byTerry Fincher/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty
John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan with his future wife, Veronica Duncan after they announced their engagement, 14th October 1963.
- In 1974, Britain was captivated by the brutal murder of a nanny, named Sandra Rivett, and the disappearance of the main suspect, Lord Lucan.
- He was never seen again but was formally found guilty a year later. In the years since, he's been spotted more than 70 times, but none of the sightings have held up under scrutiny.
- In January, Rivett's son claimed he found Lord Lucan in an unnamed city in Australia.
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His friends called him "Lucky."
In 1974, Britain, and later much of the rest of the world, was captivated by the brutal murder of a 29-year-old nanny named Sandra Rivett, and the rapid disappearance of the main suspect: an aristocrat named Richard John Bingham - or Lord Lucan.
It helped that Lucan was, according to The New York Times, a "dashing British aristocrat and army officer, known for his prowess at backgammon and bridge and his fondness for vodka martinis, powerboats, and Aston Martin cars."
It helped, too, that the murder took place in an apartment's dark basement, providing space for conjecture. What helped the most, though, was that Lucan disappeared forever, meaning no one could say for sure what happened.
There have been many theories - he committed suicide by ferry propeller, he started a new life in Africa, he was fed to a tiger. No one knows for sure. By 2017, he had been spotted more than 70 times, but none of the sightings proved to be true. To this day, the public doesn't know what happened to Lucan.
One of Lucan's friends, James Wilson, told The Telegraph that Lucan was a gambler. "He gambled on successfully killing his wife and being able to hide her body and get away with murder," he said.
But it all went terribly wrong.
Here's the full story, in photos.