Hunt/Webbe Heir Hunters

Today, the heir hunters are looking into an estate worth an estimated £200,000.

Just a question of sitting here and waiting now.

Somewhere, out there, are some long lost relatives,

who have no idea they're in line for a windfall.

Could the heir hunters be knocking at your door?

On today's show,

even finding close family proves a struggle.

Right.

That's all wrong.

And the search for a sailor's heirs

is hampered by a very common surname.

Every village has got maybe half a dozen different Evans families.

Plus, how you may be entitled to inherit an unclaimed estate 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 goes to the government.

Last year, they kept £14 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 just inheritance.

It's about reuniting people with what's rightfully theirs.

It's 7am at the offices of heir hunting company Fraser & Fraser.

And they're already hard at work.

The Treasury's list of people who have died without a will has just been released.

The case of Robin Hunt has caught the eye of senior partner Neil Fraser.

Records show that he did own his own flat, which he sold in 2001.

But, after that, there's no trace of him.

The case of Hunt, we're looking at initially, because

it would appear that the old property was sold for £85,000.

We think he's probably moved

to a nursing home or a sheltered accommodation,

and they haven't put him on the electoral roll.

To find out if they are right,

they need to see Robin's death certificate.

The heir hunters earn their money by charging a percentage of the estate for their services.

The team need to know if he owned his own property and, if so, what it's worth.

Morning, Bob.

While most of the research is done by the office team,

they rely on frontline investigators, like Bob Smith,

to follow leads, sign up heirs,

and determine the estate's value.

We'll pick up a copy of his death certificate.

See where he died.

Make enquiries at that address.

Robin Hunt died in Bournemouth, on the 9th March 2011, aged 69,

without a will.

His friend Shane only knew him towards the end of his life,

when ill health meant he was often housebound.

He had breathing difficulties.

We also had bad legs,

so he suffered with walking.

He was on a lot of medication.

But, despite his problems, he remembers Robin as a cheerful man.

He could still laugh, and crack a smile.

It didn't matter what happened, nothing ever got him down.

And when it did, he bounced back so fast.

Shane recalls how Robin always seemed to have a deal on the go.

He was a wheeler and dealer.

Even when I knew him,

he'd always be going on about making money.

He was always interested in properties.

He'd be doing the figures, working out where a pound can be made, stuff like that.

Quite a clever man.

The team are making a start on Robin's family tree.

They think he was born in Surrey.

The records, which only show surnames, list his parents as Hunt and Honeyball.

Without his birth certificate, which includes their full names,

it's hard to make progress.

But, as the Register Office isn't open yet,

researcher Rihanna is looking for their marriage.

There's actually two marriages.

-Two marriages of a Hunt to Honeyball?

-Yeah. So I'm eliminating the Poplar...

So where was the other marriage? Where was the marriage, where were the two marriages?

Chelsea and Poplar.

-They could be any, could be either, couldn't it?

-Yeah.

As Robin was a bachelor, and did not have children,

his closest heirs would be siblings.

If they can find his parents' marriage, they can start to search for them.

But, at the moment, it's all guesswork.

There's two marriages for Hunt to Honeyball.

The parents' marriages.

But there's all these births.

Following a hunch that the Chelsea marriage is the correct one,

Rihanna has identified four possible siblings born in Surrey.

The youngest one was in 1944.

The oldest in 1929.

So it's pretty good.

It's likely that one of them, at least, could be alive. That would be really good.

-He was born in...

-Surrey.

-Surrey.

-Mm hm.

So there's another birth, other births in Surrey.

And then one's in Epsom.

Right, so you got births in Poplar that time with that marriage.

In other words, it's the Chelsea marriage.

And then, where the parents are born, Epsom, Chelsea.

-I think you might have something there, Rihanna.

-Yeah. I think I do.

Case manager David Pacifico is feeling confident.

It looks like we've got sibling still alive.

The team get to work, trying to find Robin's brothers and sisters.

I'm just looking for a Barbara Hunt,

to see if she's still alive.

I'm working on Stuart W Hunt.

He is the brother of the deceased.

He may have lost contact with the family, for whatever reason.

What we need to do is to trace and contact the first person,

and go from there.

