Chapman/Moran Heir Hunters

Today, the heir hunters face a challenge.

They're searching for heirs to an estate that could be worth from 5,000 to millions of pounds.

They're looking for long-lost relatives who have no idea they're in line for a windfall.

Could they be knocking at your door?

On today's programme...

The heir hunters learn about the tragic deaths

of three young children

and it leads them to a story of a truly shocking crime.

So she was obviously taken to Broadmoor after that.

And the death of an only child from County Mayo leads to a record-breaking family tree.

It was like pennies from heaven.

Plus, how you may be entitled to inherit some of the unclaimed estates held by the Treasury.

Could thousands of pounds be heading your way?

Every year in the UK, an estimated 300,000 people die without leaving a will.

If no relatives are found, then any money that's left behind will go to the government.

Last year, they made £12 million from unclaimed estates.

That's where the heir hunters come in.

They make it their business to track down missing relatives and help them claim their inheritance.

I make sure that the government doesn't seize assets

which do not belong to them.

It's Thursday morning in the offices of heir hunters Fraser and Fraser, and partner Charles Fraser

is poring over the Treasury's weekly list of unclaimed estates.

Today, there don't seem to be any obviously high-value cases,

so he decides to make a start on one of the more intriguing ones.

One of the cases we've decided to look at today is the case of Marjorie Ruth Chapman.

So far, we know that she came from Hornchurch in Essex.

She was divorced and died in a nursing home.

The only other information the team have is Marjorie's date of death,

and that she also went by the surname Hiett.

Marjorie died aged 88 on 20th August 2009.

She passed away at this nursing home in Essex, where she spent the last 10 years of her life.

The community here is a close-knit one.

Staff Nurse Kochu was responsible for Marjorie's care and remembers her fondly.

One thing we used to notice about Marjorie, when small children

come with the visitors for other residents,

Marjorie used to say, "Oh, small baby!"

Like that, she used to clap her hands.

That makes her really happy, to see little children.

But in all the time she lived at the home, Marjorie never had any visitors.

We used to ask Marjorie, "Marjorie, have you got a husband?"

She doesn't answer.

"Have you got any brothers and sisters?"

Marjorie doesn't answer.

For those kinds of questions, Marjorie doesn't give you any answer.

By the time she died,

Marjorie was in the advanced stages of dementia,

so her behaviour could be very erratic.

By day, she would be shouting, shedding tears,

and she will say, "My two boys".

Marjorie always used to say, when she was not in a good mood,

"My two boys, my two boys."

So, we used to ask Marjorie, "What happened to your boys, Marjorie?"

Then she doesn't give answer for that.

When Marjorie died, her funeral was attended by her social worker and the nurses from the home.

It was a small affair for a big character.

Marjorie used to fill our unit.

If Marjorie's in a good mood, Marjorie used to be very good, so we really miss Marjorie.

In the office, the team are beginning the search for Marjorie's heirs.

As yet, they've got no idea about the value of her estate,

although it has to be worth at least £5,000 to appear on the Treasury's list.

The heir hunters work on commission, so they're hoping it's worth more.

Otherwise, they may not be able to justify working this case.

Case manager Dave Slee has taken charge and he's drafted in

researcher Michael, who's going to be helping him on this case.

Out on the road, Dave's recruited senior researcher, Bob Smith,

who's going to be his man on the street.

The company employs several travelling heir hunters like Bob, who are based all over the country.

It's their job to chase up any lead, no matter where it takes them,

and make sure if there are heirs to be found, they're first on the doorstep.

Bob's first job of the day is to track down Marjorie's death certificate,

which should contain crucial information like her date and place of birth.

Hi, Dave. I've got the death certificate of this lady.

-She's born on 5th December 1917.

-Yeah.

No place of birth.

Frustratingly, the death certificate doesn't say where Marjorie was born,

which will make it harder to find her birth certificate.

They need that because it will tell them who her parents were, which could lead them to heirs.

But researcher Michael may have had a breakthrough.

He's found a marriage for a Marjorie Ruth Chapman to a John Hiett,

which he thinks took place in India.

Because Hiett is such an unusual name, the team are confident it's the right one.

They've discovered that this marriage produced three children.

There would be these three children.

A Martin John, born circa 1943.

A John A, born circa 1950, Folkestone,

and a Derek Michael, born 1946.

But the team have made a sad discovery about Marjorie and John's family.

All three children appear to die in the March quarter 1953 in Portsmouth.

Really?

It seems the family suffered a terrible tragedy that year

that led to the death of Marjorie's children.

Were these the boys that she referred to in the nursing home?

For the heir hunters,

this means they will have to widen their search.

They know that John and Marjorie got divorced and none of his family will be heirs.

Now they desperately need to find out if Marjorie had any siblings, aunts, uncles or cousins.

But without knowing her place of birth, they're stumped.

We're a little bit behind on this one.

So Dave decides to send Bob to the nursing home where Marjorie died to see what he can find out there.

-If you wouldn't mind doing an inquiry?

-Yep.

And we'll see where we go.

While Bob heads off, Dave ponders the tragic facts that have come to light so far in this case.

It'll be interesting to see why all three children died in the same year.

One would have been ten,

one would have been three, and one would have been seven.

Smacks of an accident.

The team need to know where Marjorie was born.

All they have to go one at the moment is her marriage

which they believe took place in India.

See if there something on that.

Now Michael has found records which back up that theory.

We've got this in '47,

Marjorie R Hiett coming over from India with her two kids.

He's found a passenger list from a ship coming over from India in 1947.

Another one coming back from Mozambique.

John Alfred Hiett and Marjorie Ruth.

What was his occupation, then?

He's in some sort of armed forces.

It looks like Marjorie's husband, John,

was an officer in the British Army

and she and their two eldest children

were following him around the world.

With no further information about where Marjorie came from,

Dave turns to John's family.

If he has any living relatives who knew Marjorie,

they might remember where she was born,

or if she had any family.

Because Hiett is an unusual name, this search is easy to carry out.

Michael's just given me this family tree, which we've pinned together.

Which, if it's all correct,

the deceased husband has a brother called Ronald,

who's deceased, but his widow is alive,

living in north London.

Norma Hiett was Marjorie's sister-in-law.

She's not a blood relative so she can't inherit, but Dave's hoping

that she might be able to shed some light on this case.

It's a long shot, but it sometimes pays dividends

to interview people like this.

Meanwhile, Bob Smith is arriving at the nursing home

where Marjorie passed away,

hoping to uncover some vital nugget of information that will reinvigorate this search.

We're trying to trace any family

of a lady called Marjorie Ruth Chapman.

What I will do is I will check in the register.

Place of birth would be really handy if you've got it, obviously.

The register should hold all the information that the care home have on Marjorie.

Bob's hoping for a major breakthrough.

-She came from St George's Hospital.

-OK.

-Up the road.

-Thank you very much indeed.

-You're welcome.

-Nice to meet you.

-Cheers. Bye-bye.

Not a very successful inquiry for Bob.

No information about family at all.

So I couldn't find anything out about the value.

Not knowing how much this case is worth is a real problem for the heir hunters.

The longer this investigation goes on, the more it is costing the company.

If Marjorie's estate turns out to be worth only £5,000, then they may well be wasting their time.

But Dave doesn't want to give up yet.

He's keen for Bob to speak to John Heitt's sister-in-law, Norma.

It's a long shot, but maybe Norma is old enough to remember the deceased.

You might be able to at least pinpoint her place of birth.

OK, mate, all right. I'll head up there now.

-'Sweet.'

-Cheers, Dave.

Coming up, Dave gets to grips with the mysteries of Marjorie's life...

Looking after prisoners during the Second World War.

..and uncovers a truly shocking story.

Oh, dear.

Heir hunters are always on a desperate search for beneficiaries, keenly aware that if they fail

to find any, then estates will end up in the government's coffers.

But sometimes there are so many heirs to an estate

that the investigation can get out of control.

One example of this was the £300,000 estate of Michael Moran.

Michael died aged 84 on 11th March 2007 in Windsor.

For Bob Smith of Fraser & Fraser, this investigation was not one he would forget easily.

At the outset, this was an interesting case, because it was my first as a case manager.

I wanted everything to go along smoothly,

as we do with all cases, but it's turned out not to be that way.

Michael Moran was born on 23rd August 1922 in Westport, County Mayo,

on the West Coast of Ireland.

