Brown/Rubin Heir Hunters

Today, the Heir Hunters battle

with one of the biggest cases they've looked at.

We've exceeded the length of the table and this is one third of that family tree.

But could all their hard work be for nothing?

If there's a will in there, then I will personally

be absolutely devastated.

Whilst the search is on for a missing son...

We now had a serious theory that Richard Camden was the same man.

..they make a horrific discovery.

Sometimes you can find that a family has been affected by tragic chapters

in world history.

It's all in a day's work for the Heir Hunters.

All right, thank you very much for your time.

Take care, bye-bye.

Heir Hunters at firm Fraser & Fraser are working on a case

that has snowballed into a scale that has rarely been seen before.

In 20 years, I would say this is either the biggest

or the second biggest family that I've ever dealt with.

It's certainly up there.

Who's free? Anybody?

Researchers from both the London and Edinburgh offices have spent

the last two and a half years trying to crack the case of David Brown,

who died in 2014,

leaving behind an estate worth an estimated £150,000.

I have lost heart with this case a few times,

because it seems like an insurmountable challenge.

Today, case manager Karen Johannesson

is on her way to revisit David Brown's house

to carry out a search that could make or break the case.

We'll have a good look around and we'll look and see if there's

any personal effects, any personal letters.

There's the possibility of unearthing something that could mean

all of Karen's efforts over the last two years have been for nothing.

If there's a will in there, then that changes absolutely everything.

I will personally be absolutely devastated,

because I've worked so hard on this case.

Oh, wow!

That's it there.

Thanks.

This house,

situated in the small Scottish fishing village of Pittenweem,

was originally David's parents' home,

and his grandparents before them.

-Oh, wow.

-SHE LAUGHS

As the sole asset in this estate,

it's a relief to see the house is still in one piece.

Yep.

There's still water running.

If not in need of some TLC.

So much dust.

This is the only known photograph of David Brown,

taken at a business conference.

David passed away on 20th February 2014.

Although little is known about his life,

David never married

and in his final years, he became something of a recluse.

He kept very much himself to himself.

He was, um, a smiley man.

He always had a nice smile.

Neighbour Sarah McLeod's family has owned the house next door

to David's for over 100 years.

But he spent much of his time working away.

He was a sort of travelling salesman.

He had worked in England most of the time when I was growing up,

so I got to know him when he was a retired man.

Sarah was with David during his final days.

I popped in to see him, and he was in bed, bedridden, couldn't speak,

but we did make eye contact,

and I touched his hand and stuff, and that was the last time I saw him

and I think that was... he died the next day.

I felt sad, because the nurses told me nobody had been in to see him.

It's believed David didn't leave a will.

But at his house,

Karen needs to double-check that nothing was missed

last time she came.

Something special.

Ah, right. The big bedroom.

This one's got a fireplace.

-A working fireplace...

-INDISTINCT SPEECH

With no sign of any will,

Karen's search for David's relatives is more important than ever.

It's Karen here. How are you doing?

Today's house visit is the latest stage in a case that first landed on

Karen's desk in October 2014, having been advertised as unclaimed.

I was interested immediately because it was on the high street

in Pittenweem, and I guessed from that

that he would probably own that property.

The hunt to find David Brown's heirs was now on.

What's his mother's maiden name?

Heir Hunters work on commission,

taking a pre-agreed percentage of the estate.

But although David Brown's property is worth a healthy £150,000,

there are no guarantees the commission

will be enough to cover their costs.

The biggest gamble for our work is that when a case

first lands on my desk,

I don't know if we're going to end up with a single beneficiary

and a £1 million estate,

or 180 beneficiaries and a £20,000 estate.

It's a massive gamble for us to start work.

It was a gamble Karen was willing to take.

She already knew David died a bachelor

and didn't have any children.

We're thinking about, does he have siblings?

We knew that the Brown family were in Pittenweem,

Anstruther and Cellardyke,

so we did our birth searches in those areas

and I was satisfied that he did not have any brothers or sisters.

Establishing David Brown was an only child meant

that any hopes of a quick resolution fell by the wayside.

