Reynolds/Darling Heir Hunters

Every year, thousands of people die without leaving a will.

If a relative doesn't come forward, the deceased's estate will fall into the hands of the government.

Tracking down these long-lost families is a job for the Heir Hunters.

Today, the Heir Hunters take on the case of a man who was a mystery in his own village.

He wouldn't say a great lot. He was quite reserved.

We did know that he wasn't married, but as for any other family, he never spoke of them at all.

And in Blackpool, a bachelor's £55,000 estate reunites his family

after over 40 years apart.

-You've got nothing to feel guilty about. You can't do anything about something you didn't know about.

-No.

And we'll have details of hundreds of thousands of pounds of unclaimed estates held by the Treasury.

Could you be a rightful heir and in line for a windfall?

In the UK, two-thirds of people don't have a valid will.

If they die with no obvious relatives, their money goes to the government

who last year made a staggering £18 million from unclaimed estates.

That's where the Heir Hunters step in.

I'm trying to speak to Lillian.

There are more than 30 heir-hunting companies who track down the rightful kin.

Last year alone, they claimed back £6.5 million for unsuspecting heirs who would have gone empty-handed.

These sort of investigations are a bit of an adventure.

There's obviously a start and a finish and the bit that goes in between can be very unpredictable.

It's Thursday morning and overnight the Treasury has released the new names of recent unclaimed estates,

but heir-hunting company Fraser & Fraser's offices are unusually calm.

It was a Bank Holiday this week, so that's why the list is a bit smaller than it is usually.

I really would have hoped to have at least two or three cases to work.

We haven't. We're now starting to look at really our secondary sort of cases

and try to send people out and utilise the staff we've got.

But despite his early misgivings, one case has caught Neil's eye.

It's the death of a 92-year-old Charles Reynolds in Staffordshire.

He hands it over to his longest-serving case manager, David Pacifico,

a man with over 37 years' worth of heir-hunting experience.

-You're so good.

-Thank you.

-Once you get the name, yeah.

Very little information has come from the Treasury regarding Charles Reynolds' estate,

so the team cross-reference his name, looking for leads in the Staffordshire area.

Ringing around and making neighbour enquiries sometimes allows the Heir Hunters to get ahead.

Researcher Debbie has already managed to track down someone

who may have been a neighbour to Charles Reynolds.

She doesn't know if he owned the property. He was an only child. It was the family home for years.

-That might be worth pursuing if we know what that address was.

-Yeah.

-An old family home.

This new information is music to David's ears. If this is the Charles Reynolds they're hunting

and he owned the family's home, it could mean a sizeable estate.

The team have to act fast

as Fraser & Fraser are in competition with other companies to track down possible heirs.

OK. Bye.

Neil quickly contacts one of the company's many travelling Heir Hunters

who are based all over the UK.

I've asked Paul to try and pick up his death to see what he can find out.

Little query about the addresses. I'm not sure the address we've found is the right one.

Ex-policeman Paul Matthews is one of Fraser & Fraser's squadron of travellers

who are willing to go wherever a case takes them.

Their job is to follow the clues and sniff out potential heirs

to inform them of their deceased relative's estate.

If the heirs sign up with them, the company earns a percentage of the inheritance.

My only task is to go to the register office, pick up the death, find out where this chap lived

and then probably go and make an enquiry there.

We don't know the value of the estate.

The first thing we have to do is find out if the estate is commercially viable to try and find relatives.

Getting their hands on the death certificate will allow David

to confirm not only Charles's date of birth and address,

but also who the informant of his death was.

An informant is generally a relative who was present at the time of death

and can provide all the details the certificate requires.

If it's a family member on Charles's certificate, the team could be well on their way to finding an heir.

Back at the office, despite having very little to work with,

the team is trying their hardest to get a head start.

He'd be born circa 1918 if he was 90.

-So how many Charles Reynolds born about 1918?

-Yeah.

Using the 1911 Census, the team get stuck in. The census is a vital resource to the Heir Hunters.

It's a national survey conducted every ten years

that can tell you the names, ages and genders of people living at an address at the time of the survey.

But the sheer amount of information it provides can be overwhelming.

I'm trying to find the birth of Charles Reynolds. There's quite a lot of them.

