Fifty years after a murder that captivated Britain, the Crown’s case against Lord Lucan was exclusively revealed in the Mail this week with extracts from a 60-page report that outlined in gripping detail the evidence Scotland Yard had compiled against him.
The document gave a definitive account of the murder of the Lucan family’s nanny, Sandra Rivett, and the attempted murder of Lucan’s estranged wife Veronica. It was sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions for a trial which – because Lucan remained a fugitive – never took place.
The 1975 report, written by Detective Chief Superintendent Roy Ranson, the senior officer in the case, also casts new light on the other women in Lucan’s life. Two were deemed particularly significant…
Goodbye, Susie – thank you. That brief sentence, uttered on a doorstep in East Sussex in the early hours of Friday, November 8, 1974, are the last words known to have been spoken by Lord Lucan.
‘Susie’ – Susan Maxwell-Scott, the wife of Lucan’s close friend Ian – would later claim he’d kissed her ‘gently on the cheek’ before heading back to London.
Two days later, his car – a blue Ford Corsair – would be found abandoned near the port of Newhaven, 30 minutes’ drive away.
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Of the peer, wanted for the murder of the Lucan family nanny, Sandra Rivett, and the attempted murder of Lady Veronica Lucan, his estranged wife and the mother of his three children, on the night on November 7, there was, and never has been, any trace.
Fifty years on, the tantalising mystery of what happened next endures. Did Lucan kill himself by jumping off a ferry leaving Newhaven harbour? Or was he whisked away to safety abroad by the powerful and influential friends who made up the so-called Lucan Set?
Susan Maxwell-Scott, the last person to see him alive, was suspected of knowing far more than she revealed to the police.
In his report that would have informed the Crown’s case against Lucan, DCS Roy Ranson, who led the murder investigation, addressed inconsistencies in her witness statement and her ‘strange’ behaviour in the months that followed.
He concludes: ‘During the course of this investigation, I have been led to believe Mrs Maxwell-Scott had an infatuation for Lord Lucan and this may well be the reason for her reluctance in telling the whole truth.’
Mrs Maxwell-Scott remained ardent in her support of Lucan until her death, aged 67 in 2004.
‘Loyalty among friends is, in my opinion, the highest morality in life,’ she once opined in a letter to a newspaper about the case.
‘Susie’ – Susan Maxwell-Scott, the wife of Lord Lucan’s close friend Ian Maxwell-Scott, was the last person to see Lucan alive and was suspected of knowing far more than she revealed to the police
Lord and Lady Lucan with their son George who was the heir to the title
The Maxwell-Scott’s home – Grants Hill House in Uckfield, East Sussex
And indeed, that is one of the most intriguing and contradictory facts about Mrs Maxwell-Scott – steadfast loyalty combined with an inability not to talk about what happened.
Unlike other members of the Lucan Set, in the years that followed the blood-spattered events at 46 Lower Belgrave Street, London SW1, she wrote to or gave interviews to newspapers, magazines and television.
In late 1975, The Spectator magazine published her letter protesting at how a coroner had conducted the inquest, in June that year, into Ms Rivett’s death, which saw Lucan branded a murderer.
‘No evidence in Lord Lucan’s favour was allowed,’ she fumed, ‘insofar as anything harmful or hurtful to Lady Lucan was ruled out. It is hardly surprising under these circumstances that the jury accepted her statement of the events.’
So, who was Susan Maxwell-Scott and how significant was her role in Lucan’s disappearance?
In the mid-1950s, Susan ‘Susie’ Clark was a vivacious young debutante and regular fixture in gossip columns. She attended a finishing school in Paris and in 1954, aged 17, had her coming-out dance. She was also bright: she trained at barristers’ chambers and in 1957 passed her Bar exams – by which time she was in love.
