Theodoridi/Hubbuck Heir Hunters

Today, two cases that could potentially be worth a fortune.

Found a NatWest account.

We're talking a considerable sum of money.

Life-changing.

When you work a case and it turns out to suddenly have value,

it's always a bit of a shock.

But that leads to every heir hunter's worst nightmare.

We had to really make sure that we had the correct family,

because his names weren't matching up.

This potentially could disinherit all of the people we had previously

contacted and render possibly months' worth of work useless.

It's all in a day's work for the heir hunters.

In central London, case managers Ryan Gregory and Amy Moyes

from heir hunting firm Finders

are on their way to visit a flat which belonged to Victor Hubbuck,

who passed away in May 2016.

Today's visit is crucial because they are looking for information

that could have a dramatic effect on Victor's case.

It's twofold really, partly to build up an idea of the estate value,

but it's also to look for a will.

All of the work we do up until this point,

it's all completely at our own risk.

If we go into Victor's home now and we come across a will,

all that we'll be taking out of this is the benefit of being able to

-provide relatives with a bit of family history.

-Yeah.

Victor Jonathan Albert Hubbuck passed away on 20th May, 2016,

in a nursing home in London, aged 83.

There are no known photographs of Victor and his neighbours say

he kept himself to himself.

Ryan and Amy are hoping the search of Victor's flat

will also give them an insight into his life.

In visiting a house clearance, you come across all sorts of items that,

here in the office, we just wouldn't have access to.

What they're interested in, hobbies they might have had,

all the sorts of bits and pieces of information that relatives might ask

when we're making contact with them.

-This is the one, isn't it?

-This is it.

KNOCK ON DOOR

-Hi, Michael.

-Hi.

-After you.

How long have you guys been here?

About ten minutes.

OK.

Ryan and Amy have joined probate lawyers Michael and Christopher

who are assisting with the search.

Have you found anything since you've been in here?

No. We've just started.

OK. Getting the opportunity to visit the last known address

of a deceased person is not something, as a case manager,

we get to do very often.

It opens up the possibilities for us to find out some information about

someone who's passed away,

hopefully glean a bit of information that otherwise may be lost.

He was obviously a table tennis player.

And also chess.

Victor owned this flat, thought to be worth around £400,000.

As well as a will,

the team are also looking for signs of any further value to this estate.

Do we know what was his profession?

A key indication being Victor's line of work.

Yeah, here we are. He was getting a pension from Royal Mail.

Oh, so, he worked for the Royal Mail.

But so far, there's no sign of any will.

If a will does turn up, I mean,

this potentially could render possibly months of work useless.

Just this guy, really, who is the hardest for us to do.

The house visit is just the latest stage in a case the team

have been working on for just over a month.

As Victor passed away with no known will,

the heir hunters were called in.

This case was referred to us privately.

There was a limited amount of information

in the original e-mail to us.

With Victor leaving a property worth around £400,000,

Ryan was concerned the case

may have also caught the attention of rival firms.

Just because the case has been referred to us,

doesn't necessarily mean that the case hasn't already been passed

to another firm, which means we have to always be aware

that this information could be in the hands of someone else.

-No...

-Wow.

No dates, no area.

Without a second to waste, Ryan began searching for Victor's heirs.

So, the first thing for us to do when we're researching

the family tree is to find out whether someone was married.

This is always the first course of action,

because a spouse would take the entire estate.

With no marriage listing for Victor,

Ryan was then quickly able to establish

he didn't have any children.

We need to move on to knowing who his parents were.

We need to know the names we're working with in order to conduct

a birth search to find any of Victor's siblings.

But with the records indicating Victor was an only child,

the race was now on for Ryan to search for Victor's wider family.

So, we have to treat the case with a high priority.

But Ryan knew he may not be alone.

It's a kind of double-edged sword, really. As much as

we're finding the research quite easy into the Hubbuck family,

if this case is being looked into by another firm, it's...

They're dealing with the same surnames,

they're going to be finding it as straightforward.

To stand a chance of pipping any rival firms to the post,

Ryan decided to divide and conquer.

Did you ever get Gladys's middle name, Ryan?

