On 7 November 1974, the body of a children’s nanny, Sandra Rivett, was discovered in a post bag in the basement of a house in Belgravia. The prime suspect was the children’s father, an Eton-educated gambler called Richard John Bingham, seventh Earl of Lucan, who had disappeared. While most of Lord Lucan’s friends and family insisted he took his own life, no body was ever found. The manhunt for Lucan lasted decades.

This three-part series follows the deeply personal quest of Hampshire builder Neil Berriman, whose belief in his own ability to solve the mystery is unwavering. The case has consumed Neil for the past two decades, and it has done so for very personal reasons: Neil’s birth mother was Sandra Rivett.

He watches every movie, reads every book, meets with policemen who take him through crime scene photos and corresponds with Veronica, Lucan’s wife, and examines every detail of Lucan’s life. Neil emerges from this investigation not only convinced that Lucan has escaped, but that he will be the man to finally bring justice to his biological mother and find Mr. Fugitive.

Aided by ex-BBC investigative journalist Glen Campbell, Neil plots what appears to be Lucan’s escape from his homeland to a life of exile in Africa. The two men uncover compelling evidence that one of Lucan’s powerful friends has helped create a new life for the Mozambican aristocrat under the alias “John Crawford.” On a research trip to South Africa, Glen secures a rare interview with Lucan’s expatriate brother Hugh, who guides the two Lucan seekers down a path that leads to Eastern religion, Buddhist retreats, and the followed the east and west coasts of Australia.

If he lives, Lucan would be about to enter his ninth decade, so the clock is ticking – will Neil be in time to find justice for his mother?

Lucan, a 3×60′ for BBC Two and iPlayer, is made by Five Mile Films. It was commissioned by Clare Sillery, Head of Commissioning, Documentation. The series director is Colette Camden. The commissioning editor is Beejal-Maya Patel.

Lucan will be broadcast on Wednesday 6 November on BBC Two at 9pm. All episodes will be available on BBC iPlayer.

AJ2

Neil Berriman – Sandra Rivett’s son

Why is it important to tell your story now?

It’s important to tell the story now, not just because it’s the 50th anniversary, but because I’m in a position to do so, one I never thought I’d find myself in.

With a documentary and new evidence, some of which I am still working on, I feel now is the right time and almost the last chance before the old man is gone and the possibility of justice escaping. I can never forget Sandra after all these years, and Glen and I can’t go on forever – all the pieces have fallen into place…the time has come.

How did you feel when you first found out Sandra Rivett was your mother?

God, Sandra Rivett, who was she, I thought at first, the nanny killed by Lord Lucan doing a runner, how sad. It’s something that happens to other people, not to me, it’s impossible. Surely my real mother would not be involved in such a horrible and brutal end to her life.

When it was confirmed that Sandra was my biological mother, I was in total shock and couldn’t believe that someone would do this to her. I was angry, angry and wanted that man caught. The emotional part of it all was incredibly sad and painful and I felt so sorry for her. You can imagine what went wrong though.

Being Sandra’s second child and being involved in the biggest murder mystery was hard to understand, she deserves justice.

What has kept you going all these years?

She’s the mother I never knew, but that doesn’t matter. Sandra is still my mother and I will do everything I can for her. There is no real evidence that Lucan was dead, so he could still be alive.

I was new to all of this and accepted the endless challenge to find the man who killed my mother. The whole situation, the way Sandra was killed and a man who thought he was above the law and getting away with it, is so wrong. I was having none of it, and as the years brought new information, I was more determined than ever. I wasn’t going to give up on my mother, Sandra led me as much as I did myself, this was a puzzle I was going to finish. Nobody gets away with murder. It was all about Sandra.

Glen Campbell – Investigative reporter

How long have you been working on the Lucan case?

My interest in the Lucan case was sparked in 1995 when I was working as a crime reporter for ITV. A late night drink with a detective from Scotland Yard piqued my interest when he made it quite clear that, having personally reviewed the evidence, he felt that the investigation into the murder of Neil’s mother, Sandra Rivett, had been thwarted by interference and the stuffiness exercised by Lucan’s rich and wealthy. strong friends. Long story short, in 1995 I was told that far from being dead, the police secretly suspected that Lucan had fled abroad, they just couldn’t prove it.

Did you discover something new?

