Mail’s Trial of Lord Lucan podcast storms to prime of True Crime charts
The Mail’s groundbreaking new podcast, The Trial of Lord Lucan, has stormed to the top of the charts within hours of being launched.
Less than a day after the first episode of a new series about Britain’s most notorious murder went live, it was top of Apple’s True Crime category and No 2 overall in the UK.
It comes after the Mail scooped the world by unearthing a bombshell 60-page report from 1975 outlining Scotland Yard’s evidence against Lord Lucan, who police say murdered his children’s nanny Sandra Rivett and then tried to kill his estranged wife Veronica in 1974.
With revelatory detail gleaned from the 15,000-word document, The Trial of Lord Lucan examines the case against him in forensic detail – with an unmissable twist on a courtroom drama.
The Trial of Lord Lucan: Follow The Mail’s brand new podcast wherever you get your podcasts
In episodes released daily from Monday June 3 to Friday June 7, two eminent barristers will argue whether the missing peer was innocent or guilty using not only the bombshell document, but also previously unheard evidence and witness testimony, before listeners are invited to give their verdicts on MailOnline.
A preview episode of the pioneering series, examining the background to the case and the importance of the police document, was launched late yesterday afternoon and became an overnight sensation.
Mail head of podcasts Jamie East said: ‘The launch and subsequent success of this podcast has been fantastic. We hit No 1 on the podcast charts in less than 18 hours, which for a podcast containing no influencers and no celebrity confessionals, just a 50-year-old unsolved murder and some brilliant journalism, goes to show that great storytelling and reporting is still a fundamental part of what readers and listeners want – and nobody does that better than the Mail.’
The Lord Lucan mystery is one of the world’s most infamous cases. It will be 50 years this November since the then 39-year-old British aristocrat vanished without trace within hours of the murder of Mrs Rivett, 29, and the near-fatal assault on his wife Veronica, who told police her Eton-educated husband was responsible for both attacks.
Police have long believed that Lucan killed mother-of-two Mrs Rivett in the basement kitchen of his family’s five-storey Belgravia home in central London, after mistaking her for his estranged wife. His three young children were upstairs at the time.
Nanny Sandra Rivett was bludgeoned to death. Our podcast examines the mystery to try to work out what really happened
The 7th Earl of Lucan with soon-to-be wife Veronica in 1963
The new document obtained by the Mail, compiled by the lead investigating officer Detective Chief Superintendent Roy Ranson, spells out in gripping and revelatory detail the painstaking case police put together and why they thought only Lucan was responsible for the murder and the attack on Lady Lucan on November 7, 1974.
The report was penned by a senior detective and sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions for a trial which — because Lord Lucan vanished after the murder — never took place.
In the first episode of The Trial of Lord Lucan, co-presenters Caroline Cheetham and Stephen Wright visit the original crime scene in Belgravia and discuss the importance of the Scotland Yard document obtained by the Mail.
They also look at the background to the high-society murder which scandalised the UK in the 1970s and which still holds fascination worldwide today.
Barrister Max Hardy, who is acting as ‘prosecutor’, said of the report: ‘One felt history in one’s hand when reading through it.’
Edward Henry KC, who is ‘defending’ Lucan, said he was ‘honoured’ to take part in the podcast series and commenting on the Scotland Yard report added: ‘It is a magnificent piece of police analysis and prose.’
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.