He recruited fellow case manager Amy Moyes

to tackle the maternal side of the family...

..whilst Ryan attempted to crack the paternal side.

We found out that Victor's father, Stanley, passed away in 1980.

Victor's mother, Gladys, passed away quite some time ago, actually,

-in 1949.

-Did you have a chance to look at the research

I've done on this one?

With Victor's mum having died young,

the team wanted to know if Stanley had remarried.

We conducted a marriage search for Stanley V Hubbuck.

We found out there was another marriage in 1950.

The marriage was between Stanley Victor Hubbuck

and Eileen Ernestine Hubbuck.

The critical thing now was to establish whether Stanley

had children from his second marriage,

as they would be Victor's half-siblings

and sole heirs to his estate.

Hello, it's Ryan Gregory in London.

We're a firm of heir hunters.

But unfortunately,

the search for births from that marriage would prove to be tricky.

Eileen had already changed her name to Hubbuck

prior to marrying Stanley.

So we really needed to know what her other surnames were.

It could cause a delay.

We always just want to get results as quickly as possible

in these kind of cases.

A hold-up was the last thing Ryan needed.

As he was working a valuable and potentially competitive case,

the team took a punt and started looking into the wider family,

knowing that if a half-blood sibling was found,

it would render all their work useless.

It's looking like quite a small family.

I've only found the one stem.

Amy took the maternal side and made good early progress.

I've located the birth record for Gladys, Victor's mother.

And we can see that her mother's maiden name is Hagget,

spelt with a single T.

But Amy soon hit a problem.

Then gone on to take a look for Gladys's parents' marriage record

and we have Albert Henry Longman, marrying an Annie Florence Hagget,

but this time Hagget is spelt with two Ts.

I can see four possible variant spellings,

so you're having to check each potential record four times

instead of just once. So it's obviously making...

Making the work a little bit more time-consuming.

Annie Longman was a Hagget.

After some painstaking research, Amy had established

that Victor's maternal grandparents only had two children -

Victor's mum, Gladys Longman,

and her brother, Frederick William Longman.

A search of the birth indexes indicated that Frederick had

had just the one child...

..who would have been a direct cousin, a first cousin of Victor's.

But with only one living heir on the maternal side,

had the delays in researching the name Hagget left the door open

for a rival firm to sign her up first?

We knew that we had just the one heir,

so just the one chance at signature.

With no time to waste, Amy got in contact with the sole maternal heir,

but was she too late?

It was really satisfying once we'd heard it was a successful visit

and she agreed to retain us.

But the good news was short-lived.

On the paternal side, Ryan was still unable to establish whether or not

Victor had a half-sibling,

so there was still a chance the sole maternal heir

would not be entitled to inherit.

You know, no-one ever wants to get to a position

where they've found a number of heirs

of the wider family and then you come back and realise there's a step

that's been missed or someone that wasn't jumping out at you,

who would then disinherit your other family members.

But as the team desperately try to find the rightful heirs to Victor's

estate, they discover something that takes the case to a whole new level,

and ups the ante with their competitors.

Found a Natwest account.

That's just to start with.

We're talking a considerable sum of money.

Life-changing.

Massive problem with George.

In central London,

heir hunters at firm Fraser & Fraser have reached a critical point

in a big case and the clock is ticking.

Bet these could just stretch out so big, as well,

you never know what's going to happen.

Case assistant Shannon Freeman,

along with researcher Katie Peacock, is frantically trying to find

beneficiaries to the estate of John Theodoridi, who died in 2016

without leaving a will.

It's just a bit of a challenge, really.

It's one of those jobs that you keep going back to and you know you need

to crack it and it's just a matter of time before you get there.

John Frederick Theodoridi passed away in hospital in London

on 16th July, 2016.

He'd worked as a porter in the rag trade,

and since the age of ten lived in a council flat in Tooting

in South London.

He was a character. That's all I can say.

A character. He had a fantastic sense of humour.

Mike was John's neighbour for 40 years and he remembers him fondly.

I first met John 1976...

..and I thought he looked sophisticated.

And then later became friends with him

and he was like an older brother.

