Bryant/ Mason Heir Hunters

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 till 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?

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.

And when an heir hunter investigates the case

of a former radar base worker,

her journey takes her from the Cold War to family tragedy.

He'd seen my dad in the water with a gash on his head,

so he didn't stand a chance.

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,

then any money they've left behind will go to the government.

And last year, that was a staggering £14 million.

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.

Bringing together family that haven't met each other

or didn't know about each other,

it gives us pleasure, more so than the financial side.

It's Thursday morning,

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

In the offices at Fraser and Fraser...

Is that right or wrong?

..partner, Neil Fraser

and case manager Tony Pledger 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.

So, it's Rita Mason, it's 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 in to 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 what type of person you was

before she'd let you come into her world.

It took a few months, probably, a couple of years, really,

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 little bit of banter,

always a little bit of banter, and a bit of fun.

She got a really meaningful laugh, a little giggle,

and was always doing the de, de, de, de, 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 know any idea about the value,

if she's got £1,000 sat in the bank

or if she's got a million pounds 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'll ever own,

so heir hunters use this to judge the value of the 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 then, obviously, it prove 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's a risk, we're doing all this work and none of them are going to pay off.

There's also a risk that we don't do any work,

someone else does that, takes a gamble,

and those gambles pay off for them

because they get to the beneficiaries first.

Neil's given the veto Mason case to Dave Slee,

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

Rita Moran Mason.

I've checked Scotland, I've 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's using the telephone directories to find neighbours.

We're 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, obviously, 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 Slee knows from experience that phoning neighbours can pay off.

One good phone call can break the whole case sometimes.

So, it's worth doing.

Hello, good morning, I do apologise for troubling you so early,

I was just wondering if you knew Rita Mason at all?

Oh, lovely, allow me to explain who I am and why I'm 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?

Ah, right, and she's still alive, is she?

I'm so sorry to have troubled you, obviously, just pure coincidence,

that's so kind of you to let me know, thank you, bye bye.

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

Dave's 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.

Could be a nursing home, might not be an estate with any value.

I think, because the surname is common

and it's in a large urban area, like Birmingham,

there's going to be more than one of them.

Dave thinks Rita Mason's case is a risky prospect,

but Neil's 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, sometimes happens.

As it stands at the moment, we haven't got anything better to work,

so, we are going to slowly tick over on it,

because there's a dozen jobs,

and none of them are producing anything with any value.

So, it's nose back to the grindstone.

Right, do you want to spin back on it?

In the hunt to find records for Rita Moran Mason

ahead of competing firms.

Researcher, Debbie, is trawling through birth registers.

Right, so, how many Rita M births are there?

In Birmingham?

On here just now, there is three.

Out of the three, Dave has decided to go to the one

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

Debbie is running now 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 just got a feeling this hasn't got value, you know.

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 someone's estate 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, 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.

Yeah, Bob, 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 took to neighbours...

-Is it all right if I ask you a couple of questions?

-Yes.

-Thank you.

..chase certificates, and visit the heirs.

Yeah, I've got my sister on here.

That's all right.

Often, it's 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.

-Yeah.

it's the deceased death of Rita Mason,

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

We can't locate residence or time of death,

so, it's obviously crucial to know where we're going

with this job, really.

Okey-doke, speak to you later.

All right, Bob.

-Cheers. Bye-bye.

-Bye.

Up in Birmingham, travelling heir Hunter, Bob Barrett,

is also having a frustrating morning.

Yes, 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 that 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 easier to find.

We've managed to find a death for the mother of the deceased

in 1977 in Sandwell.

From that we're 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 Masons' 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, I think, 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.

Sometimes in the hunt for heirs, the researchers

uncover the tragic stories buried for decades

and reunite families that have been ripped apart by circumstance.

And that's something Anna Donne 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 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 had 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 would 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.

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 Donne was determined to find Keith's heirs.

Her first step was to look at his date of birth,

taken from his death certificate.

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 a Keith Bryant whereas I think some of the others were further away.

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

he would have stayed around 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 marriages of the parents,

I noticed that they were married later on in life.

