Heath/Alban Heir Hunters

Heir hunters spend their lives tracking down families of people who've died without leaving a will.

They hand over thousands of pounds to long lost relatives

who had no idea they were in line for a windfall.

Could they be knocking at your door?

On today's programme,

the heir hunters lose time making wrong decisions.

Sounds like we've got the completely wrong family here, Mrs Ellacot.

And a new lead means reopening

one of their most perplexing cases to date.

At some point, somebody said...

"but Peter's mum,

"she had two other children."

Plus a list of unclaimed estates worth nearly £300,000.

Do you know anyone on it?

Could thousands of pounds be coming your way?

Every year, over 300,000 people die without leaving a will.

When no family is found, their money goes to the government.

That's when the heir-hunting companies step in.

They race against each other to be the first

to track down any long-lost relatives entitled to inherit.

Fraser And Fraser is one of the oldest firms

of heir hunters in Britain.

Nicki is the half-sister...

In its 30-year history, the company has tracked down

over 50,000 heirs, entitled to a whopping sum of over £100 million.

It's 7am, Thursday, in central London.

Thursday is the most crucial day for the heir hunters

as it's when the government releases its weekly list of those

who've died with no known heirs.

Today's list has just gone live on the government website.

Experienced heir hunter David Pacifico is case manager today,

overseen by head honcho Neil Fraser.

David's first task is to select the case the team will investigate.

I'm looking at the estate of Raymond Alfred Heath,

who died in Peacehaven, in '07.

We think there's probably a property involved.

We could be talking about an estate of about £200,000,

which is good news.

The potential £200,000 value of Raymond Heath's property

makes this case worth looking at.

David looks up Raymond Heath in the electoral roll

and finds his last two addresses.

For the last five years he was in a nursing home.

Prior to that there's a property which is a detached bungalow,

has been lying empty for the last five years.

Raymond Heath lived in Peacehaven on the southeast coast.

He'd been married to his wife Terri for 42 years.

Raymond was a popular member of the community

and renowned for his skill on the snooker table.

Ray was an amazing player.

I called him the 80-year-old champion of the world when we played

because he was really that good.

Six years before he died, he developed dementia

and went into the Bramber Care Home in Peacehaven.

Terri stayed in their bungalow but three years later developed cancer.

The couple didn't have any children

and in their time of need turned to Terri's nephew Kevin for help.

When my aunt started to become unwell I spent a lot of time with my aunt.

I was down there most weekends

and she was dependent upon me for financial help,

in the way you really would be if you had a son.

When Terri died, she hadn't left a will.

By law, her husband automatically inherited the bungalow.

When Raymond died three years later, the couple's friend Francis Harding

thought it was clear who would be entitled to the estate.

A good few years ago when Ray first started to be ill,

he had said to Terri...

Terri, I haven't got a relative left in the world.

Now, you do as you want with the bungalow.

She said to me that she wanted to leave the bungalow

to her nephew, Kevin Cleary.

But Raymond hadn't left a will either.

And because Kevin wasn't his blood relative,

by law, he was entitled to nothing.

Nobody thought Raymond had any family

so his estate was taken by the Treasury

and his details were put on the government's website.

Now it's up to the team at Fraser And Fraser

to find out whether Raymond Heath does have

some living blood relatives entitled to the £200,000 estate.

To earn their commission on this case,

they need to piece together his family tree as quickly as possible,

working out generation by generation

who his relatives are and if any are still alive.

There will be other heir-hunting companies working on this case

and it's often the first heir hunter to crack the case

that wins the business of helping the heir

put in their claim to the Treasury.

The researchers start by looking up Raymond Heath

on the Frasers' database of national birth records.

Straight away, they find something of interest.

His mother is listed as Lilian Heath

but there's no father mentioned.

We now know the deceased was born on 14th June 1917 and born in Pancras.

Mother's maiden name, Heath.

He could be illegitimate, possibility he may not be.

With no father's blood line to trace,

the likelihood of the heir hunters finding any relatives

has already halved.

It's incredibly hard to get on to illegitimate families.

We don't have one vital parent's marriage. We can't get ages.

So the team are pinning all their hopes on Lilian Heath.

They look up birth records for any Lilian Heaths

born at the turn of the century, and find dozens.

