Bryant/Mason Heir Hunters

Welcome to Heir Hunters where we uncover long forgotten family

secrets and help unite people with family money they never knew was theirs.

A team of heir hunters are scouring the suburbs of Birmingham trying to find

heirs for an estate that could be worth as much as £175,000.

-We won't get that death until 10 o'clock.

-They're looking for long-lost relatives

who have no idea they could be in line for a windfall.

Could they be knocking at your door?

Coming up on today's programme:

The heir hunters are chasing a high-value case of £175,000.

But have they been barking up the wrong family tree?

That was a total false start for us on Mason.

When a Hull-based heir hunter investigates a case of a

former radar-base worker, her journey takes her from the Cold War

to family tragedy.

They'd seen my dad in the water with a gash on his head so he didn't stand a chance.

And I'll be talking to the experts to discover what the Cold War

really meant to everyday people.

Britain in the early '80s almost put

itself on a war footing. Britain was really getting itself ready for the Third World War.

Plus, how you could be entitled to unclaimed estates where heirs still

need to be found. Could you be in line for a cash payout?

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

If no relatives are found, any money they've left behind will go to the

Government. Last year, that was a staggering £14 million.

But there are over 30 specialist firms competing to stop this

happening. They are the heir hunters and they make it their business to

track down missing relatives and help them claim their rightful inheritance.

Bringing together family that hadn't met each other

or didn't know about each other. It gives us pleasure, more so than the financial side.

The heir hunters sometimes take risks, working cases before they can

establish the value of an estate.

On their first case today, will their gamble pay off?

It's Thursday morning and overnight the Treasury has advertised a new

list of unclaimed estates.

In the offices of Fraser & Fraser, partner Neil and case manager Tony

are up against it.

-That's just a total mistake.

-Not much on the list has promise.

At the present moment, it's just confusion.

There is one case that looks like it might have value.

It is Rita Mason, in the West Midlands. Value-wise it could be as high as £175,000.

Rita Mason was 79 when she passed away. She had never married. She had

learning difficulties. For most of her life, she lived in this rented

house with her mum and dad.

When her mother died 22 years ago, she moved into

sheltered accommodation. She arrived at Holly Grange care home 14 years ago.

Jenny Harley was Rita's housing support officer. She remembers Rita

as being a complex character.

Rita was a lady that had to befriend you first.

She used to weigh up what type of person you was before she would let

you come into her world.

Took a few months probably, couple of years, before she completely trusted

me but we got there in the end.

But once Rita did feel comfortable, she was always ready for a natter.

She used to spend quite a lot of time as

she passed the office popping in on a daily basis.

She was always up for a bit of banter.

Always a bit of banter and a bit of fun.

She'd got a really meanful laugh. A little giggle and was always doing

the da-da-da, as she was walking along.

No-one ever visited Rita at Holly Grange and when she passed away,

no family came forward so Rita's name was put onto the Treasury's list.

At this stage, the heir hunters don't know anything about Rita

-other than her date and place of birth.

-We still don't have any idea about the

value, if she's got £1,000 sat in a bank or £1 million sat in the bank.

No idea what type of lady she is at all.

Neil found a property which is registered to a Rita Mason. It's

valued at £175,000.

A house is the most expensive thing you will ever own

so heir hunters use this to judge the value of a case.

But they don't know for sure whether the house they found is registered

to the deceased Rita Mason or to someone else with the same name.

-Neil thinks it's worth taking the risk.

-It's better for us to start

rolling on something and it proves to be wrong.

Heir hunters work on commission, taking a percentage of the money received by each heir they sign.

They need a good sized estate to cover costs so taking on a case like this is a leap of faith.

Yes, there is a risk we are doing this work and none will pay off,

there's also a risk we don't do any work, someone else does that,

takes a gamble and those gambles pay off because they get to the beneficiaries first.

Neil has given the Rita Mason case to Dave Slee.

He's got more than 30 years' experience in heir hunting.

-Rita Moran Mason.

-I've checked Scotland, not checked Ireland.

To try and stay one step ahead of the competition, Dave has decided to take a chance.

Have we got neighbours?

Using the address they think is Rita Mason's, he is using the telephone

directories to find neighbours.

We are struggling to locate the birth for Rita Mason so I'm going to try

to phone some neighbours, just in an attempt to get a rough idea of her age, if nothing else,

which might help track down the exact birth.

Good morning, I'm very sorry to trouble you...

It may be like looking for a needle in a haystack but Dave knows from experience that

phoning neighbours can pay off.

One good phone call can break a whole case sometimes.

So, it's worth doing.

Hello, I apologise for troubling you so early. I just wondered

if you knew Rita Mason at all? Lovely. Allow me to explain

who I am and why I am phoning.

And it seems Dave has struck gold. He's found a neighbour that recognises the name.

Well, Rita Mason, we weren't sure if she was a married lady or not.

But has this heir hunter just put his foot right in it?

