Lucan's final riddle

The mystery of Lord Lucan took an astonishing twist yesterday with claims that he spent his last years as a hippie in India.

A former Scotland Yard detective said the peer sought refuge in Goa, where he was known as Jungly Barry until his death in 1996.

A photograph of bearded Barry bears a resemblance to the peer who vanished in 1974 after bludgeoning the family's nanny to death.

It was further alleged that Barry spoke with a refined accent, hinted he was on the run and was an accomplished player of backgammon - at which Lucan excelled.

But the claims were vigorously disputed last night by Lady Lucan, the real target of her estranged husband's murderous rage. She declared: 'They don't have any DNA, no body, nothing.'

A traveller who met Jungly Barry in Goa claimed that he spoke with a Lancashire accent.

And the date Barry claimed to have been born, March 11 1938, tallies with the birth of a Barry T. Halpin at St Helens in Lancashire.

There were also question marks about the former detective making the claims, author Duncan MacLaughlin, who left the police force under a cloud five years ago and has now written a book about the Lucan affair.

The fate of the 7th Earl of Lucan, who vanished aged 39 in 1974 after nanny Sandra Rivett was found murdered, has baffled police ever since.

His wife Veronica has always believed he committed suicide less than 48 hours after he tried to kill her, but attacked Miss Rivett by mistake in the dark basement of their Belgravia house.

Mr MacLaughlin insists he has 'overwhelming evidence' that the fugitive peer ended up as a skinny, squalid drunk in Goa, where he would play hippies at backgammon for the price of a cheap brandy.

None of it, however, impresses Lady Lucan, now 66. 'There is nothing conclusive in it and I don't think anybody else will be convinced,' she said.

Asked if Jungly Barry could be her husband, she added: 'I'm adamant he isn't. The description, none of it fits. It's not possible. It is unutterably boring.'

A former traveller who met Barry in Goa was equally sceptical. Electronic engineer Andy Burrows, 38, of Brighton, said he spent ten days in Jungly Barry's company in February 1992. 'I am totally convinced that man was not Lord Lucan because he did not have a plummy accent in the slightest. He still had a broad Lancashire accent.

'He used to call everyone cock and he told me he grew up around Lancashire but he was quite evasive about talking any more about his past.'

Mr Burrows also said he saw Barry interviewed on a TV travel show two or three years later, trying to promote jungle tours he ran in Goa.

'If this is a man on the run he would hardly be encouraging people to come out and see him and telling everyone exactly where he could be found.'

There is also a Scotland Yard 'age- enhanced' computer image of how Lucan, who would be 68 if he had survived, would look. He would have been bald.