We know that we're going to be doing a case involving cousins,

which most of our cases usually are.

So that means we're going to do his mother's family tree

and his father's family tree,

and find out any of his cousins and their descendants.

Searching for cousins can involve a lot of research,

but Karen was about to make a surprising discovery.

Mr Brown had no heirs in the class of cousins, or their descendants.

It was bad news for the team,

and if David Brown had died in England,

the case could've stalled there and then.

But David died in Scotland,

which meant there was a glimmer of hope for Karen.

In England, once you've exhausted the class of first cousins and

their descendants, the estate will then fall to the Treasury.

However, in Scotland, we have the option to work back

to second cousins and their descendants.

But going back an extra generation to look for second cousins

meant this case could snowball into one of the biggest

the firm has ever dealt with.

The time taken to do research obviously is massively extended,

and the time taken to contact and, er, hopefully get a contract

from all the beneficiaries is extended even further.

Thank you, bye.

And with no guarantee of finding any heirs,

the team had a big decision to make.

You have to make that judgment call.

Was it worth going back another generation

and potentially unleashing four new family trees?

Despite the risk, the team was determined to crack this case.

But the sheer size of the research meant that Karen needed the full

resources of the team in London.

File number four, which is the current file...

Case manager Gareth Langford would lead the research in London,

and he started by looking into David's maternal grandfather,

Andrew Anderson.

And all their fears about the scale of the research were realised.

Just opening up the family tree on one branch, so the Anderson branch,

we've exceeded the length of the table,

and this is one third of that family tree.

The research costs were now spiralling out of control,

but more worryingly, there was still no sign of any heirs.

I don't think we despair when we're looking at cases.

When we start a case, you know, the entire

objective is to locate all the beneficiaries.

So, you know, if you start a case, you've got to finish it. Otherwise, what's the point?

In Scotland, things weren't looking any better.

These are big families.

Euphemia married Mr Gardiner and had seven issue.

Elizabeth married Mr Gardiner's brother, Philip Gardiner, and had four issue.

But it wasn't just the size of the families that was causing problems.

As Karen began to establish the all-important second cousins,

she hit another stumbling block.

All the second cousins have passed away, and so we're looking

at their descendants,

and sometimes we're coming down three or four generations.

Now, this is really complex, even for professional genealogists.

With the research snowballing, the case was looking like a bigger

and bigger gamble for the team.

I'll be surprised if we break even.

Erm, but, you know, as we often say, once you start a case,

you've got to finish it.

Hi, this is Hector Birchwood, I'm returning your call.

Many estates stay unclaimed for many years on the Bona Vacantia list,

and sometimes new information comes to light,

and hopefully, that is what allows us to break through the case.

The Heir Hunters team at firm Celtic Research is trying to wrap up

one of those cases.

Well, he was entitled to a share in an estate.

When they first looked into the case of Jacqueline Rubin in 2011,

they had no idea it would prove such a tough nut to crack.

It can be very frustrating when a new case comes out

and there's very little information.

So, sometimes, if we can't make a breakthrough,

the very best we can do is just hope for something to come through

maybe later on.

Jacqueline Rubin died a widow in 2008.

Very little is known about her life,

other than that she grew up in north-west London,

where she worked as a dressmaker.

Jacqueline didn't make a will,

so her £31,000 estate was first advertised as unclaimed in 2009.

But three years later, no potential heirs have come forward

and Hector Birchwood thought it was worth a closer look.

I noticed that Rubin was a Jewish name,

and we have our own in-house Jewish specialist,

and so I decided to send it to him.

We trace the next of kin of people who have died intestate.

That specialist was case manager Saul Marks.

As with most cases,

Saul began with trying to establish some basic facts,

and it was immediately clear he was facing an uphill struggle.

In this case, we could find no birth or marriage listing for Jacqueline,

so we didn't know whether Rubin was her maiden name, or whether she

was married and it was her married name.

So straight away, the whole thing stalled.

Saul was beginning to understand why the case had been unclaimed,

but although he put it to one side,

he was determined not to be beaten by it.

