The Lord Lucan mystery: Which claims about his fate stack up?

For half a century, two questions have been on the lips of anyone remotely interested in the disappearance of Lord Lucan: did he do it, and where is he now?

Today, exactly 50 years on from the night that Lucan vanished hours after the murder of his children's nanny and the grave wounding of his wife, those mysteries remain as tantalising as ever.

There have been hundreds of reported sightings of the peer since Sandra Rivett was bludgeoned to death and Veronica Lucan left savagely wounded at the family home in London's Lower Belgrave Street.

This week, the most tantalising development of recent years is examined in a three-part BBC documentary that sees Ms Rivett's son confront the man he believes is Lucan at his home in Australia.

But the first sightings came in the weeks and months after Lucan disappeared, including in December 1974, when Australian police arrested a man who they believed could be Lucan - but it turned out to be Labour MP John Stonehouse who had faked his own death a month before.

Other fantastical reports have misidentified him as an ageing hippy called 'Jungle Barry' in Goa, and as an eccentric Briton living with a pet possum in a Land Rover in New Zealand.  

Below, MailOnline delves into some of the most high-profile claims of Lucan being found alive. 

Living as a Buddhist in Australia

In the BBC's three-part Lucan series, Neil Berriman – the son of Ms Rivett – is seen confronting the man he has believed for years is the missing aristocrat.

Cameras followed the builder as he tracked down Christopher Bell, 87, to his home in Australia.

In a bizarre confrontation over a WhatsApp video call, Mr Bell initially appears to confirm his suspicions, but then later tells the BBC: 'I do not know who the hell Lord Lucan is.' He adds: 'I can assure you, I'm not that man, never have been, never will be.'

During the exchange, Mr Berriman told Mr Bell: 'I know that you're Lord Lucan,' but added, 'I don't want to do anything about it.'

Mr Bell responds: 'There actually isn't much you can do about it, it's all in the hands of the divine.'

Mr Berriman, a builder from Hampshire, asks about 'the woman that you killed', and Mr Bell replies: 'She came from a background that was very horrendous. She was in a great deal of pain and stress.'

During the bizarre exchange, Mr Bell continues: 'I have no memory of killing anybody, of terminating anybody's life... As far as I know I've never taken the life of anyone.'

Mr Bell claims to be descended from English aristocracy, to have been educated at Eton and to have been friends with Princess Margaret. But he also says he left Britain in 1966, eight years before the Lucan murder, and that he worked as a 'female impersonator' in Canada before travelling to India and meeting the Buddhist spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

In the documentary, Mr Bell says he was conceived 'at a magical ritual at Stonehenge', and that his biological father was a puppeteer who performed at Buckingham Palace for Princess Elizabeth (the late Queen) and her sister Princess Margaret.

His birth certificate names him as Derek Crowther, born in Islington, north London, in 1936, the son of a railway carriage cleaner.

At one point Mr Berriman, 57, is convinced his suspicions have been confirmed by artificial intelligence facial recognition technology which matches Mr Bell's features to those of Lord Lucan.

But analysis by a Home Office-approved team of recognition experts ruled him out in 2022.

The documentary also showed investigative journalist Glen Campbell telling Mr Berriman he believes they have got it wrong after speaking with the director of a theatre production that Mr Bell claimed to have appeared in decades ago.

Secretly seeing his children from afar in Africa

In the first part of the BBC's documentary this week, a woman who worked as a secretary to Lucan's friend John Aspinall repeated her claim that she was asked by the zoo owner in 1979 to organise a trip to Africa for the peer's children. 

There, the children would be secretly observed from afar by their fugitive father, she claimed. 

Marianne Robey said: '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 guardians 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 they were going to a safari, at treetops in Kenya and that their father just wanted to see them from a distance, not for them to be aware and therefore not for them to have to keep secrets.

'I thought it was a little odd at the time.' 

However, Lucan's wife, Lady Lucan, categorically dismissed the claim when it was put to her years ago.

She said: 'I can guarantee they didn't go to Africa. It's someone trying to make a fast buck.

'The children were wards of court. I had to get permission to take them abroad.

'They were at boarding school, I was their carer. I would have known if they had gone to Africa.'

Confused with fugitive MP John Stonehouse

Labour MP John Stonehouse had been a rising star in Harold Wilson's first Labour government of 1964.

But within a few years he sank into financial ruin as he was suspected of espionage by MI5 and his career fell apart. 

He then faked his own death in Miami in 1974 and ended up in Australia, where he was using the alias of John Markham - the name of the dead husband of a constituent.

In Melbourne, police had been alerted to the odd behaviour of a mysterious Englishman who was visiting banks in the city and making suspicious transactions. 

When he was interviewed, police asked him a question that was very topical at the time. Was he Lord Lucan, the fugitive peer wanted for the murder of his nanny? 

Stonehouse's immediate denial was backed up by the fact that he did not have Lucan's trademark long scar on his thigh. 

But police did also ask him if he was the other missing Englishman, Stonehouse himself. He quickly admitted he was and, once back in Britain, was convicted of fraud and sentenced to seven years in prison. 

Claimed by ex-mercenary to be in South America

In 1982, former mercenary John Miller claimed to have tracked down Lucan to a South American country. 

Miller had previously achieved notoriety after 'kidnapping' Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs from Brazil and taking him to Barbados in 1981. 

Miller claimed he had been taken to see Lord Lucan. He said at the time: 'I became convinced I had got the right man when I met him.'

He also alleged he had photographs that had been verified as genuine by people who knew the peer. But when probed further, he said: 'I have had very heavy messages from London to leave the matter alone. 

