Original subtitles

Hold it up here. That's it.

One, two, three.

There you go, see that? See the light? We're recording.

Shall we do it, then? Let's get this done.

I'm scared stiff.

Well, let's just get past the door knock now, OK...

All right, yeah. OK, stop getting on at me. OK.

OK, let's go, then. I'll follow you.

Let's go. Let's do it, then.

Ah, God.

Come on, you'll be fine. Honestly, Neil.

Yeah, I know, but you know... Just think of the relief

when you've done it. What are we doing?

This programme contains some strong language

and scenes which some viewers may find upsetting.

Keep going. Well, it's all right for you.

I think this is the one.

Right, let's just do it.

Come on, Neil.

The chances of finding Lucan alive...

How would a gambler put it?

10,000 to one.

That's Lucan. Course that's Lucan, all day long.

95%, he's the same man 50 years on.

Oh! No, no. It's not my friend Lucky.

I knew who it was the second that I saw him,

I swear on my mother's grave that he is Lord Lucan.

Imagine, imagine if you thought

you'd eluded justice for that long...

..and your nemesis has found you.

DOORBELL RINGS

I found out when I was about nine or ten.

I remember my dad being very quiet.

It was my mum that actually told me about adoption.

I don't think they told me I was adopted,

they told me about adoption.

And I remember them saying,

"It's not that somebody didn't want you in a past life,

"but it meant, for whatever reason, somebody couldn't look after you."

I remember telling all my friends,

"Well, guess what? I'm adopted."

So, I sort of used it a little bit, does that make sense?

Oh, no. Oh, Mum.

She's kept all sorts.

Me with my mum on holiday.

She's a lovely lady, my mum.

I was very happy where I was.

I wasn't curious at all.

Nice one there of my mum and dad.

Later on in life, my mother used to talk about a brown envelope.

"You should open it, there's items in the envelope that you're going

"to need some... Basically some answers to some questions."

And I remember saying, "No, Mum, no, I'm not interested.

"I don't need the brown envelope."

Unbeknown to me, my mum knew that she had cancer.

I remember saying to her, erm...

..on her deathbed.

I remember saying to her, "Mum."

She goes "Yes?"

"Where's that brown envelope?"

She said, "I'm not telling you, but you'll find it when you need it."

I've left it another three years,

and my dad was out, went to my mum's bedroom.

And it was easy, chest of drawers, opened the drawer and there it was.

"Dear Mr and Mrs Berriman, I'm pleased to tell you

"that we have a baby son for you.

"His mother is a single girl age 21.

"She's five foot two, green eyes and a fair complexion.

"She already has a little boy who, at the moment,

"is being cared for by her parents

"and she feels that she cannot possibly bring up a baby herself.

"The baby's father is a man she has known for quite a long time

"but he's married to someone else.

"Unfortunately, while his wife had a period in hospital,

"she visited his home. Intercourse occurred..." Oh, dear.

"..and she became pregnant.

"Baby will be ready on March 23rd

"and if you like him you can take him home."

How strange is that?

Well, they obviously did like you.

Yeah, but all babies are nice, aren't they, really? So, it's...

The most bizarre thing was a newspaper article from 1994.

"The day a young boy discovered the truth about fugitive peer's nanny."

"I didn't know Lucan had murdered my mother until I was 11.

"I was always told she was my sister."

What did you know about the Lord Lucan affair?

Well, I knew a bit about the nanny being beaten to death

by an aristocrat who then disappeared

and just escaped justice,

and went on the run, and...

But I didn't understand why we seemed to have

a newspaper article about somebody

who was brought up by his grandparents.

He actually believed his mother, Sandra Rivett, was his sister.

Somebody called Stephen Hensby.

This is my adoption birth certificate.

Neil James Berriman.

It was then that I managed to put two and two together.

This is my adoption order with my real name, Gary Roger Hensby.

So, Stephen, the boy from the newspaper article,

must be my brother.

Stephen Hensby.

But the lady can't be connected to me

because she's called Sandra Rivett.

I read the article one last time

and, down the bottom,

I then realised actually her name was Sandra Eleanor Hensby.

So I am the son of Sandra Eleanor Hensby.

Also known as the nanny murdered by Lord Lucan in 1974.

A simple letter was what I was expecting, but...

This just doesn't happen, does it?

You know, the chances of you being adopted

and find out that your real mother

is in one of the biggest murder mysteries of all time,

it's just... It's unbelievable.

My mother actually sort of sent me on a journey of detective work

right from the start.

