The Lucan Obsession: 8. Speculation and Suspicion

Summary

The History Podcast: The Lucan Obsession - Episode 8: Speculation and Suspicion

In Episode 8 of BBC Radio 4's "The Lucan Obsession," titled "Speculation and Suspicion," host Alex von Tunzelman delves deep into the enigmatic case of Lord Lucan, exploring the myriad theories and controversies that continue to shroud this high-profile disappearance. This episode meticulously examines the inquest, media frenzy, and the persistent speculations that have kept the Lucan mystery alive for decades.

Introduction to the Lucifer Case

The episode opens with a vivid portrayal of Britain in 1975—a nation grappling with economic recession, labor strikes, and the terror of IRA bombings in London. Amidst this backdrop, the sensationalist media, particularly Rupert Murdoch's tabloid, The Sun, seizes upon the baffling disappearance of Lord Lucan, turning his story into a relentless public obsession.

Alex von Tunzelman sets the scene:
"In Westminster, one of the most sensational trials of the century is about to begin. Except it isn't really a trial at all." ([00:39])

The Inquest and Media Obsession

James Fox, a journalist for The Sunday Times, provides firsthand insight into the media's voracious appetite for the Lucan saga. He describes the fervor surrounding the inquest into Sandra Rivett's murder and Lord Lucan's subsequent disappearance.

James Fox remarks:
"It was a huge tabloid story." ([01:28])

The episode highlights how the Sunday Times secured an exclusive interview with Lady Lucan, aiming to clarify the murky circumstances of the case. However, the inquest quickly became a spectacle, characterized by rampant rumors and sensational allegations against Lady Lucan.

Media Influence and the Role of Lady Lucan

Lady Lucan emerged as a formidable figure in the public eye, with numerous unsettling rumors circulating about her behavior. James Fox candidly discusses the salacious and often unsubstantiated claims that tarnished her reputation.

James Fox confesses:
"Rumors began to circulate of a really prurient kind about Lady Lucan." ([02:12])
"...making genitalia out of plasticine in front of the children, murdering her cat." ([02:40])

These allegations, whether true or fabricated, fueled public fascination and mistrust, painting Lady Lucan in a dubious light.

The Inquest Proceedings

Laura Thompson, the coroner overseeing the case, provides a critical perspective on the inquest's proceedings. She emphasizes the challenges faced in determining Lord Lucan's fate given his prolonged absence.

Laura Thompson explains:
"It did become a trial, but it lacked the basic right of a defendant in an actual trial whereby you can question the probity of the person who's accusing you." ([03:33])

Despite tight restrictions on questioning, the inquest jury swiftly concluded Lord Lucan's responsibility for Sandra Rivett's murder within just 31 minutes.

Speculations and Alternative Theories

The episode transitions into a detailed exploration of the various theories that challenge the official verdict. Crime writer Claire McGowan critically analyzes the plausibility of Lord Lucan committing the murder, pointing out inconsistencies and questionable behaviors.

Claire McGowan asserts:
"I think it's believable if there'd just been one blow. But Sandra was actually killed by multiple blows, so seems a little implausible." ([05:21])

Further skepticism arises regarding Lord Lucan's mental state and the chaotic nature of the crime scene, suggesting that his involvement may not be as clear-cut as the inquest determined.

Investigating Possible Alibis and Alternative Suspects

Bob Strange, a journalist, uncovers intriguing evidence that casts doubt on the official narrative. He recounts his investigation into a police officer's dubious statement, which hints at potential connections between Lady Lucan and law enforcement.

Bob Strange reveals:
"He lost his chance of becoming a full police officer because of this allegation that, in the words of his statement, Lady Lucan alleged that they had had sexual intercourse." ([11:49])

This revelation introduces the possibility of undisclosed relationships and hidden motives that may have influenced the case's outcome.

Lady Lucan's Testimony and Credibility

Lady Lucan's own testimony during the inquest is scrutinized, particularly her claims of being blackmailed and her interactions with law enforcement. The episode questions the authenticity of her statements and whether she might have had motives to manipulate the narrative.

Laura Thompson reflects:
"I think she said to me, I'm gonna go to Broadmoor for this." ([10:04])

The doctor involved in the case also entertains the unlikely possibility of Lady Lucan inflicting injuries upon herself, although he deems it highly improbable.

Unresolved Mysteries and Continuation of the Obsession

Despite the inquest's verdict, the Lucan case remains riddled with unanswered questions and lingering doubts. The episode underscores that while Lord Lucan is legally presumed guilty, the absence of definitive evidence and his mysterious disappearance leave room for ongoing speculation.

