The Million Pound Property | The McMurrich and Overbury Estates | Heir Hunters | Ancestry®

0:03 Today, a house in a highv value estate goes under the hammer million

0:10 as the search for heirs spirals out of control.

0:14 What if they all have eight children?

0:16 Then you've got hundreds and hundreds of people.

0:19 Whilst a tragic tale,

0:21 the fact that he was uh predesceased by both

0:24 his wives and both his sons and his brother

0:27 uncovers the story of a musical legend.

0:30 Brian Epstein offered him the Beatles and he turned them down.

0:34 It's all in a day's work for the Air Hunters.

0:46 £24,000.

0:45 Can I say 24?

0:47 Of course I can.

0:48 In central London, Andrew Fraser from air hunting

0:51 firm Fraser and Fraser is attending a property auction.

0:54 Uh, should we say 25 anywhere else?

0:57 Today, a high value house forming part of the estate

1:00 of Douglas McMuridge is going under the hammer.

1:05 Today is another key day in the administration of Mr.

1:08 Marage's estate.

1:10 270.

1:10 Anybody else?

1:11 1,000.

1:11 Come on.

1:12 To sell the property today at auction would allow

1:16 the the major asset to be sold and realized into liquid funds.

1:22 The property has a guide price in excess of £1 million,

1:26 making this an extremely valuable case for the team.

1:33 Was nervous cuz ultimately we all have quite a lot riding on the outside.

1:36 Here we go.

1:44 Douglas McMurrayage passed away on the 21st of December 2015,

1:48 having lived in the same house in West London his whole life.

1:54 Douglas was a very private man,

1:56 but his neighbor of over 30 years, Andrew, got to know him well.

2:02 Most of the conversations that um Douglas and I

2:07 used to have were in fact across this fence.

2:10 But that was that was the character he was.

2:12 Once he got to know you a little bit better,

2:14 he didn't ignore you and uh it was uh it was a pleasure actually.

2:20 Andrew and Douglas's conversations in passing blossomed

2:23 and over the years they became firm friends.

2:27 My wife and I miss him very much and my um my sons do

2:31 as well because he was kind of a feature a feature of the street.

2:40 Here he is.

2:44 Salutation.

2:44 Douglas worked as an engineer nearly asleep at the drawing board

2:48 and is fondly remembered by colleagues David and Mark.

2:54 It's a nice boat.

2:56 I already got on well with him.

2:57 I liked his sense of humor.

2:58 He's quite cut in, quite cynical.

3:01 He got a lot out of the industry and he was keen to put some back.

3:05 So, he's trained a few uh a few young engineers.

3:10 Yeah.

3:10 Douglas spent many years working on commercial properties.

3:14 Douglas was a a public health engineer.

3:18 public health engineer is someone who designs a plumbing

3:22 and never let his age get the better of him

3:24 and was was was keen to develop his skills.

3:27 He wasn't one of these guys who was stuck in the ways of the the

3:32 forward thinking really

3:34 and uh was a font of knowledge.

3:37 But whether Douglas had any surviving family remained a mystery as only David,

3:42 Mark and neighbor Andrew attended his funeral.

3:46 and Andrew organized the the the cremation at Malt Lake because somebody had

3:52 to do it um rather than having someone from the council look after.

3:58 Although they had a good working relationship,

4:01 Douglas was guarded about his personal life.

4:04 His work life and his his his home life were were very separate.

4:11 Yeah.

4:09 And um he didn't like to uh to to mix the two.

4:13 It was just Douglas and Douglas was by himself.

4:20 So far, we've signed four people, four of his cousins.

4:24 As Douglas didn't leave a will, the air hunters got straight to work.

4:28 And for case manager Ben Cornish and his team,

4:31 the case would prove a tough challenge.

4:33 So, when we're looking into these cases, um,

4:36 we first have to establish when the deceased was born.

4:38 He was born in 1930 in Shepherd's Bush in London.

4:41 So we conducted a marriage search of uh of the deceased and there

4:45 were no records and from that we soon surmized that there were no children.

4:50 With no children to inherit Douglas's sizable estate,

4:53 Ben needed to find out if he had any siblings.

4:57 We then would look for his parents.

5:00 Um we we discovered that they were Alexander McMurich and Grace Hawthorne Green.

5:04 They married in 1926 in London.

