Police are still looking for the Earl of Lucan who has not been seen since his children╒s nanny was found yesterday battered to death at the family╒s Belgravia home. Lady Lucan was also viciously beaten up.
Detectives were watching the homes of friends and places in London, whom Lord Lucan, an athletic man of 39 who is a former bobsleigh and powerboat racing competitor, might visit.
Detective Chief Superintendent Roy Ransom, who is leading the investigation, said: ╥We believe Lord Lucan is still in the Belgravia area, where he was last seen about the time of the attacks. We are also watching ports and airports, but we do not believe he has left the country.╙
Earlier in the day, Lady Lucan had run screaming and bleeding from the family house in Lower Belgrave Street and into the nearby Plumbers Arms. She shouted to the landlord that the nanny, Mr Sandra Rivett, aged 29, had been murdered. She cried: ╥He╒s in the house. Help me.╙
The landlord, Mr Derrick Whitehouse, aged 44, said: ╥The pub was quiet when she burst through the door. She was covered in blood. She kept screaming, ╥My children, my children.╙
╥I asked her who she was and she said Lady Lucan. But I could not get much sense out of her and she was in such a state of shock that eventually she went completely silent.
╥My wife, Diane, brought down some white linen and we tried to stop her bleeding. Her head injuries were quite severe. She had been hit four or five times.╙
Lady Lucan, aged 35, was last night ╥progressing satisfactorily╙ in St George╒s Hospital.
After a call from Mr Whitehouse, detectives went to the Lucan home, where they found Mrs Rivett, from Coulsdon, Surrey, dead in the basement kitchen trussed up in a canvas bag. She had been ferociously battered to death with a heavy piece of lead tubing.
Lady Lucan╒s children, Lady Frances, aged 10, Lady Camilla, 4, and Lord Bingham, 7, were found huddled together and sobbing in an upstairs room. Last night they were being cared for by friends. Detectives had to force an entry to the house.
Mrs Rivett is understood to have been employed by Lady Lucan for only two months. Last night friends of Mrs Rivett, who is separated from her husband, described her as ╥a vivacious redhead╙ and ╥a girl who always liked a laugh.╙ Earlier this week she had drinks in the bar of the Plumbers Arms.
It was reported earlier this year that Lord Lucan ╤ family motto ╥Christ is my Hope╙ ╤ and Lady Lucan were contemplating divorce. Their children were made wards of court. The earl, who was once considered for the film part of the spy James Bond, lives in a new cottage in Eaton Row, round the corner from the family house.
Detective Superintendent Ransom said the children had not known of the attacks. Although they are wards of court Lord Lucan, whose great-great-grandfather was a cavalry commander at the time of the Charge of the Light Brigade, has access. Lord Lucan, who was educated at Eton and served in the Coldstream Guards, married Lady Lucan, the daughter of an army officer, in 1963. They separated last year.
Police were last night looking for the couple╒s missing brown Daf car, registration number LPK 389K, and waiting at the bedside of Lady Lucan.
