A death certificate has been issued for the peer who vanished after his children’s nanny, Sandra Rivett, was bludgeoned to death in London.
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Under a law that took effect in 2014, the earl’s son, George Charles Bingham, asked a court to formally issue a death certificate so that he could inherit his father’s title and become the eighth Earl of Lucan.
After driving to Newhaven in a Ford Corsair, stopping off to speak with a friend and write two letters, Lucan disappeared. He was handsome, a gambler and a man with expensive tastes.
Lady Lucan said at the time of the killing that her husband admitted committing the crime, although he said it was a mistake.
Lord Lucan had disappeared after Sandra Rivett, nanny to his three children, was found murdered on November 7, 1974.
Because Lord Lucan was never found, numerous stories and myths grew up around his disappearance.
But sightings of him were reported in January 1975 in Melbourne, Australia and later in France.
But, legally at least, the case is now closed.
But Mr Berriman claims he will prove Lord Lucan escaped and died overseas some time in the past 15 years. Ever since, Lord Lucan’s whereabouts and his ultimate fate remained a mystery.
“I am very happy with the judgement of the court in this matter”.
‘I was stunned when Stephen told me this, absolutely stunned, ‘ says 73-year-old Mr Marcq, who now lives in semi-retirement in Wiltshire. In the process, as well as becoming the earl of Lucan, George Bingham will also acquire the subsidiary titles associated with the Earldom, namely, Baron Lucan of Castlebar in the County of Mayo, Irish Republic and Baron Bingham, of Melcombe Bingham in the County of Dorset, UK.
George Bingham arrives with his wife Anne-Sofie Foghsgaard, at the High Court in central London on February 3, 2016.
But Neil Berriman, the murdered nanny’s biological son, told AFP he was “shocked” to hear of Bingham’s application and initially lodged an objection, which he has since withdrawn.
Lord Lucan’s auto was found abandoned and soaked in blood in Newhaven, East Sussex, and an inquest jury declared him the killer a year later. He said new evidence will surface in the next few years and possibly solve the mystery.
“Maybe the police know more than they let on”, he said in a statement outside court, in front of a press scrum.
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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. A disgusting death, a young woman beaten – my mother. “We still do not know how he met his end”. “There is no getting away from the fact that whatever happened that night, Lord Lucan is guilty of something in my eyes”.
