Jury brands missing peer as murderer

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33875, 21 June 1975, Page 15

Jury brands missing peer as murderer

(New Zealand Press Association —Copyright) LOX DOX. June 20. Il look an inquest jury only hall an hour yesterday to hand down an unprecedented verdict in which it named the missing peer. Lord Lucan, as the murderer of his children’s nursemaid.

The jury of six men ! and three women named 3 the playboy peer as the killer on the fourth day ; of the inquest, in the (• Westminster Coroner's J Court, into the death of Mrs Sandia Eleanor ’ Rivett. aged 29. Thirty witnesses had outI lined events on the night of November 7. 1974, when Mrs r Rivett was battered to death II and Lady Lucan was attacked.

Lady Lucan, who had given evidence that it was her husband who made the attack on her, sal impassively as the verdict was given. Later, she said: "I intend to put the past behind me and return to a normal life. I was'neither pleased nor displeased by the verdict. I was only interested in bringing out the facts." The end of the inquest, which had been postponed for six months to allow Lord Lucan time to make an appearance, came dramatically. Asked whether the jury had reached a verdict.

the foreman replied; Yes, murder by Lord Lucan. ■ The Coronel (Dr Gavin Thurston) told him "It is a . very rare procedure tn coro- > ner’s courts for a person tc» 1 be named as you have done. I it would be my duty to commit that person to trial, i but since I.ord Lucan is ; missing, the verdict will remain on file." Earlier, tn his summing ! up. Dr Thurston had told the members of the jury that the only real choice open to them, on the evidence, was murder or manslaughter. He reminded them that a police experiment had shown that lit was impossible to see from outside the house into the basement of the Belgravia home where Mrs Rivett died. Evidence had been given that Lord Lucan had alleged in telephone calls to his mother, the Dowager Countess of Lucan, that he was passing the house when he saw a man attacking his (wife. In a letter also introduced in evidence, Lord Lucan had alleged that his wife had demonstrated her hatred for : him and that she had suggested that he had hired a man to kill her. LIVING IN DISGUISE? A Scotland Yard detective said today that there was positive evidence that Lord Lucan was living in disguise under an assumed name. “Observation is being kept on a man who is living under an assumed name, and with a completely different appearance, in a country whose name I am not prepared to disclose," the detertive said. Lord Lucan, a member of one of Britain’s oldest noble families, is the great-grand son of the man who ordered the disastrous charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War Testimony at the inquest indicated that Lord Lucan an inveterate gambler whose striking good looks once earned him a screen test for the role of James Bond, was heavily in debt and distraught over his wife obtaining custody of their children.