Sometimes when the research on a case is stalled,

you've got to really hope that there's a piece of information

which comes to light which allows you to move forward again,

and this can be a whole variety of things,

but sometimes you're just looking for one big breakthrough.

And over two years later,

the breakthrough Saul desperately needed finally arrived.

When the Treasury Solicitor's Department actually reformatted

the way that they publicise unclaimed estates,

for Jacqueline's estate they included a maiden name of de Good.

So suddenly we now knew that Rubin was her married name,

and de Good was her maiden name,

and we could get on with working the case at last.

For Saul, the race was now on.

We could then look for a marriage certificate

for a de Good to a Rubin

and there was only one.

It's actually Simon Rubin marrying Jacoba de Good.

Now, Jacoba and Jacqueline are obviously different names,

but her age on the marriage certificate

ties in with the age that we believe Jacqueline would be.

So this had to be her.

With no time to waste,

Saul began searching for the next of kin

and he very quickly found exactly what he was looking for.

They had a son, named Bernard Leon Rubin,

on 12th July 1929.

The parents' names match up and that's fine.

However, Saul's excitement was short-lived.

So the next task was to try and find Bernard.

Problem was we just couldn't find him.

He just vanishes off the face of the Earth.

Jacqueline's son Bernard could be the sole heir to her estate,

but the major problem was Saul didn't know

whether he was dead or alive.

So it's very important to try and find the closest kin,

but that's not always very easy.

It's actually quite difficult at times to prove

that someone did or didn't have very close kin.

Unable to trace son Bernard,

Saul had to decide whether he should take a risk and search for

potential heirs in the wider family.

The problem is...

you might commit a lot of time and resources to tracing the cousins

and finding all these potential heirs -

we're still left with this mystery of what happened

to Jacqueline's son, Bernard.

If we could find him, he would inherit

and none of the cousins would.

Saul and the team decided to take the risk

and began his search for Jacqueline's relatives.

OK, thanks very much. Bye.

He suspected Jacqueline's maiden name, Jacoba,

may originate from Holland.

In yet another twist to this case,

Saul's search for heirs had now gone overseas.

The firm's Dutch agents started building a family tree,

and they soon discovered some crucial information.

The name was actually Hijman and it did come from Holland.

We'd established that Jacqueline's only sister hadn't had any children,

so there were no nieces and nephews.

The Dutch agent now started looking for Jacqueline's extended family

on the paternal side,

and established she had six aunts and uncles

that were living in Amsterdam in the early 1940s.

But nothing could prepare Saul for what the Dutch agent

was about to discover.

Sometimes you can find that a family has been affected

by tragic chapters in world history.

At the start of the Second World War,

there were over 140,000 Jewish people living in Holland.

But as Hitler's troops swept across Europe,

the lives of these Dutch Jews were about to be placed in peril.

After only five days, the Netherlands surrendered,

the royal family fled to the UK and Amsterdam was occupied

by German forces.

In 1941, Hitler ordered all Jewish people in Holland

to declare themselves and the segregation began.

A number of measures was put in place to discriminate

against the Jews.

Jewish officials were dismissed from their jobs,

forced labour measures were put in place

and Jews were being arrested and interned.

Many tried to flee the country.

Others made attempts to hide.

Martin Stern was a young Jewish boy living in Amsterdam.

One day, my father disappeared and my mother

wouldn't tell me where he was.

And still at the age of three, not long afterwards,

my mother stopped me from playing with children in the street.

It was too dangerous for people to know that there was a little boy,

the son of a Jew, living in that flat.

By 1942, the deportation of Jewish people had begun.

Martin and his youngest sister were taken to Westerbork,

a Dutch transit camp in north-west Holland.

Creosoted wooden huts, barbed wire,

watchtowers and the first thing I remember being told

is, "Don't go anywhere near that barbed wire -

"the soldiers in those watchtowers have got guns

"and they will shoot you dead."

The rest of the camp was disgustingly crowded,

which meant people were fighting each other over space.

And the food consisted of vegetables

that a normal person would throw in the bin.