They were in their 30s and also that Keith's father died

when he was only 10 years old.

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

or any marriages.

Keith may not have had a wife or children

but he was very busy working in national security.

I do know about him working in Staxton Wold for a period of 8 1/2 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.

Its 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 counter-strike against the Soviet Union

before the missiles reached us so therefore, it wasn't in the interest

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.

Geoff 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.

I suspect that whatever job you did,

you would have come across classified items.

Not top-secret but classified.

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

When Geoff 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 Donne 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 Morrises, 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, he might have cousins who could inherit.

Anna first looked at Agnes' brother James, who was Keith's uncle.

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 the 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 short cutting the research were dashed,

but that paled into insignificance when she heard the tale that Patricia had to tell.

Coming up, the harrowing tale of a father's disappearance.

It just seems a void in my life. Not having a father.

And how he played a part in one of the most

tragic secrets of World War II.

It was all kept quiet for about three years

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

Heir hunters solve thousands of cases a year

and millions of pounds are paid out to the rightful heirs.

But not every case can be cracked.

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

baffled heir hunters and remain unsolved.

Could you be the heir they've been searching for?

Could you be in line for a windfall worth hundreds,

thousands or even millions of pounds?

Estates stay on the list for up to 30 years and today,

we are 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 often associated with landowners.

If no heirs are found for his estate,

his money will go to the government. Could you be his heir?

Richard Barnes died on the first day of the new millennium

in Lambeth, London.

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

Did you know Richard?

Could you be entitled to his cash?

Does the name Violet May Priddle sound familiar?

Violet died in December 1998 in Hammersmith, London.

Violet's last name, Priddle, comes from the West Country.

Could you be related?

If the names John Archer Hydes,

Violet May Priddle or Richard Barnes mean anything to you,

then you could have a fortune coming your way.

The heir hunters are searching for heirs on the estate of Rita Mason.

She died in Birmingham in June 2010...

See what's happening on that Mason job.

..leaving anywhere between 5,000 to £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 her 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, her hairdresser's.

Always used to think she was the bees knees once she'd had her hair done.

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

The office door was always open.

She'd 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 bits 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, that had passed away.

So she lived with her mother thereon after,

for how many years, I really don't know,

but then there must be a reason that she perhaps didn't cope after,

perhaps losing her mother, that 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, erm, she needed somebody,

somebody to be there for her.

Because no family had visited Rita when she passed away,

the care home didn't know who to contact.

Her name went on to the Treasury's list.

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

has spent the morning working up a family tree for Rita Mason.

But without the death certificate,

it's all based on educated guesswork.

So I've got to determine is my girl our deceased?

-Soon find out.

-Good luck with that.

Thank you.

According to the family tree, they've drawn up Rita Mason's

parents as being Charles Mason and Violet Holding.

From this, they 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's right. Ah!

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.

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

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

But she has also confirmed Dave's fears.

It doesn't look like it is going to be a vast estate.

-Up in Birmingham...

-Death Certificate for Rita Mason.

..travelling heir hunter, Bob Barrett,

has got Rita Mason's death certificate.

-Bob Barrett on two for Dave.

-I've got this death for you.

-Go on.

-Just Rita Mason on the certificate.

-Yeah.

Born 6th August 1932.

Address, Holly Grange. Does sound a bit like a nursing home, doesn't it?

Yes. I have managed to speak to her maternal first cousin.

The cousin even knew her date of birth

and it tied in and she knew the middle name as well, Moran.

Supposed to be from a silent film star.

That's before our day, Dave.

-I thought you would have remembered that, Bob.

-Thank you for that.

Trying to catch you out, there.

While Dave's been on the phone to Bob, partner Neil Fraser

has been looking at the census for Rita's father's family.

And it's not good news.

If the census is right, there's 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's going to cost the heir hunters many man-hours to research.

I think we are in a catch 22 situation, now.

We have already contacted heirs

so we feel obliged to continue to research the whole estate

and locate all the potential heirs 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.

Here is an address and phone number for Joyce.

Jo, you are superb, mate.

It's the break they need.

Joyce will know other family members and save them hours of research.

Bob Barrett arrived at her house in West Bromwich.

The office had phoned ahead and they are expecting him.

Hello, my name is Bob... Ah, Mrs 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 and doesn't remember her uncle Charles or her cousin Rita.

-We think that your father had a brother, Charles.

-Father.

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

-No.

That's the one whose daughter died,

whose estate that we are talking about.

-I see.

-They had one daughter, Rita.

-I see.

While Joyce doesn't remember Rita,

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

-Her husband...

-Doing well!

Thank you very much.

Bob Barrett leaves the paperwork with them.

Amazingly, Joyce and her husband, Stanley, lived just a few minutes

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

Bye-bye, now. Cheerio.

Joyce is stunned by the news of her inheritance.

Yes, it is quite a surprise. Yes.

Her husband, Stanley, is also amazed.

Of course, at our age, we don't expect things like that to happen but it's, it's interesting.

In the office, case manager Dave Slee is pleased

that a second heir has been contacted.

We are fairly happy that completes another stem.

With a bit of luck, tomorrow we should conclude

most of the other research, so I'm 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's going to come back in the end, I think, to haunt us.

Fraser and Fraser are going to make a fairly sizable 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'm almost certain, loved what was done.

Yeah, yeah. Probably had a little giggle.

The support that has 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.

In 2010, Hull-based probate researcher Anna Dunn

was searching for heirs to the quarter of a million pound estate of Keith Bryant.

Former radar station worker Keith died in 2010

but with no known family, every penny of his money could go to the Treasury.

After looking at Keith's mother's family,

Anna managed to trace one heir to Keith's estate - Patricia Dockerill.

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

When Anna contacted Patricia, she was bowled over.

It was a very big shock.

He 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 he 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 always told me that he was a nice, kind, gentle man

and that 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 have been forced to call out

what we in the United States would call a 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 zig-zagged from side to side

so her position was unpredictable.

Although the Queen Mary was fast, the Curacoa wasn't

and as the ships were zig-zagging, 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.

The Curacoa was cut in half and neither of those halves

could float on its own 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.

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.

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'd just come off duty and was going down below.

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

Another survivor said he'd 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.

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 and I've been trying to do it

but I haven't been able to get anywhere

because I didn't know where they were living.

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.

His mum was from Scarborough and Scarborough to me

was somewhere really quite posh, really.

Somewhere you went on holiday and we were quite poor

when we were young so didn't have many 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 dufflecoat on

and he came all through the living room

with big muddy prints all over from his boots.

Lesley also knew all about Patricia's father James

through family folklore.

The Curacoa. 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 Geoff are on their way to Lesley's house in Hull.

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

I'm looking forward to meeting Lesley for the first time.

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

I'm hoping she can tell me a bit more about the family that I never knew.

DOORBELL RINGS

-Hello.

-Hello.

-At last!

-How strange!

I've got a cousin that I didn't know about. Yes, this is Geoff.

-Pleased to meet you.

-It's an intensely emotional moment.

These two cousins have a lifetime of memories to share.

-I've got loads to tell you.

-Got a lot of catching up to do anyway.

-We have.

-All these years.

-You were just living around the corner.

I know, so close.

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 sort of...

To be honest, it just filled her life, really. She talked about him.

I don't think she ever really believed that he'd died.

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

I've got some photos to show you. There's my dad.

-Is that the same as you've got?

-No, it's a different one.

That's the only coloured one.

-That's my 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.

Dear, oh dear.

Lesley has the only photo Patricia has seen

of her father as a little boy.

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

-Yeah.

-If that was your mum.

-I know that definitely was my mum.

So that could be my dad.

-So have you got any other photos of your dad when he was little?

-No.

Ironically, after losing touch,

their parents had tried to find one another but didn't succeed.

-My mum had been searching for you.

-My mum had tried to find your mum.

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.

-At least we have met.

-Yes.

-Like you said before, it's the one good thing that's come out.

-Yeah.

-I'm sad that Keith's died but at least we've got to meet, haven't we?

-Yeah.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd