Upper-class accent- military bearing- Has to be Lord Lucan

An upper-class accent? A military bearing? It has to be Lord Lucan
By Kathy Marks, Asia-Pacific Correspondent
Published: 10 August 2007
Independent UK

Reports that Lord Lucan is alive and well, and living in a clapped-out Land Rover with a cat and a pet possum, sparked a media frenzy in New Zealand yesterday.

Lucan, who disappeared in 1974 after his children's nanny was found murdered, was said to have been traced to the small country town of Marton, population 6,800, on the North Island. A television production company even enlisted a retired Scotland Yard detective, Sidney Ball, who lives in New Zealand, to investigate the claims.

The Dominion Post newspaper reported the development on its front page yesterday, and excitement mounted when neighbours of "Land Rover Man" revealed that he had an upper-class English accent and a "military bearing". Lucan attended Eton, and served in the Coldstream Guards.

But the man in question, while saying that he was English and had emigrated to New Zealand in 1974, denied any connection with the fugitive aristocrat. He said he was Roger Woodgate, aged 62 - 10 years younger than Lucan would be if he was still alive. Mr Woodgate told local media that while Lucan, born Richard Bingham, vanished in November 1974, he had moved to New Zealand in June of that year. "Oh, and I'm also five inches shorter than Richard Bingham," he added.

The seventh Earl of Lucan went missing after his children's nanny, Sandra Rivett, was found bludgeoned to death at the family home in Belgravia, London. His estranged wife claimed that Lucan, who wanted custody of their three children, had admitted the crime, saying he mistook Rivett for her.

Lucan's blood-soaked car was found at Newhaven, on the Sussex coast, but he was never traced. In the 33 years since then, there have been dozens of reported sightings of him, including in South Africa, Australia, Ireland and the Netherlands. Some say that he drowned himself in the English Channel, while others believe he fled abroad to live under an assumed identity.

Mr Woodgate, who owns a piece of land just outside Marton, believes that his neighbours started the Lucan rumour. "It's them. They've done this. I'm not Lord Lucan," he told the New Zealand Press Association, pointing to a nearby house. The television company that brought in Mr Ball, a former detective inspector, is making a programme about neighbours at war. Mr Ball visited him earlier this week, Mr Woodgate said. "He told me I was not Lord Lucan. I said 'I know that'."

Mr Woodgate, a photo-grapher who says he once worked for the Ministry of Defence, lives in the back of a 1974 Land Rover, sleeping under old blankets. As well as the cat and a tame possum called Redfern, he has a goat, Camilla.

Mr Woodgate, who was visited by two television crews and three reporters from daily newspapers yesterday, was unruffled by the attention. He said he was "bemused" by the affair, and had asked a local police officer if he was going to arrest him. "He said 'no, no, no'," said Mr Woodgate. "He thought it was funny."

Earlier, Mr Ball claimed that Mr Woodgate's neighbours were convinced that he was Lucan. The local mayor, Bob Buchanan, told The Dominion Post that there was "quite a resemblance" between him and Lucan. Mr Buchanan said: "I wouldn't be surprised to learn he is Lucan."

It was also reported that Mr Woodgate was receiving money from property he owned in Britain. But by the end of the day it was clear that the Lord Lucan mystery remains unsolved.

The many faces of a missing man

Lord Lucan has been sighted almost as often as Elvis Presley in the 34 years since his disappearance. The first and most significant occasion was when Australian police were alerted on Christmas Eve 1974 to an Englishman with an upper-class accent who seemed to be using a false identity.

They discovered that the man they arrested was not Lucan but the Labour MP, John Stonehouse who had faked a suicide the previous month by leaving his clothes on a Miami beach.

A Bedfordshire woman who worked for Lucan's friend John Aspinall later came forward with a story that Aspinall had sheltered the fugitive Earl, who had died after being mauled by a tiger. Aspinall, however, said he believed that Lucan drowned himself off Newhaven.

In 1976, Private Eye claimed that several of Lucan's friends, including Aspinall and Sir James Goldsmith, had met for lunch on the day after his disappearance to discuss sheltering him. Goldsmith sued for criminal libel. The case reputedly cost the magazine £100,000.

In 2003, the Sunday Telegraph bought the rights to a book by former Scotland Yard detective Duncan MacLaughlin, who claimed an English eccentric known as Jungly Barry, who died in Goa in 1996, was Lord Lucan. The story fell apart as soon as it was published because too many people remembered Barry Halpin, an unemployed busker from St Helens, who had moved to Goa because it was "more spiritual".

In 2004, Lucan was reported to be in Mozambique and at different times he has also been "sighted" working as a waiter in San Francisco, in rehabilitation for alcoholism in Brisbane, staying at a hotel in Cherbourg, and at another in Madagascar. A British High Court ruled in 1999 that Lord Lucan is dead.