The Murder of Sandra Rivett & A Lord on the Loose - Part 2

Welcome to Red Herrings!

This week, Joccoaa gives us some suprises along the way in the tale of the missing Lord...

Lady Lucan Website here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20171003195546/http://www.ladylucan.co.uk/index2.htm

Hosted by Brittany Warren & Joccoaa Gray

Sound Engineer & Co-host Christopher Brown

Edited by Joccoaa Gray

Sources:

Wikipedia

British Newspaper Archive 

The British Archives

Childlawadvice.org

https://archive.org/details/british-rail-international-passenger-timetable-1974-75/page%2004.jpg

https://web.archive.org/web/20171001023421/http://ladylucan.co.uk/

The Guardian

The Independent

The Daily Mail

Theweek.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Welcome to Red Herrings. I'm Jacoa, Master's student in Law and Human Rights, host of True Crime Club Newcastle, and creator of True Crime Forum Newcastle.

SPEAKER_02 0:15

Hi, I'm Brittany. I have two degrees in history and 15 years experience in genealogy. We're the red herrings!

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Well, well, well. What do we have here? Two red herrings and the catch of the day. Don't forget about me.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

Hi Chris! We're the red herrings!

SPEAKER_00 0:32

I'm Chris!

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Welcome back to part two of the murder of Sandra Rivet and the Missing Lord. Quick recap, we begin with Veronica Duncan, i.e. Lady Lucan, stumbling into a pub in London screaming bloody murder. We find the nanny Sandra Rivet has been murdered, and Veronica's husband, Lord Lucan, has fled the scene. We've discussed Lord Lucan, then popping by his mate's house late in the evening, telling them his version of events, and we have read through the two letters he wrote to other close friends, one to William Shand Kidd and one to Michael Stoop. In these letters Lukan claimed his innocence and asked for his children to be looked after well. I dropped the bombshell to Brittany that Lucan then officially goes missing. And finally we had the car that Lucan was supposedly spotted driving the morning after the attack, found at New Haven Port with extensive blood smearing found on the interior. Still no sign on Lord Lucan himself, and plenty of the story still to get through, so let's get back into it. Okay. Lord Lucan's description was circulated during the weekend to all ports and airports. Bearing in mind, this did happen on Thursday night. His description is being circulated at the weekend.

SPEAKER_02 1:57

Ooh, he could have gotten away. He could have gotten away at that point. Oh my god, is this turning into a Joseph Maloney case?

SPEAKER_01 2:04

But if he caught the ferry to Dieppe, there was no reason for the French authorities to detain him as his description had not been circulated to foreign police.

SPEAKER_02 2:16

Idiots. Idiots. Why would you not circulate the description?

SPEAKER_01 2:20

Well, they didn't find the car until Sunday.

SPEAKER_02 2:24

Yeah, but he's been missing this whole time, I'm assuming. I I I guess why would you not? Put out immediately. We don't know where he is, this is what he looks like.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

They didn't. Maybe they were in on it.

SPEAKER_02 2:36

I have thoughts.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

A spokesperson for Scotland Yard said to the Scotsman newspaper five days after the murder that rumours that Lucan had fled to France were completely unsubstantiated. He told the newspaper that Lord Lucan was definitely not on the British rail ferry which reached Dieppe from Newport on Sunday night. He also confirmed that the police had Lord Lucan's passport and that as far as they were aware he had not taken any private boat or plane. However, by June the next year they were on French television saying they were very sure he was very much still alive and possibly residing in France.

SPEAKER_02 3:23

Oh funny that, isn't it? I believe he went to France. You do? Oh your look on your face makes you think I shouldn't.

SPEAKER_01 3:32

No, you're just so on my train, but talking of trains, we'll get to it later.

SPEAKER_02 3:37

I f I I feel like he's never been found.

SPEAKER_01 3:39

You feel like?

SPEAKER_02 3:40

Is that how you feel, Brittany? Oh God, you're scaring me.