Over 100,000 Dutch Jews passed through Westerbork,

where they were destined for extermination camps

in Poland and Germany.

When they were full, the trucks were full,

the doors were shut and sealed with steel wire.

And even in my ignorance at the age of five,

I knew that wasn't normal for a railway journey.

I realised what was happening.

Martin and his youngest sister's names were never called.

They were amongst the few that survived.

Saul tragically discovered

that 31 members of Jacqueline Rubin's family were not so lucky.

The case of the Rubin family appears to be extreme,

with 31 members of one family being murdered during the Holocaust.

The discovery of such horrific news now meant that once again,

Saul's search for Jacqueline's heirs was thrown into jeopardy.

Looking at the almost total decimation of this family

in the Holocaust in Holland, it really made us wonder, well,

maybe the maternal side suffered a similar fate.

If the elusive son Bernard cannot be found,

the big question now for Saul and the team

was were there going to be any heirs?

Every year in Britain,

thousands of people get a surprise knock on the door

from the Heir Hunters.

That's good news for you. You can order the Ferrari.

Well, hang on a minute, we haven't found the will yet!

As well as handing over life-changing sums of money,

the Heir Hunters can bring long-lost relatives back together.

I'm so lucky because I've met up with all of you!

But thousands of estates have eluded the Heir Hunters

and remain unsolved.

Today, we've got details of two estates yet to be claimed.

Could you be the person the Heir Hunters are looking for,

or know someone that is?

The first case is James Finnegan Noone,

who was born on 4th October 1929 in southern Ireland.

And died on 22nd September 1990 in Bromley in Kent.

James died a bachelor but it is believed

he may have had several siblings in Ireland.

Is there a chance you could be related or know someone that is?

The next case is of Winifred Flude,

who was born Winifred Clarke on 14th July 1899

in Irchester in Northamptonshire.

And died on 7th May 1988 in Wellingborough.

She was the wife of George Flude and also had a brother, Reggie Clarke,

who died in Tunbridge Wells in 1987.

Do you know a Flude or a Clarke?

If so, you could be in line for a surprise windfall.

I'm calling from a company in London.

Heir Hunters at firm Fraser & Fraser

had taken on the case of David Brown,

who had died in the Scottish town of Pittenweem in 2014.

Need to be in Pittenweem at about 11 o'clock.

Having initially thought there were no heirs,

the search for living relatives had now snowballed.

The size of this family, it grew and grew

and the more I researched, the more I realised how big this family was.

Scottish law had allowed the team to go back an extra generation

to look for second cousins,

sending the team's workload through the roof.

But if they didn't find any heirs,

all the time and money spent on this case would be for nothing.

It means constant pressure on us,

not just to find the beneficiaries but find them as quickly

and as efficiently as possible.

We knew there weren't going to be any surviving second cousins,

so it was going to be in the class of their descendants.

Karen and the team in London

faced one of the biggest challenges in the firm's history

as they now had 26 stems of David's great aunts and uncles

to investigate across four family trees.

It's research that could take years to complete.

But the size of the families wasn't the only challenge

Karen had to overcome.

The deceased David Brown was an engineer, as was his father.

His father was also David Brown

and his paternal grandfather was David Brown.

Some of the unique traits we find with Scottish research

is how a name can be passed down through generations.

We often find one, two, three,

sometimes four generations of people, all with identical names.

And it wasn't just names David and his ancestors shared.

His paternal grandfather, David Brown, was a fisherman

in the town of Cellardyke and from there,

when we did all that research into that part of the family,

the Browns were almost entirely involved in the fishing industry.

Pittenweem Harbour, where the deceased David grew up,

is still one of the most active fishing ports

on the east coast of Fife in Scotland.

It was first recorded as a fishing port in 1228

but it wasn't until the latter part of the 19th century

that the fishing industry hit its peak,

as the world's appetite for Scottish herring was at an all-time high.

Well, this boat would have been seasonally involved

in the herring fishing.

She would have had a crew of eight men and a boy on board at that time.

David Brown's grandfather would have worked on a similar boat

to this one, which is over 100 years old.