Right, and she is still alive, is she? I am so sorry to trouble you.

Just pure coincidence then. So kind of you to let me know. Bye-bye.

Well, we've been working the wrong address. Oh, dear.

Dave is mortified. And now they're back to square one.

Debbie, she's alive, that woman at that address.

-Husband, Philip.

-But there's another problem.

-If the team had the wrong address for Rita Mason...

-Wrong address.

That means that Neil's valuation of her house at £175,000

could be way off the mark.

-Right now, they have no idea where she lived.

-It could be a nursing

home. It might not be an estate with any value. The surname is

common. It's in a large urban area of Birmingham. There's going to be

more than one of them.

Dave thinks Rita Mason's case is a risky prospect

but Neil is sticking to his guns. With nothing better on the list,

he still wants to work it up.

That was a total false start for us on Mason.

It sometimes happens. As it stands, we haven't got anything

better to work so we are going to slowly tick over on it

because a dozen jobs and none of them are producing anything with any value.

So, it's nose back to the grindstone...

Do you want to spin back on it?

..in the hunt to find records of Rita Moran Mason ahead of

competing firms.

Rita is trawling through birth registers.

Right, how many Rita M births are there in Birmingham?

On here just now there is three.

Out of the three, Dave's decided to go for the one

closest to the date of birth they think is Rita's.

Debbie is running with a birth that hopefully is the right one.

They've decided to take a chance and draw up a family tree.

Heir hunters use these documents to map out families, taking them back

generation by generation until they find someone entitled to inherit.

The Rita Mason registered in 1931 had a father called Charles Mason

and her mother was Violet Louisa Holding. They have a possible family

but they still don't know how much this estate is worth.

I've got a feeling this hasn't got value.

An estate of £5,000 is the minimum to make it onto the Treasury list.

It's really difficult to ever be able to determine the value of

the state if they don't have property.

To try and find out how wealthy this family was, Dave and Debbie have got

-hold of Charles Mason and Violet Holding's wills.

-What type of money

-did they leave?

-The dad only leaves £1,505 in '74.

£1,505 in 1974 equals around £17,000 in today's money.

It's not much and they still don't know if they have the right Rita Mason.

-We're speculating.

-The death certificate will confirm the right

place and date of birth. Dave gets on the blower to travelling heir

-hunter Bob Barrett.

-Morning, it's Dave Slee.

Travelling heir hunter Bob Barrett is one of a group of highly experienced

probate researchers who spend Thursdays hunting for clues. They

-talk to neighbours...

-Can I ask you a couple of questions?

-..chase certificates and visit the heirs.

-I've got my sister in here.

-That's all right.

-Often it is their dogged determination that gives them

the edge when it comes to reaching the heirs before the competition.

We desperately need a death certificate from West Bromwich RO.

It is the deceased death of Rita Mason.

The second name Moran. M-O-R-A-N.

We can't locate residence at time of death. So, it's crucial to know

-where we are going with this job, really.

-Okey-dokey. Speak to you later.

-All right, Bob.

-Goodbye.

Up in Birmingham, travelling heir hunter Bob Barrett is also having a

-frustrating morning.

-Yeah, plans keep changing this morning.

He's already travelled 120 miles from Sussex on another job and it's only 10am.

While Bob makes a beeline to get the certificate, in the office the team

are crossing their fingers they've got the right family tree.

Rita Mason's father Charles has a common name but Violet Holding,

the person they believe is her mother, is easy to find.

I managed to find death for the mother of the deceased in 1977 in Sandwell.

From that, we are getting a tree which has a sister,

a Rose Holding, who has three children.

Violet had a sister called Rose. She had some children who would be first

cousins and therefore heirs to Rita Mason's estate. One of them is

living in Somerset. This could be the break they need. Dave has the

number and he's about to find out if he has the right family.

Is this Rita Mason our Rita Mason?

Hopefully this phone call will

determine if that is the case or not.

Knowing my luck today, there will be no answer!

Coming up: Have the heir hunters bitten off more than they can chew?

-It's going to come back in the end to haunt us.

-And the sad story of how

-Rita was left alone.

-I felt that she needed somebody. To me, she came over quite vulnerable.

Heir hunters solve thousands of cases a year and millions of pounds

are paid out to rightful heirs but not every case can be cracked.

The Treasury has a database of over 2,000 names

which have baffled the heir hunters and remain unsolved.

This is known as the Bona Vacantia list.

Bona Vacantia is Latin for ownerless goods and we deal with the estates

of people who die intestate and without known kin.

This unclaimed money could belong to you, not the Government,

but you'll have to show them you're the rightful heir.

If they write to us enclosing a simple family tree,

just showing how they are related to the deceased person,

then we can have a look at it,

make sure that we're talking about the same family, before we go off

and ask them to supply various certificates of birth, death

and marriage to actually substantiate the claim.

So, are you in line for a windfall

worth hundreds, thousands or even millions of pounds?

Today, we're focusing on three names.

