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Speaker 1: Thinking Sideways. I don't just stories of things we simply
Speaker 1: don't know the answer too. Well. Hey everybody, and welcome
Speaker 1: to another episode of Thinking Sideways. I am Steve, of course,
Speaker 1: as always, joined by Devin and Joe. I was gonna
Speaker 1: play chicken, but you blinked. Next episode is going to
Speaker 1: be a really long. As always, we have another unsolved
Speaker 1: mystery for you this week. We're going to talk about
Speaker 1: the appearance of Richard John Bingham, also known as Lord Lucan,
Speaker 1: the seventh Earl of Lucan. Yeah, that guy. Yeah. None
Speaker 1: of his titles were actually Lord Lucan though, were they?
Speaker 1: They were all like Earl and Duke and Baron. I
Speaker 1: think Lord was kind of a common It wasn't one
Speaker 1: of his official titles. Well, somebody can write about how
Speaker 1: ignorant I am about that. That'll be good. I don't
Speaker 1: know how that works either. I don't really understand the
Speaker 1: workings of the aristocracy. But he actually, I can I
Speaker 1: know where the Lord Lucan is. Well, why don't she
Speaker 1: say he was living in London. Eighth Earl of Lucan
Speaker 1: is his son George. So that's it. I said, we
Speaker 1: wanted the seventh Joe, Yeah, oh that guy. That's that's
Speaker 1: a good point. But there is a Lord Lucan living
Speaker 1: in London. I'm sure there is no one in the
Speaker 1: white pages to yeah, well, before we get into the story,
Speaker 1: now that we've already gone all over the map, I
Speaker 1: do want to say that this was a listener's suggestion.
Speaker 1: This story was suggested by a whole bunch of people.
Speaker 1: Still want one of our top seven ten most requested. No,
Speaker 1: it was not, but it's got a fair number of
Speaker 1: requests over the years. Until I started looking into this,
Speaker 1: I've never even heard of the guy, and I didn't
Speaker 1: realize how huge the story is in Britain today. This
Speaker 1: is a mainstay of the British media. They dragged this
Speaker 1: out and every six to twelve months trotted around on
Speaker 1: the paper and then put it away till next year
Speaker 1: when they need some kind of cover splash, and then
Speaker 1: they find him. But we're we're kind of giving it away.
Speaker 1: So let's let's say what the actual mystery is here.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about the murder of a woman
Speaker 1: by the name of Sandra Rivett. Uh, the assault of
Speaker 1: Veronica Bingham, who is the lord's wife. No, that's not
Speaker 1: a thing, right, didn't we find that out? That it's
Speaker 1: not it's not an official thing that that lord. The
Speaker 1: wives of lords are not automatically, ladies, is that a
Speaker 1: thing everybody calls lady Lucan? Did you call her that? Yes,
Speaker 1: Lady Lucan, all right? And then of course the subsequent
Speaker 1: disappearance of her husband, John Bingham, Lord Lucan, Yes, in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four. So we have a murder, of beating
Speaker 1: and a disappearance all wrapped up into one story. We
Speaker 1: should probably get started. Endless decades, all right, um, So
Speaker 1: let's go ahead and start at the top, which is
Speaker 1: when he was born, well, not exactly when he was born,
Speaker 1: but don't really care about that. Bingham was born into nobility.
Speaker 1: His father, George Bingham, was the sixth Earl of Lucan,
Speaker 1: and as a young man he of course did his
Speaker 1: National service, which I didn't realize at that time. This
Speaker 1: is the early fifties, Britain still had basically a conscription
Speaker 1: system where men had to serve eighteen months. We had
Speaker 1: any we had it here in the Stage until the
Speaker 1: late sixties. Yeah, I for some reason, it just never
Speaker 1: sunk in that everybody had to do that. And let
Speaker 1: me correct myself. I think it was actually the very
Speaker 1: early seventies when they finally did away with it here
Speaker 1: in the stage in the state. Well, I know, I
Speaker 1: know it was in the sixties in Britain when they
Speaker 1: ended the automatic service. Um. But he went to West Germany.
Speaker 1: That's where he served at least part of his time,
Speaker 1: and then he came back to the UK. He met
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty three Veronica, and they were married a
Speaker 1: few months later. So a really short courtship seems to
Speaker 1: be the norm does. Indeed, by nineteen seventy she had
Speaker 1: given birth to three children, so they had quite the
Speaker 1: family going. Uh. He was lucky in some regards that
Speaker 1: a year after he got married nineteen sixty four, his
Speaker 1: father passed away. That's so lucky. Well, it's lucky because
Speaker 1: he inherited his father's TI dole and all of the money,
Speaker 1: so he got he suddenly was in control of everything,
Speaker 1: which is we're going to talk about later on is
Speaker 1: kind of important. Yeah, And he also that was his
Speaker 1: nickname was Lucky Lucan. It was it was because he won,
Speaker 1: it was I can't remember the year, but there was
Speaker 1: this two day long poker baker at oh I thought,
Speaker 1: was he Okay, well you might be talking about a
Speaker 1: different story. Well, now that's that's the one where I
Speaker 1: really really one big like and I've heard the different amounts.
Speaker 1: One I heard twenty thousand pounds, another one I heard
Speaker 1: twenty six thousand pounds that he won in this thing,
Speaker 1: and that was actually a kind of a pivotal event
Speaker 1: in his life and everything. The nickname of Lucky, but well,
Speaker 1: you know, he got some other names though. Well, he's
Speaker 1: the Earl of Lucan, He's Baron Lucan of Castle bar
Speaker 1: and this is the hardest, longest one. Baron Lucan of
Speaker 1: Malcolm Lucan and Baronet of Nova Scotia. He's a Baronet
Speaker 1: of Nova Scotia. Yes, yeah, yeah. This whole royal title
Speaker 1: thing is still confusing, Like you know why Prince Charles
Speaker 1: is called the Prince of Wales, you know, I mean
Speaker 1: stuff like that. I'm not we're not going to go
Speaker 1: into that right now. He can't be charge of the
Speaker 1: United Kingdom yet. But because he can't be in charge
Speaker 1: of the United Kingdom, yes, just like a part of it.
Speaker 1: That's my theory. I'm out to just defend all of
Speaker 1: our British listens going to happen. I'm sorry, folks that
Speaker 1: we don't understand this whole thing. Yeah, well we've We've
Speaker 1: had British listeners right and say they understand how difficult
Speaker 1: it is to understand it. So yeah, um, so, like
Speaker 1: I said, his father passed away. You know, he gets
Speaker 1: all the titles, he gets all the money, he's got
Speaker 1: a full he's got a family. Everything seems hunky dory
Speaker 1: from the outside. It really did seem that way. But
Speaker 1: once you got inside and you got saw the underbelly
Speaker 1: of everything, you really kind of saw how tenuous and
Speaker 1: not so good a lot of things work. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: for one thing, he quit his job. He was a banker.
Speaker 1: You're right. But but before we get to that, let's
Speaker 1: talk about his school because that's kind of a it
Speaker 1: plays a pivotal bit in his gambling. He did um.
Speaker 1: He attended Eton College, which is a boy's boarding school.
Speaker 1: Apparently he was quite creative while he was there because
Speaker 1: he made his side money being a bookie and also
Speaker 1: racing on horse racing, so he was gambling. He was
Speaker 1: making enough money to have plenty of spending cash. When
Speaker 1: he went to Germany during his national service days, that's
Speaker 1: where he learned to play poker and evidently was quite
Speaker 1: good at it. And of course then he wanted to
Speaker 1: gamble on everything, so he was playing poker and um,
Speaker 1: backgammon was the other one. Backammon's the other one that
Speaker 1: he liked to play a lot. Those are games of skill,
Speaker 1: which he was good at. But he also liked games
Speaker 1: of chance, which is a problem because he played things
Speaker 1: like baccarat, which is complete and total luck. It's too
Speaker 1: long to explain. Um, but he was also good at bridge.
Speaker 1: I understand he was. He was good at gambling. He
Speaker 1: was good at cards and games of strategy, and especially
Speaker 1: when they had money writing on him. I'm sure that.
