The last confirmed sighting of Lucan was at about 1:15 am on 8 November 1974 as he exited the driveway of the Maxwell-Scott property in his friend's Ford Corsair, and his ultimate fate remains a mystery. Detective Chief Superintendent Roy Ranson initially claimed that Lucan had "done the honourable thing" and "fallen on his own sword", a view repeated by many of Lucan's friends, including John Aspinall, who said that he believed that the earl was guilty of Rivett's murder and that he had committed suicide by scuttling his motorboat and jumping into the English Channel with a stone tied to his body. Veronica Lucan committed suicide in 2017, and she believed that her husband had killed himself "like the nobleman he was".