SPEAKER_01 3:45

A Royal Navy search and rescue helicopter searched the sea between Eastbourne and Brighton. I have a map for you on page seven. Here you can see we're at the very bottom of the country. On the left map, the circle encompasses the entire area we're talking about. For the listeners who aren't familiar with New Haven, Brighton, or Eastbourne, we're at the very south coast of England, around 70 miles directly south of London as the crow flies. Brittany, if you look at the second map on the right, you can see we've now zoomed in, so you can see I've put a red line there between Eastbourne and Brighton in the sea area. That's where they were searching. The red circle in the middle is New Haven, where the borrowed car was found abandoned. Police divers also searched the harbour at New Haven but didn't find anything. A warrant for Lord Lucan's arrest was issued by Bow Street Magistrates Court on Tuesday the twelfth of November, and by the 9th of December, police had made their way over to France for help in the search. The police used an autogyro to take X-ray pictures of the Sussex Downs to find them. A newspaper said the search used a technique still being developed by scientists. I've got a couple of pictures, so this will come into context in a second. An autogyro was a little craft that worked using aerodynamics. It's a tiny, weird little helicopter, except it can't hover. It's like a helicopter from Wish. They're often called gyrocopters today. I have included a pick of one on page eight just because I think you'll get a kick out of what it looks like. Oh, that's really funny. It's such a funny looking.

SPEAKER_02 5:45

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

So four cameras with infrared and colour films were fixed to the autogyro to take aerial photographs of the downs from up to 2,000 feet above the ground in a check to see if Lucan's body may be hidden. Local police said the Downs could easily conceal a body for years. On page nine, you can also see pictures of the Sussex Downs, or it might be called the South Downs now, I'm not sure. Just so you can see how vast it is. I mean if there's a body in there, fucking hell, like. I know, I know. So as we know, there was an inquest into the death of Sandra Rivet, and a coroner's jury did determine that Lord Lucan had unlawfully killed Sandra, and that he had also committed the brutal attack on Lady Lucan. That was the last time a coroner's jury named a murderer in their absence. This ability was abolished later. We'll likely cover it at some time in the future. So we've got a few sightings. A woman working for the British Consulate in South Africa said she had seen Lord Lucan at a cocktail party. She relayed this information to her boss, the Consular General, who informed local police who then alerted Scotland Yard. But the head of Cape Town, CID, said We have checked the report, there is absolutely nothing in it. Our information was that Lord Lucan had actually been seen. It has transpired that the woman had simply become suspicious when she phoned a friend and a strange man answered the call, an Englishman, and she thought it might be Lord Lucan. He finished off by saying they had spent a very large amount of time looking for Lord Lucan and could confirm he was not in South Africa.

unknown 7:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 7:41

There was an unpaid hotel bill left in Cherbourg or Cherbourg, I don't know, in France, which led to the manager giving reports that the guest had been Lord Lucan and that he'd slipped out without paying. This was never substantiated. There were two reported sightings of Lucan in Guernsey a week apart. Someone thought they'd seen him in a restaurant, but police were able to rule this out. Many people thought he was a hippie who had died in India, but that turned out to be a singer from Merseyside. This guy kinda looked like Lukan. You can see a bit of a shit picture of him, to be honest, there on page 10. Interesting. He was apparently a well-spoken gambler who loved backgammon. With that, the uncanny resemblance, and being a British person who landed in India in 1975, less than a year after the attack. Yeah, you can see why people were side-eyeing this guy. Now should we get to the theories? Let's go. Theory one is that he committed suicide. So he's never been found? Nope. Right, okay. So that Lord Lucan killed himself and deliberately ensured his body would never be found so that there could always be doubts about what happened. Theory two is that he did board the ferry but jumped off the boat halfway over. This is actually Lady Lucan's theory. She told ITV in an interview in 2017 that this is what she thought he did, and she called what she believed to be his final act quite brave.

unknown 9:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 9:29

Another theory is John Aspinall. Do you know this guy?

SPEAKER_02 9:34

No. Blank selves. All I got was Aspol, isn't that a cider?

SPEAKER_01 9:38

John Aspinall.

