Heirs to a Merchant’s Legacy | The Cases Of Theodoridi And Hubbuck | Heir Hunters | Ancestry®

0:04 Today, two cases [music] that could potentially be worth a fortune.

0:08 Found a Matt West account.

0:09 [music]

0:10 We're talking a considerable sum of money.

0:12 Life-changing.

0:14 When you work a [music] case and it turns out to suddenly have value,

0:18 it's always a bit of a shock,

0:20 but that leads to every air hunter's worst nightmare.

0:24 We had to [music] really make sure that we had

0:26 the correct family because his names [music] weren't matching up.

0:30 This potentially could disinherit all of the people we've previously

0:34 contacted and render [music] possibly months worth of work um useless.

0:38 It's all in a day's work for the air hunters.

0:45 [music] In central London,

0:49 case managers Ryan Gregory and Amy Moyes from air hunting firm Finders

0:53 are on their way to visit a flat which belonged to Victor Hubbuk,

0:57 who passed away in May 2016.

1:01 Today's visit is crucial because they're looking for information

1:04 that could have a dramatic effect [music] on Victor's case.

1:08 It's twofold really.

1:09 Partly to build up an idea of the estate value, but but also to look for a will.

1:14 All of the work that we do up until this point,

1:17 it's all completely at our own risk.

1:20 If we go into Victor's home now and we come across a will,

1:25 all that we'll be taking out of this is the the benefit

1:28 of being able to provide relatives with a bit of family history.

1:35 [music]

1:37 Victor Jonathan Albert Hubbuk [music] passed away on the 20th

1:41 of May 2016 in a nursing home in London, aged 83.

1:47 There are no known photographs of Victor,

1:49 and his neighbors say he kept himself to himself.

1:52 Ryan and Amy are hoping the search of Victor's

1:55 flat will also give them an insight into his life.

1:59 In visiting um a house clearance, you come across all sorts of items that here

2:06 in the office we just wouldn't have access to.

2:08 What they were interested in, hobbies they might have had,

2:11 all the sorts of bits and pieces of information

2:14 that relatives might ask when we're making contact with them.

2:23 This is the one.

2:24 This is it.

2:28 Hi, Michael.

2:29 Hi.

2:30 Have

2:33 long have you guys [music] been here?

2:35 Uh, about 10 minutes.

2:39 Okay.

2:39 Ryan and Amy have joined probate lawyers Michael

2:41 and Christopher who are assisting with the [music] search.

2:45 Have you found anything since you've been in here?

2:47 No, we have found it.

2:49 Okay.

2:50 Getting the opportunity to visit the last known address of a of a deceased

2:53 person is not something as a case manager we get to do very often.

2:57 It opens up the the possibilities for us

2:59 to find out some information about someone who's passed away.

3:02 Hopefully glean a bit of information that otherwise may be lost.

3:06 It was obviously a table tennis player and also chess.

3:13 Victor owned this flat thought to be worth around $400,000.

3:19 As well as a will, the team are also

3:21 looking for signs of any further value to this estate.

3:24 You would expect that.

3:26 Do we know what was his profession like?

3:29 Wow.

3:28 A key indication being Victor's line of work.

3:32 Yep.

3:32 Here we are.

3:33 He was getting a pension from Royal Mail.

3:37 Oh, say he worked for the Royal Mail.

3:39 But so far there's no sign of any will.

3:42 If a will does turn up,

3:43 I mean this potentially could end a possibly months worth of work um useless.

3:49 Just this guy really.

3:50 He was the hardest for us to do.

3:52 [music] The house visit is just the latest stage in a case

3:55 the team have been working on for just over a month.

3:59 As Victor [music] passed away with no known will,

4:01 the air hunters were called in.

4:04 This case was referred to us privately.

4:06 Um there was limited amount of information in the original email to us.

4:15 With Victor leaving a property worth around £400,000,

4:19 Ryan was concerned the case may have also caught the attention of rival firms.

4:25 Just because the case has been referred to us,

4:27 it doesn't necessarily mean that the case

4:28 hasn't already been passed to another firm,

4:30 which mean that we have to kind of always be aware

4:33 that uh this information could be in the hands of someone else.

4:37 No.

4:39 Wow.

4:38 No dates, no area.

4:40 Without a second to waste, Ryan began searching for Victor's heirs.

4:45 So, the first thing for us to do when we're researching

4:47 a family tree is to find out whether someone was married.

4:50 This is always the first uh um course of action

4:52 because a spouse would take uh the entire estate.

4:58 With no marriage listing for Victor,

5:00 Ryan was then quickly able to establish he didn't have any children.

5:04 We then need to move on to knowing who his parents were,

5:06 that we need to know the names we're working with in order

5:09 to conduct a birth search to find any of Victor's siblings.

