The Murder of Lord Lucan's Nanny

A well planned murder ends in the death of the wrong person

Was Sandra Rivett murdered by Lord Lucan?

A bleak November night in 1974 - and after months of planning, the 7th Earl of Lucan finally sets into motion a plot that is to turn him into a legend: He sets out to murder the mother of his three children, his estranged wife Veronica.

Although there are many possible scenarios, the most likely one is that the 39-year-old Earl had been planning the murder for nearly a year. He’d borrowed a friend’s car, a Ford Corsair, so that he could dispose of the body; he’d prepared his alibi at the Clermont Club, where he was supposed to be meeting friends for dinner; and he not only had a murder weapon - a piece of lead piping wrapped with white tape - but he had a spare bludgeon in the back of his Ford Corsair. How it would come to haunt him.

But the one thing that Lucan had never considered was that on the night of the murder, his wife’s nanny, Sandra Rivett, would change her evening off.

Sandra was 29-years-old, a bubbly redhead, and quite petite; in the dark, she would have looked much like Veronica.

It’s early evening, the Lucans’ three children have gone to bed, and Sandra goes downstairs to make some tea.

Lucan is lurking in the basement with his bludgeon. He’s unscrewed the light-bulb, so that it’s quite dark. Down the stairs comes this slight figure, a woman; it has to be Veronica. Who else could it be?

He attacks her with a flurry of blows, until eventually she’s lying dead on the floor - and then to his utter horror he realises that he’s got the wrong woman. He starts to stuff her into a US mailbag.

And now it’s Veronica who’s coming down the stairs, calling out for Sandra, asking if she’s all right. Lucan attacks her on the stairs, trying to throttle her with his gloved hands, until she strikes him a low-blow in the testicles. He’s winded. For a minute or two, they talk quite calmly.

Lucan goes off to the bathroom to clean up the blood and Veronica takes her chance. She runs out screaming onto the streets of Belgravia and races to the nearby Plumber’s Arms, where she begs them to call the police.

And as for Lord Lucan, he has only a few minutes to flee the house before the start of one of the biggest - and longest - man-hunts in history.

He calls up his mother; he stops over for a drink with a friend; and eventually, still protesting his innocence, he leaves his battered car in Newhaven - and with it, the ultimate proof that he was up to his neck in the murder.

For although it is just possible that somebody else may have murdered Sandra Rivett, Lucan was definitely involved - of that, there can be no doubt. The murder weapon, that bent piece of lead piping, was left at the scene - and meanwhile where was its twin?

The police found the spare bludgeon in the boot of Lucan’s Ford Corsair - and it was this, ultimately, which was to be the smoking gun in the Lucan scandal. Once this second bludgeon had been found, Lucan’s options were limited to either jail or a life-time on the run.

Most of Lucan’s friends from the notorious Clermont Set claim - of course - that he committed suicide long ago.

But they would say that, wouldn’t they?

Lord Lucan: My Story