Original subtitles

[dramatic music begins]

[dramatic music continues]

[Reporter #1] Of Lucan himself,

nothing has been seen since his children's nanny was found

battered to death here in the basement

of the family home in Belgravia.

Exhaustive police searches

of the South Coast produced no clue.

[Reporter #2] A massive manhunt is underway

for the location of John Bingham,

Seventh Earl of Lucan who has disappeared

and is suspected of murder.

Anyone with information is urged to contact police.

[dramatic music continues]

Bludgeoned to death at 46 Lower Belgrave Street.

The Lucan family's 29-year-old nanny.

She is the primary victim and yet we don't talk about her.

What we are really interested in, say the press,

is the glamorous story of Lord Lucan and Veronica Lucan,

and that is immensely tragic.

The murder that saw her lose her life has been defined

in terms that don't even namecheck her.

She's referred to retrospectively in the press

as Little Miss Nobody.

Well everybody is a somebody.

And she was always well turned out,

very quiet girl just like the rest of us really.

Very sad 'cause you don't want someone

you went to school with to be murdered, do you?

It's just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I feel guilty even now.

I feel guilty because of a young baby going

to grow without his mommy.

The victim in this case did have a name.

That name was Sandra Rivett.

[dramatic music fades]

The Lucan case.

I can't remember a time when I didn't know about it.

It's something that so many people have grown up with

just in the collective consciousness somehow.

People used to tell jokes.

It's almost like he was a character

rather than a person.

I probably came across his name more commonly like

that than I did for what he'd actually done.

I joined the police in 1981

and he was the suspect in a murder investigation.

There would be times when I can remember friends

and we were joking about something

and I said, "Maybe Lord Lucan's gonna appear in a minute."

It has so many of the elements that make murder so very,

very interesting and the fact that it happened in

that incongruous setting of

that beautiful tall white House in Belgravia

and it's an unsolved mystery because Lord Lucan disappeared.

So it's one of the great stories.

I've heard a lot of stories about Lord Lucan,

but I know very, very little about Veronica Lucan

and I didn't know Sandra Rivett's name until I came

to do this project, which is alarming, isn't it?

This period of the 10 weeks when Sandra Rivett was nanny

to the Lucan children is an unknown really.

I believe she had a very good

relationship with the children.

There is no reason to disbelieve that she was happy there.

She brought a cat to the house as well actually.

So that was quite a sweet sort

of domestic thing to do if you like.

And it does seem like it was happy,

it does seem like it worked for all parties.

[gentle music]

She always wanted to go back to Australia.

She talked about it a lot actually.

She'd spent a lot of her childhood there

and she just missed it terribly and she wanted to go back.

She missed the weather, she missed the life.

[dramatic music]

My name's Mary Mackenzie

and I went to school with Sandra when I lived in Caterham

my friends rang me up

and told me that Sandra had been murdered.

Well I was shocked, hard to believe really and sad

'cause she's got two boys.

Sad for her children.

They're more interested in him, weren't they?

Than they were her.

They seem to just put her as

an afterthought really I thought.

[Reporter #2] The family's nanny killed in a murder

most horrid.

But the question on everyone's lips is

where is Lord Lucan?

Did he do it?

If not, why has he disappeared

and where could he be?

There's an article in which it says it was an ugly real

life performance of upstairs, downstairs.

And they then say,

and she was firmly kept in her place downstairs

where she was slaughtered.

[dramatic music continues]

So it is leaning into the class narrative.

I mean by what parameters are individuals judged.

The Lucans were somebody

and in relation to them, Sandra, she was erased.

She was erased.

[peaceful music]

Lord Lucan had a certain status in life

and it was that status

that protected him really.

And we might think that things have changed,

but if we look through history now,

we've got our cultural royalty now rather

than our actual aristocracy.

People like Oscar Pistorius who are in these elevated

and privileged positions and they killed partners.

And yet in those cases, even given what we know now,

we still focused on their narrative

using their charisma to excuse

and justify what they might have done.

So things haven't changed that much.

[peaceful music]

I got a call from a junior officer,

like many officers in London

that night would've heard the gossip.

I think I'm right in saying I was probably the youngest

reporter on the staff of the Evening Standard.

I'd only just taken over on the crime desk.

It was a very different time in the 70s.

The police and the press, particularly in London,

were very much in each other's pockets.

There was also quite a lot of money passed

and changed hands between reporters and police officers.

In return for a good story, a return for a good tip.

As a young crime reporter, I asked a colleague,

"How do you get a policeman

"to accept money in return for a story?"

And I was told, "Well any copper in Britain will be happily

"accept a bottle of scotch."

And after a while you say, I found this new way

of putting a bottle of scotch in a brown paper envelope.

It's called cash.

And I found that little method of recruiting contacts

to be quite powerful

and in fact that was one of the ways I heard about

that night was someone that I had recently treated

to a paper envelope drink.

Looking back on it, it was wrong,

it was corrupt and I probably shouldn't be talking about it,

but it happened in every Fleet Street newspaper

and in every police station.

[bell tolls] [dramatic music]

In terms of notifying police of the murder,

it was actually the landlord of the Plumber's Arms.

It was quite quiet that evening when Lady Lucan came

through the door covered in blood being hysterical

and almost fainting in front of them.

It would've been a difficult scene.

You know some people may have thought, is this a windup?

She initially said her nanny had been killed.

She said she'd been attacked by her husband.

At that point the publican decided the best thing they could

do was to try and calm her as best they could

and inform the police.

I had a very good contact with Roy Ranson,

the senior investigating officer,

and I met him there that night at the scene.

It was already quite chaotic.

There was one or two policemen on the door.

The forensic scientist I think had arrived.

There was an ambulance,

there was people looking out windows at

what on earth was going on in the road outside.

It was a very posh part of Belgravia and a very posh road.

You didn't expect to see something like that.

As I was about to join some of my other colleagues

and photographers moving away down the street a little way,

I literally got the wink from Roy.

I slipped across to him and talked to him on that doorstep

and he said there was a body, that it wasn't Lady Lucan,

that Lady Lucan and had been hurt

and that he was really interested in finding out

where Lord Lucan was.

[bell tolls] [dramatic music]

When you read the account provided by Roy Ranson

and others, it was obviously a lot

of officers had entered the premises,

which would not happen now,

the scene would have been contained very quickly,

but back in 1974 it was a different time, a different era

and things weren't necessarily dealt with

as you would've wanted them to at the time.

Roy Ranson hadn't had any chance to talk to Lady Lucan.

As we were talking, we were gravitating together almost

to the top of the stairs

and I got one look down into the basement.

It had police lights down there.

There were police officers who were walking through the pool

of blood and tramping it up the stairs

and it was just general mayhem.

In the bottom of the stairs on the floor was the sack

and Sandra Rivett's body was in that sack

and she was doubled up.

She'd been put in head and feet first.

It was a very large American canvas mail sack,

and as far as I know, they have never been able to find

where that sack came from and why Lucan had it.

We know why he took it to the house.

It was to get rid of the body.

So the only thing you could see

of Sandra was very undignified.

She had tights and white pants on and that was it.

The officers recovered a length of lead piping

and it had been wrapped with tape.