But the team don't know which Lilian Heath is the right one.

They double-check all the documents they have for Raymond

and one of them contains a clue.

We picked up the marriage of the deceased...

which gave us an informant. It gave us two initials for an informant.

The witness at Raymond and Terri's wedding was an LR Heath.

There's only one Lilian Heath with a middle name beginning with R

and that's Lilian Rose Heath, from Great Yarmouth.

The team decide she must be Raymond's mother.

Lilian's place of birth gives the team another clue.

The heir hunters know that families usually stay

near the area where they were born, so according to this rule,

Lilian's relatives and Raymond's heirs should be near Great Yarmouth,

also known simply as Yarmouth.

The heir hunters' HQ is 140 miles away in the heart of London.

But Frasers employ a fleet of travelling heir hunters

who spend their Thursdays poised for action, in the driving seat...

Thanks a lot, mate.

..ready to go wherever the hunt takes them.

Their aim is to get to any heirs before rival companies

and sign them up, earning Frasers a slice of the inheritance pie.

David wonders if they should send a travelling heir hunter to Yarmouth, Norfolk,

so they can be on hand to sign up any heirs the team may find.

The next question, if he's coming out up in Norfolk,

do we want someone to start... have we got anybody to...

OK. Paul Matthews. But...

-Let's get up to date.

-..we haven't got anyone.

But not one of Frasers travelling heir hunters

is anywhere near Norfolk.

With only one name on the tree so far,

this could be a huge waste of Fraser's resources.

-It'll take Paul eight hours to get there.

-OK.

Although eight hours might be a slight exaggeration,

the callout to Yarmouth, Norfolk is put on hold.

The team need to push on with the office based research.

And they have access to a fantastic resource.

Every ten years since the year 1801, the British Government

has taken a national population survey called the Census.

Each census lists the names

of all the people living at every address in Britain at that time.

They are only released 100 years after they were taken,

so the latest census the Frasers' team have is from 1901.

Research director Gareth Langford looks up Lilian Rose Heath

in this census and he hits a goldmine.

It lists six of Lilian's siblings, living at the same address.

Children... Frederick William, Violet E and Daisy...

looks like May, an Ivy and an Olive.

It's great news for the team.

In one fell swoop, the census has revealed the names

of all of Raymond Heath's aunts and uncles.

With no father known, these people are the key

to finding heirs to Raymond Heath's £200,000 estate.

But Frasers are a way off yet.

All of Raymond's aunts and uncles would have died,

so it is their children and grandchildren the team need to find.

Gareth takes up the challenge.

We're obviously gonna have to look for marriages for these guys.

Hopefully we'll be able to find some of those and get it up to date.

The team soon find a marriage record for Frederick Heath and Ethel Cubit

Think they've had, let's see... one, two, three, four, five kids.

So Raymond Heath's uncle Frederick married Ethel and had five children.

Elsie, Jack, Gertrude, Ethel and Frederick.

All of these children would be cousins of Raymond Heath.

Gareth researches the marriages of these cousins and finds out

that Ethel Heath married a man also called Frederick.

But this one has the unusual surname of Ellacot,

making their offspring fairly easy to find.

I'm just doing an issue search of Ethel's marriage

to see if they have any children. I think I've got my first child here.

Where are you? There we go. That's Derek Ellacot.

That's a bit of a result. Excellent.

Gareth identifies Ethel and Frederick Ellacot's son Derek,

who would be Raymond Heath's cousin once removed.

He also works out that Derek had a son called Russell

and he thinks he's just found Russell's number in the phone book.

Gareth hands the information to case manager David Pacifico.

Derek, I've got an old address for you. That's his son.

-Derek's son?

-Yeah.

David puts in a call.

PHONE RINGS

But is he phoning the right Russell Ellacot?

Oh, hello. Is there a Mr Ellacot there, please?

We're trying to trace descendants of an Ethel Ellacot, formerly Heath.

Well, it sounds like we've got completely the wrong family here, I'm afraid, Mrs Ellacot.

The phone number Gareth found is for a different Mr Ellacot,

who has nothing to do with Raymond Heath.

It's a blow for the team

and has lost them vital time in the race to find Raymond's relatives.

All right. Thank you. Bye bye.

