The Great Lord Lucan Mystery

 

It was the mystery that gripped a nation. In November 1974 Lord Lucan disappeared from his home in London under suspicious circumstances. Lucan was never to be seen again.

Lord Lucan is a name that still generates fascination and speculation, even though it’s over 37 years since the Earl’s mysterious disappearance. The case could of come from a movie, but this was a real story that involved one of the best known casinos in London, a Lord and a murder.

Despite numerous investigations and alleged sightings, the trail on Lord Lucan’s whereabouts has gone cold – until now.

Mystery phone calls to the Police that could provide  clues to the Lucan case and now an assistant of the family offering police information. Let’s look at the story of Lord Lucan’s last hours with the help of these new revelations.

Could Lord Lucan be finally found? Did Casino Boss, John Aspinall help the Lord escape?

Murder mystery

The amazing mystery starts in a mews house in Belgravia, London at 9.45pm on Thursday November 7, 1974.

The Lucan’s nanny, 29-year-old Sandra Rivett, lay dead in the basement of the family house, having been battered to death with a blunt instrument.

Nearby a bloodstained Lady Lucan burst into the Plumber’s Arms pub crying out for help.

She claimed that her estranged husband had murdered the nanny and had tried to kill her.

Lord Lucan was suspected of murder and attempting to bludgeon his own wife to death. He fled Belgravia a wanted man.

Behind him, Lucan left a scene of blood and mayhem. He then disappeared with barely a trace, many believe that Lucan must of had help in disappearing, some even believe that close friends of Lucan in the police may have been involved.

On the trail of Lucan

What we do know is before vanishing off the face of the earth, Lord Lucan drove 45 miles south to seek refuge with friends in Uckfield, East Sussex.

Peter and Susan Maxwell-Scott were loyal members of Lord Lucan’s inner circle, people he could trust with his life.

They lived in Grants Hill House, a large manor house set in acres of gardens, with a swimming pool and several tennis courts.

After being let into the house, Lucan was never seen again – he simply vanished into thin air, was he whisked away overseas? Was he himself murdered and buried?

Maybe what might have happened in the grounds of Grants Hill House on that fateful night on November 7, 1974.

fourteen  years ago in May 1998 Sussex police received several anonymous phone calls – all were from the same man who repeated the same story.

The mystery caller claims that he was in the grounds of Grants Hill House on the night of the murder.

He claims that he witnessed three men walking from the house to the bottom of the grounds.

Taken by surprise the caller says he retreated into the undergrowth from where he witnessed two gun shots.

Moments later he heard the sound of a splash.

Two men, not three, returned to the house. That was his story.

The BBC reports that there are two police sources who have confirmed the mystery caller existed, although they refused to appear on camera.

In January 2005, the BBC, under the Freedom of Information Act, requested to see Sussex Police’s files on the case.

Their response was that all the information relating to the calls in 1998 had either been destroyed or passed on up to the Metropolitan Police.

So the BBC called Scotland Yard and this is what they had to say:

“The Metropolitan Police are aware of this allegation but do not consider it to be a strong line of inquiry.

The Lucan case is currently under review and will be for some months to come”.

Both Sussex and the Metropolitan Police refused to talk to the BBC any further, so they decided to do some detective work of our own.

Dead and buried?

The witness who claims to have seen Lucan being murdered claimed that the body was pushed into a cess pit in the grounds of Grants Hill House.

Investigative Journalists decided to check if there was indeed a cess pit on the site of the now-demolished house, using old building plans.

A cess pit did exist although it’s very hard to know if Lucan’s body lies at the bottom of it.

Lucy Sideburn is a forensic archaeologist and a specialist in the recovery of human remains.

Technology has leapt forward in the last 10 years with advances in underground x-rays and sounding equipment.

Lucy finds some evidence of ground disturbance, but it’s quite subtle.

But to be sure of any body, she’d have to come back and do a much more detailed analysis.

“We’d need to do it accurately with grids and take regular, spaced out readings to get the full picture, but there does seem to be something there.”

“To do it properly, it would probably take two or three days,” says Lucy.

“We’d need to pinpoint the location and, then, if it wasn’t too large, we could start hand-digging it.

“We’d need to find the outskirts of it and start taking it down systematically to see if there’s anything inside.”

However the Police are in a difficult position, because the mystery caller and eyewitness refused to meet with them at the time of the calls.

Unless fresh information comes in, then the only digging round here will be the gardener.

“If it is suspected that there’s something there, chances are that we’d be called in to help the police in a search.

“Without any definite evidence, it probably wouldn’t get that far,” says Lucy.