'He has very important friends and I have been told to keep clear. I'm pulling out.' 

However, it quickly emerged that Miller's claim was untrue - Lucan was not the mystery man who had been pictured.

Confused with hippy musician Jungly Barry

In a 2003 book, former Scotland Yard detective Duncan MacLaughlin claimed that Lord Lucan had lived as a hippy in India until his death in 1996. 

He said he had 'overwhelming evidence' that Lucan had been calling himself Barry Halpin while lying low in Goa. 

His book featured images of a bearded man who allegedly looked like the aristocrat. 

However, it quickly turned out that Halpin was not masquerading as anyone. 

He was a former Liverpool grammar school boy who had become one of the first hippies after moving abroad in the 1960s. 

Known by his friends as 'Jungly Barry', he would make visits back to the UK for medical treatment or to see people he knew until his death in 1996. 

John Rimmer, a frend of Mr Halpin's, said after the case of mistaken identity: 'This detective hasn't found Lord Lucan. He's found my mate Barry.'

Another individual, teacher Irene Smith, said: 'I was shocked to see his picture with the claims he was Lord Lucan. It is absolute rubbish but I am sure he would be laughing if he knew.' 

Living with a pet possum in New Zealand? 

In 2007, eccentric British expatriate Roger Woodgate was alleged by some to be Lord Lucan. 

Mr Woodgate was at the time spending most nights in a Land Rover near his home in New Zealand. His only companion was a pet possum named Redfearn. 

The rumour that he was secretly the fugitive Lucan were allegedly started by 'a television company and a trouble-making neighbour', Mr Woodgate told the Daily Mail. 

Mr Woodgate, then 62, added: 'It's a load of old poppycock. For a start, I'm ten years younger than Lucan. I'm also five inches shorter.

'If anyone can see likeness in me and him, I am more than happy to let them dream on.'

Mr Woodgate was a former photographer from North London who had once worked for the Ministry of Defence. 

It is safe to say that the claims about Mr Woodgate did not stack up. 

Mr Woodgate added: 'I'm just a friendly old Brit who wants to live out his days in peace and quiet.' 

He said he had emigrated to New Zealand five months before Lucan disappeared in November 1974. 

A man named 'Jeff' in Johannesburg?  

In the 1990s, it was alleged that a Briton living in Joannesburg was Lord Lucan. 

The man, known only as 'Jeff', was wrongly named as being Lucan by a former member of the South African intelligence service. 

Fed to tigress named Zorra at Howletts Zoo? 

In 2016, Phillipe Marcq, a casino-going friend of Lucan's, claimed the peer shot himself after agreeing that his predicament was impossible.

Mr Marcq alleged that Lucan travelled to Howletts, which was then private, shortly after killing nanny Sandra Rivett and attacking his wife.

The zoo was owned by John Aspinall, who was his close friend and also the founder of the famous Clermont Club.

Mr Marcq said he was told that after Lucan had taken his own life, his body was fed to a tigress named Zorra. 

He admitted that he was 'stunned' when he was told, but believed the claim '100 per cent'.  

'However grim it may be, however terrifying that he is going to commit suicide, he is going to do it not out of despair, not because he gave up everything, but to achieve a positive result,' he added. 

'This suicide will achieve indirectly what he failed to do by attempting to murder his wife.

'It is tough, but in a way it shows a kind of British, totally unsentimental, pragmatic approach to what was an unqualified disaster.'

Lord Lucan: The dashing aristocrat who turned to gambling before vanishing after the murder of his children's nanny and brutal attack on his wife

Richard John Bingham, the 7th Earl of Lucan, was not your archetypal murder suspect.

An Old Etonian from a well-known aristocratic family, he developed a taste for the high life after finishing National Service in 1955. He raced power boats, drove an Aston Martin and flamboyantly left his job in a merchant bank to become a professional gambler.

But as his losses mounted in the gambling clubs of Mayfair and Belgravia, the playboy peer – a father-of-three – found himself mired in debt and his marriage doomed.

It was against this background of deepening financial and domestic strife that the handsome 39-year-old is alleged to murdered his children's nanny Sandra Rivett, mistaking her for his estranged wife, who he also allegedly attacked on November 7, 1974 before going on the run.

The Rivett murder - at the Lucan family's home in central London – came to light after Lady Lucan ran to the local pub, the Plumbers Arms, collapsed on the floor and screamed: 'He's murdered the nanny and he's after the children.' Mrs Rivett's body was found in a canvas US mailbag in the basement of the five-storey house at 146 Lower Belgrave Street.

But Lucan was nowhere to be seen. Although he rang his mother later that evening, and turned up at the address of a family friend in Sussex – where he had a whiskey and water and spent less than two hours - there have been no confirmed sightings of him since.

The cause of Mrs Rivett's death was 'blunt head injuries'. Police concluded that the lead piping found at the murder scene probably caused her injuries.

Lady Lucan had five lacerations of the skull and forehead. They were deep and jagged and if she had received these wounds to the rear of her head, they may have been fatal. She also had lacerations on the inside of her mouth.

By any standards, it was a brutal murder and could easily have been a double killing.

An inquest into the death of Mrs Rivett was held in 1975. In his absence, the jury returned the verdict: 'Murder by Lord Lucan.'

In the five decades since, there have been dozens of supposed sightings of him in various locations in the UK and around the world - all documented in statement form and followed up by the Met. Yet Lucan has never been found and still remains wanted for murder.

Officially the case remains 'open', but plans for a full-scale new investigation were blocked in 2004 by senior Yard commanders, who questioned what it would achieve and at what cost. If still alive, he would be 89.