So they're going to have to continue the hunt

for the Russell Ellacot related to Raymond Heath.

That Russell was the son of Dennis, not Derek.

That's interesting.

Gareth was thinking he could pop out for some sneaky lunch.

But no such luck.

It's back to the drawing board.

The team have had a busy morning.

That's annoying, isn't it?

But they're still no closer

to finding any heirs to Raymond Heath's £200,000 estate.

Coming up, will the heir hunters' luck change?

Is your mother still alive?

And the tragic story of a secret that tore a family apart.

When Peter left, my nan was devastated. Absolutely devastated.

There are cases that the professional heir hunters

find impossible to solve.

Sometimes it takes a member of the public

to provide a crucial clue.

Jan Szulc died in 2006, in Coventry,

aged 87, leaving an unclaimed estate worth £165,000.

Are you related to Jan?

Do you know someone who is?

Anne Elizabeth James died in Lampeter, in 2007, aged 69.

She left £40,000 which went to the Treasury.

Are you part of Anne's family?

Could you claim back her cash?

Leroy Banton died in East London in 2004, aged 68.

Leroy left an estate worth £29,000.

Could you be entitled to Leroy's money?

Do you know someone who is?

If you have any information that could solve any of these cases,

then take a look at our website...

..and follow details on what to do next.

The team at Fraser And Fraser are working

on the case of Raymond Heath,

who died without a will, leaving an estate worth an estimated £200,000.

Raymond's friends thought his money would go straight

to his wife's nephew Kevin,

but Kevin wasn't a blood relative and so, by law, is not entitled.

Gareth has already tracked down Raymond's aunts and uncles...

We've got one, two, three, four, five...

so that's six including Frederick.

..and begun the search for any cousins

who might be entitled to the estimated £200,000 estate.

But so far this morning,

his research has only led him down a wrong path...

It sounds like we've got the completely wrong family here, I'm afraid, Mrs Ellacot.

..and Frasers have yet to find an heir.

That's annoying, isn't it?

Gareth now decides to put the Ellacots on hold

and hopes he'll have more luck

with another of Raymond Heath's cousins, Jack,

also a son of Frederick and Ethel.

He works out that Jack Heath was born

on the 21st October 1914, in Yarmouth.

Thinking he might have already died, Gareth looks at the death records.

He's hoping to find a Jack Heath who died near Yarmouth

but nothing is easy for the heir hunters today.

Unfortunately for us we've got two there. Two deaths.

Neither in the right area. One's in Manchester. One's in Newport.

We don't know which is the right one.

So, although Gareth has found two Jack Heaths with the right birthday,

neither of them died anywhere near Yarmouth.

Are either of them the Jack Heath the team want?

But at the moment we're struggling a little bit

to identify which one it is.

Another clue is needed, and Gareth might have just found one.

He's come across some information about Jack's sister, Elsie.

I've just got a...possible match for an Elsie S Heath.

She's the sister of Jack.

She's the only one we've found. The only Elsie S and it's in Wales.

Now, bearing in mind that the only two deaths we had for Jack,

we had in Newport and Manchester.

This marriage is in Newport

so it's making that Jack death in Newport look excellent now.

But I think we need to follow that up...

-quite urgently.

Now the team think they've found records

for the right Jack and Elsie Heath, first cousins of Raymond.

Interestingly, neither is listed as from the Yarmouth area

but from 150 miles away in Newport, Wales.

Gareth now thinks that Newport might be the target area

for all of Raymond Heath's heirs, and he could be right.

Minutes later, he finds a record of two of Elsie Heath's sons

living near Newport.

I've got potentially two addresses of two heirs on this Heath family

that we're trying to trace.

David decides to call Ivor James,

Elsie Heath's son and Raymond's cousin once removed.

We're trying to trace a family by the name of Heath

regarding an unclaimed estate we're looking into

and I'm hoping you would be the son of an Elsie James, formerly Heath.

After mistakes earlier in the day, David's even more keen to check

whether he's got the right Ivor James on the phone.

We're trying to work out

if you knew where your mother originally came from

because I'm hoping she may have been from Norfolk.

She was from... she was from Great Yarmouth. Right.

And did she have a brother Jack?

Right.