Bernard Rafter is Michael's nephew by marriage and remembers Michael as a friendly, approachable fellow.

Oh, yes, he was a roly-poly type of character.

About 5ft 9, I believe, fairly stocky, and always well dressed,

in suits and that. Shirt and tie, that type of man.

Although Michael grew up in Ireland, he ended up moving over to London

where he met his wife Margaret, an Irish girl from County Cork.

I believe they first met at a dance in London, in Kilburn, the Galtymore.

I think Michael seen her across the room and raced across to her,

asked her for a dance and from then on they were inseparable.

Michael and Margaret were married on 27th February 1957.

Michael and Margaret were a quiet couple, unassuming,

but they were always willing to help people out.

Bernard had first-hand experience of this kindness

when he and his brother moved to London in the '70s.

He invited us for Christmas dinner, he says, "There's one thing you have to do in this country,

"you have to be a good timekeeper," and he gave me a watch.

"You won't go far wrong with this," he says, "It won't go wrong."

So, I've had it 35 years now,

but I keep it for special occasions, you know?

Michael and Margaret were very happy together until Margaret passed away in 1989.

Michael lived for another 18 years on his own, keeping busy and staying independent right up till the end.

Oh, yes, he was well respected and any time that people saw him in his neighbourhood in Burnham,

they would come to him if there was any problem with lawnmowers, cars or watches.

He said if you worked hard and kept your nose clean, you'll do well in this country.

That was his view, you know?

In London, the heir hunters were about to start the search for Michael's heirs.

The company had been contacted directly by his solicitor

who was able to pass on some important information.

They were able to tell us that he was a widower,

that they believed that he died childless

and it was thought he was an only child.

But they also knew the names of the parents, which was quite helpful to us in the early stages.

Michael's parents were Kate Joyce and James Moran.

Michael was indeed an only child, and three of them lived on a small farm in County Mayo.

Bob's first move was to contact the company's agent in Ireland.

Initially, our agent had found the paternal family on the census,

all indications were that there would be no descendants from that side of the family.

So we turned our attention to the maternal family.

Unfortunately, the mother of our deceased was one of nine children.

Bob was starting to realise that he may have a very large family on his hands.

Michael's mother Kate Joyce's parents were Edward Joyce and Bridget Higgins.

They had eight further children, Mary, Patrick, John, Edward,

Anne, Margaret, Michael and Bridget.

But just as Bob began to tackle the enormous task in front of him, everything ground to a halt.

Although our Irish researcher agent was able to find the marriages of two of the maternal aunts and uncles,

being one of nine children, obviously there were six or seven other aunts or uncles

who we could find no record for at all.

That meant that out of a family of nine, Bob could only account for two

of the aunts' marriages - Anne and Margaret.

The other six would remain a mystery,

because without a marriage record, he couldn't identify their children.

Suddenly, it looked like he was never going to be able to wrap up this case.

For the time being, though, all they could do was start tracing the descendants of the two aunts

that had registered their marriages, but Bob was uneasy.

We obviously had these outstanding aunts or uncles of our deceased,

and I don't like to have that hanging over me.

Heir hunting in Ireland is notoriously difficult.

At the turn of the 20th century, the country was under British rule.

The General Post Office in Dublin was destroyed during the Easter rising of 1916,

and with it, the bulk of the public records.

Added to that, many ordinary people resented the British laws

and simply refused to register their marriages with the authorities.

If the other Joyce siblings did get married, it may have been

that they didn't want the British establishment to know about it.

Bob had run into a brick wall and was in desperate need of a helping hand.

Our research agent in Ireland suggested

that perhaps it might be a good idea to contact the local parish priest.

Father Garvey is the priest in Killawalla -

the small town in County Mayo where Michael's family came from.

He's the keeper of the parish register that could hold the key to Bob's search.

I'm very happy to help people

as regards the information from the records.

The records are good.

They go back to 1840.

They are births and marriages and death records.

Unlike the local civil records, this church register holds the complete history of parish life.

In traditional Catholic Ireland, people respected the priest and the church

a lot more than they did the British authorities.

They weren't too concerned about correct information

when they were giving it to the government officials, you know?

But I would think that the church records would be more accurate, they would have the correct dates,

I think. They would have been entered immediately after the event.

