Who was Lord Lucan’s friend Ian Maxwell-Scott?
IAN Maxwell-Scott was a British aristocrat who was close friends with the missing killer Lord Lucan.
Lucan’s shocking crime will be explored in an eponymous BBC documentary which will feature the son of his only known victim.
Friends in high places
Maxwell-Scott was born on July 18, 1927, into an aristocratic background.
His father was Rear-Admiral Malcolm Raphael Joseph Constable Maxwell-Scott, an aide-de-camp to King George V, and his mother was named Fearga Victoria Mary O’Conor.
The aristocrat married Susan Mary Clark, a debutante who had become a regular feature in tabloid gossip columns.
Her father disapproved of the match and refused to attend their wedding on Valentine’s Day 1958.
At the time, Susan’s father told the Daily Mail: “I prefer the man who does an honest day’s work to any amount of nobility or family names.”
Ian was a professional gambler and croupier (someone who works in a casino), which helped him strike up a close friendship with fellow gambler Lord Lucan.
Lucan, whose real name was Richard John Bingham, began to visit the family’s home in Sussex often and brought his wife, Veronica, and their three children with him.
According to Susan, Veronica disliked visiting the Sussex manor that the Maxwell-Scotts called home.
She said: ‘I can’t exactly pinpoint the break-up in the marriage of the Lucans, John and Veronica”
“’They often used to bring their family down to our house in Sussex for quiet weekend parties.
“We’d play tennis, swim in our pool, or perhaps play croquet.
“There were certainly no scenes.
“But John did talk to me about difficulties.
“He said Veronica had the feeling that all his friends were against her and trying to come between them.
“And she didn’t want to go away and stay with friends.”
Lucan’s horrifying crime
Ian was staying in London when Lord Lucan mysteriously appeared at the Maxwell-Scotts’ Sussex home on the night of November 7, 1974, but his wife Susan was home.
She let Lucan stay over for the night, initially unaware of the shocking crime the aristocrat had committed in West London.
At 9pm on November 7, Veronica, now divorced from her husband, sent her children’s nanny into the basement to fetch her a cup of tea but grew suspicious when Sandra Rivett, the nanny, did not return.
When Veronica went down to investigate, she was attacked by a man that she claimed was Lord Lucan, her ex-husband.
After a bitter struggle which ended with Veronica reasoning with Lucan, she ran into a local pub and called for help, all the while dripping with blood.
A police search of the home found the nanny’s body in a sack, along with the murder weapon that the killer had used.
According to Susan, Lucan had broken into the house to save his wife from another attacker.
He disappeared the next morning, making Ian’s wife the very last person to ever see Lord Lucan alive.
An inquest, held in 1975, found that Lucan was responsible for the crime within 31 minutes.
The investigation considered a wide range of evidence, including Veronica’s witness statement and the discovery of the nanny’s blood on Lucan’s tyres.
Lucan was never seen again, sparking speculation that he had fled to Africa or that he may have committed suicide after his crime.
Susan always insisted that her friend was innocent, until she died in 2004.
Her husband, Ian, died over ten years before her on November 27, 1993.
A new BBC documentary
The horrifying crime committed by Lucan will be examined in a new BBC documentary named after the aristocrat.
The three-part series will kick off on November 6, 2024, and features Neil Berriman who is Sandra’s son.
Neil didn’t realise who his mother was until he was forty, having been given up for adoption.
He hopes the series will bring him closer to the mother he never knew.