But she believes that it is possible that Lucan could be under the ground at Uckfield, “I would say bodies generally turn up close to where they were last seen”.

Escape to freedom?

On the night Lucan vanished, Derek Wilkinson was a Sussex police detective on duty at the Port of Newhaven. He has never spoken before.

After Sussex police found Lucan’s Ford Corsair abandoned in Newhaven, dozens of officers scoured surrounding countryside and checked ferry passenger lists for any trace of Lucan.

“I remember there were only three passengers in the foot hall. There was a man and a woman who appeared to be husband and wife.

“And there was a man with a long coat and a trilby hat. This man produced a French ID card.

“I’m quite aware from the photos that Lord Lucan wasn’t the man that passed me on the foot hall,” recalls Wilkinson.

Derek Wilkinson has his own theory about Lucan’s car being dumped at Newhaven.

“I feel that someone else brought the car down and left it here.

“I think it was a red herring.”

Dave is not the only detective who thought the car was a decoy. Detective Inspector Roy Ransom, who was in charge of the hunt for Lucan, had this to say to the BBC in 1993:

“I don’t know who put the car at Newhaven. I don’t think it was Lucan, no I don’t.”

Eye-witness?

Roy Blackmore was one of the two Sussex police officers who visited Grants Hill House on the night Lucan vanished.

This is the first time he has ever spoken about the murder publicly.

Six hours after the Maxwell-Scotts claimed that Lucan left Grants Hill, Roy saw something very puzzling.

It was a car bearing a striking resemblance to Lucan’s Corsair.

“We saw that vehicle go through at Uckfield, because there was no by-pass at the time.

“We saw that car go through – I think it was a Corsair going towards Newhaven.”

But was Lord Lucan the man in the car?

Roy and his Police colleague later returned to Grants Hill House to interview the Maxwell-Scotts, but they stuck by their story.

The police officers did not search the grounds of the house, meaning that any fresh clues to Lucan’s disappearance were not uncovered.

John Aspinall

 

“Lucky” Lucan?

So did Lucan escape or is his body at the bottom of the garden in Uckfield?

The 39-year-old Lucan was a professional gambler and member of the aristocracy.

He mixed in rich and powerful circles. His favourite casino was the Clermont Club in Mayfair which was owned by the millionaire John Aspinall.

Aspinall was close to Lucan, although Countess Lucan counters this view on her website, saying that “John Aspinall was not one of the late Lord Lucan’s best friends”.

However, speaking in 1994, John Aspinall said, “I would have done for him what he asked”.

Aspinall also said that if Lucan had requested asylum, “he would had got it”.

It was rumoured that Lucan told Aspinall earlier in 1974 that he wanted to get rid of Lady Lucan to get custody of his children.

In another bizarre twist, it turns out that John Aspinall had connections with Uckfield – he grew up only 200 metres from Grants Hill House.

So could he have been there on the night of November 7, 1974?

Whether he was or not, Aspinall may have taken the secret to his grave. He died of cancer in 2000.

In Africa?

In the most recent turn of events, only just revealed last week, Mr Aspinall’s secretary, who asked not to be identified and assumed the name Jill Findlay, said she was invited into meetings where the missing aristocrat was discussed by her boss and Sir James Goldsmith, the multi-millionaire businessman.

“Instructions were to make arrangements for John Bingham, also known as Lord Lucan, to see his children and to do that I had to book his two eldest children on flights to Africa,” she said.

“I don’t know the exact dates, it was between 1979 and 1981 and it was on two occasions I booked the flights.”

She said the children would have visited Kenya and Gabon and Lucan would have been able to see them from a distance but he would not meet them or speak to them.

Clear conscience

Ms Findlay said she had “no idea of the enormity” of the search under way for Lucan who was then the most wanted man in Britain.

She also said Mr Aspinall told her to expect him to announce Lucan’s death to the press, a statement which came in 2000 and which she took as a signal that he had died in Africa.

It took Ms Findlay a further 12 years to break her silence.

She said events began to piece themselves together as she reflected on her life during a recent illness and she wanted to talk to pass on information to whoever may find it of interest.

Ms Findlay said her conscience was clear because she had not helped Lucan escape. She said she was prepared to give Scotland Yard a statement. It is still unknown if Scotland Yard have spoken to Ms Findlay since her statement.

 

Final chapter?

So what did happen to Lucan after he vanished into thin air, did he escape to Africa, was he killed or did he commit suicide? Maybe last weeks news will finally clear up one of the biggest British mysteries ever.

One thing only is certain – the mystery of Lord Lucan will continue to rage until concrete evidence is uncovered.