Smith/Amanet Heir Hunters

Heir hunters track down people who are entitled to money from relatives who have died.

It's not an easy task. We do it every day of the week.

Sometimes, the deceased has become estranged from their family.

It's the heir hunters' job to trace them

and make sure any unclaimed money goes to the right person.

I had to lose my last remaining relative to inherit the money.

The research can be painstaking.

Rather like scratching one's head without any fingers.

And doesn't always go to plan.

We're back to square one.

But it's all about giving news of an unexpected windfall.

So, could the heir hunters be knocking on your door?

Coming up, is a very common surname a challenge too far for the team?

-Smith is always hard work.

-It's tricky, it's a challenge, but that's what research is.

A story of crime, punishment and ultimate redemption.

If you told me that he was going to turn out to be a half-decent guy

that does charity work, I would've thought you were bonkers.

Plus, how you could be entitled to inherit unclaimed estates held by the Treasury.

Could thousands of pounds be heading your way.

It's Thursday morning and overnight the latest bona vacantia list has been published

showing the names of people who have died without leaving a will.

At Fraser and Fraser, the country's largest firm of heir hunters,

case manager David Milchard, known as Grimble, and boss Neil

are looking at four potential cases from the list.

-That's your coffee there.

-Thank you.

Speed is always a priority because there are up to 40 rival heir hunting firms

all racing to find and sign up heirs for a commission of an estate's worth.

The one that looks the best is this one.

This morning, the team are feeling brave.

They've decided to work a case with the most common surname in Britain.

-It's a good bet, isn't it?

-What do you reckon?

-Yeah.

James Smith died in July 2011 near Chichester.

For the last three decades of his life,

he worked as a garden labourer.

His friends knew him as Jimmy.

Work colleague Doug Moye remembers him well.

I knew Jimmy 28 years.

Jimmy was never a big talker.

Always kept himself to himself. He was never one for starting a conversation.

He would only ever answer if somebody talked to him.

"How you doing, Jim?" "All right." And that was it.

"How are you feeling?" "Fair to middling." It's just the way he was.

No picture of Jimmy has been found.

But he's remembered as a hard worker who never complained.

Well, I think he was happy to have the job.

He never had a day off sick. He'd come in, he'd be there on time.

He'd be the last one usually in for a break, and generally the first one out after the break.

He wouldn't leave five minutes early.

Never asked for a holiday. Had to be sent on holiday.

Um, he got on with the job, what he needed to do.

And Jimmy kept his personal life and his past very much to himself.

Jimmy never said anything, unless you really asked him and pushed him.

He just didn't talk. He wouldn't say a thing about it.

He was just one of those people. You left him alone.

You didn't push him. He didn't seem troubled about anything.

In the office, the team has very little to work on.

So far, all they've got is a name and the place where James Smith died.

They need more information and fast.

So Grimble gets hold of one of the company's travelling researchers.

Hello. Bob Smith.

Bob spends his days out on the road gathering vital information for the team in the office.

They build up a picture of the person who has died by talking to neighbours.

And they also collect vital documents.

Hello, Bob. How are you going? Yeah.

Do you want to go down to Chichester?

Grimble sends Bob to James Smith's last known address

to see what he can find out.

The team has accessed the electoral register for Chichester,

which has given them a much needed lead.

We've run the name and what we think is the correct address through one of our databases here.

That's given us some information. Similar to an electoral roll

but has a date of birth attached to it.

We've got a birth for James Smith in 1940 in Portsmouth.

The date of birth is crucial as it should help the team identify James's parents.

If the birth we've got is right, his mother's maiden name is Couch.

Try to find a Smith-Couch marriage.

In a period of 20 years, there's three.

If the team can confirm James's parents' details,

they can look further into his family tree.

Because if they can't find a marriage for James, or children,

then his parents' relatives will be heirs.

But already there's confusion.

-Did he live in the nursery?

-Did he live in the nursery?

It wouldn't be a nursing home, would it?

The team really needs to establish James's address

to work out whether or not he owned a property.

