September 22, 2026 • 12 mins
Born rich, titled, and impossibly handsome . . a British lord’s life falls apart and he chooses murder. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. The 7th Earl of Lucan, disappeared over 50 years ago after murdering his children’s nanny, having mistaken her for his ex wife. Did his aristocratic friends help him vanish into a new life? This story may remind you of the Netflix show “The Beast in Me.” But this time, the killer escapes.
Feel free to DM me if you have a story you’d like me to cover . . on Facebook it’s Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, so what happens when a perfect life completely unwinds?
The seventh Earl of Lucan was born rich, titled, and
handsome until career and money problems lead to divorce. Divorce
leads to a nasty custody battle. Then somehow it all
leads to murder, but not of the intended victim. Finally,
(00:20):
the unlucky suspect vanishes. I'm Patti Steele. It's a 50-year mystery,
and it's next on The Backstory. The backstory is back.
This story really reminds me of the Netflix show, The
Beast and Me, money, privilege, and murder. I'm always intrigued
(00:41):
by these people who seem to have been born with
a silver baby bottle to suck on. Do they ever
get that the rest of us don't live that way?
That nothing comes easy for most folks? So how do
they handle it when their own lives take a bad turn?
Take Richard John Bingham, the 7th Earl of Lucan. He
had it all, on paper at least. A title going
(01:03):
back centuries, an education at legendary British private schools, a
face so perfect, movie producers once toyed with making him
a possible James Bond. Here's his backstory. When he was
six years old, World War II broke out. In order
to keep them safe, his parents sent Richard and his
brother and sister to live with family friends on their
(01:25):
huge estate in upstate New York for five years. Despite
the war, it was idyllic, a privileged childhood. Then after
the war, the children headed back to England. Now the
problem is, their parents were socialists, so despite their aristocratic heritage,
they lived a simpler life than you would expect. It
(01:46):
was a bit of a culture shock for those kids
when they returned to that lifestyle. When his father died
in 1964, Richard inherited the title as 7th Earl, but surprisingly,
he Titles don't pay bills, and by his 30s, Lugan's
finances were in free fall. That, however, was entirely his
own fault. He'd walked away from a prestigious job in
(02:09):
the banking industry to become a professional gambler. He joined
the Claremont Club, a members-only casino in London whose members
included some of Britain's richest men. It was a tight,
exclusive group of aristocrats, and a few hustlers, who called
themselves the Claremont Set. They became Richard Lucan's entire world.
(02:31):
He actually wasn't a particularly good gambler. He lost consistently,
so they probably liked him for that. But rather than stop,
he doubled down, borrowing against his dwindling inheritance to maintain
the look of a man who belonged in that crowd.
By the early 1970s, the money was almost gone. Although
the tailored suits, the silver Mercedes, the country club aristocratic bearing,
(02:55):
that he refused to let go of. Friends later said
it was all about pride. But life on the edge
causes other problems. This time, it was his marriage that collapsed.
Richard had married Veronica Duncan in 1963. They had three children,
but the marriage turned nasty pretty quickly. By 1972, the
couple had separated, and what followed was one of the
(03:18):
ugliest custody battles London society had ever seen. Fought not quietly,
but in open court, with each side's lawyers dragging out
the other's flaws for a judge to weigh. Richard wanted
his three kids. He fully believed that Veronica was mentally
unfit to be their mother. He lost. Custody went to Veronica.
(03:39):
But worse yet, the court's ruling didn't just deny him
the children. Friends said it humiliated him, pointing him out
as the unstable one. He had to pay support, too,
which he could barely afford, especially because he was already
drowning in gambling debt. He appealed his case, and he
lost again. Now, this is where he pivots. Multiple friends
(04:01):
later told police and journalists that Richard's conversation had changed.
He stopped talking about legally winning back the kids and
started hinting that Veronica would no longer be a problem.
He told at least one pal he'd thought about hiring
somebody to kill her. Was that loose talk after a
few drinks or an actual plan? However, not long after,
(04:24):
A woman was found dead on the family's basement floor.
But it wasn't who you'd expect. Maybe not who he
expected either. In the weeks before the murder, it was
clear Richard was surveilling the house where he used to live,
which was now occupied by his ex-wife Veronica and their
three kids. He knew the schedule intimately. What time the
(04:45):
little ones went to bed, what time was lights out,
and critically, what time Veronica came downstairs every evening to
make herself a cup of tea in the basement kitchen.
That was key to the murder. Now, the police believed
he removed the bulb from the basement fixture days earlier,
plunging the stairwell into darkness on purpose. And the weapon?
(05:08):
A piece of lead pipe, which was wrapped tightly in
surgical tape to cushion the grip and muffle the blow. Clearly,
not a spontaneous grab from a toolbox. It showed intent.