It was likely that that was the item that was used

to attack not only Sandra Rivett but also Lady Lucan.

We know that Lady Lucan's hair fibres were

found on that item.

One of the things to bear in mind is in this day

and age, if you had a a weapon like that recovered,

there would probably be that much more information

that could be gleaned that you were more than likely

to get DNA off of the weapon.

But back then what they would mainly be looking

for will be the fibres, blood and whether

or not there were any traces of fingerprints.

[dramatic music]

Roy Ranson was the chief superintendent at the time.

I tried to put myself in his shoes

and think, so what would I do next?

Well, we know that some of his staff were going

to be doing the initial work at the scene in terms

of exhibits, forensication, house to house inquiries.

He would've been thinking, how am I going to identify

how many suspects were involved in it?

The person who attacked her attacked her brutally

and with an extreme amount of force,

the force was from a blunt weapon

and all of it was directed towards her head

and face, which means that they were determined

to do the most damage possible.

This was a rage-fueled attack

and it wasn't just one blow or a couple of blows.

This was a lot of blows to Sandra's head.

The number one question

that next morning would've been, who died?

Who was murdered?

And where's Lord Lucan?

I can remember that being a very fierce topic of debate

where he could possibly be, where he might be hiding.

Had he done it?

Sandra's identity and details

such as they were would've come out the next day.

The police knowledge of the victim in terms

of victimology was that she was the nanny

to the three children.

She had only been working at that address

for about three months.

She only started in August.

It would've become apparent that the relationship

between Lady Lucan and Sandra Rivett was healthy.

It was good.

Sandra Rivett was almost certainly murdered in error.

The intended victim had been Lady Lucan.

This appalling set of circumstances

whereby Sandra, who should have been on her night off,

descended into the dark basement of this tall house

to make some tea

and in the dark was mistaken for Veronica Lucan.

I think it's quite quickly forgotten

that while Sandra is the victim of this piece,

she's the young woman who lost her life,

inexplicably and horribly.

There is another victim and that's Veronica.

[sombre music]

I have some sympathy with Lady Lucan

because I think she did have mentally challenging issues.

Lord Lucan wasn't a particularly caring husband to her

and I don't think that

after they got married he even liked her for long,

from everything that I've heard.

Towards the end of 1972, Veronica turns to one

of Lord Lucan's relatives

and describes how she's been feeling

and she says she could no longer cope.

She describes how alone and unhappy she felt.

She spoke of her husband's mental cruelty

and she hinted at sexual and physical abuse.

We have to bear in mind

that the accidental player in this narrative is Veronica.

She's the person who survived

and who later gave her testimony, wrote a book, et cetera.

So we have to treat what she says with caution,

but certainly she is very clear about aspects

of their marriage that are shocking to read about.

You know, the cane that was in his cupboard that he used

to beat sense into her,

beating out the nonsense before they had intercourse.

This happened more than once.

There were accusations of abuse

and control

and stalking, which are the three classic,

classic risk-markers that we would expect to see

and I don't think I was surprised to see them,

but I was surprised that they were

actually pretty well known,

but nobody seemed to think they were particularly relevant.

[sombre music continues]

Lord Lucan and starts telling people

that Veronica's behaving oddly, suggesting

that she's mad, making out that she's harmed herself

by throwing herself down the stairs.

He says all kinds of things that starts

to build a very negative picture of her with other people.

His motives for doing that feel very devaluing.

It's like, "I've had enough of this particular person

"and I want them gone out of my life

"and I will tell whatever story I need to get what I want."

The press knew within a day

or two that some of the basic story

that Lord Lucan wasn't living at the family home,

that there had been disagreements

about the custody of the children.

There were several custody battles

and Roy showed me the details of the one that really sank

Lord Lucan in the end.

Veronica reveals that Lord Lucan had made her dress

in a rubber exercise suit so that she was hot

and sweaty when they went to bed together.

He had no clue that she'd ever used

that information in public.

So when Lord Lucan is sitting there in the custody hearing

and he has his aged mother, Caitlin, the Doja Countess

of Lucan at his side

and suddenly out of the blue Veronica starts revealing

the secrets of their bedroom sex games and his kinkiness.

He had been so embarrassed that he hadn't been able

to look at or talk to his mother for weeks afterwards.

He didn't expect that to ever come out.

I personally think

that was the moment when Lord Lucan decided she had to die.

It's in the official record that he,

I say manipulated her in her words,

to go and get psychiatric treatment.

He told her that she was going crazy.

He told her that she needed drugs to keep her stable.

Veronica Lucan must have been a lonely person

and Sandra must have filled a hole in her emotional

and you know, social life.

So they probably were getting on okay,

they were getting on well enough for the children

to really like her.

They told their dad that she was a very nice nanny

and that everything seemed to be going fine.

[gentle piano music]

Sandra Elanor Hensby was born

on the 16th of September, 1945.

Her parents were Eunice and Albert

and she had three sisters, two older, one younger.

According to her school report, she was bright

but not academic.

She left school at age 14, which was not that unusual then.

And then went out to work, which is what women did

before they got married.

First she trained to be a hairdresser, but then she moved on

and became a secretary.

Sandra lived in the flats near me,

we were all teenagers starting out on life

and enjoying meeting people

and looking forward to, well, deciding

what you're gonna do the rest of your life.

I took Sandra on one occasion

to a dance in the barracks next door to us

where the army was.

It was always very nice, danced

and met all the people there.

I was 20 when I met my husband,

I was at a dance at the barracks

and he got me to pull out the raffle tickets

and then he asked me out

and then we went out together for a while

and then we decided to get married and that was it.

In 1963 when she was 17, 18,

Sandra had mental health issues

and she did spend a bit of time in a hospital.

That was after a very bad breakup,

which I suppose is possible.

You know girls are very susceptible at that age,

but that seems to have resolved itself.

But it was significant in another way

in that she met a guy there slightly older who was working

as a builder at the hospital

and they fell for each other, young love,

and when she was discharged,

they carried on seeing each other

and announced their engagement.

Very soon after Sandra becomes pregnant

and she wants to get married to this guy

and he gets cold feet and starts to withdraw

and tells her, "You know what,

"I'm not gonna go ahead with this."

And this leaves Sandra heartbroken

and on top of that, she's also pregnant at a time

where single women pregnant,

unable to look for support,

would've left her in a very isolated

and tricky position.

[sombre music]

[laughs]

Contraceptive options.

Really the only way

of not getting pregnant was to not have sex.

[sombre music]

If girls had carried anything like condoms

in the 60s, they would've been classed as loose women.

It was a different world then you had to be more aware.

The contraceptive pill is not legalised until 1961

and it's certainly not available to anyone initially.

Wait for it, you have to be married

and with one child to get the contraceptive pill

in the early 1960s.

Abortion wasn't legal until 1967,

she was either gonna become a single mother

or she would do what a lot of young women did,

which was give the baby up for adoption

and that is what she prepared to do.

But then her parents stepped in

and said that they would bring him up

and the baby believed

that Sandra was his older sister, which was quite common.

So moving on three years, we are in 1967,

Sandra was having a relationship with a local estate agent

and he was married so it didn't have a lot of future,

unluckily got pregnant again.