With Reynolds being such a common family name, the Heir Hunters hit a brick wall.

I think we should just hold back until we find out...

First, we need his date of birth and two, we need the death certificate

which will have his date of birth and his address and the informant.

-So are you OK to hang on for...?

-I think so.

You're not going to be able to... You can't identify family from this, from no date of birth.

For the office it's a frustrating start,

but in Staffordshire, travelling Heir Hunter Paul has arrived at the register office.

-Any chance of getting that today?

-It would be £17.

-That's all right.

Paul secures Charles's death certificate and immediately feeds back the information to the office.

He died in Stafford Hospital and they are the informant.

This is not an encouraging start in the hunt for any heirs.

The team were hoping to find a close family member as the informant,

but it's a stranger who can't give them any information.

Despite this setback, the team's earlier research on the electoral roll could be about to pay off.

The name of a possible neighbour to Charles has come to light.

We're trying to trace relatives of Charles Reynolds

and I was told that a Peter Taylor knew the deceased in question

and may have arranged the funeral and so forth.

I don't know. Would that be yourself...? Charles Reynolds.

David quickly finds out there could be a possible heir.

Peter Taylor knew Charles well.

In her 90s. No idea where this cousin was, whether she was in the Staffordshire area or...?

But any hope of a large estate starts to dwindle

as David digs deeper.

He rented it, did he? I take it he was not married?

Did he live with his parents until they died or...?

From talking to the neighbour, a picture has started to emerge of a solitary man

who was as much a fixture in his village as the post office or pub.

He was regularly spotted doing his errands on his beloved bike.

Very little is known about Charles as he outlived most of his peers

and this is the only photo of him that has come to light.

Charles was always a well-dressed person and very polite.

He was always a very pleasant, inoffensive sort of person.

He wouldn't say boo to a goose. He was a really nice chap. And that's how we'll always remember him.

He used to have a tipple at the pub.

At ten o'clock at night, he'd be on the dot there, drinking three pints of Guinness.

That was every night. Obviously, he'd have a chat with one or two of the locals.

He didn't socialise much, other than that, other than going to the local pub.

And he didn't look his age. If he was 92, I don't believe he was 92.

He didn't look nowhere near 92, you know?

Obviously, it's the stout that was keeping him going!

It seems people knew Charles's habits, just not that much about the man himself.

What was his occupation until he retired, do you know?

Uh-huh...

Despite keeping himself to himself in his later years, Charles had led a busy working life.

The majority of his career, he was a boiler man at Cannock Police Station

and finally retired aged 72.

From the outside, his rented cottage looks in good order,

but inside, it was a different matter.

Like many of his generation, Charles didn't like to ask for hand-outs.

For Adrian Eggington, a director for South Staffordshire Housing Association,

it's an all too common problem.

Charles didn't really ask for help. He was a proud, independent man,

which is quite similar to a lot of our elderly clients.

We were asked to go out and fit an alarm in Charles's home and we went out to see him,

realised that his accommodation wasn't particularly good

and that he had extra needs that we could provide for at Riverside House.

At that point, he was happy to then move in here and receive support from us.

So, aged 90, Charles moved into Housing Association accommodation,

leaving behind the cottages he and his parents had shared their entire lives.

This new information is bad news for the Heir Hunters.

With no property attached to Charles's estate, the signs point to it having little monetary value.

But on such a quiet day, Paul is told still to retrieve the parents' death certificates.

If they came from small families, generally meaning fewer heirs,

the case may still be worth it for Frasers, but only if they can wrap it up quickly.

-His dad was Joseph Reynolds.

-Joseph Reynolds, yeah.

His mum was Martha Ann - without the E - Reynolds, formerly Ellis.

-Yeah.

-Dad was a farm labourer.

-Yeah.

-And the mum was informant and they lived at Castle Street, Eccleshall.

Back in the office, the team cannot find the birth of Charles's mother, Martha Ann Reynolds, on the census.

The facts just don't add up.

But that's...

That's the wrong census.

Well, it's the only census that goes with Joseph being a son of Samuel...

-There's only one census that comes up.

-Can we look up the birth of Joseph Reynolds?

Yeah, I'm doing it here.

I think I want to cry!