With such a common surname, the research is hard work,

which could end up being costly.

If James didn't own a property, his estate is likely to be low value

and might not be worth investigating.

That address is a garden centre.

That's what I thought.

Originally, the team thought James had lived in a nursing home.

But a closer look at the address suggests he might have lived at the nursery where he worked.

It doesn't make sense to Neil and Grimble.

So, what's it look like? A nursery?

-A garden centre.

-He's living in the garden centre?

It looks like he's renting a caravan on the site.

There may be confusion over James's last known address

but, despite dealing with a common surname, the researchers think they've made a breakthrough.

We're working on a 1941 marriage.

Henry Smith to a Jennifer Couch.

Um, we've got one of James's possible brothers up to date.

Um, Simon's just ringing him up.

-It's wrong.

-Wrong?

But one of the other case managers, Simon Mills, has just proved all this is wrong.

He has found James's mother was not called Couch after all.

And their research has been for nothing.

We're back to square one.

There's always a risk of a setback like this when dealing with such a common name.

Nonetheless, it's frustrating.

First thing this morning, we thought we'd identified the birth of the deceased.

We've got the cert and it's proved to be wrong.

Um, quite surprising because everything looked fairly good.

The reason most of these cases get on the list is because they're hard to work.

If they're very simple, very easy, or very close family,

then they should all be dealt with by the time they get to our office.

It's not an easy task for anyone to start working.

It's not an easy task for us and we do it every day of the week.

It's tricky, it's a challenge, but that's what research is.

Senior travelling researcher Bob Smith

has his own theory about the pros and cons of working a name like Smith.

If it's a common surname, the likelihood of competition is less.

But, obviously, it presents problems in terms of research

and trying to locate family members.

If it's an uncommon name, it's easier to locate people

but, of course, the element of competition comes into play then.

Because nothing is known about James, Bob is going to do all he can to move the case on.

What I'm going to do is make an enquiry with the people who worked there.

Find out from them what they know about his life, his family.

And, most importantly of all,

try and get an indication of whether he may well have left an estate with any value.

With the team in the office back to square one,

all hope rests on Bob Smith.

See what he can do.

But will Bob be able to uncover any clues about the mysterious James Smith?

He came home one day and all his family were gone.

Heir hunters trace the relatives of people who have died without leaving a will.

Sometimes, they've been estranged from their family for many years.

Only after their death is their family able to fill in the missing pieces of their lives.

Often discovering things they never knew about them.

And that was true when Mike Tringham of heir hunting firm Hoopers picked up the case of Philip Amanet.

A man who had a troubled life but was able to give something back in his later years.

Well, I think, in Philip's case, it's nice that the good work

that he'd done in the latter part of his life can be recognised,

which otherwise would have just been lost in the mists of time.

Philip Amanet's name was published on the Treasury Solicitor's bona vacantia list of unclaimed estates

following his death in Essex on the 29th of September 2009.

It was fairly close to home, a good name to work with,

and it had all the features of a potential case,

so we thought we'd work with it and see where it took us.

For the last six years of his life, Philip was involved with the church in Essex.

And its leader Peter Domini remembers him well.

I met Phil 2004. I work with the church,

he was volunteering at the local homeless centre.

He was a bit disconnected at the time and wanted to get involved with our little church.

Phil was fairly quiet, often had a smile on his face,

didn't push himself to the fore.

Phil was someone who just seemed to want to gently slide in

and be included and get involved.

Phil had a number of things which he was passionate about.

One was his disco.

Another one was his clowning.

For many years, Philip raised money

making appearances at local charity events as Bobo the Clown.

His disco and clowning came together. He loved to entertain children.

He did discos, children's parties.

He did some for different people in the church.

And his clowning, same again.

He wanted to raise money for charity and he loved to put on his clown suit.

I think he just wanted to put a smile on people's faces.

And when Philip died, he was surrounded by his many friends.

It was like the family he never had was then gathered around him,

loving him and caring for him.