For his entire life, John had shared a flat with his mum and dad,

becoming their carer in their final years.

When they passed away, it took its toll on John.

The year after his mum died, he had a breakdown.

He was in a local hospital, Springfield,

for about two, two months.

It did affect him somewhat.

It's lovely, that.

That is good, yeah.

-Sort of innocent little face.

-I know.

With no family to care for John,

he was befriended by neighbours Jane and Susan,

who helped him with his weekly shop.

When we came back, he would check the prices.

You know? Sell-by dates.

"This was two pence cheaper last week."

You know, have the money exactly.

Completely on the ball.

I think he was the archetypal grumpy old man...

..in a lovely way!

When John died, it was these friends who gave him a good send-off.

She got quite a few people to come to his funeral, which was wonderful,

and they came here, to the Wheatsheaf, afterwards for a wake.

As there were no family members to speak of.

It isn't about family and I think of his mum, he said once,

"Oh, they died a long time ago."

He only talked about his parents.

I didn't think there were any other family members.

We're not going to have anyone on this generation.

This will all be down another level.

With no known family or a will,

John's estate was advertised on the government's Bona Vacantia list.

It came from the government legal department,

so we knew instantly the risk is that we could have other competitor

companies that may well also be working the same case.

But competition from rival firms wasn't Shannon's only concern.

The team needed to try and establish

if there was any value in John's estate.

We knew that it was a small flat, and it was a council flat.

It was quite a risk going on with the case.

The heir hunters work on commission,

making a pre-agreed percentage of the estate.

We could start work and it could get bigger and bigger and bigger

and then at the end of the day we could have 50 beneficiaries

and no money to distribute.

If the estate turned out to be worthless

it would spell disaster for the team.

Nonetheless, they decided to take the risk,

hoping later down the line they would discover assets

that would make this case more worthwhile.

First, Shannon had to establish some basic facts.

John hadn't married or had any children,

so the search focused on his parents.

His father was Frederick Theodoridi and the team were confident about

working his side of the family.

Theodoridi is an amazingly unique name.

From the beginning we knew it would be a great name to work.

Things were less positive on the maternal side,

as John's mother Bessie had the most common surname of all - Smith.

But Shannon soon made a significant discovery.

Our enquiries told us from a long-standing neighbour

that the deceased's mum was... She was raised in an orphanage.

This was crucial information.

If someone's raised in an orphanage it could mean perhaps

that they were born illegit, so they may not have a father.

That works in a good way,

in the sense that we wouldn't have a whole side of the tree to do,

and where her surname was Smith,

that would have helped us quite a bit.

But Shannon couldn't get her hopes up just yet.

We're not entirely sure if

what the neighbour said in regards to the orphanage was true.

It could just be hearsay and she could maybe have just said that

to someone along the way.

So far we've signed four people. Four of his cousins.

If Shannon discovers she has to research the tricky maternal

Smith side of John's family, the workload would be monumental.

In the meantime, Shannon began to research

the paternal Theodoridi side, starting with John's grandfather,

but straight away, she ran into problems.

His grandfather was known as Theodore Gabriel John Theodoridi,

as well as being known as Gabriel Theodoridi

and John Frederick Theodoridi.

The fact that he went by so many names was a concern for the team.

He's Gabriel in the 1911 census, and that was one of our worries.

We had to really make sure that we had the correct family

because his names weren't matching up.

Concerned she may be researching the wrong family,

Shannon ordered a copy of the birth certificate

for John's grandfather Frederick

in the hope it would shine some light on the discrepancy in names.

The birth certificate of the grandfather...

So he's born as Theodore Gabriel Theodoridi, and that's in 1869.

But it was the information the certificate contained

about John's great-grandfather that could have a huge bearing

on this case.

John Theodoridi,

the great grandfather of the deceased, was a tobacco merchant.

It's a discovery that could open the case up

and lead to a high-value estate.

We were quickly able to establish that with the unique name,

there was someone who was a tobacco merchant who was quite well known

for opening a tobacco shop in London.

John's career in the valuable tobacco industry

was forged in the 1850s, during the Crimean War.

