Case Study: How it Works
This case history is the story of our first missing heir case and provides a good description of the heir finding process. The reader will learn about the many research and investigative strategies we employ, combining the skills of the Genealogist and the Private Detective in a quest for one special person.
WHERE’S ROSE?
Do you remember your first true love with all its nervousness and excitement? Can your mind’s eye picture the first time you rode a bicycle with the training wheels off? Can you recall both the elation of fear and accomplishment? We have all had those firsts in some matter of fashion.
Investigators, like fishermen, also talk about the one that got away. These fishermen and woman of fact-finding and lead-running can ramble off the facts of the case that got away as if it were yesterday. Some carry the burdens to their graves, especially when it involves a still-missing child or a grisly murder that goes unsolved.
So too it is with me and Rose Schnitman, our first missing heir case that still remains open on my desk today.
Some time ago we were approached by a lawyer in New England to find Rose with her last known address as “New York, New York”. She was the sister of the decedent and as the decedent died intestate, i.e., with no will, Rose or her children would be entitled to a generous portion of the estate.
He had seen our little ad in the local Bar Journal and asked for the company’s qualifications. I was honest with him. I told him we were good at locating people, being Legal Investigators with many years experience, and that I personally worked pro bono with an amateur genealogist at my church to help find blood relatives of another church member in need of bone marrow donors for a transfusion to try and stop a deadly cancer. We found 168 living relatives and arranged for the Red Cross to do the testing. None matched, but my friend found an extended family she never knew existed.
I don’t know what convinced him to hire us but, armed with a family tree, a three week deadline and a $1,000.00 retainer, we were on the trail.
First stop were the databases: Ancestry.com, RootsWeb, and FamilySearch.org. They yielded some information and, most interestingly, revealed that Rose had worked as a steno for a private detective agency at the time of the 1930 Federal Census. I don’t know why, but Perry Masons’ Della Street came to mind. Here the lady we were trying to find worked for a Shamus, a gum shoe like me. Somehow, Bogie and the Maltese Falcon got into that day dream as well.
We hit a dead end at the NY Public Library’s History and Genealogy Section. NYC Municipal Archives, with their weird hours and arcane search methods, left me shaking my head when I tried to locate brides and grooms. The New York Times Obits and Death Indexes were negative.
We went through that retainer and still had more leads to go. “Nope!” said the estate representatives when we asked for additional funding. The lawyer told us to wrap up and bill out. “But, but…” I sputtered, “We’ve got a ton more work to do.” He told me that the estate would release us from their employ and suggested that we work the case on speculation. “Who will pay us?” I asked.
His response has become the genesis of International Missing Heir Finders, LLC. He told us to continue the search and when we find the heirs that we sign them up to a finder’s fee agreement in exchange for telling them where the estate was. I wondered aloud if I could do that and, more importantly, was it legal. He said that it was both legal and very lucrative, if you could find the heirs.
In my spare time when I wasn’t working billable hours, sitting on surveillance or marketing, I squirreled away some time to visit the libraries, courts, and archives. Being licensed in NY, CT and MA has its advantages. I came to know the clerk at the City Probate Court very well.
The Historical Society coughed up Rose’s High School yearbook and her photo. Now we had a photo of the elusive Rose. Where was she? Did she follow her dreams to become a violinist or an actress? Did she change her name, in the height of the Great Depression, and go to Hollywood?
The Jewish Historical Society on the State University Campus gave us more insights. We were able to trace Rose and her sister through grade school and saw their absence and tardiness records. The Synagogue records showed how much her father tithed during the Great Depression.
With all this research, we still hadn’t come up with her date of birth. We were wearing the carpet out at Vital Statistics Office. We had found out the town Rose was born in, but they could not find a birth certificate on record. All of us were getting frustrated.
Finally, we walked into the Vitals vault and like kids in a candy store figured out what happened. Rose had been misnamed by the mid-wife who had delivered her as RACHEL and her last name was misspelled as SNITMAN. It was further compounded by wrongly stating that her father’s first name was Nathan, when in fact, it was Hyman. We were fortunate to find this record by her mother’s first and maiden name Sarah Stock. Now we had the Date of Birth as 12-05-1907.
At the time of our search, Rose was 98 if she was still alive. Back to the genealogy databases we entered Rose, first name only born in 1907. We found that Rose was a popular name for the era. We began slugging through all the names, but kept coming up empty.
My daughter came with me one day and we visited the cemetery where most of Rose’s family is buried. It was a cold day and she helped brush some of the leaves from the grave stones. My family could not sit through a dinner with me without me talking about Rose. They said I was obsessive. I said I was just trying to be thorough. As we began to piece the correct family tree together, we learned how to find obituaries on microfilm at the City Public Library and then run across the busy street to City Hall and Probate Court for more info. We would tickle the keys on the computer for database searches and go back to the Microfilm.
During these searches, we learned how other Missing Heir Research firms located estates for review and began to dabble in our spare time in locating estates of value where not all the heirs were accounted for. We began to see that silver lining in the dark cloud that was becoming my search for Rose. From the “Leave no stone unturned approach” to finding Rose, we were learning how to perform Missing Heir Research.
At some point, we came across Rose’s mother’s probate paperwork and in December of 1936 Rose was listed as living at “428 Midwood Ave, Bellemore, NY”. This was an address in walking distance of the Long Island Railroad that, like the New Haven Railroad, ran a commuter service into New York City.
We descended on the Nassau County Offices and Courthouse and asked for voter registration, marriage and death records. We traced the property ownership backwards and forwards with no further leads. We exhausted liens and judgments. I went to the house and began knocking on doors in the neighborhood. “Hi, my name is John Hoda and I am an investigator. I am trying to find a lady or her kids that lived in that house over there 68 years ago. Do you think you can help me?”
Slowly, every lead turned cold; every trail a dead end. We had to stop actively searching. I think that Rose possibly married out of her faith and as it happens in some families, she became a black sheep. Thirty years of no contact and as each of her brothers and sisters died, no one mentioned Rose’s whereabouts. When she married, she probably took her husband’s name and her social security benefits are in that name. As we learn new things in genealogy research, we plug in Rose and just like staring at a slot machine, we are hoping to come up with all cherries.
Last year, I traveled to the Mecca of Genealogy, The Family Search Library in Salt Lake City, Utah and talked with the experts there. Whenever we attend Genealogy conferences, we round table Rose. The 1940 Federal Census will be available in 2015. Whose name do you think we’ll be entering in first?
