there to murder your wife allegedly you didn't have a contingency plan for what happens if the woman was there and you ended up murdering her instead and then your wife saw and basically now you don't really have an explanation for this and that is why you are guilty as sin allegedly no i don't have to say allegedly he was in he was tried in absenteeism absentia absentia and guilty of murder so no allegedly there it was you mate this threat is worth pulling if only a little all right katie let's pull it a little veronica lucan is something of an unreliable narrator the major facts of the attack and lucan's confession come only from one source veronica luken after running for help to the pub she was coherent enough to speak in sentences to get her message across but never said that her husband was the villain okay you can put that down to shock and fear but it would have been useful to tell people that you knew who the murderer was straight away she'd also sustained several blows to the headset might have been confused and lost some time due to passing out she also told police that she recognized his voice while they were fighting on the stairs but if they'd spent a significant time together trying to clean up while she pretended she'd help him surely she would have known it was him and recognizing his voice is kind of not really relevant as she was seeing him with her own eyes and he admits being there the main side theory is that as luke wrote in his letter he hired someone to kill his wife the nanny was a mistake and maybe if he was peering in to spy on proceedings luke can realize that it wasn't his wife who had gone downstairs first or actually had a change of heart and burst in to stop the attack even though he was in a hole financially and personally lukan was still a member of the british elite would he really have gone so far as to wait in the dark with a pipe to off his wife when he could pay someone else to do it yes maybe i mean yeah just because you're part of the elite doesn't mean that you're not going to be you're not capable of murdering someone for sure he managed to tie himself to the murder anyway by leaving in a car which had an almost identical lead pipe in it and blood which was matched to both women dude it's like mega mega guilty this was the 1970s so dna proof was not available but the blood groups apparent found apparently matched sandra rivett and veronica lucan so i guess we'll have to rely on that can't they retest this do they not have an evidence box these days and then they can test like his kid and or not yeah they can test her kid and i don't know about the other woman um they could probably find some relative or no they'll because they were murdered she was murdered they'll have her body they'll also have samples from her so they can't they match them up now or does no one really care cause he's already been found guilty it'd be nice to have the mystery solved though wouldn't it maybe they do do it we'll find out if it wasn't their blood it was the most enormous of coincidences speaking of coincidences what are that third letter that lucan wrote it was to his friend michael stoop he of the ford corsair that lucam was driving when the murder occurred here's what he said my dear michael i have had a traumatic night of unbelievable coincidence however i won't bore you with anything or involve you except to say that when you come across my children which i hope you will please tell them that you knew me and that all i cared about was them the fact that a crooked solicitor and a rotten psychiatrist destroyed me between them will be of no importance to the children i gave bill chandkid an account of what actually happened but judging by my last effort in court no one let alone a 67 year old judge would believe me and i no longer care except that my children should be protected yours ever john in both letters to his friends lucan is very preoccupied with what his children will think of him and that they're looked after he makes no admissions of guilt and doesn't give any hint as to what his next moves or overall plans are or even if he has a plan michael stoop read his letter as a suicide note especially given the phrase i no longer care lukan's letter to william chandkid also seems like it's a final goodbye given the last line of when they are old enough to understand explain to them the dream of paranoia and look after them whether he was directly involved or indirectly involved the fact that lucan disappeared rather than going to the police is a very strong indication of guilt yes no there is however the faintest with another man who could have been in the house may have been totally unconnected to lucan really luke and sister gave a statement to the police in 1974 saying that the lord's young daughters had mentioned a boyfriend who stayed at the house no names were forthcoming but as the girls had mentioned that the man sometimes stayed in the nanny's room and she stayed with them when he did it seemed unlikely that he was rivet's boyfriend oh okay because she was sleeping with the children and he was sleeping alone in her room also ribbit hadn't been working for the lucans for a very long time so it might have been a bit early for her to have guests staying over plus it wouldn't really be very professional so was it this man possibly a boyfriend of veronica lukans who had carried out the attack maybe he had meant to kill sondra a bit after all what why like what motivation the other guy has like super strong motivation here there's like i i don't know what it is and after veronica was attacked maybe she momentarily backed out and came around as lukan entered and just assumed that it had been him the whole time lucan knowing this would look bad for him whatever happened took his chances and he left the scene his fingerprints weren't found on the weapon or in any or in