5:07 From that point, we would look to see if there were any other children.

5:11 Okay, thank you.

5:12 Bye.

5:14 But Ben was about to make a tragic discovery.

5:17 Uh there was one other son, a Lawrence, born in 1927,

5:21 but sadly passed away um from TB in 1933.

5:28 Although infant deaths were still common in the 1920s,

5:32 Lawrence's death would have been a devastating blow for the family.

5:38 Even though Douglas was only three when when Lawrence passed away,

5:42 no doubt it must have had a massive impact on on his mother and father.

5:46 With no close relatives, Ben now had to extend their search to aunts and uncles

5:51 in the hope of finding cousins who may still be alive.

5:55 And he recruited the help of research manager Isa Adams.

5:59 Here's the McMaridge foil with the SS in if you want to look at that.

6:05 Isa began working up the maternal side of the family.

6:09 So it was a Grace H Green marrying Alexander McMaridge.

6:14 So we found the marriage um in 1926 in Hammers.

6:17 So it's all in in area and we then found the deaths of the parents.

6:22 So then we had an age and had round about date of birth.

6:25 But Isa soon ran into a problem.

6:28 Then we found the mom was born in Fulham, but there was no birth for the dad.

6:34 With no record of his father's birth,

6:36 the team wouldn't be able to research his side of the family.

6:41 Although no records of him had shown up in London, Issha had a plan.

6:45 With a name like McMaridge, it doesn't sound very English as such.

6:50 Um, so we got our Scottish agent to have

6:53 a look and he was actually born in Glasgow.

6:59 With the father's side of the family in Glasgow, this case had now mushroomed,

7:03 and the team had staff in England and Scotland working flat out to find heirs.

7:09 But the Scottish side of the research was to become even more intriguing.

7:14 It was going quite well initially, only two siblings of the father,

7:20 the deceased, and then it the tree just seemed to grow and grow.

7:25 Douglas's father had two sisters, Maggie and Mary.

7:29 And whilst Mary had four children,

7:31 the stem of Maggie would turn out to be even larger.

7:35 Then we go on to Maggie and we know

7:38 she has an illegitimate daughter um with a John Hunter.

7:42 There's no marriage, but the but Margaret Junior is called Margaret Hunter.

7:48 So, we know that that's the mom, that's the dad.

7:50 That's one.

7:51 Maggie did get married to a John Valance Ore and they had nine children.

8:01 Douglas's fast growing family tree was a worry for the team.

8:06 It does send you into bit a bit of a panic because you think,

8:10 what if they all have eight children?

8:12 Then you've got hundreds and hundreds of people that you've got to look for.

8:17 All right.

8:17 Thank you very much.

8:19 Thank you.

8:19 Bye.

8:21 The Scottish team now faced a monumental

8:24 challenge in their search for Douglas's cousins.

8:26 Ben feared the worst.

8:29 On any estate, it's a danger of missing beneficiaries

8:32 um but especially um when you have a high value case um because it could be you

8:39 know hundreds of,000 being going in the wrong direction.

8:41 So we had to be extra careful on the case of McMurray.

8:44 We had to buy multiple certificates and uh we had

8:48 to make sure we had all records that we we can find.

8:53 But in the middle of this frantic research,

8:55 the team had started to learn more about Douglas,

8:58 including the fascinating story of how his parents first met.

9:03 So, we know that the seas father was Alexander McMurich

9:05 and he was born on the 22nd of July 1897 in Glasgow.

9:10 He came down to London in World War I.

9:12 He was a driver in the army.

9:14 Uh and then after uh the conflict finished,

9:17 he got a job in the laundry business.

9:23 Alexander took a job with a company called Snowflake Laundry

9:26 where his skills as a driver were suddenly in demand.

9:30 Most people who become responsible for a motorized vehicle in the 1920s,

9:36 the chances are they've learned how to drive during the First World War.

9:41 After decades of horsedrawn vehicles, by the 1920s,

9:45 the company had joined the motorized revolution.

9:49 Motor vans are becoming cheaper to buy,

9:51 and they're certainly less trouble to run because

9:54 you haven't got to mess around with a horse.

9:59 Alexander's work at the Laundry would have involved deliveries all over London.

10:04 He actually was quite proudly going around and showing

10:08 what their company was doing with the lettering

10:11 on the side and knowing that he was quite a he was a part of the business,

10:15 crucial part of the business and no doubt felt very proud to be doing it.