Father Garvey managed to find two marriage records with the same names as Michael's mother's siblings -

John Joyce, who married Bridget Heneghan,

and Bridget Joyce, who married a Patrick O'Malley in 1887.

But unfortunately, neither record listed a father's name.

This case was tantalisingly close to a breakthrough,

but there was still no way to prove that these Joyces were from the right family.

It looked like Bob had hit yet another dead end in the search for Michael Moran's heirs.

But just then, one of the team made an amazing discovery.

They had found an online record for the O'Malley family, the descendants of Michael's aunt Bridget.

Suddenly, Bob had the information he needed to help him crack this £300,000 case.

When it was pointed out to me that this particular family

had entered their details on this website, it was like pennies from heaven.

Coming up, Bob's hard work pays off as he begins to pull together

one of the largest family trees in heir-hunting history.

The thought of meeting up with everybody, it would be impossible!

I don't think there would be a hall big enough!

Heir hunters track down thousands of rightful beneficiaries every year, but many cases are still unsolved,

so could you be in line for a surprise windfall?

The Treasury has a list of over 2,000 estates

that have so far baffled heir hunters and remain unclaimed.

Estates stay on the list for up to 30 years and today we're focusing on three names,

are they relatives of yours?

Could you be about to receive a lump sum of thousands or even millions of pounds?

Ronald Jaggard died on third of January 2002 in Felixstowe, Suffolk.

Jaggard is an Anglo-Saxon name and means carter or merchant.

Most people with this name live in the east of England around Cambridge.

Does anyone remember him?

Doris May Baggott died on 15th March 2003, aged 81 in Redditch, Worcestershire.

Baggott is an old German name that's derived from the verb "bag", meaning "to fight".

If no heirs of Doris's are found, her money will go to the government.

Joseph Michael Fagan died on first April 2003, aged 87 in Southwark, London.

The majority of Fagans live in Motherwell, Scotland.

The origin is Gaelic and means a beech tree.

Joseph left no will and so far, no-one has come forward to claim his estate.

Someone out there must remember him.

If the names Ronald Jaggard, Doris Baggott or Joseph Fagan mean anything to you or someone you know,

you could have a fortune coming your way.

Heir hunter Bob Smith was trying to find the heirs

to the £300,000 estate of Irish emigre Michael Moran.

It was proving to be an almost impossible task.

Although our Irish research agent found marriages of two of the maternal aunts and uncles,

being one of nine children,

obviously there were six or seven other aunts or uncles

who we could find no record for at all.

Right from the start, Bob knew that this case was going to be awash with heirs.

Michael's mother was one of nine children, and from just two stems of her family,

he'd already found 30 beneficiaries.

But with virtually no written records,

he couldn't make any headway tracking down the rest of them.

Michael died in London, but he was originally from County Mayo

on the West Coast of Ireland, where he lived with his mother and father on a small farm.

After Michael's father died, he struggled on the land at that time.

Even though he was happy, he said it was tough and a lot of people round that time,

from Mayo especially,

emigrated to England and he decided to give it a go.

He heard there was great money to be made.

Ireland has a long history of emigration.

In the 50 years after the Great Potato Famine of 1845,

about five million Irish people emigrated to America.

Michael Moran left home in 1945, part of a new wave of emigrants and this time they were headed east.

The post-war generation was something new, a new type of emigration.

It was caused by the pull factor of Britain wanting more labour

to reconstruct Britain after the Second World War and to build new motorways

and build new power houses.

And there was a gigantic exodus.

Three out of four children born in Ireland in the 1930s

ended up leaving the country and travelling all over the world

in search of a brighter economic future.

Michael was one of them and he decided to travel in style.

He had a motorbike at that time and he drove all the way from County Mayo across Ireland

to Dublin, 200 miles, and he landed at Holyhead

and then he drove to, I think, the Midlands, and down to London.

Michael was very happy in England.

He said he couldn't have had a better life.

He met his wife, Margaret.

He had a lovely job. But he said he always called Ireland home.

Heir hunter Bob Smith was desperately trying

to assemble the missing elements

of Michael's family tree

in order to find all the heirs to his £300,000 estate.

He'd made a crucial breakthrough when he found an online record

showing the marriage of Michael's aunt Bridget to Patrick O'Malley

which he'd previously been unable to confirm.