Are they relatives of yours?

John Archer Hydes died in Sheffield, South Yorkshire on 8th December, 2002.

The surname Hydes is historically associated with landowners.

Do you remember John? If no heirs are found for his estate,

his money will go to the Government.

Does the name Violet May Priddle sound familiar?

Violet died in December 1998 in Hammersmith, London.

The highest concentration of Priddles is in Devonshire

and Somerset.

Do you share the surname Priddle? Are you related to Violet

and entitled to her unclaimed estate?

Richard Barnes died on January 1st, 2000 in Lambeth, London.

So far, all efforts to trace any heirs have failed.

Do you know Richard and can you help solve this case?

But these estates will not be around for ever.

It will stay on the list as long as it's claimable

and actually under the Limitation Act, people have 12 years

to come forward and claim.

Here are the names again. John Hydes, Violet Priddle

and Richard Barnes.

So if any of the names on today's lists of relatives are yours

then you could have a windfall coming your way.

Next the case of a life long Yorkshireman who died

without leaving a will. Can the heir hunters find living family

entitled to inherit his quarter of a million pound estate?

Sometimes, in the hunt for heirs,

the researchers uncover tragic stories buried for decades

and reunite families that have been ripped apart by circumstance.

And that's something Anna Dunn of DS Researchers encountered

when she took on a case centred around North Yorkshire.

I mainly look at cases that cover the North of England

where the death has occurred.

Keith Bryant lived in this bungalow

in the village of Cayton Bay near Scarborough.

He was 78 when he passed away and left a substantial estate

of £250,000 but no will.

When Keith's estate was advertised on the Treasury's list last year,

it caught Anna's eye.

He had died in Scarborough, which isn't too far

and I thought it would be an ideal one to start off with

on that Thursday morning.

Keith was a Yorkshire lad

who'd stayed close to his roots all his life.

His neighbour of 17 years, Peter Hargreaves,

remembers him going off for daily walks in his beloved countryside.

You talk about any part of Yorkshire and Keith

had either been there or he was going there.

Some of the locals thought Keith was a bit odd but to Peter,

he was a good sort.

People misread the type of man he was.

Cos round home, he was a very, very private person.

Once he was outside his own area, he was very, very light-hearted,

always happy, spoke to most people he met on the bus

or whilst walking around.

He was a very, very likeable man and a very good neighbour.

In fact, we miss him quite a lot now.

With no obvious relatives, every penny of Keith's whopping £250,000

estate could go to the Government.

Probate researcher Anna Dunn was determined to find Keith's heirs

and her first step was to look at his date of birth

taken from his death certificate.

So I checked the birth records for Keith Bryant and I found three.

I picked one that was sort of in Yorkshire, a birth in Yorkshire

for Keith Bryant whereas some of the others were further away.

Usually, you know, if he was a Yorkshire lad,

he would have stayed around the Yorkshire area.

Now she could check Keith's birth certificate

to find out who his parents were and start building a family tree.

Keith's dad was Donald Bryant and his mum was Agnes Morris.

Looking at the marriage of the parents, I noticed

that they were married later on in life. They were in their 30s.

Also, Keith's father died when he was only ten-years-old.

Anna wasn't able to find any record of siblings for Keith

or any marriages.

Keith may not have had a wife and children but he was very busy

working in national security.

I do know about him working in Staxton Wold

for a period of eight and a half years.

Near Scarborough, on the Yorkshire coast, Staxton Wold

is the oldest radar station in Britain.

Keith was part of an immensely important time in British history -

the Cold War.

The RAF Radar Museum in Norfolk houses the sort of equipment

that was found in Staxton Wold in the 1960s.

His role was to feed in the radar picture of aircraft operating

over the North Sea including incoming raids from the Soviet Union

should they take place.

A radar network was set up to protect Britain.

20 miles to the north of Staxton Wold was RAF Fylingdales.

It's almost certain that Keith also worked there. This was a specialist

long-range radar set up by the Americans.

In the '60s and '70s, it was at the cutting edge of defence.

The Sputnik launch in 1957 heralded a completely new way of delivering weapons,

the intercontinental ballistic missile.

That required a whole new system of detection to protect

the United States and Fylingdales was built to provide part

of that protection along with other radar stations in Greenland

and Alaska.

During the Cold War, the tensions between the West and the Soviet Union

were balanced on a knife edge.

There was always the possibility during the 1970s and '80s

of the Soviet Union launching a nuclear attack against the West.

Radar stations like Fylingdales were crucial in maintaining a status quo.

It made it pointless for the Soviet Union to actually launch an attack

because with the warning provided by Fylingdales, we were able to launch

a counterstrike against the Soviet Union before the missile reached us

and therefore, it wasn't in the interests of the Soviet Union

to actually launch any attack against the West.

At Staxton Wold, Keith worked in the supply department where he was a

small cog in a very important wheel.

Jeff Bridgeman worked with him.