Speaker 1: I'm sure that was more fun than you know, we're
Speaker 1: just working for a living. Oh, I'm sure it was,
Speaker 1: because as you said, he uh, he did quit his
Speaker 1: job eventually, but he when he got out of the service,
Speaker 1: he came back to London. He got a job working
Speaker 1: at a merchant as a merchant banker or at a
Speaker 1: merchant bank I should say he was earning five pounds
Speaker 1: a year, which at that time is not bad money,
Speaker 1: but for a guy who likes to gamble, that's not
Speaker 1: enough money. And then after what you were talking about,
Speaker 1: when he won some obscene some in a single night,
Speaker 1: that's when he decided he was going to be a
Speaker 1: professional gambler, exactly said. The gambling also didn't really mesh
Speaker 1: well with having a day job because most of this
Speaker 1: gambling stuff was all kind of all night stuff or
Speaker 1: at least two or three or four in the more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a late night activity. Yeah, which the gambling though,
Speaker 1: that's where we start to see some of the problem
Speaker 1: because even before he inherited all the money, he wasn't
Speaker 1: winning all the time. You never do well, you never
Speaker 1: do when you're gambling. But it was more apparent what
Speaker 1: his winning streaks were because he would go into debt
Speaker 1: for it. Family would have to bail him out sometimes,
Speaker 1: and he honored his debts. You know, the family would
Speaker 1: come in and pay it all up, and then he
Speaker 1: would take a couple of years to pay that person back.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like he was filching on him, but he
Speaker 1: was losing decent sums of money. Yeah, it just it
Speaker 1: seems like his his game plan wasn't that good. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: I don't think that it was that great. Now, I
Speaker 1: talked about the fact that when his father passed away,
Speaker 1: he inherited a whole bunch of money. He smartly used
Speaker 1: some of that money to pay off his debts. So
Speaker 1: he at least started from that point forward with not oh,
Speaker 1: not in the hole, which is a good thing. But
Speaker 1: then he kept gambling. But then he kept gambling, exactly right,
Speaker 1: That's absolutely the problem. He was a member, or one
Speaker 1: of the early members of a place called the Claremont Club,
Speaker 1: which is a gambling club. It was a club in
Speaker 1: London and it served two high titled people. That's that's
Speaker 1: the way I'm going to say that. It had quite
Speaker 1: the clientele there was. There was dukes, marquees, Earl's cabinet ministers,
Speaker 1: I mean we're talking the upper echelon came to this
Speaker 1: club and gambled. It wasn't like the Indian casino down
Speaker 1: the street where anybody could just walk in and drop
Speaker 1: their their nickels in the machine. You've got to be
Speaker 1: a member. You gotta be a member, and it wasn't
Speaker 1: cheap to be a member. And I wondered about this too,
Speaker 1: because naturally, you know me, I went to Google Maps
Speaker 1: and looked at looked at where it was in London
Speaker 1: and where he lived in London he lived he lived
Speaker 1: just a mile south. So I wonder if he bought
Speaker 1: his house specifically to be close to the club. I
Speaker 1: was just a coincidence. I think that was a coincidence.
Speaker 1: I really think that had to be a coincidence. Um,
Speaker 1: there's some really interesting history on the Claremont Club. If
Speaker 1: anybody wants to get into it. We won't go into
Speaker 1: it now, but if you want to read on it.
Speaker 1: They were scamming their customers and it's really kind of
Speaker 1: interesting how they were doing it. Yeah, they were. They
Speaker 1: were totally skimming and scamming. It was really interesting. And
Speaker 1: that's that's This club was founded by James aspen All correct, correct, Yeah, correct,
Speaker 1: it was who will come up later on and we'll
Speaker 1: be talking about him, I guess. Yeah. Let's uh, let's
Speaker 1: keep moving on though, with the lifestyles of the rich
Speaker 1: and famous here, which is the things that that Bingham
Speaker 1: would do. He he had the life. He had the
Speaker 1: perfect life for you know, a guy with money. He
Speaker 1: could do what he wants. He had, He had a
Speaker 1: an Aston Martin. He liked to raise speed modes. He
Speaker 1: would drink expensive booze if you know it struck him.
Speaker 1: He and his friends would go down and rent a
Speaker 1: plane and go wherever it was they decided that day
Speaker 1: they wanted to go. I mean, he could do what
Speaker 1: he wanted because he had all the money. There's a
Speaker 1: There's another fun fact though, and I know this one
Speaker 1: is there's a little bit of discussion on it, which is,
Speaker 1: if you've seen some of the photos of him when
Speaker 1: he's i'd say about thirty or thirty five years old,
Speaker 1: several years before he disappears, he's quite the dashing figure.
Speaker 1: He's got. You know, he's got his collared shirt on,
Speaker 1: his hair is greased back or kind of slicked back.
Speaker 1: He's got that typical English mustache. I mean, he's just, yes,
Speaker 1: the the the English gentleman. Yeah. And it was kind
Speaker 1: of a handsome guy he was. And he was actually
Speaker 1: approached to play the part, to try out to play
Speaker 1: the part of James Bond because his description fits so perfectly. Now.
Speaker 1: He turned down the because Sean Connery had found out
Speaker 1: about it and kicked his ass. No, he had. Evidently
Speaker 1: he tried out for a movie once before and never
Speaker 1: even made it past the initial screening, So that turned
Speaker 1: him off of movies. I guess, I guess. I don't know. Well,
Speaker 1: I probably thought that it was beneath his dignity attemption,
Speaker 1: have to audition. Yeah, just said you're the next James Bond.
Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, maybe, but and I have but written
Speaker 1: in all capitals. Not everything was that great at home
Speaker 1: besides the money part. His family, like you know, playing
Speaker 1: and gambling and flying anywhere and probably like you know,
Speaker 1: believing the kids and theeping with a lot of different
Speaker 1: ladies didn't pan out for him. Evidently not. Actually, according
Speaker 1: to Lady Lucan's website, he was not an adulter. She says,
Speaker 1: I never got the impression that he was used playing
Speaker 1: the field. He liked to play the cards, not the ladies. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he might have been a cheater too, according to Lady Lucan,
Speaker 1: and she had every reason to not like him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she has every reason, she says. Yeah. She says that
Speaker 1: he was not an adulterer. All right, Well let's let's
Speaker 1: talk about Lady Lukenwell we're at it because, like I said,
Speaker 1: between nineteen sixty three and nineteen seven, sixty four and
Speaker 1: seventy she gave birth to three children. Well, it turns
Speaker 1: out that she had some problems with with being a parent.
Speaker 1: And it's not that they're not being a parent, but
Speaker 1: she experienced something that a lot of women experience, which
Speaker 1: is they call it postpartum or postnatal depression. We've only
Speaker 1: ever heard that postpartum, but yes, so if you don't
Speaker 1: know what that is, it's a depression that a lot
Speaker 1: of parents experience once the child is born. Women only,
Speaker 1: women only, because I'd heard that men get it, but
Speaker 1: I don't understand. I think that childbirth the whole process,
Speaker 1: and afterwards you your hormones are doing all kinds of
Speaker 1: crazy stuff. So yeah, it's pretty common. I wouldn't say
Speaker 1: pretty common, but it's it's common enough that we know
Speaker 1: about it. That doesn't mean that, you know, all women
Speaker 1: are going to go through hypercentage, but some women do.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying that it's not like common. I guess
Speaker 1: what I'm saying is it's not rare at all. Okay,
Speaker 1: you probably know somebody in your You probably do know
Speaker 1: somebody that that experienced it, even if it was for
Speaker 1: a short time or like a very mild case. Yes,
Speaker 1: she did not have a mild case. She was extremely
Speaker 1: depressed to the point that I believe it was in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one. Being a basically John Beingham basically spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time taking her around, trying to get
Speaker 1: help for her, and you know, trying to help figure
Speaker 1: out what's wrong with his wife. I mean, I have
Speaker 1: to guess that he cared enough to do that if
Speaker 1: you're going to spend all that time. He then allegedly
Speaker 1: tried to have her committed, which which was not that
Speaker 1: back in those days. It was not considered as heinous
Speaker 1: of a deed somebody committed, no, but she fought it,
Speaker 1: and so he didn't. I believe at the time it
Speaker 1: was supposed to be a voluntary committal. Is what he
Speaker 1: was trying to get her to go for while they
Speaker 1: were at the sanitarium? Is that what it would have been?
