Friday 8th November 1974
Police are still looking for the Earl of Lucan who has not been seen since his children's nanny was found battered to death at the family's Belgravia home. His wife, Lady Lucan was also badly beaten.
Lord Lucan, an athletic man of 39 at the time, who was a former bobsleigh and powerboat racing competitor, was suspected of still being in the area at first, although police were watching ports and airports.
Earlier in the day, Lady Lucan had run screaming and bleeding from the family house in Lower Belgrave Street and into the nearby Plumbers Arms. She shouted to the landlord that the nanny, Ms. Sandra Rivett, aged 29, had been murdered. She cried: "He's in the house. Help me." The landlord, Mr Derrick Whitehouse, aged 44, said: "The pub was quiet when she burst through the door. She was covered in blood. She kept screaming, "My children, my children.' "I asked her who she was and she said Lady Lucan. But I could not get much sense out of her and she was in such a state of shock that eventually she went completely silent.
"My wife, Diane, brought down some white linen and we tried to stop her bleeding. Her head injuries were quite severe. She had been hit four or five times."
After a call from Mr Whitehouse detectives went to the Lucan home, where they found Mrs Rivett, from Coulsdon, Surrey, dead in the basement kitchen trussed up in a canvas bag. She had been ferociously battered to death with a heavy piece of lead tubing.
The Lucan's children, Lady Frances, aged 10, Lady Camilla, 4, and Lord Bingham, 7, were found huddled together and sobbing in an upstairs room.
Lord Lucan, who was educated at Eton and served in the Coldstream Guards, married Lady Lucan, the daughter of an army officer, in 1963. They separated in 1973, a year before his disappearance.
Police never found the couple's missing brown Daf car, registration number LPK 389K.