Ivor's answers convinced David that he is a relative of Raymond Heath.

But there's a surprise in store.

Is your mother still alive?

Oh, indeed.

Well, in that case, we think your mother could well be a beneficiary

to an estate of somebody that's recently passed away.

David thought Ivor and his brother were the heirs,

but as his 97-year-old mother Elsie is still alive,

it is actually she who will be entitled.

It is the breakthrough we wanted.

The person I spoke to, we think, was a cousin once removed

but he's not entitled, his mother's still alive.

David arranges for travelling heir hunter Paul Matthews to visit Elsie tomorrow...

so Frasers can help her put in a claim for her share of the £200,000 estate.

It's good news. But Gareth is all too aware

of how much more work they have to do.

So, we just need to sort out the rest of it.

David is keen to get things wrapped up.

I want to get it all on the computer now

because tomorrow I'm going to Harrowgate for a long weekend.

Going off tomorrow morning. Back Tuesday.

It's all right for some.

I haven't had any time off for ages.

For David Pacifico, the weekend starts here.

-Night.

-Night.

But for the rest of the heir hunters, there's hard work ahead.

No heirs have been signed up yet

and Gareth's still got the Ellacot family members to find.

Coming up, Raymond Heath's unclaimed estate leads the heir hunters

to one of their oldest beneficiaries...

-You're doing very well, I tell you.

-I'm doing very well, considering.

..and one of their youngest.

In the last series of heir hunters, an appeal to the public

for help cracking a case the team started six years ago,

gave Fraser And Fraser an astonishing new lead.

The case was that of a Simon Alban, who died in February 2001,

in Peckham, South London, leaving an estate worth £91,000.

Simon Alban was a loner, with no known occupation,

who rarely spent any time in the house which he owned.

In 1997, Simon's property caught fire.

It took a team of firefighters 24 hours to put it out.

Simon was never seen again.

Four years later, the property was sold and cleared out

and a grizzly discovery was made.

A skeleton, presumed to be Simon Alban,

was hidden amongst the debris.

Simon had no known relatives and hadn't left a will

but the sale of his property resulted in a £91,000 estate.

It was down to the team at Fraser And Fraser

to find any heirs who might be entitled

but from the get go,

case manager Marcus Herbert came up against a brick wall.

The problem we had with his name was on the death, it's Simon Alban, otherwise Simon Alban-Angrove.

We tried all variants that we could look at for births in England and Wales.

We couldn't find anything that would tie up at all.

Marcus still believed that if only they could crack the case,

some heirs would exist.

There had to be an answer out there somewhere.

There's got to be family of some sort.

I mean, this is a man, he's born, he had parents.

Likelihood is he had siblings.

If he didn't have siblings or surviving parents,

you're talking about aunts, uncles, cousins.

There had to be somebody out there or somebody out there at some stage.

And after the last series was televised,

it seemed Simon might have some family out there after all.

When the appeal went out

we were contacted by somebody called David Angove

and he claimed that he was a relative of this gentleman.

At first, Marcus wasn't sure whether this caller was genuine

because his surname was actually different

from that of his supposed relative.

His name was David Angove.

The deceased was Simon Alban-Angrove.

Added to this confusion, things got even more complicated.

They said to us that the gentleman was actually born as Peter Harris.

And his mother had not been married when she'd had him.

She'd left him with her sister who'd married a Mr Angove

and they brought him up as their own child.

According to David Angove,

Peter Harris was the illegitimate son of Maya Harris.

As a tiny baby he was given to Maya's sister Sian,

who had four children of her own.

Peter was never officially adopted by Sian but was brought up to believe

she was his real mother and that Maya was just an auntie.

Marcus tracked down Enid Lumsden,

daughter of Brian and Peter's cousin once removed.

Growing up, Enid believed that Peter was her uncle.

He was always in my life as far back as I can remember.

I was born in 1951 and I remember back to when I was five,

maybe 1956-ish, that he was always around.

I never thought of him as my uncle, just my friend.

He was very "way out",

very much of the '60s and he'd come up with

all these weird and wonderful ideas

that to me were so exciting because I was still a child.

Enid explained to Marcus how on his 21st birthday

Peter was told the truth about his parentage.

There was apparently a family gathering of sorts.