Later on, David gets a break and one step closer to an heir.

-We're happy we've got the right family, yes?

-Well...

-We can't find anything better, can we?

-No.

Heir-hunting companies don't always begin their cases

from the names posted on the Treasury's Bona Vacantia website.

Sometimes they are approached to solve cases where everyone else has failed.

Walter Darling was 69 years old.

He lived alone and died in his bed.

Every year in the UK, 350,000 people pass away without leaving a will

and Walter Darling was no exception.

He left just the remaining contents of his bank account.

To those who knew him, Walter was a friendly, dry-humoured old man,

but a man they really knew very little about.

Known locally simply as The Squirrel Man,

he'd spend days studying and feeding the animals in his local park.

The £55,000 estate he left would have ended up in the Treasury's coffers,

had it not been for Jeremy Ford, a senior case manager at Hoopers,

one of the country's leading heir-hunting companies.

This is the case of Walter Darling that landed on my desk some time ago, a solicitors' referral case.

The solicitors brought it to our attention for the simple reason

that they were having difficulty in solving the investigation.

We're to identify and trace lawful heirs who would be entitled to share in Walter's unclaimed estate.

This is a copy of Walter's birth certificate, born the 20th of December, 1938.

Shows his father's name Henry and the father's occupation, quite unusual, an amusement caterer.

Despite the paperwork showing Walter's parents married in Ipswich,

the trail soon leads to the coast.

With his father's job associated with funfairs and showbiz,

the bright lights of Blackpool's Golden Mile was the perfect place to try and make your fortune.

There would seem to ambitious people

to be business opportunities in Blackpool.

Many people would have wanted to try running guesthouses and small hotels.

Others would have seen opportunities in amusements and entertaining.

Walter's family would have been settled in Blackpool just as World War Two broke out,

but what meant chaos for the rest of Britain meant boom times for Blackpool.

During the war in Blackpool, we had over three-quarters of a million RAF recruits

who had their initial training in town.

If you add to that the impact of the Americans based at the nearby Warton air base

who came to Blackpool for their entertainment and recreation,

there would have been thousands of them in town.

Many people had money to spend, no shortage of things to spend it on,

a real melting pot of people coming together, a very exciting place to be.

Worse places to spend the war than Blackpool.

Walter would have grown up amid the excitement of wartime Blackpool,

but his childhood, much like his adult life, was a mystery to those who knew him best.

His long-term friend Lisa Savickis remembers how this rascally old man became a fixture in her home

after initially befriending him at the local newsagent.

Walter worked out that I was living here

and decided he would frequent every single morning with his paper,

followed by "Can I have a cup of tea and can we do the crossword?"

And we just used to sit and talk, do the puzzles.

He liked it. He was comfortable here.

And it just sort of went on from there.

He was just there, he was just my friend.

He was just part and parcel of my life every single morning.

As a regular presence in their home for over seven years,

Walter also inspired Lisa's son Kieran to study the natural world,

a subject very close to Walter's heart.

Walter used to help me with my homework.

We did something on rocks and minerals and Walter took me down to the library one day

and got me a book on rocks and minerals and made me study it, so I knew what they were.

But despite Walter's drive to teach and inspire,

he never spoke to Lisa or Kieran about having had children of his own or any family full stop.

Heir Hunter Jeremy soon discovered this was anything but the case.

We established that Walter was one of seven children of his mother Frances.

Of that number, there's three still alive.

One was adopted away from the family

and one we established was half-blood because there's no father stated on the birth certificate.

And unfortunately, the seventh child died a number of years ago without any children.

The research showed that when Walter died,

he had three living heirs to his £55,000 estate.

But as Jeremy started to track down his siblings, the tragic history of the Darling family began to emerge.

As the matter developed, we started making more phone calls,

one of which was to Walter's sister Muriel.

And she told me the story of the various children being brought up in homes around Blackpool

when they were very young, which seemed a bit strange

because, as far as we were aware and we proved this, the mother was still alive,

so something clearly was going quite wrong with the family,

coupled with the fact that Muriel had no specific knowledge of other members of her family,

in particular, her four blood siblings.

Muriel Dawson, Walter's younger sister and now heir, spent her youth in a children's home.

She was taken into care aged just three.

I remember being sort of...held.