Taking this all into consideration,

I thought, "Bingo, we've definitely got the right family.

"That makes perfect sense to me."

But Bob still had a problem -

the online family tree wasn't an official record

and he had no way of confirming if the information on it was correct.

He desperately needed to speak to someone in the family who could verify that it was all true.

One of these individuals, Patrick McLoughlin,

was an unbelievable source of information

in terms of the whole Joyce family.

Patrick was a cousin of Michael's,

the grandson of Michael's aunt, Bridget Joyce.

He remembered Michael from when they were both growing up in County Mayo.

I seen him as a boy, he'd be about three years older than me.

But that was the custom, in those days, they had a horse and buggy, a little pony.

And they would come up for Grandma cos she was the sister.

Bob soon realised he'd just come across the answer to his prayers.

Patrick was a walking, talking encyclopaedia of Joyce-family history.

My mother got married the 14th November 1925.

The other guy was born February eighth 1930.

My young brother was born July the fifth, 1931,

and my baby sister was born... We were all born on Sunday.

Mr McLoughlin, who is a first cousin once removed to our deceased,

was able to name all the aunts and uncles of our deceased, who they married,

when they died, how many children they had,

the names of those children, the names that those children had married,

and also some of the details of their children.

And he was also, without reference to an address book, able to provide addresses

and telephone numbers for these family members.

With his incredible knowledge and memory, Patrick was able to open up more and more areas

of the Joyce family tree, including branches that had emigrated all over the world.

Armed with the information that Patrick had given them,

the team set about tracing the rest of Michael's heirs.

Most of the eight aunts and uncles had had many children

and as Bob originally suspected, over time the tree just grew and grew.

Before long, they'd found over 70 heirs but there was still one missing link.

Having spoken to Patrick McLoughlin,

and given the information that he was able to provide,

we looked into the other branch of the family where the parish priest had identified an entry,

which we thought at the outset was our family, but had no way of proving it.

The man they were trying to confirm was John Joyce.

He had appeared in the parish records at Killawalla

and they had suspected he was one of Michael's uncles.

Patrick was able to confirm this and with this information,

they were finally able to complete this mammoth family tree.

We then set about trying to trace descendants from this branch of the family.

Using the information that Mr McLoughlin had provided,

we contacted the granddaughter of the person that had married in the parish church.

One of the heirs they found through Michael's uncle John

was Delia Stanford, Michael's first cousin once removed.

Delia lived in Beckenham in Kent and had never heard of her cousin Michael,

but she did know a bit about her Irish roots.

My father was one of nine children. I think he was somewhere in the middle.

They all left Ireland apart from Aunt Cissy and Uncle Pat, but Uncle Pat then left in the '50s.

They went to America, London, Liverpool and Chicago.

Delia knew that she came from a large, spread-out family,

but she was amazed by what Bob Smith told her.

It's been fascinating, especially the immediate family,

none of them know who these other people are.

The thought of meeting up with everybody would be impossible!

I don't think there'd be a hall big enough!

It was her share of Michael's £300,000 estate that led the heir hunters to her door.

But for Delia, it's not about the money.

The thought of inheriting something from someone I've never met is all a little bit sad.

I'd like to have known the person.

By all accounts, Michael Moran was a much-loved and respected man, who lived a full

and happy life in England, but his heart and his roots were always in the West Coast of Ireland,

something that he shares with each and every one of his heirs.

For Bob Smith, tracking all of Michael's heirs was a huge but ultimately very rewarding challenge.

It's been a real learning curve.

To date, we have as many as 100 beneficiaries.

They're spread all over the globe.

In 25 years of working in this industry, this has to be one

of the largest, if not the largest, family tree I've ever come across.

Heir hunters Fraser & Fraser are searching for the heirs to Marjorie Chapman's estate.

She died aged 88 in a nursing home in Essex.

So far it's been a very difficult investigation for case manager Dave Slee.

-Have you found... You can't find a birth.

-Can't find a birth.

No trace there.

He hasn't even managed to get hold of the deceased's birth certificate yet.

Worse still, they've got no idea how much her estate is worth.

If it's really low value, they could be wasting their time and resources.

It's a dilemma, you know.