So she went down to her older sister Theresa,

who lived in Portsmouth

and this time she didn't really have a lot of choice

but to give the baby up for adoption.

That's quite standard to move away

when you're pregnant, you don't wanna be seen,

don't wanna bring the family's name down

and she gives birth when she's dating the man

who becomes her husband, Roger Rivett.

The baby, they don't keep, for whatever reason,

they decide they can't manage the child

who is subsequently given up for adoption.

When I was researching the book,

I found the adoption letter for the baby.

I'm pleased to tell you we have a baby son for you.

[Tessa] He was born on February the fourth

and weighs seven pounds, eight ounces.

His mother is a single girl, age 21.

She already has one little boy

who at the moment is being cared for by her parents

and she feels she cannot possibly

bring the baby up properly herself.

The baby's father is a man she's known

for quite a long time.

Unfortunately while his wife had a period in hospital,

she visited his home on a number of occasions

to help in the house.

Intercourse occurred and she became pregnant.

She did not want to break his marriage,

so came away from the area.

God, that tells a tale, doesn't it?

[sombre music continues]

I think it's pretty sad, really.

She was very attractive

and it sounds like she was quite susceptible and she was 21.

It's not very old and it sounds like the bloke might have

thought his lucky day had come

when his wife was in hospital.

Sandra had very few life choices when it came

to how she lived her life.

But at the same time, I get the sense

that Sandra was a very carefree,

energetic kind of human being.

So she was almost ahead of her time in the way

that she was living.

Her sister Teresa subsequently says,

"My sister said she loved children

:but she wasn't cut out to have them."

Theresa is trying

to justify why her sister didn't bring up her own children,

but she doesn't need to

because we know in that decade, in the 60s

and the 70s, the majority of girls

who had children out of wedlock could not keep them.

We were the highest year

for adoption rates in Britain in the 60s.

1968,

24,000 babies adopted.

That is how many girls were trying their luck.

Didn't know how to say no, fell the wrong side of the gamble

and had a baby that was illegitimate.

[babies crying]

She married Roger Rivett when she was 22.

They got married in a registry office in Croydon.

He was away at sea a lot of the time.

Apparently he got suspicious when she used

to write regularly and then the letters became a bit

less frequent.

He's in the Navy.

I mean she's quite lonely I think when he's away,

but she's always working.

In 1969, Roger came back to England.

I think the marriage probably got back on track.

Sandra was actually working at an orphanage.

She started as a cleaner,

but I think she got more involved

with working with the children.

But then we go to 1973

and Roger went back to sea again.

We had that pattern of letters becoming less frequent.

And then the final, the sort of climax

came in May of 1974.

They had a huge row and he left.

That was the end.

We know that when the marriage breaks down,

she moves up to London.

[sombre music continues]

She seemed to experience a new lease of life

after separating from Roger, she was going out,

she was engaging with friends, she was having a good time

and she puts her name down for domestic service.

She has one job that's fairly short-lived

and then her next job is with the Lucans.

[suspenseful music]

That was sort of paralleled almost by the dislocation

and breakdown of Veronica's marriage

and I think that's one of the reasons why the girls,

the women hit it off.

And actually Veronica says herself, these were happy times.

They laughed a lot together.

She was employed to be a nanny to the three children

of the Lucan marriage, Francis, George and Camilla.

The wage was 25 pounds a week,

which even in modern money isn't very much,

but of course she had accommodation.

She was living in a house in Belgravia,

a really very lovely house.

She hadn't even unpacked all her things when she died.

[tense music]

Veronica was a fairly challenging employer,

but nonetheless Sandra knows how to please people,

it's one of the things that makes Sandra so appealing,

so attractive.

She was one of a long procession of nannies.

There was one that only lasted four days.

There was one that lasted a bit longer.

There were 6, 7, 8, I don't know, it's not clear.

But anyway, she arrived

and it seems to have been a success.

Both Sandra

and Veronica in their own lives had psychological struggles.

They'd had real challenges and difficulties

and they were trying

to find their way in their own lives

and this is the point at which they come together under

Veronica's roof and they make sense to one another.

What's interesting is noting

how Sandra checked in on Veronica when she

wasn't working the weekends.

She picked up on her employer's vulnerability

and Veronica felt able to share

that vulnerability with Sandra.

There was a kinship.

There clearly was a feeling of mutual sympathy.

They understood each other's circumstances.

[bright music]

Veronica Duncan as she was,

was born in 1937.

She had a younger sister, Christina

and her father was an army officer

who was killed when she was quite young.

He was killed in a car crash, but her mother married again

and they spent some of their childhood in South Africa.

Her and her sister Christina are sent to boarding school

and I think this is incredibly difficult

for the very young Veronica.

Her and her sister are bullied for a number of reasons,

which makes life for Veronica incredibly difficult.

And I think her mother struggles with what to do,

sends Veronica to a psychiatrist

who labels her, a troubled child

and I think that's where some of her issues begin.

The family left South Africa in 1949.

They came back and they lived quite near

where Sandra was born in Basingstoke.

The stepfather ran a pub called the Wheatsheaf.

I can remember one of the policemen talking

to me about Veronica

and he said, she always said,

"I am a Countess of the realm."

And he said she grew up in a pub,

but they were the daughters

of an army officer and what have you.

She was very status aware, Veronica, no question.

Veronica got herself up to London.

She tried her hand at various jobs.

She wasn't a sticker.

She left art college.

She couldn't really bear the idea

of doing four years on a course.

Now that again doesn't surprise me.

Nobody had long-term really invested in her

or spent time with her.

She'd never lived or been settled in

one place for that long.

By now, Veronica is 25

and very hard for us to understand.

But that was then getting to the point

of why aren't you married?

You know the shelf, the dreaded shelf,

I suppose the shelf was when you were 30,

but 25 is, you know, the shelf is visible.

One of the things that was said was

that Veronica had a complex about being very, very small.

She was, she was tiny.

She was like a China doll almost.

And she thought that being small was a sign of bad breeding.

Veronica absolutely felt single.

She tells us later in her memoir, she admits,

she says herself, "I cannot stress the importance

"of getting married for my generation of women."

Of course, a situation for her, compounded

by the fact her younger sister,

she had a successful marriage into the Shand Kydd dynasty

and all the trappings of wealth

and prestige that came with it.

Poor old Veronica wasn't quite so lucky.

Christina married Bill Shand Kydd

who was very connected, connections

to the late Princess of Wales, Diana.

A rich man,

but that put Veronica in an orbit if you like,

because she could visit Bill and Christina

and there would've been Bill's friends.

[tense music]

One of Bill Shand Kydd's friends was

the then John Bingham who would become Lord Lucan.

John Bingham was beyond her wildest dreams.

She would've thought he was a god.

He was regarded as extremely good looking.

I mean, he was asked to test for films and so on.

He was a catch, no question.

And possibly she may have thought a better catch

than Bill Shand Kydd, which I think she might have enjoyed.

Lucan was considered as a possible James Bond.

I mean, he was a handsome man, he was very sporty.

He raced powerboats and he was really good at it.