And the brown envelope has set me on a world of mystery,

intrigue, corruption, sadness, depression.

I wouldn't have thought, for one minute, that my mother would have

expected me to have taken it to the extreme to which I've taken it now.

But she did know you.

Yeah, she did, yeah.

I mean, I'm no detective, but you don't really have to be.

I think if you've got the mentality of being so tenacious

that I won't let anything lie.

When all this started,

all that I knew was what every man on the street knew.

Which was not very much.

Good heavens. Oh, I see.

Oh, this... Good afternoon.

Hmm. Hmm.

I was desperate to know as much as I could

and as fast as I could.

Oh, God. Ah!

What's this?

Oh, my man cave.

Couldn't wish for a better place, really.

It's ideal having a builder's lockup for my research.

The only way I could really get any sense of it,

right from the start,

was to watch all the dramas that have been made.

What I find stranger is people playing my mother.

I think, because I've got no massive connection with Sandra,

so when I see something on the screen,

it doesn't matter what drama it's in, that's my mum.

Most of them seem to start with Lady Lucan, Veronica,

running down Lower Belgrave Street towards the Plumbers Arms.

The police were called after Lady Lucan ran into the street

shouting, "Murder!"

Are you ready? OK, my name is Graham Forsyth.

I'm an ex-detective Sergeant of the Metropolitan Police,

retiring some years ago.

I got to the premises around ten o'clock, 10.20.

We go through the house, we split -

one went one way, one went the other.

I got the basement floor.

Tricky, isn't it?

Even watching a reconstruction is...

..horrendous.

I know the light bulb had gone, there was no light.

In the dark, I could see there was a sack.

It was a big sack.

There appeared to be an arm hanging out of it,

over the side of the sack.

It was an awful amount of blood.

There was blood everywhere.

It was seeping through the sack.

It was coming through the top of the... It was everywhere,

you were literally paddling in blood.

I genuinely thought it was possible that the victim

had been decapitated, there was so much blood.

Upstairs, we discovered there was children,

I wanted to know who's house we were in.

It turned out that we were told that it was owned by Lord Lucan.

Where was Lord Lucan?

Word has gone, flown through London as fast at that,

here we've got an aristocrat, God help us,

we've got this, we've got that, all the other.

It's murder, there's blood everywhere. Woof!

The word is travelling fast.

Here's the Evening Standard.

"Body in sack. Countess runs out screaming."

Daily Mail - "Wanted for murder - world hunt for missing earl."

"Body of Sandra Rivett is taken from a house in Lower Belgravia Street.

"She was trussed up in a bag and battered to death

"with a piece of lead pipe."

"Worldwide murder hunt was under way last night

"for the Earl of Lucan, 39, missing since his children's nanny..."

It's all about Lord Lucan.

An Aristocrat, peer of the realm.

Moustache.

But who is he?

I knew him for 20 years,

saw him almost every day.

Here was a gambler, Taki Theodoracopulos by name.

I met Lucky, as we called him,

because we all belonged to the Clermont Club

where we gambled all day long.

Were you a gambler? Yes, I was.

What's the most you've lost in one session of gambling?

100. You're not talking about £100, are you?

No, 100,000.

Clermont membership was very, very difficult to get into,

but Lucky, he had lunch and dinner there every day, seven days a week.

And you called him "Lucky"?

His name was Lucky because he was so unlucky in gambling.

If you're stupid enough to gamble,

like anything dangerous,

it's a thrill.

The international offshore powerboat race is a testing course.

White Migrant still leading, Lord Bingham giving quarter to no man.

Gambler, loves speed.

Strikes me, anything that he wants to do, he just gets on and does it.

The lifestyle's amazing, innit?

I mean, look at it.

They don't want for anything, do they?

Friends, luxury yachts,

got an attractive wife, Veronica.

They definitely liked the camera.

I mean, they filmed everything about their life.

Everything looks ideal.

He loved his children, that's clear from this.

Throwing things around.

I mean, watching some of this,

you wouldn't have thought that he would have wanted to have left them.

They had everything, didn't they?

What was he doing killing my mother?

They had separated.

He had another address,

so I went down there,

I discovered quite a few tapes.

He'd made tapes of his wife.

What kind of tapes?

On the phone, he secretly recorded his wife, as far as I know.

What was he trying to get her to say?

I mean, just talking.

He used to tell her that she was ill, she wasn't well...

..and she needed treatment.

I do remember that.

Lady Lucan left her home in Belgravia guarded by police,

as she has been since her husband's disappearance.

A really surprising number of people were willing to talk to me.