10:20 For a small laundry business,

10:22 using a motor vehicle would have given them an edge over their competitors

10:28 because the van was faster at getting around.

10:30 no doubt had expanded their area of operation.

10:34 They were probably delivering to some of the smart

10:36 hotels and places like that as well.

10:38 So it would have all looked I think quite prestigious and he

10:41 would have felt and no doubt was you know quite wellplaced really.

10:48 Snowflake laundry was owned by Charles Edward Green and in the office

10:52 the team were about to make a surprise connection.

10:56 So when we looked up Douglas's birth, Douglas M.

10:59 McMurray, we saw that his mother's maiden name

11:02 was Green and the daughter of Charles Edward Green, a laundry proprietor.

11:08 But for the team, Grace's surname of Green

11:11 was proving to be the thorn in their side.

11:14 Green is a bit tricky to research just because it's a very popular surname.

11:20 With a big Scottish family on one side and a tricky name on the other,

11:24 would the team find heirs to the million pound estate of Douglas McMurray?

11:29 The sheer volume of the case and it's obviously because it's got a good value.

11:35 It's panic, panic, panic.

11:46 I'm struggling to find contact details for this guy.

11:49 Sometimes when you're working a case, it doesn't happen very often,

11:52 but you can come across somebody on your family tree

11:54 that um is either famous or infamous for whatever reason.

12:01 In January 2016, air hunting firm Finders in central

12:05 London took on the case of Percal Overbury.

12:09 But little did they know the search for his heirs

12:11 would reveal the story of a legendary British record producer.

12:21 Perival Overbbury died in December 2015

12:25 in a nursing home in Straoud in Glstershare.

12:29 Although there are no known photographs of Perl,

12:32 he'd spent the majority of his life living in the tight-knit

12:35 village of Witminster and was a well-known local figure.

12:40 I remember him as a kind man.

12:44 Uh, always immaculately dressed.

12:47 Can never remember seeing him without a colorant tie.

12:51 I can never remember seeing him without a suit.

12:56 When neighbor Honor Jones was a little girl,

12:58 she lived just a stones throw from Perl's home.

13:02 He kept an immaculate house.

13:04 And I can remember as a child going to their house.

13:09 The garden was always it was beautiful.

13:12 They had fruit trees.

13:14 Um it was always immaculately kept.

13:21 Can you try and trace them through and speak

13:24 to them and find out whether they're related or not?

13:27 Perl had owned his own home but hadn't left a will.

13:30 So his valuable £325,000 estate was advertised by the Treasury,

13:36 meaning other air hunting firms may already have been on the case.

13:40 So given that there was a relatively high value

13:43 to this estate and we had picked up on the case,

13:45 but we didn't know whether there was going to be any competition on it.

13:49 The pressure was on for case managers Ryan

13:51 Gregory and Amy Cox to find the heirs first.

13:58 The case of Percal Overbury came to us from a private referral.

14:03 Um the only things that we knew when we were referred the case

14:06 were his name um date of death and that it had recently been

14:10 passed to the treasury solicitor to save us coming across competition and we

14:15 try and work these cases um as urgently and quickly as we can.

14:18 Thanks very much for doing the the job.

14:20 All right.

14:20 Cheers then.

14:21 Take care.

14:25 With no time to waste,

14:27 the team began by searching for any

14:29 close relatives and quickly made an important discovery.

14:34 We found out quite early on um that Perival Joseph Overbury um was married.

14:41 Obviously, this is important for us because any children

14:43 of the marriage would be beneficiaries of his estate.

14:46 Likewise, if there's a spouse that's surviving him,

14:49 they would be entitled to inherit.

14:52 But Ryan was unaware he was about to uncover a trail of tragedy.

14:58 Now, the sad thing is with this family as we're working through it is

15:00 that we actually found out that Perl

15:02 was not only predesceased by his first wife,

15:05 he was predesceased by his second wife as well.

15:10 Although Perl and his second wife Doris had two children, Nigel and Nicholas,

15:15 as Amy started delving a little deeper,

15:18 it seems the tragedy in Perl's life came thick and fast.

15:22 We found a death record for Persal overbur's son that had been living with him.

