The son of the nanny murdered by Lord Lucan has embarked on a quest to find the fugitive aristocrat.
Hampshire builder Neil Berriman has previously said he believed the missing aristocrat, chief suspect in the murder of his mother Sandra Rivett, to be dead. But after conducting new research he is left not only convinced that Lucan got away, but also that he will be the man who finally finds Richard John Bingham, the seventh earl of Lucan.
Lucan, then 39, killed 29-year-old Sandra on November 7, 1974, bludgeoning her with a lead pipe after mistaking her for his estranged wife Veronica. Neil, who was just seven when his mother’s body was found in a sack in the basement of Lucan’s Belgravia home, has turned his quest into a three-part series for BBC2.
Lord Lucan, pictured with his future wife Veronica, has been missing for decades (
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Getty Images)
Richard John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan, suspected murderer who disappeared after the murder of his children’s nanny and who has never been found (
Image:
Daily Record)
Fifty years after her murder, Neil has travelled across the globe to try and discover the truth and get justice for Sandra – despite the fact that Lucan would now be 89 years old. Neil’s conviction in his ability to solve the mystery of where the Eton-educated gambler ended up is described as “unshakeable”.
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While most of the aristocrat’s friends and family insisted at the time that he had taken his own life, no body has ever been found and many believed he had managed to escape abroad. On the night when Sandra died, he is known to have driven to a friend’s house in East Sussex in a borrowed car later found abandoned in Newhaven and containing bloodstains. Since Lucan’s disappearance there have been multiple “sightings” all over the world and the manhunt has lasted decades. He was officially declared dead by the British authorities in 2016.
Neil Berriman has embarked on a quest to find the aristocrat (
Image:
Ian Vogler / Daily Mirror)Don’t Miss
BBC documentaries boss Clare Sillery said: “The disappearance of Lord Lucan, following the murder of Sandra Rivett, is a mystery that has baffled the police and fascinated the press for half a century. Whilst there have been many programmes following Lord Lucan and his possible fate, Sandra’s story has rarely been told. By following Neil’s deeply personal quest to seek justice for his mother we gain a unique perspective, one which sees an ordinary man take on the British establishment in his search for the fugitive Lord.”
In his mission to get to the truth, Neil watches every film and reads every report and book on the subject of Lord Lucan. He also meets police officers who take him through pictures of the scene of the crime, and liaises with Veronica, Lucan’s wife, to scrutinise every detail of the missing man’s life. .
Neil is aided in his mission by former BBC investigative journalist Glen Campbell, who helps him to map out Lucan’s likely escape to a life of exile in Africa. The two men unearth persuasive evidence that one of Lucan’s powerful friends helped him to start a new life in Mozambique under the alias ‘John Crawford’.
On a research trip to South Africa Lucan’s ex-patriate brother Hugh points the pair on a path that ultimately leads to Australia. Two years ago it was claimed that an 87-year-old man living in a Buddhist community in Australia was, in fact, Lord Lucan. The series, called Lucan, will air later this autumn.