5:14 But with the records indicating Victor was an only child,

5:17 the race was now on for Ryan to search for Victor's wider family.

5:22 So, we have to treat [music] the case with a high priority.

5:25 But Ryan knew he may not be alone.

5:27 So, it's a kind of double-edged sword really.

5:29 As much as we're finding the research quite easy into the Harbuk family,

5:34 if this uh case is being looked into by by another firm,

5:38 they're they're dealing with the same surnames.

5:40 They're going to be finding it as [music] as straightforward.

5:43 To stand a chance of pipping any rival firms to the post,

5:46 [music] Ryan decided to divide and conquer.

5:49 Did you ever get Gladice's middle name, Ryan?

5:53 He recruited [music] fellow case manager Amy Moyes

5:56 to tackle the maternal side of the family.

5:59 Whilst Ryan attempted to crack [music] the paternal side,

6:03 we found out that um Victor's father,

6:05 Stanley, passed away in 1980 and Victor's mother,

6:08 Gladis, passed away quite some time ago, actually in 1949.

6:12 Did you have a chance to look at the research I've [music] done on this one?

6:17 With Victor's mom having died young,

6:19 the team wanted to know if Stanley had remarried.

6:23 We conducted a marriage search for Stanley V.

6:25 Hubbuk.

6:26 Uh we found out there was another marriage um in 1950.

6:29 [music] The marriage was between Stanley Victor Hubbuk and Eene [music]

6:36 um Ernestine Hubbuk.

6:40 The critical thing now was to establish

6:42 whether Stanley had children from his second

6:44 marriage as they would be Victor's half siblings and sole heirs to his estate.

6:50 Hello, it's Ryan, Gregory, and London.

6:52 We're affair hunters.

6:54 But unfortunately, the search for births

6:56 from that [music] marriage would prove to be tricky.

6:59 Eileen had already changed her name

7:01 to Hubbbook prior to marrying [music] Stanley.

7:04 Um, so we really needed to know what

7:08 her other surnames were and could cause a delay.

7:11 We always just want to get results

7:13 as quickly as possible in these kind of cases.

7:16 A hold up was the last thing Ryan needed.

7:18 As he was working a valuable and potentially competitive case,

7:22 the team took a punt and started looking into the wider family,

7:26 knowing that if a half-blood sibling was found,

7:28 it would render all their work useless.

7:32 It's looking like quite a small family, but only found the one stem.

7:37 Amy took the maternal side and made good early progress.

7:41 We've located birth record for Gladis, Victor's mother,

7:45 and we can see that her mother's maiden name is Haggot, spelled with a single T.

7:49 [bell]

7:50 But Amy soon hit a problem.

7:53 Then gone on to take a look for um Gladis's parents' marriage

7:58 record and we have Albert Henry Longman marrying an Annie Florence Haggot,

8:04 but this time Haggot is spelled with two T's.

8:09 I can see four possible variant spellings.

8:12 So, you're having to check each potential

8:16 record four times instead of just once.

8:18 So, it's obviously making um making the work a little bit more time consuming.

8:25 Annie Long was a haggot.

8:29 After some painstaking research,

8:31 Amy had established that Victor's maternal grandparents only had two children.

8:36 Victor's mom, Gladis Longman, and her brother, Frederick William Longman.

8:44 A search of the birth indexes indicated that Frederick had had just

8:48 the one child um who would have been a a direct cousin,

8:53 a first cousin of uh Victor's.

8:57 But with only one living heir on the maternal side,

9:00 had the delays in researching the name [music] Haggot left

9:03 the door open for a rival firm to sign her up first.

9:07 We knew that we had just the one [music] air,

9:09 so just the one chance at a signature.

9:13 With no time to waste, Amy got in contact with the sole maternal heir.

9:17 But was she too late?

9:21 It was really satisfying once we'd heard that it was

9:24 a successful visit and she'd agreed to to retain us.

9:28 But the good news was short-lived.

9:32 On the paternal side,

9:34 Ryan was still unable to establish whether or not Victor had a half sibling.

9:38 So, there was still a chance the sole

9:40 maternal heir would not be entitled to inherit.

9:43 You know, no one ever wants to get to a position where they've

9:46 found a number of heirs of [music] the wider family and then you come

9:50 back and realize there's a a step that's been missed or someone that wasn't

9:54 jumping out at you um who would then disinherit your other family members.

10:01 But as the teen desperately tried to find

10:03 the rightful heirs to Victor's [music] estate,

10:05 they discover something that takes the case to a whole

10:08 new level and ups the ante with their competitors.

10:12 found a Matt West account.

10:14 Well, that's just to start with.