In 1999 we found two new Scotland Yard sources who said there was credible information organized criminals had been recruited by Lucan’s wealthy friends to take him abroad. They gave me the name of one of these suspects, but when I brought him into Switzerland, he denied involvement. I hit a dead end. But the Lucan case is a “slow burner”, with new evidence emerging slowly, often when key people die or old alliances break. The discovery of Lucan’s plastic surgery medical records was an insight into the powerful cabal that protected him and gave us clues into the murky world of the Claremont Set. Then, in 2007, I interviewed a “new” witness. Mandy Parks was a teenager in 1974 who had been babysitting at the house where Lucan was last seen alive. In her first TV interview, Mandy swore she saw Lucan alive and preparing to flee the UK two days after Sandra Rivett’s murder. She was the first credible witness to support Scotland Yard’s suspicions. Of course, what I didn’t know when I interviewed Mandy was that in the late 1990s, the Metropolitan Police were in possession of credible information that Lucan was still alive and hiding in Africa. They even had a fake name he was going by. Scotland Yard’s purpose-finding investigation looked at all the evidence from the original files and gathered the fresh information that came from Sandra Rivett’s murder. It was a fundamental piece of detective work, but it was marked restricted/secret. In 2009 I received a copy. In short, the police strongly suspected that Lucan was alive in 2001 and hiding in various locations in Africa. This gave further impetus to our research and motivated me to travel to Johannesburg to try and interview the Rt Hon Hugh Bingham, Lucan’s brother. My timing was right. Hugh Bingham admitted his brother fled London in 1974 to make a new life abroad because he felt he would never get a fair trial. This confession was a major breakthrough. Inside information that blew to shreds the bogus story that Lucan committed suicide on or shortly after November 7, 1974.

After Hugh Bingham’s confession, more people came to help. Marianne Robey had worked for one of Lucan’s closest friends and, as a young woman in 1979, had been commissioned to send the Lord’s two eldest children “on holiday” to Africa so that Lucan could see “from afar”. The children never knew their father was present. Then we were contacted by Davina Chambers. She saw one of our Lucan stories on the internet and got in touch to give us access to her late father’s files. Her father had been the lead detective on the Lucan case since 1974 and had collected boxes of original Lucan documents in his attic at home which shed new light on the investigation and helped push us forward. The cold case of 74 was until 2015 very close to being.

Did you face any challenges while making this documentary?

The journey was one of constant shifting sands. In a year we would make significant progress only to be followed by months where we would be quiet with nothing new coming out. The biggest challenge was to evaluate what information is credible and what is false. Our trip to Mozambique in 2014 was difficult because at the time the country was difficult to film, especially when you were searching for an international fugitive living under a false identity. Australia was safer to investigate, but unknown to us it has very strict confidentiality laws, so it’s not an easy place for an investigative journalist to establish the true identity of a man who had five names. It was a case of patience and perseverance.

Colette Camden – Series Director

Why did you want to do this series?

I met Neil and liked him immediately. He’s completely self-absorbed in his beliefs—and the thing he’s convinced he has the answer to also happens to be one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of our time. No one knows what happened to Lord Lucan, but Neil does. And he’s disarmingly open about the very strong feelings he has for his mother and her killer. Neil is also the most unlikely detective. He is untrained, never objective, and doesn’t follow the rules. This should be a good starting point.

Why do you think the Lucan case continues to attract people’s attention?

The Lucan case still looms large because it is remarkable and unsolved—a domestic hit apparently at the hands of an aristocrat who then flees and is never seen again. Hard to believe it could happen now. And in the 50-year gap that followed, crazy theories took hold—not only about his supposed death by drowning, shooting, or being fed to his friend’s tiger, but then about his strange “sightings” around the world—as depressed butcher. in Vancouver to a folk singer from Goa. When Neil follows the extraordinary – and believable – leads to a fake Australian Buddhist monk named Derek, it’s not the craziest idea out there.

What do you hope viewers will take away from this series?

The Lucan Mystery may be an initial draw, but it really is a film about obsession. It’s about a man who is so consumed by the idea of ​​the mother he never knew – that he is prepared to do anything to come face to face with her killer and avenge her murder. Regardless of the emotional consequences for his family, his relationships and his own mental health. For a story that has been re-told for 50 years, The Builder and the Monk is a surprising and hopefully compelling new interpretation.