But her father Sir Andrew Clark QC, a distinguished barrister, did not approve of his daughter’s boyfriend despite his aristocratic credentials and a law degree from Oxford. Ian Maxwell-Scott, a professional gambler and croupier nine years Susie’s senior, was a descendant of Sir Walter Scott, a cousin of the Duke of Norfolk and said to have ‘the blood of two marquises, four earls, a viscount, and sundry baronets in his veins’. His father had been an aide-de-camp to King George V.
Sir Andrew refused to consent to their marriage while Susie was under the age of 21.
The couple married on Valentine’s Day 1958, but the bride’s father was absent. Susie said of the snub: ‘I had a final chat with Daddy but he wouldn’t change his mind.’ Indeed, Sir Andrew told the Daily Mail at the time: ‘I prefer the man who does an honest day’s work to any amount of nobility or family names.’
The Daily Mail’s front page in November 1974 about Lord Lucan’s disappearance and the murder of nanny Sandra Rivett
Sandra Rivett, the Lucan’s family nanny. Her body was found in a canvas US mailbag in the basement of the five-storey house at 146 Lower Belgrave Street
The Clermont in London’s Berkeley Square, where the friendship between Lucan and Ian Maxwell-Scott was built over a shared passion for gambling and horse racing
The friendship that developed between Lord Lucan and Ian Maxwell-Scott was built on a shared passion for gambling in West End clubs – especially The Clermont in Mayfair – and horse racing. In 1966, Maxwell-Scott, who was working at The Clermont on Berkley Square at the time, made headlines when he won £42,000 (£980,000 today) after he bet on three horses at Doncaster and Fontwell. He was described in newspaper reports as a bookmaker, croupier and professional punter.
In the years that followed, the Maxwell-Scotts, who had six children, became firm friends with the Lucans, who would visit their home – Grants Hill House in Uckfield, Sussex – with their children. On one occasion when the Lucans were weekend guests, Susan scrawled on a wall in shoe polish: ‘Don’t let Lord George fall down the f****** stairs.’ George was the Lucans’ son and heir to the title.
In the hours after the murder, it was to the Maxwell-Scotts that Lucan turned. He went to Uckfield in search of Ian but found only Susan at home. After the Rivett inquest in June 1975, she gave an interview to the News of the World about that encounter. In the context of DCS Ranson’s previously unpublished views about her, it makes for fascinating reading.
Then aged 38, she is described by the newspaper as having been a close friend of Lucan’s for 18 years. She said she knew him in happier times with Lady Lucan when their relationship was strong but watched as love turned sour and ended in a bitter custody battle.
‘I can’t exactly pinpoint the break-up in the marriage of the Lucans, John and Veronica,’ she said. ‘They often used to bring their family down to our house in Sussex for quiet weekend parties. We’d play tennis, swim in our pool, or perhaps play croquet. There were certainly no scenes. But John did talk to me about difficulties. He said Veronica had the feeling that all his friends were against her and trying to come between them. And she didn’t want to go away and stay with friends.
‘Possibly, of course, though I thought she and I got on very well, she resented the fact that my husband, Ian, and John mostly went out playing golf throughout the day. That left Veronica and me at home.
‘Once, she did tell me she felt rather insecure as far as her relationship with John was concerned. She’s a very intense little person. I remember she told me how she hated the Clermont Club, yet she always felt compelled to go there when John was playing. And this was during the days when they were a happily married couple.
Who was Lord Lucan?
Richard John Bingham, the 7th Earl of Lucan, was not your archetypal murder suspect.
An Old Etonian from a well-known aristocratic family, he developed a taste for the high life after finishing National Service in 1955. He raced power boats, drove an Aston Martin and flamboyantly left his job in a merchant bank to become a professional gambler.
But as his losses mounted in the gambling clubs of Mayfair and Belgravia, the playboy peer a father-of-three found himself mired in debt and his marriage doomed.
It was against this background of deepening financial and domestic strife that the handsome 39-year-old is alleged to murdered his children’s nanny Sandra Rivett, mistaking her for his estranged wife, who he also allegedly attacked on November 7, 1974 before going on the run.