the basement but this doesn't mean much as he puts himself at the scene of the crime anyway that i mean it does kind of mean a little bit he's saying he's there doesn't mean he handled the lead pipe and used it to whack his uh or attempt to whack his wife and end up accidentally whacking the babysitter but also he probably just wore some gloves didn't he there didn't appear to be any easy way to exit the house apart from the front door and no witnesses came forward with sightings of this other man there were no sightings of lucan leaving the house either though so anybody could have slipped out sandra rivet's blood was found in the back garden of the house which is a bit weird but the garden was walled and it was deemed that nobody likely escaped from there lucan would have known about the wall so is it likely that he was the one who went outside it could have been accidental transfer during the police investigation or maybe a third party hired by lucan or not was involved the mystery man anger was never brought up at the inquest so who knows whether luken was actually telling the truth he probably wasn't though the most compelling thing there is the blood in the garden and even that is just like it was probably an accident or something like that fairly i'd be fairly quick to dismiss that as you know accidental transfer somehow because everything else seems pretty cut and dry doesn't it lord after the murder theories we've talked about the murder now let's get on to the next mystery part of our story what happened to lord lucan there are two theories either he killed himself almost immediately after driving to new haven or he managed to escape and went into perfect hiding for an unknown and possibly still ongoing period of time oh it'd be really old though wasn't he born in like the 1920s i don't remember but it'd be really old man let's talk about the suicide theory first supposing that lord lucan had been the perpetrator or instigator of the murder knowing that it had been completely ballsed up put him in an awkward position the death penalty had already been abolished by this point but going to prison for murder would ruin his family name and it seemed like the last thing he wanted for his children were for them to see him as a murderer he had been drinking heavily in the months before the murder and while his friends at the time say his mood had lifted in the weeks immediately prior who knows what his mental state was actually like at the time he might have thought that suicide would be the best resolution to the situation and simply put an end to things if he did think that he managed to balls that up too it's not common for people who kill themselves in such a way that they're never found drowning is probably one of the few ways where a body might never be recovered but it's not a guarantee yeah isn't this like the swimming out to sea thing i always remember there's that scene in uh oh what was that tv show show called was it called mi5 or spooks was it called spooks yeah maybe mi5 was like the international name but it was called spooks which is like the british word for spies and there's that really intense scene where the guy's like he just swims out to sea and dice i think he dies it's been a very long time since i saw that tv show but that's how he chooses to go he just like goes to the beach and just swims out to sea oh my god so intense it's hard to think that luke lucan would intentionally have meant for his body not to be found there would be no closure in the case for his family or estate if he had planned the murder of his wife it was to help with his financial and family issues and presumably if the plan had gone successfully he would still be there to reap his ill-gotten benefits dude but you're gonna be like the number one suspect it's always the husband what i mean is that he would not have had a plan in place to kill himself and not be found if he did jump into the channel and got pulled out to sea or whatever it would have been by chance one of his friends yeah but it's not an impossible thing is it one of his friends thought he had hey had sailed a motorboat out into the channel and jumped overboard after changing her mind a couple of times lady duke and eventually said that she thought he'd taken the ferry out of new haven and deciding to end his life like the nobleman he was he jumped into the propellers of the fairy oh my god is that how nobleman is supposed to he decided to end his life like a no woman he jumped into the propellers of a massive ship holy sh who would do that is that a traditional wave an ability to take their own lives it's a good question i believe the answer is no john aspinall also mentioned killing himself as a noble way out but to me the noble thing to do after this sort of thing would be to turn yourself in admit your guilt and face the consequences like a good honorable chap yes but it ruins your family name doesn't it rather leave some mystery out there luke had insomnia so he took sleeping tablets as a matter of course wouldn't you just load up on those and slip overboard if you were planning on offing yourself in that way who on earth would consciously jump into a boat's propellers it is crazy also what if you don't get destroyed by them what if you miss i mean then you just drown which i suppose the end result is the same but i don't know that is very strange i would be like no he didn't jump into those boat propellers of that boat that is a big stretch and as a single tracer has ever been found if he got chopped up in the blades there would be in theory lots of little traces to be found of course i never knew the man but this seems like a totally weird and unnecessary way to go the detective assigned to the case was detective troop for chief superintendent roy ranson he initially also thought that lord lucan had died by suicide but searches of the