Word had got out and we met all these people who turned up

from Phil's past, from his active days of clowning.

We had one chap in the church DJ-ing on Phil's record decks.

And anyone who wanted to got up and shared stories from different parts of Phil's life

over the years.

As with many cases, Mike Tringham's investigation began with Philip's death certificate.

First thing we did was to look for a record of his birth.

Which we didn't find initially.

And we speculated on whether he'd perhaps been born abroad.

Then it was suggested perhaps we just check the adoption records.

And, sure enough, we found his record of birth

or adoption in the birth indexes.

Discovering Philip's details on the adoption records was a real breakthrough in this case.

And these same records gave Mike his next clue.

The significant names are his adoptive parents.

We needed to find out more about them, who they were, what happened to them,

whether they were still living,

if they were deceased, whether they had other children.

That sort of thing. Trying to build up a picture of the deceased,

his family that he had been brought in to.

It was crucial to build up a picture of Philip's adoptive family

because under UK law it would be them and not his birth family

who would be entitled to inherit his estate.

Philip was born in 1954 at a time when the social stigma of having children outside marriage

meant many women who found themselves in this situation

felt they had no choice but to give up their child for adoption.

Parents' particular fear was that their teenage daughters might get pregnant.

Because then they thought their marriage prospects would be ruined.

If they were in education, they would have to leave school.

It was seen as a social disaster. If they did get pregnant,

there was often great pressure on them to go quietly to a mother and baby home

have the baby, give it away very quickly.

The majority of children were given up as babies

but, unusually for the time, Philip wasn't adopted until he was four years old.

His new parents were Henry Amanet and Violet Carlier.

They formally adopted Philip in 1958

during an era when there was a great change in the way adoption took place.

By the 1950s, there was more regulation of adoption.

Societies were more organised, local authorities were getting involved.

There were still independent adoptions

in which doctors and nurses might find potential parents for babies.

And also families would somehow just informally pass children between them.

And that was allowed. It wasn't illegal.

But there was a growing feeling there should be more regulation.

In the office, Mike Tringham and his team had established that Philip was legally adopted

and were trying to chase the rest of the Amanet family.

They found out that Philip was the second child Henry and Violet had adopted.

David was six years older than Philip.

Unlike his younger brother, he'd been adopted as a bay.

If Henry and Violet had both died, then David would be next in line to inherit Philip's estate.

Looking at the ages of the adoptive parents,

if they were alive today, they would be into their 90s.

And so we would assume that they would be dead by now.

Mike's team searched death records and, as expected, they found that

Philip's mother Violet had indeed passed away in 1995.

But the team could find no record of a death for her husband Henry.

I was quite shocked to discover that the father was still alive,

the fact that the deceased was adopted, and yet one of his adoptive parents was still living.

It was a surprising breakthrough and meant the team had found the sole heir to Philip's estate.

But there was a dramatic twist to come and it would soon emerge that life in the Amanet family

had been extremely difficult.

Initially, it didn't seem to create a problem but, as a bit of time went on,

he started getting very disruptive.

Heir hunters track down thousands of rightful beneficiaries every year.

But not every case can be solved.

There are thousands of name on the Treasury Solicitor's unclaimed list

that have stumped the heir hunters.

To claim an estate of someone who has died intestate,

you need to trace your relationship in a direct line

from the deceased person's grandparents.

They need to supply certificates of birth, death and marriage.

And identity documents as well.

Today, we're highlighting two cases that have so far proved impossible to solve.

Could you be the beneficiary heir hunters have been looking for?

Perhaps you're in line for a windfall from a long lost relative.

First, is the case of Patrick Armstrong

who died in London's Maida Vale on the 25th February 2001.

All work to trace his relatives has so far drawn a blank.

Can you help? Are you related to Patrick?

Or perhaps you were a neighbour living in Maida Vale back in 2001

who may have some information which could help find Patrick's beneficiaries.

Next, can you throw any light on the case of Jane Wighton

whose last known address was Barmwell Terrace in Edinburgh?

