The mysterious case of the missing 7th Earl of Lucan has always fascinated me. To this very day, his son and heir, Lord Bingham, cannot succeed to the title. The Right Honourable Richard John Earl of Lucan, was found guilty of murder by an inquest jury more than thirty years ago; and Lord Lucan has been missing since the 7th November, 1974.
The 7th Earl's son George, Lord Bingham, cannot yet become the eighth earl because a death certificate hasn't been issued.
For what it's worth, I firmly and strongly believe that Lord Lucan did not actually murder their nanny, Sandra Rivett. I believe he hired a hit-man to do the dirty work; and the hit-man killed the hapless nanny instead of the intended victim, Lady Lucan. When Lucan returned to clear up the mess and dispose of his wife's body, he realized that the hit-man had killed Miss Rivett by mistake.
The author, Patrick Marnham, has written an excellent book about the mystery entitled Trail Of Havoc, which I still read occasionally.
To cut a lengthy story short, Lord Lucan would have found the guilt, humiliation, trial, shame and everything else unbearable, so he fell on his sword, figuratively speaking. He made off on his boat, to the open sea miles out, and scuttled it. He found life intolerable without custody of his children at any rate.
The 7th Earl's wife, Lady Lucan, has her own website which gives her side of the story.
That's my theory, at any rate.
2 comments :
My father was a friend of Lucan's and spent some time being interviewed by the police afterwards. They were both in the Coldstream Guards together.
He is of the view that he did do it and came to the same end as you suggest.
I have a very old copy of Marnham's book somewhere here. Lucan was terribly old-fashioned.
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