The Lucan Obsession: 10. The Final Act?

Summary

The History Podcast: The Lucan Obsession - Episode 10: The Final Act

Release Date: October 28, 2024
Host: Alex von Tunzelman
Producer: Becca Briers
Series Producer: Sarah Bowen
Editor: Philip Sellars
Production: BBC Radio 4

---

Introduction to the Lucan Case

In the tenth episode of The Lucan Obsession series, titled "The Final Act," host Alex von Tunzelman delves deep into the enigmatic disappearance of Lord Lucan, a British peer whose vanishing act in 1974 has captivated the public imagination for decades. The episode explores the complexities surrounding the case, the myriad theories about Lord Lucan's fate, and the enduring obsession it has fostered in British society.

---

Revisiting the Disappearance

Alex opens by recounting the night of Lord Lucan's disappearance. Two weeks prior, the esteemed Lord had seemingly walked into the English Channel under mysterious circumstances. However, in a twist reminiscent of earlier scandals, the episode contrasts this with the resurfacing case of John Stonehouse, a Labour MP who faked his death in 1974 only to be later found alive in Australia.

Quote:
Alex von Tunzelman: "Running away didn't work for John Stonehouse, but maybe it did for Lord Lucan."

---

The Unsettling Murder and Motivations

A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to dissecting the murder of Sandra Rivett, Lord Lucan's children's nanny. Alex presents the ambiguity surrounding the incident, questioning Lord Lucan's motives and the plausibility of his intentions.

Quote:
Alex von Tunzelman: "Why would a squeamish man plan to bludgeon his wife to death with lead piping?... the simplest solution involves several complex assumptions."

This segment highlights inconsistencies in the case, such as the brutality of the intended murder method and the absence of conclusive evidence tying Lord Lucan directly to the crime.

---

Exploring Alternative Theories

The host introduces alternative theories, including the possibility that another assailant was involved, potentially a hitman hired by Lord Lucan. This theory seeks to explain discrepancies in the evidence and the absence of a straightforward motive.

Quote:
Alex von Tunzelman: "Lord Lucan's suggestion that there was another man in the house that night is possible. But if so, he was most likely a hitman hired by Lord Lucan."

However, Alex remains skeptical about absolving Lord Lucan entirely, emphasizing that the presence of another individual does not necessarily exonerate him from the crime.

---

Evidence and Possessions

A compelling segment involves Bob Strange and former Met police detective Jackie Moulton examining a box of Lord Lucan's possessions, including peculiar items like fetish photographs and a heavily annotated book on legal cases related to marital murders. These findings suggest Lord Lucan may have meticulously planned the murder, delving beyond mere drunken intentions.

Quote:
Jackie Moulton: "Lord Lucan's briefcase. He never took this with him either."

Timestamp: [06:01] - [09:39]

The presence of such items bolsters the argument that Lord Lucan had premeditated the murder of Sandra Rivett, potentially undermining claims of it being a spur-of-the-moment act.

---

The Role of DNA Evidence

A pivotal discussion revolves around the potential of modern DNA analysis to finally shed light on Lord Lucan's involvement in the murder. The conversation explores whether DNA from Lucan's possessions could be matched to evidence from the crime scene, potentially providing closure to the decades-old mystery.

Quote:
Bob Strange: "If the evidence that the police have is a good enough quality, you could get that answer. Answer tomorrow."

Timestamp: [09:56] - [12:20]

Alex posits that a DNA match could conclusively determine Lord Lucan's guilt or innocence, suggesting that advancements in forensic science might finally end the enduring obsession.

---

Cultural and Personal Impact

Alex reflects on the broader implications of the Lord Lucan case, discussing how it has fractured lives, from his own involvement in investigating the story to its effects on Sandra Rivett's family and the British public's collective psyche.

Quote:
Alex von Tunzelman: "A moment like the murder of Sandra Rivet can fragment and transform everyone's life story."

The host acknowledges becoming part of the "Lucan Obsession," illustrating how the case has permeated cultural narratives and sustained public interest over the years.

---

Potential for Closure and Justice

As the episode concludes, Alex expresses cautious optimism that forthcoming DNA evidence could provide the long-sought resolution to the case. He underscores the importance of justice for Sandra Rivett, emphasizing that uncovering the truth remains paramount over public fascination.

Quote:
Alex von Tunzelman: "What should have mattered most all along is justice for Sandra Rivet. To my surprise, I think we're within grasping distance of that justice."

Despite acknowledging that the next episode may never materialize due to the unresolved nature of the case, Alex holds onto the hope that scientific advancements will eventually lay the Lucan obsession to rest.