SPEAKER_02 9:39

Yeah. But it reminded me of Cider, so no, I don't know who this guy is.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

Aspinall was a fellow gambler and close friend of Lukin's, and it has been rumored that he helped Lukin get a private flight to Africa. Not even surprised. Aspinall also always publicly said that if Lucan had come to him for help, he would have obliged. Lynn Barber had a piece in The Guardian in 2000 about how she thinks Aspinall slipped up in an interview with her once and almost admitted to helping Lukin. Tell me more. The quote was listen carefully, it's quite subtle, and I will ask you to pick out the slip-up when I've finished. So this is Aspinall talking in the interview. Well, I always think that if someone who has been a great friend is then in a terrible position, you rather feel more warmly towards him because that's when you are needed. A friend is needed when things are going badly. Anyone can be a friend of a successful man who's done nothing wrong and is in the New Year's honours. But somebody who's in trouble, who's snapped and done something silly, that's when you need your friends. I'm more of a friend of his after that than I was, though I haven't seen him. Because if he wanted me to do something, I'd do it for him, because he needs one and, like anyone else in life, I like to be needed. What's the use of a friend who because you make one mistake suddenly I don't believe in that? Did anything stand out?

SPEAKER_02 11:24

Oh god, I forget what you said, but it was like a more than a friend after the fact.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

That's it. Lynn wrote in her article about this interview, I remain convinced that that sentence, I'm more of a friend of his after that than I was, is the giveaway. True. Aspinall corrected himself immediately and said he has not seen Lucan. But if Lucan committed suicide the night of the murder, how could Aspinall be more of a friend after than he was before? Thoughts? Fair point. See, I kind of have an answer to that. It could it could just be It's like you n now you know more about them. They went through something before now you feel more warmly.

SPEAKER_02 12:07

That's that's what I thought. So I immediately when you said it, it it's not it it okay, that's the slip-up, that's what it was. But I thought, well, it can be a good one. It doesn't implicate him at all. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:19

Listen to this though. There was a woman who made public interviews with the likes of the BBC, giving her accounts of working for John Aspinall, and was privy to conversations where Lucan was on the other end of the phone. This is after he vanished. So she says Lord Lucan wanted them to send the children to Africa so he could see them. So then this woman would arrange the flights and stuff to get the kids over there where Lucan would somehow watch them at a distance. So it looks like this never really went anywhere, and Veronica said that it was ludicrous as the children didn't leave the country, and of course she'd have known if they did, because getting them out of the country was a whole thing because of the wardship. Remember, a court had to let them out of England and Wales. So this may all be a oyoi. Red herring. Nice one. We don't know. Neil Berryman, Sandra's son, features in a three-part BBC series called Lucan. It's Sandra's son. And it's called Lucan. Yeah. Where he follows the path of what he believes to be true, that Lucan changed his name to John Crawford and lived out his days in Mozambique in Africa. The detail apparently came from a tip-off from a confidential intelligence report passed on by an unnamed serving Scotland Yard officer. So make of that what you will. Another theory is that Lady Lucan was in on it. Whoa wow, what a surprise. And that they hatched the plan together so that he could escape his debts and leave her in a good financial position to give her children good lives.

SPEAKER_02 14:09

Well, she lost the children, didn't she?

SPEAKER_01 14:11

She did.

SPEAKER_02 14:12

And cut off all contact and left. She was getting out of her will. Uh-huh. Right. I think she was in on it. Okay. To what extent, I don't know. I don't think. I don't know if he was in on it. Is that bad to say? I I I I don't know if he was in on it. I fully believe she had some aspect that she was controlling.

SPEAKER_01 14:34

I'll tell you at this point. You have all the information. So if you want to go ahead and have a theory on this, go for it. And I have a fully formed theory.

unknown 14:43

Tell me.

SPEAKER_01 14:44

Well, are you ready for me to tell you? Or do you my theory will be of no surprise to our good friend Rachel, as I seem to have a tendency to stick up for the straight, rich, white guy. Oh no.

unknown 15:01

Oh no.

SPEAKER_01 15:02

I think Lord Lucan is innocent.

SPEAKER_02 15:05

I think he's innocent.

SPEAKER_01 15:07

I think Veronica set him up. I don't even think there was a third person. I think Veronica bludgeoned Sandra and then turned the lead pipe on herself.

SPEAKER_02 15:22

Herself? Yeah. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 15:25

So when Lord Lucan is coming into this scene, I think he's almost imagining a second uh uh sorry, a third person.

SPEAKER_02 15:37

Because he doesn't think she can do it to herself.