Veronica's sister,

Lucan's sister,

people who'd really known them.

There was this malign chemistry between the Lucans.

She looked very, very pretty,

and he looked very handsome,

and it all looked rather fairy tale.

But, I mean, I've always wondered if he was gay, to be honest.

Erm... Really? Why so?

Er, well, I... I did... I'm not...

there's not just me saying that.

People said things like,

"Oh, he was known to be safe in taxis,"

and things like that.

He had to have an heir and do those conventional things.

But by degrees,

things just fell apart.

It was the custody case.

It was all about that.

The vicious hearing.

Veronica talked about his sexual proclivities.

Claimed that he was violent.

She, herself, admitted she had mental health issues.

She had a psychiatrist who was, said on her behalf,

"As long as she takes lithium,

"she's fit to have custody."

Lucky came to see me here in Gstaad and he said to me,

"You know, it's a strange thing,

"the moment she walks into a court of law,

"she's transformed from a mad woman to perfectly sane,

"perfectly articulate person

"and swings the judge every time."

After he lost, the court order said she must have a nanny in situ.

She was not capable of looking after them herself.

There was a procession of nannies, a constant procession of nannies.

WHISTLING

And into that chaos walks my mother.

Good morning, love. Hello.

There's very few people that are around

that can give us a sense of

what it was like on the inside.

DOORBELL

At the time, I read that my mother had a boyfriend,

an Aussie bar manager called John.

Good looking fella, wasn't he? Hey, and he had hair.

I took over the Plumber Arms.

It was a good little boozer,

and this was actually the pub that Veronica ran to

on the night of the murder.

This is where I met Sandra.

And what was your first impression?

Nice bum.

Seriously, erm...

She was a lot of fun.

Does a bit of piss-taking.

She had a great job, she'd made good friends with her boss.

Veronica was a nice person, she really was and...

Well, I mean some people come right out with it

and say she was completely mad.

Bullshit.

This is Veronica, Lady Lucan's book.

And she talks about the first time she met Sandra.

"A very nice girl who looked most respectable and well turned out.

"I liked her at once.

"She seemed kind and decent, she said she liked

"to take a pride in her work

"and understood the difficulties attached to my situation."

I was up there one day waiting for Sandra to come out

and His Lordship, he was standing across the road near a park,

just standing there watching the house.

They were getting phone calls in the house -

midnight, it'd be three o'clock in the morning -

nobody on the other end, heavy breathing,

all that sort of bullshit.

Try and intimidate her and send her over the edge.

Sandra, at one stage, took one of the calls and just said to him,

"Why don't you just fuck off? We know who you are."

I said, "Did you say that to him?"

She said, "Yeah, course I did." So, yeah.

She sounds quite a tough one.

Yeah, yeah, a very strong personality.

We saw the deterioration of Lucky,

especially the last two weeks.

He was drinking all the time.

He came to see me two nights before the murder.

He borrowed some money.

£12,000.

He said because of the children.

I mean, for him to come to me to ask for that money...

..he must have been pretty desperate, he had no money.

Because the creditors were closing in.

I don't think there was a major bank he didn't owe money to.

He lost £20,000 on the case.

His gambling became more and more manic

because he was trying to win money

which, as soon as you try and do that, you inevitably lose.

And he did become obsessional and he was stalking her,

and he was... It was really the end.

There's endless theories to what happened that night

on the seventh of November,

but the police are pretty clear cut

on what happened.

Lucan was furious about the custody case.

He goes to the house to kill Veronica,

goes down into the basement,

removes the light bulb

then waits in the darkness.

And Sandra came down the stairs

to wash up some cups,

or make another cup of tea, and he bludgeoned her to death.

And then he violently attacks Veronica

when she'd come down to the basement to see where Sandra was.

Veronica managed to escape, run down the road and raised the alarm.

So he got the wrong woman?

A case of mistaken identity?

Do you think it was?

I did.

Everybody did.

Then I got a call from the police

asking if I wanted to come in and look at the case files.

The lady was very nice,

took me through lots of paperwork.

She said, "If this will help you,

"we have a book of the crime scene photographs."

I've never seen any pictures of the crime scene.

And I was due to get the train home.

The book was to one side.

I thought, "Oh..."

I did give a health warning.

Because once he turns the page and looks at those images,

you can't unsee them.

You could tell he was really thinking hard about

what he wanted to do, needed to do.

And he chose to turn those pages.

Front door steps.

They've worked their way into the house.

Downstairs, the basement.

The tea tray at the bottom of the stairs with all the broken cups.