She died on the 15th of May in 2002.

Her estate was published by the Queen's and Lord Treasurer's Remembrancer or QLTR,

which is the list published in Scotland of people who have died without leaving a will.

Unlike the bona vacantia list,

which holds the names of people who have died intestate in England and Wales,

the QLTR does give values for estates.

Jane's estate is worth £11,657.18.

Both Patrick and Jane's cases remain unsolved.

Unless heirs are traced, the money they left behind

will go to government funds in their home countries.

When considering a claim for an estate,

it's important a person puts forward a very good case.

It's all based on the evidence.

We need the birth, death, marriage certificates, perhaps something on adoption.

Then we consider the evidence very carefully.

Do you have any clues that may help solve either the case of Patrick Armstrong or Jane Wighton?

If you do, you could have an unexpected windfall coming your way.

It's all in the name at heir hunting firm Fraser and Fraser.

The team is looking into the case of James Smith who died in Chichester in July 2011.

But his common surname is causing problems for the team.

Smith is always hard work. But the good thing is,

it'll be just as hard for the competition to get on to it as it is for us.

Rather like scratching one's head without any fingers.

They've already spent valuable time working on one possible family only to draw a blank.

So we're back to square one.

And it seems that James Smith was just as mysterious in life

as he is in death.

This guy turns out to be a bit of a mystery man.

David Cunliffe is the deputy manager of the pub where James,

known as Jimmy to his friends,

was a regular for many years.

He used to just sit at the bar. Pop himself up on the bar stool

and just sit there ordering his beer.

Um, after the smoking ban had come in, he couldn't smoke at the bar,

so he used to order a pint of beer and a packet of crisps.

He would pass you the money over the bar

and then he would try and snatch it back a little bit as a little joke.

And he'd always have a smirk on his face. He did have a sense of humour.

I think every pub has one.

No pictures of Jimmy survived and Doug Moye,

who worked with Jimmy for 18 years, knew very little about him.

He never spoke about family to me.

Then, I suppose in a way, I never really asked him about family.

But then, Jimmy is Jimmy. He is what he is.

We know Jimmy, we knew what he was like.

And so he was basically left alone.

Jimmy didn't seemed sad or lonely.

He always came in and said hello to the people behind the bar

and the other people sitting at the bar drinking.

He always had a smile when you spoke to him.

He never seemed down or upset about things.

Back on the office, the search for James's heirs has drawn a blank.

Early on, the team thought they had found his relatives in Portsmouth

but it was the wrong Smith family.

No, that Couch is incorrect completely.

Now they have a new lead and they're really hoping this one will pay off.

Just got the death certificate back for James Smith.

It tells us he was born in Berkshire in 1948.

And that he was a horticultural worker and that he worked, lived and died on the estate.

That explains the confusion about James's address.

And the team now understands why his last known address was a garden centre.

James might have been an odd-job man in the nursery.

Although the death certificate seems to give them the all-important birth date,

it's not enough.

We can't actually find a birth for a James Smith in Berkshire in 1948.

Hopefully, Bob Smith's enquiry will give more specification as to where he was born.

Bob has arranged to meet Tinika Swinkels, James's old boss

who knew him for many years and took him to hospital shortly before he died.

I'm making enquiries about James Smith.

Was he here very long at all?

-He's been with us since '84, February.

-Since 1984.

-Yes.

He was a very private person. The only time he started talking about family was in the last, er...

..months when he was alive.

He said before that he came home one day and all his family were gone.

-But we don't know what...

-Really?

-What the real story is.

I think something in '83 happened...

-Right. OK

-..that made him move away from where he was.

-From where he was before?

-And he completely blocked it out of his life.

-OK.

Tinika thinks that James's personal details, including his name and date of birth, might be wrong.

Bob is going to have to dig a lot deeper.

The only thing we could find was a driving licence under a different name but Smith.

It was probably, we think, his brother.

-You think it belonged to his brother?

-Might have belonged to his brother.

-What was the name?