SPEAKER_01 15:39

I think she's seeing either she he either saw herself hit herself. I don't even I think he's just come in when she's covered in blood and assumed there was an intruder, and so that has put it, it's put an intruder in his story, but I don't think anyone was ever there apart from Veronica.

SPEAKER_02 16:00

And no one saw anything. There's nothing from neighbours, there is there is about another person.

SPEAKER_01 16:05

No, there's no evidence another person was there. In fact, there was oh my god, I didn't put it in, but there was fingerprints taken, and the only fingerprints in that house was Sandra and Veronica's, even Lord Lucan's weren't there. So I think he's walked in on the aftermath and not known what to do. And I think he's so convinced himself that someone attacked her that he's put them there in his mind. Cause he never says outright that he saw a man. He says, When the man left. So he doesn't even say he was this tall, he was this big, I saw him, he spoke to me, he was white, he was whatever. He just says when the man left. I think he's I don't think there was ever anybody there. I think she set him up. Okay, let me continue. The car the the wheels are turning. Uh-huh. I suspect also that Mr Maxwot was home the evening that Lucan popped in for that infamous cupper with Susan. I think they hatched a plan together on how to get him out of the country. But wait, I have a crazy theory as to how they did that. So they told Lucan to park the car in New Haven. They arranged for someone to meet Lucan where he left the car, and then they took him to Dover.

SPEAKER_02 17:37

From Dover, you can get anywhere.

SPEAKER_01 17:39

From Dover, in the very early hours of the morning, a train would come in from Victoria Station, London, and it would board the night ferry to Dunkirk. Can I just say, by the way, I have not seen this theory anywhere else? This is purely my own original theory. I love it so far though. And it came to me from a dream. A dream? So I wasn't gonna tell you. I wasn't gonna tell you this. I was looking at the photos of the Sussex Downs that I wanted to s to put in your document, and there's a little village, must be somewhere in the Sussex Downs, that came up on Google Images, and it flashed me back to a dream I'd had because this village looked so much like my dream. And in that village was a train, like a train line with the beep, beep, beep, beep, whatever. So I suddenly thought, what if he got on a train? So then I searched to see if there were sleeper trains that went from Dover like to France in this time, and there were. And I was like, oh my god. So wait, so wait, so wait. Let me let me tell you all. Yeah, yeah. Okay. From Dover, in the very early hours of the morning, a train would come in from Victoria Station, London, and it would board the night ferry to Dunkirk. This had on it a sleeper train. So the ferry, the sleeper train was the train, came in to Dover. It would so you'd get the train from London at like 6pm, you'd have your dinner on the train, you'd go to bed, and poof, you'd be pulling into Paris by 9am. I found the timetables on the British Archives, and sure enough, this train would be gently broken into compartments and slid onto the ferry between midnight and 2 a.m. most nights. It would go on to reach Dunkirk Port for 6 and Paris for 9. The train would get to Paris for 9, but the ferry would get to Dunkirk for 6. So you're understanding? Yeah. Get on the train in London. Yep. Train gets to Dover, gets put on the ferry, ferry goes across, train is like put all back together in Dunkirk and then goes to Paris.

SPEAKER_02 20:07

By 9am. For nine.

SPEAKER_01 20:09

So I'm wondering if Lucan was smuggled onto that ferry. Police had put out an alert for the staff at the port of Dieppe, which collected ferries that had left from New Haven, where they found the car. But I'm not aware of any alerts put out for the Dunkirk port that took in the ferries that came from Dover. And as this was the night ferry, Lucan could have been off that ferry in Dunkirk before anyone knew any the wiser. Yep, yep, yep. I don't believe he's alive today, although a little part of me thinks he could be sitting in a little French old people's home somewhere on a Poche People Mountain in France.

SPEAKER_02 20:55

Do you know when he was born? How old is he? Fuck. If he was even alive.

SPEAKER_01 20:59

Yeah, so he was 39 in 74. Okay, so let's just round it 40.

SPEAKER_02 21:05

Born in 35. Maybe 90. He he could, he could be.

