Don’t miss the possibility to move YOUR verdict on Lord Lucan

It shot straight to number one in the true crime charts – and today the Mail’s ground-breaking podcast, The Trial of Lord Lucan, enters its most thrilling phase.

From 6am on Friday morning, we are inviting you, the listener, to join the jury and seal his fate.

It has been an extraordinarily successful week for the Lucan podcast. Barely a week ago, no one had heard a single episode – yet within days it incredibly seized second place in the charts for all UK podcasts.

In a world-first, the team behind the Mail’s acclaimed series has brought to life the case against the infamous earl. 

Every day this week, new episodes have chronicled how Lord Lucan’s actual Old Bailey trial might have unfolded had he been caught.

The Trial of Lord Lucan: Follow The Mail’s brand new podcast wherever you get your podcasts 

It has been almost 50 years since British aristocrat Lord Lucan, 39, vanished without a trace

The Earl disappeared after his children’s nanny Sandra Rivett was murdered in the family home

Barrister Max Hardy (right) is prosecuting Lord Lucan in the trial, while Edward Henry KC is acting for the defence

Presented by the Mail’s Associate Editor Stephen Wright and broadcast journalist Caroline Cheetham, it is based on a never-before-seen, 60-page Scotland Yard document obtained exclusively by Wright, setting out the evidence amassed by detectives in the 1970s.

And to lend it the gravitas it deserves, two of Britain’s most eminent barristers have presented the prosecution and defence cases in enthralling detail. But now it is time for listeners to decide Lord Lucan’s fate. 

Until midday on Sunday, votes can be cast to determine his guilt or innocence before the verdict is revealed in a special episode at 6am on Monday.

The drama has gripped audiences just as the world was captivated by the unsolved murder 50 years ago.

The mystery scandalised Britain when Lord Lucan went on the run after the family nanny, Sandra Rivett, 29, was bludgeoned to death with a lead pipe in the basement kitchen at the Belgravia mansion, and the earl’s estranged wife, Veronica – believed to be the intended victim – sustained serious head injuries before fleeing.

The blood-soaked basement with Sandra Rivett’s body inside a mail sack beside a cast-off shoe

Lord Lucan’s wife Veronica Mary Duncan suffered a near-fatal assault on the same night

Lady Lucan with Frances and George, two of the three children she had with her husband

Jamie East, the Mail’s head of podcasts, said: ‘The most exciting part is yet to come. The listeners must weigh up what they have heard and cast their precious vote. This is the first of its kind, a truly interactive event.’

The Trial of Lord Lucan presents, for the first time, the prosecution case prepared by police for whenever he was brought to justice. It also reveals startling new details about the events leading up to the murder and the aftermath.

As prosecuting barrister Max Hardy lays out, Lucan alone was responsible for the grisly attacks on November 7, 1974. He had planned the murder down to the last detail, he says, even discussing dumping his wife’s body in the Solent and bragging he would never be caught.

Mr Hardy also claims the last person to see Lucan in the hours after the attack had failed to assist police because of her ‘infatuation’ with the aristocrat.

For the defence, barrister Edward Henry KC urges jurors to judge the case on ‘the evidence alone’, saying Lord Lucan ‘has been vilified… his whole life defamed in the Press’.

To hear the latest episode and to cast your vote, go to dailymail.co.uk/lucan