ares around new haven port yielded no results most of the searches have been described as partial though so it's possible that they missed things nonetheless a warren was issued for lucan's arrest on the 12th of november 1974. in later years even ransom changed his mind and decided that lucan had actually managed to escape so why do people think he fled while he was no longer flush with cash he still had means ways and he was connected he had influential and very rich friends yeah but if you're wanted for murder the chances are that you know someone's gonna turn you in like yeah it doesn't matter if they're influential and rich or someone you're gonna be like dude did you murder your wife mate i'm gonna tell on you his gang at the claremont club were totally unhelpful to police investigators earning them the nickname the eaton mafia and at least one friend publicly stated that even if he did know something he wouldn't tell the police anything all of luken's personal belly guess he's got better friends than i would be uh of luca's personal belongings like his passport car keys and glasses were still at his flat so either that was a red herring to make people think that he had killed himself or he was still in the country or he just fled with the clothes on his back and had a second set of false id paper stashed somewhere just for this occurrence that is some spy well he was gonna play james bond wasn't he it's highly possible that he could ask someone to help him leave the country on a small private plane or boat as this was the time before mobile phones so news was not instantaneous yeah i'd say that's a pretty good way to like leave the country just i you know leaving britain is going to be harder than leaving a country that is landlocked you know just wander across the border in most of europe but it's still not going to be impossible just jump on a boat steal a boat the channel's not that big you can cross the channel in a pretty small boat and as he seemed to be compass mentos she believed his version of events he could have easily have rushed into his club after the murder told them that he was in a pickle and then got on to maxwell scott while they got things set up for him we only have soldier maxwell scott's word for the time he arrived and left her house someone else could have picked him up or driven the ford course there to new haven his friends may not have known what had happened and so were fine with aiding and abetting as they didn't know a murder rap was on the cards after they did know they didn't want to get themselves into trouble so just kept quiet about helping yeah yeah that seems pretty likely doesn't it because you'd help your friend if it wasn't like murder i mean there's definitely we've talked about this before maybe we talked about on casual criminals there's definitely that line where it's like things i would help my friends out for and then there's a lot of things over the line it's like arno well you murdered someone didn't you so i'm not gonna help you escape and then but if he just lied about what the crime was then it's like yeah okay i'll help you escape you just did some like light assault i still wanna help you i'm a bad friend but hopefully a decent citizen the media definitely tended towards escape rather than suicide of course they do because they're going to sell more papers with headlines like where did he go from the mirror and many references like sea hunt porthunt and dawn hunt cropping up all over the tabloids just the fact that neither hyde nor her hair from his luxuriant moustache was ever seen again stokes the legend that he successfully evaded justice and has been living as a fugitive ever since sightings [Music] okay so let's get on to the fun part the sightings almost as soon as he vanished reports of lucan were popping up all over the place obviously all of these have come to nothing but it seems that the world has been keeping a keen eye out for this nobleman over the last half century sightings have been reported in france iceland goa australia botswana guatemala island new zealand basically anytime someone sees a posh-sounding english man with a decent tash he immediately becomes a suspect one of these sightings hilariously led to the identification of a different fugitive when police in melbourne australia were alerted to the suspicious baby or an englishman visiting multiple banks in december 1974 that is massively unfortunate for that dude when they caught up with a man it turned out not to be their top suspect lord lucan but disgraced labour mp john stonehouse who had faked his own death in miami that same year and fled to australia well have i never heard of that story a labor mp fakes his own death and goes to miami and then australia that's wild another top suspect as the missing lord for a while was someone who went by the name of jungle barrier hippie beech bum living in goa who died in 1996 a retired detective from scotland yard followed this lead and even co-published a book about his theory barry did bear some resemblance to luke and seemed to have vast knowledge about sports cars and was a good baggage player and only gave vague shady answers about his past which was seemingly enough for people to conclude that he was the missing lord i know how to play backgammon i don't know much about cars but i could learn and also did luke can know much about cars he was the boat i know he loved speed boats bit of a stretch i mean maybe there's more to it but whatever when the book dead lucky was published it was quickly established by english friends of the dead beach bum that he was in fact a folk singer called barry halpin the author duncan mclaughlin and his publishers quickly changed tech to suggest that lucan took on barry's identity but the case fell apart from there yeah it was just too unlikely wasn't it it just goes to show that people