But one problem Richard hadn't counted on? Sandra Rivett. She
was 29, newly hired as the children's nanny. In fact,
(05:28):
she'd only been on the job just a few weeks.
Thursday was her regular night off, but she made a
completely random choice to stay in. It was Thursday, November 7th, 1974.
And as fate had it, Sandra also decided to make
herself a cup of tea at almost the exact time
and the same spot Veronica usually would have. She headed
(05:52):
down the darkened staircase. Richard approached from behind. There was
no way to tell the two women apart in the darkness.
Sandra was brutally hit with the pipe, repeatedly, and killed.
Her body was then stuffed into a canvas royal mail-style sack,
again showing this was planned. Now, his intended target, Veronica,
(06:14):
comes down the dark staircase. She knew Sandra had come
down earlier, and she called out for her. Then Veronica
walks directly into whoever was waiting in that stairwell. What
happened next is where the case gets even weirder. We
know the details because Veronica survived to tell it. She
said a man attacked her in the dark, hit her
(06:35):
several times, and then in the chaos seemed to back off.
She testified that he then tried to force his fingers
down her throat, but strangely stopped, apologized, and actually started
to help her upstairs. She then managed to break free
and run. She fled the house in her nightgown, blood
streaming from her head, and she burst into the Plumber's
(06:58):
Arms pub around the corner, screaming that she'd escaped a
murderer and that her children's father had killed the nanny. Richard, meantime,
was already on the move. He drove to the home
of a close friend, Susan Maxwell Scott, arriving late that
night completely freaked out. He claimed to her that he'd
been driving past his old house, saw a struggle through
(07:20):
the basement window, and let himself in with his own key.
He said he had disturbed an unknown attacker in the
dark and slipped in a pool of blood trying to
help out. He then asked her to pass a message
to his mother to look after the children. By this time,
it was around 1.30 in the morning. Richard, the 7th
Earl of Lucan, then drove straight into the night in
(07:43):
a borrowed Ford Corsair. That car was found abandoned a
few days later at a channel port on England's south coast.
Inside it, another piece of lead pipe matching the murder
weapon and bloodstains later confirmed as the dead nanny's blood type.
From that point, in that harbor town, on a dark night,
(08:04):
the trail simply goes cold. No ferry ticket confirmed, no
border record, no verified sighting ever from that moment forward.
Over 50 years ago, Lord Lucan didn't just flee. He evaporated.
No trace, no body. In 1975, a coroner's inquest named Richard,
(08:25):
Lord Lucan, as the nanny Sandra Rivett's murderer. So what
exactly happened to him? Theory 1, which his family and
aristocratic pals have clung to, says he drove to that port,
took a boat out into the English Channel, and drowned himself,
unable to face what he'd done. It's a tragic but
(08:45):
tidy answer, but no body ever washed ashore. Theory 2,
which the tabloids have loved for more than 50 years,
posits that his wealthy, well-connected friends, maybe the Claremont Club
circle of aristocratic gamblers, helped him disappear, smuggled him out
of the country, funded a new life somewhere far away,
(09:08):
using the kind of old money networks that could make
a problem quietly vanish. Over five decades, Lucan sightings have
poured in from places like Botswana, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand,
even a bizarre claim that he was living as a
Hare Krishna devotee in Goa, India, robes and all. As
(09:29):
recently as a few years ago, an amateur investigator claimed
facial recognition technology had matched an elderly man living quietly
in Australia to Richard, which made headlines for a few days,
but the lead fizzled. In 1999, a court finally declared
Richard Lord Lucan legally dead, 25 years after he disappeared.
(09:52):
And it wasn't until 2016 that his family finally got
an actual death certificate. So his son was at long last.
allowed to become the eighth Earl of Lucan. Meantime, his
ex-wife Veronica, the Dowager Countess of Lucan, who weirdly escaped
his murderous rage, lived a quiet, careful life in London
(10:13):
in the family's multi-million dollar townhouse. In the 1980s, she
had severed all ties with her family, including her three children.
In 2016, she took her own life and in her
will left nothing to her children, instead leaving her entire
fortune to a major homeless charity in the UK. So
(10:34):
the question is, was Richard helped by rich friends who
valued loyalty over the law? Or did he throw himself
into a cold, dark sea? Or is there, even now,
50 years later, a version of this story where an
old man, about 92 years old, somewhere quietly reads a
headline about himself and says nothing? That's the uncomfortable, fascinating
(11:00):
truth about Lord Lucan. It's a mystery, not because the
clues are missing, but because the people with the power
to provide answers have chosen for half a century to
remain silent. I hope you like the backstory with Patti Steele.
Please leave a review. I'd love it if you'd subscribe
or follow for free to get new episodes delivered automatically.