It's a year-round industry,

particularly for people in this kind of community.

Undoubtedly a tough life and a hard life and a dangerous one.

But in the early 20th century, the herring industry was in decline,

so many local men forged more stable careers

outside of the traditional family trade,

including David Brown's father, who became an engineer.

If you had a son, you would be wanting your son

to have a better life

and they wouldn't want him to be involved with the fishing.

The younger David Brown distanced himself even further

from the family trade, opting for a career in sales.

I don't think there would have been any difficulty about, you know,

disloyalty to the industry, as it were, by opting out.

But it was David's fisherman grandfather

that was about to give the team a breakthrough.

We found that on the paternal grandfather's family,

there were only two lines that required our research

and on one of those lines, we came down to James Barclay.

But the burning question was,

had Karen finally uncovered one of David Brown's heirs?

He is a second cousin to the deceased, three times removed.

Karen wasted no time contacting James, who's known as Jim,

to break the news.

I didn't recognise the name.

It didn't really mean anything to me until I started digging

in my father's old albums and suchlike

and I saw there was a great...

his great grandfather was a David Brown.

Jim lived in Pittenweem, the same village as David Brown,

until he was ten years old.

Despite his family only moving to a neighbouring village

24 miles further up the coast,

he has no recollection of any contact with the Brown family.

My grandmother was Maggie Reid

and that's my granny at seven years old in 1896

and she was the offspring of a marriage between Adam Reid

and Elizabeth Brown and that's where the connection

with the Brown family comes in, a couple of generations ago.

So, that's why we're sitting here today.

Since researching his family history...

I've got quite a few photographs on the walls through my hidey-hole.

..Jim's discovered his grandparents

were also from a family of fishermen.

The Reids were long-time fishermen, going back to the 1700s.

This was Adam Reid's boat.

That's his son's boat, the younger Adam Reid.

Back in London, the search for other beneficiaries was gathering pace

and it was becoming clear

Jim wasn't going to be the only heir in this case.

Our first beneficiary is here and if we open up the family tree,

it'll eventually lead to our last beneficiary.

This is actually really difficult.

We've already exceeded the desk and I'd say I'm a third,

a third through the first family.

I knew that I was going to be looking at four family trees

because he had no cousins

but I just didn't anticipate how big this case was going to be.

At the house, Karen has invited heir and keen family historian Jim

over to have a look through some of David's heirlooms

in case they're relevant to the search.

Come on in.

So, here it is. I guess this was the more, the more casual front room.

That'll take me back a bit.

This just takes you straight through to the kitchen.

I guess it's a scullery, isn't it?

Just so funny to think of Mr Brown living here,

right up till he passed away two years ago!

Upstairs, there's one particular item Karen wants Jim to see,

a family record book known as a family Bible.

Parents' names, David Brown, born November 28th, 1828.

-And that's his wife.

-That's David Brown's grandfather then, that's...

I would think so. Yes, that's his grandfather, isn't it?

People used books like this to keep a record of family births,

deaths and marriages.

John Brown, drowned at sea April 8th, 1890.

-Drowned at sea, is that what it says?

-Yes.

Family Bibles were quite the...quite a thing.

It's a really good record, isn't it?

It's a great way to keep in touch, especially in a bigger family.

Certainly interesting.

There's nothing in the record book that changes Karen's research.

But for Jim, it's been an enlightening afternoon.

It's intriguing to see an old house like that,

just with hardly any changes from the year dot,

you know, it's all very interesting.

Karen has just one more piece of business at the house.

Hi, is it Eric?

-How are you doing?

-How are you doing? I'm Karen.

-Hi, nice to meet you.

-Great to see you.

-I'm really glad you could come down today.

-You're welcome.

She's invited antique clock expert Eric Young round

to value the two grandfather clocks that belonged to David.

This clock was made by George Lumsden from Pittenweem.

David's property is estimated to be worth £150,000

and the clocks could add value to his estate.

And I'm dying to ask you, how much do you think these clocks are worth?

Each clock would need to be

given a value of £5,000.

-£5,000?

