Son of murdered Lord Lucan nanny confronts man accused of being peer

This is the moment the son of a nanny bludgeoned to death by Lord Lucan confronts an 'Old Etonian' who is accused of being the missing British peer. 

BBC cameras followed Neil Berriman – the son of murdered Lucan nanny Sandra Rivett – as he tracked down the man he believed to be the missing aristocrat, now living in Australia.

Mr Berriman accused 'Old Etonian' Christopher Bell, 87, of being Lucan and of having killed his mother on November 7, 1974, before going on the run for decades.

In the new BBC documentary, Mr Berriman has a WhatsApp video call with 'just me and the old man' as he's 'after a confession'.

'Let's do this,' Mr Berriman says before dialling the number. 

During the call, Mr Berriman creates the false identity of an aging hippy called Bezza Dugal who has left him a brown envelope after he died that reveals Mr Bell's 'real identity'. 

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He tells Mr Bell he has been told to 'protect him' and 'that is why I know you are Lord Lucan. That is why I don't want to do anything about it'.

Mr Bell replies: 'Good. Well there actually isn't much you can do about it. It's all in the hands of the divine.'   

But Mr Bell later backtracks and says: 'I do not know who the hell Lord Lucan is.' He adds: 'I can assure you, I'm not that man, never have been, never will be.'

The brutal murder of Ms Rivett in the Lucan family home in Belgravia, London, shocked Britain and prompted a five-decade manhunt for the prime suspect, the 7th Earl of Lucan.

Mr Berriman, who Ms Rivett gave up for adoption as a baby, spent years attempting to trace the missing peer, and the new BBC Two documentary shows the dramatic moment when he confronts Mr Bell.

Mr Berriman, a builder from Hampshire, asks about 'the woman that you killed', and Mr Bell replies: 'She came from a background that was very horrendous. She was in a great deal of pain and stress.'

During the often confused exchange, Mr Bell continues: 'I have no memory of killing anybody, of terminating anybody's life... As far as I know I've never taken the life of anyone.'

In the documentary images of Mr Bell and Lord Lucan are sent to facial recognition expert Professor Hassan Ugail 'who's never been wrong' to be analysed. 

Mr Berriman later stands in a corn field with his arms aloft as he reads aloud an email detailing the results with one image saying there's an 88.5pc 'similarity index'.   

The algorithm's creator Professor Ugail says anything above 75pc is 'the same individual'. 

The results were sent to two other AI companies - one in London and one in America -  a both came back with similar or higher figures. 

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Mr Berriman is seen jeting off to Australia in a bid to confront Mr Bell having tracked down his remote home in the city of Bundaberg, Queensland, where he is living as a Buddhist monk. 

But he's asked not to have the cameras rolling for the meet in which Mr Bell tells him: 'What if I am Lord Lucan? What the f**k are you going to do about it?' 

Mr Bell claims to be descended from English aristocracy, to have been educated at Eton and to have been friends with Princess Margaret. 

But he also says he left Britain in 1966, eight years before the Lucan murder, and that he worked as a 'female impersonator' in Canada before travelling to India and meeting the Buddhist spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

In the documentary, Mr Bell says he was conceived 'at a magical ritual at Stonehenge', and that his biological father was a puppeteer who performed at Buckingham Palace for Princess Elizabeth (the late Queen) and her sister Princess Margaret.

His birth certificate names him as Derek Crowther, born in Islington, north London, in 1936, the son of a railway carriage cleaner.

At one point Mr Berriman, 57, is convinced his suspicions have been confirmed by artificial intelligence facial recognition technology which matches Mr Bell's features to those of Lord Lucan.

But analysis by a Home Office-approved team of recognition experts ruled him out in 2022. The documentary also showed investigative journalist Glen Campbell telling Mr Berriman he believes they have got it wrong, and Mr Bell's vehement denial that he is the missing peer.

The three-part documentary follows Mr Berriman as he reveals how he learnt he was adopted and that Ms Rivett was his biological mother.

Her battered body was discovered in a mail bag in the blood-stained basement of the Lucan home after his wife Lady Veronica Lucan ran into a nearby pub screaming that their nanny had been murdered.

Lucan's car was found abandoned, soaked in blood, in Newhaven, East Sussex.

An inquest jury later declared him the killer, but he has never been found.

- Lucan is available to view on BBC iPlayer.