(11:22):
And feel free to DM me if you have a
story you'd like me to cover. On Facebook, it's Patti Steele.
And on Instagram, real Patti Steele. Thanks for listening to
The Backstory with Patti Steele, the pieces of history you
(11:44):
didn't know you needed to know.
All right, so what happens when a perfect life completely unwinds?
The seventh Earl of Lucan was born rich, titled, and
handsome until career and money problems lead to divorce. Divorce
leads to a nasty custody battle. Then somehow it all
leads to murder, but not of the intended victim. Finally,
(00:20):
the unlucky suspect vanishes. I'm Patti Steele. It's a 50-year mystery,
and it's next on The Backstory. The backstory is back.
This story really reminds me of the Netflix show, The
Beast and Me, money, privilege, and murder. I'm always intrigued
(00:41):
by these people who seem to have been born with
a silver baby bottle to suck on. Do they ever
get that the rest of us don't live that way?
That nothing comes easy for most folks? So how do
they handle it when their own lives take a bad turn?
Take Richard John Bingham, the 7th Earl of Lucan. He
had it all, on paper at least. A title going
(01:03):
back centuries, an education at legendary British private schools, a
face so perfect, movie producers once toyed with making him
a possible James Bond. Here's his backstory. When he was
six years old, World War II broke out. In order
to keep them safe, his parents sent Richard and his
brother and sister to live with family friends on their
(01:25):
huge estate in upstate New York for five years. Despite
the war, it was idyllic, a privileged childhood. Then after
the war, the children headed back to England. Now the
problem is, their parents were socialists, so despite their aristocratic heritage,
they lived a simpler life than you would expect. It
(01:46):
was a bit of a culture shock for those kids
when they returned to that lifestyle. When his father died
in 1964, Richard inherited the title as 7th Earl, but surprisingly,
he Titles don't pay bills, and by his 30s, Lugan's
finances were in free fall. That, however, was entirely his
own fault. He'd walked away from a prestigious job in
(02:09):
the banking industry to become a professional gambler. He joined
the Claremont Club, a members-only casino in London whose members
included some of Britain's richest men. It was a tight,
exclusive group of aristocrats, and a few hustlers, who called
themselves the Claremont Set. They became Richard Lucan's entire world.
(02:31):
He actually wasn't a particularly good gambler. He lost consistently,
so they probably liked him for that. But rather than stop,
he doubled down, borrowing against his dwindling inheritance to maintain
the look of a man who belonged in that crowd.
By the early 1970s, the money was almost gone. Although
the tailored suits, the silver Mercedes, the country club aristocratic bearing,
(02:55):
that he refused to let go of. Friends later said
it was all about pride. But life on the edge
causes other problems. This time, it was his marriage that collapsed.
Richard had married Veronica Duncan in 1963. They had three children,
but the marriage turned nasty pretty quickly. By 1972, the
couple had separated, and what followed was one of the
(03:18):
ugliest custody battles London society had ever seen. Fought not quietly,
but in open court, with each side's lawyers dragging out
the other's flaws for a judge to weigh. Richard wanted
his three kids. He fully believed that Veronica was mentally
unfit to be their mother. He lost. Custody went to Veronica.
(03:39):
But worse yet, the court's ruling didn't just deny him
the children. Friends said it humiliated him, pointing him out
as the unstable one. He had to pay support, too,
which he could barely afford, especially because he was already
drowning in gambling debt. He appealed his case, and he
lost again. Now, this is where he pivots. Multiple friends
(04:01):
later told police and journalists that Richard's conversation had changed.
He stopped talking about legally winning back the kids and
started hinting that Veronica would no longer be a problem.
He told at least one pal he'd thought about hiring
somebody to kill her. Was that loose talk after a
few drinks or an actual plan? However, not long after,
(04:24):
A woman was found dead on the family's basement floor.
But it wasn't who you'd expect. Maybe not who he
expected either. In the weeks before the murder, it was
clear Richard was surveilling the house where he used to live,
which was now occupied by his ex-wife Veronica and their
three kids. He knew the schedule intimately. What time the
(04:45):
little ones went to bed, what time was lights out,
and critically, what time Veronica came downstairs every evening to
make herself a cup of tea in the basement kitchen.
That was key to the murder. Now, the police believed
he removed the bulb from the basement fixture days earlier,
plunging the stairwell into darkness on purpose. And the weapon?
(05:08):
A piece of lead pipe, which was wrapped tightly in
surgical tape to cushion the grip and muffle the blow. Clearly,
not a spontaneous grab from a toolbox. It showed intent.
But one problem Richard hadn't counted on? Sandra Rivett. She
was 29, newly hired as the children's nanny. In fact,
(05:28):
she'd only been on the job just a few weeks.
Thursday was her regular night off, but she made a
completely random choice to stay in. It was Thursday, November 7th, 1974.