-That was David Smith.

The date of birth

was four or five years different from what he's given us.

Tinika thinks James may have had a younger brother called David.

And she remembers him talking about a sister too.

In passing, he made a comment about having a sister in Cornwall.

Yeah. In passing, he said that

one day he came back from school, work,

-and all his family had left.

-They'd all disappeared.

This is not good news for the team.

James's family may be even harder to trace.

And Tinika has confirmed that James lived in a static caravan on the nursery site.

It's looking like James's estate is not worth very much

and so might not be worth investigating.

Bob has to find out if James had any assets.

Er, I'm surprised you don't know about it.

Well, they don't usually reveal that sort of information.

-Plus 30.

-Plus 30?

The fact that James's estate is worth more than £30,000,

means the case is more valuable than the team thought.

And they can afford, for now, to keep researching.

Having done the enquiry, it all now rests on the research which is done in the office.

I've given them the facts that I've been able to obtain.

Er...

And it's really just a question of research

in the normal way of putting together a family tree.

The team follows up information Bob gleaned from the nursery.

Bob's done the enquiry.

Um, and we now know that James might also have been known as David.

They're working on the theory that the driver's licence

in James's caravan for a David Smith might have belonged to him.

So they start to look for David Smiths or David J Smiths

born around that time.

There's a David J Smith born 1948 in Eton.

At last the team might be making progress.

We're working up the speculative birth we have of a David J Smith,

which is the new name that has been added to the mix - David.

A potential alternative name for the deceased.

Found a birth in the right quarter in Eton, which is the right county.

Jo's worked it up and found a sister.

She's married and we've got an address in Essex.

The team are working up as many possibilities as they can.

And they've also found a James Smith born in Barnet.

Bit of a random area but worked it up and got a possible phone number for a sister in Devon,

which is at least heading in the right direction.

Simon is interested in the Devon link because Bob was told

that their James Smith may have had a sister living in Cornwall.

Give it a call, find out.

If the research is right, and the lady is James's sister,

it's likely that Simon will have to break the news to the family

that one of their relatives had died.

These calls are always difficult to make but sadly they're part of an heir hunter's job.

We were wondering if she had a brother James Smith.

She's got a brother James Smith.

We're actually looking for the family of a James Smith who has recently passed away.

So I don't know... If he's definitely still alive.

OK. In which case, the birth we're working is incorrect.

Sorry about that, it's a very common surname.

That's another dead end in the search for James Smith.

That's the kind of problems with Smith.

It's not a nice phone call to say, "Oh, is your brother still alive?"

If they haven't heard from him for a while, then they could panic.

That one's wrong as well.

There's bad news for the side of the office who are working the theory that James's real name was David.

They've had information about the birth they were looking for in Eton.

Slough registry office just phoned me back.

They've given me the information

of the birth of a David J Smith in 1948.

Unfortunately, it's wrong.

Um, the David J Smith born in Eton in 1948

was actually born on the 6th of June.

And our deceased was born on the 28th of April.

So that's unfortunately wrong.

So we've got nothing, basically.

The team has been working on this for hours and it looks like they're no nearer to solving the case.

Every line of enquiry today has drawn a blank.

There are no James births at all in the right period in Berkshire.

There's a David J and that one turned out to be wrong.

We worked a James in Portsmouth, that was wrong.

And we worked a James in Barnet and that was wrong.

So all very random areas, I know,

but each one we had a reason for believing they might be correct and they're not.

It's now a case of ordering everything and wait until

we find out which one is correct before we do any more research.

By ordering birth certificates for every James Smith born in the right quarter of 1948,

the office hopes it will find the right one.

But it's a risky and potentially costly strategy because there are no guarantees

they'll find the birth they're looking for.

Will we get anything? I'm not overly confident, no.

Just because we're not 100% sure his name was James at the moment.

So doesn't leave me being too hopeful.

A few days later, the certificates have come in.

None of them are the right birth.

After investing time and money trying to find James's relatives,

the team still has no leads to follow.