When you look at it, if I was producing a James Bond movie

and I needed a character,

then a powerboat racing, handsome, bobsleigh skiing,

gambling aristocrat is a pretty good choice.

He would've been a good James Bond.

It always reminds me a little bit

of when Diana met Prince Charles, you know,

and they seemed to understand each other

and he may have thought this sweet young girl will

be a nice docile wife.

And she seemed to understand him

and Lucan said to her, you know, "I'm a gambler.

I'm gonna, this is my way of life."

And she said to him, "Oh no, that's fine.

"That doesn't matter at all."

[gentle piano music]

Lord Lucan operated in a clandestine world,

the Clermont Club, this is a gambling fraternity.

They're operating without the standard norms of society

and they are very much a boys club.

In an old school world where class, status, wealth

and title really meant something,

[gentle piano music continues]

By the time that they are married, it becomes clear

that Lord Lucan's friends don't really think that much

of Veronica.

She's not one of their set.

And I think this message is reinforced when she goes

to the Clermont Club where she is made

to sit on the widow's bench

and he is at the centre gambling,

doing whatever he wants to do as the man's man.

[dramatic music]

Lord Lucan was living in a quite a misogynistic time

in history.

He certainly thought he was superior to women.

He recognised that Veronica was actually

quite an intelligent, witty, quick woman,

and he said to her,

there can only be one captain of the ship.

That's like, "Whatever I say goes,

"it doesn't matter if you think you know better

"or even if you actually do know better.

"I'm the captain of this ship."

He started to undermine Veronica,

and one of the ways that he started

to undermine Veronica was to question her mental health,

her emotional stability.

And this was something that got a lot worse

and worse over time.

The Lucans had three children.

Francis was born in 1964, George,

so the heir, was born in 1967

and Camilla was born in 1970

and there were questions of postnatal depression.

Veronica was known to rock back

and forth from a very early age,

and she was seen doing this in the Clermont Club,

and I think that might have been a way

of self-soothing whatever she was experiencing,

and I think it's just one of those behaviours

that she found helpful without consciously being aware that

that's what she was doing.

It was something almost very primal to her.

There were two incidents in 1972.

One was that the Lucans were at the Clermont Club

and Veronica threw a glass of wine in a woman's face,

which was like a thunderbolt.

People had been sort of more

and more saying, "Oh, she's a nightmare."

Which you can interpret as you wish,

but the fact is she did throw a glass

of wine in someone's face.

You might be sympathetic to her for doing it, but she did.

And then the second thing was that she sacked this nanny,

the long-term nanny,

and that seems to have been the last straw for Lucan.

[sombre music]

The family was clearly in crisis.

He moves out of the marital home.

Clermont Club is sold, his gambling's out of control.

He's having to spend a lot of money claiming custody or

otherwise of his children.

Building up to the main custody battle.

She has to prove that she's mentally capable of looking

after those children, of being the primary parent.

So she checks herself into the priory and is assessed.

She had a guy from the priory come

and say that she was completely cured.

As long as she kept taking the right drugs,

she was completely cured.

She won the hearing and all the things she'd said

about Lucan which were meant to be kept under wraps,

all came out.

You know all these things about his sexual deviancy

and his general violence,

general ghastliness, all this came out.

[sombre music continues]

Veronica is told she has to have a nanny to help her look

after the children full time.

And this is hugely problematic.

Sandra, she'd had quite a few predecessors

over the previous year or so.

My name is Pierrete Goletto.

I am French by birth

and Italian by both my parents.

I live with the Lucan family for a long time

of I think over a year,

and I look after the three little children.

[gentle piano music]

In 1974, I saw an advert of

an agency looking for nannies.

I was told that the nanny before me lasted for a few days.

I have to go to a lawyer to be accepted.

The lawyer, and I remember his question,

"Will you stay if they have trouble in the family?"

I say, "I am here to protect the children,

"to take them away from it.

"That's all."

And then he said to me,

"Right, you got the job. You can start. Great."

I really loved the children.

Really, really.

Camilla was about two and a half.

George was about five.

Francis was the biggest one.

She was about seven.

We get up in the morning,

I bring the food up in the nursery, we eat up there.

We have a lot of fun.

We read the story, get ready, take

Francisca to the school, George would stay with me,

then I cook the supper.

This was seven days a week, but on Sunday it was fun

because we could go to the park.

[tense music]

This isn't a standard nannying situation, bearing in mind

that it's not normal to be fighting the custody of children.

Divorce isn't commonplace in the early 1970s,

so the situation is unusual.

It's highly charged

and I would think challenging, emotionally challenging.

I remember clearly my first meeting with Lady Lucan,

with Veronica.

I was lying on the floor, playing with the children.

She said to me, "Is this the way you do in France?"

I said, "This this the way the children like it."

And she just walk away.

The children didn't see their mother sometime for weeks,

and when I was seeing her dancing around the table

with a bottle of vodka,

I knew it wasn't the time to talk to her.

What one did here repeatedly was

that Lucan was a very hands-on father,

unusually so for, you might say, the time,

the class, whatever,

he was a very affectionate father.

I remember speaking to a nanny of the children of one

of his friends and she said he was the only one

who came into the nursery.

[gentle music]

He was living down the road.

I think it was Elizabeth Street if I remember rightly,

because sometime I was in the dining room downstairs

studying when he was coming at two o'clock,

three o'clock in the afternoon

before I go to pick up the children.

I could hear them arguing, arguing about money,

arguing about gambling, arguing about wasting money,

arguing about the children.

"I am going to prevent you to see George."

And that was the biggest threat Lord Lucan can have

because one thing is sure, he love his children.

Just outside Belgrave Street is a little kind of park

and I was going there and I know he was passing

and taking photos of the children.

He did two things with the nannies.

He had them followed

and he also did his best to tape record their conversations.

So he had a private investigation company

that was working for him.

At times, they had two different operatives

who would follow the nannies when the children

left the house and follow Lady Lucan.

It was a concerted bit of espionage that was going on.

The most startling behaviour for me

that I saw in this case was the stalking that happened

after they had separated

and it probably wouldn't have been called stalking back in

the 70s, but what he was doing was actually stalking.

He was parking up outside Veronica's house

and he would sit there for hour upon hour

staring at the house.

One of the nannies reported that there were 22

heavy breathing phone calls to the house in just one hour,

leaving either silent messages or heavy breathing.

[tense music]

Now that is to frighten somebody.

This man is actually wanting

to dominate Veronica's life.

"I'm still here. I'm not going anywhere."

He would tape a call to Veronica

and he would start off talking reasonably to her,

and then he would slowly provoke her into losing her temper

on the telephone and starting to rant and rave at him.

And only when she was ranting

and raving, he would then turn on his tape recorder when he

realised that nothing was gonna work to get those kids back

other than removing Veronica from the scene,

he abandoned all the sort of the nanny shenanigans,

if you like, and just began concentrating on

how do you kill your wife and get away with it.

[suspenseful music]

I think one marry the other one for money

and one marry the other one for a title.

Veronica was very, very attached of her title of the lady.

I don't think he has any sign of violence.

Lot of sadness, lot of hunger yes, but violence.

This wasn't a term that we used for him.

No.

