After a week of gripping testimony and debate, listeners to the Mail’s pioneering podcast The Trial of Lord Lucan have delivered their verdicts.
From 6am today, a special episode of the chart-topping series will reveal whether the 7th Earl of Lucan is guilty or innocent of the murder of his children’s nanny Sandra Rivett and the attempted murder of his estranged wife Veronica.
At the end of the trial on Friday, audience members were invited to join an online jury to decide whether the peer was responsible for the horror attacks nearly 50 years ago.
The response was staggering – by the deadline of noon yesterday, many thousands had cast their votes, underlining the runaway success of the podcast which stormed to number one in the Apple and Spotify true crime charts after its launch.
It has also established itself in the top ten for all podcasts in the UK.
The series is inspired by a world exclusive police report, obtained by the Mail, which spelt out the case against the infamous earl, who vanished within hours of Mrs Rivett’s murder on November 7, 1974.
Every day last week, new episodes chronicled how an Old Bailey trial involving Lord Lucan, pictured, may have unfolded had he been caught.
Two of Britain’s most eminent barristers presented the prosecution and defence cases as the earl stood trial over Mrs Rivett’s death and the attack on Lady Lucan, with whom he was involved in a custody battle over their three children.
After decades of speculation, the evidence was laid bare after the Mail obtained a previously confidential Scotland Yard report from 1975 which detailed the Crown’s case.
The story shocked Britain when, allegedly aided by his powerful friends, Lord Lucan went on the run after the family nanny, Mrs Rivett, 29, was bludgeoned to death with a lead pipe in the basement kitchen at his Belgravia mansion. Lady Lucan – believed to be the intended victim – sustained serious head injuries.
As Max Hardy, for the prosecution, laid out, Lucan alone was responsible for the grisly attacks. He planned the murder down to the last detail, he says, even discussing dumping his wife’s body in the River Solent.
For the defence, Edward Henry KC urged jurors to judge the case on ‘the evidence alone’, saying Lord Lucan ‘has been vilified’.
Go to dailymail.co.uk/lucan to hear the special verdict episode.