And sort of, um...

..put through this hatch.

And the next thing I remember was being in a bath and it was very hot.

And from there on, I don't really remember anything, apart from going into the children's home.

Muriel was placed in the care of Grundy Children's Home,

originally founded by a local figure, Sir Cuthbert Grundy.

He was best known for his artwork,

but he also became a philanthropist.

Sir Cuthbert Grundy was a man who had a big belief in humanity.

He believed that you should always help people where you could.

Jeremy knew from the records that at least three of Frances Darling's children were put into care,

but at the time this didn't include Walter.

Even at this early stage, the family began to grow apart.

My brothers were in the home when I got there.

I didn't really know who they were at first

until I got older, I got to find out who they were.

Muriel and her brothers stayed in care until their teens.

In post-war Britain, homes like Grundy's were essential,

but left young people like Muriel strangers to their own families.

My mother sent me a birthday card with her address on it.

And...you know, so I thought, "Right, well, I'll follow this up."

I was 18. So I thought I'd follow this up.

And I went round to see her and I knocked on the door.

And this lad came to the door.

And I said, "Is Mrs Darling in, please?"

And he shouted out, "Mum, it's for you!"

That was the first thing I remember of Walter.

She was rather taken with drink.

I wasn't impressed.

You know, it was... There was nothing there...sort of thing.

No sort of feeling. It was just a case of, "Oh, I'm in my mum's house and with my mum."

That was it really.

From that moment on, Muriel was to find her own way in the world

and steadily lost all contact with the family she had never really known.

I've got no photographs. Nothing.

Not of my family.

None of my nephews or nieces or whatever I may have.

You know, I've got absolutely nothing

from my sort of former life, so to speak.

I don't know what my father looks like.

So I really... If I could possibly get hold of some, I would really like some photographs of the family.

That's it.

That's my life in a nutshell.

When speaking with Muriel, it became very clear during our conversation

that for over 30, 40 years, there was no contact at all with any of the siblings

and amazingly, there was one sibling, a sister, in particular, that she never, ever knew existed.

Despite this good news about her long-lost sister Jenny,

it was still a bitter pill for Muriel to swallow.

It brought home the fragmented nature of her family.

I've missed out on such a lot, you know, as far as my brothers and sister are concerned.

Wanting to make up for lost time, Muriel put pen to paper.

I've written a letter to Jenny

as I don't know her and I don't think she knows me.

And I'd like Jeremy to forward it to her if he knows where she is.

That would be really nice.

I'll just hope and wait to see if she wants to get in touch.

Later in the show, Muriel travels back to her childhood home of Blackpool

to try and reconnect with the brother she never really knew.

I want to find out what sort of man he was and what his friends thought of him.

You know, how he was out and about around Blackpool.

Back to the confusing case of Charles Reynolds.

He died in December 2008 aged 92, leaving no will.

Having outlived his peers and with no known family,

Fraser & Fraser's case manager David Pacifico has had a hard time trying to get the hunt for heirs started.

-I think I want to cry!

-And part of the reason for the slow start soon becomes clear.

Traveller Paul has ended up with a death certificate for a lady totally unrelated to Charles Reynolds.

-Hello, Paul.

-Hello. I've got that death you asked to get.

-Good.

-Well, everything fits apart from the maiden surname.

It looks like it's wrong.

-There must be another death there of a Martha Ann Reynolds.

-Back to the drawing board.

Trying to make up for lost time, the team quickly change priorities

to the paternal line of Charles's family.

Initial research suggests Charles's father Joseph could have been born in Walsall and had four siblings.

If Paul confirms this from a birth certificate for Charles's father,

the office will have proof they are dealing with the right family.

But before he's even left the car park, Paul gets another call from the office.

It seems that one of the father's brothers might be born in Stafford.

That's Thomas in March quarter, 1897.

Is that OK? You didn't leave Stafford, did you?

No, I've just got back to the car, so it's a five-minute walk back.

-Hopefully, that will show him the son of Samuel.

-Okey-cokey, Dave, I'm on my bike.

-Bye.

The office's latest research indicates Charles's father Joseph Reynolds had a brother called Thomas

who Paul will hopefully confirm shared the same father.

