Lord Lucan's son has insisted his father - who disappeared almost 40 years ago - committed suicide by drowning himself on the night his nanny was murdered.
According to George Bingham, Lucan wanted to "vanish forever" after nanny Sandra Rivett's murder - with his 45-year-old son telling the Daily Mirror his father drowned himself in the English Channel.
“He would have got on board with a bottle of whisky and some pills and taken it out to the 50 metre mark, the point where if you go down you’re not going to come back up again...
Lord Lucan's son claims he believes his father drowned himself in the English Channel
"It would have been cold, very cold and he would have died of hypothermia before the water got in his lungs. I am sure, without an ounce of doubt, it happened before dawn lifted on the morning after Sandra’s murder.”
Lord Lucan went missing following the gruesome death of his son's nanny, Sandra Rivett, in 1974 and was declared dead by the High Court in 1999. An inquest jury named him as the killer in 1975.
Ms Rivett, 29, was found dead at the home of the peer's estranged wife in Belgravia, London after being bludgeoned with a lead pipe.
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The nanny's attacker turned on Lady Lucan, beating her severely before she managed to escape and raise the alarm at a nearby pub.
Lucan's car was later found abandoned and soaked in blood in Newhaven, East Sussex, and an inquest jury declared the wealthy aristocrat was the killer a year later.
There have been numerous "sightings" of the missing nobleman, often in Australia and India.
Most recently a BBC report interviewed a former personal assistant to Lord Lucan's friend John Aspinall, who claimed the peer was living in Africa during the 1980s.
There are also claims Lucan, who would be 77 if he was still alive, was visited by his children at least twice in Africa.
But his son, 45, said he did not believe the peer had killed Miss Rivett, saying: "He knew his name would be circulated and there would be a firestorm."
"He didn’t want 38 years of looking over his shoulder, waiting for some friend to give him up.
"Or hiding in a foxhole with a straggly beard like Saddam Hussein."