Who is Lord Lucan? Mystery of the gambling peer who vanished after nanny was murdered

Aristocrat and peer was legally declared dead in 1999 following a number of alleged sightings - but questions over what happened to him endure

The mystery surrounding the disappearance of Lord Lucan is back in the news, following claims by a facial recognition expert an elderly man in Australia is an exact match for the alleged killer.

Lord Lucan’s name, and the case, have remained in the public consciousness decades after his unexplained disappearance in 1974.

But how much do we know about the aristocrat, who continues to fill column inches 23 years after he was legally declared dead?

Below we look at the key figures in one of the most notorious disappearing acts in history.

Who is Lord Lucan?

Lord Lucan vanished in 1974 following the death of his family’s nanny (Getty Images)

Richard John Bingham - better known as Lord Lucan - was an Anglo-Irish aristocrat, the 7th Earl of Lucan and a member of the House of Lords.

Born in 1934, he went to Eton College before becoming a merchant banker and later a professional gambler. Known for his expensive tastes, he was said to have once been considered for the role of James Bond and was a friend of the character’s creator Ian Fleming.

Lord Lucan was married to Veronica Duncan in 1963 and the couple had three children.

He vanished from his home in London in 1974, aged 39, following the death of the family’s nanny and has not been seen since. If still alive today, he would be 81.

Who is he accused of killing?

Sandra Rivett was bludgeoned to death with a lead pipe at Lord Lucan’s London home

Nanny Sandra Rivett began working for the Lucans in 1974, a few weeks after her marriage ended in May.

On 7 November she was bludgeoned to death with a lead pipe, and her body placed in a canvas mailbag.

Her remains were discovered in the basement kitchen of the aristocrat’s home in Belgravia, London, where his estranged wife was also attacked.

An inquest into the 29 year-old’s death found she was murdered by Lord Lucan, whose car was found abandoned and covered in blood in Newhaven, East Sussex.

What happened to his wife?

Lady Lucan maintained her estranged husband had killed himself (Getty)

At the time of Lord Lucan’s disappearance, the couple were estranged. She had suffered from post-natal depression and her husband had left home in 1972. A bitter custody battle ensued, eventually won by Lady Lucan, and she hired Ms Rivett as a nanny.

Lady Lucan claimed her husband had admitted killing Ms Rivett before his disappearance, but had claimed it was an accident.

At the time, she said he jumped off a ferry after leaving Newhaven.

Lady Lucan passed away in 2017, with an inquest ruling she died from a cocktail of drink and drugs after diagnosing herself with Parkinson’s.

Sightings of Lord Lucan

While Lord Lucan was declared legally dead in 1999, his body has never been found, and Scotland Yard is reported to have carried out a cold case review into Ms Rivett’s murder in 2004.

The first reported sighting of Lord Lucan came in January 1975. He was supposedly seen in Melbourne, Australia, before allegedly being seen in Cherbourg and St Malo, both in northwest France.

There have also been reported sightings of Lord Lucan in Mozambique and Bulawayo, Zimbabwe and claims that he lived in India as a hippy called "Jungly Barry".

The mystery of what happened to the aristocrat endures (Getty Images)

Barbados Police were asked by Scotland Yard in 1978 to investigate reports that a British resident was sending money to Lord Lucan in South America.

Meanwhile, an ITV drama claimed the missing peer had been spirited out of the country by his wealthy friends, including Sir James Goldsmith and John Aspinall.

By 2007 the search for Lord Lucan switched to New Zealand and in 2012 his brother Hugh Bingham said he was "sure" he had fled to Africa after the murder.

Other theories suggest that Lord Lucan was held to ransom by the IRA, or that he had shot himself and asked for his remains to be fed to the tigers at Kent zoo owned by his friend Mr Aspinall.

An investigation by BBC South East in 2009 opened up the possibility that Lord Lucan had had plastic surgery after the murder.

Why is the case back in the news?

'When he realised he had killed the nanny the remorse, guilt and panic led him to commit suicide'

This week it was reported that cards from the murder mystery game Cluedo were found in Lord Lucan’s abandoned car by police investigating the killing of his nanny.

According to the Daily Mail, officers investigating the case found the items – depicting the character Colonel Mustard, a lead pipe weapon, and the fictional murder location of “the hall” – in the boot.

Citing sources with knowledge of the Metropolitan Police review in 2004, the paper claimed the three cards were missing from a Cluedo set recovered from Lord Lucan’s home.

Blood spatters were allegedly discovered on stairs near the building’s hallway, including on a door leading to the basement.

Investigators are said to have found a piece of heavily bloodstained lead piping wrapped in adhesive tape, according to a 2002 report handed to Nanny Rivett’s son Neil Berriman.

The cards were said to be from a set of the classic board game (file image)

The allegations fuelled speculation over whether the cards were left deliberately as a boast, as clues for the police to follow, or whether they were planted there in an attempt to frame him.

And in the latest bizarre twist, a facial recognition expert has told the Mirror that a photo of an elderly man is Australia is an exact match for Lord Lucan.

Professor Hassan Ugail claimed the algorithm linking the two people is “never wrong”.

The leading computer scientist said he used an artificial intelligence algorithm to run 4,000 cross-checks of seven photos – four of Lord Lucan and three of the man in Australia.

The expert, who positively identified two of the Russians behind the Salisbury Skripal poisonings, said: “They produced a match. This isn’t an opinion, it’s science and mathematical fact.”