The late Daily Mirror journalist, Garth Gibbs, who died in 2011, used to claim his “most spectacular success” in journalism was not finding Lord Lucan.
“I have successfully not found him in more exotic spots than anybody else,” he recounted. “I spent three glorious weeks not finding him in Cape Town, magical days and nights not finding him in the Black Mountains of Wales, and wonderful and successful short breaks not finding him in Macau either, or in Hong Kong or even in Green Turtle Cay in the Bahamas where you can find anyone.”
Now, once again, the hunt is on for the man who murdered his family’s nanny, Sandra Rivett, in Belgravia, London, on 7 November 1974 and then disappeared. It is now being claimed he could be an 87-year-old man living in a Buddhist community in Australia.
The evidence comes from the facial recognition expert Prof Hassan Ugail, of Bradford University. “It’s him,” he is quoted as saying in the Daily Mirror. “That isn’t opinion, that’s a fact.”
Ugail had been asked by Neil Berriman, the son of Rivett, to analyse photos of the man in Australia alongside photos of Lucan, or John Bingham, through an artificial intelligence algorithm. The 87-year-old man approached by the paper has denied, through his carers, being Lucan.
Berriman publishes details of the search on his website, which currently features Ugail’s report.
“My mission is to keep my mother’s memory very much alive and to seek justice,” he states on the site. “She is not ‘just the nanny’, she is a victim of violent crime who became secondary because her killer was a lord, a lord who was protected and who vanished abroad with the aid of his rich and powerful friends rather than face justice.”
Contacted by the Guardian, Ugail said: “I can’t 100% confirm it’s Lord Lucan. It looks remarkably like him – it’s worth investigating further.”
He said he had not been aware when he carried out the research that it involved the Lucan case. A Silicon Valley firm has produced similar results to those of Ugail.
In response to a Guardian inquiry, the Metropolitan police said it had been made aware in December 2020 of information relating to an Australian citizen in connection to the case. “In April 2021, following extensive inquiries and investigations made by the Australian federal police on behalf of the Metropolitan police, the person was conclusively eliminated from the investigation.”
They said the inquiry into Rivett’s death remained open “as is the case with all unsolved murders. Any significant new information will be considered.”
The Met carried out a cold-case review in 2004 without reaching a conclusion as to what happened to Lucan.
The new claims, published on Monday, the 48th anniversary of the murder, came as the Daily Mail reported that “cryptic new clues in the Lord Lucan mystery can be unveiled … in the form of Cluedo cards found by detectives at the time: Colonel Mustard, the lead pipe and the hall.”
The Mail added: “Almost 50 years after his family’s nanny was found bludgeoned to death by a lead pipe, it can be revealed that these three cards from the aristocrat’s board game were discovered in his abandoned car. The trio of Cluedo cards appears to chillingly represent the grisly killing of Sandra Rivett – prompting the question of whether her death was planned.”
Officially, Lucan has been dead for more than five years. In 2016, a death certificate was issued at the high court which allowed his son, George Bingham, finally to inherit the family title. At the time, Bingham, said: “I am very happy with the judgment of the court in this matter … It has been a very long time coming.”
The latest story is one of thousands over the years about the case. Sightings of Lucan were one of the regular tales passed on to the media by the late hoaxer, Rocky Ryan. This was much appreciated by reporters, when Fleet Street newsdesks were more relaxed about dispatching staff on speculative tip-offs, especially in the winter months if he was “spotted” somewhere warm. Reports placed him everywhere from Botswana to Guam, and Mozambique to Melbourne.
In 2003, he was supposedly tracked down to Goa in India. The man identified was in fact a folk singer from St Helens. In a letter to the Guardian, fellow singer and comedian Mike Harding told how he laughed until he cried when he saw a picture in the Sunday Telegraph of “the missing Lord Lucan”.
“To think that anybody could mistake my old pal Barry Halpin for Lord Lucan,” he said. Lucan’s wife, Veronica, told Sky News at the time: “It’s unutterably boring. I could never imagine my husband looking so pathetic.” Lady Lucan killed herself in 2017.
Garth Gibbs, when telling of his career in not finding Lucan, noted: “As that brilliantly bigoted and crusty old columnist, John Junor, once cannily observed: ‘Laddie, you don’t ever want to shoot the fox. Once the fox is dead there is nothing left to chase.’
The fox, unlike Lucan, shows no signs of dying yet and with the 50th anniversary of the murder approaching there could be many more such sightings.