We could be throwing good money after bad, really.

One of Dave's problems is that Marjorie herself is such a mysterious figure.

We used to ask Marjorie, "Marjorie, have you got a husband?"

She doesn't answer.

"Have you got any brothers and sisters?"

Marjorie doesn't answer.

Although she never spoke of any family,

the team have discovered that she was once married to a John Hiett,

from whom she later divorced.

The couple had three sons, Martin, Derek and John,

but then a terrible tragedy struck the family.

All three children appear to die in the March quarter, 1953, in Portsmouth.

This means the team are looking to Marjorie's family for heirs.

And because they don't know where she was born, they're stumped.

But working on the theory that Marjorie and John were married in India, Michael makes a breakthrough.

Derek Michael what?

Prisoner of war camp?

Born in Bhopal POW camp.

Bhopal.

Michael's found a record for one of Marjorie's sons, Derek.

It seems that he was born in 1945 in an internment camp in India.

Several camps were created to house the German, Italian and Japanese prisoners of war.

What are they doing there, then? Unless he was camp commander?

He's stationed there... With his family? Looking after prisoners

during the Second World War and their son was born there.

Sure enough, Derek's birth certificate reveals that he was born in the camp.

His father, John Hiett, a British officer, was stationed there during the war.

Marjorie herself worked there as a nurse,

which came to light in photographs discovered after her death.

In that photo album, we could see Marjorie's nursing uniform picture.

Marjorie's duties as a nurse in Bhopal would have been very challenging.

I imagine that the POW camps that were there in India

would have housed a number of wounded soldiers -

Japanese, perhaps Germans from North Africa.

And that these men would have required both medical attention and nursing care.

It's looking increasingly likely that Marjorie herself was born in India.

Dave's sent a researcher to the British Library to look through the India birth records.

Noel gets a call that confirms their hunch.

Marjorie Ruth Chapman, otherwise Ruth Marjorie Chapman,

born 5th of the 12th 1917 in Madras,

no father given on the birth certificate. Her mother, Kate,

was the informant on the birth.

So, she's illegitimate, by the looks of things.

It's taken them most of the day, but finally the team have got hold

of the key piece of information that they were looking for.

Marjorie's birth certificate shows that she was born in Madras, India, in 1917.

Her mother is listed as Kate Chapman, but there's no mention of her father.

Marjorie had a dark complexion, so this new information could mean one of two things -

either Marjorie's English mother Kate Chapman had a liaison

with an Indian man that was frowned upon by her family,

or Kate was herself Anglo-Indian,

and had an affair with a high-ranking British officer or civilian,

who refused to recognise a mixed-race daughter as his own.

British officialdom really was keen to draw a line

between British people, proper British communities, proper in India,

and the Anglo-Indians, who were seen as of lower status.

But unlike many of her fellow Anglo-Indians,

Marjorie had the opportunity to overcome this prejudice.

Working as a nurse would bring them into contact with doctors,

obviously, but also officers who'd been wounded.

This would certainly have been a means for them to be able to negotiate, perhaps,

upward mobility by marrying out of their specific community.

Marjorie and John went on to have two children in India

before the whole family sailed for England in in 1947.

A lot of Dave's questions have been answered, but he's still unhappy.

Interesting, but it's not getting us anywhere, is it?

The problem Dave's got now is that looking for Marjorie's family in India is going to be very expensive

and they still don't know how much her estate is worth.

Does he keep going or pull the plug now?

It's a big gamble.

On the road, Bob Smith has arrived at the house of Marjorie's husband's sister-in-law,

Norma Hiett. Norma is the team's last hope of getting some good leads on Marjorie's family in India.

DOORBELL RINGS

But unluckily for Bob, it looks like no-one's home!

The only thing he can do is leave a letter for Norma

and hope that she contacts the office when she returns.

Back in the office, Noel is starting to shift through the India records

to see what he can turn up on Marjorie's mother, Kate Chapman.

We don't know whether she was born in India, England, anywhere in the world, really.

Just when the search for heirs to Marjorie Chapman's estate is looking completely hopeless,

Dave gets a phone call.

Norma Hiett has returned home and found the letter Bob had pushed through her door.

Norma is Dave's last hope on this case.