We'll probably leave it alone for the time being.

Without even being certain of James's real name,

it's like looking for a needle in a haystack.

And boss Neil has no choice but to call a halt to the research for the time being.

We've discovered a £30,000 estate and that's heading straight to the government

because we kind find the birth of the deceased.

But the fact that James has proved so elusive

comes as no surprise to those who knew him.

Jimmy was a mystery. I do believe he was happy being that mystery.

But whatever the true story behind James's past,

he man himself will be sorely missed.

All of us have been quietly affected by the fact that he's suddenly gone

because he was kind of part of the furniture.

You just expect him to be there.

Did you know James Smith?

Do you know his actual name or have any other information that may help trace his relatives?

If so, you could ensure his £30,000 estate goes to his family

and not the government.

At heir hunting firm Hoopers,

Mike Tringham has been investigating the case of Philip Amanet

who had been adopted as a child. He died in 2009 aged 55.

During his investigations, Mike had been surprised by a twist in the case.

I was quite shocked to discover that the father was still alive.

And so Philip's adoptive father Henry was sole heir to his son's £6,000 estate.

There's no biological link between the two, as far as we can determine,

but that has no impact on our work. Under English law,

the same rules apply.

Philip spent a lot of his young adulthood working on fairgrounds across the country.

But later returned to Southend where he became a popular member of his local church.

Phil's the sort of person you remember as, he drew good out of other people.

Not just because he was selflessly hoovering up good for himself.

He seemed to have the ability to do that.

I'll remember Phil as someone who didn't get stuck is his life.

In the final years, when it was hard for him,

he just seemed to mature and grow and flourish as a person.

But Philip had a turbulent start to his life

As a very young child, he was given up by his mother.

And was adopted in 1958 by Henry and Violet Amanet

who had no biological children of their own.

In those days there was no way for an infertile couple to have children

other than by adopting. No infertility treatments then.

So if they could adopt, that was a way of becoming a family.

There was big social pressure to be a family.

Unusually for the time, Philip was four years old when he was taken in by the Amanets,

who already had a ten-year-old son David who had also been adopted but as a baby.

I would assume that Philip's adopting parents wanted another child

for their older adopted child.

If they'd adopted a baby, the age gap would have been very large.

They probably felt is was better to adopt a child who was already three or four

so that he would be a nice companion for their older child.

With their family now complete,

it seems Henry and Violet were like most people in 1950s Britain,

in that they simply wanted to settle down to a normal family life.

The idea of conformity probably does come from the chaos of the Second World War.

People wanted to retreat to comfortableness.

And I think the government also wanted things to just settle down.

Because people were more prosperous, they could afford now

to lead a quite comfortable quiet lifestyle if they wanted.

Unfortunately, life for the Amanet family would be anything but quiet.

It seems that, from a very early age, Philip rebelled and caused his family great anguish.

His brother David remembers how Philip started to go off the rails.

He started getting very disruptive.

Even stealing from a fairly young age. He'd steal food.

I'd look over my shoulder and think, "Oh, God! What's he knicking?"

And things only got worse.

My dad got him a job working for Essex water board.

It was his job to make the tea.

He was going into the portakabin they had, putting the kettle on,

while he was doing that, he was going through the blokes' jackets.

And the guys kept thinking they were losing money

and it was Philip stealing off of them.

And all David's efforts to bond with his brother came to nothing.

I tried to be close with him but there was always that little bit... He didn't want to do anything.

I took him to banger race and motor-race meetings at Brands Hatch.

But you kind of got the feeling that it wasn't really appreciated.

But it appears Philip's behaviour haunted him in later life.

Phil used to talk about the early years.

Talk about his family who'd adopted him and welcomed him.

And he used to reflect on it with real regret.

In London, Mike Tringham and his team had established that Philip's father Henry was still alive,

and the sole heir, but now had the difficult job of breaking the news of his son's death.

It's never an easy task having to inform a close member of a family

that someone has died who maybe they've lost touch with or been estranged from.