Keith would have been working at Fylingdales as a civilian

and also Staxton Wold at the height of the Cold War

and I suspect whatever job you did, you would have come across

classified items. Not top secret, but classified,

and he would have had a fair idea what this information was about.

When Jeff worked with him,

Keith was in his 40s and lived with his mother Agnes in Scarborough.

He didn't mention his mother very often but may do occasionally

if she wasn't very well. But very private and kept himself to himself.

And in Hull, heir hunter Anna Dunn is still trying to track down heirs

to Keith's quarter of a million pound estate.

Anna knew that Keith's mum Agnes would hold the key to unlocking

the case. So she decided to focus on Agnes's side of the family first.

On his mother's side, the Morris', I was able to locate seven siblings.

It was a real coup because if Keith had lots of aunts and uncles

on his mum's side, then he might have cousins who could inherit.

Anna first looked at Agnes's brother, James,

who was Keith's uncle and using the birth register,

she made a discovery.

I found one of the uncles, James Leo Morris, had married

and had a daughter Patricia.

Patricia would be Keith's cousin and one of his heirs

to his quarter of a million pound estate.

Anna was elated to have found her first heir

but it soon became clear that Patricia wouldn't be able

to fill in any blanks on the family tree.

She was quite taken aback at first because she explained to me

that her father had died when she was only six weeks old

and therefore, she had no real contact with any of her father's family.

Any hopes Anna had of shortcutting the research were dashed.

Keith Bryant worked at radar bases in the UK from the 1970s onwards

and this was a time of great tension between the West and the Soviet Union.

I've come to Royal Holloway University, London to meet historian

Tim Stanley to find out more about the Cold War

and what it meant to the everyday people of the UK, USA and USSR.

Keith worked in UK radar bases during the 1970s and 1980s.

What was the political mood at the time?

The mood was incredibly tense.

America had just elected Ronald Reagan who was determined not only to fight the Cold War

but actually to win it and after his election,

the Soviet Union was terrified America might actually strike

so in a sense, the Cold War had turned hot.

'Diving now, diving now.'

Keith would have been feeling the heat at both the radar bases he's suspected of having worked in -

Staxton Wold and Fylingdales.

Why was the radar station, RAF Fylingdales,

particularly crucial at the time?

Fylingdales was part of the ballistic missile early warning system

which meant it was really on the front line of the Cold War.

It was rather like a tripwire system. The idea was that if the Soviet Union

fired a bomb at America, Fylingdales would pick it up,

warn the Americans, and that would give them time to respond.

And this put us on the front line because it made us a target if there

were a Soviet attack. Now, over time, the radar system - because it gave

America that advantage, arguably, evolved from being a defensive system

to an offensive system, and that's why some people targeted Fylingdales

when they campaigned during the Cold War against nuclear weapons

because they thought it actually put Britain closer to war

rather than making us more secure.

So if the Cold War was due to frosty relations

between the US and the USSR, what was the UK's political position?

The United Kingdom was an ally of America and after Margaret Thatcher

was elected, that relationship became even closer

and Britain in the early '80s almost put itself on a war footing

so it sent lots of material to ordinary people

telling them what to do in the event of a nuclear attack.

Britain was really getting itself ready for the Third World War.

This was a threat that was very real for the population

of Britain at the time. Leaflets were posted through doors about the

four-minute warning and what to do in the event of a nuclear strike

by the Soviets.

People were told to store food and where to hide should a bomb drop.

What's the closest we came to war?

The closest was 1983

when Ronald Reagan ordered an exercise of American troops

called Able Archer.

The Soviet Union thought that America was actually getting ready

for an attack and the Soviet people were put on a war footing as well.

It really is the closest we came to the 20th century apocalypse.

How did the public react during this time?

The British public were split on the issue of nuclear weapons.

Some people thought they put us on the front line

and so put us at risk.

Other people felt that nuclear weapons actually kept us safe

and prevented a conventional war so you ended up with a bizarre situation

where people like my grandparents, who always voted Conservative,

actually built a nuclear bunker under their house, in the foundations

of their house, and stored beans there and stored gas masks there,

in the prospect and in the terror of the Cold War

but they still did actually support the fact that Britain

had this defence system.

'But luckily, it was the defence system that was never needed.'

The Cold War was brought to an end by Ronald Reagan when he announced

he wanted to develop something he called Star Wars,

which was a missile system potentially fired from space

that would destroy any incoming Soviet weaponry.

The problem was that the Soviets couldn't afford

this kind of technology themselves and in their effort to do so,

ended up bankrupting their economy.

It's estimated that the US spent in the region of 8 trillion

during the Cold War years.

After the tensions, Russia cut its military spending dramatically,

leaving millions unemployed.

The Cold War's legacy was misery and terrible living conditions

for the people of the former Soviet Union.

Back on the heir hunt, Anna may have found the first heir

to Keith's estate, but yet again, she discovers war has played

a major part in the family's history.

It just seems a void in my life, not having a father.