Coming down the stairs, we can see broken crockery.

We start to see Sandra's body here in the mail sack.

Blood all over the floor.

And also some splattering,

right at the bottom of the stairs

where the first blows were struck.

Lots of blood on the door.

And the mail sack.

Other photographs...

It's probably about seven, eight really disturbing photographs.

Six major blows to the head,

splitting the scalp...

..and then bruising to the back of the right hand,

defence wounds where she would have tried to block.

We found there was a lead pipe -

not very long, but very heavy.

The old-fashioned lead piping you used to get in old houses.

And then you think, "Well, why keep bashing her?

"What was the point?"

I mean, this is supposed to be a gentleman.

You know, why keep bashing the kid?

There's no excuse, but he was completely drunk.

Do you think?

Well, I know so, because he had drank two bottles of vodka,

he was about to kill his wife.

A cold blooded murderer wouldn't drink at all, would drink water.

The story goes, "He accidently kills the wrong person."

I don't believe that.

She was trying to protect herself with her forearms

and she's... I think she's got bruising on the front of the face.

That would indicate that somebody was, they were face-to-face.

SMASHING AND SCREAMING ON TV

Lucan's plan was to convince everybody that Veronica was mad

and then get custody of the children.

This was not going the right way for Lucan, was it?

I think because Sandra was there,

Veronica was able to cope with it better.

When Sandra was in the house with Veronica,

I think it gave Veronica a sense of safety and security.

His plans were falling apart.

He wanted rid of her.

The most upsetting thing about it all

is that she didn't die instantly.

It destroyed me.

And you never knew her?

No, I never... I never knew Sandra.

But that doesn't change things, does it? Erm, she's still your mother.

Good to see you.

I don't get to see many people

that knew my mum the way that you knew her.

So find out as much as you can before I cark it, pal.

That's why I'm here, John.

We were just enjoying life, that's all.

To be honest, your mum said to me,

three or four weeks into the relationship,

that she had baggage of her own, you know?

And she explained about putting herself into a...

A facility because she was depressed.

And I learned about Stephen and I learned about you.

Sandra was depressed?

Not when I knew her, she wasn't.

Working for somebody that, you know, she really liked

and vice versa, and the kids loved her.

What did she say about me, then, John? Because...

Nothing much, to be honest. I'm sorry.

I had no idea who adopted you or anything like that.

I can't give you much more information on that.

Oh, no, that's fine.

I'm pretty sure she felt that...

..both of you were getting a better chance at life

to what she was able to give you.

Who knows? Later on down the track,

she might have started looking for you and Stephen,

and that sort of thing, I don't know.

It is what it is, I'm afraid.

Mm-hm.

Something you need to know about that particular night, erm...

The day before, erm...

Watneys, they'd gotten in touch with me

and said they want me to go into another pub.

So...

..I rang your mum and said,

"Can you swap nights? Because I'm going have to be working

"on the Thursday night."

Which was normally her night off.

She spoke to Veronica, and Veronica said, "Yeah, that's no problem."

You know? So...

..I got her to change her shift.

So, Sandra was home that night when she should have been out with me.

EXHALES

And, no matter what people say to you...

..you can't forgive yourself for something like that.

And there's nothing I can do about it, you know, it was, erm...

It was my fault.

Give me a sec.

Imagine your girlfriend's brutally murdered

and John's had to put it in a box

and put the lid on it.

If I hadn't asked her to change her night off...

If, if, if, if, if.

50 years that he's been stewing on that.

Sometimes I feel as though as I'm the one that actually killed her.

That's a bit harsh.

You mustn't beat yourself up over it.

Who was to know that it wouldn't have happened a week after?

Until you've been in a situation

where somebody close to you has been murdered,

you really don't understand what...

What the feelings of anger, revenge...

..injustice really mean.

ON TV: If you think of battering,

you're close to a person,

you must have a sense of who they are.

You must have a sense of the voice that you're hearing.

Even in the dark, you know the feel, the smell of people, don't you?

To put it at its most basic.

Bearing in mind that Sandra had different coloured hair,

then whoever attacked Sandra knew it was Sandra.

Do you agree? Mm.

Ah, it's just never-ending.

It's been very, very difficult.

Many, many hours, every weekend, up on the computer,

"Oh, come and look at this."

Quite good having a bit of a mission, isn't it?

Er, yes, it's good having a mission in life,

but not at the expense of...your own life.

It's just taken over.

I try to bring him back to normality, you know,

"What are we doing this week?"

You know, "Where are we going on holiday? Shall I book it?"

But the conversation always comes back to Lucan.

ON TV: And what happened to Lucan after that night?

My own view is that he's dead.

As far as the police were concerned,

I think it's fair to say that, from almost immediately

the case was solved,

and the only issue was, "Where is Lord Lucan?"

I wish to interview him and I'd like to interview him

as soon as possible.

And if any person is helping him

or have any knowledge of his whereabouts,

we'd like them to let us know.

Have you any idea why he isn't coming forward at the moment? No.

All the police knew

was that he'd driven, that night,

in a borrowed car, to Uckfield in Sussex.

Then he would have come along here.

But this is the area that we...

The next thing we know, which is, in a sense, the last thing,

is that the car he was driving was found abandoned in

an obscure residential road in Newhaven -

which is, of course, a port

and, therefore, natural narrative would lead one to say

that Newhaven is journey's end.

There were ferries that went regularly to Dieppe,

so one would say he got on one of those ferries and he jumped off.

We tried everything, even had the bloody ferry taken out of the water.

Because forensically, although it's been in the water,

they could still find whether propellers had chopped him up.

That was the theory, but they didn't find anything.

What do you think happened?

I think, in the end, he did himself in.

Soon afterwards?

I think so.

It had all gone so terribly wrong.

He must have been terribly depressed.

The search began at nine o'clock this morning,

dogs were used to check a rugged half mile stretch of cliffs.

Police also searched caravans on a site overlooking the harbour.

He must have sobered up,

then he realises that he had committed

a terrible crime and there was no coming back.

The police divers are due to carry out an underwater search

of the harbour. They'll be concentrating on a deep hole

where a number of bodies have been found in the past.

The only thing that makes sense to me

was that he killed himself immediately.

Lucky was a very experienced sailor.

Puts weights on him, he goes down the Channel.

It's... But it's quite hard, isn't it?

Because bodies usually eventually come to the surface.

No, they don't if they're weighed down,

and fish eat you.

Please take my word, all his friends knew from day one,

Lucky died 50 years ago on that night.

"He's dead, job done."

That was the consensus.

I was stumped.

He seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth.

I didn't know what to do.

Morning, morning. Oh. Good to see you. Are you all right?

Ooh, yeah, not too bad. Are you all good? Yeah, it's cold out there.

Is it? Yeah. Are you hungry?

Yeah, bacon sandwich or something like that.

Toasted or...

Normal. Normal. Normal, we're good.

Brown sauce or red sauce?

Not fussed. You?

I met Glen in 2008.

I'm a bit hungry, actually.

I went for a run this morning, so I'm going to have a bit...

Did you? When did you start doing that?

Oh, I'm trying to do couch to 5K in six months.

Glen, he's an investigative reporter.

It's only when you get to Dunkirk

that you realise just how easy it is

to get past French security.

Half an hour's drive through the Judaean desert

and you reach here, The Dead Sea.

This bridge is over the M6 near the Sandbach Services.

Because they know most badger baiters...

..know first-hand the dangers of picking up battlefield ammunition.

Actually, I emailed the BBC after watching a programme,

and I think it was probably...

Plastic surgery, yeah. That's it.

1963.

Carolyn's father's notes detail an operation performed on Lucan.

What's that bit there, then? That's Lucan's nose?

That's Lucan's nose from the base.

I see. Looking up the nostrils.

The Holy Grail for me,

as it emerged in the '90s,

was the Lucan story.

And I wanted to get into the river and go and find the gold nugget.

When you told me the story about the... The brown envelope. Yeah.

Oh, I mean, it set all my journalistic bells ringing.

It was like St Paul's Cathedral, I was like, "Wow."

I mean, when you first meet people it's really difficult, isn't it?

Because you don't know how you're going to...

How you're going to get on.

I'll be very honest. I hid a lot of stuff from you.

Well, I know that.

Because I couldn't trust you, I didn't know you.

But I trusted you because I didn't have anywhere else to go, really.

Yeah, he is a rock.

He's my rock, actually.

Don't tell him that, but...

..you know, I need him, don't I?

Where are you? You're under there.

I assessed the evidence on this case slowly over the '90s

and into the early 2000s.

HE BLOWS DUST

We know that the English Channel was scoured by police on both sides,

patrol boats up and down.

Not a body, not a clue.

How could someone just fall off the face of the earth, you know?

Bumph, disappear.

Lucan, what's going on? Are you coming here?

HE WHISTLES

Lucan?

Good boy. Sit.

Every now and again, sightings would pop up.