Particularly having to inform a parent of a child's death.

Although I've done it many times over the years,

I still don't look forward to it.

But, I suppose, with experience, one learns how to treat the situation

with a certain amount of sensitivity and tact.

Philip's father had been estranged from his son for many years.

But understandably the news was a great shock.

The father of Philip took the news pretty well under the circumstances.

He had lost touch with Philip for a number of years.

There had been a couple of occasions,

long periods of time, when they had been estranged.

But they'd been reconciled in the early '90s.

And they had had some contact but then that contact had lapsed.

And he really hadn't had any contact with his son for nearly 20 years.

Once Mike found Philip's father, he thought it was the end of the investigation.

But there was another twist to this story.

Philip's elderly father Henry died in January 2012

before Philip's estate was wound up.

As Henry had died, the estate would now pass to Philip's brother David.

I've never had a case in more than 40 years' experience

of one adoptive son inheriting from another adoptive son.

And I don't suppose I'll see another one.

For David, who had an extremely difficult relationship with his brother,

the news of the inheritance was bittersweet.

It's upsetting primarily because it means

I had to lose my last remaining relative

to inherit the money.

Given the choice between having my dad back in the days when his health was better,

yeah, I'd quite happily give up the money and the bungalow.

David has struggled to forgive Philip for the pain he caused his parents.

Every time they tried to help him, or give him advice,

he just didn't want to know.

My mother was worried about what's going to happen when he comes home.

David doesn't know why Philip was so troubled because both adopted boys were treated the same.

I've got no problem whatsoever with being adopted.

Maybe it's a better environment than a lot of other children have

because there was no mistake that I was wanted.

It was the same with Philip, they wanted him.

We just had different ways of showing our appreciation.

There was no difference in the way my parents treated Philip to me.

If an opportunity came along to me, they said, "Go for it."

If the same opportunity was given to Philip, he wouldn't want to take it.

The last time David saw his brother was after Philip had broken in to the family home and stolen money.

But although Philip was difficult in his early years, in later life,

he started to get his life back on track and became a valid member of his local church community.

The change which came about seemed to be two steps forward, one step back.

Trying to climb a greasy pole at times for Phil.

But, at the same time, he did seem to year after year keep going at it.

The thing that was really impressive about Phil's change,

at the end, he'd had a stroke, he was in a wheelchair for the last year that we knew him,

he had everything to complain and be bitter about. And in all that adversity,

that was when Phil really seemed to soften and mellow.

David knows nothing about these later years and today,

40 years after he last saw Philip,

he's come to meet Peter to find out more about his brother.

The main reason I've come today is just to find out how my brother changed.

He wanted to be loved himself.

He'd had quite a few tough years. But then, over those years,

as we got to know him better, he just seemed to thaw out and warm up as a person.

Yeah. I wonder if that's a legacy of the fact that in his teenage years

everyone was against him for how he was.

People in our church would go and visit Philip thinking they're there to help him.

They'd sit down with him, he'd listen to them, it was a two-way thing.

Even when he physically couldn't do stuff, he still cared.

That's another thing. As a teenager, he wouldn't sit down and discuss anything.

Peter is clearly painting a picture of a man that David doesn't recognise at all.

If you told me that when he was 18,

he was going to turn out to be a half-decent guy that does charity work,

I would have thought you were bonkers quite honestly, if you'd told me that.

Is it frustrating for you that you, your mum and your dad

put all the graft and hard work in and you got all the rubbish back?

No, it's not frustrating because it took a long time

for the benefits to start to show.

And I don't think we could have handled that interim period,

that long period in his life, before he changed.

Perhaps now David can finally lay to rest the memory of his troubled brother.

What I'll take from it is the fact that nothing's wrong with my preconception.

But my preconception was based on information

that was close on 40 years old.

He did in later life have the guts to open up and admit that he was at fault.

And that impressed me that he finally had the nerve to have done that.

If you would like advice about building a family tree or making a will,

go to bbc.co.uk/heirhunters

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