The Rivett murder – at the Lucan family’s home in central London came to light after Lady Lucan ran to the local pub, the Plumbers Arms, collapsed on the floor and screamed: ‘He’s murdered the nanny and he’s after the children.’ Mrs Rivett’s body was found in a canvas US mailbag in the basement of the five-storey house at 146 Lower Belgrave Street.
But Lucan was nowhere to be seen. Although he rang his mother later that evening, and turned up at the address of a family friend in Sussex ¿ where he had a whiskey and water and spent less than two hours – there have been no confirmed sightings of him since.
The cause of Mrs Rivett’s death was ‘blunt head injuries’. Police concluded that the lead piping found at the murder scene probably caused her injuries.
Lady Lucan had five lacerations of the skull and forehead. They were deep and jagged and if she had received these wounds to the rear of her head, they may have been fatal. She also had lacerations on the inside of her mouth.
By any standards, it was a brutal murder and could easily have been a double killing.
An inquest into the death of Mrs Rivett was held in 1975. In his absence, the jury returned the verdict: ‘Murder by Lord Lucan.’
In the five decades since, there have been dozens of supposed sightings of him in various locations in the UK and around the world – all documented in statement form and followed up by the Met. Yet Lucan has never been found and still remains wanted for murder.
Officially the case remains ‘open’, but plans for a full-scale new investigation were blocked in 2004 by senior Yard commanders, who questioned what it would achieve and at what cost. If still alive, he would be 89.
‘I could never understand it because Veronica would sit at the club for hours just staring and not talking to anyone.
‘She’d sit at John’s shoulder, while he was gambling, not even watching the play. She’d stay there just to be in the same room rather than go home to bed.
‘I remember one weekend when they stayed with us, and John had a horse running at Newmarket. He’d chartered one of those little aeroplanes and John asked Ian if he’d like to go to Newmarket.
‘Ian said nothing would induce him to fly in such a small aircraft because he hates flying. I said I’d love to as I think those little planes are such fun. But Veronica who was absolutely terrified of planes and would become sick with fear at the thought, was told by John to stay with Ian.
‘But she refused and told me, ‘No, if John is going to die, I’m going to die with him. We’re going to die together. I’m going’.’
She also recalled, in rather more colourful detail than her official witness statement, the night of the murder.
‘My husband was in London, so I went to bed early. I was sort of asleep when I heard the doorbell ring. I went to the bathroom, which overlooks the front door, looked out and saw John. He shouted up something like ‘Susie, I’m sorry to disturb you so late.’
‘I said, ‘I’ll come down and let you in’.
‘I took him into the drawing room. He looked – straggled is too strong a word, but normally he was rather spruce-looking – and he looked a little dishevelled. His hair was rumpled. I knew something was wrong and offered him a drink.
He accepted a whisky and water and sat down in an antique, gold velvet, cushioned wicker chair. I gave him what I think is called a good measure, something known as two fingers, and sat down too.
‘I said, ‘What’s wrong, John?’ He said, ‘I must tell you I’ve been through the most nightmarish, most awful experience. It’s so incredible I don’t know whether you or anyone will ever believe it. But I’ll tell you about it’.’
According to Mrs Maxwell-Scott, Lucan repeated his claim that he stumbled on a mystery man attacking his estranged wife while walking past the family home.
‘He had a key to the front door and hurried downstairs to the basement,’ she said. ‘When he entered the room, he slipped in a pool of blood and the man ran off. I asked him about the man, and he said he hadn’t got a clear sight of him, but he was large. He said he didn’t know him. He said the sight in there was absolutely awful. He was very distressed at this point and briefly covered his face with his hand.
‘In describing the basement, he said it was ghastly. Everything was covered in blood. There was a bundle in the corner which Lady Lucan pointed out to him.
