CASE STUDIES

ELIZABETH MARY ROHAN ESTATE
$600,000 Intestacy
No Known Heirs
Elizabeth died at age 90, having never been married. She was believed to have been born in San Francisco, about three weeks after the great 1906 earthquake and fire. No birth record for her was found. Various leads were pursued in the United States, Canada, Ireland and Australia. In an 18-month search, involving eleven professional researchers, Elizabeth’s heirs were determined to be eight first cousins once-removed, residing in Ireland. Competing heir search firms had been unsuccessful.

ROSE VADIL ESTATE
$505,000 Intestacy
No Known Heirs
Rose died in St. Louis, Missouri at age 75. Competing heir search firms over a six year period had failed to locate any of Rose’s heirs. TRACER USA then began its search which resulted, three and a half years later, in the location of seven heirs in the Czech Republic. TRACER’s agent traveled to the Czech Republic to complete this case.

BUFORD MASON, JR. ESTATE
$30,000 Intestacy
No Known Heirs
Buford died in North Carolina. His heir was found to be his half-brother, also named Buford Mason, Jr. Their father had disappeared from the first family, moved to another state, remarried and fathered another son, giving the second son the same name as the first. Neither son had known that the other existed.

HENRY A. ZERO ESTATE
$128,000 Intestacy
No Known Heirs
Henry’s birth name was determined to be Henry Albert Bobenmoyer. At age nine, Henry Albert Bobenmoyer, along with his six brothers and sisters, was given away by his father when Henry’s mother died. His father then moved out of state, married a 17-year-old girl, and had seven more children. Henry served in the military in World War I. He became a mental patient in the Arkansas State Hospital, from which he escaped, and assumed the name Henry A. Zero. He lived in a trailer with his dog on the White River in Arkansas until his death at age 85. It is believed that he chose the name Zero because of his perceived lot in life. His heirs were found to be an 87-year-old sister and seven nieces and nephews.

VERDIE WHITE TRUST
$130,000 Bequest
In Honolulu, Hawaii, the Verdie White Trust’s residual beneficiary was missing. It was determined the beneficiary had died leaving her estate for the benefit of her dog, Frankie’s Lover Boy, as long as the dog lived. The dog was to be fed the table food of his choice but no milk or gravy. TRACER USA, upon determining that the dog had been euthanized, obtained an affidavit from the veterinarian so stating. This allowed the trust beneficiary’s share to pass to a niece of the beneficiary whom TRACER USA located in Pennsylvania.

COHEN ESTATE
$150,000 Share
This was a real estate matter involving a Jewish family who had owned property in the 1930’s in (East) Berlin, Germany. Some of the surviving members of this family escaped to Israel and from there to Canada and then into the United States. Although they had changed their first and last names, TRACER USA was able to trace the surviving members of the family, two sisters, one residing in New York and one in California.

FRIEDRICH WILLI DIETRICH
$112,000 Share
Friedrich died in Stuttgart, Germany. TRACER USA located six heirs in Argentina.

BAUER DUFOUR SUCCESSION
$30,000 Bequest
Mr. Dufour died in New Orleans leaving a bequest to a woman whom he knew as Miss Lauri Layne (not her real name), a former dance partner of his at a local dance studio. The heir’s correct name was ascertained. She was located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

MARGARETHE WOOTERA JORDAAN ESTATE
$400,000 Intestacy
No Known Heirs
Beloved Tera, as she was known in Larned, Kansas, died at age 89. She had never married. Her heirs were found to be 52 cousins, many of them residing in Europe. TRACER’s agent traveled to Europe on this assignment.

INGEBORG *****ER ESTATE
$1,060,000 Testacy
This matter involved a search in Stuttgart, Germany, for a child given up at birth by her German mother in 1958. It was determined that an American husband and wife, then residing in Germany, adopted the child. They soon returned to America with the child, where they divorced. The adoptive father was found, but he had no knowledge of the present surname or location of his former wife, or the daughter whom he had adopted some forty years earlier. The adoptive mother was traced to Texas, where she had remarried, and her daughter was again adopted by the mother’s second husband. TRACER USA eventually traced the heir to New York City where she is a practicing attorney of high regard.