While the team trace the siblings,

David tries calling one of Robin's old neighbours,

to see what he can find out.

I represent a company of probate researchers.

We've been trying to track down the next of kin of a Mr Robin Hunt.

The father would have died in Christchurch,

so would the mother.

Do you think he was an only child,

or do you think he may have had any brothers or sisters?

He was an only child.

Alarm bells are ringing for David.

The parents they've been chasing had more than one child,

and lived in Surrey.

Thank you. Bye bye.

That's all wrong.

The parents both died in Christchurch.

It doesn't, it's totally different from that family.

Right.

That's all wrong.

I've spoken to a neighbour.

It's terrible news, they've been investigating the wrong family.

The deceased did not have siblings,

and his parents lived in Christchurch.

-That is wrong.

-What's wrong?

-The complete...

-This is no good?

-No.

I spoke to a neighbour that knew him for the last 13 years.

-That family is wrong?

-That family is definitely wrong.

Unfortunately she can't remember the names of the parents.

David needs the full names of Robin's parents, fast.

It's now nine o'clock, and they've lost valuable time.

We need to get this birth.

Can somebody phone up one of the Surreys, and see which Surrey it is?

After checking Surrey's Register Offices,

the team finally order the birth certificate from neighbouring Merton.

But it could take a while.

In the meantime, David wants to check

if the second marriage they've found of Charles Hunt and Mabel Honeyball, in Poplar,

could be Robin's parents.

What they need to know is where they died.

Can you check for the death of Charles F Hunt, and Mabel Hunt, see where they come out?

Because I think that marriage might be right.

They should have died in Christchurch.

The neighbour's valuable information has saved them time.

She's also given them the address of a flat in Bournemouth,

owned by the deceased when he died.

So, if there's property involved, there should be money in the estate.

He's bought about five flats since he left that one.

It seems Robin liked to dabble in property.

But, what they need to know is what his last flat was worth.

He owns a property. However, there's a charge on that property,

which looks like, to me, equity release.

We don't know how much equity he has released from that property.

It could be 100%, it could be 10%. We just don't know at the moment.

So, with property involved, they know the case has value.

But, with money borrowed against the flat, they can't be sure how much.

Down in Bournemouth,

Bob has confirmed Robin's last address of his death certificate.

The office want him to check the flat out,

and get an idea of what it's worth.

Looks quite nice, looks as if it's a private residential area.

Not local authority. So

I'll just make enquiries with the neighbours.

DOOR BUZZER

On the landing where the deceased lived,

no one answered the doors.

So, Bob hasn't had much luck,

and it's the same story back in the office.

While they wait for the birth certificate,

the team aren't sure which leads to follow.

Shall we check an adoption for him?

If we go with that Poplar marriage, we can't disprove that yet, right?

Perhaps he is adopted.

Are you working up those two births?

Is there anything positive...

Can someone give Roger a hand,

working up the Poplar marriage?

Coming up: Heir hunter Frances has a controversial theory

about why they can't identify Robin's family.

It's war time.

She had a relationship with a Mr Hunt.

Now, Mr Hunt could well have been a married man.

Could Frances be onto something?

And will it lead to Robin's elusive parents?

In 2009, heir hunters Celtic Research began looking into a case

that they thought would be easy.

But, faced with an international family,

and one of the UK's most common surnames,

after nine months' research, they gave up.

Without a connection, we just couldn't make a claim.

The following year, they reopen the case.

And, this time, they were determined to crack it.

Josiah Arthur Webbe died on January 19th 1987, aged 86.

He left an estate worth £70,000.

He was a sailor, and lived in a small village by the sea,

in Gwynedd, North Wales.

Sadly, there are no known existing photos of the man himself.

But family friend Gwyn Jones and his sister Haf remember him fondly.

Well, Arthur had a typical seafarer's complexion,

which was in fitting with his background on the seas.

He was very popular in the village.

Lots of people thought the world of Arthur.

A very, very kind person.

When his name was published on the weekly Treasury list,

heir hunter Peter Birchwood took up the case.

Unlike their standard jobs, where the deceased dies without a will,

Josiah Arthur had written one, but there was a problem with it.