15:27 Um, and so what we did is went back to the records

15:29 to see if there was any further issue from his marriage.

15:32 We found another record um for another son,

15:36 but um he'd already passed away as an infant.

15:39 And his second son, Nicholas, died just a few months before Perl in 2015.

15:46 It's a sad situation really given that um given that both wives had had passed

15:51 away and both sons had passed away you know just by a matter of months really.

15:54 So so first of all was um in terms of of close family

15:58 members kind of on his own um in the later stages of his life.

16:04 Ryan's next port of call was to look for siblings.

16:07 Perville had an older brother called Leonard.

16:11 But Ryan was about to uncover yet more misfortune.

16:14 He he was killed in action in in World War II.

16:20 Fact that he was uh predesceased by both his wives

16:23 and both his sons and his brother who was killed in action.

16:26 I mean, you know, you can't really begin

16:29 to think how anybody would would deal with that.

16:38 Yeah, that' be actually get a couple of possible addresses.

16:42 Having ruled out close kin on this valuable estate,

16:45 the team faced an uphill struggle as they started looking into the wider family.

16:52 Concerned rival firms may crack the case first,

16:55 they decided to divide and conquer to speed things up.

17:00 While Ryan took the maternal side,

17:02 Amy worked the paternal side and immediately hit a snag.

17:07 We thought it was going to be um quite a good surname to research,

17:11 but then it turned out in the Glosses area,

17:13 it was actually quite common,

17:14 so we had to order quite a lot of um births

17:17 to actually establish how many aunts and uncles there were to Perl.

17:21 But that wasn't all.

17:24 The aunts and uncles moved out of area,

17:26 so originally it had been all based in Glossier,

17:29 but they had started to move around.

17:30 Um so that made them searching the records a little bit trickier.

17:36 Despite this, they were able to make fairly quick progress.

17:41 The team discovered that on the paternal side, Perl's grandparents,

17:45 Joseph Overbury and Mary Smart, had seven children,

17:50 giving Perl six aunts and uncles.

17:54 And once we then started to look into it a little bit deeper,

17:57 we realized that there were only um issue on the Uncle James William Overbury.

18:03 Um so any of the heirs that were going to come from the over

18:06 side of the family were going to come from this one uncle.

18:10 With only one of the six stems to investigate,

18:13 Amy quickly uncovered 25 potential heirs.

18:17 Hello, it's Ryan Gregory from London.

18:19 We're firm of Air Hunters.

18:21 and the team was quietly confident they had the paternal side wrapped up.

18:27 So for us, the paternal side of the family, the Overby family,

18:30 wasn't too much of a difficult search to find beneficiaries.

18:33 But it was really when we got into the maternal

18:35 side of the family when things got interesting.

18:38 And it would reveal that the family had one

18:40 of Britain's most influential record producers in their midst.

18:44 You know, that was his first big uh

18:46 breakthrough really as Margaret Thatcher's favorite record as well.

18:55 Every year in Britain,

18:56 thousands of people get a surprise knock on the door from air hunters.

19:01 I found that amazing that I had that side

19:05 of the family that I didn't know existed.

19:09 As well as handing over life-changing sums of money,

19:12 the air hunters can bring long-lost relatives back together.

19:16 I'm so lucky because I've met I've met up with all of you.

19:23 But thousands of estates have eluded the air hunters and remain unsolved.

19:29 Today, we've got details of two estates yet to be claimed.

19:33 Could you be the person the air hunters are looking for or know someone that is?

19:39 The first case is Helen Miller.

19:42 Records suggest she was born in North London on the 13th of January in either

19:46 1910 or 1915 and died on the 28th

19:53 of September 1994 in Tottenham in North London.

19:59 She was married to a Mr.

20:00 Miller whom she outlived but his forame is unknown.

20:04 Is there a chance you could be related or know someone that could be?

20:10 The next case is Clarence Middlebrook who was born on the 7th of September 1912

20:15 in Skippton in North Yorkshire and died

20:20 on the 28th of February 1988 in Bradford.

20:25 He never married but did have an older

20:27 sister called Martha and a younger brother called Herbert.

20:32 Do you know a Miller or a Middbrook?

20:34 If so, you could be in line for a surprise windfall.

20:44 All right, thank you very much for your time.

20:46 Take care.

20:46 Bye-bye.