The British saw their Turkish allies and their Russian enemies

smoking these cigarettes.

From its introduction in the 16th century,

tobacco had been smoked using pipes

and then, from the early 1800s, cigars as well.

That began to change after the Napoleonic wars,

after the British troops shared cigars,

ie smoking tobacco leaves in kind of leaves themselves.

But in southern Europe, cigarettes were not really heard of yet

and after meeting British soldiers in the Crimean War,

enterprising Theodoridi saw the craze for tobacco had the potential

to grow, and with it the opportunity to make a lot of money.

Cigarettes - the idea that you could smoke tobacco

in sort of thinly rolled-up bits of paper,

that hadn't really caught on in England.

So, in the late 19th century,

Theodoridi had picked a good racket to get involved with.

In 1861, John opened his first cigarette shop,

similar to this one in Leicester Square, in London.

It was a good business proposition

because London then was the biggest city on the face of the earth.

It was a centre of empire and where he had a shop - Leicester Square -

that was one of the most commercial places you could find.

When John moved to England to open his shop in Leicester Square,

it was the beginning of what would become a multimillion-pound industry

in the UK alone.

By just opening that shop and coming over from another country

and starting his life over here,

he's massively influenced what's happened so far in the world.

For the heir hunt, it meant not only was their potential for John's

unclaimed estate to be worth a small fortune,

but Shannon had now managed to confirm she was researching

the correct family.

Dad's listed as John Theodore Theodoridi, rather than Gabriel,

which is what we have on other records.

So we're able to kind of work out that

straight off the top the grandfather was messing around with his name.

He used a lot of different names during his life,

so we just had to kind of keep that aware when we were looking for

things like census records and especially death records

and marriage records.

Shannon was now able to start building the Theodoridi family tree.

John's father Frederick had four siblings -

John, Reginald, Arthur and Jessie.

But when they began looking for their descendants,

they hit another problem.

The further we started researching, we realised these families,

they weren't going on to have children.

Having ruled out Reginald, Arthur and Jessie from their search,

options for finding heirs were looking limited.

We only have descendants of one aunt and uncle.

But things were looking even worse on the Smith side of the family,

which Shannon had been hoping they'd be able to avoid.

I've got the marriage certificate of the parents of the deceased

and it had a dad's name on it.

And we wanted it to not have Dad's name on it.

We wanted her to be raised in an orphanage and not have any family.

But instead we got a census which was absolutely full of names

and they were stretching back to like 1883,

so it's a lot of hard work now.

It was the news the team had been dreading.

They were facing a huge family with the worst possible name.

Isn't her maiden name Smith?

We've got possibly eight top-liners who are all going to have children

and all going to carry on whittling down and we're going to have

so many beneficiaries. It's going to be a huge tree.

I'm absolutely dreading it already.

And with still no idea how much the estate was worth,

was the case of John Theodoridi about to turn into a major loss?

It felt like everything was against us.

Every year in Britain,

thousands of people get a surprise knock on the door from heir hunters.

A little bit shocked to find out that I had a long-lost relative.

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

the heir hunters can bring long-lost relatives back together.

I was quite shocked because I didn't realise there was anybody

in the family that we could inherit from any more.

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 Meade Grigg. She was born on 11th December, 1903,

in Wales, possibly in Pembrokeshire...

..and died on 6th December, 1987 in Bournemouth.

It's unknown whether Meade ever married,

but it's thought she had two nephews

and may have used the middle name Josephine.

Is there a chance you could be related

or know someone that could be?

The second case is Leslie James Swann,

who was born on 28th March, 1923,

in England, and died on 31st March, 2008, in Tooting, South London.

Leslie never married,

but it's possible he was adopted and his birth name may have been Cowen.

Do you know a Grigg or a Swann?

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

It's looking like quite a small family.

I've only found the one stem.

At heir-hunting firm Finders, case managers Ryan and Amy

have been desperately trying to find heirs to the estate

of Victor Hubbuck before rival firms.

So we have to treat the case with a high priority.

Victor owned a flat in West London,

estimated to be worth around £400,000.

-Very good.

-That's quite interesting.