And one thing is sure,

when he was telling hello to me, he was not telling hello,

like if I was a dog, he was looking at me.

He was looking and saying, good afternoon.

Thank you for looking after the children.

Any behavioural issues that Veronica displayed.

The police theory was that they were Lucan's fault.

They said that Lord Lucan had been trying to send her mad

or convince her that she was mad.

She said to them, "He used to take me off to psychiatrists."

There was pretty strong evidence

that the children shouldn't be with her.

He had concerns about her as early as 1967

and he didn't even leave the marriage until 1973.

So that means he was playing a very long game,

which frankly he wasn't capable of.

And it's ridiculous.

He just wasn't that imaginative.

He just wasn't.

There are conflicting descriptions of what Lord Lucan

was like as a person.

Some people describe him as very charming

and very charismatic and friendly and nice.

Other people say that that mask slipped quite a lot.

One of the things that we know about controlling people is

that they are very, very manipulative.

So they will learn as they go through life.

What works, what gives me the most control?

Most of this charm would've been used on people

who could be useful to him.

His motivations to get rid

of Veronica were very, very strong.

Veronica was, in his eyes, ruining his life.

And it wasn't only that she had won custody of the children

in the most embarrassing way possible for him.

It was also that she was living in the Lucan Trust's

Belgravia mansion, while Lucan was living around the corner

in a little two bed flat

and she was spending money at Harrod's like it was water.

No court was going to let him sell their family home

so he couldn't access any of the money

that he had locked up there.

He was like many aristocrats.

He was asset rich and cash poor.

Divorcing her, which he almost certainly would've wanted

to do, would possibly have made the situation

even worse for him.

I think it was about the end of September, I was told

by the lady from the Au Pair agency I wasn't needed anymore

and they needed somebody

English to replace me.

I have to go.

And then I did my, they were at school.

I put my thing and I went.

Sandra was with an agency in Belgravia

and her next job was at 46 Lower Belgrave Street.

I know almost nothing about Sandra.

I met Sandra once because I forgot some books

and I rung up to come to get them

and she opened the door.

She was not very big.

She looked like a pleasant lady.

I don't think she say a word to me.

She hold the book and I say, "Thank you very much."

She closed the door. Nothing else.

No contact.

I would've loved to ask how the children, no,

they were at school, the babies.

[gentle piano music]

It was very hard to get a nanny, a good nanny in London

for a rate that wasn't too over the top

because we know Lucan had money issues and therefore

you get this extraordinary sort of revolving door

of carers and au pairs

and nannies that arrive in the family house,

some of whom leave, some of whom aren't appropriate,

some of whom don't cut the mustard,

some of whom Veronica doesn't get on with,

some of whom are only temporary anyway

until the agency can get the right nanny.

We know Francis, the older girl didn't really get on

with the nannies and can you blame her?

She had a different one every week virtually.

[soft music]

I became a penthouse pet and a Bunny Girls,

and I love it.

I love the money I was making.

It was just glamorous.

I cannot remember the exact date,

but I know that I left weeks

before everything happened.

My boss said to me, "Have you read the last article?"

And I said, "No."

He said, "You worked with Lord Lucan, didn't you?"

And he gave me the paper and I read it.

And I just walk out and I walk in the street

and I said, "It could have been me."

And then I straightaway said, "No,

"that would not have happened if I did stay."

And from this minute, the guilt came.

First of all, I thought it was Veronica was killed,

and that really shocked me.

Then when I saw it was a mother of a young baby,

a young child, I felt guilty.

And this guilt is still here now,

50 years on this guilt is here.

It's all right.

I have to cope, I live with it.

[music box plays]

I mean, when you think of the chain of events

and how they're affecting people's lives,

the idea that a judge saying there has

to be a nanny in situ all the time,

and Sandra happily, innocently

thinking, oh, what a great job.

It's awful really.

When the police ask me question, I said to them,

"I feel guilty.

"No way they would ever murdered me."

I never heard from the children again.

My guilt was so great at the time.

I felt that the children could have been killed as well.

[gentle piano music]

Sandra appeared happy at her place of work,

and she told her mother that.

She'd ring her mother every evening.

She would ring her boyfriend and say how happy she was.

They probably felt very secure

and safe within the environment at that address at the time.

Unfortunately, that was to then to become a significant

and horrendous murder scene.

Less than half an hour after they were watching a television

and she'd gone downstairs, Sandra would've been killed.

On the night it happened with Lady Lucan

taken off to hospital, desperately injured.

She had massive wounds to her scalp.

Sandra Rivett dead in the basement.

The children were completely alone in the house

with this horrible scene happening downstairs.

Lucan himself tried to get some help for them.

He telephoned his mother

and said, could you go to the house?

I believe that the only person in the room with

the Dowager Countess of Lucan was a police woman.

The police woman realised Lucan was on the phone

and then just did nothing, just sat there and listened.

Lord Lucans mother asked Lord Lucan whether

or not he wanted to speak to the officer.

And his response was, "No, tell the officer I will speak

"to her tomorrow."

And for me, that was where part

of the investigation was going to be hindered.

You can't have your possible suspect on the opposite end

of the phone who says, "I'll ring you tomorrow."

Your natural instinct would be, "Give me that phone.

"Hello, mate, you need to wind your neck in

"and we need to talk."

That's just policing.

I don't think of any police officer who would go,

"Yeah, I agree with that."

I don't understand why the officer didn't do it, I'm sorry.

I think the details of how Sandra died

and the details of how Lady Lucan was hurt

didn't really come out in any great detail

until the inquest into Sandra's death,

which was some considerable time later.

The whole attention of the police

and the press was supposed

to be the worldwide hunt for Lord Lucan.

I wish to interview him

and I'd like to interview him as soon as possible.

And if any person is helping him

or assisting him, we'd like them to

or have any knowledge of his whereabouts.

We'd like them to let us know.

After Lady Lucan ran off

to the pub screaming and shouting,

and Lucan realised that he had to get away.

He into his car, the car that he had hoped to carry,

Lady Lucan's body away in, and he fled the scene.

And the only indication of

what he did then comes from the late Susan Maxwell Scott,

who days later reported

that he had turned up at her house on

the night of the killing.

He looked a bit dishevelled,

may have had a bit of blood on him.

He asked if he could get a pen and paper,

and he wanted to write a couple of letters.

He then left.

One of the letters, went to Bill Shand Kydd,

his brother-in-law.

Bill was a very, very close friend of his.

No, I obviously can't divulge the contents of the letter.

All I can say is that it confirmed the story,

which he had told his mother

that there had been an intruder in the house.

Apart from that, I can't divulge any of the contents.

I think he used the phrase, it's been a night

of unbelievable coincidences.

And he set the scene for what is his version,

his alibi for what happened that night,

or rather his defence for what happened that night.

- And he saw the intruder? - Yes.

He disturbed the intruder.

What sort of a man was he?

Generous man. A very gentle man.

Very much a family man.

He's really devoted to his children.

They are the most important thing in his life.

When I interrupted the fight at Lower Belgrave Street

and the man left, Veronica accused me of having hired him,

I took her upstairs and sent Francis up to bed

and tried to clean her up.