20:48 The air hunters at firm Fraser and Fraser have their work

20:51 cut out finding heirs to the million pound estate of Douglas McMarrage.

20:55 This is a very large estate and it's one of the largest I've ever worked with.

21:00 With research stretching to both the team's London and Edinburgh offices,

21:04 a large Scottish family and the nightmare surname

21:07 of Green have pushed the air hunters to the limit.

21:10 It was going quite well initially and then

21:14 it the trade just seemed to grow and grow.

21:17 The case has now reached a critical stage.

21:23 Uh should we say 25 anywhere else?

21:26 Andrew Fraser is at a property auction in central London

21:29 where Douglas's home is about to go under the hammer.

21:34 Mr.

21:34 McMur's home is lot number five and just about to start.

21:38 I'm very nervous about today's sale.

21:43 It's a vacant threebedroom house.

21:46 Uh it's a pro sale, ladies and gentlemen.

21:48 Good location, nice looking house

21:51 with a reserve price in excess of a million pounds.

21:54 It's going to be an anxious few minutes for Andrew.

21:58 Guy is a million pounds.

21:59 Who would like to start me off?

22:00 You want to say a million pounds anywhere on the guy?

22:04 Million five.

22:05 Yes.

22:06 Million 10 15 million 15 million 20 25 Well,

22:15 we're not quite where we need to be on that one, I'm afraid.

22:21 Disappointing.

22:21 Didn't get to the reserve price.

22:22 Uh, right.

22:23 It's not the result Andrew hoped for and will

22:26 mean Douglas's home will now be put on the market.

22:30 Douglas had lived in this house for most of his life.

22:33 And although air hunters knew he'd never married or had children,

22:37 it turned out he did have one lifelong companion.

22:42 quite a friendly little uh creature.

22:45 76 years old and going strong and mischievous just like his like his owner.

22:54 Joey the tortoise was bought as a pet for Douglas when he was 8 years old.

22:59 And over the next 75 years, they formed an inseparable bond.

23:03 I I think of Joey as being part of Douglas.

23:06 Yeah.

23:07 Because it's his lifelong companion.

23:09 It really is his lifelong companion.

23:13 Whilst clearing Douglas's house, a scrapbook was discovered.

23:16 Douglas had used it to document Joey's life in great detail.

23:23 The file records what Joey's health was like in 1998 and what he likes to eat.

23:30 What Douglas has meticulously recorded is Joey's weight.

23:34 Last one, interestingly enough, is in um October 2015,

23:41 so several months before his death.

23:45 The records are a fascinating insight into Douglas's diligent nature.

23:50 It also reveals some interesting history about Joey.

23:55 The file also confirms that um Joey was bought at Woolworths

24:00 in in in 1938 for the six old pence money.

24:07 Thousands of tortoises just like Joey would have been bought over

24:11 the counter in high street shops up and down the country.

24:16 The tortoise trade started in the 1890s and it continued

24:22 with the exception of the war years um till the 1940 late 40s.

24:31 Tortoises may have quickly gained popularity but they were sold

24:36 with very little information about how to look after them.

24:40 No care sheets given.

24:42 They were actually selling them um with the message

24:46 they would eat insects in your yard.

24:52 Douglas's tortoise Joey is still going strong at the age of 76,

24:56 which says a lot about his owner.

24:59 I think he probably was quite a caring and observant person because

25:05 you wouldn't keep a tortoise alive for over 70 years if you weren't.

25:11 It was probably a little boy that spent a lot of time

25:13 looking at it and having a go at providing a little house,

25:19 coming back from school, making sure that it was out of the rain.

25:23 And you know, once they get adjusted and they get fed, it is fatal.

25:31 Before Douglas passed away,

25:32 he asked his neighbor Andrew if he would take care of Joey after he was gone.

25:38 We're glad we could we could we kind of complete our kind of promise

25:43 to to his owner that we we would we would look after him.

25:50 As Joey was settling into his new home,

25:52 the team search for Douglas's relatives was turning into a mammoth task.

25:58 What is going on here?

26:01 The team in Scotland was looking for heirs on the paternal side.

26:04 But having discovered Douglas's aunt Maggie had nine children,

26:08 they faced an uphill struggle working through a whopping 14 stems.

26:14 We have the paternal McMar, which is a very large tree, as you can see.

26:22 Bit too large for me to spread out all at once.