Josiah Arthur Webbe left a will.

He'd made out all of his assets to his wife.

But, unfortunately, as she predeceased him,

the will was not valid.

Josiah Arthur's will hadn't named any other family or friends as beneficiaries.

And he did not have children.

So, Peter began his search for blood relatives who would inherit his money.

In the heir hunting game, names are everything,

and Josiah Arthur's surname was a good start.

Webbe is one of those names that can be spelt several different ways.

And, when we've got it spelt with an 'e' on the end, it's relatively uncommon.

From the date of his death, Peter managed to find Arthur's birth certificate,

and the names of his parents.

His mother, Elizabeth Evans, married his father,

also from Josiah Arthur Webbe, in 1897.

Peter discovered that the sea was something of a theme in the Webbe family,

starting with his father.

Josiah Arthur senior was a second mate for the merchant Navy.

The Merchant Navies consisted of hundreds of private companies

running merchant ships, from huge passenger liners,

to very undistinguished trunk ships of 3,000 or 4,000 tonnes.

Down to small coasters running around the coast.

But, in World War I, the Merchant Navy became part of the war effort.

Trade and export abroad still had to continue,

despite Britain being at war with Germany.

Josiah Arthur Senior was sailing the seas at an extremely dangerous time.

During the start of the war,

he sailed for three years with no protection from the Navy against German attack.

And it was during this dire period of the war

that the SS Whitgift, that Josiah Senior sailed on,

fell victim to German attack.

She was on a voyage from Spain to Britain,

with a cargo of iron ore.

An immensely heavy cargo.

So the ship was loaded down to her marks,

and there was still an enormous amount of space in her holds.

So, when she was struck by a torpedo from U-67,

somewhere off Ushant, in the outer reaches of the English Channel,

she sank very quickly.

And, in the case of the Whitgift, all her crew were lost, 33 men.

Despite losing his father whilst still in his teens,

Josiah Arthur followed in his footsteps,

and joined the Merchant Navy himself.

One of the things that we learned about Mr Webbe

from speaking to people in the village

was that he had been a retired sea captain, a master mariner.

That, of course, was also listed on his death record.

So, it didn't really surprise us when we found that he was

actually born not in North Wales, where he died,

but in Liverpool where his father was also in the merchant marines.

From his parents marriage certificate, Peter discovered

that Josiah Arthur had had a brother, David,

but he had died before him, without children.

With close kin ruled out,

Peter would need to go up the paternal family tree

to try and trace Josiah Arthur's aunt or uncles.

To find his grandparents he began by checking Josiah senior's

birth certificate and he made a surprising discovery.

We found out on the census, the 1901 and the 1911 census,

Josiah had been born in the Caribbean on the island of Nevis.

He found out the deceased's grandfather, Charles Webbe,

had been a sugar planter.

In the late 17th century,

Nevis was one of the headquarters of the British slave trade.

With high-quality sugarcane produced on the island,

and using African slaves for labour,

Nevis became a great source of wealth from Britain

and possibly the Webbe family.

Although Charles would have been planting his sugar

after the abolition of slavery, it's clear from further records

that the Webbe family in Nevis had owed to slaves.

That might have been the great grandfather of the deceased

because we did find indications of slave owning

in the sugar plantations there.

So far the case had gone smoothly but Josiah Arthur senior's

Caribbean roots spelt disaster for Peter's hunt.

It really wasn't a financial possibility for one

or other of us to go over.

If we could get an agent on Nevis to do the research,

then that would be the way to go.

But, we couldn't find anyone who could do the work

or would be willing to even take a look at the research.

It was a massive blow. The paternal search for heirs had to be shelved.

Now, the only hope of finding beneficiaries to Josiah Arthur's

£70,000 estate rested with his mother, Elizabeth Evans.

But Peter felt it wasn't going to be easy.

Evans in North Wales, there are thousands of them.

Every village has got maybe half a dozen different Evans families.

He decided to admit defeat and close the case.

The following year, determined not to be beaten,

Peter began a fresh hunt for the heirs to Josiah Arthur's £70,000 estate.

He made a start on the family tree of his mother, Elizabeth Evans.