It turns out Keith's uncle was involved in one of the most tragic

secrets of World War Two.

It was all kept quiet for about three years

because they didn't want the Germans to find out.

Now, it's back to the case of Rita Mason. Can the team find any

relatives entitled to inherit? And is

there any money in Rita's estate?

The heir hunters have so

far spent the morning searching for her heirs. She

died in Birmingham, in June 2010...

See what is happening on that.

..leaving anywhere between £5,000 and £175,000.

The heir hunters don't yet know that

Rita died in a nursing home. Rita had learning difficulties

and had lived

in residential care since her mum and dad passed away 22 years ago.

Jenny Harley was a housing support officer at Holly Grange, where Rita

lived for the last 14 years. She admired Rita's spirit.

She did her own thing. She was an independent lady.

She would go and jump on a bus outside and go to different places.

The hairdresser's. Always used to think she was the bee's knees when she

-had her hair done.

-It took a while but Jenny got to know Rita well.

The office door was always open.

She used to stand outside and I invited her to

come in. "Come on in, Rita." And it was from there, really, that she used

to sit and tell me little bit about her past.

And Rita had suffered more than her fair share of shocking experiences.

-She was 29 when her father died.

-She actually found her father in bed, he

had passed away. So she lived with her mother thereon after, for how

many years, I really don't know. But there must have been a reason. She

perhaps didn't cope after losing her mother. She went into residential care.

Because of her sad past, Jenny felt that she needed more

-support.

-To me, she came over quite vulnerable.

I felt that she needed somebody. Somebody to be there for her.

Because no family had visited Rita,

when she passed away the care home did not know

who to contact. So her name went on to the Treasury's list.

In London, Fraser's case manager, Dave Slee,

has spent the morning working

up a family tree for Rita Mason. But without the death certificate it is

-all based on educated guesswork.

-I have got to determine, is my girl

our deceased? Soon find out.

-Good luck with that.

-Yes! Thank you!

According to the family tree, they have drawn up Rita Mason's parents as being

Charles Mason and Violet Holding. From this they have found three cousins

who could be potential heirs. Dave is on the phone to one of the cousins now.

We are trying to trace the next of

kin of a lady who was born Rita Mason.

Could this be the break they are looking for?

Yes, that is right.

Dave can breathe a sigh of relief. He has found their first heir.

So, we did have the right birth after all.

The cousin was able to fill in all the

blanks on Rita's mother's side of the tree. And some on the father's side too.

Yes, one phone call like that and then you speak to a lady who has

a wealth of information, it can save hours and hours of research.

-But she has also confirmed Dave's fears.

-It does not look like it is

going to be a vast estate.

-Up in Birmingham...

-Death certificate for Rita Mason...

-..travelling heir hunter

Bob Barrett has finally got Rita Mason's death certificate.

'Bob Barrett on two for Dave, please.'

-I've got this death for you.

-Go on.

-Just Rita Mason on the

-certificate.

-'Yes.'

-Born August 6th, 1932.

Address, Holly Grange, which

-does sound a bit like a nursing home, doesn't it?

-Yes. I managed to

speak to a maternal first cousin, the cousin even knew her date of birth

and it tied in. She knew the middle

name as well. Moran.

Supposed to be from a silent

-film star.

-That is before our day, Dave!

-I thought you would

-have remembered that one!

-Thank you for that!

-Trying to catch

you out there!

Whilst Dave has been on the phone to Bob, boss Neil has been

looking at the census for Rita's father's family. And it is

not good news.

If the census is right, there are six stems on the paternal side.

This is a real blow. Rita's father's

family tree has opened a huge can of worms.

-It is going to cost the heir hunters many man hours to research.

-I think we are

in a catch-22 situation now, where I have already contacted heirs.

We feel obliged to continue to research the whole estate and all the

potential heirs that that would be entitled.

But then the unexpected happens.

-OK.

-Rita's cousin has just called Dave back and given him

details of another cousin on Rita's father's side.

We could be in holy land.

Joyce Holyland. Charles Mason had a brother called George and his

-daughter, Joyce, is an heir.

-It is an address and phone number.

-Joe, you are superb, mate.

-It is the break they need. Joyce will know

other family members and save them hours of research.

Bob Barrett has arrived at

her house in West Bromwich. The office have phoned ahead and they

are expecting him.

Hello, my name is Bob... Ah, this is Holyland? Is it

possible to come in and have a word with you? Thanks very much.

Bob runs through the details with Joyce and her husband.

Joyce is 89. She doesn't remember her Uncle Charles

or her cousin Rita.

We think that your father had a brother, Charles.

I didn't know... I don't remember that.

That is the one whose daughter died, whose estate we're talking about.

-They had one daughter, Rita.

-I see.

While Joyce does not remember

Rita, she is able to fill in the blanks on the family tree.

A husband.

We are doing well.

-Thank you very much.

-Bob Barrett reads the paperwork with them.