10:16 We're talking a considerable sum of money.

10:18 Life changing.

10:29 Yeah.

10:28 A massive problem with George.

10:30 In central London, air hunters at firm Fraser and Fraser have reached

10:35 a critical point in a big case and the clock is ticking.

10:40 But [music] these could just stretch out.

10:41 so big as well, you never know what's going to happen.

10:45 Case assistant Shannon Freeman, along with researcher Katie Peacock,

10:49 is frantically trying to find beneficiaries

10:51 to the estate of John [music] Theodori, who died in 2016 without leaving a will.

10:58 It's just a bit of a challenge really.

11:00 It's one of those jobs that you keep going back to and you know you

11:03 need to crack it and it's just a matter of time before you get there.

11:12 [music]

11:11 John Frederick Theodori passed away in hospital

11:14 in London on the 16th of July 2016.

11:17 [music] He'd worked as a porter in the [music] rag trade and since

11:24 the age of 10 lived in a council flat in Tooting in South London.

11:28 He was a character.

11:29 That's all I can say.

11:31 Character.

11:31 He had a fantastic sense of humor.

11:34 Mike [music] was John's neighbor for 40 years and he remembers him fondly.

11:41 Yes.

11:40 I first met John 1976

11:45 mother and I thought he looked a bit so sophisticated then later became

11:50 [music] friends with him and he he was like a older brother.

11:55 For his entire life John had shared [music] a flat

11:58 with his mom and dad becoming their carer in their final years.

12:02 When they passed [music] away, it took its toll on John.

12:07 The year after um his mom died, he had a breakdown.

12:12 He he was in a local hospital, Springfield, for about two two months.

12:16 [music] It did affect him somewhat.

12:19 It's lovely.

12:21 That is good.

12:23 Such innocent little face.

12:26 I know.

12:28 With no family to care for John,

12:30 he was befriended by neighbors Jane and Susan

12:33 who helped him with his weekly shop.

12:36 And when we came back, he would check the prices, you know, sell by dates.

12:42 This was 2 p cheaper last week, you know,

12:45 have the money exactly completely on the ball.

12:49 I think he was the archetypal grumpy old man in a in a lovely way.

12:54 [laughter] When John died,

12:57 it was these friends who gave him a [music] good send off.

13:00 She got quite a few people to come to his funeral which was

13:03 wonderful and they came here to the wheat chief afterwards for a wake

13:08 as there were no family members to speak of.

13:11 About family and I think their mom said, "Oh, they died you know long time ago."

13:20 He only talked about his parents.

13:21 I didn't think there were any other family members.

13:30 We're not going to have anyone on this generation.

13:32 It's all going to be down another level.

13:35 With no known family or a will,

13:37 John's estate was advertised on the government's Bonavantier list.

13:43 It came from the government legal department.

13:44 So, we knew instantly the risk is that we could have

13:48 other competitor companies that may well also be working the same case.

13:53 But competition from rival firms wasn't Shannon's only concern.

13:58 The team needed to try and establish if there was any value in John's estate.

14:03 We knew that it was a small flat and it was a council flat.

14:08 It was quite [music] a risk going on with the case.

14:12 The air hunters work on commission making

14:14 a pre-agreed [music] percentage of the estate.

14:17 We could start work and it could get bigger and bigger and bigger and then

14:20 at the end of the day [music] we could

14:21 have a 50 beneficiaries and no money to distribute.

14:26 If the estate turned out to be worthless, it would spell disaster for the team.

14:32 Nonetheless, they decided to take the risk,

14:35 hoping later down the line they would discover

14:37 assets that would make this case more worthwhile.

14:42 First, Shannon [music] had to establish some basic facts.

14:45 John hadn't married or had any children,

14:48 so the search [music] focused on his parents.

14:51 His father was Frederick Theodoriti,

14:54 and the team were confident about working his side of the family.

14:59 Theodori is an amazingly unique name.

15:02 From the beginning, we knew it was going to be a great name to work.

15:07 Things were less positive on the maternal side, [music] as John's mother,

15:10 Bessie, had the most common surname of all, Smith.

15:14 But Shannon soon made a significant discovery.

15:19 Our inquiries told us from a long-standing neighbor

15:22 that the deceased mom was she was raised in an orphanage.

15:26 This was crucial information.

15:29 If someone's raised in an orphanage,

15:30 it could mean perhaps that they were born illegit.

15:32 So they may not have a father.

15:35 That works in a good way in the sense that we

15:38 wouldn't have a whole side of the tree to do.

15:40 And where her surname was Smith, that would have helped us quite a bit.

15:44 But Shannon couldn't get her hopes up just yet.

15:47 We're not entirely sure if what the neighbor

15:49 said in regards to the orphanage was true.