It started in France, in Cherbourg.

The police inquiries have centred on the Grand Hotel

close to Cherbourg Harbour.

He come to restaurant with a girl, a....

With a girl? Yeah. Young girl, French girl.

But you are satisfied that who you served a meal to is Lord Lucan.

Yes. Yes, yes.

And then there was a sighting over in Jersey.

A perfectly respectable Englishman

with amazing resemblances to Lord Lucan.

Anyone elegant with a moustache,

you'd find ten press photographers on your doorstep.

Lord Lucan's been sighted again, I understand? Yes, he has.

He was seen in a cafe somewhere in South Africa.

Where was he? God, he's been everywhere.

He's been everywhere!

The press, they'd all go down, find nothing whatsoever,

get drunk as skunks and come back to London absolutely pissed

out of their brains, which is a usual media reaction.

Seychelles, I went to Seychelles twice.

Mutare, Komatipoort...

Canada.

It was the single case that I spent most time on.

Sordid domestic murder -

people thought the aristocracy were above that.

Absolutely captured the public's imagination.

Suddenly the phone would ring and we'd get sightings.

South America, the Far East,

on a farm in Mexico.

He was seen crying into his prawns in Mozambique.

Transport cafe on the M1.

A depressed butcher in Brisbane.

He was in Japan, he was in the Philippines,

he was in Madagascar, Trinidad...

A man who lived in a camper van in New Zealand.

We spoke to Roger's neighbour.

She saw this photo of Lord Lucan

and is convinced he's living down the road.

I'm sure that was who he is, because he's trying to make out

that he's a very poor man. Poor man, my foot.

He sleeps in a Land Rover and has a pet possum named Redfern.

Are you Lord Lucan? No.

As time went on, people had given up on it being a serious investigation

to find a criminal on the run.

This, we're told, is Lord Lucan.

Living the life of a hippie in Goa

under the name of Jungle Barry.

Both sporting an aristocratic forehead,

left parting and distinctive eyebrows.

Lucky couldn't live outside of Belgravia and Mayfair.

The idea that he could live in Goa...

I mean, when he came to the South of France,

you could see him a mile away, an Englishman abroad.

You know, that charming way of not really knowing where you are.

But looking down at these people

and their strange habits.

There's no way.

Today, five years later, no-one knows whether he's alive or dead.

Lucan disappeared a decade ago...

20 years ago, Lord Lucan...

It was madness.

A horrific murder moves into a farce.

He was last seen running round on Shergar in the Bull Ring.

How do you investigate something like this?

If you're watching, Lord Lucan, please, you know,

give us a ring, because Gary...

Sometimes you need a lucky break.

My intuition, as his son, is that he died within about 12 hours of...

Of the event.

But... And that raises a whole load of questions

which I don't know where to go with.

A documentary had been on television.

Lucan's son was in it.

When that went out,

a woman called Marianne Robey was watching it at home.

George Bingham, he just said,

"I wish I knew what the truth was."

I suddenly thought, "Well, I remember sending you to Africa,

"I know your dad was alive. I could tell you some things."

So I set off trying to contact him,

which proved very difficult.

I tried a few journalists,

sent out three or four emails,

I was contacted by, erm, Glen Campbell of the BBC.

So, we just chat for a bit, really.

But not recording, are we not...?

Yeah, we are recording, yeah.

He wanted to do an interview, which I was very reluctant,

I honestly didn't feel that comfortable about saying too much.

Shall I just put it there...?

Yeah, sorry, I'll just...

She didn't want to be on camera.

So, what was your job?

In '79, I answered an ad and moved into Aspinall's.

Mr Aspinall's secretary, I was more a secretary for the casino.

Mr Aspinall's Clermont Club

in one of the last private houses in Berkeley Square.

This is the restaurant.

John Aspinall ran casinos.

Pick them out now.

He ran Howletts Zoo.

These animals are not tame.

We're not the boss.

As, no doubt, you can see.

And, he was a very, very good friend of Lord Lucan's.

He was a very good boss, very loyal, very kind.

Did me favours which I appreciated.

And had you heard of Lord Lucan and the whole mystery?

Maybe something had come in the news in '74,

I mean, I would have been 19.

In 1979, I was asked to be involved

in arranging for Lord Lucan's children

to go to visit him in Africa.

The bits I had to do was to arrange flights for them,

passports for them.

They had to have a second passport

because, otherwise, it would be stamped and their mother,

Lady Lucan, wasn't to know about this trip.

It was made clear to me that, if she were to get in touch

for any reason, there was no mention to be made about them going off.

