The earl who vanished after murdering his children’s nanny

It also reveals much about the British attitude to class. Richard John Bingham, the seventh Earl of Lucan, married Veronica, a former model and secretary, in 1963. He was an Eton-educated professional gambler, who despite his “Lucky” nickname had run up debts and was facing bankruptcy at the time of the murder. When he disappeared, there were suggestions that he had been helped by wealthy friends, dubbed “the Clermont Set” after the casino they frequented in Berkeley Square. One of the more outlandish theories about Lucan’s fate claimed that he shot himself, asking that his body be fed to the lions in the private zoo of his friend, the Clermont Club owner John Aspinall.