SPEAKER_01 21:14

Lord Lucan, if you're listening, please write in. Tell me if my theory's right. So desperate to know. There's more to the theory. Okay, so ultimately I think Lucan was innocent of murder, and that Veronica had spiraled basically for months and had come up with a ludicrous, badly thought out plan to either get revenge for him leaving her, maybe it was about money, maybe it was about custody, maybe it was all three. In my opinion, I can find way more motive for this crime on her part than I can for him. I would even go as far as to throw in that she may have covered the car in blood herself. I don't know where the car was parked or how long for or if she knew where it was parked or what, but as I don't believe. Lucan did it, I've had to try and find a reason for the blood in the car, and my only option really is that Lady Lucan planted it there, but don't ask me how. Alright. Saying that, I didn't know where else to put this in, so I'm gonna put it in here. Lady Lucan made a website. That website is called the official website of the Countess of Lucan. Setting the records straight. It's not like in the it's like the title that appears when you're in a website.

SPEAKER_02 22:35

I thought that you I thought you meant that was the URL.

SPEAKER_01 22:38

No, I think it's actually www.ladelucan.org or something. So I'm not gonna read the whole thing. I will show it to you later. It's amazing. But I'm going to read about five paragraphs and take from it what you will. Because at the end of the day, she isn't here to defend herself. She did literally write her side of the story for us to find, so let's tell it. This is also where I got the personal account that I read to you almost at the very beginning. Right, okay. It gets slightly more unhinged as we go, but I digress. So it starts off pretty normal. It reads in part, and this is like literally, it's uh it's a blue website, you know, imagine oldy worldie websites with like the countess, blah blah blah, setting the record straight in like gold writing at the top. I'm very animated, I'm very excited. And then it's like literally just pages of words, it's just paragraphs and writing and verbal vomit and and personal photographs of the family and stuff. It's amazing, it's the best thing I've ever seen on the internet. Right, hold on. Start out pretty normal. The killer of Mrs. Sandra Rivet does not remain unknown. The inquest jury of the Coroner's Court in June 1975 named the seventh Earl as the murderer of Mrs. Sandra Rivet. They were the last inquest jury to name anyone as a murderer. The right was abolished in 1977. Their unanimous verdict was murder by Lord Lucan. And murder by Lord Lucan is in capitals. No informed people believe the seventh Earl to be alive. One ex-police officer has written a book and was in contact with Charles Benson of the Express, who duly reported in a piece written by himself in 1994 that the ex-police officer had confided to him that he actually believed the seventh earl to be dead, but it made a better story to believe him to still be alive. Then it starts feeling a little personal. The extraordinary behaviour of my blood relations in supporting a belief in my late husband's innocence, an attempting to cast doubt on my sworn evidence and somehow portraying me as the offending party has been confirmed to me by members of the media who have interviewed them. It was, however, to be expected that my late husband's rather uncivilized blood relations would make futile attempts to clear his name. I think she's talking about her kids.

unknown 25:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:25

I think this is why she cut contact and cut them out the will because they believe in their father's innocence.

SPEAKER_02 25:31

I was thinking that all the way back at the beginning, but obviously, like I I didn't know the full story back then, so I didn't want to say that, but I thought what what's the only reason she's gonna cut her kids out of the will is if they take the father's side.

SPEAKER_01 25:45

Yeah, and that's exactly what I think they did. She says he was a heavy, addicted gambler, not an adulterer in brackets. His affairs were always chaotic. Why would you specify not an adulterer?

SPEAKER_02 25:58

I have no idea. Sorry, sorry.