15:51 It could just be hearsay and she could maybe have

15:53 just said that to someone along the along the way.

15:57 So far, [music] we've signed four people, four of his cousins.

16:01 If Shannon discovers she has to research

16:03 the tricky maternal Smith side of John's family,

16:05 the workload would be monumental.

16:09 In the meantime, Shannon began to research the paternal Theodore Edi side,

16:13 starting with John's grandfather.

16:16 But straight away, she ran into problems.

16:19 His grandfather was known as Theodore Gabriel John Theodori,

16:24 as well as being known as Gabriel Theodoriti and John Frederick Theodori.

16:29 The fact that he went by so many names was a concern for the team.

16:34 He's Gabriel in the 1911 census, and that was one of our worries.

16:37 We had to really make sure that we had

16:39 the correct family because his names weren't matching up.

16:44 Concerned she may be researching the wrong family,

16:46 Shannon ordered a copy of the birth certificate for John's grandfather,

16:50 Frederick, in the hope it would shine some light on the discrepancy in names.

16:56 The birth certificate of the grandfather,

16:59 so he's born as Theodore Gabriel Theodori, and that's in 1869.

17:05 But it was the information the certificate contained about John's

17:08 great-grandfather that could have a huge bearing on this case.

17:12 Sister John the great-grandfather of the deceased was a tobacco merchant.

17:17 It's a discovery that could open the case up and lead to a high value estate.

17:22 We were quickly able to establish

17:24 that with the unique name there was someone who

17:27 was a tobacco merchant who was quite well

17:29 known for opening a tobacco shop in London.

17:38 John's career in the valuable tobacco industry was

17:42 forged in the 1850s during the Crimean War.

17:46 The British saw their Turkish allies

17:49 and their Russian enemies smoking these [music] cigarettes.

17:59 From its introduction in the 16th century,

18:01 [music] tobacco had been smoked using pipes.

18:04 And then from the early 1800s, cigars [music] as well.

18:08 Uh that began to change after the Napoleonic

18:11 wars uh after the British troops shared cigars.

18:15 So i.e.

18:15 smoking tobacco leaves in um kind of leaves themselves.

18:23 But in southern Europe, cigarettes were not really heard of yet.

18:26 And after meeting British soldiers in the Crimean War,

18:30 enterprising Theodori saw [music] the craze for tobacco had the potential

18:34 to grow and with it the opportunity to make a lot of money.

18:40 Cigarettes, you know,

18:41 the idea that you could smoke tobacco in sort of thinly rolled up bits of paper,

18:46 uh, that hadn't really caught on in England.

18:49 So in the late 19th century,

18:51 Theodor Reedi had picked a good racket to get involved with.

18:56 In 1861, [music] John opened his first cigarette shop

19:00 similar to this one in Leicester Square in London.

19:04 It was a good business proposition because uh London then

19:08 was the biggest city on the face of the earth.

19:10 It was a center of empire [music] and where he had his shop,

19:13 Lester Square, that was one of the most commercial places you could find.

19:21 When John moved to [music] England to open his shop in Leicester Square,

19:25 it was the beginning of what would become

19:27 a multi-million pound industry in the UK alone.

19:30 [music]

19:31 By just opening that shop and coming over

19:33 from another country and starting his life over here,

19:36 he's massively influenced what's happened so far in the world.

19:41 for the air [music] hunt.

19:43 It meant that not only was there potential

19:44 for Jon's unclaimed estate to be worth a small fortune,

19:48 but Shannon had now managed to confirm she was researching the correct family.

19:54 Dad's listed as John Theodore Theodori rather than Gabriel,

19:58 which is what we have on other records.

20:01 So, we were able to kind of work out that straight

20:04 off the [music] top the grandfather was messing around with his name.

20:08 He used a lot of different names during his life.

20:10 So we just had to kind of keep that aware when we were

20:13 looking for things like census records

20:15 and especially death records and marriage records.

20:18 Shannon was now able to start building the Theodorei family tree.

20:23 John's father Frederick [music] had four siblings,

20:26 John, Reginald, Arthur, and Jesse.

20:30 But when they began looking for their descendants, they hit another problem.

20:35 The further we started researching, we realized that these families,

20:38 [music] they weren't going on to have children.

20:41 Having ruled out Reginald, Arthur, and Jesse from their search,

20:45 options for finding heirs were looking limited.

20:49 We only have descendants of one aunt and uncle.

20:53 But things were looking even worse on the Smith side of the family,

20:56 [music] which Shannon had been hoping they'd be able to avoid.

20:59 I got the marriage certificate of the parents

21:00 of the deceased and it had a dad's name on it.

21:03 And we wanted it to not have a dad's name on it.

