Lucan was a well-known figure in high society. His whereabouts have been unknown since November 7 1974, when his children's nanny, Sandra Rivett, was found murdered at his estranged wife's home in Belgravia, London. Lady Lucan, who was also attacked that night, said her husband was the killer. Lord Lucan claimed, to a family friend he visited later the same night, that he been walking past the house, had seen someone struggling with Lady Lucan and entered the house to help her. He said he calmed her down but had slipped on a pool of blood on the way into the house. Lady Lucan then left the house screaming 'Murder'! He then panicked, he said, and left the scene. A car Lucan was borrowing at the time was later found abandoned containing some blood of two types in Newhaven.
At an inquest, the coroner's jury brought in a verdict of unlawful killing, naming Lord Lucan as the murderer. Many alleged sightings of him have been reported from all over the world since then, but the police investigation has drawn a total blank in its efforts to find the runaway earl. In 2000, John Aspinall, a casino owner, conservationist and good friend of Lord Lucan, gave an interview in which he said that Lucan had committed suicide by scuttling his powerboat that he kept at Newhaven. Aspinall said that he had no doubt that Lucan had killed the nanny, but that it was a mistake and Lucan had intended to kill he wife (a widely-held belief) and had killed himself out of shame for the botched job he had done, killing an innocent bystander.
In 1999 The Times newspaper reported that the High Court had declared Lucan dead and that his estate (much diminished by Lucan's notorious gambling) could be wound up by his executors. However a death certificate had not been published and Lucan's son, Lord George Bingham has not been able to take the title of 8th Earl of Lucan or sit in the House of Lords, and since the passing of the House of Lords Act 1999 would be unable to sit by virtue of the hereditary peerage.
In September 2003 a book entitled Dead Lucky : Lord Lucan The Final Truth authored by a former Scotland Yard detective claimed to have solved the mystery of Lucan's disappearance. He claimed that Lucan fled to Goa, India, arriving there a year after the death of his children's nanny. The book includes photos taken there in 1991 of a man who looked somewhat similar to Lucan, including a lack of ear lobes. The man who died in 1996 was known in Goa as Barry Haplin (or, according to the book, Jungle Barry). However these claims were almost immediately dismissed. BBC Radio 2 presenter Mike Harding said in a letter to The Guardian newspaper that he knew Barry Haplin from his days as folk musician in Liverpool in the 1960s and that he had gone to India 'as it was more spiritual than St. Helens'. Lord Lucan's ex-wife and son scorned the suggestion in separate statements. Given the extremely rapid disproving of the claims The Sunday Telegraph, which serialised part of the book, was left with egg on its face in a manner reminiscent of The Sunday Times' publication of the bogus Hitler Diaries.
The phrase "do a Lord Lucan" now means to disappear or go missing. The phrase is generally applied in a humorous context.
| Preceded by: George Bingham | Earl of Lucan | Followed by: Current Incumbent |