SPEAKER_01 26:00

I know. He rarely paid bills without many reminders, seldom bothered with insurance. He used to say, if you need insurance, you can't afford it, and if you can afford it, you don't need insurance. Whatever, fine, rich people's shit. In any event, he wasn't expecting his own imminent death. He was expecting it would be me who died. Exclamation point. She also claims that she was horrifically medically abused in 1978. So this is four years after. Although it honestly looks to me like she was either just put on the wrong medication or put on some medication she didn't like because it made her fat. Because she heavily complains about that. She's like, I've always been skinny, it made my face puffy, it was obviously wrong. I hate to say that because, of course, believe women, and this obviously had an effect, and she was negatively impacted, yes, and she certainly feels wronged, but I did read where she went into detail about this medical abuse, and it really didn't seem like anything major or out of the ordinary. I'm sorry, Veronica. She also mentions a lot that she went to this person and that person and went to the GP and went to the police and reported all of it and everybody dismissed her and shrugged her off. And I hate that for women, and I am not I'm the last person to ever not believe women. But she also, when she's saying that, gives her own personal account of what happened with the medication and stuff, and I don't find it out of the ordinary. Okay? Mm-hmm. You can go and read it yourself. I I'm gonna say later, this website I'm putting in the show notes, go and read it all yourself. Like and call me out, redheronspod.gmail.com if I'm if I'm a terrible person, tell me. So then it goes on. My now married daughter announced her engagement in the Times as younger daughter of the seventh Earl of Lucan, wheresoever, and the Countess of Lucan, although she knew that her father had been presumed deceased in 1992. This piece of bad manners was followed a few months later by yet more as she failed to invite me to her wedding held at a church a stone's throw away from my house. The press were told, and when I walked past the church, which I had to, don't believe you, they rushed out saying, Lady lookin', lady lookin', it's your daughter, and then she's got in brackets sour grapes. I'm adding the achievement. I don't believe a word she says.

SPEAKER_02 28:53

I'm sorry. It's all me, me, me, me, me, me, me. What's going on? I don't believe it. It even even right, listen. Yeah. If this whole scenario happened, okay.

SPEAKER_01 29:04

And he was there and he actually beat her up, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:07

Well well, not only that, but what she's recounting about like the wedding and on her website, if this whole thing happened. Okay. Why is she saying it like this?

SPEAKER_01 29:16

It's mean.

SPEAKER_02 29:17

It is it's mean. It's all about me.

SPEAKER_01 29:20

It's bitter as fuck.

SPEAKER_02 29:21

It's it's like why? What what motive do you have? I'm sorry, I think she's did it. She she did it, she's in on it, she had some type of control or no, no, no, no. I don't believe a word she says. Sorry.

SPEAKER_01 29:37

Me and you are pretty much the only people like in the public that think that. That people that weren't close to Lord Lucan because no one knows the story properly. So, okay, there's more, there's more, there's more. Okay. Okay, okay. She says Aristocrats attempt to bring up their children to have good manners and to behave honourably with the knowledge that privilege entails responsibility. I hope that I have clarified some of the points which have been raised over the years, but if there are any further questions, please email and then she gives uh youudoramail.com address. It's countessoflucan at eudoramail.com. I highly doubt anybody's looking at it nowadays. She did commit suicide in 2018, so it's definitely not her. So that was page one. It goes on for five more pages, and that was just snippets of page one. I've read it all. It's amazing. Right. Please, if you're interested, go read it for yourself. I'll put it in the show notes, like I said, just click the link, you're in for an amazing evening. At the end, at the end end end of page five or whatever, comes quite a vicious line, in my opinion, although hell, if he tried to kill her, and everyone close to her thinks he didn't, then fair enough to this line. Let's read it. By the 8th of November 1974, the seventh Earl of Lucan was a dead loss. He faced a certain prison sentence, long-term unemployment, and social disgrace. However, the gods decided to smile on him at long last, and the look that so eluded him in life came to him in death. Immediately after that, because that's the last paragraph on page five, page six is just a cute photo of Lord Lucan as a baby. It's on page ten, look at it. Which feels so fucked up after the last paragraph. You can see that there it's a screenshot of exactly as it appears on the website on the last page.

SPEAKER_02 31:48

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 31:50

Isn't that weird to have such a vicious Why are you gonna why? And then a baby picture of him at nine months old, and it's like one of the cutest photographs I've ever seen. It's giving a psychopath. It really is. It's giving narcissist.

SPEAKER_02 32:07

Me, me, me, me, me.

SPEAKER_01 32:08

It's giving psycho. It's giving I bludgeoned the nanny and hit myself. And I have a question. Uh-huh. If she did it, why?

SPEAKER_02 32:20

Was the tea not made quick enough? Like, why would she have killed the nanny? Oh. Why? She was only working there, what, five you said five weeks? Hold on a second. Okay, I'm holding.

SPEAKER_01 32:33

Nanny wasn't meant to be there.