26:26 The Scottish team had narrowed down the search to five stems.

26:30 And after months of research, at last they had leads on potential heirs.

26:35 Oh god, this is exciting.

26:38 Meanwhile, in London, Isa and Ben were working the maternal side.

26:42 But with the common surname Green proving difficult,

26:44 the team were hoping for a small family.

26:50 green as a name is a bit trickier to uh research,

26:56 but Isa discovered one common thread that would help her build the family tree.

27:02 So, we've also got Jenny Winterfred Green,

27:06 another maternal aunt of the deceased.

27:09 And on her death certificate, it says that she was a spinster

27:12 and a laundry manager and daughter of Charles Edward Green,

27:17 laundry proprietor, deceased.

27:20 So once again, they all seem to be running the same business

27:25 and it makes us easier when we do look at the certificate.

27:28 It's got a lot more information cuz we can link it in.

27:33 By focusing on the Greens who worked in the laundry trade,

27:36 the team were able to narrow down their search and soon

27:40 established that only two of Douglas's maternal aunts and uncles had children.

27:46 One of the uncles was William Charles Edward Green,

27:49 who married Adah Kersy in 1911.

27:53 They went on to have two children,

27:54 Sydney Charles William Green and Constance Grace Green.

27:57 Uh Constance was born in 1915, Sydney in 1913.

28:03 Sydney and Constants were Douglas's cousins, and although both had died,

28:08 records showed that Constants married and had two children.

28:12 The team was closing in on their first heirs.

28:16 What we would then do is use our various tracing resources uh

28:20 to locate them up to date and and speak to them about the family.

28:26 For Constance's daughter, Carol, her first cousin once removed,

28:30 the news would come as a bolt out of the blue.

28:34 This is Douglas outside Grandstone Road.

28:37 I'm not sure how old he is,

28:39 but I would presume perhaps he looks about seven at the most.

28:44 Carol also grew up in London and has fond childhood

28:47 memories of the time she spent with Douglas and his family.

28:52 That is my aunt, uncle, and Douglas.

28:56 He looks as if he's a teenager there.

28:58 Must been his cars that he loves so much.

29:01 So, he always he started early there.

29:07 Douglas was he was always very kind and he

29:11 was very generous and he was good to be with.

29:15 He you always felt entertained by him.

29:19 From the age of seven, Carol spent the school holidays helping

29:22 out in Douglas's father's laundry business.

29:26 The steam and that was awful.

29:28 And I didn't want to be there.

29:30 I I'm sure I'm I it would much rather have been somewhere else,

29:34 but um I suppose looking back it was what happened in them

29:39 that is that was the sort of thing families helped out families.

29:43 But in recent years, they drifted apart,

29:46 and Carol had no idea that Douglas's health had taken a turn for the worse.

29:51 I was just so sad, but that none of us had been there.

29:55 That was the only thing that really did upset me for a little while.

29:59 I thought it was it was sad that he was on his own somehow.

30:03 That didn't seem right.

30:09 After months of hard work, the team had located 26 potential heirs.

30:15 And Andrew has another reason to smile

30:18 as there's also been a development with Douglas's property.

30:23 Following the auction sale, it was very disappointing the house didn't sell,

30:27 but we've offered it on the market through a number of local estate agents,

30:31 and we're now accepting an offer,

30:33 and each of the beneficiaries will receive a nice sum of money.

30:40 But there's one final chapter to the case.

30:43 As Douglas passed away months before his heirs were found,

30:46 none of his family could attend his funeral.

30:51 But today, Andrew has arranged for Douglas's ashes to be interned.

30:56 And it's an opportunity for his friends and family to pay their final respects.

31:02 Although they might have been not been in touch for the last 30 odd plus years,

31:07 they've all got memories and want to show their own respect.

31:11 Some of us on his mother's side of the family

31:13 that will be here and then also on his father's side.

31:17 It's quite surreal to be honest with you to think

31:20 that we didn't know till after the event if you like.

31:26 Douglas was an intensely private and assuming independent person.

31:33 Douglas's ashes are being placed in his family grave.

31:38 very appropriate that we come here today

31:42 to this grave where his parents Alexander

31:44 and Grace are buried together with his brother

31:48 Lawrence who died aged just five in 1933.

31:55 Sad obviously but it's sort of finalized everything.