‘And Lady Lucan herself was covered in blood and was hysterical. She pointed at the sack or bundle and then, in her hysteria, she apparently accused him of having hired this man to kill her, Veronica.
‘I pointed out to John that nobody could possibly imagine that if he’d hired the man he would go in when the man was actually there. It didn’t seem to make sense.
‘John said he calmed his wife down. He supported her and talked to her for some time and took her upstairs. However, while he was in the bathroom getting towels to wash her wounds, Lady Lucan ran out of the house shouting ‘murder, murder’.
‘Now this is where John panicked. He didn’t say this, but I feel he did.
‘Here he was, the murderer had gone, there was the blood and she had run out into the street. He said he thought ‘I’m not going to stay here with the body in the basement’. So, he just left.
‘He told me he telephoned his mother from a call box to ask her to take charge of the children and telephone the police. The next thing he did was to call Mr Shand-Kydd, Lady Lucan’s brother-in-law. He wanted to ask for his advice and help. But Mr Shand-Kydd was out.
‘John told me he’d go to the police in the morning. I tried to persuade him to stay the night but eventually, about 1.15am, he insisted he must get back to straighten things out. Those were his exact words. Which I took to mean to go to London and the police.
‘Once he’d spoken to his mother (again) and was assured his children were safe, he relaxed. Then he asked me for some paper so he could write to Mr Shand-Kydd. He wrote two letters and left them here and we posted them the next morning.
‘I tried to persuade him to stay as he’d had an upsetting time. To stay for the night and we’d go together to the police in the morning. He almost wavered for a little bit. But then he said, ‘No, I must get back and sort things out. I must find out what that bitch has done to me.’
‘Later we just sat and chatted – not about this horrible occasion but about the old times and about his children and mine. Just before he left, as I stood on the doorstep, he kissed me gently on the cheek and said, ‘Goodbye, Susie – thank you’.’
Exactly what motivated Mrs Maxwell-Scott to give an interview to the News of the World is unclear, but a large cheque may have been involved. Certainly, money was becoming an issue for the couple. In 1976, her husband’s friends rallied around him to save him from a possible jail sentence when they paid his overdue rates bill of £301 (£2,715 today).
However, Susan Maxwell-Scott’s loyalty to Lucan was also a factor in her repeated engagement with the media. She reportedly wrote a letter to the Daily Star following renewed criticism of Lucan’s friends by DCS Ranson in assisting the investigation. ‘I fully and truthfully answered all questions. I also gave the permission to search the house and the grounds. Later still, I allowed police forensic science experts to examine my chairs for bloodstains – they did not find any!
‘I cannot imagine in what way I could have helped Ranson more! Friends have loyalty to each other – else they are mere acquaintances not friends. Loyalty among friends is, in my opinion, the highest morality in life. Without it friendship could not exist – only acquaintanceship.’
In a 1994 BBC TV interview to mark the 20th anniversary of the murder, she remained staunch in her defence of Lucan and critical of his wife’s social awkwardness.
The Maxwell-Scott marriage, though it would endure, was an unhappy one. Susan was an intelligent woman stuck in a life that frustrated her. She would find a release in alcohol – reportedly enjoying a glass of sherry at breakfast – or occasional flashes of temper or bizarre behaviour.
In 2004, 11 years after her husband, Susan Maxwell-Scott passed away.
Like so many other members of the Lucan Set, she took her secrets to the grave.
His last love, a young blonde who became Jeffrey Archer’s mistress
She is described as the ‘last love’ of Lord Lucan – a 22-year-old blonde former debutante who, on the night nanny Sandra Rivett was murdered, was expecting to have dinner with him.
Andrina ‘Andy’ Colquhoun told police that the peer had been ‘vague’ about the arrangements.
In the months leading up to the murder of Ms Rivett, Andrina was Lucan’s regular dining partner and has remained loyal to him in the 50 years since.