There was a court order that the children would be wards of court

and that their guardian would be Lady Lucan's sister

and her husband Bill Shand Kydd.

Bill took them out of school a week early

without Lady Lucan being aware.

What I had been told, and what I believed, was that they would

believe that they were going to a safari at Tree Tops in Kenya.

And that their father just wanted to see them from a distance.

Not to, not for them to be aware and, therefore,

not for them to have to keep secrets.

Do you think that was odd?

I thought it was a little odd at the time, perhaps a bit elaborate,

But I didn't...

I didn't question it.

Perhaps that why he liked me, though, because I was quite silent.

Somebody that worked for John Aspinall,

she was charged with booking flights for the children.

Get them out to Africa so that Lucan could look at them,

but for them not to know that he was there looking at them.

I believe that as much as I believe

that I'm the man who went to St Helena in 1821

and assassinated Napoleon.

Bullshit.

Two trips I specifically arranged, which were between '70...

You, you meet this lady and when I met this lady I believed her.

She's, she's easily not believed.

But she's very believable when you meet her, credible.

I was in on the conversations

when John Aspinall and Sir James Goldsmith

were talking about

the fact that Lord Lucan had requested to see the children.

Sir James Goldsmith said, "Absolutely not, this won't work.

"He can't..." You know, "He can't see them,

"he's going to have to wait."

Mr Aspinall said, "He won't wait.

"If he doesn't see the children soon,

"he's just going to come back and risk everything."

Lord Lucan, I remember him calling, it was a Friday afternoon

and Mr Aspinall had already gone down to Howletts.

The call came in.

"I've been asked to let you know that everything's been put in place

"and he'll be in touch."

How did he sound?

Very well spoken. What we would call "posh", I guess.

Do you think he's alive or dead?

I have a feeling he might be alive.

Well, he knew from the start anyway that he was in Africa.

He had arranged for him to go to Africa.

Aspinall was rescuing gorillas from Africa.

Lord Lucan, he was a great friend of yours.

You actually say, "If he had begged asylum from me,

"he would have got it."

He would have got asylum regardless of the consequences,

as far as I'm concerned, because you don't have friends

unless you help them when they're in that position.

In fact, the very meaning and essence of friendship

is to help a man when he's in exactly a position like that.

Friends skip together, face the battle regardless, side by side.

Loyalty like that is the one crucial factor.

And I mean, of course, if you're going to turn your friend

over to the authorities, be it the law,

you're no longer a person in my view.

A former Coldstream Guards officer, David Hardy.

He was unfortunately killed in a road accident in the late '70s.

And the first police officer on the scene went through his pockets

and found an address book.

David Hardy's widow gave me this address book.

Hardy was an acquaintance of Lucan,

on the fringes of the gambling set.

Under A is Aspinall's.

You get to see the Clermont Club, Berkeley Square, SW1.

And then when you get under L...

..you have here Lord Lucan,

care of Hotel Les Ambassadeurs,

Beira, Mozambique.

When we went to see Hardy's widow,

she gave us the address book

and said she had given it to her husband as a birthday present

around about '77, '78.

So, the question arises,

why would you put the address

of someone in an address book three or four years after he disappeared?

1984, I went to Beira, and of course...

..he was gone.

We've got Hardy and the address book.

Marianne Robey.

Everything is pointing now towards Africa.

As always, I can't find...

There you go.

Then I found out that Scotland Yard

had drawn up their own intelligence report.

"Recent developments have included

"alleged sightings of Lucan in Southern Africa."

Written in 2002, it drew together credible intelligence

that Lucan has got away to Africa.

And I got hold of it.

Did you share it with Neil?

I did. I did share it with Neil.

It's unbelievable.

It blew away all the established bullshit.

They're sort of talking about what they might want to do next.

Covert operations, for example.

There's police officers that wanted to carry on with this investigation.

It was shut down for whatever reason.

But it's here, it's all here.

And it gave a name. Lord Lucan had taken the name John Crawford.

And then something happened that we couldn't have predicted.

George was seven when Sandra was killed, exactly the same age as me.

He wanted to draw a line under everything,

and I can understand that.

George wanted his father declared dead.

He put a tiny little advert in the West End Extra,

"Application for the granting of a presumption of death certificate."

He rejected my report that said that

him and his sister were flown out to Africa

so his father could watch him from afar.

I'd guess he had access to a boat

and he went a little way out into the English Channel

and sank it with himself on it.

It was about inheritance.

George would become the eighth Earl of Lucan.