Amazingly, Joyce and her husband, Stanley, live just a few minutes from

the care home where Rita lived. But they never knew she existed.

Cheerio.

Joyce is stunned by the news of her inheritance.

Yes, it is quite a surprise.

-Husband, Stanley, is also amazed.

-At our age we do not expect

things like that to happen. But it is interesting.

In the office, case manager Dave is pleased that a second heir has been

-contacted.

-We are fairly happy that it completes another stem. With a bit

of luck, tomorrow we should conclude most of the other research, so we're

-very pleased.

-Rita Mason's estate was valued at £16,000. But with so

-many heirs to process, this case has been difficult for Neil.

-It is going

to come back to haunt us in the end. Fraser and Fraser are going to make a

-fairly sizeable loss on a case like this.

-But for the heir hunters, the

ultimate consolation is that Rita's money will go to her family

and not the Government.

And to the residents of Holly Grange, Rita was much more than a name on

the Treasury list. She was part of the family. Jenny helped to organise

her funeral, complete with music from the Lion King.

Rita would have loved

it. If she was looking down, she would have, I am almost certain,

loved what was done. Yes. Probably had a little giggle. The support that

was given to Rita on her final journey, it was very emotional.

I think we all came away feeling proud

to have known Rita. She was very

close to my heart. I hope I was close to hers as well.

Now it is back to the Treasury's list of unclaimed estates. Here are some

more unsolved cases where heirs still need to be found. The list of

unclaimed estates is money that is owed to members of the public. And

new names are added all the time.

Money raised through Bona Vacantia ultimately

goes to the General Exchequer to benefit the country as a whole.

But it is important to note that the Crown does not want all estates at

all costs. It is not how it operates. It wants kin to be found and that is

what we work very hard to do.

Do these names mean anything to you?

Are they relatives of yours?

Doreen Wilde died on January 23, 2010 in Northfield.

Was Doreen a member of

your family? So far, all efforts to trace her heirs have drawn a blank.

Christine Lynch died in Keighly, West Yorkshire, in March 2009. Lynch

is originally a Celtic name from Ireland. Do you remember Christine?

Could you be an heir to her unclaimed estate?

Samir Zaki Rizk died in Earls Court,

London, 19th October 1998.

I have got Samir's death certificate here which contains

more information about him. It shows that he was born in April 1942, in

Cairo, Egypt.

The death certificate also reveals his occupation. It says that he was

an accountant. Was he a colleague of yours? Did he ever talk to you

about family here or in Egypt? If you think you are related to Samir or

any of the names today then follow the Bona Vacantia Division's advice.

If people want to find out information about Bona Vacantia Division the first port of call

is our website. We have a dedicated website and there is information on

there to find out about what we do and how to make a claim.

-But remember...

-We never release details of

the estate or anything about the deceased until

a claim has been admitted. We will only then release it to the person

whose claim we have admitted.

A reminder of those names again:

If today's names are relatives of yours then you could be an heir

entitled to a long lost fortune.

Let's return to the case of Keith Bryant from North Yorkshire who died

without leaving a will. The heir hunters already discovered that he worked in

RAF Fylingdales but that was only part of his history.

More information

on Keith's life has now come to light. It turns out that before

working at radar bases he was in the Army for many years. His army records

have been studied by military expert Taff Gillingham.

-Hello.

-Hi, Lisa.

-What have you found relating to Keith?

-This is Keith's service record. It is

very interesting. It shows that he joined in 1955. That makes him 23

when he joined. This is the height of national service. Normally everybody

gets called when they're 18, unless they have a very good reason not to be

called up. Or to be deferred. And normally that is because you are

doing an apprenticeship, or something like that. So it may well be that he

had an apprenticeship then he has joined up. Normally at this time you

do two years. But he has actually signed up for three. That was an

option. If you signed up for three years you tended to get better

treatment, career prospects were better, and at the end, what the Army

really wanted you to do was stay on and become a regular soldier.

Because obviously they put a lot of time and effort into training you.

All these young lads doing national service would just come along for two

years and then disappear again, taking whatever they'd learnt

-with them.

-Was it usual for men to sign up for so long?

-A lot of people

did, the majority didn't, the majority just did two years,

"Thank you very much, never really wanted to do that anyway", and off

they would go. But obviously quite a lot of them did decide to make a

career of it. What this actually shows us, when we go through his

record, it shows that when his three years are almost up, he has made a

decision, "I am not going to extend it, I am only going to do these three years."

But then almost immediately after that, within a few months,

while he is still on what they call reserve, so they can call you back,

if anything blew up in the meantime, anywhere in the world. But he then

decides a few months after leaving that he wants to go back. So he then

-signs on again. He stays on, in the end, for 22 years.

-That is amazing.

From looking deeper into the records, it shows that despite his initial

misgivings about army life, Keith went back to join the military

police. But for reasons that we will never know,

he changed his mind again.