He was a gentleman called Samuel Reynolds

who married an Alice Mary Gerrard in 1881.

Luckily, Paul's return visit to the register office does shed some more light on this case.

How are we doing on this?

-Thomas, son of Samuel...

-And Alice Gerrard.

-We're happy we've got the right family, yes?

-Well...

-We can't find anything better, can we?

-No.

The team are happy that Charles's father Joseph is the brother of Thomas

as both are named as sons of Samuel Reynolds on their birth certificates

and Paul has also dug up information on a sister called Hannah.

OK, Dave, cheers. Bye.

That was Paul. He's now picked up the marriage of a Hannah Reynolds

who would have been a paternal aunt to the deceased, who married a Frank Smith.

And also has picked up the birth of their son - William George Smith, born 1909,

so with his date of birth, we may be able to identify a fairly recent death for him

which will bring us further on in the family.

Charles's aunt Hannah Reynolds married a Frank Smith

and had a son called William George Smith born in 1909 in Stafford.

Some more research reveals he died in 1996 in Lichfield.

If the informant on his death was family, David could be a breath away from finding an heir.

But before the team know it, they get another lead from Paul

concerning Thomas Reynolds, Charles's uncle.

-What was the date of marriage?

-24/12/18.

-1918.

-And that was to...?

-To Winifred May Keegan.

Winifred May...Keegan.

It seems that Thomas Reynolds and his wife Winifred also had children.

That birth of Thomas Reynolds, which does appear to be right, who marries Keegan...

Thomas is an uncle of the deceased.

He has three children - Doris A, Sissy and Blanche.

The office have come up with a marriage for Blanche to an Arthur Martin in 1947.

The office have found a death in December quarter 1997 of Blanche.

Obviously, that will hopefully throw out a next of kin, hopefully a son or daughter,

so that's what I'll apply for next.

Paul retrieves the death certificate for Blanche, a first cousin of the deceased.

It reveals the informant on her death was her husband Arthur Martin.

He subsequently died in 2000 and the informant on his death was indeed family.

The informant on the death certificate was a sister, so she's not an entitled heir,

but we think there could be children.

I'm just going to ask them to check this address out.

Paul has no luck at the address he's been given by the office,

but luckily, an elderly neighbour knew the family well

-and gives him a contact number for Blanche's sister-in-law Lillian.

-Bye-bye.

Is that Lillian?

-'Yes.'

-You don't know me at all.

I work for a probate research company called Fraser & Fraser.

We've just been round to try and see you.

We're trying to trace... Your brother Arthur who you were the informant on the death on,

his wife Blanche, yeah...?

-'Yes.'

-We're trying to trace her relatives.

Lillian informs Paul that Blanche and Arthur never had any children,

but the big surprise is that one of Blanche's sisters is still alive and well at 89.

This could be the first heir, but as always, there's a catch.

-'Doris...'

-Yeah.

-'..and her husband...'

-Yeah.

'..have gone for a holiday to South Africa to their daughter's.'

At last, the team have managed to track down a first cousin of Charles,

but it's no good if she's away on holiday.

At least we've got a result of sorts, but we're not getting anybody to go and see to sign on the dotted line.

Without an heir to sign up with Frasers, they could still lose the case to another company.

The team turn their attention to another stem of the Reynolds' family tree.

We've now got the death certificate of William George Smith

who is a cousin of the deceased from another branch of the family.

The informant is a widow. We're checking the address out to see if she's still alive.

I'd be surprised if she is.

And, um, obviously, it would take us nearer to see if there's any heirs on this branch of the family.

David starts making some calls.

Using the address from William and Lillian Smith's death certificates,

he rings around their former neighbours.

Do you remember a family called Smith living at No.24?

Do you know whether they had any children, any family?

You've got her details, have you?

Success! It seems like David's tenacity has paid off.

Do you know her Christian name?

Oh, sorry, Avis Allsop. A-L-L-S-O-P, yeah?

Do you have a phone number for her at all?

David is keen to get this case put to bed as soon as he can.

I'm trying to contact an Avis Allsop, formerly Smith, the daughter of a William George Smith.

What I'm hoping for... One of my colleagues is in the area today.

Would it be convenient for him to call and see you, so he can discuss it in further detail to you?