Alex von Tunzelman muses:
"But maybe I'm falling into the trap of the Lucan obsession, creating a more and more complicated explanation, because I want this story to follow a logic that real life just doesn't." ([08:07])

The enduring fascination with the case is a testament to its complex nature and the compelling human narratives intertwined within it.

Conclusion and Forward Look

As Episode 8 concludes, Alex von Tunzelman hints at future explorations into the case, particularly focusing on the possibility that Lord Lucan may have escaped alive, further deepening the mystery.

Alex von Tunzelman teases:
"With Lucan's guilt decided, the British press moved on to a new obsession and an even bigger story had Lord Lucan escaped alive." ([13:44])

This forward-looking statement sets the stage for subsequent episodes, promising listeners a continued unraveling of one of Britain's most enduring criminal enigmas.

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Notable Quotes:

• James Fox on media obsession:
  "It was a huge tabloid story." ([01:28])

• James Fox on rumors about Lady Lucan:
  "Rumors began to circulate of a really prurient kind about Lady Lucan." ([02:12])
  "...making genitalia out of plasticine in front of the children, murdering her cat." ([02:40])

• Laura Thompson on the inquest's limitations:
  "It did become a trial, but it lacked the basic right of a defendant in an actual trial whereby you can question the probity of the person who's accusing you." ([03:33])

• Claire McGowan on the plausibility of Lord Lucan's actions:
  "I think it's believable if there'd just been one blow. But Sandra was actually killed by multiple blows, so seems a little implausible." ([05:21])

• Bob Strange on the police officer's statement:
  "He lost his chance of becoming a full police officer because of this allegation that, in the words of his statement, Lady Lucan alleged that they had had sexual intercourse." ([11:49])

• Alex von Tunzelman on the ongoing obsession:
  "But maybe I'm falling into the trap of the Lucan obsession, creating a more and more complicated explanation, because I want this story to follow a logic that real life just doesn't." ([08:07])

Final Thoughts

Episode 8 of "The Lucan Obsession" masterfully navigates the complexities of one of Britain's most perplexing criminal cases. Through meticulous examination of the inquest, media influence, and a plethora of theories, the episode offers listeners a comprehensive understanding of why Lord Lucan's disappearance remains a subject of enduring intrigue and debate.

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.

[Claire McGowan]

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.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

BBC Sounds music radio podcasts. It's 1975among the swaggering, macho and competitive journalists in the newsroom of Rupert Murdoch's new tabloid, the Sun. The pressure's on to scoop Britain's most popular paper, the Daily Mirror. Life in Britain is pretty depressing. The economy's tipped into recession. There have been strikes. IRA bombs keep going off in London. The Mirror publishes photographs of glamour models in bikinis on page three. The sun ups the stakes by having them pose in the nude. And alongside the soft porn. What could be more thrilling than sensational crime stories? Lord Lucan has vanished. And for the papers, his story is a gift that keeps on giving.

[James Fox]

It was a huge tabloid story.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

James Fox was a journalist for the Sunday Times.

[James Fox]

Earl gambling. The Claremont Club, an exclusive band of people who tried to prevent the police from getting evidence about their friend, was just made for the tabloids.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

In Westminster, one of the most sensational trials of the century is about to begin. Except it isn't really a trial at all. I'm Alex von tunzelman and for BBC Radio 4, this is the Lucan Obsession, episode eight, speculation and suspicion. Before the inquest, James secured a long interview with Lady Lucan, partly because he promised to set the record straight.

[James Fox]

Rumors began to circulate of a really prurient kind about Lady Lucan. Some of the details are really. I don't think I can even sort of say them, but things like making genitalia out of plasticine in front of the children, murdering her cat. And it's astonishing. The public imagination in a sort of moment like this, things people believe about somebody is really quite extraordinary. I have these notebooks of the inquest of my interviews. Gosh.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

And these notebooks are so full that you've written on the COVID in this one. She gave me a big banana. On the day journalists packed out the coroner's court, the atmosphere fizzed with excitement.

[James Fox]

A lot of the guys and girls were there. I mean, people who'd been on sort of expenses for weeks. We were a Gang, you know, we were the Lucan gang.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

Many players had fueled the obsession with this story, but now the press were going to supercharge it.

