Transcript
Alex von Tunzelman (0:00)
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Paul McGann (0:05)
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 (0:27)
I saw that ship sink and I saw that ship break in half.
Paul McGann (0:32)
Titanic Ship of dreams. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
Unnamed Journalist (0:39)
BBC.
Alex von Tunzelman (0:39)
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.