But having found a potential cousin through Victor's mother,

the team ran into trouble when they discovered there was a chance Victor

had a potential half-sibling.

Half-blood siblings would also have a prior entitlement to any potential

maternal and paternal beneficiaries.

Knowing a half-sibling could make or break the case,

Ryan faced an anxious wait for the birth records to come through.

We again found out that Stanley didn't have any other children

and Victor didn't have any other brothers and sisters.

Having ruled out half-siblings,

the team could now focus their efforts on the wider family.

Ryan looked into Victor's father, Stanley,

to see if he had brothers or sisters.

But there was a problem.

For some reason, we couldn't find Stanley Victor Hubbuck

on the 1911 census. He was coming up on 1939 register, but again,

he wasn't with his family at that time.

Frustratingly, the case had stalled.

And with the possibility of rival firms moving in on the estate,

Ryan had to think on his feet.

The only way around it was to order the birth certificate

of Stanley Victor to find out the answer to that question -

who were Stanley's parents?

On a highly competitive case like this,

Ryan faced an agonising wait for the birth certificate to arrive.

But would it contain the information Ryan needed

to kick-start this search?

We now have the names of his parents.

Now we've located the family on the 1911 census,

the search can properly begin into any family members

on the paternal side.

With that information, Ryan could now check key documents

to look for siblings of Victor's father.

From the 1911 census,

Ryan was able to establish that Victor's paternal grandparents,

John Lee Hubbuck and Annie Tall, had three children -

Ivy, William and Stanley.

The census records are incredibly important.

They will also tell us how many children they've had,

how many are still living and how many have passed away.

So that's an incredibly useful starting point

to know how many top lines we've got.

Another key bits of information which is useful for when we go back

to the 1911 census records is that Stanley's father John

was a master hairdresser.

HORSE NEIGHS

By the mid-1800s, wigs,

which had previously been the head garment of choice

amongst the well-heeled, were falling out of fashion

and a desire to have one's own hair styled instead

swept across London and the UK.

By the 1900s, hairdressing had become a profession

that was in demand.

In 1884, here in London, the Guild of Hairdressers,

Wig-makers and Perfumers was established.

And we can make out that John Hubbuck would have been a member

of one of these guilds, because he was called a master hairdresser.

For Victor's grandfather John, to become a master hairdresser,

he would have first undergone rigorous training.

Hairdressing apprentices would have to learn the different hairstyles,

how to shave properly,

how to sell and make different creams and lotions and potions.

And it was also a fairly formal affair.

As well as the skills and knowledge needed to ply their trade,

the training also taught the aspiring hairdressers

how to converse with their clients.

There were to avoid controversial topics,

unless invited by the clients.

Such topics included personal relationships -

well, I can understand that one -

politics - that's fairly standard - or the weather.

Now, if only fewer hairdressers talked to me about the weather,

I'd be one happy customer.

With the title of master hairdresser under his belt, in the early 1900s,

John left Gateshead in north-east England and travelled south

to London with his wife, Annie.

There would have been many more opportunities for him here

in order to make a name for himself

and cut the hair of many well-to-do clients

and no doubt sell them many of his own hair-styling products as well.

Yeah, if you can get a couple of addresses.

Having travelled to London for work,

the team discovered grandfather John stayed there to have a family.

Upon checking the 1939 register,

Ryan revealed that John Hubbuck and his wife Annie had a fourth child

in 1923, called Sidney Ernest Hubbuck.

With Victor's one aunt and two uncles to look into,

the race was on to find a cousin who could be an heir.

So, given that we've had to wait for the lead into the paternal family,

we were really anxious to get to talk to someone,

you know, to speak to beneficiaries.

Finally, Ryan was making progress on the paternal stems

and began to build a family tree.

Victor's aunt - Ivy Hubbuck - married William Thomas in 1924.

They had six children, one of whom was Grace Annie Thomas.

But just when Ryan thought he was closing in on a paternal heir,

he received some bad news.

Here we have Grace Anne Thomas, she married Howard Etherington in 1966.

Grace subsequently passed away in 2004.

The trail had run cold.

Ryan's only hope of finally finding a paternal heir

was all resting on Grace having children that were still alive.