32:02 Nice to think that they are all together now.

32:05 Today has turned out to be, I think, a very good occasion.

32:09 I'm sure Douglas in his heart would have

32:11 been pleased as to um how today has gone.

32:23 In London, the air hunting team at firm Finders were

32:27 desperately trying to find beneficiaries to the estate of Percal Overbury.

32:31 The only things that we knew when we were referred the case were his name.

32:35 um date of death and unravel the mystery of his forgotten family.

32:40 With an estate worth £325,000 waiting to be claimed,

32:46 Ryan and the team were determined to pit their rival firms to the post.

32:50 We had a few of us in the office

32:52 working on the different stems of the family tree

32:55 and be the first to find Percal Overbur's heirs.

33:03 With no immediate family to inherit,

33:05 the team was forced to delve a little deeper.

33:08 Amy's search into Perl's paternal side had been relatively easy,

33:13 uncovering 25 potential heirs.

33:17 But Ryan and the team were now tackling the maternal side,

33:20 which would prove to be far tougher than they originally imagined.

33:24 The indexes told us that Perival's mother was Louise or Louisa Blanch,

33:30 but Bert was her major name.

33:32 Bert spelled B I R T.

33:34 Again, we're thinking that that surname is

33:36 not going to cause us too many problems.

33:38 However, when Ryan began researching it further,

33:41 he discovered that Louise Bert was one of eight children.

33:47 Ryan's workload had just got a whole lot heavier.

33:50 And with the clock ticking,

33:51 Amy was called in to lend a hand and soon made an unusual discovery.

33:57 When we started looking at the stem of the maternal aunt,

34:01 Caroline Bert, um we saw that she married and she had four children.

34:06 Um and when we um looked at the name of her oldest daughter,

34:11 we realized um it was the same person who had married Perl Overbury.

34:16 So um it looks as though Perl married one of his maternal cousins.

34:21 Discovering Perl had married his cousin wouldn't be the only surprise.

34:27 Ryan was now looking into the stem of Perl's maternal aunt,

34:30 Evelyn, and had established she had married Alfred Meek.

34:36 The couple had four children, Arthur, Robert, Eric, and Pamela.

34:42 The last born of the four was Pamela Edith Rose Meek.

34:45 She married a Richard Williams,

34:47 and they had two children who were also entitled to inherit.

34:52 Ryan was close to finding his first heirs.

35:02 I'm still coming to terms with the shock of it all really.

35:07 And then we've got one of them is Pamela Meek's daughter, Sandra.

35:13 This is Joan.

35:14 This is Percy's wife.

35:16 That's Joan's mother.

35:19 So, she's Nan's sister.

35:21 So that's the closest to the two that um we've got.

35:28 Despite losing touch with Perl and Joan in her adult life,

35:32 the news of their passing has triggered fond

35:34 memories of childhood meetings with her uncle and aunt.

35:38 I can remember Percy and Joan and Nicholas

35:41 coming over for afternoon tea on Sundays.

35:45 And Auntie Joan, she always dressed absolutely immaculate.

35:50 She she always had lovely hair.

35:53 Very very smart lady.

35:55 Very attractive.

36:00 All right.

36:00 Thank you.

36:03 Bye-bye.

36:05 At Finders HQ, Ryan was continuing research into the meek stem,

36:10 but little did he know he was on the verge of making a remarkable discovery.

36:16 on the line of Eric Charles Meek.

36:19 We um found out that he married

36:20 Martin Williams and they had three children together.

36:22 One of whom was was Robert Meek.

36:28 I got a call from air hunters telling me that one of my relatives had died.

36:32 First of all Overre who was will be my great uncle I think.

36:37 Uh but I never actually really knew him so he it was all news to me.

36:44 Robert is another beneficiary to Perl's sizable estate.

36:49 But it was what he revealed about his uncle,

36:51 also called Robert Meek, that left Ryan and the team stunned.

36:57 A key bit of information that we wouldn't

36:58 have necessarily known unless we spoke to him.

37:00 His uncle was also known as Joe Meek.

37:03 His uncle Joe Meek was actually a famous record producer.

37:07 So he was big in the 60s.

37:14 From his humble rural upbringing, Joe Meek rose to stardom to become one

37:18 of the most influential record producers of the last century.

37:22 Since he was a boy, Joe was always interested in electronics.