It looks like David has found his next heir, a cousin once removed from Charles Reynolds.

He immediately informs Paul and sends him around to meet Avis.

So she's expecting you, as I said, in possibly half an hour or more.

If you're successful, we're going to want to use her possibly as the claimant.

-OK.

-All right, so good luck, Paul. I'll catch up with you tomorrow.

-OK, cheers, Dave. Bye.

At the end of a long day, Paul is glad to finally have a face-to-face meeting lined up with an heir.

If Avis signs with Fraser & Fraser, they can submit a claim on her and Doris's behalf

and the ball can get rolling with the Treasury.

Please sit down. Do you want a table?

Inheriting a long-lost relative's estate can obviously be gratifying,

but for some, getting long-awaited answers to questions about their family history is worth a lot more.

-We tend to think it's a small estate.

-I'm not terribly bothered about that.

It was just the fact that you've... You know, about my dad.

I've been toying with the idea of trying to get a family tree going on his side.

Paul starts at the beginning with Charles Reynolds, a relative Avis was unaware she had.

The person who passed away would have been a cousin of your dad.

Your grandmother Hannah had brothers and sisters. You're a first cousin once removed.

I didn't know my dad had any family.

Avis is like thousands of others in the UK.

Over generations, family can simply drift apart and crucial information is lost.

-Your grandmother was Hannah Reynolds.

-I knew her name was Hannah, but I didn't know the maiden name.

-She married Frank Smith.

-I didn't know that.

-She had a brother Thomas, a brother Joseph...

..a sister Maude and a sister Mary-Jane.

I didn't know she'd got any brothers and sisters, where she came from or anything.

This information comes as a revelation for Avis.

The Smith name attached to her father had always confused her and with good reason.

Frank Smith, Avis's paternal grandfather, was Hannah Reynolds' first husband,

but she later settled with an Edgar Summerfield and had a daughter Lillian Summerfield by him.

I often puzzled over it cos I don't think my mum particularly...

I won't say liked the family, but had much to do with them.

It just wasn't mentioned.

I knew about his sister or half-sister or whatever she was.

But this is lovely to get some information about him.

I'm really pleased.

With Fraser & Fraser now representing their case to the Treasury,

Avis and Doris upon her return from holiday are set to share the £7,500 estate

of the enigmatic Charles Reynolds.

Avis may never discover if he knew she even existed,

but in his death, she'll benefit from Charles, a hard-working creature of habit

who liked nothing more than to be left to his own devices to enjoy a few pints of stout.

-All the best. Thank you very much.

-Thank you.

-Bye-bye.

It's a great result at the end of a long day.

Very, very nice lady. She's signed an agreement with us.

At the end of a bit of a frustrating day, we've got an end result,

so we can put forward her claim and at least get the ball rolling.

A good end to the day and a good result for myself and for the company, so yeah, very good.

For every case that is solved, there are still thousands that remain a mystery.

Currently, over 3,000 names drawn from across the country are on the Treasury's unsolved case list.

With estates valued at anything from £5,000 to millions of pounds,

the rightful heirs are out there somewhere.

Today, we've got two cases Heir Hunters have so far failed to solve.

Could you be the key? Could you be in line for a pay-out?

Catherine Brown died in Edmonton, London, on the 5th of November, 2005.

Was Catherine a friend or neighbour of yours?

Could you even be related to her and entitled to her legacy?

Leonard Clutton passed away on the 16th of August, 2006, in Barking.

So far, every attempt to find his rightful heir has failed.

If no relatives can be found, his money will go to the government, but could it be meant for you?

If the names Catherine Brown or Leonard Clutton mean anything to you or someone you know,

you could have a fortune coming your way.

Walter Darling died in 2008 without leaving a will.

Heir Hunter Jeremy Ford's job was to discover whether he had any family

that should share in his £55,000 estate.

He tracked down three living heirs, one of which was Walter's younger sister Muriel.

I've missed out on such a lot, you know, as far as my brothers and sister are concerned.

Having grown up in care, Muriel only met Walter twice in her life,

but a bigger surprise came when Jeremy helped her contact a sister she never even knew she had.

This is a letter that I got off me sister.

It sort of says that she's had her ups and downs in life and...