We have Grace Anne Thomas, she was survived by three children,

one of whom was Nigel.

The team had finally struck gold and found an heir.

Nigel is Victor's cousin once removed.

I'd never heard of Victor before.

My aunties had never mentioned anything about him...

..so it did come as a bit of a surprise, yes.

Nigel's father was a diplomat,

so he spent most of his life between boarding school in the UK

and living overseas.

Growing up as a diplomat's son, it was quite good fun...

..as we were able to go to the ambassador's residence quite often

and meet any British dignitaries.

Nigel's father's jetsetting career took its toll on the traditional

family life, and as a result, Nigel had never met his cousin, Victor.

We've lost touch, I guess.

Or didn't really explore a lot of our extended family that perhaps,

had we stayed in the same place, then maybe we would have done.

Since finding out he is an heir,

Nigel has dug out some old family photographs.

This chap's my dad.

And this is my mum...

..with her dad. My grandads on either side, I think.

They both died either when I was young or before I was born.

There's a lot of people in here who I just have no clue who they are.

But there was about to be another twist to this tale.

Hi, Michael, nice to see you.

Ryan and Amy, along with probate lawyers Michael and Christopher,

are conducting a search of Victor's flat in Paddington in West London,

which could have a huge bearing on Nigel's inheritance.

They're looking for details of any savings or investments

Victor may have had. But also, any sign he may have left a will.

If a will does turn up, I mean,

this could potentially disinherit all of the people we've previously

contacted and render possibly months' worth of work useless.

Have you found anything since you've been in here?

No. We've just started.

Little is known about Victor.

But the search has already revealed that he worked for the Royal Mail

and appeared to live a very humble lifestyle.

These look like bills.

But the team are completely unprepared

for what they discover next.

Yep. Found a NatWest account.

220,000 in it.

And a Nationwide account with 320,000 in it.

No way.

Well, that's just to start with.

We found the two bank statements.

To be there when something like that happens is very memorable.

We are talking a considerable sum of money.

Life-changing.

-Fairly recent statements.

-2016.

2016.

It's truly astonishing discovery.

This kind of takes the case into another dimension.

The bank statements indicate the estate is worth a staggering

half a million pounds more than they initially thought.

And crucially for the heir hunters, there's no sign of any will.

It's just mind-blowing.

You know, now to know that somebody had that much money and then...

Nigel, along with 15 other heirs,

will share Victor's impressive £900,000 estate.

For Ryan and Amy,

having pipped rival heir-hunting firms to the post,

it's not a search they'll be forgetting any time soon.

As a case manager, I mean,

we go through a case and it starts off and it's just a name

on a file, and we don't really know anything about the person.

So then we have to go in and have a look through Victor's property

and know a bit about him.

It is touching and it's quite moving.

It's quite nice to be able to give them not only the financial rewards

that are available, but also to give them something more personal.

Since discovering he's an heir to Victor's substantial estate,

it has kick-started Nigel's own quest to discover

more about his family history.

It would be an idea for me to try and find out who the rest

of these people are. It could fill in a few blanks.

We're not going to have anyone on this generation,

it's all going to be down another level.

In London, heir hunters at Fraser & Fraser have spent

the last fortnight trying to crack the case of John Theodoridi,

a quiet, private man who died in 2016 without leaving a will.

The team had already discovered

John's great-grandfather was a tobacco entrepreneur.

But despite having a wealthy relative,

they still hadn't found any sign of any money.

OK, so, someone who doesn't own a property is always a bit risky,

cos you're purely reliant on any assets that they've had

during their life. So any savings that they've had,

any cars that they've owned, you are really reliant on that.

Having committed time and money into research, Shannon feared the worst.

What we didn't want to do was go out to locate all of these people

and spend a lot of resources and a lot of money on a case to find out

that the deceased was insolvent or didn't have any money at all.

As the search for finding heirs was under way,

establishing the value of this estate was more pressing than ever.

We knew that the mother and the father didn't leave any money to him

at the time of passing away.

So not even the neighbours knew that he had savings or money.

Having exhausted most lines of inquiry,

things were not looking good.