SPEAKER_02 32:35

Maybe she Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 32:37

Maybe she bargained or somehow knew that Lord Lucan was coming over that night, and that was the night she was going to accuse him of trying to kill her. And then Nanny fucking changed her shift. And she's just so fucking batshit crazy, she thought, fuck it, I'm gonna double this shit, I'm gonna double down, I'm gonna kill her, and I'm gonna say he did it.

SPEAKER_03 33:03

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 33:05

Maybe she just used her.

SPEAKER_02 33:07

I don't think the nanny was any part of it.

SPEAKER_01 33:10

As in like planned. Also, I'm sorry, but let's say it happened how Veronica said it happened. 8 30, Sandra asks her if she wants a cup of tea. There's a long enough wait that Veronica goes downstairs. I would say half an hour. Veronica goes downstairs, no one there, can't see anything, then she gets attacked, then she goes upstairs with her husband attack her, then she escapes. Where the fuck did Lord Lucan have the time in between all that to put Sandra's body in a tent canvas bag thing? Also, how did the children not hear anything? They didn't hear anything. I know I think Sandra died way before all of this. I think she was dead and wrapped up in that canvas bag, like so was her body found in that canvas bag?

SPEAKER_02 34:07

Okay, okay. And I know that Veronica said she was watching TV with her eldest daughter. Or with one of the daughters, one of them. Right, so fair enough. Let's say that child is in her bedroom or wherever it is watching TV.

SPEAKER_01 34:22

It's a Thursday, they've been at school. Veronica had all day to kill Sandra.

SPEAKER_02 34:27

Okay, let's say Sandra's already dead. In my mind, I'm thinking, how do they not hear the quote attack on their mother? So especially if she she said she screamed.

SPEAKER_01 34:39

I read to you what the 10-year-old child said to the jury. Yes, yes, you did. She does not mention in that that she heard a scream. Nope. Other reports do report that that child heard a scream. And I don't know if it's Veronica or the child, but they say something about how she thought that Veronica had been attacked by their cat. I have a cat. The kid doesn't say it in the inquest. No. No one said the kid said that in the inquest. I don't think she did. I don't think the kid heard a scream. I don't think Veronica screamed. And the other two kids. They didn't hear anything. I think she knew that Lord Lucan would be either popping in that night or that he used to walk past on his way back. I mean so wait, even let's go again to Veronica's s version of events. Sandra's come up to the room, do you want a cup of tea? She's then gone downstairs, she's been attacked. She's been bludgeoned to death. No one hears anything. The killer waits f then for Veronica to come downstairs. He doesn't go upstairs looking for her or is he just too busy putting her in a tent canvas bag? How long does it take to bludgeon someone to death? You have to find them first. Like, none of this makes sense. So then what? He just lies in wait for Veronica to come downstairs. She comes downstairs, she gets on the first landing, she shouts, Sandra, she hears a noise, she follows the noise, and then the attacker's like, Oh shit, she's here. I'm gonna attack her now. And then I'm gonna take her upstairs and try to get her cleaned up. I don't think anyone was there. Veronica turned it on herself at exactly the time that she knew she had either invited Lord Lucan to come over, or she had knew he was gonna be walking past the house at a certain time and did something to lure him in after already doing the lead pipe on herself.

SPEAKER_02 36:59

Yes, and killing Sandra.

SPEAKER_01 37:02

She he's come in, he's been like, What the fuck has happened? She's immediately turned it on him as to his account. She said, You hired someone to hurt me. That's just her putting something in because she knows she did it to herself. And then he's like, Well fuck, let's clean you up. Do you wanna do you want some water? He probably did get us some water from the tap. Are you okay? He's not mentioned the nanny at all at this point. He's really not thinking about the nanny. He's seeing the blood. That's why later in the phone call to his ma'am, she says, Is the nanny dead? No, she says, Is the So he says, Fuck, let me get it. He said there had been a terrible catastrophe at the house. Veronica is hurt, and I want you to collect the children as quickly as possible. He also said the nanny was hurt. His mother said badly, and he said, Yes, I think so. He doesn't say she's dead. He's looking around at all the blood everywhere and he's going, Yeah, I think so.

SPEAKER_02 38:05

Like, I think in this case, I'm on a side. I think she she had some hand in it.