She's got two daughters which she's sent me photographs of.

Yeah, I was thrilled to bits.

I felt like a little kid again for a couple of hours, sort of thing.

Yeah, it was very nice.

And that's my letter, one I've waited nearly all my life for.

Muriel and her sister have already discussed meeting each other for the first time in their lives.

She has also arranged a trip back to Blackpool with her husband Howard,

hoping for an insight into her late brother's life.

I want to find out what sort of man he was and what his friends thought of him

and, you know, how he was out and about around Blackpool.

As Muriel arrives at her destination,

the memories of a broken childhood begin to flood back.

This is where the Oxford bus shelter used to be and the reason this place sticks out to me

is I believe this is where I was taken off my mother and put into welfare care.

Muriel has yet to discover why she and two brothers went into care

whilst other siblings like Walter stayed at home with their mother.

But her years at the Grundy care home were at least consistent.

I used to sleep in that room there right by the window.

It was a life in there.

You know, it was pleasant. You didn't get hit, you didn't get sort of pushed around or anything.

I felt really secure in there, as if that's where I belonged.

I was in there, as far as I know, from being three till about 15.

And it was during that 12-year period in care that Muriel missed out ever getting to know Walter.

By the time she was in her late teens, the family was so fragmented,

they'd lost touch completely.

Wanting desperately to reconnect with a brother she never knew,

Muriel has arranged to meet up with Lisa Savickis, her son Kieran

and some of Walter's closest friends.

Hi. Come on in.

-Please come in.

-I'm Muriel. This is my husband Howard.

-Hello. Pleased to meet you both. I'm sorry to hear about your loss.

-That's all right.

-Please come in.

Having been Walter's friends for over seven years,

Lisa and Kieran have dug out some photos of the man himself.

It's the first image Muriel has seen of her brother in over 40 years.

-I think that one's amazing.

-I got that one off Brian, one of his friends.

He's been an absolute godsend to me and Kieran, one way or another.

Just looking at the picture, apart from the fact that you look similar, very much so, in the face,

-I just think it's marvellous that you're interested in birds just as much as Walter was.

-Yeah.

-Because that would make him proud.

-Yeah, yeah.

It would make him proud that another member of the family is interested in the same things as well.

It was this life-long interest in nature that got Walter dubbed The Squirrel Man of Stanley Park.

Walter would spend days feeding and observing every aspect of the park's wildlife.

And it was this pastime that not only made him well-known, but also won him many friends.

Today, his ashes are going to be scattered and a tree planted in his memory in the place he loved best.

Hello, I'm Muriel. It's nice to meet people that have actually known him.

He just loved the park and all the animals in it and the birds.

If he found an injured bird, he'd pick it up and take it home and look after it, then bring it back.

I first met Walter 20 years ago prior to me having this job.

-He was a character in the park and he's not here and he's missed.

-Yeah.

He'd be in here and he could talk the legs off a donkey.

-Yeah.

-But it was all about wildlife.

It makes me think that he took to animals...

STARTS SOBBING I'm sorry.

-You should be really proud that everybody has got something good to say about your brother.

-I am.

You'll be fine. Yeah?

He probably took to animals because people let him down.

-The people that cared about Walter didn't let him down.

-I don't mean them people. Just people.

No, no, no. You've got nothing to feel guilty about.

-You can't do anything about something you didn't know about.

-No.

Hearing the shared memories of Walter from his friends

is understandably overwhelming for Muriel.

It's a fitting tribute.

I want to say on behalf of Walter Darling

who was a very good friend to all of the people that are here today,

I think it's nice that his sister is here today and I think she should be very proud of him.

I think all families should be together and I'm pretty certain Walter would have felt the same.

And it's not just the human inhabitants of Stanley Park who miss him.

At the end of a long day,

Muriel takes time to reflect on the older brother she barely knew until today.

Coming down and meeting Walter's friends and going to the places that he knew best and things,

yeah, I feel sort of nearer to him now.

It's sort of answered a few... Not all of them.

It's answered a few questions, helped me find out exactly what sort of man he was.

And I'm quite proud of what I've heard.

If you would like advice about building your family tree or making a will,

go to: bbc.co.uk

Subtitles by Subtext for Red Bee Media Ltd 2010

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