The night a nanny was killed and an earl disappeared

Shortly before nine o'clock on the evening of Thursday 7 November 1974, Sandra Rivett went down to the basement kitchen of a tall house in Belgravia to make tea. She was 29, a mother herself, and worked as the nanny to the three children of Lord and Lady Lucan. She never came back up the stairs.

A marriage that had fallen apart

The house was 46 Lower Belgrave Street, one of the smartest addresses in London. Richard John Bingham, the 7th Earl of Lucan, had grown up in that world: Eton, the Guards, a short spell in a merchant bank. Then he gave it up to gamble for a living, mostly at backgammon and cards in the exclusive Clermont Club in Mayfair. His friends called him "Lucky".

By 1974 his luck had run out in more ways than one. He and his wife Veronica had separated early in 1973, and had fought a bitter battle over the children. Lord Lucan lost. The children stayed with their mother at Lower Belgrave Street, and he moved to a flat nearby, seeing them every other weekend. He was also deeply in debt.

"Help me"

When Sandra Rivett did not return, Lady Lucan went to look for her. At the top of the stairs to the basement, she was attacked in the dark.

She broke free, and some time later ran down the street, bleeding from head wounds, to the Plumbers Arms pub nearby. According to the pub's landlord, who later gave evidence at the inquest, she cried: "Help me, help me, I've just escaped from being murdered!" She said her husband had attacked her and had killed the nanny.

Police found Sandra Rivett's body in the basement, inside a canvas sack. She had been beaten to death. A bloodstained length of lead pipe lay near the top of the basement stairs.

A night drive to Sussex

Lord Lucan was not there. That night he phoned his mother and told her there had been a "terrible catastrophe" at the house. Then he drove a borrowed Ford Corsair more than 40 miles to Uckfield in East Sussex, to the home of his friend Susan Maxwell-Scott.

There he wrote letters to his brother-in-law and to the friend who had lent him the car. In one, he gave his own version of events. He wrote of "the most ghastly circumstances", and said he had interrupted a fight at Lower Belgrave Street and "the man left". He added that "the circumstantial evidence is strong in that V will say it was all my doing", and that he would "lie doggo for a bit".

At about 1.15 in the morning of 8 November, he left Uckfield. It is the last time he was reliably seen.

Two days later, the Corsair was found parked in a street in Newhaven, a ferry port on the Sussex coast. There was blood inside, and in the boot lay another piece of lead pipe.

The last verdict of its kind

A warrant was issued for Lord Lucan's arrest. In June 1975, an inquest into Sandra Rivett's death was held in London. After a short deliberation, the jury's foreman gave its verdict: "Murder by Lord Lucan."

It is widely cited as the last time a coroner's jury in England named someone as a murderer. In 1977 Parliament removed that power, following a recommendation made years earlier, so that inquests could no longer find a person guilty of murder.

That verdict is the closest the case has ever come to a court ruling on what happened. Lord Lucan was never arrested, never tried and never convicted. His son and younger daughter have said they are not convinced he was responsible. Lady Lucan said he had attacked Sandra Rivett in the dark believing she was his wife, a theory police also favoured, but which was never tested in court.

Seen everywhere, found nowhere

For decades, Lord Lucan was "spotted" all over the world: in Africa, Australia, New Zealand, India and South America. One man living in Goa was confidently identified as him, but turned out to be a folk musician from Merseyside. A man in Australia investigated as recently as the 2020s was ruled out by the police.

None of the sightings has ever been confirmed. Some of his friends believed he took his own life that night, perhaps in the Channel. Lady Lucan later said she thought he had jumped from a ferry. Nobody knows.

Declared dead

In 1999 the High Court declared Lord Lucan dead for the purposes of his estate. In February 2016, under a new law for missing people, a judge granted a death certificate, and his son George became the 8th Earl.

"Our family has no idea how our own father, my father, met his own end," George Bingham said after the ruling. "It is a mystery, and it may well remain that way forever."

Sandra Rivett's son, Neil Berriman, had put it differently before the hearing: "Closure for us is when we can actually get closure for Sandra."

The Metropolitan Police says the inquiry into her murder remains open, as it does for all unsolved murders. More than 50 years later, the questions about that night in Lower Belgrave Street still begin with her.