---

Conclusion

"The Final Act" serves as a poignant exploration of one of Britain's most enduring mysteries. Through meticulous analysis of evidence, exploration of alternative theories, and reflection on the case's cultural impact, Alex von Tunzelman presents a comprehensive narrative that not only revisits the historical facts but also contemplates the possibility of future revelations. The episode encapsulates the intricate interplay between public intrigue and the relentless pursuit of justice, leaving listeners with a profound understanding of why Lord Lucan's story continues to captivate.

---

Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• Alex von Tunzelman (00:39): "People do run away, create new identities, and if they're better at hiding than John Stonehouse, get away with it."

• Alex von Tunzelman (08:27): "Of course, this is circumstantial. Maybe it was planted in this box by someone, though I'm not sure why they'd have done that..."

• Bob Strange (10:22): "They'd have a look at it. I'm sure the forensic scientists would have a look at it. It depends on the decay."

• Alex von Tunzelman (12:13): "If the evidence that the police have is a good enough quality, you could get that answer. Answer tomorrow."

• Alex von Tunzelman (14:39): "I've seen the dark side."

---

Final Thoughts:

Episode 10 of The Lucan Obsession masterfully balances historical recounting with investigative journalism, providing listeners with a nuanced perspective on a case shrouded in mystery and speculation. By intertwining personal reflections with expert opinions, the episode not only informs but also engages, making it an essential listen for anyone intrigued by true crime narratives and the quest for truth in unresolved cases.

Transcript

[Alex von Tunzelman]

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the uk.

[Paul McGann]

Titanic Ship of Dreams, the new podcast from the award winning Noiser Network. Join me, Paul McGann, as we explore life and death on Titanic. I'll delve into my own family story, following my great Uncle Jimmy as he tries to escape the engine room. We'll hear the harrowing tales of the victims and the testimonies of the lucky survivors.

[Bob Strange]

I saw that ship sink and I saw that ship break in half.

[Paul McGann]

Titanic Ship of dreams. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

[Unnamed Journalist]

BBC.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

Sounds Music Radio podcasts. Miami Beach, Florida. Two weeks after Lord Lucan disappeared, a British man walks across the cool, pale sand. He undresses, leaves his clothes in a pile and walks into the water. There's a current, he struggles. The sea drags him down. Back in Britain, his death is announced, obituaries are written. A month later, the man turns up alive in Melbourne, Australia. The police, convinced he must be Lord Lucan, make him pull his trousers down. Lucan has a long scar on the inside of his right thigh. This man has no scar. It turns out he's a Labour mp, John Stonehouse. He faked his own death in the United States, then fled to Australia to start a new life with his secretary. Running away didn't work for John Stonehouse, but maybe it did for Lord Lucan. I'm Alex von tunzelman. And for BBC Radio 4, this is the Lucan Obsession, episode 10, the Final Act. People do run away, create new identities, and if they're better at hiding than John Stonehouse, get away with it. If Lord Lucan had the mental strength to do this, he certainly had contacts who could have helped him. Class, money, a fall from grace, a striking villain and victims. There are many reasons the Lucan case captured the public imagination, but it's also something deeper about the story itself. Human societies are held together by stories instinctively. We know good stories have a beginning, a middle and an end. This one doesn't. There's just a beginning and a middle. The absence of that end unsettles us, so we're compelled to create one that is the root of the Lucan obsession. The horrible reality comes back to a dark basement in Belgravia, with Sandra Rivett's blood already seeping through the United States mail sack. Lord Lucan had thought about killing his wife. He'd talked drunkenly to friends about it. He'd lost the children he loved to the wife he hated and was on the brink of bankruptcy. He had a motive and was under the kind of pressure that can make someone act irrationally. He knew it was the nanny's night off. He borrowed a friend's car. He drove past the Claremont Club and spoke to the doorman at the precise time that would give him an alibi. He admitted he was in the house that night. So the simplest explanation is that he did it. But then it gets complicated. Why would a squeamish man plan to bludgeon his wife to death with lead piping? She was on medication. If she took an overdose, it wouldn't look particularly suspicious. Why set up this noisy and traumatic murder when the children were upstairs? Why didn't he notice, face to face with his victim, that she wasn't his wife? And if his aim was to kill Lady Lucan, why did he stop after the attack? The two of them were together for at least half an hour before she fled. That was plenty of time to kill the woman he wanted to kill, who was now also the only adult witness against him. So the simplest solution involves several complex assumptions. The fact there isn't a simpler answer drives obsession. With this case, I'm left with suspicion around two questions. First, I wonder if Lady Lucan was telling the complete truth. Lord Lucan wasn't known to be violent. She was throwing glasses of wine over acquaintances and urine at journalists. But I don't think it can be as simple as suggesting she did it because Lord Lucan said he saw another man attacking her. Lord Lucan's suggestion that there was another man in the house that night is possible. But if so, he was most likely a hitman hired by Lord Lucan. That would explain why he killed the wrong woman. It wouldn't make Lord Lucan innocent. The police don't seem to have given a lot of weight to these possibilities. Part of the reason they didn't is Lord Lucan fled and by doing so, he handed full control of this story to Lady Lucan. He said in his letters that because he wasn't believed by the judge in his custody case, he thought a judge wouldn't believe him this time either. Well, maybe. But he sure as heck didn't help himself. I think there's a chance Lord Lucan left the country. That sighting of him by a senior police officer on the Santander ferry, backed up by his friend's credit card receipt, is compelling. There are plenty of places he could have disappeared. His brother, Hugh Bingham, allegedly once told a reporter that Lord Lucan died in Africa in 2004. If he's still alive, what would happen if he came back for a trial? A defence lawyer could raise questions around Lady Lucan's rumoured boyfriends. Or the under investigated possibility of another man in the house. There's significant potential for discrediting Lady Lucan as a witness. I think a decent barrister could create enough doubt in the minds of a jury to get Lord Lucan off. That doesn't mean he was innocent. On balance, I doubt he was. Though I'm not sure he was the only person who was guilty. But in a criminal case, guilt must be proven beyond reasonable doubt.