She laid Doggo for a bit,

and when I was in the bathroom, left the house.

The circumstantial evidence against me is strong in

that V will say it was all my doing.

I will also lie Doggo for a bit,

but I'm also concerned for the children.

If you can manage it, I want them to live with you.

To use the term, the circumstantial evidence against

me is strong.

It doesn't sit right with me.

It doesn't feel like the thing a normal person would say.

He said to Bill Shand Kydd that he was going to run away

and lie doggo for a while.

That phrase has haunted me for 50 years

because lying doggo for a while is not I'm gonna go

and kill myself.

It's I'm gonna go

and hide under the bed clothes until somebody finds me.

And it's just, he's been hiding very well

for five decades.

On the 9th of November, police had received information

that the Ford Corsair, that Michael Stoop had loaned

to Lord Lucan had been found in Newhaven.

The individuals who came across the vehicle said it had been

parked between five and 8:00 AM that day.

The vehicle was subsequently found by the officers locked,

which would imply that whoever was in it

may have intended to come back to the vehicle.

The natural suggestion would be

that he then got on the Newhaven to Dieppe Ferry

and escaped to France.

But the reality is

that the police questioned just every passenger they could

find who had made that crossing on the day after the murder.

And they could find nobody among the passengers

or crew who saw

or remembered a six foot tall former guards officer

with a very big bushy moustache

and talking in a very plummy, aristocratic accent.

He wasn't somebody you could mistake in a crowd.

I think the police believed

that the car was left at Newhaven as a red herring.

Nobody would know apart from Susan Maxwell Scott.

And and her evidence was just never forthcoming.

I would think that the probability is that he is alive,

but I have no knowledge, no foundation for that.

It's just a feeling. I think he's alive.

I don't think there's anybody, certainly in London

that didn't know about this case.

It would've been front page, back page news, everything.

But that sometimes can work against you

because you're gonna get lots

of sightings coming from all over the world.

They were coming from Australia,

they were coming from Europe, certainly in the UK.

So that would've made it even more difficult.

In the days and weeks after the murder,

the media generally were full of stories

of this worldwide hunt for the missing Lord Lucan,

it was a great headline.

The truth of the matter is that Roy Ranson,

the detective in charge of the case,

never went on a worldwide hunt

because he had no evidence of where Lucan might be.

14 years ago when I was in the Met, I believe

that they would've identified where Lord Lucan was

and he would've been arrested within days

or even weeks at the maximum

because there's so much stuff now that we have to do

that the moment you have your phone in your pocket,

it's pinging away on

where you are from the moment he left the scene from the

moment he ended up out in Newhaven,

all that information would be downloaded

and would have all that information in a matter

of 72 hours max.

So Roy Ranson

and his team were hamstrung by the lack

of technology

and all of those things

that an SIO now has to bring to bear.

If you're lucky in this day and age,

you could have solved that within 72 hours.

And if you're not, maybe in a couple of weeks.

[tense music]

The most plausible thing I think,

and supported by the evidence, is that Lord Lucan

was absolutely enraged

that he had no control over Veronica.

He wanted custody of his children, basically.

He wanted to win and he was losing.

He went through an escalation period.

He started to fantasise about how he was gonna win.

He was gonna win by killing her.

He planned to kill her.

He went round there to execute the plan.

He killed the wrong woman.

A typical intimate partner homicide that went wrong.

I think the murder was very premeditated.

There were a number of indications that it was premeditated.

The week before it happened,

he had custody of the children for a weekend or an evening,

and he talked to them about their new nanny, Sandra,

and they told him all about Sandra

and what a nice girl she was.

So he said, "I suppose your nanny has a boyfriend?"

And the oldest, Lucan girl said, "She's got a boyfriend."

and giggled.

And I think said, "We saw her kissing him."

and Lucan then said, "Does the boyfriend take Sandra out?"

And the children said, "Oh yes,

"she goes out every Thursday night

"because that's her day off."

It was the very next Thursday night that Lucan

turned up in the house with his intent to kill.

So it was certainly premeditated to the point where he knew

that the nanny would be out of the house

and Lady Lucan would be alone

and he was most likely to be able to kill his wife.

It was common knowledge

that Sandra normally had the Thursday night off.

But on this occasion, she decided

that she wanted to change it.

We know before the attack she'd spoken to her boyfriend,

they talked about meeting up the next day.

[dramatic music]

The murder happened on the evening

of the 7th of November, 1974.

As ever with this, there are very few hard facts.

We don't even know what time it happened

because there are conflicting reports.

While Veronica, two of her children

and Sandra were all upstairs in the main bedroom,

Veronica's bedroom, they were all on the bed together

watching the $6 million man.

And on the floor above was Francis, the elder child

who was watching top of the pops.

At some point between

25 to nine and five to nine,

Sandra Rivett went down into the basement to make tea.

There was a light bulb had been removed,

so she was in the dark.

She went down those stairs

and at the bottom of the stairs was attacked.

[dramatic music crescendos]

I think maybe after the first two or three blows.

And she may have screamed.

He may have thought this is not her,

but he could not have stopped then.

He couldn't say, "Oh, sorry, wrong person."

So he had to kill her.

Sandra collapses in a pool of blood and Lord Lucan

scoops up the body

and puts it into the big sack that he's come prepared with.

Now, it is entirely possible

that he doesn't know he's killed Sandra.

He thinks he's killed Lady Lucan.

And so he goes off to wash off the blood,

leaving the body in the sack.

All he can see of the body is her rocked up skirt

and underwear, which could well have been his wife's.

So he goes upstairs to

where there is a light in the ground floor, cloak room,

and that's where he starts to wash the blood off.

And it's at that point that he hears a noise outside

and he throws open the door, and there's his wife.

The woman who he firmly believed at

that stage was downstairs dead in a sack.

[water Trickling] [tense music]

He's totally shocked by this.

And he attacks Lady Lucan viciously.

I mean, he's got this lead pipe in his hand

and he's still swinging his pipe at her.

He hits her across the head several times.

She wouldn't have had the slightest chance

or knowledge of what was happening to her.

It is so hard to know what was actually going

through his head at that point.

But what I would theorise is that he sounded

blood hot angry.

And after that, there might have been a moment

where he went, "Oh God, what have I done?"

Upstairs, he's in a narrow corridor.

He's facing Lady Lucan.

And although he hits her without enough force

to knock her out, she's a wiry, feisty young woman.

And she's fighting for her life.

She scratches him, they're wrestling together.

And in the end, she reaches down

and she grabs hold of his testicles and squeezes

and twists as hard as she can.

And Lucan collapses to the floor with her.

They slide down the walls together.

And Lady Lucan is so clever.

She says, "What are you doing, John?

"What on earth are you doing?"

And he mumbles incoherently.

And she says, "Where's Sandra?

"Where's my nanny?"

And he says, "I think I've killed, I've killed your nanny."

They went upstairs to the bedroom

and he rang out a towel to clean her up a bit.

We know he was there because Francis, his daughter, saw him.

But when he was in the bathroom

cleaning up the towel and everything,

Veronica ran down the stairs, ran out the house,

ran up the street to the The Plumber's Arms pub,

and burst into the bar.

