The fall after the murder of Lord Lucan’s nanny

When Lord Lucan planned the murder of his wife Veronica, he could have had no idea of ​​the immense number of consequences. At the time, in 1974, Lucan presumably thought the only loser in the whole affair would be his ex-wife Veronica, whose body would end up being dumped in the Canal.

But it turned out that the events of that night were going to have a rather catastrophic effect on a number of people. For starters, Lucan killed the wrong woman: it was the nanny of her children, Sandra Rivett, 29, who was mistakenly bludgeoned to death.

This mistake has come to cast such an extraordinary shadow over the lives of Lucan’s family and friends. For his poor wife Veronica, she is now separated from her three children. His son George could, if he chose, take the title and become the eighth Earl of Lucan. But the truth is that Lord Lucan has made a permanent joke of his title and it is unlikely that George will ever use it. Can you imagine what it would be like if George booked a table at a restaurant named after Lord Lucan? It would be even worse if the police stopped him.

But outside of his family, Lucan’s murder was also the direct cause of the suicide of one of his friends, Dominic Elwes. It triggered one of the longest libel actions in British history. And, incredibly, it also led to the arrest of Britain’s former Postmaster General. It’s this latest arrest that is so utterly bizarre it’s almost a farce.

In the autumn of 1974, a Labor MP, John Stonehouse, had drowned in the sea off Miami. It was unfortunate for Stonehouse that, a few weeks later, Lucan murdered Sandra Rivett. The entire world was on the lookout for this British aristocrat on the run. Shortly after, in Australia, a bank teller sees a rather shy Englishman. The Englishman looks rich and is very nervous; he wants to get a large sum of money.

The police are immediately called. Minutes later, the tall Englishman is under arrest, only for detectives to discover that they caught not Lord Lucan, but hapless British MP John Stonehouse, who faked his own death to settle in Australia with his secretary. How upsetting for Stonehouse: arrested and hauled back to jail in Britain simply because he bore a passing resemblance to Lord Lucan.