Speaker 1: I guess, okay, but she wasn't down for it. Well,
Speaker 1: the thing about it is too I I appreciate your
Speaker 1: point of view, because if you're already depressed. Can you
Speaker 1: imagine how much more depressing it's going to be to
Speaker 1: be in one of those places. Yes, we've and we've
Speaker 1: had this conversation before. So especially if it's you know,
Speaker 1: wrapped up in your your feelings for your children, to
Speaker 1: be told basically like hey listen, no you can't actually
Speaker 1: be near them. Yeah, that's got to be a pretty
Speaker 1: big glow. Yeah, she was actually her problems. I think
Speaker 1: I went beyond just postpartum depression. I'm sure that she
Speaker 1: that there was more there than that. At a later,
Speaker 1: much a later stage in her life, she was diagnosed
Speaker 1: as bipolar. She had some issues, She had some issues,
Speaker 1: But the point is it didn't do good things for
Speaker 1: their marriage, you know, I believe it was. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was the Chris of nineteen seventy two. The family spent
Speaker 1: Christmas together. Uh, that didn't go well, and in January
Speaker 1: of seventy three, John moved out of the house. So
Speaker 1: now they're they're basically they're on the skids and they're
Speaker 1: kind of separated. She was interested in trying to reconcile,
Speaker 1: and she did try to reconcile the marriage, but at
Speaker 1: that point he had no interest in it. He was
Speaker 1: basically done with the marriage. Yeah, it sounds you know,
Speaker 1: it sounds to me like she was kind of kind
Speaker 1: of hard to get along with. But you probably know
Speaker 1: this that her kids, none of her kids speak to
Speaker 1: her anymore. It also sounds like he was maybe a
Speaker 1: little like hardheaded because he was convinced that he could
Speaker 1: do a better job, and he did everything he could
Speaker 1: to prove that. Yeah, I mean, he he was kind
Speaker 1: of a big jerk about this whole thing. And then
Speaker 1: but then during the whole are you going to talk
Speaker 1: about the child custody, Well just just a little bit,
Speaker 1: but go ahead, yeah, yeah, no please, Yeah. Well, he
Speaker 1: she did something in the in the custody battle to
Speaker 1: that that really incensed him. Apparently, she she brought out
Speaker 1: a few accusations thinks that would not be considered really
Speaker 1: really heinous today, But she told the court that he
Speaker 1: was into some certain kinky sexual practices that again that
Speaker 1: would not be considered and but you know, considering the
Speaker 1: time and a proper, proper lady does not do those things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he considered that to be a huge active betrayal
Speaker 1: and uh yeah, so that that kind of hardened his
Speaker 1: heart towards her. I think Yeah. You know, there's a
Speaker 1: bunch of dirty laundry that we could air about their
Speaker 1: custody battle, but I'm not going to do it because
Speaker 1: that's exactly what it is. It's it's dirty laundry. Here's
Speaker 1: what you need to know. A judge ruled he lost,
Speaker 1: she kept custody of the children, and he had to
Speaker 1: he had to pay her, you know, he um, it
Speaker 1: was a stipend is the only word I can think of.
Speaker 1: An allowance or alimony, Yeah, an allowance, alimony, whatever the
Speaker 1: official title was. He had to pay. But that would
Speaker 1: have been expensive because not only the household and their
Speaker 1: living expenses and everything, but also they didn't have a nanny.
Speaker 1: The judge ordered to nanny Anti because plus he had
Speaker 1: to maintain his own household around the corner. And and
Speaker 1: he did some things like, you know, he played games
Speaker 1: with her as much as I'm sure she played games
Speaker 1: with him. When you read about the story, sometimes you
Speaker 1: hear that after he lost the custody battle, he spiraled downhill,
Speaker 1: except that when I've read the stuff about him, his
Speaker 1: actions don't really support that. He basically went on about
Speaker 1: his life. I mean, he's still trying to do things
Speaker 1: to talk to the kids and spend time with them.
Speaker 1: But he was still going to the club, he was
Speaker 1: still gambling, he was still hanging out with his friends.
Speaker 1: There was no huge market change in him all of
Speaker 1: the sudden, nothing, nothing that would indicate to me that
Speaker 1: he was spiraling downhill. So I discredit that a little bit.
Speaker 1: But you will come across that when you read the story.
Speaker 1: It does seem that he had some pretty serious problems.
Speaker 1: So he it. Yeah, let's at this point move forward
Speaker 1: in time a little bit. We're gonna go to the
Speaker 1: night of Thursday, November seven night Lord Lucan himself. Specifically,
Speaker 1: he had met a friend that day at for some
Speaker 1: conversation impossible business dealings, and then he gave that person
Speaker 1: a ride home and then he went home himself. He
Speaker 1: had plans later that evening to meet his friends at
Speaker 1: the Claremont Club at eleven o'clock that night, so it
Speaker 1: appears from the outside that it was just a normal
Speaker 1: Thursday night for him. Oh and by the way, there
Speaker 1: are there there were witnesses who saw him at the
Speaker 1: Claremont Club at nine pm that night too. Yes, he
Speaker 1: had been there once. I believe he was meeting a
Speaker 1: friend m who it was they were going to have dinner.
Speaker 1: He decided to decline dinner and then suggested meeting again
Speaker 1: at at the eleven o'clock time. So evidently he was
Speaker 1: just gonna walk home, do whatever he was gonna do,
Speaker 1: and then come back. Yeah, there's there's some serious confusion
Speaker 1: in the time line in this hole. We're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about this whole timeline. It is. It's wonky. That's the
Speaker 1: only way I can describe it as wonky. But we're
Speaker 1: gonna keep moving forward as much as we can. Here.
Speaker 1: We're gonna go over to Veronica's house where things are
Speaker 1: normal as well. Kind of a normal Thursday night. Uh.
Speaker 1: Sandra the nanny, she normally didn't work on Thursdays, but
Speaker 1: she for some reason was there that Thursday, so she
Speaker 1: was at the house. I think she she took one
Speaker 1: night a week off and it's usually Thursday, but apparently
Speaker 1: this this week it was Wednesday instead of Thursday. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's hard to say exactly I've seen, because
Speaker 1: I've seen it several times. She was always gone on Thursdays,
Speaker 1: or this particular one was a weird case. I don't know. Indeed, indeed,
Speaker 1: really shouldn't have changed her plants. This literature, this is
Speaker 1: called foreshadowing. So just before nine o'clock that night, she
Speaker 1: went down to the basement kitchen. She was gonna get
Speaker 1: Veronica some tea and some for herself. While she was
Speaker 1: in the kitchen at the basement kitchen, or maybe possibly
Speaker 1: just when she walked into it, someone beat her to
Speaker 1: death with a lead pipe and then stuffed her body
Speaker 1: into a sack, sack of all things. But I disagree.
Speaker 1: I think it was the professor with you would do it.
Speaker 1: You knew it was going to him. Yeah, kind of
Speaker 1: when you see the lead pipe thing, you can't help
Speaker 1: but think of it. You're right. Okay, So she's beaten.
Speaker 1: She's now in the U S mail sack. Veronica, who
Speaker 1: is expecting her to come back upstairs, is kind of
Speaker 1: wonder what's going on, so she goes to check on her.
Speaker 1: And actually, I want to pause here for a second.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about Yes, I want I know.
Speaker 1: That's why I want to talk about this before we
Speaker 1: keep going, because it's just gonna get more and more intense.
Speaker 1: When you read about this, it this what we're about
Speaker 1: to cover. It reads like who done it? Or a
Speaker 1: murder mystery kind of you know, it's a Sue Grafton
Speaker 1: or somebody like that. And I was really curious why
Speaker 1: everything you read told it exactly the same. The details
Speaker 1: always had this real big build up to them, And
Speaker 1: then I figured it out. There's four authors who have
Speaker 1: written quite extensively on this, one of whom happens to
Speaker 1: have been one of the lead investigators on the case.
Speaker 1: And everybody is then taking their information from those four sources.
Speaker 1: If you trace those four sources backwards, do you know
Speaker 1: who their main sources? Veronica, Okay, she is going to
Speaker 1: tell the story in one way because she's probably got
Speaker 1: a reason to whether good, bad or indifferent, She's gonna
Speaker 1: paint it in a certain light. So I want to
Speaker 1: say that now because it does come across in one
Speaker 1: very direct way, and one side really seems to hold
Speaker 1: all the cards in this. So just be aware of
Speaker 1: that as we're going through. What's about to happen next? Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: what happens down the stairs? So Veronica goes to the
Speaker 1: stairs to the basement and calls to Sandra, and at
Speaker 1: that point someone attacks her. Officially, we aren't sure. She
Speaker 1: starts screaming her attacker tells her to shut up. It's
Speaker 1: at that point she says that she recognized the voices
Speaker 1: that of her husband. Here's the thing you need to
Speaker 1: keep in mind, is that the basement kitchen, it was dark,
Speaker 1: so she couldn't see anything down the stairs, so she
Speaker 1: couldn't really see who her attacker was. Um, but they
Speaker 1: were not in the basement, and said they were on
Speaker 1: the first floor. They were on this just she had
Speaker 1: on the stairs and then in the first floor. Yes,
Speaker 1: at the top of the stairs. Yes, top of the stairs.
Speaker 1: She had never gone down the stairs. And apparently he
Speaker 1: was hiding in a closet, like hiding in the coat closet.
Speaker 1: Is that what it was. I don't know exactly where. Again,
Speaker 1: this is another part of that story where it's a
Speaker 1: little wonky here and there, and I'm not sure where
Speaker 1: he was hiding. I got the impression that he rushed
Speaker 1: up the stairs as possible. Yeah, I I heard somewhere
Speaker 1: that he was actually hiding in a closet or could
Speaker 1: have been maybe just hiding around the corner in the hallway.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, Well, the point is they struggled.
Speaker 1: The two struggled. Um, she bit him, he knocked her
Speaker 1: to the ground. Um, and then, of course this attacker,
Speaker 1: who she says is her husband, then tries to strangle her.