He then becomes a clerk and joins the Royal Army Pay Corps, and eventually

via the Royal Army Service Corps and into the Royal Army Ordnance Corps.

And he spends the rest of his time sorting out pay issues and things like that.

It's not the most glamorous of roles but at the same time, somebody has to do it.

-So, did he get to travel?

-Yes, he did. I mean, he spent some time in

Malta, he's in Cyprus and while he's in Cyprus, that's the time when

the Turks and Greeks come to blows over Cyprus and the British are there

as part of the United Nations effort to keep them apart.

He's also in Germany for a very long time. In fact, he's in Germany

twice and the second time he's there, from 1959 to 1963, that's at

the time when the threat from the Russians is increasing. The Berlin

Wall is built so it's deliberate provocation. Towards the end of his

time there, is the Cuban Missile Crisis at the point at which even all

those people who haven't taken any notice of the Cold War so far...

That really starts to focus your mind when the Russians start moving

nuclear weapons around.

The Cuban Missile Crisis was a key event in the Cold War and started in

October 1962. After failed attempts by the US to overthrow the Cuban

regime, both the Cuban and Soviet governments started secretly moving

nuclear weapons onto the island.

This activity was spotted by a US spy plane and the crisis as we know

it began. It's said that this stand-off was the closest the world

has come to nuclear apocalypse.

It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile

launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere

as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States.

Fortunately, Kennedy and the Russian premier, Khrushchev, came to

agreement both publicly and privately that managed to resolve

the dispute. The US would never invade Cuba and the Russians

removed the missiles.

So you can't say that he's involved in these really exciting things and

goings-on but he's there. He's part of the experience and obviously he'd

have been very well aware of it at the time because the threat levels

increased and the Army are on full stand by because any moment,

the worry was that the Red Army could come crashing through West Germany

and the British Army and the Rhine are the only thing

-standing in their way.

-Absolutely.

So even before Keith worked on the frontline of Britain's defence

against the Soviet nuclear regime, he had already been posted in other

areas perceived to be under threat from the Russians. But it wasn't all

doom and gloom.

Did he go anywhere further afield?

Yes, he gets to British Honduras in the 1960s.

He's there for two years which must have been a dreadful posting,

I should think, being in the Caribbean for two years(!)

-Hard life(!)

-Absolutely.

So is it unsurprising that he went on then to work in a military radar base?

I think the thing is because he's done 22 and a bit years, in a way

it's almost becoming institutionalised

so I should imagine what he'd have been looking for

was some other environment where he could find himself

amongst other people who were very similar to himself. A lot of

civilians working for MoD establishments were people who had

served in the military before, so actually it was quite a natural

progression for him.

So the military look after their own. They're not left.

Yes, definitely.

It sounds like Keith Bryant was an Army man through and through,

choosing military careers that may not have always been glamorous but

were still a crucial part of our country's national security.

Now let's find out how Keith's case was finally solved. In 2010, probate

researcher Anna Dunn was searching for heirs to his £250,000 estate.

Keith died in 2010 with no known family but all that was about to change.

After looking at Keith's mother's family, Anna managed to trace one

heir to Keith's estate, Patricia Docherill.

She's Keith's cousin on his mother's side.

When Anna contacted Patricia, she was bowled over.

It was a very big shock and it was a long lost cousin

that I never knew. It was a big surprise that I might be

in line for some inheritance. I wasn't expecting anything.

Patricia's father, James Leo Morris, had been Keith's uncle. But Patricia

never knew anything about her father's side of the family because

she was a tiny baby when he went off to war.

My dad worked for the National Health Service as a civil servant and he was

a trainee accountant. He volunteered for the Navy when the war started.

After James did his training, he was assigned a post on the HMS Curacoa

a C-class light cruiser carrying around 439 men.

On the ship, my dad was on the guns

and he was also in charge of the stores, so I've been told.

Patricia was born in 1942

and her father came to see her when he was on leave.

My mum has told me that he was a nice, kind, gentle man.

He was proud of me when he saw me as a tiny baby.

Little did he know when he went back to sea,

that it would be the last time he saw his daughter.

James's ship, the Curacoa, was sent to escort the Queen Mary on a

dangerous mission.

We've been forced to call out what we in the United States would call the sheriff's posse.

The Americans had just joined

the Allies in the battle against Hitler and the civilian superliner

the Queen Mary was charged with carrying 20,000 American troops

across the Atlantic to the UK.

Queen Mary's main protection against submarine attack was her very high

speed. It was very difficult for a submarine to draw a bead on her but

to make it even more difficult, she zigzagged from side to side so her

position was unpredictable.

But although the Queen Mary was fast, the Curacoa wasn't.

As the ships were zigzagging, the unthinkable happened.

The Curacoa strayed into the path of the Queen Mary and she

sliced right through her as shown in this photograph of the actual crash.

Curacoa was cut in half and neither of those halves could float

on its own and so she did go down extremely quickly.

The Curacoa sank in just five minutes and hundreds of her crew

were left in the North Sea in freezing October temperatures.