We know from her marriage to the father of the deceased

that her own father is a Solomon Evans and Solomon is a quarry man.

We know where they were living.

We know where they were living at the time of the 1871 census.

Peter discovered that the deceased grandfather, Solomon,

and his wife Mary lived in Llanvihangel in North Wales.

They had three children,

Elizabeth, Josiah Arthur's mother, another daughter, Jane

and a son, David.

They would no longer be alive but if they had children,

they would be Josiah Arthur's cousins and heirs to his estate.

To try and find them,

Peter needed to know where they ended up as adults.

With such common names, it would be difficult.

His best chance was to follow their fathers more unusual name

and hope they had settled close to their parents.

But it didn't go to plan.

We can find him in the 1871 census with his children.

We find him in the 1881 census. But, after that there's nothing.

The trail has gone cold. Had he died? Had he moved? Peter was stumped.

Coming up, having reopened the case,

he faced another insurmountable hurdle.

We researched virtually every Evans family in the Llanvihangel area

and we weren't coming up with anything.

Was Peter going to abandoned the heir hunt for a second time?

Heir hunter's work hard to solve thousands of cases a year,

ensuring millions of pounds are paid out to rightful heirs.

Not every case can be cracked.

The Treasury has a list of over 2,000 estates that have baffled

the heir hunters and remain unclaimed.

These estates stay on the list for up to 30 years

and each one could be worth anything from £5,000 to many millions.

Today, we're focusing on three names from the list.

Are they relatives of yours?

Could you be in line for an unexpected windfall?

Paul Anthony Bebb died in Mexborough Doncaster in January 2007.

Bebb is a Celtic name and the vast majority of Bebbs are in Wales.

Could you be related? Does Bebb ring a bell with you?

Maria Ellen Quint died in Kent in March, way back in 1960.

Some new assets must have come to light for her

to appear on the list, 40 years after her death.

Do you remember her?

Doreen Hadlum died in Gillingham, Kent, in December 2004.

Hadlum is an extremely rare surname.

There are only a handful of Hadlums in the UK.

Do you have this surname?

Could Doreen be a distant family member?

If no heirs are found, her money will go to the government.

All these states are worth at least £5,000 but could be a lot more.

Only successful heirs will be told.

If the names Paul Bebb, Maria Quint or Doreen Hadlum mean

anything to you, or someone you know,

you could have a fortune coming your way.

Heir hunter, Peter Birchwood, was working on the case of Josiah Arthur Webbe.

He died aged 86, leaving an estate worth £70,000.

Pete had begun looking for his heirs in 2009,

but when the paternal trail led to the Caribbean, he hit a brick wall.

It's not an area where we've ever had to research in the past,

so, we didn't have any agents there to help us out.

With a name like Elizabeth Evans,

chasing heirs on his mother's side, was a daunting prospect.

Evans is not the sort of name that's easy to research.

Peter threw in the towel.

The following year, he decided to give the heir hunt another go.

He traced the deceased's maternal grandfather, Solomon,

and found he had three children,

Josiah Arthur's mother, Elizabeth,

another daughter, Jane, and a son, David.

But then records of the head of the family disappeared.

We find him in the 1881 census,

but after that, there's nothing.

Then, at last, they had some luck.

We actually had one of our researchers go through

the records again this time looking for misspellings,

mis-transcriptions of Solomon's name.

His name had been misspelt.

He had died in 1880s and his death certificate gave the family's address.

Peter hoped his children had stayed in the area.

He started by looking for Jane.

We checked to see if we could find marriages for her,

that's the most likely possibility

but even restricting it to the area we could find

probably about 130 marriages of a Jane Evans, any one of which could be correct.

We decided that it was too difficult, we couldn't find anything.

We had put all of our research onto David Evans.

Peter's last hope of finding any of Josiah Arthur's heirs

now rested on his uncle, with the common name of David Evans.

Eventually we found a David Evans in the census who,

we think, is definitely the right person

because he's born in the right area.

He is the right age and he married a Jane Pugh.

David Evans's father was Solomon, who was a quarry man, deceased.

So that identified it for us.

He discovered that David was the foreman at Dolgellau Station

in Snowdonia, at the turn of the century.