This was 10 to 10

and said, "Help, help my husband's murdered my nanny."

And from that point, it became a police matter.

They descended on the house.

[sombre music]

Lady Lucan attended the inquest,

and her role was to give an account of

what happened to her in terms of the attack,

which resulted in her receiving those injuries.

The problem in this case is that at the time,

the law did not allow her

to talk about her husband's attack on Sandra Rivett

because at that time a spouse couldn't give

evidence against the other.

So all that Lady Lucan could talk about

was the attack on her.

She couldn't, in any way, give evidence about

what Lord Lucan said when she managed to calm him down

and he actually confessed that he had killed Sandra.

She could not give that evidence.

But that law has subsequently changed

where a spouse can give evidence against the other spouse in

relation to any offence

that they may have committed against them.

At the inquest, which was June, 1975,

Sandra became more striking to my mind, really,

because you can understand the initial flurry around Lucan

and the excitement.

This very unlikely murderer.

Sandra's family were there

and her father, Albert said to the press, you know this,

"This is all meant to be about my daughter."

And her Aunt Vera said the same thing,

but more, she was stronger.

"My niece is caught in the crossfire between the Lucans

"and it's all about the Lucans."

Veronica had had a tough time as well,

but Sandra's family is where the sympathy should be going.

It's just the dad

and the aunt sitting at the back quietly.

And what they reflect on is

why wasn't this about Sandra?

Why was she completely ignored?

And that is devastating

because within that you can hear the frustration,

the pain, and I reckon the rage of

"How dare you ignore my child, my niece,

"the victim of this story as if she doesn't matter."

I saw the crime scene photographs

and she had taken blows

to her head, which were clearly unsurvivable.

I am no medical expert.

But you could not have survived the beating

that Lord Lucan gave her.

At the inquest, the main source of interest was not

how Sandra died.

It was where was Lord Lucan

and what was the jury going to say in their final verdict?

Because the inquest turned into the trial of Lord Lucan.

Sandra was virtually forgotten.

And so it became a bit of a circus to some degree.

[tense music]

The media were there.

People turned up in their fine regalia.

You had Lady Lucan

who was still suffering from her injuries.

She had a hat that she wore every day to hide them.

Lord Lucan had hit her over the head three times

with the metal bar with which he'd killed Sandra.

And she had vertical gashes running down her scalp like

this deep bone revealing gashes.

And she was still scarred

and her hair was completely wrecked by this.

So she was in the habit

of wearing tight turban hats each day.

Lady Lucan's hat attire

became a sort of a fashion item in the papers.

Nine times out of 10 when you have a inquest

and a coroner obviously involved, nobody knows about it.

But this one was like everyday news

and public could have attended.

It was a circus and I don't think that that necessarily

allowed Sandra's family to find some closure.

The postmortem in relation to Sandra Rivett basically showed

that she had received, at least is it nine blows

to the head and face.

There was significant blunt trauma

and ultimately she died as a result of those blows

as well as asphyxiation from her own blood.

It's what we call overkill.

So this was gratuitous in a way.

It was more violence than was necessary just to cause death.

Plausibly, he probably thought

that it was Veronica that he was attacking.

She was the one he felt all this rage towards,

that rage was pent up.

And because it was such gratuitous violence,

this killer is not only

and simply performing a homicide,

they're getting some emotional kind

of benefit from this as well.

The coroner's conclusion,

and this was quite rare, he basically said

that Lord Lucan was responsible for Sandra Rivett's murder

and that is something that was unheard of.

And it created a bit of a backlash

because the whole point of the inquest was

to establish the circumstances surrounding someone's death.

Was it an accident? Was it deliberate?

But the coroner in this case went beyond that

and actually indicated that Lord Lucan was the person

who had murdered Sandra Rivett.

[sombre music]

What's interesting is because

of the fanciful nature in the way this story was written up,

the press behaved in a way

that I think disrespected the death of Sandra Rivett.

There was a case of the newspaper report offering a case

of champagne to a reader who came up

with the most inventive

or fanciful end for Lord Lucan I.E, where is he now?

Give this horror story an end

and we will give you a crate of champagne.

So they're turning it really into a drama

and it had become, yeah, a fairy story,

a horror fairy story, a grim fairy story.

The Fleet Street reporters

and I speak as someone who was proudly one

for many reasons,

are a pretty unfeeling

and pretty nasty pack of people.

A lot of my former colleagues are now snarling at me.

But it's true.

If you are dealing with a constant stream of nastiness,

one of the ways of dealing with that is to laugh it off

and make gallows jokes about it.

So I can't deny that the death

of Sandra Rivett would not have been greeted by

the Fleet Street Crime reporting pack with great sympathy

and sorrow.

That's not to say that on a personal level,

I, or many of my then colleagues

would not have had every sympathy for her

because she was just so unlucky.

But when you are in that situation now,

50 years ago, the intense competition

of Fleet Street, and I'm talking really intense.

You were going through a time in the 70s when she died,

when both the police and the press

were not at their finest,

their morals were distinctly un-fine.

It's regrettable, but it was how it was

and it wasn't driven by anyone's malice,

it was driven by a need as reporters and media

and editors would've seen it at the time by a need to

inform and keep circulation.

I mean, you know, it was a very competitive era.

I think the police investigation was pretty terrible.

There was quite a lot of insinuation about

how she had a lot of boyfriends.

She clearly liked having a boyfriend.

Is that a crime to like having a boyfriend?

I mean, it's a confusing world, the 60s

and 70s where women have to have a man,

but they have to have a man according

to the very narrow social expectations of the day

and the way Sandra did it outside of wedlock or divorced.

Wow.

And a slight overlap.

I mean, how many men have had an overlap?

Does one really deserve to be murdered

for having a very slight emotional overlap

in your heterosexual relations?

I think not, Great Britain.

What really makes me sad about Sandra is

that if she'd been born 20, even 10 years later,

I think her life would've been completely different.

Sandra's sort of acknowledged boyfriend was Australian,

he was called John Hankins

and she'd met him in the Plumber's Arms Pub.

They seemed to have been quite serious

because it was reported

that she had asked Roger Rivett for a divorce

'cause they never actually got divorced.

And he said, "Okay, I'll divorce you."

But he never heard from her again.

Presumably that was

because she was getting serious with John Hankins.

Veronica states on record several times,

including during the inquiry.

She never had a problem with Sandra.

Sandra had relations with men,

but she did not bring those men home.

They did not affect her work.

It's irrelevant, it's totally irrelevant.

She had a really attractive sort of

conventionally attractive appearance

and obviously that's appealing to the press.

There was a certain amount about her boyfriends.

There was a certain amount about her broken marriage

and I think that

I'm afraid is par for the course.

Sadly, I'm not sure how much that's changed.

I don't believe that there were any preconceived views

by the officers at the time.

I tried to put myself in their position.

The officers would've turned up to a horrendous scene.

They would've established at a pretty early point the nature

of the injuries that she received, that she was a nanny,

her having a boyfriend or boyfriends.

I don't think that was necessarily anything

that would've been then thinking

that had anything to do with it.

I genuinely think that those officers were steadfast in

their desire to establish the facts.

