The only female detective on the case reveals Lord Lucan’s 10-year-old daughter’s account of the murder and how the Clermont Set covered for him

Fifty years after the murder that shocked Britain, the Crown’s case is being contradicted Lord Lucan was revealed exclusively in the Mail last week after we unearthed it in a confidential Scotland Yard document from 1975. Today the Lucan Files continues with an interview with the only female Met detective involved, who played a crucial role in the first months of the war. investigation into the murder of babysitter Sandra Rivett.

With its notoriously macho, hard-drinking and sexist culture, CID has offices around the world metropolitan police were a challenging environment for female detectives in the 1970s.

Sally Bower was a 29-year-old officer when she was seconded to the Lord Lucan squad. In a sign of the times – or perhaps the prevailing ‘Life on Mars‘ attitude within the force – its role was ‘limited’ to dealing exclusively with female and child witnesses.

In the Lucan case, however, this would put her at the epicenter of the investigation.

The two main witnesses were Lucan’s estranged wife Veronica, whom he allegedly tried to kill on the night of November 7, 1974, and their daughter Lady Frances, aged 10, who was also present in the five-storey family home in London‘s Belgravia.

Sally Bower, pictured, was the only female detective on the Lucan team in 1974 at the age of 29

Lord and Lady Lucan and their daughter Frances in the garden of 46 Lower Belgrave Street

Sally, now 78 and long retired from the Met, was not only the only female detective in the Lucan Squad, she was also the only female officer in the entire A Division of the Met, which covered Westminster and Belgravia in 1974.

“My role was quite simple,” she said. ‘I treated the women and children during each examination. Ironically, in this case, they were the key witnesses.”

Four days after Lucanian nanny Sandra Rivett was beaten to death in the basement kitchen at 46 Lower Belgrave Street, Sally was assigned to the investigation by Detective Chief Inspector Roy Ranson, author of the police report obtained by the Mail.

Later that week she found herself in the West Country where, after being released from hospital, Lady Lucan had fled to a friend’s ‘safe house’ in Sheviock on the Rame Peninsula in south-east Cornwall.

Sally escorted two of the Lucan children there, Frances and four-year-old Camilla, in an unmarked car as part of an effort to protect the family from the relentless media attention. Their brother George, 7, stayed behind because he was ill.

The next day, Sally sat down with Frances, who was upstairs watching television with her mother when her nanny was attacked. She later saw her father lead her mother, who suffered serious head injuries, to her bedroom.

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A fragment of Lord Lucan’s AA membership card, which he left behind before disappearing

John Bingham, seventh Earl of Lucan, with his future wife Veronica Duncan, in 1963

A page from the Daily Mail from 1975 about an account of Lady Frances, aged 10, in court

Over the course of several hours, Sally teased out the details of the child.

“She was a very intelligent, articulate girl,” she remembers. ‘She spoke clearly and precisely. A lot of weight was given to what she said because she gave a very good timeline of the programs they had watched, and what she had seen was clearly critical to the investigation.

‘I’m pretty sure I drove straight back to London with the statement after the interview. I also had to read it at the inquest.

‘They were the most fantastic children. So polite and serious and, I believe, honest.”

In the coroner’s inquest report, June 17, 1975, the front page of The Daily Mail refers to Sally reading Lady Frances’s moving statement in which she described hearing a scream and then seeing her father with her mother, Lady Lucan, who was ‘bleeding down her face and crying’.

Sally Bower gives her first newspaper interview as the Mail launches a new podcast series, The trial of Lord Lucana week-long event that started on Monday, during which two leading lawyers will argue the case for the defense and prosecution.

The legal deliberations are based on a previously unseen Scotland Yard document, unearthed by the Mail and first published last week. Written by lead investigator DCS Ranson, it provides a definitive account of the murder, with fascinating new evidence and witness accounts.

Lady Lucan plays with two of her children while her son climbs a rope ladder

It outlines in forensic detail why detectives believed Eton-educated Lucan was guilty of the murder of Mrs Rivett, 29, and the attempted murder of his wife Veronica, and is said to have formed the basis of Regina v The VII Earl of Lucan if he was ever brought to justice. But Lucan disappeared.

Sally’s first assignment with the squad was a visit to the ferry port town of Newhaven in Sussex, where the Earl’s Ford Corsair car – which he had borrowed from a friend – was found abandoned a few days after the murder.

“One of the key pieces of evidence was the discovery in the trunk of a piece of lead pipework wrapped in bandages. It was a perfect fit for a similar length [of pipe] found at the murder scene,” she said. ‘Some people thought it was an important part of the circumstantial evidence against Lucan. But I always thought it was strange. Why would a killer carry two identical weapons when one clearly suffices?

“Did he put it there? Or was it put there, possibly like the car, to throw us off? There are so many pieces to the Lucan puzzle that are puzzling and seemingly contradictory.”

During that initial investigation, Sally also accompanied DCI David Gerring to question Susan Maxwell-Scott at her home in Uckfield, East Sussex – a friend of the Lucan family and reportedly the last person to see him alive.

As revealed in the Ranson Report, police believe that lawyer Ms Maxwell-Scott was ‘in love’ with the Count and did not tell the whole truth about their meeting at her home in the hours after Rivett’s murder.

“I was absolutely convinced that she knew a lot more about what was happening than she ever let on,” says Sally. ‘Even when you just had the feeling she was hiding something. She clearly thought of Lucan’s world and was very loyal to him. There was no way she was going to betray him. She never fully opened up. She was undoubtedly hiding something.’

A police officer stands outside 46 Lower Belgrave Street in London, the home of John Bingham

Lady Lucan decorates a Christmas tree with her three children Camilla, Frances and George

She also recalls that her colleague Detective Sergeant Graham Forsyth was the only officer assigned to Lady Lucan – described in DCS Ranson’s report as a ‘highly tense’ but ‘truthful’ witness – throughout the investigation.

“For some reason he was the only person who could manage her,” she says. ‘She was a very difficult woman. So entitled. She even started trying to order me around and asked for cups of tea for her in Cornwall. I told her that wouldn’t happen. It wasn’t my job.

“Graham had the size of her. He made her happy. I don’t know why they stopped doing it. He was a nice guy, but not the height of sartorial elegance, as I’m sure he would be the first to admit.

‘He took care of Veronica from the first days she was in hospital. She was such a snob, yet there was something about this scruffy person that warmed her heart. It was a great achievement for him to keep her sweet.”

Sally left Gerald Road Police Station in Mayfair, where the hit squad was based, in April 1975. The Lucan case was still unsolved – and of course remains so almost half a century later.

One of her last assignments was packing the fugitive colleague’s belongings into his bachelor flat in Elizabeth Street, around the corner from the family home. ‘It was pitch black in there, with all the curtains drawn. Kind of creepy,” she said.

‘It was full of his whole life. Lots of books and his ceremonial robes for the House of Lords. Very sad. By then the case was running out of steam as there were no more credible new leads.”

What does Sally think happened all these years later? “I think there were people who knew exactly what happened to Lucan,” she says. ‘I like to deal with evidence, not speculation. But I think Lucan escaped and I think he had help.

‘And beyond that, who knows? That help almost certainly came from his Clermont Set [the gambling club, of which he was a founder member, and where his wealthy and powerful friends would meet]. None of them had any respect for anyone. They were a law unto themselves.”

Special reporting: Simon Trump