It was part of the Cambrian railway network

and at the height of the steam age.

It linked large parts of mid and North Wales

and the Shropshire border.

David Evans was the,

I'd suppose you would call him today,

the station inspector

up at Dolgellau.

It was his job to ensure that the whole of the station,

the yard itself ran efficiently.

He would be in charge of all the shunters,

make certain that all the signals were working properly.

Even, would you believe, getting a brush out and cleaning the platform station.

That was his job. A very important job.

The station opened in 1868, but nothing remains of it today,

after it was demolished to make way for a bypass in the 1970s.

The railway station was the hub of everything.

There was very little transport, cars and buses and things like that.

Everybody came and went by train.

You'd get all the milk churns, and everything like that,

all the parcels, chickens, you name it, everything went by it.

Even fish, would you believe, was taken by rail.

David and his wife Jane had five children,

two sons, Griffith Solomon and David Charles

and three daughters, Jennie Enid, Nira and Mair.

If they were still alive,

they would be Josiah Arthur's first cousins and heirs to his estate.

At last, Peter felt he was getting closer.

I was beginning to think that somewhere out there there were

live people who we could contact

and tell them about their inheritance.

Peter began by looking for the eldest child, Griffith.

He discovered that he had died in Shrewsbury in 1972.

I did find a couple of neighbours who remembered him

but the indications that I had were that the Griffith Solomon Evans,

we were looking for, did not have any children.

With a more common name than his brother,

David Evans was going to be hard to find.

Instead, Peter thought that his sisters,

with their more unusual names would be easier.

The first girl was Jennie Enid

and that's a name that you wouldn't think there will be too many of them.

Mair and Nira, the three girls in the family.

But, the complication turned out to be that Jennie Enid married

an Evans and Nira married an Evans

and, at least, during the first searches, we couldn't find Mair marrying at all.

So two of the Evans girls had married other Evans.

It was a researcher's nightmare. Peter asked his son, Hector, in his London office for help.

He took on the massive task of searching through

all the records to try and find them.

Finally, after all the dead ends and disappointments,

there was a breakthrough.

I was just about to close up the office and I got a phone calls

and e-mails from Hector saying he thought that he had identified

a lady who was definitely one of the members of the family.

At last, after two years, this tough case finally had an heir

Iola was Nira's daughter,

which made her Josiah Arthur's cousin once removed.

When Peter called her, she was confused.

He kept mentioning a surname Webbe and Evans and I didn't know a Webbe.

Only when he mentioned about that's where there was a Webbe

in Liverpool who had married Elizabeth, that was my grandfather's sister.

Then I realised that there must be a connection

because my mother used to talk about an aunt in Liverpool.

Iola had never heard of Josiah Arthur

but she does remember visiting his uncle,

station foreman, David Evans, her maternal grandfather.

We always used to very excited when we were going on the steam engine

to go to Dolgellau to my grandparents home.

Since finding Iola, Peter has discovered another part

of the maternal family that he didn't know about and has made

contact with many more beneficiaries to Josiah Arthur's £70,000 estate.

We've got eight or ten heirs that we are representing right now.

We would really hope that they'll be another two or three

once we find this missing branch.

On and off, the case took two years to crack.

The paternal heirs in the Caribbean were never found

but Peter's persistence with the Evans side of the family

eventually paid off.

Although at times we thought that it really was going to end up

that they'd be no heirs, I'm really very happy

that I've been proved wrong.

There are a number of them out there and we found them.

I think it is very sad that we are inheriting this money

from the Webbe family, which we didn't know existed.

Heir Hunters Fraser & Fraser were working on the case of Robin Hunt.

He died in Bournemouth in March 2011

leaving an estate worth an estimated £200,000,

but no will.

The team got off to a good start

and thought they'd found his parents marriage

but, after speaking to an old neighbour,

they discovered they'd been barking up the wrong tree.

Right. That's all wrong.

After two hours research, it was back to the drawing board.

Robin Hunt ran a pub in Banbury, Oxfordshire

with his parents in the 1970s.

Tony Bell took over as landlord and remembers him as a sociable man.