Nearly 30 years after the Rivett murder, Andrina Colquhoun was back in the headlines when it emerged that she had been Jeffrey Archer’s mistress.
She met Archer in 1979 while working as Habitat founder Terence Conran’s personal assistant.
Andrina ‘Andy’ Colquhoun is described as the ‘last love’ of Lord Lucan. The 22-year-old blonde former debutante was expecting to have dinner with him on the night Sandra Rivett was murdered
For the next five years she was Archer’s regular consort at literary and political engagements when his wife Mary was absent.
She accompanied him abroad on book tours and writing trips and spent much of her time at his London penthouse overlooking the Thames.
Deeply in love with the Tories’ then rising star, Andrina furnished the apartment, arranged the flowers and removed pictures of Mary from the walls. In 1982, Archer appointed her as his PA in response to rumblings in the gossip columns. But in 1984, when promotion to deputy chairman of the Tory party beckoned, Archer dumped her, saying he needed to ‘tidy up his life’.
In 2001, Andrina gave evidence against Archer when he was on trial for perjury and perverting the course of justice over allegations that he (and TV producer Ted Francis) created a false alibi to assist Archer’s successful libel action against the Daily Star.
Archer had won £500,000 damages in July 1987, over the claim that he had sex with Monica Coghlan, a prostitute.
Andrina Colquhoun said she had been in Greece with her partner when Archer had claimed he was with her. He was jailed for four years. In 1990, Andrina married businessman Robert Waddington with whom she had a son.
Now 71, she declined to comment on the Lucan case when approached by the Mail.
Detectives always believed that Lucan and Andrina were more than just friends. But speaking to the Daily Mail just days after the murder, she denied he was her lover.
‘We are not lovers and have never been,’ she insisted. ‘I just went out to dinner or lunch with him, and he is a great friend. He is a married man with three children, and I did not want to become involved in such a situation.’
Charlotte Colquhoun – known by a middle name Andrina – was born in 1952. She was a stepdaughter of timber millionaire Peter Montagu Meyer, and in her debutante year, is said to have attended 300 parties.
She first met Lucan at a lunch party at the Clermont Club several months before the murder.
‘When we went out, perhaps once or twice a week, we would invariably have dinner at the Clermont and then go downstairs to Annabel’s nightclub for a drink and a dance,’ she said. ‘We talked about lots of things, mainly current events, what people we knew were doing, but we never discussed his wife – or gambling.’
She added: ‘I liked Lord Lucan a lot. As far as I know, he did not take out any other girls. Things might have been different if he was not a married man.’
Nearly 30 years after the Rivett murder, Andrina Colquhoun was back in the headlines when it emerged that she had been Jeffrey Archer’s mistress.
She met Archer in 1979 while working as Habitat founder Terence Conran’s personal assistant.
For the next five years she was Archer’s regular consort at literary and political engagements when his wife Mary was absent.
She accompanied him abroad on book tours and writing trips and spent much of her time at his London penthouse overlooking the Thames.
Deeply in love with the Tories’ then rising star, Andrina furnished the apartment, arranged the flowers and removed pictures of Mary from the walls. In 1982, Archer appointed her as his PA in response to rumblings in the gossip columns. But in 1984, when promotion to deputy chairman of the Tory party beckoned, Archer dumped her, saying he needed to ‘tidy up his life’.
In 2001, Andrina gave evidence against Archer when he was on trial for perjury and perverting the course of justice over allegations that he (and TV producer Ted Francis) created a false alibi to assist Archer’s successful libel action against the Daily Star.
Archer had won £500,000 damages in July 1987, over the claim that he had sex with Monica Coghlan, a prostitute.
Andrina Colquhoun said she had been in Greece with her partner when Archer had claimed he was with her. He was jailed for four years. In 1990, Andrina married businessman Robert Waddington with whom she had a son.
Now 71, she declined to comment on the Lucan case when approached by the Mail.