Speaker 1: I heard he also he was he was wearing gloves,
Speaker 1: and I heard he also jamped some fingers down her
Speaker 1: mouth just to have a quieter down. I don't know,
Speaker 1: it could be, you know, the strangling part. I can
Speaker 1: get fingers down the mouth seems like a dumb thing
Speaker 1: to do because someone's gonna bite. Yeah, I heard that
Speaker 1: from a few sources. Yeah. Well, the battle ensues, at
Speaker 1: which point she grabs his testicles, guessing not in the
Speaker 1: nice way, squeeze and uh that's what they teach us
Speaker 1: that it takes the fight out of him. Not surprising, weird. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he stops trying to kill her once they calmed down. Uh.
Speaker 1: They go upstairs and Veronica I get that she was
Speaker 1: trying to buy time. At this point, she figured she
Speaker 1: was dead. She figured he was gonna kill her, even
Speaker 1: though he had stopped fighting at that point. So they
Speaker 1: go upstairs. She says, listen, I won't tell anybody. You
Speaker 1: can hide out at the house for a couple of
Speaker 1: days and then escape the country. And he's like, okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that sounds like a great idea, and I think, well,
Speaker 1: and didn't he say that essentially you have sleeping pills, right,
Speaker 1: and he's basically he was he was saying that, well,
Speaker 1: I won't I won't bludge and you to death, but
Speaker 1: you can just take a whole bottle of sleeping pills.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there was a lot of threats. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you can just do that, and so I'll stop bledgening.
Speaker 1: You can just kill yourself another way, and that's it'll
Speaker 1: all be okay with me, which is a little weird. Yes,
Speaker 1: So he takes her upstairs and he and he's he
Speaker 1: goes off into the bathroom, well not before putting one
Speaker 1: of the children to bed, because one of the girls
Speaker 1: had gotten up and he put her to bed. And then, yes,
Speaker 1: they're in the bedroom. She's you know, he goes I've
Speaker 1: heard it described. Either he was looking through the medicine
Speaker 1: cabinet or he was getting towels to clean her up with.
Speaker 1: He turned when he turned the water taps on to
Speaker 1: that's when she made her breath, because the sound of
Speaker 1: the water would cover her escape. She realized that she
Speaker 1: beat feet out of the house. She ran down the
Speaker 1: street and into the Plumber's Arms, which is a pub. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not the plumber, but the actual actually yam and told
Speaker 1: everybody what was going on. So, needless to say, somebody
Speaker 1: the cops, cop showed up, They searched the house, They
Speaker 1: find Saunder's body, but of course Lord Lucan is nowhere
Speaker 1: to be found. And by the way, the finding of
Speaker 1: Saunder's body was kind of a classics and something out
Speaker 1: of Agatha Christie because they didn't actually immediately realize that
Speaker 1: there was even a body down there. And somebody sees
Speaker 1: this big mail bag and somebody like gave it, gave
Speaker 1: it a kick or something in this arm flops out
Speaker 1: of it. It really does read like a book. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought you were gonna say they saw blood trail
Speaker 1: straight to them. Again, somebody kicked in an arm flopped.
Speaker 1: They were immediately they didn't really immediately realize. The investigation
Speaker 1: here wasn't exactly bulletproof. There was possibly some contamination of
Speaker 1: the scene. Well unless be fair right, if anybody had
Speaker 1: been following the news at the time, if the police
Speaker 1: had been following the news, if Lord Lucan had at
Speaker 1: any point called the cops or talked to his friends
Speaker 1: that were cops or whatever and said, listen, my wife's
Speaker 1: kind of crazy. I'm gonna try and get committed. And then,
Speaker 1: you know, a couple of weeks later, she comes screaming
Speaker 1: hysterical and says, oh, that was a man in my house.
Speaker 1: And they're like, okay, crazy, let's go check it out. Okay.
Speaker 1: Well she was beat up. Yeah, she did have size.
Speaker 1: She'd been hit like four times with a lead pipe
Speaker 1: on the forehead something like that, and she was still conscious.
Speaker 1: That's incredible. Well, the lead pipe was wrapped in a bandage,
Speaker 1: which is I'm not sure that the entire pipe was
Speaker 1: i just basically part of it, the part that he
Speaker 1: wanted to use for for like a gripe. That's that's
Speaker 1: kind of like you were on. I'm not entirely sure
Speaker 1: that's that's what I'm thinking. Then I'm thinking, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: because yeah, as like a grip, that would make sense.
Speaker 1: But we were talking about the kind of contamination. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was blood all over the house. I mean there's
Speaker 1: blood on the stairs, there's blood on the carpon. They
Speaker 1: then find blood in the back garden, and of course
Speaker 1: there's blood in the basement, but they don't know if
Speaker 1: the blood in the back garden. Wasn't necessarily accidentally transferred
Speaker 1: there by one of the police officers, because yeah, and
Speaker 1: obviously they had to go back there and check it.
Speaker 1: They did. So there's there's some things that maybe not
Speaker 1: exactly right just because the way it was handled, at
Speaker 1: least initially, that initial burst of people on the scene.
Speaker 1: Well also, you know she's saying, I've been attacked, have
Speaker 1: been attacked. Your initial reaction is going to be, well,
Speaker 1: let's make sure that dude's not here anymore. Not Oh,
Speaker 1: it's a crime scene. Better preserve it. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: what cops do already. I mean they do that today.
Speaker 1: Is we will secure the scene and then we will
Speaker 1: lock it down so that we can take a look
Speaker 1: at everything. But yeah, you've got to make sure that
Speaker 1: the guy's not still there. Well, and you gotta remember
Speaker 1: too that there were three children in the house, and yeah,
Speaker 1: obviously that was a high priority. It was well, you
Speaker 1: know what the thing is that it was a high
Speaker 1: priority to them, and as it turns out, still a
Speaker 1: high priority to Lord Luken because like I said, he
Speaker 1: was nowhere to be found. Um, and he does a
Speaker 1: little bit give his side of the story. He called Uh.
Speaker 1: He called his mother that night somewhere between ten thirty
Speaker 1: and eleven o'clock and said he was driving by the
Speaker 1: house and saw Veronica fighting with the man in the
Speaker 1: basement kitchen and went in to help. And that's, uh,
Speaker 1: it's a little hard to believe. I mean, the window
Speaker 1: you can see into the basement. Did check that out?
Speaker 1: They did, and you have. They said you had to
Speaker 1: be crouching down to see it or kneeling down, which
Speaker 1: makes me wonder if sitting in a car is too
Speaker 1: high of an angle. And also, don't forget it was
Speaker 1: there were no lights on because the light bulb. We
Speaker 1: haven't talked about this, but the lightbulb in the basement
Speaker 1: kitchen had been taken out of the socket, so there's
Speaker 1: absolutely no way he could have seen it. But this
Speaker 1: is one of the things about his story is like
Speaker 1: he couldn't have planned this very long because his story
Speaker 1: is so weak. Yes, I agree, he said that he
Speaker 1: went in, the attacker ran away. He then took her
Speaker 1: upstairs to help clean her up, and that's when she
Speaker 1: quote unquote came to and snapped out of it and
Speaker 1: ran out of the house, screaming that it was him,
Speaker 1: and he had done it, and he seems to believe,
Speaker 1: or at least he seems to convey I should say
Speaker 1: that he was worried that she was gonna say it
Speaker 1: was him, and you know, this was gonna damage his
Speaker 1: ability to see his children and so getting arrested years
Speaker 1: which I'm sorry, but if her children are in the
Speaker 1: house and your wife has just been attacked and you
Speaker 1: saw it happen, why are you leaving the house? Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's that. Huh, it doesn't make sense. I mean, he
Speaker 1: did ask his mother to go by and pick up
Speaker 1: the children because he knew that his wife was going
Speaker 1: to get carted off to the hospital to get checked out,
Speaker 1: so he at least did that right, But it's just
Speaker 1: he doesn't his story doesn't quite add up based on
Speaker 1: what we know from that phone call to his mother,
Speaker 1: and well, the other thing about his story is this,
Speaker 1: he said he was was driving by, saw saw her
Speaker 1: being attacked in the basement, rushed into the house, ran
Speaker 1: down the stairs, slipped in some blood, and his his
Speaker 1: loss of balance enabled the tailor, the killer to get away.
Speaker 1: And then she apparently accused him of hiring a hitman
Speaker 1: to murder her. That is one of the virgins. Yep, yeah,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't really doesn't really fit with the physical evidence.
Speaker 1: Though it doesn't it really doesn't. Um of course you
Speaker 1: know that they don't necessarily, I mean, cops do this.
Speaker 1: They got to take what the what the victim says
Speaker 1: with a grain of salt. They don't believe her right
Speaker 1: away entirely, so they get some other suspects. They then
Speaker 1: rule out those suspects. But lo and behole, Lord Lucan
Speaker 1: still know where to be found. He did do a
Speaker 1: few other things to try to add to his side
Speaker 1: of the story. He wrote a letter to his brother
Speaker 1: in law basically reiterating what he had said to his mother.