21:05 We wanted her to be raised in an orphanage and to not have any family,

21:08 but instead we got a census which was absolutely full of names.

21:13 And they were stretching back to like 1883.

21:16 So, it's a lot of hard work now.

21:19 It was the news the team had been dreading.

21:21 [music] They were facing a huge family with the worst possible name.

21:26 Isn't her [music] major name Smith?

21:28 We've got possibly eight top liners who are all going to have children and all

21:33 going to carry on whittling down and we're going to have so many beneficiaries.

21:36 It's going to be a huge treat.

21:38 Absolutely dreading it already.

21:40 And with still no idea how much the [music] estate was worth

21:44 was the case of John Theodori about to turn into a major loss.

21:49 It felt like everything [music] was against us.

21:58 Every year in Britain,

21:59 thousands of people get a surprise knock on the door from air hunters.

22:04 Little bit shocked to find out that I had a long lost relative

22:09 as well as handing over life-changing sums of money.

22:12 The air hunters can bring long-lost [music] relatives back together.

22:17 And I was quite shocked because I didn't realize that there

22:20 was anybody in the family that we could inherit from anymore.

22:25 [music] Thousands of estates have eluded the air hunters and remain unsolved.

22:30 Today, we've got details of two estates yet to be claimed.

22:34 [music] Could you be the person the air

22:36 hunters are looking for or know someone that is?

22:41 The first [music] case is me Grigg.

22:44 She was born on the 11th of December [music] 1903 in Wales,

22:48 possibly in Pemrookchere and died on the 6th of December 1987 in Bournemouth.

22:59 It's unknown whether me ever married,

23:01 but [music] it's thought she had two nephews

23:03 and may have used the middle name Josephine.

23:07 Is there [music] a chance you could be related or know someone that could be?

23:12 The second case is Leslie [music] James Swan who was born on the 28th of March

23:17 1923 in England and died on the 31st

23:21 of March 2008 in Tooting [music] South London.

23:25 Leslie never married but it's possible he was adopted

23:28 and his birth name may have been [music] Cohen.

23:31 Do you know a Grig or a swan?

23:34 If so, you could be in line for a surprise windfall.

23:40 [music] It's looking like quite a small family.

23:50 I've only found the one stem.

23:53 At air hunting firm Finders,

23:55 case managers Ryan and Amy have been desperately trying to find

23:59 [music] heirs to the estate of Victor Hubbuk before rival firms.

24:03 So, we have to treat the case with a high priority.

24:06 Victor owned a flat in West London estimated to be worth around £400,000.

24:12 There we go.

24:13 That's quite interesting.

24:15 But having found a potential cousin through Victor's mother,

24:18 the team ran into trouble when they discovered there

24:21 was a chance Victor had a potential half sibling.

24:25 Half- blood siblings would also have a prior

24:27 entitlement to any potential maternal and paternal beneficiaries.

24:32 Knowing a half sibling could make or break the case,

24:35 Ryan faced an anxious wait for the birth records to come through.

24:39 We again found out that Stanley didn't have any other

24:42 children and Victor didn't have any other brothers and sisters.

24:46 [music] Having ruled out half siblings,

24:49 the team could now focus their efforts on the wider family.

24:54 Ryan looked into Victor's father, Stanley, to see if he had brothers or sisters.

25:00 But there was a problem.

25:03 For some reason, we we couldn't find

25:05 uh Stanley Victor Hubbick on the 1911 census.

25:08 Uh he was coming up on the 1939 register,

25:10 but again, he wasn't with his family at that time.

25:16 Frustratingly, the case had stalled

25:19 and with the possibility of rival firms moving in on the estate,

25:22 Ryan had to think on his feet.

25:25 The only way around it was to order the birth certificate

25:29 of Stanley Victor to to exactly [music] find out that that question.

25:33 Who were Stan's parents?

25:38 On a highly competitive case like [music] this, Ryan

25:41 faced an agonizing wait for the birth certificate to arrive.

25:45 But would it contain the information Ryan needed to kickstart this search?

25:49 The family were living.

25:50 [music] We now have the names of his parents.

25:53 So now we'd located the family on the 1911 census.

25:56 Uh the search could properly begin

25:58 into any family members on the paternal sides.

26:03 With that information, Ryan could now check key [music] documents

26:06 to look for siblings of Victor's father.

26:11 From the 1911 census,

26:13 Ryan was able to establish that [music] Victor's paternal grandparents,

26:16 John Lee Hubbuk and Annie Tol had three children,

26:20 Ivy, [music] William, and Stanley.

26:24 The census records are incredibly important.

26:28 Will also tell us how many how many children they've had,

26:31 how many are still living, and how many have passed away.