37:27 When he was young, he was always tinkering with stuff.

37:30 He would take radios apart and put them back together.

37:33 He was supposedly the one that made one of the first televisions

37:37 in Newent uh which people used to come and watch back in the' 50s.

37:42 He was a very clever man.

37:44 When he grew up, Joe left Glestershare and moved to London

37:48 where he worked for IBC Studios as a sound engineer.

37:56 I hope you don't mind me wearing my glasses

37:58 to do this cuz I can't see otherwise.

38:03 That's it.

38:05 In 1954, Adrien Carriage started working as Joe's assistant,

38:10 and over the years, they became firm friends.

38:14 We traveled to record radio shows, and this was taken in March 1956.

38:23 Adrien was about to witness Joe change the landscape of popular music forever.

38:29 It's indisputable that guy's talent.

38:32 He was the guy that started some of the modern recording techniques,

38:36 close micing techniques, doing unusual things with microphones.

38:41 There were wires everywhere.

38:43 Nobody knew what went to where and what he hung on what, but he got results.

38:54 In 1962, Joe had his biggest success to date as his composing skills

39:00 combined with his pioneering recording techniques came

39:02 together to produce a record called Telstar.

39:11 Joe's record saw huge international success as the second UK

39:15 single to hit number one in the United States charts.

39:20 Telstar with its sort of box-like drum sound.

39:23 It was all pumping and it all reverb and it was in your face and that's Joe.

39:34 You know, that was his first big uh breakthrough really.

39:38 As Margaret Thatcher's favorite record as well,

39:41 it was just when I heard it, I thought, "Wow, that that that's Joe.

39:44 It's his it was his audio signature." By the mid60s,

39:50 Joe was at the height of his career and was

39:52 one of the most in demand producers in London.

39:56 Because of what he was doing, the techniques he used, people requested Joe.

40:00 He worked with Pula Clark, Shirley Bassie, Wifford Atwell, Mr.

40:05 Joe Piano Henderson, Frankie Vaughn, Edmund Hawkidge, and so on.

40:11 Worked with all these people.

40:13 Brian Epstein offered him the Beatles and he turned them down.

40:18 Despite his growing popularity, he didn't forget about his family back home.

40:23 Got memories of him coming down from London and he'd always um come

40:28 down with loads of presents and he used to like um toffee crisps.

40:35 So he went into the shop and he actually bought the whole

40:38 box which you know in those days it was just incredible.

40:49 But unbeknown to his family, Joe's world was soon going to come crashing down.

40:55 No one really knew what was going on in Joe's head back home.

40:59 Obviously things were pretty dark in London and uh well it

41:04 all all ended on when it did on the 5th of February.

41:12 On that date in 1967, 5 years after the release of his hit record Tellstar,

41:19 Joe tragically murdered his neighbor who was

41:22 a close friend before taking his own life.

41:27 Nobody will actually know what was going on in that flat on that day.

41:31 Uh we can all speculate,

41:33 but Joe was taken away before his time and it it was very very sad.

41:40 I was saddened.

41:41 Dennis Preston was saddened.

41:43 Uh it shouldn't have happened.

41:45 Um but volatility rules.

41:54 Joe had no children, so there are no further beneficiaries from his stem.

42:00 With the case now wrapped up, all of Ryan and the team's efforts have paid off.

42:06 It's always really satisfying to um to managed to crack a large family tree.

42:11 Um especially as quickly as we managed to do this case um and we

42:15 managed to avoid any competition um which

42:17 is always a really great success for us.

42:20 there there's certain um cases that we pick up over the years and they

42:25 kind of become um kind of dinner party conversation topic if you like.

42:29 We don't go into too much details of exactly you

42:32 know what really happened but there's kind of key stories

42:34 that may jump out and that's what happened in this case

42:38 um with the connection between Perl and Joe Meek.

42:42 Perival's £325,000 estate will be divided up between 46 heirs,

42:48 including Sandra and Rob,

42:50 who's spending his share on landscaping his garden in honor of Perville.

42:55 We're going to call it the Perville Overbury Garden cuz

42:58 I couldn't have afforded to get it done without it.

43:01 Just going to put the plaque over there, call it the Perful Over Garden.

43:05 put a nice few flowers around it and uh

43:08 hopefully it'll be a fitting tribute to the man.