At that point, Mr Angove, his adoptive father took him to one side

and said, "Peter, this is your birth certificate,"

showing him the birth certificate,

showing that he was not his father,

the woman he believed to be his mother wasn't his mother,

were in fact his aunt and uncle.

I can only imagine my grandfather being my grandfather,

an ex-army man, everything was black and white.

Everything was matter of fact.

Here you are, boy. Here's your birth certificate.

I can just see him doing that.

At that point, Peter left the family home.

It really affected him badly.

He was cross. He was angry. He was upset.

He had a right to know when he was younger that he was adopted

and he wasn't, and I can understand him running away.

Basically, that's what he did.

Peter disappeared and broke all contact

with the people he had for 21 years believed to be

his mother, father, brothers and sisters.

It was not the outcome that anyone had wanted...or expected.

When Peter left, my nan was devastated. Absolutely devastated.

She couldn't understand why he would do it, why he made no contact.

25 years after he had gone,

my nan still had all his mail in a suitcase.

She kept it because he might come back.

It was a whole big brown suitcase full of mail.

Peter clearly didn't put them out of his mind either.

Nine years after he left home, he visited Enid.

He came to where I was working with a bouquet of flowers

because he'd remembered it was my birthday

and he gave me these flowers and I never saw him again.

With the background information filled in,

Marcus now had to work out who of Peter Harris' new-found relatives

were entitled to claim his £91,000 estate.

It was something of a conundrum.

Because he wasn't officially adopted by the Angoves,

it would mean the entire Harris family,

which would include the Angove family or descendents thereof,

would be entitled, but not as close kin -

for instance, siblings, nephews, nieces, that kind of thing -

but as cousins, cousins once removed.

If Peter Harris had been officially adopted by his aunt Sian,

then by law, her children would be his brothers and sisters

and legally entitled to all of his estate.

But as Peter was never formerly adopted,

he is legally still the son of Maya.

Sian's children are his cousins and still could be entitled

but they would have to share the estate with Peter's other cousins.

It took some time for Marcus to work out who was entitled to what.

Then he received news that was to change everything.

At some point,

somebody said...

but Peter's mum,

she had two other children.

Coming up, will Marcus be able to track down Peter Harris' long lost sisters?

It's day two on the case of Raymond Heath

who died without leaving a will.

Yesterday, the team tracked down Raymond's first cousin,

97-year-old Elsie Heath.

An appointment was made

for travelling heir hunter Paul Matthews to visit.

The team suspected there were more heirs to the estate

but Gareth had no luck tracking down the Ellacotts.

Case manager David Pacifico left for a long weekend, and today

it's up to research director Gareth Langford to finish things off.

Gareth has come in to work this morning

determined to find the elusive Russell Ellacott.

He disappeared off the electoral roll in 2005

and he's either moved from the address or passed away.

He looks in the death records and quickly realises

why he couldn't get hold of him yesterday.

Yep. He's died.

Died in 2005.

He's very young. He was only born in 1960.

Now, if he has kids, obviously they'll be entitled.

Gareth looks up birth records and he's in luck.

Russell has a daughter, Jessica,

who lives in Hastings with her mother Dawn.

She's only actually...I think, 17 years old...

so she's a minor,

in which case we need to speak to her mother in this case.

She's a very distant relative of Raymond Heath

but an heir, nonetheless.

Top of my head, she's cousin three times removed.

It's quite unusual to get someone that distant on these cases,

especially someone, I mean, Russell was born in 1960, so you know,

we'd expect to be speaking to him.

Unfortunately, he passed away in 2005, so his daughter's an heir.

Unfortunately, she's ex-directory so the team can't call her up.

Marcus speaks to travelling heir hunter Bob Barrett

and gives him the job of visiting Jessica in Hastings.

Hello, Bob.

It's me. Hello, mate.

You got your trunks with you?

Shades on, Bob sets off for his seaside trip.

Meanwhile, travelling heir hunter Paul Matthews has just arrived

at heir Elsie James' house.

Elsie is the only remaining child of Raymond Heath's uncle Frederick,

making her the last of Raymond's first cousins.

My mum. This is Elsie.

-Pleased to meet you, mum!

-This is Paul.

-Are you all right?

-I'm fine, yeah.