26:33 So, that's an an incredibly useful starting point

26:37 to to to know how many top lines we've got.

26:40 Another key bit of information which is useful for when we go back

26:43 to the 191 census uh records is

26:47 that Stany's father John was a master hairdresser.

26:56 By the mid 1800s, wigs,

26:59 which had previously been the head gargment of choice amongst the well-healed,

27:02 were falling out of fashion, and a desire to have one's own hair

27:07 styled [music] instead swept across London and the UK.

27:12 [snorts] By the 1900s,

27:15 hairdressing had become [music] a profession that was in demand.

27:19 In 1884 here in London, the guild of hairdressers,

27:23 wig makers, and perfumers was [music] established.

27:26 And we can work out that John Hubbuk would have been a member

27:29 of one of these guilds because he was called a master hairdresser.

27:35 For Victor's grandfather, John, to become a master hairdresser,

27:39 he would first have undergone rigorous training.

27:43 How do you think apprentices would have to learn the different hairstyles,

27:46 how to shave properly,

27:48 how to sell and make different um creams and lotions and potions,

27:54 and it was also a fairly formal affair,

27:58 as well as the skills and knowledge needed to apply their [music] trade.

28:01 The training also taught the aspiring

28:03 hairdressers how to converse with their clients.

28:08 They were to avoid controversial topics unless invited by the clients.

28:13 Such topics included personal relationships.

28:16 Well, I can understand that one.

28:18 Politics, that's fairly standard.

28:20 Or the weather.

28:21 Now, if only fewer hairdressers talked to me about the weather,

28:23 I'd be one happy customer.

28:26 With the title of master hairdresser under his belt in the early 1900s,

28:31 John [music] left Gates Head in northeast England

28:33 and traveled south to London with his wife Annie.

28:38 There would have been many more opportunities for him [music]

28:40 here in order to make a name for himself and cut

28:44 the hair of many wellto-do clients [music] and no doubt

28:47 sell them many of his own hair styling products as well.

28:54 [music] Yeah, we get actually get a couple of hospital dresses.

29:02 Having traveled [music] to London for work,

29:04 the team discovered grandfather John stayed there to have a family.

29:09 Upon checking the 1939 register,

29:13 Ryan revealed that John Hubbuk and his wife Annie

29:16 had a fourth child in 1923 called Sydney Ernest Hubbuk.

29:21 With Victor's one aunt and two uncles to look into, the race

29:24 was on to find a cousin who could be an heir.

29:29 So, given that we'd had to wait for the lead into the paternal family,

29:33 we were really anxious to get to talk

29:35 to someone um you know to to speak to beneficiaries.

29:39 Finally, Ryan was making progress on the paternal

29:42 stems and began to build a family tree.

29:45 Thank you.

29:47 Victor's aunt Ivy Hubbuk married William Thomas in 1924.

29:53 They had six [music] children, one of whom was Grace Annie Thomas.

30:03 But just when Ryan thought he was closing in on her paternal heir,

30:06 he received some bad news.

30:09 And then we have Grace and Thomas.

30:11 She married Howard Erington in 1966.

30:14 Grace subsequently passed away in 2004.

30:18 The trail had run cold.

30:20 Ryan's only hope of finally finding a paternal heir was

30:23 all resting on Grace having children that was still alive.

30:28 We have Grace and Thomas.

30:30 She was survived by three children.

30:32 Uh, one of whom was Nigel.

30:38 The team had finally struck gold [music] and found an heir.

30:42 Nigel is Victor's cousin once removed.

30:46 I'd never heard of Victor [music] before.

30:48 Um like my my aunties had never mentioned anything about [music] him.

30:53 Um so it did come as as a bit of a surprise.

30:58 Yes.

31:00 Nigel's father was a diplomat, so he spent most of his life between

31:03 boarding school in the UK and living overseas.

31:07 Growing up as a diplomat's son, it was it was quite good fun.

31:11 Um, as we were able to go to the the ambassador's residence quite often,

31:18 um, meet any British dignitaries.

31:21 [music] Nigel's father's jet setting career took

31:26 its toll on the traditional family life,

31:28 and as a result, Nigel had never met his cousin, Victor.

31:32 we've lost touch, I guess,

31:34 or didn't really explore a lot of our extended [music]

31:37 family that perhaps had we stayed in the same place,

31:40 then maybe we we would have done.

31:44 Since finding out he's an heir, Nigel has dug out some old family photographs.

31:49 This chap's my my dad, and this is my my mom with with her dad.

31:56 My granddad's on on either side.

31:58 I think they they they both died either when

32:01 I was young or or before I was born.

32:04 There's a lot of people in here who I

32:06 just have no no clue [music] who who they are.