[James Fox]

It traced the whole story. It traced from the very beginning to where his car ended up. What was found in the car? There was a lot of copy. You were getting evidence that you hadn't.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

Heard before, yet only some parts of the story came out. Author Laura Thompson, the coroner was aware.

[Laura Thompson]

That there still could be a trial. I mean, Lucan had been missing since November 74, but he might not continue to be missing, so there couldn't be anything prejudicial.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

Even so, the coroner wanted to determine not just what happened to Sandra Rivet, but who killed her.

[Laura Thompson]

It did become a trial, but it lacked the basic right of a defendant in an actual trial whereby you can question the probity of the person who's accusing you.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

Lord Lucan's interests were represented by a barrister, Michael Eastham qc. He tried to raise questions about Lady Lucan's mental health and attitude to her husband.

[Laura Thompson]

But every time he asked Veronica anything that was to the point, the coroner discontinued the line of questioning. So he began by saying something like, you entertained feelings of hatred for your husband. Did you not finish? Can't have that.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

With tight restrictions on what could be asked, and said Lord Lucan couldn't be defended. The jury took just 31 minutes to name him responsible for Sandra Rivett's murder.

[Laura Thompson]

Lucan became the last but one person who could be named as guilty by an inquest jury that is now no longer possible. You read it from one point of view and you think, gosh, this is an absolute travesty. But then you also think, well, Lucan had brought this on himself, either by committing the crime or, if he didn't, by running away. All he had to do was show up and defend himself.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

True enough, but the guilty verdict didn't end the speculation about the murder.

[Laura Thompson]

I mean, there's a bit of a, bit of a poser in all this, which is that Lucan may have had an alibi, which is a real shocker if you trust the alibi. Certainly if you go by the timings of his daughter, then the crime happened at around quarter to nine. At a quarter to nine, he was driving past the Claremont Club, winding down the window and saying to the doorman, anybody in yet?

[Alex von Tunzelman]

The thing I find hardest to believe is that Lord Lucan didn't realize he was murdering the wrong woman. The murderer was face to face with Sandra Rivet. Surely even in the dark, she would have sounded and smelled different from his wife. Of More than a decade. Crime writer Claire McGowan.

[Claire McGowan]

I think it's believable if there'd just been one blow. But Sandra was actually killed by multiple blows, so seems a little implausible. Also, I would completely believe, based on the state of mind of Lord Lucan and the state of their marriage and his bankruptcy looming, I would believe that he had wanted to kill her. But is that really how you would do it in such a messy, evidence laden way in the actual house?

[Alex von Tunzelman]

And it's odd Lord Lucan would plan such a violent murder when he couldn't stand the sight of blood. If it wasn't Lucan though, who could have killed Sandra? There were no signs of forced entry, so the idea of a burglar was dismissed. But what if this wasn't a case of mistaken identity after all? Could one of Sandra's boyfriends have wanted to kill her?

[Laura Thompson]

There was supposedly a Norwegian sailor. There was somebody called Ray. There was somebody she'd broken up with very, very recently. I don't know if he's another person. There was the official one, John Hankins. Only takes one of those men to get nasty. And she's a fairly viable victim in her own right, you know, an intended victim.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

What the police did, Lannix, is that they. Jackie Moulton, former senior police officer, they traced every boyfriend of Sandra Rivet and took statements from them. And not only did they trace them, they alibi'd them out. With strong alibis for the night in question. Just when I think I'm getting somewhere. Okay, what about the idea that Lord Lucan hired a hitman?

[Laura Thompson]

Lucan took out this loan with the most notorious money lender to the upper classes. He borrowed £3,000 at 48% interest. I don't know whether that would buy you a hitman, but certainly the casino world, there would be people who could get you someone, I would think. And I just think it would explain the killing of the wrong woman. It would explain the mail sack whose provenance is unknown. It would explain, you know, who was going to deal with that Ford Corsair and put a body in it. Because the idea of Lucan doing that in the middle of London, get a body out of the house and put it in the car. I find him as the actor, not credible. But it really was an incompetent hitman. And also it doesn't explain why Lucan was there. Because if you're employing someone to do it, you make sure to be as far away as possible.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