Can she shed some light on Marjorie's family

and her life in India or England? Does she know what happened to her children?

It's just to see if you knew anything about Marjorie which would help us in our inquiries.

Norma starts off by confirming some of the facts that Dave already knew.

So, as far as you're aware, none of her family ever came to England with her?

I think she married in Lucknow in India to John in 1941.

If I'm right, that they had three children -

Martin, John, and Derek.

Then, Dave hears something for which he's completely unprepared.

She murdered the three children.

Oh, dear.

So she was obviously taken to Broadmoor after that.

It seems that the great mystery of Marjorie's life

was something so terrible that no-one had even guessed at it.

In 1953, Marjorie had tried to kill herself and her three children.

The children had died, but she survived.

Bye-bye now.

So, one must presume that Marjorie spent a number of years in Broadmoor and in later life was allowed to...

um, go into a nursing home in Hornchurch.

So, what a tragic story, really.

The one person still alive who knew first-hand of these terrible events is Norma Hiett,

Marjorie's ex sister-in-law, and the widow of John's brother, Ron Hiett.

She remembers the dreadful day when her husband heard the news.

When he went to the office, one of the office girls showed him a cutting from the newspaper.

And he took the paper apparently and said "Oh, my God, this is my brother."

Norma still has the article showing the boys, John,

and a picture of Marjorie as she looked at the time.

Marjorie had actually been groaning in the flat

and the neighbours had heard a groaning

and a patrol car had turned up at the door

and broke the door down to get in and found

that she'd killed the three little boys by gassing them

and it was due to, actually, the gas oven.

And she wasn't quite dead, that's how it happened.

At the time, John had settled Marjorie and the children

in a flat in Portsmouth while he was stationed in Germany with the army.

Marjorie found herself alone with the boys a long way from Norma and the rest of John's family.

She was a very lonely girl in Portsmouth because she didn't know anybody at all,

she was brought straight over from India.

She was totally alone except for the three children, really.

The boys didn't go to school as yet, so they were just there on their own.

Portsmouth in the 1950s was a very different place,

and Marjorie as a young Indian woman may well have felt isolated from the community.

This was a time when workers from the Empire and the former colonies

were being brought in in quite large numbers

to work in the postal services, the transport services,

and this had led to some degree of anxiety and hostility towards coloured people,

as they were then known in Britain.

And I imagine Marjorie would have certainly perceived some hostility against her.

Her feelings of isolation soon developed into something more serious.

She didn't know what to do and she cried.

She would write and phone to John and tell him that she was,

Marjorie was, being followed about

and people were looking at her and they were trying to kill her,

she said, but you know, it was very difficult to deal with.

No-one will ever know exactly what drove Marjorie to commit such a terrible crime.

It seems clear though that her already-fragile mental state

cracked under the pressure of a lonely life in an alien environment.

For the rest of the family, the effect of that terrible day was shattering.

John was absolutely devastated.

He told my husband Ron that he just didn't feel like he wanted to live anymore

because without Marjorie, although he obviously lost his boys,

without Marjorie, his life wasn't worth living.

Marjorie was given a life sentence for the murders and sent to Broadmoor.

John visited her every month until, with the help of his family,

he managed to get back on his feet and move on.

He got himself established.

He became an insurance man and he then met his new wife,

who was very similar in looks to Marjorie.

And what of Marjorie herself?

After John stopped visiting, she served out her sentence

in Broadmoor without any contact with the outside world.

In her late 70s, with her dementia already quite advanced,

the authorities decided that Marjorie should be released into a home.

After a lifetime of insecurity and anxiety,

Marjorie at last found herself in a place

that offered the safety and stability she craved.

Maybe she found some comfort in that.

Marjorie really was a loving lady.

She was so loving and she was so caring, you know?

Marjorie used to...consider others also, so caring, so loving.

And we really miss Marjorie.

Back in the office, heir hunter Charles Fraser has come to a decision.

After a lot of consideration, we've decided to stop our research on the case of Marjorie Chapman.

It really doesn't seem cost-effective for us to carry on ploughing hours of research

and resources into trying to find more distant relatives.

This particular case has been quite a tragic one.

Perhaps more so than some other cases that we deal with.

It does put things into perspective at times.

And, yeah, nobody has failed to be moved by the story.

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

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