Well, I think it was sort of mum and dad ran the front of the pub

and then, behind-the-scenes there was a big function room upstairs

which, I think Robin used to organise a sort of a party atmosphere,

discos, young people's clubs, that sort of thing.

People don't go to parties

if they don't like the person who's organising them, you know,

so, I mean, I suppose he was a bit of a party animal.

Everybody knows who's working behind the bar,

and he was quite well-known in Banbury.

Back on the hunt for Robin's heirs,

they still don't have his parents' full names.

Without them, they can't look for heirs.

Still unable to find a record of their marriage,

manager Frances has a theory.

Has somebody checked whether it's also under Honeyball?

Roger. Roger.

Very quick, can you check, it's very important?

That this goes under Honeyball.

December '41, Honeyball.

It is.

They got married.

Well done, Frances. She's solved the mystery.

So, Robin was born illegitimately.

He was registered, not just under his father's name, Hunt,

as is the case for married couples,

but his mother's name, Honeyball, too

They registered under both names.

Both parents would sign the register.

Means they're not married.

So what is the Hunt connection then?

It's wartime. She had a relationship with a Mr Hunt.

Now, Mr Hunt could well have been a married man.

The records still only show surnames

and now, as no marriage certificate exists,

the only other document that would give them his parents' full names

is Robin's birth certificate.

That birth is under a Honeyball as well, by the way.

The parents are not married. We definitely need that birth.

With Bob still busy in Bournemouth,

David calls a second on-the-road researcher, Bob Barrett, for help.

-Hello?

-Hello, Bob.

-Hiya.

Merchant register office.

We're still supposedly looking up the birth.

Which one's this for?

This is on the case of Hunt, Robin Hunt.

We really do need his birth,

we can't identify the parents' names without it, I don't think.

OK, on the way, then. Cheers.

Thanks, Bob. Bye.

We've waited an hour, an hour and a half now and they still haven't

said they've got it, so, I did want to go over there myself two hours ago

and decided not to because they said they would do it, so we are stuck.

We need to get that birth certificate.

That's the document we haven't been able to get our hands on yet.

Meanwhile, Robin's old neighbour has called in

with some more information.

I believe you called.

Christchurch Cemetery.

Frances, the mother's buried in Christchurch Cemetery.

What about contacting Christchurch Cemetery?

If they can get Robin's mother's full name

without waiting for the birth certificate,

they could at last start the hunt for heirs.

While the team chase the cemetery, David wants Bob in Bournemouth

to chase another lead from the neighbour.

What I've been told is that the mother probably died

about the 1980s, was last known to be living in a bungalow in Kingston.

It's like a small village outside the confines of Bournemouth.

It's a long shot, but Bob's off to the library

to check the old electoral rolls

and see if he can find Robin's mother's name that way.

It may take a while.

Our address is 1363. And it stops at 1362.

Back in the office,

they've discovered a website for Christchurch Cemetery.

We don't know what surnamed Mum used

and we certainly don't know what their first names were.

But it would appear to work, by putting in the name, Hunt, there were

certainly four people by the name of Hunt

buried in Christchurch Cemetery.

But you can't always rely on the internet.

Look at the names of the cemeteries.

You've got Ruru Lawns...

Dunedin...

Yeah...

Doesn't sound like Christchurch, Dorset.

Definitely one thing I can say to you,

she's definitely not buried in Christchurch, New Zealand!

Determined to get the stalled investigation moving,

Frances calls the right Christchurch Cemetery.

Thank you so much!

Wonderful.

Thank you. Bye-bye.

-Cracked it.

-So who is her husband?

Harold Stanley Hunt who died in 1976.

It is the breakthrough they've been waiting for.

An absolute long-shot that we were...

David had been told that the deceased's mum

had been buried in Christchurch cemetery in Dorset.

Normally, cemeteries won't check their records.

Or don't have the facility to check records

without an exact name and an exact age of death.

Fortunately the lady did a search

and Ellen Marie Hunt who died in 1979

had purchased the grave in 1976

when her husband Harold Stanley Hunt died in 1976.

So, bingo.

Good old-fashioned detective work paid dividends.

Although she was not married,

Robin's mother Ellen Honeyball used his father's surname, Hunt.