Speaker 1: One page was the story and the other page was
Speaker 1: financial things that I needed to take care of off
Speaker 1: a bunch of stuff. And by the way, that his
Speaker 1: brother in law was not was not Lady Lucan's brother. Yes,
Speaker 1: that is correct. Yeah, but he had married her sister. Wait,
Speaker 1: let me let me make sure. So it was Lady
Speaker 1: Lucan's sister's husband. Yeah, okay, okay. I was like this
Speaker 1: basically thinking that Spaceball's moment. Okay, when I when I
Speaker 1: first read about these, I thought, when he's they referred
Speaker 1: to his brother in law. I thought it was Lady
Speaker 1: Lucan's brother. I thought, that's really weird to be writing
Speaker 1: a letter and expecting sympathy from her brother. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. That's not true. Yeah, it's not true. Lord
Speaker 1: Lucan did call his mother one more time. He called
Speaker 1: her later that night, um, sometime after midnight. Now she
Speaker 1: had gone to pick up the children, so of course
Speaker 1: the cops sent a man home with her. They're not stupid.
Speaker 1: When he made that call to his mother, the police
Speaker 1: officer was there. Officer asked to speak to him. He
Speaker 1: didn't decline to speak to the officer said he had
Speaker 1: to think about it, but that he'd be in contact
Speaker 1: with the police in the morning. That, of course didn't happen,
Speaker 1: As we all know, he didn't ever actually speak to
Speaker 1: the police. At the time. He was driving a borrowed
Speaker 1: Forward Corsair. He drove from London to East Sussex, where
Speaker 1: he went to a friend's house. Those friends were the
Speaker 1: Maxwell Scott's. Susan Maxwell Scott answered the door. Her husband
Speaker 1: evidently wasn't home, and apparently her husband was one of
Speaker 1: his lot gamblers. Correct, yes he was, but her husband
Speaker 1: wasn't there and maybe what have you got a better
Speaker 1: idea of this. I never got a clear understanding of
Speaker 1: if he hung out for a while or if he
Speaker 1: just said oh okay and then turned around and left.
Speaker 1: I could never get a clear beat on it. I'm
Speaker 1: not totally sure. I thought it was that he told
Speaker 1: him he told her the story, and I thought he
Speaker 1: made a phone call and I thought maybe that was
Speaker 1: I thought he maybe he might might have even written
Speaker 1: those letters to his brother in law. Then well, but
Speaker 1: the letters were at his house, his house, if I
Speaker 1: remember correctly, the letters were at his home. I think
Speaker 1: he had told her that he had done it, that
Speaker 1: he had written the letters to his brother in law.
Speaker 1: But again, this is one of those things like because
Speaker 1: of the way that it's told and it's been regurgitated,
Speaker 1: him a little bit unsure. All I know is that
Speaker 1: they found the letters and they were in London, So
Speaker 1: take from that, which will Yeah, I had heard that
Speaker 1: he wrote the letters, mailed him and then called his
Speaker 1: brother in law to hold him. He bailed these letters
Speaker 1: to him and he wasn't in London, so that caused
Speaker 1: a brother in law to go to London to get
Speaker 1: the letters, and that would make more sense. That would
Speaker 1: totally make more sense, and the versions that I kept
Speaker 1: coming across that just confused to crap out of me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he might have made that phone call from there,
Speaker 1: that was under the impression that he made a phone
Speaker 1: call from there and told her. I don't know if
Speaker 1: he told her much of anything. I mean, obviously he
Speaker 1: told her there was a crisis, and YadA, YadA. I mean,
Speaker 1: right his mother, Yeah, no, no, no, Susan Maxwell Scott, yes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And well, and he would have had blood on his
Speaker 1: clothes yea, if he slipped and fell in the blood.
Speaker 1: If he's telling the truth and he's trying to clean
Speaker 1: up his wife, he would have blood on his clothes. No, not,
Speaker 1: if he went home and wrote letters, he would have
Speaker 1: changed his clothes, you would think by the way there
Speaker 1: were there was blood on the envelopes, so, but not
Speaker 1: on the stationary itself. Correct, And it was like blood smears,
Speaker 1: like a little bits of blood. So Okay. The reason
Speaker 1: that that's troubling to me is that blood dry is
Speaker 1: pretty quick on your skin, right, So for it to
Speaker 1: be blood smears, it would mean that he would have
Speaker 1: had to have been actively bleeding probably or maybe he
Speaker 1: had gotten his hands wet and was trying to wash
Speaker 1: him off and grabbed it and that would have you know,
Speaker 1: that would have transferred blood. I guess, yeah, it would
Speaker 1: have been like really watered down. I mean, like blood
Speaker 1: doesn't it hangs around, you know, on you dry for
Speaker 1: a while, but like reconstituting blood on your hand like
Speaker 1: that doesn't really know, it doesn't work out well, it
Speaker 1: doesn't work super great. I mean, I mean, we're kind
Speaker 1: of going down there, rabbit. But I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I think that that that does present a problem for me,
Speaker 1: especially since it wasn't on the stationary. It was on
Speaker 1: the envelope, being honest, being honest, being on the envelope
Speaker 1: only in the case to me that he wrote the
Speaker 1: letters before it does. Yeah, all right, let's let's move
Speaker 1: forward a little bit more in time. We're gonna move
Speaker 1: from that night, which is Thursday, to Sunday, which is
Speaker 1: the tent that four Corsair that he was driving was
Speaker 1: found sixteen miles away from the Maxwell Scott's home. Uh
Speaker 1: in the car they found blood. It was both it
Speaker 1: was I never could tell because it was I saw
Speaker 1: it listed or written as believed to be Sandra and
Speaker 1: Veronica's blood. I don't know if the technology was good
Speaker 1: enough for the time to be able to exact match it.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing that they couldn't. They could match by type,
Speaker 1: at least I know that, but they didn't do so
Speaker 1: that would explain why it was written that way. So
Speaker 1: they found the blood, They found another lead pipe in
Speaker 1: the boot, which was also, by the way, partially wrapped
Speaker 1: in tape. Surgical tape. Yep, it was. There was a
Speaker 1: bottle of vodka. I don't know how much was in it. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the witnesses in the area has said they had
Speaker 1: seen the car park there early on Friday morning, which
Speaker 1: means it would have sat for several days. But that
Speaker 1: also I guess that it's a problem for me too,
Speaker 1: because the timing of it seems really weird and quick,
Speaker 1: because when did he attack? When did the attack happen?
Speaker 1: Nine o'clock at night on Thursday, Okay, so it would
Speaker 1: have presumably been what an hour, I don't know how
Speaker 1: long it was attacks probably would have been under fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1: There was a whole drama upstairs, you know, and I
Speaker 1: still max okay, And then he lived how far away
Speaker 1: from the house, oh, from his house to live. It
Speaker 1: was around the corner of the corner, so we had
Speaker 1: to go home. That wasn't actually around the corner, it
Speaker 1: was it was not far about a mile south. We're
Speaker 1: saying like he's leaving town at like ten thirty. It's
Speaker 1: about an hour and a half drive to the Maxwell,
Speaker 1: Scots Okay, I guess. So he could have parked the
Speaker 1: car any time in the wee hours of Friday morning
Speaker 1: and that would totally lead line up with what the
Speaker 1: witnesses said. That's a that's helpful. And actually the car
Speaker 1: was found in new Haven about a mile from the
Speaker 1: harbor and new Haven is of course on the English Channel. Yes, uh,
Speaker 1: they were about six am. There were a couple of fishermen.
Speaker 1: I saw this in a documentary and this is this
Speaker 1: is uh the words of an author who research and
Speaker 1: wrote a book about this whole. Yeah, and a couple
Speaker 1: of fishermen were loading up their boat preparing to for
Speaker 1: the day's work and they saw they testified to having
Speaker 1: seen Lord Lucan at the harbor and new Haven at
Speaker 1: about six am. There you go. What he did from there,
Speaker 1: We're not sure. The lead investigator, one of the guys
Speaker 1: who wrote the books Roy Ransom. Yeah, great name. It is.
Speaker 1: He Uh, he's convinced that Lord Lucan uh committed the
Speaker 1: murders of Sandra and the attack on his wife. And
Speaker 1: then from there he thinks that Lucan committed suicide. Yeah,
Speaker 1: somehow he doesn't. He didn't speculate exactly how whereas some
Speaker 1: others have. But he for a long time. He since
Speaker 1: changed his theory, but for a long long time he
Speaker 1: was sure that he had done himself in. There was,
Speaker 1: of course, a inquest later on, and he not shockingly
Speaker 1: was found guilty of the murder of Sandra. And because
Speaker 1: well there was really no defense prosecution. That's that's That's
Speaker 1: the thing about it is he really incriminated himself because
Speaker 1: I disappearing. Well not just that, but he told people,
Speaker 1: he said I and he basically placed himself at the
Speaker 1: scene of the crime by telling people, oh, I was there,
Speaker 1: because he told people I was going by and I
Speaker 1: rushed into Savor, you know, and and so he placed
Speaker 1: himself there and I and we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: maybe one of the reasons why in the theory section.