are willing to believe pretty much anything oh yes all the time regularly covered on this show on my other shows people would just you know it ties the leads up nicely let's believe that even though it's not really believable when another suspect was outed in new zealand in 2007 the fact that he was english had a mustache and was living in a 1974 land rover seemed to trump the fact that not only was he around a decade younger than lucan would have been he was almost half a foot shorter there's some things about your appearance that you can easily change but your height is not one of them lucan's brother thought he had probably fred fled to africa and friends such as susan maxwell scott also maintained that he was probably still alive the son of sandra ribbit who was adopted as a baby only found out she was his birth mother in 2007. neil berryman has since become deeply entrenched in the case and was given access to the notes diaries and case files of another detective on the case david gehring after his death in 2004. you know when all the detectives investigating this are dying that the dude who escaped is either really old or definitely dead this led berryman to believe that lucan is still alive but in increasingly bad health and living in australia an investigation by police as recently as july 2021 however came to the conclusion that the elderly man was not the missing luke and berryman declared that the police didn't carry out a very detailed investigation with no dna tests etc and he is still convinced that this man is the murderer of his mother just test the kid and test the man if he gives you the dna if he's innocent he probably will and uh yeah you'll quickly prove that he's not luken if you take a look at his website lordlucanthetruth.com there is a side picture of a side by side picture of 1970s lucan and the alleged modern day luke and to me they're not the same person sure he could have had some cosmetic surgery but really the similarity does not jump out so the mystery rolls on having disappeared at the age of 39. if he did escape lord lucan would be 87 this year there we go okay not as old as i thought so what does that make him like 1930s i'm sure it was in the start but he's he's dead like my conclusion from all of this he murdered the babysitter and he's dead allegedly lukan was not officially declared dead until 1999. okay there we go and i don't have to say allegedly because he's officially dead and he was tried in court and found guilty in absentia uh until 1999 meaning that he was still lord lucan all that time and his family could not inherit any of his titles or properties his son george bingham didn't in inherit the title of eighth earl of lucan until the death certificate had been issued in 2016. damn it took 16 years to get a death he was officially declared dead and it took 17 years what are you up to get it done you want to be that lord you're going to get better tables in restaurants his children have been largely vague over their father's actions and possible fate but that's only to be expected when the only reason the media wants to talk to you is about something your dad did when you were in primary school yeah just be like [ __ ] off maybe you didn't want the title of lord lucan because you'd be like i just can i just go on with my life please please leave me alone veronica lucan continued to live on the how in the house on lower belgrave street her relationship with her children deteriorated leading them to be looked after by her sister and her husband william shand kid in 1982 and by adulthood they were all completely estranged from her he killed herself in 2017 with a cocktail of drugs after becoming convinced that she had parkinson's disease although this was self-diagnosed rather than confirmed by a doctor parkinson's disease one of those diseases that you should probably get confirmed by a doctor rather than just being like no i have it okay she kept her portrait of lucan and some of his gambling trophies in her living room and the interviews she gave over the years has seemed to belie some sort of grudging lingering respect for the man who tried to kill her she also said that the reason it took so long to declare him dead was to avoid paying death duties which would have prevented her from affording the fees for her children's education ah how the aristocracy can fall whatever actually happened the fate of the missing aristocrat far outweighed the interest in the dead sandra rivet which is why her son is still trying to bring luken to justice all these years later lucan won't doubt himself as he's a convicted murderer so be arrested straight away unless dna testing provides an answer in the future it's unlikely that we'll ever find out what really happened to lord lucan unless he is still alive right now 87 years old and living as some you know old man somewhere in australia or whatever and then there's going to be a deathbed confession and they'll confirm it by dna that's what i hope for because it would wrap things up really nicely but i think the reality is he's probably dead already and there's never going to be an answer this has been an episode of decoding the unknown remarkably similar to what we do on casual criminalist if you're not familiar with that show please do check it out it's like this there's a podcast there's a youtube channel yes yes uh also if you're watching on youtube please use that like button below make sure you're subscribed if you're watching as a podcast a review five stars preferred of course would be fantastic if you think the show deserves less well you know that's your opinion if you're entitled to it do what you want and thank you for watching or listening [Music]

Channel: Decoding the Unknown

Views: 237,159

Keywords:

Id: McXGOD1Diu8

Length: 50min 26sec (3026 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 18 2022