Now they know his parents full names,

they won't need Robin's birth certificate after all.

There is a corresponding birth for her

as Ellen Marie Honeyball in Edmonton.

So, fantastic.

Finally, they can now start searching for Robin's possible heirs.

But there's still one mystery they still need to solve.

Why were his parents, known as Mr and Mrs Hunt, not married?

I am absolutely convinced that for some reason

she could not marry him because he was already married to somebody else

and couldn't, for whatever reason, claim a divorce maybe.

Before people start charging back looking at brothers and sisters

Harold had and what brothers and sisters Ellen had,

we have got to have a look and see whether he himself

had a family that will be the first people entitled.

If Harold Hunt had children with his wife,

as half-siblings they would be first in line to inherit

Robin's estimated £200,000 estate before any full blood cousins.

-What have you just found?

-That's his first marriage, isn't it?

-28th.

-Yes.

-23 when he married.

-Just as I suspected, he was married.

To a lady called Helen Brown when he was 23 years old.

The couple married in Paddington and records show

they had one daughter, Muriel, modern's half-sister.

But there's bad news for the team.

We believe the possible half-sister

of Robin Hunt the deceased has died quite young.

She married, didn't have any children.

If that's the case, she is the only half-sister,

that means we will have to go and research back into the family.

The researchers can't be sure she was Harold Hunt's only other child.

But with no leads to follow, they decide their best bet

of finding heirs for Robin's estate is to trace his cousins.

They start by looking for aunts and uncles.

You got ten on that top line?

-Yes.

-This side of the tree is jumping up.

There's ten stems on it already.

One of them, I've just heard, has seven children.

We're talking of lots and lots of beneficiaries.

I am hoping once we get this up, one of them may know something

about the deceased and may know if the father had any other children.

But it's still a huge gamble to be working

that many stems on the mother's side

when we don't know what happened to near kin.

They discover Robin has a huge family tree.

Four aunts and five uncles on his mother's side.

And two aunts on his father's.

It will take more than a day to track them all down.

A couple of hundred hours working on this today.

Lots and lots of staff and a huge amount of expense so far for us

and it's not finished yet.

It's day two on the case,

and on-the-road investigator Bob Barrett is on his way to meet Joyce.

She's Robin's cousin through his Uncle Robert.

Although confined to bed, she's agreed to see him.

The person that has died,

I don't know if they told you who it was in the office, did you know him?

Very vaguely. I haven't seen him since my father died.

Right, so it wasn't a huge shock or anything?

Another on the road investigator Ewart Lindsay

is meeting Victor, he is Robin's cousin once removed.

-The grandson of his Aunt Dora.

-Just confirm your full name for me.

-Victor Cyril...

-Did you know the deceased?

There was no communication between the previous generations and him.

It's a pity really.

We don't know how much the estate is worth.

At the moment, we don't know how many people will have to share it.

But there'll be a good few.

-'Hello.'

-Hello, David. Bob Barrett.

I have just seen Mrs Norman. She's bedridden.

The poor lady had a stroke about 15 years ago

and has been bedridden ever since.

-'Oh, God.'

-So she's signed.

'Right, that's it. You're finished today.'

Bob's off home and Ewart's almost finished with the Victor.

So, I'll leave you the agreement. OK?

Any queries you can give my colleague a call in the office.

We knew of this sort of unmarried relationship

and that would have been a sensation in those days.

We're talking 40, 50 years ago, more than that.

That was a big no, no in those days.

I certainly knew Robin existed,

and when the phone call first came they talked about Harold

and the name Robin just came into my head immediately.

I always wondered about Robin, what he did and so on and so on.

As it turned out, he seems to have been about my age.

It would have been interesting to have talked to him,

I'm sorry we didn't.

Victor's not sure how much he will inherit, but he has plans for it.

We will probably help our two kids out with their house-buying.

In the end, they found over 20 heirs

to Robin's estimated £200,000 estate

on the maternal and paternal sides of the family.

Neil's fears of finding half-siblings failed to materialise.

We can now conclude that the heirs which we have found

and which we do represent are the correct beneficiaries

and it is them who is going to share in the estate.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd