Wingrove/ Lotocky Heir Hunters

Today, the heir hunters are chasing an estate with a potential value

running into hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Their job now is to beat the competing companies

and be the first to find the long-lost relatives

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

Could they be coming to your door?

On today's programme -

a family so large the office takes drastic action

in the hunt for heirs.

Don't you think that's art?

The tragic story of a mysterious Ukrainian soldier

whose death in the UK came as a massive shock to his heirs,

who'd thought him dead a long time ago.

My husband told me he was shot in Hungary.

And how you could be entitled to unclaimed inheritance

where heirs 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,

then any money that's left behind will go to the government.

And last year they kept £14 million from unclaimed estates.

But there are over 30 specialist firms

competing to stop this happening. They're the heir hunters.

And they make it their business to track down missing relatives

and help them claim their rightful inheritance.

It's all about finding the family and the money that is rightfully theirs.

It's early Thursday morning in London,

and overnight the Treasury has advertised a new list of names of unclaimed estates.

One name in particular has caught the attention of the heir hunters,

and they've already started their research.

Do you know how to get this intranet to work?

-Partner Charles and case manager David Pacifico...

-OK, bye-bye.

..are some of the first in the office,

and they let everyone know the state of play.

-We'll work Wingrove.

-Yes.

Wanting to get ahead of any other competing heir hunting companies,

they've been hard at work for hours

and have already conducted a lot of basic research.

We're looking at the case of Daisy Wingrove, who died in 2008.

She was a spinster, so she died without ever having been married.

We've managed to work out where Daisy used to live.

From there, we've obviously been able to find out when she was born

and who her parents we think would have been.

All this initial educated guesswork is essential

if they want to get ahead of the competition.

Especially if what Charles has discovered from the probate records proves correct.

We've managed to identify that she did have two sisters,

who have both died already.

The last to die, died only about a year before her,

leaving about £80,000 to the deceased.

Yes, yes.

So the heir hunters have evidence this early in the day

that there could be good money in Daisy Ellen Wingrove's estate...

-Did you know that?

-No.

-There you go.

..and have already accounted for the majority of her close kin.

Two of her sisters died leaving no children,

but the third sister, Ivy, is an unknown quantity at this stage.

It's a year out, but it could be the right court.

If Daisy's sister, Ivy, is deceased,

the team knows they'll be hunting her cousins.

With tens of thousands of pounds potentially at stake,

David Pacifico decides to draft in multiple travelling heir hunters.

They will be his eyes and ears out on the road.

Morning, Bob, David. Have you been asked to go anywhere this morning?

Right. In that case, we want you to go to Richmond.

Morning, Ewart.

We need you to go to Royston on a case called Wingrove.

OK, thank you.

-Crawley.

-Crawley, right, OK.

David has sent some of the travellers

to collect vital paperwork from register offices

to help with the hunt, and to head to areas of the country

where the research suggests potential heirs may crop up.

He can now get back to the important job

of finding out what has become of the unaccounted for sister, Ivy.

Daisy Ellen Wingrove died aged 92 in a nursing home in Chichester.

She passed away back in 2008 and left no will and no known relatives.

Despite spending the last few years of her life in a home,

for most of her later years, she'd lived independently

with her late sister, Joan.

Their neighbour, Sheila Harrison, had known the sisters for decades

but knew the deceased by a different name.

She hated the name Daisy.

She wouldn't even recognise the name Daisy.

It wasn't till she went into the nursing home

that I found out that she was called Daisy.

Sheila had known Daisy by her middle name of Ellen.

And over the years, as the sisters got older,

she helped the pair out with shopping and general chores.

It was help she didn't mind giving.

Ellen, she was a real sweet person. She really was.

She was an absolute sweetie and you couldn't help but like her.

Daisy Ellen and her sister were private people.

But over time, Sheila was told bits and pieces from their past.

I knew there were four girls.

I knew their mother died at a very early age.

So I don't think it was easy for them.

I didn't think they got any help from the family.

They never saw any of the family any more after that.

A family that the team's research is showing is a large one.

Yeah, it's quite a big family.

But their research could be in vain,

as sister Ivy is still unaccounted for.

And what worries David Pacifico is if they find Ivy dead,

Gareth's work into the census records

suggest there could be in excess of 20 aunts and uncles on this case.

Thank goodness David made the decision to send four travellers

out on the road.

But first things first, they need to find out what happened to Ivy.

-So there's no death of an Ivy Maddox.

-Not on our set list.

It's all we've got. And that is just Ivy Maddox.

Debbie has found a phone number for a potential daughter of Ivy's.

It's very speculative, but this could be the phone call

that decides which way this hunt is going to go -

close kin or countless cousins.

I just want to make sure we've got the right Ivy Wingrove.

Thank you very much. Bye-bye.

Wrong Ivy.

But it proves irrelevant anyway.

While David was on the phone, the team made a vital discovery

and now know they have a huge hunt on their hands.

We've managed to establish that Ivy probably was a sister

and that she's died a spinster.

The team brace themselves for the big hunt.

All this and it's still only 7:50 AM.

David and Gareth inspect the tree and debate their next move.

-We need some information on that side.

-Yes.

-I think we need the other census really, don't we?

-The 1911.

-All of them.

-Yeah.

Census records are a great tool,

and Gareth knows they're going to need them today.

If you've got a big family, they're having children for a long time.

So we need to go further back.

And the grandparents were born in 1846, 1847.

They probably married young

and started having children straightaway.

The team that are in the office

start to check the 1891, 1901 and 1911 censuses,

to try and find every single aunt and uncle of Daisy's

on both the paternal and maternal sides.

They're coming thick and fast.

-Yeah. Albert is...

-Born in Chichester.

On the '11 census. He's single.

The father had eight brothers and sisters.

We're looking at all of those at the moment.

Charles may be laughing but Gareth probably feels like crying.

The family tree is more than one man can hold.

It's still very early in the morning,

and the rest of the company's researchers

have arrived in the offices.

Straightaway they're put to work,

tackling the family trees Gareth and David have so far compiled.

I'm working on the paternal side of the tree at the moment.

I'm working on the maternal side.

At the moment I'm looking at the maternal side.

I'm working on the paternal side.

Partner Charles has good reason to dedicate over 20 of his staff

to just this one case.

Through their research, the team have made a significant discovery.

OK, bye.

The fact that she sold her own house in 2007 for 200 grand...

You know, there's going to be some money left over.

The value of the house plus the money that was left to Daisy by her sister

could potentially mean an estate worth hundreds of thousands.

Oh, that's good.

But if the team have found this out, so perhaps have the competition.

Luckily, David has some promising leads.

Potentially we've got a couple of cousins once removed

on the paternal side of the family.

It seems throwing manpower at this case is already bringing results.

Plus the team's gamble on sending four travelling heir hunters out

for this one estate has paid off.

We've got Ewart going to one of the registry offices

to try and obtain some birth certificates for us.

-Bob Barrett to Richmond registry office.

-OK, Cheers then.

Dave Hadley to go and see a possible heir.

And Bob Smith, we've sent to Crawley to see a possible heir as well.

The travelling heir hunters are some of the company's squadron of senior researchers

who are willing to go wherever a case takes them

in the hunt for heirs.

Their goal is to retrieve vital certificates and research,

and ultimately meet face-to-face with long lost relatives

and hopefully get them to sign up with the company.

I've been doing this job for about 17 years now.

A long time. But I love it, I still love it.

In the office, the team have made remarkable progress.

Having thoroughly scoured decades of Census records,

they are now certain all of the paternal line of aunts and uncles are accounted for.

Daisy's father was one of 10, and his brothers and sisters

are already leading the team to potential heirs.

It's a fantastic result this early on in the day.

But the maternal line is proving more troublesome.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.

-Got three children missing.

-No, it was there.

Surprisingly, they've had 16 children,

four of which have died and 12 are still living.

On our tree we've only got nine children,

so we're missing three children on the top line.

Gareth again returns to the census records.

This time the one from 1881,

in a bid to track down the three missing aunts and uncles

from Daisy's mother's line.

Case manager David has mixed feelings about Gareth's hard work.

What Gareth is doing, he's adding on several pages onto the maternal side.

You are talking well over 20 aunts and uncles.

But I'm hoping not everybody had children.

Unfortunately, you don't always get what you wish for.

The descendants of the Walters keep coming.

I'm working on the stem of Agnes Mary Young.

She seems to have had about six children.

With a family tree beginning to resemble a forest,

David Pacifico makes a suggestion.

Shall we split it?

I've already, well...

The only thing is I've already spoken to people

on the other side of the family.

It's now 9am, and senior case manager David Milchard,

known in the office as Grimble, has joined the fray.

But he's not keen on straight away

being lumped with the maternal line of Walters.

It's something he and David will have to discuss further.

We said he's got to be born after '11.

Trying to palm me off with 16 stems!

Later in the programme, two senior case managers

go head-to-head in the hunt for Daisy's heirs.

We're not lagging behind. Oh, I can be cruel when I want!

Every Thursday morning, the Treasury's list of unclaimed estates

is advertised to the heir hunting companies,

and they scramble to be the first to find the beneficiaries to an estate.

But despite the initial rush, some cases baffle the researchers

and sit unclaimed for years.

Mykola Lotocky died aged 76 in January 1992.

He passed away in Mansfield, leaving no will

and no known relatives to inherit his £63,000 estate.

Mykola was Ukrainian by birth, and according to neighbour,

Duncan Gillett, he was a friendly but private man,

who he knew by a different name.

Nicholas was his name, Nicky. He couldn't speak very good English.

And of course, every time you used to see him, well,

and he would go, oh, oh... You know, that business.

And I never got into deep conversation with him,

but as far as I know, you know, he kept himself to himself.

Mykola's language barrier may have caused his private nature,

but he was one of many Ukrainians

who settled in the area after the Second World War.

Majority of them that were around here, as we know around here,

are decent, hard-working chaps and they were a credit to the community.

Mykola Lotocky passed away in a community that respected him,

but didn't really know him.

And his private lifestyle meant people were at a loss

to find his relatives after his death.

His £63,000 estate was advertised on the Treasury's list,

but sat there for years.

His Ukrainian roots made it an extremely complex case

for the heir hunters to solve.

That's until Hector Birchwood from Celtic research got involved.

We have a very good agent in the Ukraine and I felt that this

case just really needed an extra push in order to get it resolved.

And Hector's first push

was to look at the details on Mykola's death certificate.

The best starting point for any heir hunt.

Well, once we had his death, we knew his age and

so we started to look for marriages by the time he ought to be marrying.

And we weren't able to find anything for him.

So, we also looked at births

that could potentially be illegitimate births.

He doesn't have to marry to have children. But we couldn't find any.

So, according to the records, Mykola had led the life of a bachelor.

Well, all we knew from his death certificate was that the

deceased was a coal miner.

After the Second World War, Britain was suffering a labour shortage

and there was work for immigrants like Mykola in heavy industry.

And in his case, down the coal mines.

It would been hard graft, working up to 1,000 feet underground.

Dr Ivor Brown, a coalmining expert,

can recall his own days down the pit.

They would have been very similar to Mykola's.

We had to get down the pit in our own time, that is, if you were due

to start at 7:00, if you weren't there at 7:00, no work for you.

When you got down the pit, you then had to walk to your

place of work, which could be three quarters of an hour journey away.

It was a tough job, but the pay could be very good.

And the migrant work ethic impressed the locals.

The Eastern European's were excellent workers.

They often learnt English very quickly.

And they were generally well accepted.

They didn't always stay long.

They did often five, 10 years, and then,

they moved off to other jobs or even back home.

But Mykola stayed in the UK.

And it was now Hector who was heading back

to the Ukraine in the hunt for his heirs.

The first step after having done the research here in the UK

is to identify his baptismal record,

and for that we needed our agent in the Ukraine to locate it.

Which their agent promptly did.

And it came back to the UK with a sting in the tail for Hector.

The deceased was born illegitimately,

so, although we expected his name Lotocky or Lotosky to be

the name of his father, it's actually the name of his mother.

His father was not listed on the birth certificate.

With Mykola having been born out of wedlock,

Hector's search for his heirs didn't look promising.

In the UK, this means the heir hunters can only look into

the mother's side of the family.

But the laws of the Ukraine are very different.

Well, according to a very obscure point in Ukrainian law,

it's called the article number 135,

where a woman is not married,

she must put down a masculine version of her maiden name

under the father's surname.

And Lotocky was that masculine version

of his mother's maiden name, Lotocka.

But that wasn't the end of it.

According to article 135, an element of the father's first names

should also be included in the illegitimate child's name.

In this case, Mykola's full name was Mykola Ilkovych Lotocky.

And this inferred that there would be somebody

by the name of Ilko as his father.

Hector then discovered Mykola's mother had married

an Ilko Mykolaiovuch Kisil six years after his birth.

For Hector, the father's first names were too similar to Mykola's

to be just a coincidence.

Using details on the marriage certificate,

he furthered his research

and found three children born to Ilko and Paraskovia.

At that point, we realised that at the very least,

they are half-brothers and half-sisters of the deceased.

Hector had a lead and ran with it.

He now got stuck into tracking the siblings down.

In the early 20th century, Mykola and his family

lived in Western Ukraine,

during an extremely turbulent time in the country's history.

From the year he was born,

Mykola's homeland was a constantly changing entity.

At the time of his birth,

the land that he was born on was under Austro-Hungarian rule.

By the time he had reached the age of three, that land then became

part of Poland and was under Polish rule from 1918 to 1939.

Mykola and his family lived in the west of the country,

but those living in the East came under the Soviet Union.

During the emerging decades of the 20th century,

they were victims of Stalin's brutal campaign to keep the Soviet Union

together by crushing the Ukrainian people's call for independence.

There were three man-made famines

inflicted on the Ukrainian people by Stalin,

collectively called the Holodomor.

The literal translation is death by hunger.

And the worst one of the three was between 1932 to 1933.

Under this campaign, whole villages were ordered to give

all their food and crops away to the government.

The people were then forcibly starved to death to hand over their

foodstuffs and there are various estimates on the number of people

that were killed in the Soviet Union during the 1920s, during the 1930s.

It was quite literally in the millions.

The Holodomor, now considered an act of genocide,

is estimated to have starved to death more than 7.5 million people.

It was an experience that would shake Mykola

and his family's lives for ever.

Later in the programme,

Mykola's life in the UK is a revelation to his surviving family.

My husband saw him being shot in Hungary.

Could you be in line for an unexpected windfall?

In the UK, the Treasury has a list of over 2,000 estates that over

the years have baffled the heir hunters and still remain unclaimed.

This is money that could have your name on it.

These estates can stay on the list for up to 30 years

and each could be worth anything from £5,000 to millions of pounds.

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

Could they be relatives of yours?

Ellie Sexton Barling died in Edmonton, London, in April 2004.

Her middle name of Sexton is usually a surname.

Is it possible it was her mother's maiden name?

Or did you know George Barry Pizzy,

who died in 1999 in Middlesex?

Pizzy is an extremely rare surname in the UK. Do you recognise it?

Are you George's heir?

Or, finally, Gladys Frogley.

She died in November 2001 in Kingston upon Thames.

Gladys was born in 1900, meaning she reached the age of 101.

If no heirs are found to her estate,

the money will go to the government.

If the names Ellie Sexton Barling,

George Barry Pizzy or Gladys Frogley mean anything to you,

then you could have a windfall on its way.

Daisy Ellen Wingrove died in September 2008 aged 92.

Leaving no will and no known relatives,

her estate ended up on the Treasury's list.

She spent her elderly years living in Chichester

with her late sister, Joan.

Her friend and neighbour, Sheila, got to know Daisy over the years.

I like to think back when we used to sort of walk out in her garden,

potter in her garden, you know, me there making sure she's all right

down the steps and when we would have something to laugh about.

It was always nice to go up in the home.

Both Daisy and her sister Joan spent the final

few years of their lives in a nursing home.

Joan died a year before Daisy.

You know, she thought the world of Joan.

They had always been together, and now she was on her own.

And she was absolutely devastated.

Heir-hunting company Fraser & Fraser

have picked up Daisy's estate from the list.

Very early on, they knew her case had value from a house sale

and inheritance.

Wanting to beat competing companies to the long-lost relatives,

Charles has thrown everything at the hunt.

We've got 20-odd people in the office working on it.

And throwing such resources at the case is paying off.

They found early on that Daisy's three sisters had all died

leaving no children.

And this meant looking for cousins and cousins once removed.

The team has now accounted for all nine of the Wingrove family's

aunts and uncles.

This has already led them to finding heirs on the father's side.

The maternal line of Walters has proved trickier, but the team

has now confirmed all 12 aunts and uncles that may have produced heirs.

Case manager David Pacifico has made an executive decision.

He and Grimble will split the tree, but neither is keen to take

the maternal side with its 12 aunts and uncles.

Grimble and David come to an agreement.

-Can you walk around there?

-But it's an agreement that favours Grimble.

Look at this! Don't you think that's art? Look! Art!

He's ended up with the smaller paternal family.

It's a family that has already produced heirs.

And the travellers are already

out on the road on their way to meet them.

Just about to go into the tunnel.

In the office, David is coming to terms with the arrangement.

In all fairness, he's volunteered to take the larger side of the family.

At the moment, we don't have any heirs on that side,

but I'm hoping we might do soon.

And David doesn't have to wait long.

Gareth's hard work is paying dividends.

The maternal side, the Walters side, we have now got

an address of somebody that might have been entitled if his mother

is still alive, but there's still a lot of work to do on this side.

But the team are doing it and pass David their latest leads.

I'm going to go and make a couple of phone calls.

It's a good sign when the case managers start heading upstairs.

It means there's potential heirs to call and arrange meetings with.

Maybe David stands a chance of catching up with Grimble after all.

-Hello, Tone.

-Hello, Dave.

Some in the office are having it easier than others,

and partner, Neil, has arrived into work,

glad his cousin Charles is having to finish this case off.

It's been a frantic morning,

with research happening all over the place.

We've identified it's got value.

I expect a lot of other people will be able to identify it's got value,

so it's going to be a competitive case, so we want to be there first.

And the travelling heir hunters are key to that happening.

Bob Smith, Dave Hadley and Bob Barrett are all on their way

to meetings with heirs on the paternal line Grimble is working.

Things are falling into place nicely for a relaxed Grimble.

Speak to you later. Goodbye.

David Pacifico is keen to discover how all of the hard work

he put in on Daisy's father's side of the tree

is paying off for Grimble.

Are you finished all your work on the paternal side then?

Almost finished, David. We're not lagging behind.

We're not trying to palm off any of our work

to anybody else in the company.

I volunteered to have that side of the case.

I could've easily have said, look, Grimble,

I've already spoken to people on the paternal side,

it makes more sense for you to take the maternal side.

-Did I say that? No, I didn't.

-Oh, I can be cruel when I want!

And to add insult to David Pacifico's injury,

Bob Barrett has made it to a paternal heir's house.

Yvonne Collins is a cousin once removed whose grandmother Nelly

was Daisy's aunt.

She was one of nine.

Yeah, we were trying to work out this the other day.

Bob goes through what he knows with Yvonne,

and after the meeting, gives the cheerful Grimble a call.

She's signed an agreement on her own behalf

and on behalf of her late brother.

That's marvellous.

-Good news.

-OK, bye now.

Cheers, goodbye. Ah, Mr Bob Barrett has done it again!

Bob Barrett is on fire.

As quickly as Grimble is contacting heirs, Bob is meeting up with them.

-Hello, Mr Whittingham?

-Yes.

Robert Whittingham is another descendant of Daisy's aunt Nelly.

Whereabouts were you born?

-Grandmother Nelly or Ellen...

-Yes.

..was one of nine, we believe.

And the paternal heirs keep coming.

Traveller Bob Smith has just arrived at his meeting.

Well, this is very nice.

He's meeting Bob Bevan,

a cousin once removed through Daisy's paternal aunt,

Rosa Wingrove.

OK, what was your father's name?

Bob Smith gets down to business.

Bob Barrett has wrapped his up.

The news comes as a big relief to Grimble.

-He's signed an agreement with us.

-Oh, good.

I'm glad about that, because I can now run off and go for a wee wee.

But he'd better not take too long, as downstairs,

David Pacifico and Gareth are finally making some headway.

We've got quite a few names to play with

and we've got a current address on two of those stems.

David is fighting back.

He puts his decades of experience to good use

and passes the addresses straight to his travellers.

-It's time for Ewart Lindsay to get in on the action.

-Thanks, yeah.

Bye, bye.

With Ewart hot-footing it to one Walters heir,

David Pacifico has got Dave Hadley to go to another.

Mrs Davy?

Barbara Davy is a cousin of Daisy's through her uncle Arthur Walters.

Dave gets down to business.

Meanwhile, Ewart is just beginning his.

Hello, hi, how are you?

-Goodbye.

-Back with Dave Hadley, and he's a happy man.

She signed the agreement, I'm pleased to say,

so, it's a job well done, so it's on to the next one now.

Another agreement for David Pacifico's team.

Ewart brings heir, Lynne Burling, up to speed on what they know.

Lynne is happy to sign an agreement with the company.

She's an amateur genealogist

and this addition to her knowledge about her family tree is priceless.

I'm hoping that they'll let me

have copies of all of the documents that they've taken,

or gathered themselves, so that I can add to my records.

It's just, I'm not even thinking about the money! Honestly!

It's just come out of the blue this! So it's just so exciting!

As exciting as the hot competition between the two case managers.

Despite Dave Hadley meeting

and signing yet another heir on the maternal line, in the office,

partner Neil knows which horse crossed the line first.

It looks as though David Milchard has beaten David Pacifico

quite hands down today. He certainly had the agreements first.

And the side of the family looks pretty well wrapped up,

and until we get the certificates back, then, it's looking fairly good.

Grimble had a family of nine to trace the heirs to,

with a lot of work already done.

And David Pacifico had to track the heirs from an un-researched

family of 12. And a family tree of about 12 foot.

That'll teach you a lesson, trying to fob it off on me!

Did I fob it off to you?!

I volunteered to have this side of the case!

In the end, the estate was worth a lot less than the initial estimate.

But the team have shown they can handle such a large case.

-Thank you very much, goodbye.

-Take care, goodbye.

I'm now looking forward to going home.

None more so than an exhausted, but exhilarated David Pacifico.

It may have been a day of head-to-head

competition with Grimble,

but everything these guys do is for the greater good of the company.

At the end of the day, you know, we're sort of the same team,

and importantly, we have now come up with agreements,

so we have ended the day even, I think.

And partner Neil couldn't be happier with his team.

We've worked it very, very hard.

The reason we had to work it very, very hard

is because of the size of the family.

The family is absolutely huge. Certainly a top-level line.

That's whittled down to not as many heirs

as it possibly looked like first thing this morning.

I think some of the guys were probably

saying 50 to 100 beneficiaries. We'll probably have 50,

but I don't think we'll get near the 100 beneficiaries stage.

But it's got value, it's been a good day.

Mykola Lotocky died in Mansfield in Nottinghamshire

without leaving a will, and with no known relatives.

According to his neighbour, Duncan Gillett,

he led a very solitary life.

I never got into deep conversation with him,

but as far as I know, he kept himself to himself.

Ukrainian born Mykola was 76 years old when he passed away in 1992.

And his £63,000 estate was advertised on the Treasury's list.

But because the heir hunt needed to go all the way back to the Ukraine,

for years it proved too tough a nut to crack for the heir hunters.

This is until Hector Birchwood from Celtic Research

took up the estate.

This case just really needed an extra push in order to get it resolved.

Despite Mykola being registered

as an illegitimate birth in the Ukraine,

his mother went on to marry six years later

and have a further three children.

Hector couldn't be 100% certain but there was a chance

the father of these children, Ilko Kisil,

was also the father of Mykola.

Well, once we had located the names of potential brothers and sisters,

really, the next step was to see if they were still alive or not.

And hopefully, then, they may be alive, and if they're not alive,

then we looked for marriages and then look for potential children.

Using a Ukrainian agent to help with his hunt,

Hector researched further into a brother and sister

who had stayed in the Ukraine.

The team found the sister alive

and she was now an heir to Mykola's £63,000 estate.

The brother had died but left two surviving children.

These were Mykola's second and third heirs.

But Hector's hunt was far from over.

There was, however, also a third brother.

And we didn't know where he was

because he no longer resided in the Ukraine.

Hector moved his research on and discovered his hunt

would now bring him back to the UK.

Using the recognisable surname of Kisil, he found his man.

But there was a big shock in store.

What we found was that his brother Teodor had settled

here in the United Kingdom in Leicester,

only a few miles from where the deceased died in Mansfield.

He married in the 1950s to Gratzia Cicatiello,

and he died some nine years after the deceased,

not knowing that, actually,

his brother was only living a few miles apart.

It was a mystery Hector could only wonder at,

as according to the Ukrainian family,

the brothers had always been close.

They had even gone away to war together

to fight for the Germans against Stalin.

They had seen their fellow countrymen

being starved to death in the millions by Stalin's Soviet regime.

So it's no wonder they may have been willing

to take up arms against the Red Army.

After the war had ended, people who were conscripted by the Nazis

found themselves in Germany in displaced persons camps.

They had the option of whether to go back home or to stay in the West.

People that fought in German and Polish uniforms settled in this country

and Mykola and Teodor were obviously two people

that fitted that category.

So, both brothers came to the UK unbeknown to each other.

And, seemingly, never tried to make contact again.

Unfortunately, this tragic separation was all too common.

Mykola, like many Ukrainians, would not have contacted his family,

simply because he feared for their lives.

He knew that if he got in touch with his family,

that the Soviets may view him as an enemy of the state

and that his family could suffer as a consequence.

With this hanging over him,

it's no wonder Mykola chose to live a solitary life in the UK.

Never being able to discover what had happened to his brother

or family back in the Ukraine.

It's a tragic life story

and especially sad for his surviving heir in the UK.

An heir Hector was now contacting.

He put in a call to Mykola's brother Teodor's wife

who would now also inherit.

As Teodor had died after Mykola,

he had what is known as a vested interest.

This means his widow Gratzia is considered the next of kin.

But Hector's news about Mykola's close whereabouts in the UK

wasn't her biggest shock.

For me, it was really confusing.

My husband saw him being shot in Hungary.

Teodor had spent his adult life

believing his older brother was dead.

He'd been convinced he'd seen him shot

on the battlefield in Hungary in 1944.

The whole family had been convinced of Mykola's death.

Even erecting a headstone for him

above an empty grave back in the Ukraine.

We went to a visit the grave

and I also made a photograph of some of them.

You'd never think that he had survived,

and it really was a big surprise for me.

A sort of a mystery.

Mykola's decision to leave the past behind is understandable,

given the circumstances.

But it's still a bitter blow for the surviving family,

knowing he'd lived just 50 miles away for all of that time.

For Gratzia, Mykola's lonely existence in the UK is a sad memory

and despite being an heir to his £63,000 estate,

she knows what she and her late husband would rather have had.

I would have loved to have known what sort of person he was.

Instead of money.

Mykola Lotocky's estate

will be divided up between the four heirs

Hector Birchwood discovered from the Ukraine to the UK.

But it's going to four people who would have preferred to have

known the whereabouts decades earlier of the long-lost Mykola.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd