Lord Lucan’s brother knew the missing aristocrat was living abroad as a Buddhist under an assumed name, it is claimed.
Hugh Bingham, who died in 2018, had described details of his brother’s escape from Britain in an off-the-record chat with ex-BBC journalist Glen Campbell four years earlier.
His bombshell came as he was being interviewed in South Africa in 2014 for BBC1 news investigation programme Inside Out.
When the interview ended, he asked: “Is that camera turned off?”
Assured it was, he said: “Do you want to know what really happened?”
It comes after the Mirror revealed how a British OAP living as a Buddhist in Australia was found by one of the world’s most respected facial recognition experts to be a match for the missing aristocrat.
Speaking about his off-camera chat with Bingham in 2014, Campbell said last night: “Hugh told me about his brother being a Buddhist – and then when I discovered this man living in Australia was a Buddhist it was the first time everything fell into place.”
Only three people were present for the interview in the conservatory of a house in Johannesburg.
After establishing he was speaking off the record, Bingham told Campbell: “My brother did get out of England alive and I know he was living under some sort of alias.
"I still don’t know how he managed to get away. But I do know my brother would never have committed suicide.
“He completely rejected his former lifestyle and adopted a simpler, more reflective life following a Buddhist belief system.
“I’d heard he moved down through India, living in hostels and refuges run by people of similar beliefs.”
Bingham died from cancer in Johannesburg in July 2018.
He had been writing a book about what happened to his brother.
But days before he died he was paid a surprise visit by people he knew from New York, who took away his detailed papers on the case.
Campbell contacted the lawyers in New York who had taken receipt of the manuscript and papers but met a wall of silence. What was in those documents remains a mystery.
Lord Lucan disappeared 48 years ago today, on November 8, 1974, the day after the murder of nanny Sandra Rivett in the family home in Belgravia, Central London. Friends claimed he had jumped off a cross-channel ferry, but his body was never found.
The Mirror told yesterday how Professor Hassan Ugail used an artificial intelligence algorithm to run 4,000 cross-checks of four photos of Lucan and three of the mystery OAP.
Prof Ugail, who previously identified two Russians behind the Salisbury poisoning, said: “They produced a match. This isn’t an opinion, it’s science and mathematical fact.”
A second highly respected US firm ran the same tests on the same photos last week on a separate algorithm and came to the same conclusion.
Folio3 said: “Based on the output of the facial recognition AI algorithms we can assume all these images are of the same person.”
The Metropolitan Police say Australian officers investigated the identity of the pensioner and ruled out that he was Lord Lucan. But Sandra Rivett’s son Neil Berriman dismissed the Met’s claim.
He said: “I just don’t believe they carried out any extensive inquiries. They have never shown me any evidence whatsoever. The Met have simply made Australian Police the scapegoats.
“Professor Ugail is a scientist – his algorithm has never been wrong before.
“The facial recognition technology says the photos are the same man. This new development means they need to go back to this man. How have they ruled him out?
“My mother was murdered and deserves justice. This man has to be questioned and arrested now.”
Due to worldwide legal restrictions the Mirror is currently unable to show a photo of the mystery man, and we are continuing to pixelate it.
He is still living in a house near the Queensland capital Brisbane where he is cared for by members of the local Buddhist community. But further details have started to emerge of his sheltered life in Australia.
Teacher Luke Reed, 60, said he had rented his house on the outskirts of Brisbane to the pensioner for two years until the beginning of last year.
He vividly remembered him and said he was a distinctive character.
Mr Reed added: “He said he had been a Franciscan monk and had studied at an ashram in India.
“He was a very refined man, a gentleman. They ushered me in to meet him, he was very well-educated, very well spoken. He didn’t speak about his time in England, he just said he had learned from a famous Catholic priest who drew on both Christianity and Hinduism.
“He said he became a devotee and then embraced Buddhism. He had a number of young people who looked to him as a guru and he was helping them out. I met him when I came to fix the curtains, he was very well-educated and very religious.”
Mr Reed added that Australian Federal Police had arrived at his home in March last year hoping to speak to the pensioner for an investigation to “establish someone’s identity”.
The Met said: “The inquiry into the death of Sandra Rivett remains open as is the case with all unsolved murders. It has never been closed.
“Any significant new information will be considered.
“In December 2020 we were made aware of information relating to an Australian citizen in connection to this case. In April 2021, following extensive enquiries and investigations made by the Australian Federal Police on behalf of the Met Police, the person was conclusively eliminated from the investigation.”