SPEAKER_01 38:16

The only thing I can't explain is the fucking blood in the colour. I can't explain that.

SPEAKER_02 38:23

It was planted at some point. I don't think by him. Obviously, it had to be like maybe. It has to have been here before she hired or somebody uh in her circle.

SPEAKER_01 38:33

She must have had time to get enough of Sandra's blood to smear the car in it. But even then, like, how did she know he was gonna drive that car? Even well, maybe she didn't have to, she only had to knew know where it was parked. And then I'm thinking, well, why did he get in the car if it's covered in blood? And I'm like, it's pitch black, it's night time. I think you I think you may not have seen it some something. But then, but then but then but the but the wait. Okay. Wait. I'm waiting. If the car was parked outside his own house, which I think was uh like a neighbouring street, it says somewhere neighbouring, if he got in that car and he was either enough covered in blood to transfer all of that blood to the car, or the blood was already in that car, he would have been covered in blood when he got to Susan Macw Maxwell Scott's.

SPEAKER_02 39:32

Who would have been? I think the blood was planted after the car got to New Haven.

SPEAKER_01 39:38

Yeah, New Haven port.

SPEAKER_02 39:40

I think the blood was planted afterwards. I don't think he because obviously, if you start driving in a car that has blood in it, you're not gonna drive the car.

SPEAKER_01 39:50

I was I'm there is absolutely nowhere that says how he got to Ian Maxwell Scott's house or how he left Ian Maxwell Scott's house. Nobody directly says he got in that fucking Ford. The only thing is a sighting of what people think is Lord Lucan in the Ford Corsair at 8 a.m. on Friday morning driving to New Haven Port. What if that wasn't Lord Lucan? What are the odds that it is? But otherwise, I'm thinking, why would Susan Maxwell Scott not put the sec the record straight and say he wasn't in that car? Exactly. But maybe they've come up with this so much together, maybe, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Maybe, because I believe that Ian was in the house when Lord Lucan got there. I think the three of them have worked this out together how they're gonna get him out, in my opinion, to to Dover. They wouldn't have known anything about this car at this point. They're not thinking about the car, it's still parked outside Lord Lucan's house. That that it's not even someone is just taking Lord Lucan directly to Dover. Maybe it was Ian. Maybe he's that's why he's saying he wasn't there. He's created a fake alibi somewhere else.

SPEAKER_02 41:06

He was out of the house.

SPEAKER_01 41:08

He was taking Lord Lucan to Dover. And maybe when this car, covered in blood, was found on Sunday 10th Sunday, maybe they're just like, don't mention it. At the end of the day, we know he wasn't in it. They're not gonna find his fingerprints. Well, they might find his fingerprints, but they're not gonna find anything else on him. He literally wasn't in it. We can't even start explaining that away. There's no point. Let's just never talk about the car. Because they never talk about the car, because the car wasn't there. But then, how did Lord Lucan get from Belgravia to Ian Maxwell Scott's house?

SPEAKER_02 41:51

I don't know, I don't know. So many unanswered questions. It genuinely feels like a Joseph Maloney case. It's so good. I'm so glad you had a little bit. See, like, as he went on, I kept thinking, like, I've heard the name, I've heard the name, like Lord Lucan. And it must have only been from Chris. Like, I he must have mentioned it at some point. So if you're listening, you probably told me.

SPEAKER_01 42:16

And to whoever about two years ago from Meetup told me I should do the Lord Lucan case. And I quickly looked it up and I was like, he killed her and fled. Like, what's there to know? I just want to deeply apologise to that person. We're gonna do Lord Lucan this year at Meetup at True Crime Club. We're gonna do it. I want to talk to as many people as possibly fucking can about this because this is bonkers. Okay, so my sources are Wikipedia, British Newspaper Archive, the British Archives, Childlawadvice.org, Ladelucan.co.uk, The Guardian, The Independent, The Daily Mail, TheWeek.com, the WebArchive.org for Ladelucan.com. The link for that will be in the show notes. You can read the whole thing and really get her side of the story, everything that happened. Uh, write in, tell us what you think. Redherr'sPod at gmail.com. This this case was amazing. I can't wait to hear what everyone thinks. Tune in next week for a real good tale.