It is the high society murder trial that never happened – until now.
Picture this: Lord Lucan in the dock of the Old Bailey, as the Mail’s podcast team behind our acclaimed series The Trial bring you every dramatic twist and turn from the oak-panelled press bench.
And then consider how you – the reader – could directly decide the extraordinary fate of Lord Lucan, as a member of the jury of his peers tasked with finding him innocent or guilty.
Imagine no more, because in a world-first, the Mail is bringing the Lord Lucan trial explosively to life – using the actual, but previously unseen 60-page Scotland Yard document – obtained exclusively – which details the police case against the Earl.
It is 50 years this November since the murder that scandalised Britain – and shocked the world. Lord Lucan went on the run after nanny Sandra Rivett was bludgeoned to death with a lead pipe and his estranged wife Veronica suffered serious head wounds in their Belgravia house.
Now for the first time, the Mail can reveal the exclusive details of the prosecution case against the Earl, prepared by police in anticipation of him being apprehended and brought to justice. And to give the case the gravitas it deserves, we have persuaded two of Britain’s foremost criminal barristers to write and perform their own stunning courtroom oratory based on the police document.
The Trial of Lord Lucan: Follow The Mail’s brand new podcast wherever you get your podcasts
Barristers Edward Henry KC (left) and Max Hardy (right) will help Mail readers to find Lord Lucan either innocent or guilty
It has been almost 50 years since British aristocrat Lord Lucan (pictured), 39, vanished without a trace
He disappeared after Nanny Sandra Rivett (pictured) was bludgeoned to death in the family home
Lord Lucan’s wife Veronica Mary Duncan (pictured here with him) suffered a near-fatal assault on the same night
Between them, these barristers now present for us the sensational cases for the prosecution and defence of the 7th Earl of Lucan.
The Mail’s trailblazing podcast series The Trial has already won plaudits for bringing listeners in-depth audio coverage of a live trial. Our coverage of the Lucy Letby trial and other seminal court cases have been downloaded more than 26 million times and won several industry awards.
The Trial Of Lord Lucan is a ground-breaking production which, in addition to featuring two of Britain’s most celebrated lawyers, provides never-before heard testimonies from original witnesses who spoke exclusively to The Mail’s Associate Editor Stephen Wright and broadcaster Caroline Cheetham.
Despite half a century of intrigue, tens of thousands of articles, and numerous books and documentaries about the Lord Lucan mystery, Wright is the only journalist in the world to obtain the actual Scotland Yard dossier on which prosecutors would have based their Old Bailey case, had Lucan been caught.
At our invitation, barrister Max Hardy, a distinguished legal figure who has led some of the Crown Prosecution Service’s most high-profile criminal trials, read through the police dossier from 1975 and, for the Mail’s podcast, wrote an utterly gripping ‘opening speech’ to potential jurors. His unmissable courtroom oratory features in the third episode of the series.
Taking the role of defending Lord Lucan is barrister Edward Henry KC. He is an eminent star of the Bar, already known to millions for his razor-sharp interrogation last month of former Post Office boss Paula Vennells at the Horizon inquiry into the postmasters scandal (he is representing a group of them). In mesmerising style, he will argue for Lucan’s innocence,
Jamie East, the Mail’s head of podcasts, said: ‘The Trial brand has been a massive success story for the Mail. We are always looking for ways of doing new, innovative things in the audio space. When Stephen Wright came in with the actual document outlining the police case against Lucan, we knew it would make a gripping new courtroom series.
‘The millions of people who listen to The Trial will love it. With the help of two incredible barristers, we have recorded episodes in our state-of-the-art studios and on location around Britain.
‘It is a compelling true crime story, but it is not over-dramatised. We have been at pains to make it as authentic as possible, and as close as we could get to what would have been the genuine trial of Lord Lucan.
Sandra Rivett (pictured) was brutally murdered in Lord Lucan’s home in London on November 7, 1974
The blood-soaked basement with Sandra’s body inside a mail sack beside a cast-off shoe
The Plumbers Arms, where Lady Lucan ran to after finding Sandra dead in her house
Lady Lucan with Frances and George, two of the three children she had with her husband
Susan Maxwell-Scott with her husband William. She was the last person to see Lord Lucan alive
The Daily Mail’s front page in November 1974 about Lord Lucan’s disappearance and the murder of nanny Sandra Rivett
‘We have gone out and spoken to detectives who were involved in the actual Lucan investigation, so there are a lot of really interesting voices.
‘And the listeners are the jurors. At the end of the series, they alone will weigh up the evidence they have heard – and pronounce Lord Lucan guilty or not guilty.’
The Lucan story is one of the most enduring criminal cases in British legal history. There has been no confirmed sighting of Lucan since a few hours after the Rivett murder on November 7, 1974. On the fateful night, it is alleged that he planned to kill his wife Veronica – she had gained custody of their three young children after a bitter High-Court battle – by lying in wait for her in the basement of the family home at 46 Lower Belgrave St.
He struck out with lead piping before stuffing the body into a U.S. Mail bag. But the woman he killed was the couple’s 29-year-old nanny, Sandra Rivett, who was due to have been on a day off. She had swapped days at the last minute. Lady Lucan was also attacked but managed to escape, running screaming for help to a nearby pub, covered in blood.
Lord Lucan, then 39, drove to a friend’s house in a sleepy Sussex village where he claimed that Veronica had been attacked by a stranger and he needed to lie low because she had previously accused him of hiring a hitman and would blame him.
Three days later, his borrowed car was found abandoned – with a section of lead piping in the boot – at the cross-Channel port of Newhaven. He has not been seen since.
Go to dailymail.co.uk/lucan to listen to the podcast series and find out how YOU can be on the jury.