-You're doing very well, I tell you.

I'm doing very well, considering.

Very well. Absolutely. Where can I sit?

Aged 97, Elsie is accompanied by her two sons, Ivor and Kenneth.

I'll ask your mum a few questions about herself,

prove she's the right person

and we're going to take her back down memory lane

to ask what you know, or don't know.

Elsie reveals some astonishing family history.

When she was a child, her mother Ethel died.

Died from a fever she had.

-And she left the five of us.

-Right. Yeah. I know she died young.

Her father, Frederick, remarried

but his new wife didn't want his children.

Elsie saw a job advertised for a farmhand and decided to go for it.

She was only ten but still has memories of the day she arrived...

alone and on foot,

not knowing whether the farmer's wife would let her in.

80 years later,

the heir hunters have pieced back together Elsie's family tree.

Now, Paul asks Elsie to sign a contract,

so they can help her put in a claim

for her share of Raymond Heath's £200,000 estate.

-All the very best.

-And you.

-Nice meeting you, Mum!

Now you behave yourself. You have a smashing home.

A smashing family.

I'm coming back here to live.

All the best, Ken. Nice meeting you.

With a signed contract in his hand, Paul leaves a happy man.

Over in Hastings, Paul's counterpart Bob has arrived at the home

of Raymond Heath's second heir, 17 year old Jessica Ellacott.

Luckily for Bob,

both Jessica and her mother Dawn are at home and he is welcomed in.

-So, you're Miss Ellacott. E-L-L-A-C-O-T-T?

-Yep.

Bob explains how Jessica is related to Raymond Heath.

We've actually researched back to your great-great-great grandfather

-here to get to you.

-Have you?

Yes. So...been lots of research.

That is lots of research, isn't it?

Jessica is Raymond's cousin three times removed.

Although she never met Raymond, nor knew of his existence,

she is entitled to a share of his £200,000 estate.

Bob leaves the paperwork for Jessica and her mother to look over.

Well, that's it then.

Thanks very much for letting me do my bit. I hope you use us.

Thank you very much for a lovely surprise.

I hope it ends up being worthwhile for you

and you get a nice big fat cheque.

-Thanks ever so much.

-Thank you.

-Bye bye.

-OK. Bye bye.

It's close of play on the case of Raymond Heath.

It's been a successful investigation for the team

and a clear lesson on the importance of writing a will.

Raymond Heath wanted his wife's nephew Kevin to inherit his fortune

but without a legal document,

he wasn't entitled, and heirs were found that Raymond didn't even know.

They'll receive money from someone they know nothing about,

whereas Kevin, who's cared for Raymond in his later years,

he's not actually gonna receive anything.

It's why it's so important for people to leave wills.

Last year, an appeal for help

with a case that had remained unsolved for six years

gave Fraser And Fraser an astonishing new lead.

A viewer claimed that the deceased, Simon Alban,

was in fact born with the name Peter Harris

and had been unofficially adopted by his own mother's sister.

Marcus thought he'd found the heirs to the £91,000 estate,

and that they were Peter Harris' cousins,

but then he got some more news which changed the family tree altogether.

At some point, somebody said...

"but Peter's mum,

"she had two other children."

That person was 79-year-old Enid Johnson, who was the daughter

of another sister of Maya and Sian and Peter Harris' cousin.

Well, I was able to furnish Fraser And Fraser

with the fact that the late Peter had two half-sisters.

Mary and Marilyn, known as little ones as Cherry and Minty.

Enid revealed that several years after having Peter,

his mother Maya had had two more children,

Mary and Marilyn

and Enid remembered more than anyone else

about the difficult situations Maya had got herself into.

First, by becoming pregnant with the man who didn't want to marry her

and then, by having two further children with another man.

Because, you see, she couldn't marry their dad

because he was already married.

And his wife was in a mental home.

So he was unable to marry.

But they had these two lovely girls. Isn't it tragic?

You know, you get one black sheep in the family,

but to think Auntie Maya was that, for me to take it in,

that she was the black sheep,

you know, it's very hard for me to take in cos I adored her.

Everyone did.

Maya put her two daughters by this second man into a convent school

and never saw them again.

We identified two that we thought

were probably the children of the deceased mother

and we obtained copies of the birth certificates

and low and behold, they were right.

