4.8 • 13.5K Ratings
🗓️ 12 September 2023
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
[CONTENT WARNING: this episode contains depictions of violence and spousal abuse.]
On November 7, 1974, John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan committed a horrible crime: attacking his wife, Veronica, Lady Lucan, and murdering their nanny, Sandra Rivett, in the family's quiet Belgravia home. But it's what happened after that turned the story into a true-crime legend: the morning after the murder, Lord Lucan disappeared.
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0:00.0 | Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky, |
0:06.5 | listener discretion advised. |
0:20.0 | Thursday, November 7, 1974. |
0:26.5 | The residential London neighborhood of Belgravia was known back in the Tutor period as a hotspot for highwaymen and robberies. |
0:38.0 | But by the 1970s, it was considered a quiet space in the heart of the city. |
0:45.0 | Today, the neighborhood's Lower Belgrave Street has its own wiki page with four notable residents listed. |
0:55.0 | Two writers, the wife of a Nicaraguan dictator and John Bingham, the 7th Earl of Lucan. |
1:04.0 | The night of November 7, Lucan's estranged wife Veronica was home with the couple's children and their nanny, a woman named Sandra Rivett. |
1:17.0 | Thursday was normally Rivett's night off, the evening she would go out with her boyfriend. |
1:24.0 | But Sandra switched her schedule that week and had seen her boyfriend the night before. |
1:30.0 | A little before 9, Sandra Rivett put the youngest children to bed and asked Lady Lucan if she wanted a cup of tea. |
1:40.0 | After a while, Veronica began to wonder what was taking the nanny so long and so she headed downstairs to the home's basement kitchen. |
1:52.0 | She made it to the top of the basement stairs where she was struck by a metal pipe. |
1:59.0 | According to later testimony, Veronica screamed for her life and then recognized her attacker's voice as her husband when he told her to shut up. |
2:14.0 | A struggle ensued, Lucan only released the grip on his wife's throat when Veronica managed to grab his testicles and he gave up the fight. |
2:26.0 | With tensions slightly calmer for the moment, Veronica asked her husband where Rivett was. |
2:35.0 | At first he was evasive, finally he admitted she was dead. |
2:41.0 | In an attempt to placate her husband and by herself some time, Veronica suggested she would help him dispose of the body, |
2:51.0 | but that she had to stay in the house until her wounds from their earlier fight were healed. |
2:57.0 | Her gambit was successful. |
3:00.0 | Lucan agreed and when he went into the bathroom to get a wet towel, Veronica realized he wouldn't be able to hear her over the running water. |
3:11.0 | She fled the house and successfully ran to a nearby pub, the plumber's arms. |
... |
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