[Jackie Moulton]

Lord Lucan's briefcase. He never took this with him either.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

And I'm with the journalist Bob Strange, going through that box of Lord Lucan's possessions he bought from the accountant.

[Unnamed Journalist]

This is a speculum. This is a pretty weird stuff to.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

Have in a box, isn't it?

[Unnamed Journalist]

What on earth is this for?

[Alex von Tunzelman]

The police have never seen any of this.

[Jackie Moulton]

Wrapped up in some of the tissue paper are photographs of women in various states of fetish disarray.

[Unnamed Journalist]

So on one side of this one we've got a middle aged lady squatting over a lavatory bowl, wearing suspenders and spiky boots. Slightly nurse's outfit, look. And on the other side we've got one woman from the back in a kind of plastic PVC dress. One woman from the front looking rather racy, smoking a cigarette, in sunglasses, a rubber leotard and some black gloves.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

I never thought I'd use my historical training to sift through Lord Lucan's pawn stash. Oh, well, here goes.

[Unnamed Journalist]

How exotic.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

Most of these are Pages torn from 1970s fetish contact magazines. They're ordinary women dressed up in leather gear who want to meet like minded men, presumably for some spanky fun. There are also photographs, a couple of Polaroids of women on beds pulling their own legs apart.

[Unnamed Journalist]

There is indeed a photo of somebody who doesn't look completely unlike Veronica Lucan, wearing a rubber Leo suit made in London for about pound 35. And this one completely covers the body. I mean, you can't even see a face. It's what we'd now sort of think of as a gimp mask.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

Some of what's in this box clearly did come from Lord Lucan's flat. The chequebook and letters are authentic. If these fetish pictures did too, they back up Lady Lucan's claims about her husband's sexual kinks. There are a few books, an academic study of sexual fetishism with yet more fruity pics. But another catches my eye.

[Unnamed Journalist]

Book on Norman the Life of Lord Birket of Ulverston by H. Montgomery Hyde. It's a huge hardback, massive book.

[Jackie Moulton]

Birkett became a judge, but he was a major defence barrister in the golden era of sort of British jurisprudence. And Lucan appears to have been studying closely and sort of underlining bits of cases that he was dealt with that had some relevance to his own desire to get rid of his wife.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

There are underlines and turned down corners on very specific pages.

[Jackie Moulton]

And everything that has been torn out relates to murder cases of early 20th century onwards. Almost all of them where a husband tried to kill his wife and got away with it.

[Unnamed Journalist]

Goes into the case of the Brighton trunk murders, which were in the 1930s, where women's bodies were found in trunks at left luggage offices at railway stations. I think at least five pages seem to have been completely ripped out.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

Of course, this is circumstantial. Maybe it was planted in this box by someone, though I'm not sure why they'd have done that, since no one has taken it to the police or, or tried to sell it to the papers. So it may well be legit. And if so, this does make it look like Lord Lucan's thoughts about murdering his wife went beyond drunken comments to a friend into the planning stage.

[Unnamed Journalist]

This book, full of ways to murder women, doesn't look great, does it?

[Jackie Moulton]

That's probably a wonderful understatement, except that police don't have that evidence because they never bothered to collect it and because.

[Unnamed Journalist]

It'S sitting in your study.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

There's some other stuff in here, too. Lucan's typewriter, a fetching shade of teal in a leather case.

[Jackie Moulton]

And that appears to be his hat.

[Unnamed Journalist]

A tweed, sort of slightly houndstoothy cap. Should we have a picture of you wearing it, Bob?