32:11 But there was about to be another twist to this tale.

32:19 Hi, Michael.

32:20 Hi.

32:20 I see you.

32:21 Ryan and Amy along with probate lawyers Michael and Christopher are

32:25 conducting a search [music] of Victor's flat in Paddington in West London,

32:30 which could have a huge bearing on Nigel's inheritance.

32:36 They're looking for details of any savings

32:38 or investments Victor [music] may have had,

32:40 but also any sign he may have left a will.

32:43 If a will does turn up, I mean,

32:45 this potentially could disinherit all of the people we've previously

32:48 contacted and render possibly [music] months worth of work um useless.

32:53 Have you found anything since you've been in here?

32:56 No.

32:56 Of interest.

32:58 Little is known about Victor,

32:59 but the search has already revealed that he worked for the Royal

33:02 Mail and appeared to [music] live a very humble lifestyle.

33:11 These look like bills.

33:13 But the team are completely unprepared for what they discover next.

33:19 Yep.

33:20 Found a N west account.

33:23 220,000 in it and a nationwide account with 320,000 in it.

33:33 No way.

33:35 Well, that's just to start with.

33:38 We found the two bank statements to be there when

33:41 something like that happens is [music] is is very memorable.

33:44 We're talking a considerable sum of money.

33:47 Life changing.

33:49 Fairly recent statements.

33:54 2016.

33:54 It's a truly astonishing discovery.

33:57 This kind of takes the case into another dimension.

33:59 [music] The bank statements indicate the estate is worth a staggering

34:04 [music] half a million pounds more than they initially thought.

34:10 And crucially [music] for the air hunters, there's no sign of any will.

34:14 It's just mind-blowing to be put, you know,

34:16 now to know that someone had that much money [music] and then still have no

34:23 Nigel along with 15 other heirs

34:25 will share [music] Victor's impressive £900,000 estate.

34:31 For Ryan and Amy, having pipped rival air hunting firms [music] to the post,

34:36 it's not a search they'll be forgetting anytime soon.

34:40 As a case manager, I mean,

34:41 we we go through a case and it starts off as just a name on a file.

34:44 I mean, we really don't really know anything about the person to then be able

34:48 to go and have a [music] look through

34:49 Victor's property and know a bit about him.

34:51 Yeah, it's touching and it's quite moving.

34:53 It's quite nice to be able to give them

34:54 not only the [music] financial rewards that are available,

34:56 but also to to to give them something more personal.

35:00 Since discovering he's an heir to Victor's [music] substantial estate,

35:04 it's kickstarted Nigel's own quest to discover more about his family history.

35:09 It would be an idea to for [music] me to try

35:12 to find out who who the rest of these people are.

35:14 Could fill in a few a few blanks.

35:22 We're not going to have anyone on this generation.

35:24 It's all going to be down another level.

35:27 In London, air hunters at Fraser and Fraser have spent

35:30 the last few weeks trying to crack the case of John Theodori,

35:34 a quiet, private man who died in 2016 without leaving a will.

35:42 The team had already discovered [music]

35:43 John's great-grandfather was a tobacco entrepreneur.

35:48 But despite having a wealthy relative,

35:50 they still hadn't found any sign of any money.

35:54 A case where someone doesn't own the property is always a bit risky

35:57 because you're purely reliant on any assets

35:59 [music] that they've had during their life.

36:01 So any savings that they've had,

36:02 any cars that they've owned, you're really reliant on that.

36:08 Having committed time and money into research, Shannon feared the worst.

36:13 What we didn't want to do was to go out

36:16 to locate all of these people and spend a lot of resources

36:19 and a lot of money on a case to find out [music]

36:21 that the deceased was insolvent or didn't have any money at all.

36:25 As the search for finding heirs was underway,

36:28 establishing the value of this [music] estate was more pressing than ever.

36:32 We knew that the mother and the father didn't leave

36:34 any money to him at the time of passing away.

36:36 So, [music] not even the neighbors knew that he had he had savings or money.

36:41 Having exhausted most lines of inquiry, things were not looking good.

36:45 But just when Shannon needed it, a bit of good luck was about to come her way.

36:50 We were able to establish with some

36:52 inquiries that the deceased did have some savings

36:55 and it was in the region of around £80,000 in one of his bank accounts.

36:59 It was just what the team needed to hear.

37:02 And then when we got the knowledge that there was money in the case,

37:05 we then [music] pursued the Smith side with a bit more

37:08 aggression and kind of got a lot more people to start research.

37:12 Okay, thank you.

37:13 Bye.

37:15 Shannon and the research team quickly [music] sprung into action,

37:18 but there was a major stumbling block that would slow them down.

37:22 The deceased's mother's maiden name.

