A British judge officially declared the infamous aristocrat Lord Lucan dead, nearly 42 years after the playboy aristocrat disappeared following the murder of his children's nanny in an unsolved mystery. Speaking to Britain’s Press Association after the ruling, George Bingham said: "I am very happy with the judgment of the court in this matter. More on this story and other news from London 
 
 Speaking outside the court, he added: "It has been a very long time coming." Rivett's son Neil Berriman had opposed the application according to media reports, telling the Daily Mail that if Lucan was still alive, he should be prosecuted. It is fantastic and I am very pleased for him (Bingham)." Three days later, the peer's blood-soaked car was found abandoned in Newhaven, East Sussex, and an inquest jury declared him to be Miss Rivett's killer a year later. Over the years, sightings have been reported of Lucan in places including Australia, South Africa and New Zealand, none of them verified. Mrs Maxwell-Scott was thought to be the last person to see Lucan alive. The account comes days before a procedural hearing at the High Court to determine whether a death certificate should finally be issued for Lucan. According to MailOnline, Mr Marcq is the source of an allegation that emerged during an earlier High Court hearing to determine whether a death certificate should be issued for Lucan, allowing his son George, now Lord Bingham, to adopt his father's surname and title. George Bingham can now become the Eighth Earl of Lucan, following the ruling at the High Court in London on Wednesday. He had always said this legal process had been about gaining "closure." The Eton-educated 7th Earl of Lucan vanished after Sandra Rivett, nanny to his three children , was found murdered at his family home in Belgravia on November 7, 1974. They allegedly dismissed the idea that he flee abroad, saying he was not cut out for a life on the run and he would be returned to the UK. "I personally, along with other people I worked with on this case, know that the convenient drowning, shooting that night, of Lord Lucan is not true. "There is no getting away from the fact that, whatever happened that night, Lord Lucan is guilty of something in my eyes." After killing Miss Rivett, Lucan is suspected of beating his wife over the head, before she managed to escape and raise the alarm. Police mount a search but find no further trace of him 
 
 June 1975 Lucan is named as Ms Rivett's killer at the inquest into her death. Lady Lucan identifies him as her attacker 
 
 1999 His family is granted probate over Lord Lucan's estate, but no death certificate is issued and Lucan's son Lord Bingham is refused permission to take his father's seat in the House of Lords 
 
 2014 The Presumption of Death Act enables Lord Bingham to apply to have Lucan declared dead so he can inherit the family title.
– A decades-old murder mystery has finally come to some sort of an end. Following a judge's Wednesday ruling, a death certificate has been issued for Lord Lucan, who the New York Times recounts as "a dashing British aristocrat" last seen on Nov. 7, 1974—the day that his children's nanny was found dead, allegedly by his hand. The BBC recalls the crime: Sandra Rivett was beaten to death in the family's London home and her body left in the basement; Lord Lucan's estranged wife was also attacked but got away, fleeing to a neighboring pub and yelling "He’s in the house! He’s murdered the nanny!" per the Times. Lady Lucan named her then 39-year-old husband as the attacker, saying he had thought she was Rivett, reports USA Today. A June 1975 inquest named him as Rivett's murderer, except the man born Richard John Bingham was never officially seen again after that night; a car he had borrowed from a friend was later found, blood-stained and abandoned. The sightings and theories kept flowing, though: in Melbourne, Australia, and France within the first year; employed as a waiter in San Francisco; backpacking on Mount Etna; dying in Goa in 1996. Just last Saturday came a story from an old gambling friend, who says he was told that the lord shot himself and had his body fed to a tiger. Lucan was declared dead in 1996, but the rub was that son George Bingham was unable to take on his title, preventing him from assuming his father's seat in the House of Lords. The death certificate now allows for that.