So I don't believe that that had any bearing whatsoever on

the mindset of those officers at that time.

I think she'd have had a great time now.

For somebody like her who didn't settle,

which, you know it's not a crime

and she wouldn't have had to be a nanny in

that weird household, let's face it,

she'd be alive almost certainly.

[sombre music]

[dramatic music]

After nearly 50 years,

my understanding is that this is still a cold case

for the Metropolitan Police Service.

This case would've been very frustrating

for those officers involved because initially,

and this is no disrespect to my colleagues,

they may have assumed that this was an open and shut case.

Everything pointed to Lord Lucan.

The problem for them is they were never ever able to speak

to him because he disappeared

and has never been seen for 50 years.

There are all these unanswered questions,

but it may be that they're just unanswered questions

for YouTubers and podcasters.

And the fact is we still know who did it.

If I had to put forward a theory, I'd probably say Lucan

employed a hitman and that's why they got the wrong woman

and attacked Veronica in a panic.

But even that doesn't fit all the facts.

We all have our views

and thoughts as to what may have happened to Lord Lucan.

From my perspective, there's nothing to suggest

that he committed suicide.

For me, it would suggest that

after the event somebody helped him

to possibly leave the country at some point in time.

It didn't have to be in the first 48, 72 hours.

It could be a week, two weeks after

and has probably been able to look after him

and support him over the years.

That is my own personal view.

I know other people may probably disagree,

but it seems too convenient for someone to have disappeared

after such a significant incident

and not be found for 50 years without having some help.

I still don't believe Lord Lucan did it.

No way.

I don't see him hurting a fly.

I never allow myself to judge her.

They were both lost creatures in this world of madness.

[gentle music]

The trouble with this story is so many hangers on

after the event were just saying the most unbelievable.

I still hear things from people who say, "Oh,

"Veronica did this."

or "Do you know Lucan was fed to a bunch of tigers?"

And it's all, it's a story

that breeds a lot of real nonsense.

I've heard the stories

of Aspinall feeding Lucan into the tigers.

I would've believed it more if he'd fed him to pigs

'cause pigs will eat anything.

It's never really rung true with me.

Aspinall wasn't a close friend of his.

He didn't particularly like Lucan,

but Lucan was very useful to him

because he was seen

as an aristocratic playing member at the club,

an attraction to others to go to Aspinall's clubs.

I can think of no reason on earth that he would've gone

to the trouble of trying to feed, you know,

Lucan to the tigers.

What happened to him?

I don't believe he's dead.

He may by now have died of natural causes.

He will be 90 very soon.

But his father lived to a decent age.

So if you accept that he ran away that night and escaped,

then he may well still be out there.

But the family

and friends of his have tried very hard through the years

to suggest that he took the honourable course

and killed himself.

But I've never believed that for one moment,

it's very hard to kill yourself and hide your own body.

[suspenseful music]

Veronica had a really tough time after all this.

She got these head wounds.

She was in hospital.

She sort of seemed to cut herself off.

Her life did start to sort of fall apart really.

She did in fact lose her children at the end of it all.

[Interviewer] Are you going to start proceedings

to get your husband declared legally dead?

- No, I'm not. - Why not?

Because I don't think he is.

[Interviewer] Would it not make a difference to your life

if you did?

As far as the last seven years have shown me,

it would make absolutely no difference

to my life whatsoever.

Apart from doing something which I don't

really believe to be true.

[Interviewer] Do you think you'll see him again?

I always hope to,

but I have a feeling that I won't see him again.

I don't think he'll come back.

He'll have made another life for himself.

I always hope though, there's always a possibility.

How has life changed for you?

What do you do from day to day?

It's changed to one day is like another.

It's like being isolated.

It's worse than being in prison

because I haven't got any prison inmates with me to talk to.

I'm in solitary confinement

and I feel hostility from those that I knew before.

She lived in the muse house behind Lower Belgrave Street.

And then she would occasionally say, "I still adore John."

As she called him, Lucan.

She kept his portrait.

She's very complicated, Veronica.

She deliberately went on television near the end

of her life and just to reassert her version of events,

[gentle music]

she was brilliant, absolutely brilliant

'cause I think it did worry her that people said,

you know, some of this evidence is a bit conflicting.

She did have friends, but she seemed still to be

very, I don't know if she was obsessed with Lucan,

but I think the idea of having married him,

I think that still pleased her.

I saw her near Buckingham Palace not that long

before she died actually.

And she looked very, you know, she was immaculate

like older ladies in the 1970s really.

She died in 2017.

It seems a very difficult life.

Veronica said towards the end of her life,

her biggest fear was becoming dependent on others

and that she supported assisted suicide.

And I don't think it's any real surprise

that she was subsequently found dead in her own home.

And it was presumed that she had indeed taken her own life.

There is something really very pitiful

about the whole episode.

She was quite a feisty lady who was able

to stick up for herself.

I met her many years after this all happened.

I went to her house and I spoke to her

and she invited me in knowing I was a journalist

or knowing as I was then an author.

I wanted to write a book about it.

So I introduced myself.

She invited me into a little tiny living room that she had

and she actually brought out tea

and we had a cup of tea together.

And she was pleasant and helpful

and she tried to paint Lord Lucan in quite a good light.

She wasn't desperately nasty about him at all.

And I went back the very next day, banged on the same door

and she opened the door and threw a cup of urine in over me

and started literally in the middle

of the street screaming I was gutter press

and I should F off.

And I told that story to Bill Shand Kydd,

who'd raised her children and knew her very well indeed.

And he said, "Oh, that was typical Veronica."

I think what was very touching

and really in some ways typical of what we've got to know

of Veronica, that she was able to recognise that the tragedy

of their marriage and the discord in that marriage led

to the loss of Sandra Rivett's life

and how sorry she was about that.

And that there was nothing she could do about that,

but that she would never forget her or it.

And that really speaks to Veronica's humanity, her empathy,

and also to a sisterhood, if you like, almost,

with a fellow woman who hadn't had an easy path

and who'd got caught up in a psychodrama

that was really of none of her doing.

[gentle piano music]

Sandra's sister described her in the newspapers.

She said she was fun-loving.

She was, you know, up for a laugh.

She was sociable, she was kind, thoughtful.

Just all the things that make you

think she was actually a lovely young woman.

And it it just very, very poignant tribute to her.

John actually,

her last boyfriend said she was a really good girl.

He actually was deeply one of the most touching bits

of the case, but never gets heard.

She was a lovely lass.

She might have had a rather lovely future

after a bit of a questionable start in life.

Poor girl.

John Hankins talked to the papers quite a lot

after it all happened.

He gave the impression that they might have gone

to Australia, they might have had a happy life together.

She was a lovely girl, lovely nature.

And it's sad really 'cause she didn't deserve that,

didn't have a bad bone in her at all.

[bright music]

I think it's so often the case when we report

or record crime, the victim gets overlooked

time and time again.

And when we refer to the case of Lord Lucan,

can we please put before his name,

the name of the victim of the murder.

She was called Sandra Rivett,

and she lost her life on

that night in a basement in London in 1974.

The innocent victim of the case.

[bright music]

[bright music continues]

[bright music ends]