And as fate had it, Sandra also decided to make
herself a cup of tea at almost the exact time
and the same spot Veronica usually would have. She headed
(05:52):
down the darkened staircase. Richard approached from behind. There was
no way to tell the two women apart in the darkness.
Sandra was brutally hit with the pipe, repeatedly, and killed.
Her body was then stuffed into a canvas royal mail-style sack,
again showing this was planned. Now, his intended target, Veronica,
(06:14):
comes down the dark staircase. She knew Sandra had come
down earlier, and she called out for her. Then Veronica
walks directly into whoever was waiting in that stairwell. What
happened next is where the case gets even weirder. We
know the details because Veronica survived to tell it. She
said a man attacked her in the dark, hit her
(06:35):
several times, and then in the chaos seemed to back off.
She testified that he then tried to force his fingers
down her throat, but strangely stopped, apologized, and actually started
to help her upstairs. She then managed to break free
and run. She fled the house in her nightgown, blood
streaming from her head, and she burst into the Plumber's
(06:58):
Arms pub around the corner, screaming that she'd escaped a
murderer and that her children's father had killed the nanny. Richard, meantime,
was already on the move. He drove to the home
of a close friend, Susan Maxwell Scott, arriving late that
night completely freaked out. He claimed to her that he'd
been driving past his old house, saw a struggle through
(07:20):
the basement window, and let himself in with his own key.
He said he had disturbed an unknown attacker in the
dark and slipped in a pool of blood trying to
help out. He then asked her to pass a message
to his mother to look after the children. By this time,
it was around 1.30 in the morning. Richard, the 7th
Earl of Lucan, then drove straight into the night in
(07:43):
a borrowed Ford Corsair. That car was found abandoned a
few days later at a channel port on England's south coast.
Inside it, another piece of lead pipe matching the murder
weapon and bloodstains later confirmed as the dead nanny's blood type.
From that point, in that harbor town, on a dark night,
(08:04):
the trail simply goes cold. No ferry ticket confirmed, no
border record, no verified sighting ever from that moment forward.
Over 50 years ago, Lord Lucan didn't just flee. He evaporated.
No trace, no body. In 1975, a coroner's inquest named Richard,
(08:25):
Lord Lucan, as the nanny Sandra Rivett's murderer. So what
exactly happened to him? Theory 1, which his family and
aristocratic pals have clung to, says he drove to that port,
took a boat out into the English Channel, and drowned himself,
unable to face what he'd done. It's a tragic but
(08:45):
tidy answer, but no body ever washed ashore. Theory 2,
which the tabloids have loved for more than 50 years,
posits that his wealthy, well-connected friends, maybe the Claremont Club
circle of aristocratic gamblers, helped him disappear, smuggled him out
of the country, funded a new life somewhere far away,
(09:08):
using the kind of old money networks that could make
a problem quietly vanish. Over five decades, Lucan sightings have
poured in from places like Botswana, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand,
even a bizarre claim that he was living as a
Hare Krishna devotee in Goa, India, robes and all. As
(09:29):
recently as a few years ago, an amateur investigator claimed
facial recognition technology had matched an elderly man living quietly
in Australia to Richard, which made headlines for a few days,
but the lead fizzled. In 1999, a court finally declared
Richard Lord Lucan legally dead, 25 years after he disappeared.
(09:52):
And it wasn't until 2016 that his family finally got
an actual death certificate. So his son was at long last.
allowed to become the eighth Earl of Lucan. Meantime, his
ex-wife Veronica, the Dowager Countess of Lucan, who weirdly escaped
his murderous rage, lived a quiet, careful life in London
(10:13):
in the family's multi-million dollar townhouse. In the 1980s, she
had severed all ties with her family, including her three children.
In 2016, she took her own life and in her
will left nothing to her children, instead leaving her entire
fortune to a major homeless charity in the UK. So
(10:34):
the question is, was Richard helped by rich friends who
valued loyalty over the law? Or did he throw himself
into a cold, dark sea? Or is there, even now,
50 years later, a version of this story where an
old man, about 92 years old, somewhere quietly reads a
headline about himself and says nothing? That's the uncomfortable, fascinating
(11:00):
truth about Lord Lucan. It's a mystery, not because the
clues are missing, but because the people with the power
to provide answers have chosen for half a century to
remain silent. I hope you like the backstory with Patti Steele.
Please leave a review. I'd love it if you'd subscribe
or follow for free to get new episodes delivered automatically.
(11:22):
And feel free to DM me if you have a
story you'd like me to cover. On Facebook, it's Patti Steele.
And on Instagram, real Patti Steele. Thanks for listening to
The Backstory with Patti Steele, the pieces of history you
(11:44):
didn't know you needed to know.
Host
Patty Steele
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!