For Neil, it would mean Lord Lucan was dead.

I didn't think he was dead.

I didn't want him declared dead.

I was one of the few people that could contest presumption of death

because I'm a member of the victim's family.

I applied to the High Court to intervene.

The court date was set.

And I had the intelligence report,

it was leaked to Glen,

that would blow the whole case apart.

I sat in the High Court.

The judge said to me,

"Mr Berriman, have you got anything you'd like to say?"

And I said, "Yes, your Honour.

"I believe that Lord Lucan was alive in 2004."

And George Bingham's face, because he was sitting next to me,

went like stone.

And he said to me, "Where have you got this information from?"

And I said, "It's a confidential police report."

"Right."

Everything went silent, and, "Do you have it?"

I said, "No."

Neil could not show that intelligence report.

The person who'd given it to me was a serving Scotland Yard Officer,

and he or she would have lost their jobs, their pensions.

There was a cost here.

I did think to myself,

I'm never going to get another chance like this, am I?

Well, there you go, can you imagine?

Can you imagine what the impact of that would have been everywhere?

The court this morning declared Richard John Bingham, my father,

known to most people as Lord Lucan, er,

to be dead for all legal purposes.

It was like having a rug pulled from under your feet.

I want to take this time to applaud the efforts of Mr Neil Berriman

to secure justice for his mother,

our beloved family nanny.

Nonetheless, I'm very pleased with the result that we achieved today.

I would all, you know, be very grateful

if we all moved on and find, found another Loch Ness Monster.

Can I just ask from a personal...?

Well, he got what he wanted.

Do we now refer to you as Lord Lucan?

I would now be the eighth Earl of Lucan, or referred to as Lord Lucan.

So, of course, having him declared dead almost gives the police

an excuse to think, "Well, we can push that away now.

"There's no further to go on this. We don't need to do any more work."

I am the son of Sandra Rivett.

I'm a builder and by no means used to these matters

but my intrigue moves me forward.

I know that the convenient drowning of Lord Lucan is not true.

Neil, what do you think happened to Lord Lucan?

Erm, he escaped.

Thank you, thank you.

This was a dark hour.

It was an emotional time. It was awful.

I nearly had about two years of being on antidepressants, didn't I?

I just remember you being completely...

You were like a different person.

You could just tell with the tone of voice, there was just nothing.

You were very angry. I remember you being very angry.

Angry. Yeah, I was angry, yeah.

Yeah, it's difficult for Melissa, of course it is.

Her dad's always had the bee in his bonnet, if you like.

Melissa was only a teenager, so...

Do you remember this, this whole presumption of death

and then what happened afterwards?

I do remember it,

and I remember actually, at the time, not wanting to watch it,

and I didn't watch it for ages.

Because...it was hard for Dad.

Yeah, you know, it's been...

It's gone on for so long,

you kind of think...

.."OK, it's never really going to come to an end."

We're too far, we're too involved with it now.

You can't stop something that you're too involved in.

Especially if you've got a belief.

You can't just... It's not like a tap you can turn off.

24 hours a day, seven days a week.

He's pushing himself,

he's pushing his own mental health.

But for what purpose?

This is the closest, really, we can get to her, isn't it?

Yeah, I think she fitted in well here. It's, erm...

Where's the house from here?

Just over there.

I sometimes feel better by coming here.

This is where she enjoyed her last eight weeks.

I imagine her to be very kind of fun and bubbly, and friendly.

Outgoing. Mm.

Yeah.

But you're the same, aren't you?

Hmm.

You and Kim have been through hell, so I'm sorry for that.

No, you don't need to apologise.

But we're past the point of no return now.

I am convinced that he got away.

And that he survived for a while somewhere.

Lord Lucan? I'm sorry,

but obviously I cannot divulge my whereabouts at this time.

That would be quite out of the question.

I definitely knew, in 2000, that he was still alive.

I was pretty sure in 2005.

Is he lying still undiscovered somewhere here in the Newhaven area?

Your adopted mother set you a bit of a challenge, really, didn't she?

Yeah, she did give me a puzzle.

But I wonder whether she thought

that I'd actually put the last piece in?

Well, this is massive.

If this man's correct...

..he's alive.

To catch a criminal, you have to think like a criminal.

Check, check, check, check.

Max is 45 minutes on these.

That's him.

I know you want it to be.

And then he goes, "What if I am Lord Lucan?

"What the fuck are you going to do about it?"

That man, back there...

BOTH: Is Lord Lucan.

You know what? What?

Let's go and get this fucker.