Lady Lucan, 80, found dead at home after police force entry
Lady Lucan, whose husband sparked an international manhunt after disappearing more than four decades ago, has been found dead at home.
Police forced entry to the 80-year-old’s home in Westminster on Tuesday afternoon after she was reported missing and found her unresponsive.
‘Police attended an address on Eaton Row in Westminster … following concerns for the welfare of an elderly occupant. Officers forced entry and found an 80-year-old woman unresponsive’, a Metropolitan Police spokesman said.
‘Police and London Ambulance Service attended. Although we await formal identification we are confident that the deceased is Lady Lucan.’
Her son George Bingham, the 8th Earl Lucan, told the Daily Mail: ‘She passed away yesterday at home, alone and apparently peacefully. Police were alerted by a companion to a three-day absence and made entry today.’
Lady Lucan was one of the last people to see her husband, John Bingham, the 7th Earl of Lucan, before his notorious disappearance in November 1974.
He vanished after the body of Sandra Rivett, nanny to his three children, was found dead at the family home at 46 Lower Belgrave Street, central London, on November 7 1974.
Despite being officially declared dead by the Home Office in 1999, Lord Lucan has reportedly been spotted in Australia, Ireland, South Africa, and New Zealand.
There are also claims that he may have fled to India and lived life as a hippy called ‘Jungly Barry’.
On the same night at Lucan’s disappearance, Rivett’s attacker also turned on Lady Lucan, beating her severely before she managed to escape and raise the alarm at a nearby pub, the Plumbers Arms.
Lucan’s car was later found abandoned and soaked in blood in Newhaven, East Sussex, and an inquest jury declared the wealthy peer the killer a year later.
One journalist, Roger Bray, was the first on Lord Lucan’s doorstep after the mysterious disappearance, and spoke to Head barman at the in the Plumbers Arms, Derrick Whitehouse, who told Mr Bray that Lady Lucan “staggered” in and she said: ‘I think my neck has been broken. He tried to strangle me.’
The barman said Lady Lucan was “just in a delirious state”, telling Mr Bray: “She just said ‘I’m dying’. She kept going on about the children. ‘My children, my children’.
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After his disappearance, Lady Lucan contributed to a documentary about her husband and revealed his violent nature, which saw him hitting her in the head with a cane in an apparent attempt to cure her depression.
‘He could have hit harder. They were measured blows. He must have got pleasure out of it because he had intercourse (with me) afterwards’, she said.
