The man determined to find his mother's killer
· BBC NewsCharlotte Andrews
BBC News
A brown envelope changed Neil Berriman's life forever.
The builder from Hampshire found it in a chest of drawers belonging to his adoptive mother.
Three years after she died of cancer, he plucked up the courage to open it.
It was stuffed with photos, documents and newspaper clippings, revealing his birth mother was Sandra Rivett, the victim of a shocking murder in 1974.
She had worked as a nanny for the family of Lord Lucan, a British aristocrat who became the chief suspect after he disappeared the night she was killed.
Her body was found in his house in Belgravia, sparking a large but fruitless manhunt for Lucan that lasted decades.
A new three-part BBC series follows Mr Berriman as he tries to track down his mother's murderer.
This article contains details that some may find distressing.
On making the devastating discovery 30 years after his mother died, Mr Berriman said he was "desperate" to find out as much information as he could, and as quickly as possible.
"The chances of you being adopted and finding out your mother is one of the biggest murder mysteries of all time is just unbelievable," he said.
Graham Forsyth, former detective sergeant with the Met Police, was the man who found Ms Rivett's body in the house's basement.
"In the dark, you could see there was a sack... there appeared to be an arm hanging out of it," he said.
Lucan's blood-soaked car was later found abandoned in Newhaven, East Sussex.
Despite never being tracked down, an inquest jury declared the him to be the nanny's killer in 1975.
And while most of Lucan’s friends and family insisted he had taken his own life, Mr Berriman was adamant he was still very much alive - and on the run.
Since that night, there have been a number of unverified sightings of Lucan across the world.
There were even claims he lived in India as a hippy called "Jungly Barry".
"As time went on, people seemed to give up on it being a serious investigation," Mr Berriman said.
"He seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth, I didn't know what to do."
But a confidential police intelligence report passed on by an unnamed serving Scotland Yard officer sparked new leads in his quest to find the fugitive.
Written in 2002, he said it contained evidence suggesting Lucan had fled to Mozambique in Africa, and changed his name to John Crawford.
He said it referenced plans for "covert operations" that were later shut down.
To protect the police officer, he refused to share the report, leading to a High Court judge issuing an official death certificate for Lucan in 2016.
"If he was alive, I was going to find him," Mr Berriman said.
With the support of a former BBC investigative journalist, Glen Campbell, Mr Berriman has mapped out Lucan’s likely escape from London to a life of exile in Africa.
"I'm no detective - but you don't really have to be. I've got the mentality of being so tenacious that I won't let anything lie," he said.
A Metropolitan Police spokesperson said the investigation into the death of Sandra Rivett remained open.
"Any significant new information or investigative opportunities that may be progress the investigation, will accordingly be considered by the Met," they added.
The first episode of Lucan airs on Wednesday at 21:00 GMT on BBC 2.
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