Speaker 1: There is just one other little bit here about about
Speaker 1: Lord Lucan, because he disappeared he wasn't for a long
Speaker 1: time not declared dead. Yeah, they have a standard set
Speaker 1: of time, right, I don't. I think the family was,
Speaker 1: especially Lady Lucan, they delayed having him declared legally dead
Speaker 1: because comparently they would have had to pay death taxes
Speaker 1: and they really couldn't afford at the time, and so
Speaker 1: they actually waited a long long time and then everything
Speaker 1: went into probate and now they have it. There's some
Speaker 1: crazy things though. There's there's towns in and parts of
Speaker 1: England and Ireland that officially the nobility his family owned.
Speaker 1: So people were still having to pay to the Lucan
Speaker 1: family rent, yeah, because they were nine hundred nine nine
Speaker 1: year leases. Yeah, now they I had heard that the
Speaker 1: family owns about twelve hundred properties in Ireland and but
Speaker 1: the other thing I heard is they're having a lot
Speaker 1: of trouble collecting rents in those properties they are, and
Speaker 1: people are also just buying them out. Some people are saying,
Speaker 1: you know what, to to heck with it, I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna buy it out. So they they are. They finally
Speaker 1: probably have caught up on what they owed in the past.
Speaker 1: Took a long time, but that that really is the
Speaker 1: the end of the story. Um, and it leaves us
Speaker 1: with the two questions of a did he really kill
Speaker 1: Sandra and then attack his wife? And then after that,
Speaker 1: what happened to it? Where'd you goilities there? Yep, So
Speaker 1: we we have a couple of who done it theories
Speaker 1: and who done it? Theory Number one is obvious that
Speaker 1: he's guilty that he did it. Well, if we look
Speaker 1: at it from the perspective of what is his motive, Well,
Speaker 1: he's he's been jilted by the courts, he's lost custody
Speaker 1: of his children. He probably feels like everybody is screwed
Speaker 1: him out of all these things that he's entitled to, which,
Speaker 1: when you think about it, through the course of his
Speaker 1: life he got what he thought he was in title too,
Speaker 1: so when suddenly somebody tells him no, it doesn't sit well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when I talked about his behavior before everything happened, I said,
Speaker 1: it didn't really seem like he spiraled downhill. He just
Speaker 1: seemed to be okay, And maybe that was some form
Speaker 1: of emotional shutdown. People do that. You can't tell that
Speaker 1: they're a boiling cauldron of emotions because they're just acting
Speaker 1: normal until eventually it does overflow. Yeah, he had a
Speaker 1: lot to be stressed about. And besides being massively in
Speaker 1: debt and not being able to pay his bills and
Speaker 1: losing his kids and everything. And then there was that
Speaker 1: one little thing. Yes, yes, there was that one little
Speaker 1: thing which came out last year. That's when that little
Speaker 1: thing that Joe keeps hinting at happened. There's a guy
Speaker 1: by the name of George Weiss, and he was evidently
Speaker 1: a member of the Claremount Club and he played He
Speaker 1: played with John Bingham there, Yeah, because everybody did. And
Speaker 1: he was quoted in an article in the Mirror last
Speaker 1: year as saying he knew why Lord Lucan had snapped.
Speaker 1: And the reason was, according to him, is that Lord
Speaker 1: Lucan had sent a kitten to his children as a gift,
Speaker 1: and the kitten was set back through his mail letterbox,
Speaker 1: which is the slot in the door, you know, you
Speaker 1: get your mail through with its throat cut. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: that's hours after he had had it sent. Yeah. Seriously,
Speaker 1: even if you were angry at this guy, you don't
Speaker 1: kill the kitten. I actually, you know, if this is true,
Speaker 1: If this is true, then I say Lady Lucan deserved
Speaker 1: to get beaten. Well that's my question though, is it okay?
Speaker 1: So who who did the kitten in? Was it Lady Lucan,
Speaker 1: was it Sandra, was it one of the maybe one
Speaker 1: of the children, or was it some other man that
Speaker 1: we don't know about. There's a whole host of people.
Speaker 1: We have another murder mystery of who who did the kitten? Really,
Speaker 1: because that could really impact what happened later on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course that's you know. I mean, I don't know
Speaker 1: if Wise is lying or perhaps Lord Lucan lied to him.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's possible that none of this happened. And yeah,
Speaker 1: it's yeah, keep in mind and sat on this since
Speaker 1: nine and just suddenly comes out with it's like, oh
Speaker 1: I remember that thing. Yeah, I remember the family of
Speaker 1: the Lucan family. They had a cat who lived in
Speaker 1: their house on Laura Belgrade Street. And uh, generally, in
Speaker 1: my experience, the kind of people who own cats usually
Speaker 1: are not the kind of people who slit kitten's throats. Yes, usually, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what dog people do. Yeah, I'm a dog person
Speaker 1: and I would not know. But it does make me
Speaker 1: one question this bit about the kitten, because as we
Speaker 1: talked about before and we'll probably talk about again. The
Speaker 1: British media trots this story out every year. Yeah, I don't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and again you're right, and this time why did this
Speaker 1: guy sit in the dead kittens story for so and
Speaker 1: every time it's somebody with a new revelation. Take that
Speaker 1: with a grain of salt. Well, and in strong favor
Speaker 1: of the he did it is? The question would be
Speaker 1: what motive did he have to kill the nanny? But
Speaker 1: it's totally possible. They look I mean they didn't look
Speaker 1: really the same. They were the same height, right, nanny
Speaker 1: I think was just a little bit more thick set
Speaker 1: than dark in the dark and you know, if it's
Speaker 1: pitch black downstairs and you think you've got you know,
Speaker 1: your wife who you are hating right now, and beat
Speaker 1: her up and then realize, oh oops, that was a nanny.
Speaker 1: What do we do in the mail sack? And we'll wait? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that your your plan has gone to gone
Speaker 1: pear shape? Right. That The other part is the what
Speaker 1: what motivated him to kill the nanny? And I believe
Speaker 1: it was a complete total accident. I think she was
Speaker 1: the wrong place, wrong time. Well, let's not forget though
Speaker 1: he was paying her salary man. That might have been
Speaker 1: his way of cutting expenses. Yeah, I think it was.
Speaker 1: And again this is this is another one of those
Speaker 1: things that's totally out of out of one of the
Speaker 1: detective novels. Who is I know, it really is. I
Speaker 1: can't wait for the twist of like, oh, yeah, by
Speaker 1: the way, this is actually just a novel. Now, by
Speaker 1: the way, yeah, that the twist is going to be
Speaker 1: in the end that actually she murdered him and then
Speaker 1: self bludgeoned. She murdered him, murdered the nanny, and then
Speaker 1: self bludgeon and then ran down the street and ran
Speaker 1: into the pub. And you know, yeah, I know I
Speaker 1: feel connected to all of our listeners because they were
Speaker 1: doing the same thing as I'm sure as I was
Speaker 1: just doing, which is just shaking my head. No, you
Speaker 1: gotta love those those kinds of devious twists. So our
Speaker 1: next theory of who done it, it wasn't him. That's
Speaker 1: the next theory. There are people who say this, There
Speaker 1: is a lot of people who say that. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's he left those letters and talked to his mother
Speaker 1: and attested his innocence. Um, and some of his friends
Speaker 1: have stood by him. I mean, initially a lot of
Speaker 1: people said, yeah, he's probably innocent. Some of those guys
Speaker 1: changed their tune, but some of them have said he
Speaker 1: was innocent for twenty five plus years, so they're really
Speaker 1: standing there. What What is my hard part about his
Speaker 1: not having done it is there was no signs of
Speaker 1: forced entry into the house. So you're saying that's uh
Speaker 1: that essentially it was an entirely random thing. Somebody broke
Speaker 1: into the house maybe too well, no, no, I'm saying
Speaker 1: it's hard to believe that he didn't do it because
Speaker 1: there's no signs of forced entry. The basement doors were locked.
Speaker 1: I don't think that a fleeing attacker would stop and
Speaker 1: locked the doors behind themselves. And the back garden was walled. Um,
Speaker 1: there was no signs of anybody, you know, climbing the
Speaker 1: vegetation and breaking the branches to get out. Um. Like
Speaker 1: we talked about the fact that, you know, when the
Speaker 1: police recreated the scene, it's very hard to see in
Speaker 1: the window from the street unless you're bending down, which
Speaker 1: I still think is kind of hinky. His theory does
Speaker 1: not hold water, or excuse me, his alibi does not
Speaker 1: hold water. Yeah, yeah, it doesn't. And I think we
Speaker 1: talked about this a little bit in terms of the
Speaker 1: blood that was around. My other problem with him not
Speaker 1: being involved or guilty of doing it is that Veronica's
Speaker 1: blood was everywhere else but the basement kitchen well precisely,
Speaker 1: and so down the stairs. Yes, she didn't so the
Speaker 1: attack on her it took place. But we've talked about
Speaker 1: the snow lights, no blood. This doesn't work. So let's
Speaker 1: move on to the next two done it, which is
Speaker 1: a hit man. And there is theories out here that
Speaker 1: a hit man did it, and it says that, you know,
Speaker 1: he didn't. He wasn't the one that committed the entire act.