Marcus now had the names of two half-sisters to Peter Harris.

As close a kin to him than all of the family from the Angove side,

they were entitled to all of his £91,000.

Further research into these half-sisters showed that Marilyn had died

but had a daughter, Deborah, making Mary and Deborah Peter Harris' heirs.

Marcus got in touch with Deborah first.

It was a surprise when I found out I'd got an uncle

because I didn't...ever recall my mum had got a brother.

But then, my mum's mum left

when my mum was very young,

so initially I thought it must be a younger brother.

Then Marcus explained very, very nicely

that he'd been born on the wrong side of the blanket

before my mum and my aunt had been born.

Marcus was convinced that Deborah and Mary

were related to Peter Harris and that Peter Harris

was the same man as Simon Angrove.

But putting a case together to convince the Treasury

was another matter.

Myself and Marcus were absolutely convinced

we'd found the right family.

Trying to convince the Treasury when we can only write to them

was even more problematic.

This has always been the problem.

Trying to get to the bottom of whether Peter Harris

and Simon Alban-Angrove were the same person

because he never changed his name by Deed Poll,

there was no legal change of name, nothing like that.

Were that the case, it would have been easier to prove.

When he left the family home when he was 21, he became Simon Peter Angove.

Then at some stage he added the name Alban,

after his place of birth, St Albans.

When his death was registered, it was Simon Alban-Angrove.

The Angrove was a mis-spelling of Angove.

And there were more than just name discrepanices to deal with.

The date of birth on the birth of Peter Harris

and the date of birth on the death for Simon Alban-Angrove

didn't tie up exactly.

The day was right. The month was right.

The year was five years out on the death.

Six years after starting the case,

Marcus submitted the claim as best he could. And crossed his fingers.

But the Treasury were not won over.

We reached the point where we put a claim in to the Treasury solicitor's office

and quite rightly so, they threw it out and told me to go away.

It was a disappointment for the team,

but on the positive side, all the hard work by Frasers

had brought together the different sides of a very fragmented family.

The great thing about this

is that we've actually now been able to reunite

Mrs Johnson with Mrs Williams, the half-sister of the deceased.

As I said, she's not seen her since she was a little girl.

Enid and Mary were cousins who had known each other as children

but hadn't seen each other for decades.

And when she said, "I'm known as Cherry,"

that didn't surprise me either

because although I was only 17 and I'm now 78 not out,

I remember her nickname, you know, her little pet name.

Cherry.

It looked as if the Alban-Harris case was to be laid to rest here,

but then there was another twist in the plot.

We heard from a legal executive who had worked for a solicitor's

in South East London when the deceased walked in,

asking him to, we believe,

deal with his portion of his late mother's,

the lady he believed to be his mother, Mrs Angove, her estate.

He had a diary from 1981

with a record of his meeting with the gentleman in it

and crucially, it wasn't Angrove in the diary.

It was Angove. That's the point we knew...we've got it.

With this new evidence, Marcus approached the Treasury again.

And today, he's been given their final decision on the case.

About midday today I got an email

from the Treasury solicitor's office

that they finally admitted the claim to the estate.

They admitted that the person we put a claim forward for

was a half-sister of the deceased.

Simon Alban-Angrove.

I'm absolutely thrilled.

It's the best news I've had in ages. It's fantastic.

There is no way we could have solved this estate

without an appeal going out on the previous series

but it's absolutely brilliant.

We never thought we'd solve it.

I think this must be one of the best pieces of research and the best...

the hardest families we have ever put together

so to be involved in it and for it to be coming now is great news.

Marcus was over the moon when we eventually got the claim accepted.

Drained by the whole thing, really. I feel completely exhausted.

We've even got confetti now because...

We're celebrating in here, you see.

But there's one last thing for Marcus to do. Call the heirs.

The Treasury solicitor have admitted the claim.

Your claim.

And for the two heirs to the Alban-Harris £91,000 estate,

it's also a time to celebrate.

To inherit money from somebody you don't know is a bit surreal, really.

It just seems a bit strange.

You know, it's got that weird factor to it, you know?

But, it's nice that Fraser

spent the time to track me down and let me know.

If they hadn't have done, I'd be none the wiser.

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