Another chapter closes as Lady Lucan dead at 80

Officers had been called to the address at Eaton Row in Belgravia because its 80-year-old occupant had not been seen for three days. They forced an entry and found her dead.

Scotland Yard confirmed her identity as Veronica, Dowager Countess of Lucan.

Lady Lucan had been a figure of intense public interest since 1974, when her husband, John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan, disappeared after the murdered body of their nanny, Sandra Rivett, was found at the family home in Lower Belgrave Street, around the corner from Eaton Row.

His wife had been one of the last people to see him alive.

The Metropolitan Police confirmed: “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.

“Police and London Ambulance Service attended. Although we await formal identification we are confident that the deceased is Lady Lucan.”

Police say her death is being treated as unexplained but is not believed to be suspicious.

Her son George Bingham, the 8th Earl Lucan, said: “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 had been the second victim of her nanny’s attacker, on the night her husband vanished. She was beaten severely before managing to escape and raise the alarm at a nearby pub, the Plumbers Arms.

The head barman, Derrick Whitehouse, told journalist Roger Bray that Lady Lucan “staggered” in and she said: “I think my neck has been broken. He tried to strangle me.”

Mr Whitehouse 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’, she said. She came staggering in through the door and I gave her all the assistance I possibly could. I’ve only seen her in here once before.”

Lucan’s car was later found abandoned and soaked in blood in Newhaven, East Sussex, and a year later, an inquest jury declared the peer to be the killer.

The High Court officially declared him dead in 1999, despite reported sightings in Australia, Ireland and New Zealand, and even claims that Lucan had fled to India and was living as a hippy.

A death certificate was issued only last year.

Lady Lucan had kept her counsel almost to the end, but earlier this year she appeared on an ITV documentary in which she suggested her husband had taken his own life.

“I would say he got on the ferry and jumped off in the middle of the Channel in the way of the propellers so that his remains wouldn’t be found - I think quite brave,” she said.

During the programme she spoke of her own depression and her husband’s violent nature following their marriage in 1963, which saw him beat her with a cane to get the “mad ideas out of your head”.

“He could have hit harder,” she said. “They were measured blows. He must have got pleasure out of it because he had intercourse (with me) afterwards.”

The interest in Lucan was fuelled in part by the playboy image he had created for himself. Once apparently considered ideal casting for James Bond by the character’s creator, Ian Fleming, Lucan made a show of racing power boats and driving an Aston Martin.

When his death certificate was finally issued, his son said the mystery would likely remain unsolved.

“My own personal view, and it was one I took as an eight-year-old boy, is that he has unfortunately been dead since that time,” he said.

“In the circumstances I would think it possible that he saw his life at an end, regardless of guilt or otherwise.”