Lord Lucan: The craziest theories and sightings since he vanished 40 years in the past

Forty years ago Lord Lucan vanished from his family home in London following the death of his children’s nanny Sandra Rivett.

The Eton-educated 7th Earl of Lucan is said to have mistaken Sandra, the nanny to his three children, for his wife Veronica and bludgeoned her to death on November 7, 1974 in one of Britain’s most notorious crime cases.

Three days later his Ford Corsair was found abandoned and soaked in blood in Newhaven, East Sussex. Bizarrely, three cards from the detective board game Cluedo were left in the car, which seemed to be a coded reference to the murder.

Read more: Lord Lucan’s brother knew fugitive was living abroad as Buddhist in shock claims

An inquest jury declared Lord Lucan to be Miss Rivett’s killer a year later and he was declared legally dead in 1999 – although his death certificate was not issued until 2016.

Mystery has always surrounded his disappearance with many claiming to have seen Lord Lucan in various places across the world.

Following this week’s publication of a bombshell Scotland Yard report detailing the case against the missing peer, the Daily Star unpicks some of the craziest theories surrounding his death.

Lucan was living in India as a hippy called ‘Jungle Barry’

In 2003 former Scotland Yard detective Duncan MacLaughlin claimed the missing Earl had died in Goa, India, in 1996.

He said a 1991 photograph of a dishevelled man with a long beard looked just like Lucan and claimed he had lived under the name Barry Halpin, aka Jungle Barry.

The former detective said Mr Halpin arrived in Goa a year after Lord Lucan went missing and was a well-spoken gambler who played backgammon, which the Earl also famously played.

BBC Radio 2 presenter, Mike Harding quickly poured cold water on the claim, saying Halpin was actually a well-known banjo player from the 1960s folk music scene known as Mountain Barry.

in a letter to the Guardian newspaper, Mr Harding wrote: “I laughed, I cried, I fell about the road chuckling: to think that anybody could mistake my old pal Barry Halpin for Lord Lucan?

“Otherwise known as Mountain Barry (not Jungle Barry) he was a musician, storyteller and Good-Time Charlie of the 1960s folk revival in Liverpool, Manchester and beyond, who went to live in India because it was cheap, sunny and more spiritual than St Helens.”

Lucan shot himself and asked his friend to feed his remains to his pet tiger Zorra

In 2016, one of Lucan’s gambling friends Philippe Marcq claimed another of their group told him that after the murder Lucan visited his friend John Aspinall, the founder of the Clermont Club, where they played. Aspinall also owned a private zoo in Kent.

Mr Marcq said: “He arrived in the early hours of the morning and they had a kind of council of war. They told him: ‘Look, it is absolutely terrible what happened. You are a murderer. You tried to kill your wife out of desperation for your children and so they would be free from her influence.

“But what you have done makes absolutely sure she will be in control of your children for years to come — you are a murderer and you are going to be in a cell for the next 30 years.” ’

The group are said to have agreed Lucan needed to disappear completely, and it is claimed Lucan was given a pistol before he went into a room on his own and shot himself dead.

Mr Marcq says he was told Lucan’s body was then fed to one of John Aspinall’s tigers, named Zorra.

The claim has never been substantiated or disproven, with no one believed to have been at the zoo that night still alive today.

Police had already interviewed Aspinall’s mother, Lady Osborne, after the murder and she reportedly told them: “The last I heard of him, he was being fed to the tigers at my son’s zoo.”

When they asked Aspinall he is said to have replied: “My tigers are only fed the choicest cuts — do you really think they’re going to eat stringy old Lucky?”

Lucan was living out of a Land Rover in New Zealand with a possum called Redfern and a goat named Camilla

In 2007, rumours surrounding Lord Lucan’s whereabouts took a fresh twist as a family in New Zealand claimed their neighbour was the missing playboy earl.

Roger Woodgate and his possum Redfern became famous overnight after armchair detective Margaret Harris said he bore a startling resemblance to the aristocrat. The eccentric British expatriate was at the time living in a Land Rover near his home with his pet, alongside a goat named Camilla and a cat called Smoky.

When the world’s media descended on his home he told them: “I’m sorry chaps, I’m not Lord Lucan. I heard something on the radio this morning and I just laughed.”

Woodgate is 10 years younger than Lord Lucan and later took his neighbour to court for harassing him.

Mrs Harris said Woodgate told a real estate agent he owned two properties in London and had told another person he was considering returning to Ireland. Through internet research, Mrs Harris found a link to the names Woodgate and Bingham – Lord Lucan’s family name.

She said: “We got to know him a bit in the beginning and he has an air of mystery.

“I’ve got a photo of him and the resemblance to Lord Lucan is incredible. Take off the tweed hat and moustache, add a few years, and you’ve got him.

“The other question is the money. He says he’s a beneficiary but he paid cash for his property and bought an antique Ducati a while ago. Where does a beneficiary get money like that from?”

Lucan evaded justice by having significant plastic surgery to change his appearance

A BBC investigation in 2009 opened up the possibility Lord Lucan might have had plastic surgery after the murder.

BBC’s Inside Out South East programme found medical files showing Lucan had one of Britain’s most eminent plastic surgeons operate on his nose after a speedboat accident.

Harley Street specialist Dr John Watson took the secret to his grave – until a reporter for BBC’s Inside Out South East visited his daughter Carolyn. Carolyn discovered Lord Lucan’s previously unseen medical records among private papers left by her late father.

She believes her father may have carried out more face-altering surgery after Lucan’s disappearance because he believed Lucan was innocent.

Carolyn, from Queensland, Australia, said: “I rather think that after the murder my father went to the hospital and took the medical records so that Lord Lucan couldn’t be identified from them.

“I asked him many times when he was alive if he had carried out more work on Lord Lucan’s face and he never gave me a straight answer but I know he was sympathetic to him and I have no doubt that if my father felt he should have helped him he would have done.”

In 2012, former Det Chief Supt Drummond Marvin said the theory “wouldn’t surprise him”, claiming: “I would say Lord Lucan probably was in Africa. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’s had plastic surgery and that’s been paid for by friends.”

Lucan was living in an ex-Nazi colony in Paraguay

A number of people have reported seeing Lord Lucan in a range of bizarre locations over the years – including an ex-Nazi colony in Paraguay, a sheep station in the Australian outback, backpacking on Mount Etna and working as a waiter in San Francisco.

Paraguay was infamous as a favourite hiding destination of Nazi fugitives after World War II.

While there is little information about the rumour he was living in South America with neo-Nazi’s, back in 2005 the Observer revealed Lucan had an interest in Hitler’s politics.

Lucan is said to have visited a second-hand department of Hatchards in February 1972 and left with a 1930s translation of Hitler’s political testament, Mein Kampf.

His wife confirmed her husband was an extremist in his politics, telling the paper: “He did have very right-wing views, some might describe them as fascist. I didn’t know he was indulging in extremist reading matter in 1972, although I knew he listened to recordings of Hitler’s speeches at Nuremberg Rallies.”