37:25 At first, having a Smith job is really

37:28 is almost worrying because you know that you're going to have to spend the time

37:31 and the money getting the certificates and doing the research.

37:37 [music] Eventually, Shannon managed to confirm that Bessie's

37:41 parents were Thomas Smith [music] and Elizabeth Mills,

37:44 and they had a total of 10 children, including Bessie.

37:50 Two had died as infants,

37:51 [music] but that still left a daunting seven Smith stems to research.

37:57 We realized we were dealing with not only a Smith family,

38:00 but a very large family.

38:02 And everything about the family made the hunt for heirs near impossible.

38:07 We had names that were just first name, surname Smith.

38:10 We didn't have dates of birth.

38:11 We didn't know where they were born.

38:12 People were chopping and changing names and it was just so disheartening.

38:19 With the Smith side hitting a brick wall,

38:21 the team began to wonder whether they'd ever crack this case.

38:26 On the Theodoriti side, however, there was more positive news.

38:31 The team had established that one of John's uncles,

38:34 who was called John Frank Theodoriti, married even more in 1924.

38:40 But the vital information for the air hunt

38:42 was they went on to have five children.

38:45 One of them was Valerie.

38:49 Got on the telephone to her and she recognized

38:51 the name but she couldn't pinpoint it and she didn't recognize

38:54 the name of the deceased which obviously made me worry

38:58 a bit whilst I was on the phone to her thinking, have we gone off on a tangent?

39:03 Was Shannon closing in on her first heir?

39:07 Or had the team just made a huge [music] error?

39:13 Valerie's reaction to the name John Theodori was

39:16 [music] not the one the team had hoped for.

39:19 I'd never heard of this uh chap who was my cousin, so they were telling me.

39:27 Um, and I I was a little bit excited,

39:32 but I was a little bit Oh, I don't flumxed by it all.

39:38 After the phone call, Valerie contacted her family to see if anyone

39:42 else had heard of a cousin called John.

39:45 My nephews and my great nephew said, "Oh, well, we'll, you know,

39:50 we'll investigate this." I found [music] out that I'm

39:53 related to John Frederick Theodori and that he's my cousin.

40:00 Um, I [music] found that amazing that I had that side

40:04 of the family that I didn't know existed and um,

40:09 [music] I just couldn't believe it really.

40:12 Although she had no knowledge of her cousin John or his father Frederick,

40:16 [music] she has fond memories of the time

40:18 she spent with her grandfather Theodore Theodori.

40:23 I sort of remember [music] him very well.

40:25 He lived in London and I remember him coming to see us regularly,

40:30 [music] very gentlemanly and always beautifully dressed.

40:38 As well as finding out about the inheritance,

40:40 [music] Valerie has received a photograph of the cousin she never knew she had.

40:45 Oh, good gracious.

40:50 Would you believe it?

40:52 And instantly [music] Valerie can see the family resemblance.

40:56 I can see my brother [music] Derek here, you know, big family likeness.

41:03 Oh, how wonderful.

41:05 But the question remained, how did Valerie go through the last 80

41:09 years without knowing about John or John's father?

41:14 I'm quite surprised really [music] that I've

41:17 got these relatives that I didn't know existed.

41:21 Um, my father [clears throat] was a very busy businessman.

41:26 Some people they they live [music] very much, don't they,

41:29 with all their cousins and they're always seeing

41:31 their cousins and all that sort of thing.

41:34 My family's not like that.

41:37 Very [music] good to their immediate family, but they don't seem to need to keep

41:42 in contact [music] with um other members of the family.

41:52 As well as having made contact with an [music] air on the Theodori side,

41:55 the team had also made a breakthrough on the Nightmare Smith side.

41:59 And when we realized that one of the addresses

42:02 was consistent on all of the records,

42:05 that was the only thing that we began looking out for.

42:07 We stopped looking for Smiths.

42:09 We started looking for connections to the one property.

42:12 And the moment we found that connection,

42:15 we were finding marriages that where people state that they

42:18 were born and married in that one or that one property.

42:21 It meant that we could pretty much we just stopped thinking

42:25 of it as a Smith case and just started to think,

42:27 hang on, we'll just look for everyone that was at this house.

42:31 Let's see what other marriages there are.

42:35 The team discovered 19 heirs who will share John's £80,000 estate

42:40 [music] along with the seven heirs the team had already found.

42:43 On the paternal side,

42:46 you finally get that [music] last person that can say what happened on the tree

42:50 and you know exactly where everyone [music]

42:51 is and you're confident that it's all correct.

42:54 It's the best feeling because you know at the end of the day you can

42:57 all sit down and you can have

42:59 a chat and you've actually really achieved something today.

43:06 [music] [music]