Speaker 1: He just hired someone. He hired somebody and probably, like
Speaker 1: we said before, Sandra was in the wrong place at
Speaker 1: the wrong time, and then everything went sideways. I'm guessing
Speaker 1: that he must have been at the house if this
Speaker 1: is true. He probably was sitting outside watching it, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of reveling in the whole thing and maybe got
Speaker 1: cold feet, or maybe he was in there with the
Speaker 1: hit man to see it all happen and that's when
Speaker 1: it kind of went. All that I heard, too, is
Speaker 1: that he had hired a hit man and then at
Speaker 1: the last minute he realized what an incredibly horrible thing
Speaker 1: he was doing, and he rushed down there to try
Speaker 1: to try to head it off. Well, if he wrote
Speaker 1: those a lot of years before, right, it's possible he
Speaker 1: hired a hit man to to stage the exact situation
Speaker 1: that he said happened. If he was if he may
Speaker 1: be realized, oh I want Veronica back, or oh I
Speaker 1: want to be a hero, or you know, oh I
Speaker 1: just want to scare her. Whatever, whatever his motivation was,
Speaker 1: he had hired this hit man. It did go a
Speaker 1: little south, right. He expected it to be Veronica that
Speaker 1: he was that was attacked because the nanny was supposed
Speaker 1: to be off and he went in to save her
Speaker 1: and then realized this person is dead. This person, this
Speaker 1: did not go to plan at all, and then ran away.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, the only problem with that
Speaker 1: is that he he went ahead and mailed the letter's
Speaker 1: bloody and all when it was really kind of time
Speaker 1: for him to come up with a new story at
Speaker 1: this point in time. And so really why would he
Speaker 1: go ahead? And I mean maybe he wasn't thinking straight,
Speaker 1: but yeah, because I mean, obviously the right thing to
Speaker 1: do at this point is to not mail those letters
Speaker 1: starting start cooking up a new alibi, or like, don't
Speaker 1: leave the house, hang out, knowing she's going to go
Speaker 1: get the cops. Hang out there, and you know, played
Speaker 1: the innocent card and say I was like, I wasn't here,
Speaker 1: you guys, I'm sorry. How can I help in this?
Speaker 1: You know, because that at the very least, it's it's
Speaker 1: way less suspicious if you're still sitting there when the
Speaker 1: cops come back and you're like, oh my gosh, thank
Speaker 1: thank god, here help us versus disappearance. Oh I better
Speaker 1: get out of here, because I was just helping her.
Speaker 1: I think, I think at this point, so I think
Speaker 1: he he came to realize the hopelessness of the situation.
Speaker 1: I also think that this though there isn't a lot
Speaker 1: of support for this theory, I think there are some
Speaker 1: signs that it might be the right one. And that's
Speaker 1: the car. Yeah, because think about it this way. He
Speaker 1: sends the guy in, the guy MUCKs the whole thing
Speaker 1: up and kills the nanny. He goes in, he discovers it,
Speaker 1: He sends the guy outside, and the guy goes and
Speaker 1: sits in the car and waits. You know, okay, boss,
Speaker 1: I'll be waiting for you, because there's blood in the car,
Speaker 1: and the hitman is gonna have blood all over him
Speaker 1: from beating Veronica and then from beating the nanny. Well,
Speaker 1: I think both, you know, I mean, I think it's
Speaker 1: gonna be both of them. He's gonna blood all over him,
Speaker 1: and that would explain why there was blood and hair
Speaker 1: in the car, and then of course there was you know,
Speaker 1: some of the stuff. So I really I think that
Speaker 1: he was trying to break it up and, as Devin
Speaker 1: put it, be the hero of the situation. And then
Speaker 1: he screwed it up. He takes off, he drops the
Speaker 1: guy off wherever he's going to drop him off for
Speaker 1: his final bit of of time with him, and maybe
Speaker 1: he pays him, maybe he doesn't. I don't know, and
Speaker 1: the wrong person. I don't. I don't think he deserves.
Speaker 1: I don't think you deserve to get paid. But on
Speaker 1: the other hand, you know, do you really look at
Speaker 1: the him and say, hey, screw you, I'm not paying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you probably don't, probably don't checks in the mail, Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: But that's personally, I kind of think that's probably the
Speaker 1: most likely scene because I don't think he had the
Speaker 1: stones to do well. The thing about it that The
Speaker 1: reason I don't like the hitman theory is is that
Speaker 1: Lord Luca and whatever his faults, did, love his children did.
Speaker 1: And the problem. The problem was sending a hitman by
Speaker 1: that to kill your wife. It's one of your kids
Speaker 1: stumbles upon the scene. Well, and that's why I don't get.
Speaker 1: I don't think that it was the hitman was supposed
Speaker 1: to kill anybody. I think he's supposed to rough her up,
Speaker 1: and then he would run in as the hero and
Speaker 1: chase the bad guy away, and she would realize how
Speaker 1: much she loved and needed him and welcome him back.
Speaker 1: Generally using a lead pipe to rus somebody that's not
Speaker 1: a good strategy. I mean, somebody hitting somebody on the
Speaker 1: ribs and breaking a few ribs, but you don't hit
Speaker 1: him on the head. Yeah. Although again the big question
Speaker 1: then is like she did try to reconcile with him.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was too make the house seemed like a
Speaker 1: dangerous place for the kids, so he would get custody. Yeah. Maybe,
Speaker 1: I mean there's a thousand ways that he made that
Speaker 1: somebody may have thought that should play out in their favor,
Speaker 1: but but yeah, I don't think the hitman was trying
Speaker 1: to just rougher up because the lead pipe that he
Speaker 1: is it's a serious tool. Well it's not just serious tool.
Speaker 1: It was bent. The lead pipe was bent, but some
Speaker 1: seriously hard whacking. Yeah that was okay. Let's smack and whack.
Speaker 1: Let's let's move forward to where did he go? Because
Speaker 1: we're done with who done it? Now, let's find out
Speaker 1: what happened to him? Yeah, what did happen to Yeah? Well,
Speaker 1: the most popular theory is that he committed suicide. Um,
Speaker 1: it's uh, let's see his his his friend John aspen All,
Speaker 1: who's a really wealthy guy on his own by the way,
Speaker 1: by the way, owns a couple of zoos. He does,
Speaker 1: but I mean, he had nothing to get from standing
Speaker 1: by Lucky Luke in all these years. But he said
Speaker 1: he probably didn't do it, but he probably did take
Speaker 1: the gentleman's out, probably took a boat out, got out
Speaker 1: into the channel, pulled the plug in the middle of
Speaker 1: the boat, and sank with it. Did they actually come
Speaker 1: with plugs? Yeah, some boats drain plug It's a real thing.
Speaker 1: It's not just in looney Dunes. Another theory that he
Speaker 1: put out there is that then this would be a
Speaker 1: little easier to do. Um, there's a ferry that leaves
Speaker 1: New Haven a couple of times a day and goes
Speaker 1: to France, and so you could have either boarded the
Speaker 1: ferry or more likely maybe he snuck on board and
Speaker 1: stowed away, which was plain why nobody on the ferry
Speaker 1: remember seeing it. But he could just basically out in
Speaker 1: the middle of the channel jumped overboard. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's the that's the primary way that everybody thinks that
Speaker 1: if he did commit suicide, he did it drowning himself
Speaker 1: in the English Channel. Yeah, and apparently got I think
Speaker 1: he got these from Susan Maxwell Scott. Yes, I think he.
Speaker 1: I believe he got us set of really strong sleeping
Speaker 1: pills from Susan Maxwell Scott. I do remember something about that.
Speaker 1: I remember the exact details at this moment, but yeah,
Speaker 1: that that that the thing is is that he took
Speaker 1: himself a huge dose of sleeping pills and then when
Speaker 1: those were starting to kick, and flung himself overboard. And
Speaker 1: if you if you went over the side of the ferry,
Speaker 1: then I'm I'm lucky for him. He probably got sucked
Speaker 1: into the screws. Yeah. Bah, let's uh, let's move forward
Speaker 1: to our next theory of where did he go, which
Speaker 1: is he left the country. Yeah, could have actually had
Speaker 1: a fake passport. He hopped on the ferry in New Haven.