But just when Shannon needed it,

a bit of good luck was about to come her way.

We were able to establish with some inquires that the deceased did have

some savings and it was in the region of around £80,000

in one of his bank accounts.

It was just what the team needed to hear.

And then when we got the knowledge that there was money in the case,

we then pursued the Smith side with a bit more aggression

and kind of got a lot more people to start research.

OK, thank you. Goodbye.

Shannon and the research team quickly sprung into action.

But there was a major stumbling block that would slow them down.

The deceased's mother's maiden name.

At first, having a Smith job is really... It's almost worrying,

because you know that you're going to have to spend the time and money

getting the certificates and doing the research.

Eventually, Shannon managed to confirm that Bessie's parents

were Thomas Smith and Elizabeth Mills

and they had a total of ten children, including Bessie.

Two had died as infants,

but that still left a daunting seven Smith stems to research.

We realised we were dealing with not only a Smith family,

but a very large family.

And everything about the family made the hunt for heirs near impossible.

We had names that were just first name, surname, Smith.

We didn't have dates of birth, we didn't know where they were born,

people were chopping and changing names

and it was just so disheartening.

With the Smith side hitting a brick wall,

the team began to wonder whether they'd ever crack this case.

On the Theodoridi side, however, there was more positive news.

The team had established that one of John's uncles,

who was called John Frank Theodoridi,

married Eva Moore in 1924.

But the vital information for the heir hunt

was they went on to have five children. One of them was Valerie.

I got on the telephone to her and she recognised the name,

but she couldn't pinpoint it

and she didn't recognise the name of the deceased,

which obviously made me worry a bit

whilst I was on the phone to her, thinking,

have we gone off on a tangent?

Was Shannon closing in on her first heir?

Or had the team just made a huge error?

Valerie's reaction to the name John Theodoridi was not the one

the team had hoped for.

I'd never heard of this...

..chap who was my cousin, so they were telling me.

And I was a little bit excited,

but I was a little bit...

I don't... ..flummoxed by it all.

After the phone call, Valerie contacted her family

to see if anyone else had heard of a cousin called John.

My nephews and my great-nephew said, oh, we will investigate this.

I've found out I'm related to John Frederick Theodoridi

and that he's my cousin.

I found that amazing,

that I had that side of the family that I didn't know existed.

And I just couldn't believe it, really.

Although she had no knowledge of the cousin John,

or his father Frederick, she has fond memories of the time she spent

with her grandfather, Theodore Theodoridi.

I sort of remember him very well.

He lived in London and I remember him coming to see us regularly.

Very gentlemanly

and always beautifully dressed.

As well as finding out about the inheritance,

Valerie has received a photograph of the cousin she never knew she had.

Oh, good gracious.

Would you believe it?

And instantly, Valerie can see the family resemblance.

I can see my brother Derek here, you know?

Big family likeness.

Oh, how wonderful.

But the question remained - how did Valerie go through the last 80 years

without knowing about John or John's father?

I'm quite surprised really that I've got these relatives

that I didn't know existed.

My father was a very busy businessman.

Some people, they live very much, don't they,

with all their cousins and they are always seeing their cousins

and all that sort of thing - my family was not like that.

Very good to their immediate family,

but they don't seem to need to keep in contact

with other members of the family.

As well as having made contact with an heir on the Theodoridi side,

the team had also made a breakthrough

on the nightmare Smith side.

And when we realised that one of the addresses was consistent

on all of the records, that was the only thing we began looking out for.

We stopped looking for Smiths.

We started looking for connections to the one property

and the moment we found that connection,

we were finding marriages where people state that they were born

and married in that one property,

it meant that we could pretty much...

We just stopped thinking of it as a Smith case and just started to think

"Hang on, we'll just look for everyone that was at this house."

The team discovered 19 heirs who will share John's £80,000 estate,

along with the seven heirs

the team had already found on the paternal side.

You finally get that last person that can say what happened

on the tree and you know exactly where everyone is

and you're confident that that's all correct, it's the best feeling,

because you know, at the end of the day, you can all sit down

and you can have a chat

and you've actually really achieved something today.