[Alex von Tunzelman]

Could this stuff have Lord Lucan's DNA on it? Could we find out through testing from the crime scene if he did murder Sandra Rivett? Back to former Met police detective Jackie Moulton. If I had a box of Lucan's possessions now, including his hat, keys, some documents that haven't been passed around too much, would that be something that maybe some sort of DNA could be extracted from?

[Bob Strange]

They'd have a look at it. I'm sure the forensic scientists would have a look at it. It depends on the decay. Fifty years later, bear in mind that the police exhibits will have been preserved, specifically preserved. Lord Lucan's hat or his comb brush may not have been preserved in the same way, so it could decay.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

Yeah. I encouraged Bob to put that hat on for a photo, so I guess it's now contaminated. Whoops.

[Bob Strange]

He does. Lord Lucan does put himself at the scene, doesn't he? He's there, so it's not trying to say, oh, I wasn't there, my Lord he was there. So it's about the evidence on the exhibits, you know, on, on the body. So if, for example, if there was DNA of Lord Lugans on the USA mailbag, for example, you know, that's kind of strong evidence.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

But did I hear correctly that the police still have exhibits from the crime scene that they would have.

[Bob Strange]

Oh, no, God, yes.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

Yeah.

[Bob Strange]

In this evidence, those exhibits are preserved. Have been preserved, yeah.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

Didn't the blood all get mixed up when the police and journalists stomped through it?

[Bob Strange]

Yeah, but they also have samples where there's complete samples of Sandra Rivets, some across, but not all of them. There is another group, as I understand it, of male blood.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

So if we did have, say, Lucan's DNA, there would be a chance we could test it against Sandra's clothes or something.

[Bob Strange]

Oh, gosh. Complete comparison. Yeah. And if you had the familial DNA, that would help with the DNA profile. And in today's world, you could get a familial DNA from the family to compare, then you'd know 100%.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

So if his children, for instance, were to give DNA.

[Bob Strange]

Yes.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

That could be used for a comparison and we could get an answer tomorrow.

[Bob Strange]

If the evidence that the police have is a good enough quality, you could get that answer. Answer tomorrow.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

I'm suggesting, if Jackie's right about this, I wonder if the police have requested DNA from Lord Lucan's children, that could settle this. But maybe they don't want to know. If so, I can't blame them. It must be exhausting to live with other people's obsession with this story. Lord Lucan's son, George bingham, now the 8th Earl of Lucan, has said he believes his father is innocent. A moment like the murder of Sandra Rivet can fragment and transform everyone's life story. Ultimately, in this case, one person, probably a man, killed one woman. What happened in those few minutes changed so many people's realities forever. Sandra Rivets, obviously Lord Lucan's, whether he was guilty or not. Lady Lucan, who ended up cut off from her children, those three children, now middle aged Sandra Rivett's parents and her two sons, policemen, journalists maybe, others we don't know about. Was there a hitman who spent the rest of his life looking over his shoulder? Did some of Lord Lucan's friends help him start a new life and keep their silence forever? At the beginning of this series, I thought I'd end up accepting that Lord Lucan murdered Sandra Rivet, thinking she was his wife, then threw himself into the English Channel. After all my own investigation into why this story remains so compelling, I feel much less sure about either of those conclusions. I've become part of the Lucan Obsession myself, part of the culture feeding off this case and its mysteries. What should have mattered most all along is justice for Sandra Rivet. To my surprise, I think we're within grasping distance of that justice. The question of whether Lord Lucan killed her could be resolved if his family came forward with their DNA. That's not in the next episode because it hasn't happened. So there is no next episode. But maybe one day DNA will finally give this story an ending and lay the Lucan obsession to rest. The Lucan Obsession is a BBC Studios audio production for BBC Radio 4. The presenter was Alex von Tunzelman. The content producer was Becca Briers. The series producer was Sarah Bowen. The editor was Philip Sellars. For years, a witness's evidence has been locked away.

[Jackie Moulton]

I've seen the dark side.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

He warned a chemical is coming, it's a silent killer. And that he was a target forced into a witness protection program. We're Del Ashby and Lucy Taylor, two investigative journalists joined by the Hollywood star, Michael Sheen. Do you think someone's going to try and kill us? From BBC Radio 4, an unsettling investigation into a chemical secret unravels. They don't have any record of him.

[Bob Strange]

What?

[Alex von Tunzelman]

Listen now to Barry, the last witness on BBC Sounds.

[Paul McGann]

Ship of Dreams, the new podcast from the award winning Noiser Network. Join me, Paul McGann, as we explore life and death on Titanic. I'll delve into my own family story following my great uncle Jimmy as he tries to escape the engine room. We'll hear the harrowing tales of the victims and the testimonies of the lucky survivors.

[Bob Strange]

I saw that ship sink and I saw that ship break in half.

[Paul McGann]

Titanic, ship of dreams. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.