The Fall Out After the Murder of Lord Lucan's Nanny

When Lord Lucan planned the murder of his wife Veronica, he could have had no concept of the immense quantity of fall-out. At the time in 1974, Lucan presumably idea that the only loser in the entire affair was going to be his estranged wife Veronica, whose dead physique was going to finish up becoming dumped in the Channel.

But as it turned out, the events of that evening had been to have a fairly catastrophic impact on a quantity of individuals. For a begin, Lucan killed the incorrect lady: it was his kids's nanny, 29-year-old Sandra Rivett, who was mistakenly bludgeoned to death.

This blunder has come to cast such an extraordinary shadow more than the lives of Lucan's family members and his buddies. For his poor wife Veronica, she is now estranged from all 3 of her young children. His son George could, if he wanted, take the title and turn out to be the 8th Earl of Lucan. But the truth is that Lord Lucan has turned his title into a standing joke and George is unlikely ever to use it. Can you envision how it would be go down if George have been to book a restaurant table under the name Lord Lucan? It would be even worse if he have been pulled more than by the police.

But outdoors his household, Lucan's murder was also the direct trigger of the suicide of one of his mates, Dominic Elwes. It sparked one of the longest libel actions in British history. And, extremely, it also prompted the arrest of Britain's one-time Postmaster Common. It is this final arrest which is so utterly bizarre as to be nearly farcical.

In the autumn of 1974, a Labour MP, John Stonehouse, had drowned in the sea off Miami. It was to be Stonehouse's misfortune that a couple of weeks later, Lucan was to murder Sandra Rivett. The complete globe was on the appear-out for this British aristocrat on the run. Quickly afterward in Australia, a bank teller spots a quite diffident Englishman. The Englishman appears wealthy and is quite nervous; he desires to take out a substantial sum of dollars.

The police are promptly named in. Minutes later the tall Englishman is under arrest - only for the detectives to find out that they've caught not Lord Lucan, but the hapless British MP John Stonehouse, who'd faked his own death to set up household in Australia with his secretary. How pretty irksome for Stonehouse: arrested and dragged back to jail in Britain merely mainly because he bore a passing resemblance to Lord Lucan.

William Coles is the talented English editor of Lord Lucan My Story. He is also the author of a moving novel, Prelude, which was published in the UK under the title The Properly Tempered Clavier.