-Yes, £5,000 without question.

-For each clock?

For each clock, they are absolutely incredible examples

-of East Neuk clock-making.

-Wow!

That is amazing, that really is amazing.

Thanks so much, Eric. Take care, bye-bye.

The clocks are a welcome addition to the estate.

For the team in the office, their research is finally complete.

In total, they found an incredible 192 heirs.

The majority of the heirs are entitled to a 123rd of this estate

but there are beneficiaries that are more distantly related

and they're going to receive a 738th of the estate.

So, although they're not going to receive any life-changing amounts,

you know, it's where the money should go.

After two and a half years of hard work,

Karen and the team in London are now tying up the loose ends.

Having uncovered a forgotten family's history,

as well as 192 heirs,

it's been nothing short of an incredible journey.

In this case, I really do think it's going to pay off for the company

but even if it doesn't, it's been a massive learning curve for me

as a professional.

I've really, really enjoyed working on David Brown's history.

It's just been so fascinating.

What we'd like to do, we send you a form

to allow us to put your claim forward to the estate.

Heir Hunters at Celtic Research have been looking for beneficiaries

to the estate of Jacqueline Rubin,

a Jewish lady who died a widow in London in 2008,

leaving behind an estate worth £31,000.

The parents' names match up and that's fine.

Saul managed to track down Jacqueline's family in Holland,

only to find they had been decimated during the Holocaust.

Which now raised the serious question, were there any heirs?

Jacqueline did have a son, Bernard,

but tracking him down was proving near impossible.

We just couldn't find him anywhere

but we had to find him or eliminate him somehow.

With Saul's search for Bernard at a standstill,

the firm's Dutch agent began to investigate the maternal side

of Jacqueline's family,

to see if any of them had survived the Holocaust.

There were some problems with this because

Jacqueline's parents actually kept moving between London and Amsterdam

and they went back and forth quite a few times.

The Dutch agent had their work cut out tracking the family's movements

but when they finally pieced it all together,

Saul was in for a huge surprise.

Miraculously, there was one branch that survived.

Thankfully, they had actually left Holland

and were away from Holland at the time of the Nazi invasion.

The first time in this case, Saul had a positive lead.

Jacqueline's mother was Esther Glasoog.

She had a number of brothers.

Her youngest brother was Samuel Glasoog.

He came to this country and he became known as Samuel Glass.

Jacqueline's uncle, Samuel Glass, married Frances Davis in July 1908

and they had two children.

One of those children, Rebecca Baldock, stayed in London

and had three children of her own and seven grandchildren.

Saul was on the cusp of finding his first potential heirs.

With the elusive son Bernard, who would be sole heir if alive,

still unaccounted for,

Saul began trying to make contact with the people he'd found.

One of them was Samuel's great-granddaughter, Barbara,

whose mum Phyllis could be an heir.

Do you remember when I got the phone call from Saul?

Oh, yes, we were amazed, weren't we? We thought it was all a joke.

Seven years after Jacqueline Rubin's estate had been advertised,

Saul had found a potential heir.

Yeah, it was quite exciting.

But we weren't told how much it was at that time.

It just so happened Barbara was a keen amateur genealogist

who'd spent 15 years looking into her own family trees.

This is him outside a tailor shop which he opened in New Zealand.

And she was particularly interested

in her great-grandfather, Samuel Glass.

This is a picture of Samuel in a boxing pose.

Samuel was born in Holland and moved to London

when he was just a year old.

By the age of 16, he'd joined a boxing school,

and within a couple of years,

he'd forged a reputation

as one of London's most feared bare-knuckle boxers.

He boxed under the name of The Professor.

He became welterweight champion, which is very interesting -

he only had one eye,

which was the result of an accident with a nail when he was a child,

but he kept that secret.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s,

bare-knuckle boxing was still at the height of its popularity,

with some bouts in London drawing crowds in their thousands.

And not just from the working classes.

Fighters in those days were owned by noblemen.

So, you having a boxer,

that was bragging rights, that you had the best fighter in your stable.