But the Queen Mary couldn't stop because if she did,

she'd be a sitting duck for submarines and Hitler had in fact

put a price on the Queen Mary's head. So stopping would have been suicidal.

She slowed down but she couldn't stop. Some of the other warships in

the vicinity were ordered to help but by that time, the sailors had been in

the water for a long time and as usual, it's not drowning so much,

it's the exposure of people in cold water which causes them to die.

Of the 439 men on board, 338 perished.

Sadly, Patricia's father was amongst the dead.

A survivor told my mum that my dad had been on duty, he had

just come off duty and was going down below.

Whether he ever got down below, I don't know.

Another survivor said he had seen my dad in the water, with a gash on his

head and blood coming from it and he was too weak to survive, plus the

water was icy cold.

So he didn't stand a chance.

But waiting at home, back in Britain, Patricia's mother, Edna,

had no idea what had happened.

The first idea that my mum knew of the collision

and what had happened was her brother had sent her an American

paper with the details in. He said that this could be the Curacoa...

..that my dad was on at the time but it wasn't made official until 1945.

It was all kept quiet because they didn't want to let the Germans know

that the Americans were helping us out.

The tragedy of the Curacoa would impact on the rest of Patricia's

life. Because her father died when she was so young, she never really

had anything to do with his family.

I'd like to know more about my dad's

family, see what they look like, meet them. I'm quite interested. I've been

trying to do it. But I haven't been able to get anywhere because I didn't

know where they were all living. So I'm quite interested in meeting them.

And tracking down these other family members is just what heir hunter Anna was trying to do

in order to solve the case of Keith Bryant.

After contacting Patricia, she began to trace other cousins of Keith.

Another of Keith's maternal aunts was Gladys, who went on to marry and

had three children. I was able to track them down and spoke to Lesley.

Lesley is the daughter of Gladys and is a cousin of Keith, and therefore

an heir to his £250,000 estate.

Unlike Patricia, Lesley did remember her much older cousin, Keith,

and his mother, Agnes.

Because his mum was from Scarborough and Scarborough to me

was somewhere sort of quite posh really. It was somewhere where you

went on holiday. We were quite poor, when we were young, so we didn't have

any holidays. I had this vision of them being quite rich which I don't

think was the case.

He was 22 years older than Lesley and they didn't really gel.

I last saw Keith 11 years ago. He came to my mum's funeral.

What I really remember about him was he had a huge duffle coat on

and he came through the living room with big muddy prints from his boots.

Lesley also knew all about Patricia's father, James, through family folklore.

The Curacoa, I never forgot this name.

The Curacoa, it stayed with me.

Lesley was completely astonished when she found out that Patricia

is living just 15 miles away in Humberside.

So the two cousins have arranged to meet. Patricia and her husband,

Jeff, are on their way to Lesley's house in Hull.

I'm feeling nervous, excited, got butterflies in my stomach but I'm

looking forward to meeting Lesley for the first time.

It seems strange meeting someone that lives so close that I didn't

know. I'm hoping that she can tell me a bit more about the family

that I never knew.

BELL RINGS

-Hello.

-Now then.

-Now then.

Lovely. At last.

-How strange!

-A cousin I didn't know about!

-Yes, this is Jeff. Come on, Jeff.

-Hello.

It's an intensely emotional moment.

These two cousins have a lifetime of memories to share.

I've got loads to tell you.

A lot of catching up to do, haven't we?

-We have.

-All these years.

-Yeah, yeah.

-You were just living round the corner.

-I know. So close.

-Yeah.

Patricia had lost her father, James, when she was a tiny baby. She's

hoping Lesley can tell her more about him.

My mum never forgot your dad.

She was just so... To be honest, it just ruled their life, really.

She talked about him... I don't think she ever really believed that he had

died. You know?

They've got so much past to catch up on.

Got some photos to show you.

There's my dad.

-Is that the same as you've got?

-No, it's a different one. Yeah.

That's the only coloured one.

That's your mum. I think these two at the back were off the ship.

He was the best man. But they went down with the ship as well.

Yeah. Dear, oh dear.

Lesley has the only photo Patricia has seen of her father as a little boy.

-Well, that would have been my dad then, wouldn't it?

-Yeah.

-That was your mum.

-I know that's definitely my mum.

-So that could be

-my dad.

-Have you got any other photos of your dad?

-No.

Ironically, after losing touch, their parents had tried to find one

another but didn't succeed.

-And my mum had been searching for you.

-My mum had tried to find your mum.

-Yeah.

And if it hadn't been for the death of their cousin, Keith,

they would never have found each other at all.

Keith Bryant's death has not been in vain. Two cousins have rediscovered each other.

-Well, at least we've met.

-Yes.

-Like you said before, it's

-the one good thing that's come out.

-Yeah, yeah.

It's sad that Keith's died

-but at least we've got to meet, haven't we?

-Yeah, yeah.

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