SEPTEMBER 29 ― I was a little surprised this morning to read about the death of Lady Lucan. She was 80 years old and I just realised that the mysterious disappearance of her husband, for which she was also made famous, happened over 40 years ago!
Her husband was of course the famous Lord Lucan and if you collected books on strange occurrences as I did in my adolescence, you would be very familiar with his handsome, confident smile.
He was, after all, a candidate to play James Bond himself and only lost out to Sean Connery.
But his looks were not what made him famous. John Bingham, the seventh earl of Lucan or popularly known as Lord Lucan was a world famous figure because of the murder case he was involved in way back in 1974, on the 7th of November, to be precise.
It happened in Belgravia, a district in London quite well-known for its poshness. This was where Countess Veronica Lucan (popularly known as “Lady Lucan”), the then estranged wife of Lord Lucan, lived with her three children.
At about 10.30pm on that day, Lady Lucan, in a bludgeoned and dazed state, burst into a pub and screamed bloody murder.
The Lucans' nanny, Sandra Ribbit, had been bludgeoned to death in Lady Lucan’s home. She was only 29 years old.
The police arrived at her home and found Ms Ribbit where Lady Lucan had indicated ― in the basement. Ms Ribbit’s body was tied up in a sack.
Earlier, she had gone down into the basement, where the kitchen was located, to make some tea. It was there a stranger attacked her. He bludgeoned her to death with a lead pipe wrapped in surgical tape.
When she did not return to the living room, Lady Lucan went down herself to look for her and was herself attacked. Fortunately, she managed to escape and ran to the pub and claimed her husband tried to kill her!
To be sure, Lord Lucan did not have a very vanilla history. He was certainly handsome and debonair, yes but his conduct was not what one would call exemplary.
In 1955, he first took up employment in a merchant bank but also had a penchant for gambling. In 1960, he won a huge jackpot of 26,000 pounds which would be over 550,000 pounds today (over 2.5 million ringgit!).
He then became a professional gambler till this tragic incident. He had a love for the finer things in life and even had an Aston Martin, just like James Bond.
In 1963, he married Veronica Duncan and had three children with her. Lady Lucan, as she came to be known, suffered from post-partum depression after each birth.
Lord Lucan’s gambling career was not exactly stellar either. He was losing more than winning and his debts were piling up. This added more stress to his marriage and he moved out of their family home at the end of 1972.
Why did Lady Lucan blame her husband for the crime? For a start, the darkness of the basement coupled with the fact that Ms Ribbit was not meant to work that night, could have led her husband to think that it was Lady Lucan herself who was coming down the stairs.
Lady Lucan was surprised that her husband suddenly popped up just then to “help her.” He then left in a friend’s car he had been using that past week and went to another friend’s home in East Sussex.
He had time to relay the story to his friend and claimed that his wife had hired someone to frame him!
They found this car abandoned in New Haven, a coastal town. There was another lead pipe with surgical tape in the car but Lord Lucan was nowhere to be seen. Ever again.
He literally became a legend. Some say he took the ferry from the town and jumped to a watery death. Others claimed to have seen him in various places all over the world. Still others claimed he had assumed a new identity and lived the rest of his days as a new person.
Lord Lucan, if he is still alive, would now be 83 years old. The chances of him coming forward, if so, are growing slimmer by the day. His real legacy is his story.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
