Murder by Mistake Read Free

this came at all hours. He told his wife he’d be “gone for a couple of hours” and drove to pick up
his
boss, Detective Chief Superintendent Roy Ranson, based at Cannon Row police station. It would be four days before Gerring would get home again.
    As the senior policeman on the case, Ranson immediately took charge of the investigation and would eventually write a book on the subject. He immediately reduced the number of officers in the house to a bare minimum and placed a uniformed man on the front door. He went through the house from top to bottom, noting mentally what Sergeant Baker had first seen nearly three hours earlier.
    Then he and Gerring went to 5 Eaton Row and 72A Elizabeth St., Lucan’s current home. A suit was on the bed in Elizabeth St., still on its hanger and ready for wear. There was also a driving license, checkbook and about £80 ($187—all money is calculated at the exchange rate in 1974) in cash. Ranson left officers at both addresses, in case Lucan should return. His next port of call was to see the still-living victim; other people were taking care of the dead one.

    House where Lord Lucan lived after separation from Veronica
    St. George’s Hospital is one of the most famous of London’s hospitals, dating from 1733. Today the building is the Lanesborough Hotel; in 1974, the hospital’s move to larger premises was already under way. Veronica Lucan was under sedation, but conscious, and she told the detectives what had happened as the intense pain in her head and neck came and went.

    Old St. George’s Hospital
Photo by Paul Farmer
    “She was in a terrible state,” David Gerring told a writer years later, “really bloody awful. There were tufts of hair and skin all over the pillow. She was covered in dry blood and her scalp was open with the wounds… the basement was a sight I’ll never forget. Veronica Lucan was another sight I’ll never forget.”
    The nanny, Sandra Rivett, Veronica told the police, usually had Wednesdays off, but she had changed this week to meet her latest boyfriend. At about 9 PM, she had offered to make Veronica a cup of tea and had gone down to the kitchen basement. Veronica had been watching TV earlier with her two youngest children—Lee Majors performing the impossible in
The Six Million Dollar Man
. Frances had been in her room watching
Top of the Pops
, a “must” for any girl already longing to be a teenager. By this time, the little ones were in bed and Frances was dozing in her mother’s room. It was past her bedtime.
    When Sandra had not come back after nearly 20 minutes, Veronica went to look for her. She had just reached the hall and was about to go down to the basement when she was grabbed from behind by a powerful man. They wrestled together while he tried to force his gloved fingers into her mouth and rain blows down on her head. When she screamed, he had told her to shut up. She recognized her husband’s voice in the darkness. Desperate and fighting for her life, she had grabbed his testicles, and he gave up, exhausted and shaking. She calmed him down, and they went up to the bedroom so that he could tend her wounds. Frances saw them, mummy bleeding, daddy looking distraught. Veronica sent the girl to bed, the parental order that for generations had removed children from awkward situations. While Lucan went to fetch a towel from the
en suite
bathroom, Veronica had taken the opportunity to run for the stairs. She would have no accurate memory of the rest, but she found the safety of the Plumbers Arms.
    With the scene of crime secured and the body of Sandra Rivett already at the morgue, Ranson and Gerring kick-started a murder case, setting up an incident room at Gerald Road and collecting crime-scene photographs and witness statements. It was well into Friday morning by now and the London rumor machine was already going into overdrive. Ranson set up a press conference at Scotland Yard, which routinely handled all media coverage, if only to