Speaker 1: Think about it, Lord Lucan. He comes from money, He's
Speaker 1: got wealthy friends. He can do whatever he wanted when
Speaker 1: he was basically being a playboy almost, I mean, he
Speaker 1: just he did what he wanted he could. And so
Speaker 1: it's quite possible that he got ahold of some of
Speaker 1: his friends and they said, whoa mate, that's screwed up.
Speaker 1: We'll get you out of town. And so they got
Speaker 1: him out of town. And you can pick your favorite
Speaker 1: country right now, and chances are good he was cited
Speaker 1: in that country. I swear he's been sited more than Elvis, Yes,
Speaker 1: thousands of sightings there. There are two people who are
Speaker 1: the favorites for if we're going to say that he
Speaker 1: got spirited out of the country. The two people that
Speaker 1: our favorites are John aspen all As who said and
Speaker 1: James Goldsmith, Sir James Goldsmith, Sir James Goldsmith, who was
Speaker 1: also a very rich man. Actually, the lady on Lady
Speaker 1: Lucan's website, she has something to say about that, believe
Speaker 1: it or not. She says. She actually says in her
Speaker 1: website that those guys didn't like him all that much
Speaker 1: at all. Really, she said, yeah, she said, she quotes
Speaker 1: somebody else. There is a there's a guy who and
Speaker 1: I've actually read this guy's stuff before. He writes a
Speaker 1: lot about politics, which he used to, but he's also
Speaker 1: a little bit about gambling. And apparently he knew the
Speaker 1: guy that the whole Claremont Club gang. So his name
Speaker 1: is Talkie and last name I pronounceable. He actually wrote
Speaker 1: in the Sunday Times quote this is regarding Sir James Goldsmith,
Speaker 1: He wrote, Goldsmith was not particularly fond of Lucan unquote.
Speaker 1: He wrote that. She also says on her website John
Speaker 1: Aspinall was not one of the late Lord Lucan's best friends.
Speaker 1: Both James Goldsmith and John Aspinall have supported my version
Speaker 1: of events, namely that my late husband murdered Mrs Rivet
Speaker 1: by mistake instead of me, and shortly there afterwards committed suicide.
Speaker 1: They did not want their integrity damaged by a murderer.
Speaker 1: That that is really funny because she's the only one
Speaker 1: who really puts that out there, and I love that
Speaker 1: that says that she says my version of events, but
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, I wasn't there at the time.
Speaker 1: I don't know how much they did or did not
Speaker 1: like him. But those two guys are the prime candidates.
Speaker 1: They are that that's what everybody else says. But according
Speaker 1: to her, they didn't much care for him. And according
Speaker 1: to Talkie unpronounceable, yeah, yeah, buddies either. Well, according to
Speaker 1: the theory, what those two did is they helped spirit
Speaker 1: him out of the UK and get him to Kenya,
Speaker 1: and then years later they organized trips for his children
Speaker 1: to Kenya so that he could see them unbeknownst to them.
Speaker 1: And another one of these yeah, well yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of these, but this this one where it
Speaker 1: says that they went to that he went to Kenya,
Speaker 1: That is from Aspinall's secretary. She said that she did
Speaker 1: all these transfers and all this funny stuff and years
Speaker 1: later figured out and then yeah, figured out who was
Speaker 1: for Or there's another version that says that he was
Speaker 1: flown he went to a small airfield in Kent and
Speaker 1: then got on a plane heading to France. The person
Speaker 1: who helped him in this version is Susan Maxwell. Scott.
Speaker 1: She's the one who organized the whole thing. Now, I
Speaker 1: will say that the source for this bulatantly admits that
Speaker 1: he was told the story while in a pub, which
Speaker 1: really makes me question how much truth there is to it.
Speaker 1: But the guy who's telling the story says that then
Speaker 1: he was his father who drove them to the airport,
Speaker 1: and then he himself went and picked up the Corsair
Speaker 1: and then drove it away and and dumped it. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's so many sightings I want to say about the
Speaker 1: whole thing about transporting the kids to Africa where you know,
Speaker 1: and and of course they didn't meet with him. According
Speaker 1: to that story, he's watching them. He watched them from
Speaker 1: a distance. I saw it in view that his son
Speaker 1: George did the eighth Thorold, and and actually he was
Speaker 1: he was. He was quite intelligent and articulate. And I
Speaker 1: love the way he put this. He said, he said,
Speaker 1: I've never ever been to Gabon, and I hope I'm
Speaker 1: announcing that correctly. Maybe it's Gable owner, but anyway, he says,
Speaker 1: I had never ever been to Gabon, and I guess
Speaker 1: I was supposedly transported down there with my with my
Speaker 1: sister then they're from my father could watch us or
Speaker 1: view us from some creepy distance. Yes, but yeah, he
Speaker 1: was very dismissive of that entire story. So the whole
Speaker 1: family has been dismissive of most of these theories that
Speaker 1: are out there, short of he would and did himself
Speaker 1: in the channel. Yeah, but here's some of my favorite sightings. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to hear them all right. He was cited
Speaker 1: in Martin, New Zealand. There was an Englishman who was
Speaker 1: investigated as possibly being Lord Lucan, even though it turned
Speaker 1: out that he was just some English guy living in
Speaker 1: his land rover with his pet possum. The picture of
Speaker 1: him with this possum a little different in New Zealand.
Speaker 1: They do. They're they're different color and not nearly as ugly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: never mind, Now this is the best part. Everybody said
Speaker 1: it was Lord Lucan because it was a brit even
Speaker 1: though this guy was ten years younger and half a
Speaker 1: foot shorter. But he was in a land rover. Well,
Speaker 1: there you go, there go, yeah, let's see what. Oh,
Speaker 1: this is awesome. He lived in go oh where he
Speaker 1: was living the hippie lifestyle as Barry Helping until his
Speaker 1: death in and he had the awesomest nickname ever, jungly Berry. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was pretty conclusively disproven. Yeah, he worked as a
Speaker 1: waiter in a San Francisco restaurant. And then, because the
Speaker 1: IRA have to get involved in everything, the last one
Speaker 1: says that he was held hostage by the IRA, and
Speaker 1: presumably they were responsible for the tack on his family,
Speaker 1: I guess. And then before they killed him, or before
Speaker 1: he killed himself, he asked to be fed to the
Speaker 1: tigers at the zoo in Kent, of course. Yeah, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, it was. Yeah, I've heard that one too.
Speaker 1: The another theory that I've heard is that the the
Speaker 1: Underworld contacts, the shady Underworld contacts that hooked him up
Speaker 1: with the hitman realized that he was kind of a
Speaker 1: liability after the whole thing went out and knocked him
Speaker 1: and knocked him off. Yeah, so that's another theory. Sure,
Speaker 1: it's entirely possible at this point with all the other
Speaker 1: craziness we've had going on. Yeah, but I'm inclined to
Speaker 1: believe he killed himself with a lead pipe on the
Speaker 1: ferry in the English channel Candlestick. Yeah, I I think
Speaker 1: that most likely he did himself in and I, like
Speaker 1: I said, I personally think that the he sent somebody
Speaker 1: into the house and then the whole and then realized
Speaker 1: what a dumb idea it was probably what happened, But
Speaker 1: that's my opinion. I'm in client to believe that he
Speaker 1: didn't hire a hit man. He just wanted to himself
Speaker 1: to do it. But and you know, kind of bungled
Speaker 1: the whole thing. Yeah, if he didn't himself, he really did.
Speaker 1: He really didn't think his crying too too carefully. He
Speaker 1: should have really put a lot more thought into you. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: one one last thing is that that in that that
Speaker 1: that Mirror interview with George the eight thorough he talked
Speaker 1: about how sick the family is of hearing of all
Speaker 1: these sightings. We were so tired of this. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's not alive. He died. You know, please everybody accepted. Well,
Speaker 1: if you have any thoughts on this particular story or
Speaker 1: any other stories that you would like us to take
Speaker 1: a look at, you are more than welcome to send
Speaker 1: those to us. You can send that to our email address,
Speaker 1: which is Thinking Sideways Podcast at gmail dot com. We
Speaker 1: of course have our website where this and all previous
Speaker 1: episodes are and as well as some of our research.
Speaker 1: That website is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. We are
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Speaker 1: to help out the show. That is us, all of it.
Speaker 1: If I think all right, well, we're gonna go ahead
Speaker 1: and wrap this one up, get ready, guys. The next
Speaker 1: episode comes out in the month of October, a big month.
Speaker 1: It's a listener's suggestion our top stories. We're calling it
Speaker 1: thinking sideways, most wanted, Yes, because these are most suggested
Speaker 1: or highest voted stories to cover. So we're going to
Speaker 1: do that for the entire month of October. We're not
Speaker 1: going to tell you what what what Next week is
Speaker 1: a surprise, all right, everybody, We'll talk to you next week.
Speaker 1: So it was choppy in the kitchen with a lead pipe.
Speaker 1: It's just so wrong all the time. I had to
Speaker 1: mention chupy, I have an accused chuopy of anything for
Speaker 1: a while