That's true, but I'd say two one hitmen are really only slick in the movies. Two, I can imagine a version of events in which Lord Lucan hired a hitman, set up his alibi, then had second thoughts and rushed to stop the murder. Of course, if he hired a hitman to kill his wife and that hitman killed Sandra Rivett, he's not exactly innocent. But it does make sense of a few things, including the Gory murder plan and. And the mistaken identity. But maybe I'm falling into the trap of the Lucan obsession, creating a more and more complicated explanation, because I want this story to follow a logic that real life just doesn't. There was at least one other adult in the house. Lady Lucan. Could she have murdered Sandra Rivett or inflicted the injuries on herself? Now, let's be clear. People with mental health problems such as Lady Lucan are far more likely to be the victims of violent crime than the perpetrators. And in the vast majority of gender based violence cases, men attack women and girls. That said, some women do commit violent crime and some lie about it. In 2023, a woman from Barrow in Furness called Eleanor Williams posted pictures of herself online with horrific injuries. It turned out she'd bought a hammer and beaten herself up. She was jailed for making false allegations against a number of men. During the Sandra Rivet inquest, somebody clearly wondered whether Lady Lucan had done something like that. The doctor who treated her was asked, could Lady Lucan's injuries have been self inflicted? He replied, yes, but it is very unlikely. Lady Lucan later told the News of the World, it was only then I realised that I myself was suspected of murdering Sandra. I can't get some of her stranger comments out of my head.

[James Fox]

I think she said to me, I'm gonna go to Broadmoor for this.

[Laura Thompson]

I don't have a very high opinion of the value of human life. The other person who I think might have done it is Veronica, because there were two people in the house and it took an awful lot to kill that poor small woman and she was on very strong drugs. But I mean, it's a bit like a novel, it's a bit of a Christie twist.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

Crime fiction keeps creeping back into this story. Maybe it is an Agatha Christie twist, but Lady Lucan took such tight control over this story that I have to consider her motives. Though she had no female friends and previous nannies have said she barely spoke to them. She claimed to have been best friends with Sandra. I find that hard to believe because Lady Lucan was a ferocious snobby. When she was asked at the inquest why an attack with the same piece of lead piping that Killed Sandra had not broken her own skull. Lady Lucan replied, good breeding. Ironically, the piece of evidence that most clearly vindicates Lady Lucan is the testimony of Lord Lucan. He said he saw a man attacking his wife. If what he really saw was his wife attacking the nanny, why wouldn't he say that? Lord Lucan described this man only as like large, which isn't much to go on. Could someone else have wanted to kill Lady Lucan? Let's go back to that peculiar tape where she says she was being blackmailed.

[Laura Thompson]

I was going through a terribly difficult time having got involved with somebody who I thought was going to back me.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

Was this the drugs talking or could there be something in.

[Bob Strange]

It took me many, many years to find the policeman involved.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

After the inquest, journalist Bob Strange came across a curious statement from a prob stationary police officer.

[Bob Strange]

He lost his chance of becoming a full police officer because of this allegation that, in the words of his statement, Lady Lucan alleged that they had had sexual intercourse. That's the actual words on the statement. But the police had not investigated it.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

Bob tracked him down to a small village and confronted him on the doorstep.

[Bob Strange]

He said, I have never been a policeman. So I said, well, actually, I've got here a note that you were at Gerald Road police station, which is just very near the Lucan family home, and you were there in 1974 when this happened. And he said, ah, oh, yeah, well, I was a policeman. He said, but I didn't know the Lucan family. And I said, well, I gather that you, you become very friendly with Lady Lucan, you got called to investigate a crime there one night. And he said, no, never investigate a crime at the Lucan house. And I said, well, according to this statement I have in my pocket, you were called it Thor 90. We then proceeded in this peculiar way of outright absolute lies, countered by me proving in absolute fact that he was lying. And the basic story was that he was one of three young police officers who were dispatched to the Lucan house one night after Lord Lucan had separated and had gone, because Lady Lucan was in the habit of phoning and saying that she thought there were burglars in the house. So go down and they check the house over and there's no sign of any entry. But this guy realizes he's getting a flirty eye from Lady Lucan, who is an attractive woman. So he tells his two mates that, you go back to the nick and I'll just have one last check over the premises, just to reassure her anyway, because then he never turned up back at the police station that night.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

It does sound like Lady Lucan was having relationships and was concerned about men breaking into the house. Did she hope this man would protect her against someone else? Or if he lost his job over this, was he out to get her himself? Maybe all of these other theories are nonsense and Lord Lucan was the murderer, but there was clearly far more going on than the inquest ever heard there. Lady Lucan was the star witness and her version of the story triumphed. With Lucan's guilt decided, the British press moved on to a new obsession and an even bigger story had Lord Lucan escaped alive. That's in the next episode.

[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.

[Claire McGowan]

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.