Losing the court case proved devastating for Lucan. It had cost him an estimated £20,000, and by late 1974 his financial position was dire. As he drank more heavily and started chain-smoking, his friends began to worry. In drunken conversations with some of them, including Aspinall's mother, Lady Osborne, and her son, Lucan discussed murdering his wife. Greville Howard later gave a statement to the police describing how Lucan had talked of how killing his wife might save him from bankruptcy, how her body might be disposed of in the Solent and how he "would never be caught".