So, you'd want to take him around, "Look, I've got the champion,

"I've got the British bare-knuckle champion. He's my...

"This is my guy!"

And all dressed up to the nines to go and watch bare-knuckle fights.

In the early 1900s, when Samuel was at the peak of his career,

the longest recorded fight had lasted over six hours.

So, it wasn't for the faint-hearted.

You had to be a pretty tough individual to be involved

in bare-knuckle fighting back then.

You have to remember there were no paramedics.

You were on your own.

You were like, you would have to go fight...to the death.

Samuel wasn't just a successful fighter.

He was a huge influence on the sport.

He was responsible for taking boxing to the Netherlands.

After that, he was very active in the boxing world

and he was a coach to the boxing team that went to Berlin.

Remarkably, Samuel only lost two fights during his boxing career,

and finally retired at age 40.

But it was what Samuel did outside of the ring

that would have an impact on the heir hunt.

Samuel married here in London in 1908 and had two children.

He then left and returned to Amsterdam

and married again in 1911 - that's only three years later -

to another lady and had two further children.

Samuel's second marriage to a female boxer

was something of a family scandal.

He wasn't actually divorced from my great-grandmother,

so it was a bigamous marriage.

And they had two daughters together.

It was mind-blowing, actually.

Sometimes in our research, we come across instances of bigamy,

where a person has married a second time,

having not been widowed or divorced from their first spouse.

Whilst that can cause all sorts of

social and psychological complications

for the families involved, from a genealogical research point of view,

it doesn't actually have that much effect

because the descendants of both those marriages

would be entitled to inherit.

The crucial thing for the whole family is that when Samuel

left for Amsterdam, his first wife,

Barbara's great-grandmother, stayed behind.

If Gran had gone to Amsterdam with him,

would she have been a survivor of the Holocaust?

We don't know.

Or would she have been able to get back to England

before it all started?

Saul's research into Jacqueline's wider family was complete,

and he found a total of 18 potential heirs.

But there was still one unanswered question

that threatened to undo all of Saul's hard work.

What had happened to Jacqueline's son, Bernard?

Sometimes you might have done a lot of work to trace the cousins

and not got any further towards finding out

whether these cousins are actually entitled to inherit or not.

But we just couldn't find him.

There was no marriage listing for him,

there was no death listing for him.

He just vanishes and it was a real head-scratcher.

But by looking through electoral records,

Saul was about to make a surprising discovery.

I found them living in Maida Vale.

Jacqueline and Simon Rubin are listed there.

But there's also a gentleman named Richard Camden.

At this point, Saul didn't know quite how significant

the name Richard Camden was.

I looked at some more records and I came across this.

This is a ship manifest

for a ship leaving London in 1960

and one of the passengers is Richard Camden.

His exact date of birth was 12th July 1929.

Where had I seen that before?

Only on Bernard's birth certificate.

We now had a serious theory that Richard Camden,

born on 12th July 1929, was the same man as Bernard Leon Rubin.

Saul set about searching American death records,

looking for a Richard Camden.

And he was in for a surprise.

There was indeed a Richard Camden of the right date of birth

who died in Los Angeles in 1992.

It was another tragic twist in the tale of Jacqueline's family.

And it meant Saul's research had come to an end.

So, thanks to this death certificate,

we've been able to prove definitively that all those cousins

from all over the world are now unequivocally heirs

to Jacqueline's estate,

and all the research that we did to find them

has not gone to waste after all.

Phyllis, along with 17 other beneficiaries,

is set to share Jacqueline's £31,000 estate.

It turned out to be quite good, actually, you know,

and we've learned a lot from it, haven't we?

For Saul, it meant that eight years after the case was first advertised,

the search for Jacqueline's heirs was finally over.

There were a lot of problems and we had to put it aside

and we came back to it,

and the fact that we could then come back to it and solve it,

and there are quite a number of heirs internationally...

We've worked well with our Dutch partner on this.

I'm really quite pleased with how the whole thing has worked out.

The fact that my cousins

are set to inherit some money,

I think it's quite interesting.

It's made me start delving again into my family history.

I love it.