Sixty years later, the lights come up. The case file is open.
The Hitz Inheritance
Her
Her name was Anna Maria. Her granddaughter only ever called her Abuelita.
The papers called her the missing heiress, the Goldspatz, the golden caged bird. Her family knew a different woman: the grandmother who walked to Publix every day of a Miami summer, fed the dogs better than anyone, swam across Swiss lakes toward whichever shore had no people on it, and was afraid of the number four.
She was kidnapped twice as a child, once by each parent. She was front-page news on three continents at seventeen. She never collected the fortune, and she never told her granddaughter any of it. She died in Miami on February 4, 2019. This site is the case file her family kept for sixty years. The book is the conversation she never allowed.
The Case
Twenty-six days from a fortune, she vanished.
A seventeen-year-old heiress disappeared from Washington twenty-six days before she would inherit a ten-million-dollar estate. She turned up in Caracas: married, a mother, and surrounded by people with claims on the money.
Her family spent the next sixty years trying to learn what really happened. The papers had seventy-two hours with the story. We had the other sixty years, and we kept everything: the front pages in four languages, the court files, the letters, the photographs, a diary nobody has fully read.
I have been investigating this story since 2014, starting at NYU. It is now a book and a six-to-eight-episode limited series, built from the real archive. No one ever collected the money. This page is where the telling begins.
Get the opening chapter of the memoir, and the story as it comes out.
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HAVE MARRIED. BIRTH CERTIFICATE SHOWS I AM 18. LETTER FOLLOWS. STOP THIS RIDICULOUS PERSECUTION. I AM HAPPY NOW.
Signed “Annely,” by cable to her mother. Her mother did not believe it was real. And by every record the family kept, she was seventeen.
The Case File
Six files. Then the one they sealed.
The story the newspapers told, in six short files, in order. The seventh is where the family kept what the papers never printed.
The VanishingTwenty-six days from a fortune, gone.A seventeen-year-old walks out of Washington on the eve of inheriting ten million dollars.Open file →
02
I Am Happy NowA cable, a birth, a hidden mansion.She surfaces in Caracas married and a mother. Her own mother says the cable is a fake.Open file →
03
The Golden Caged BirdStolen at five. Taken at thirteen.A father who took her to a park and never brought her back, and a school-yard car in Switzerland.Open file →
04
The Empty GraveThey opened the grave. It was empty.A widow who never stopped saying murder.Open file →
05
The ScandalPawned jewels. A stolen diary. No sleep lost.A Caracas courtroom takes the fortune apart in public. This is where the newspapers stop.Open file →
06
The MechanismWhere the money went, in three papers.In one fortnight of January 1966, three Caracas newspapers printed the method, and one printed the name it was held under.Open file →
The Sealed File
What the newspapers never printed.
The murder question and the money trail, past where the first chapter stops.
Open the sealed file →
The Archive
500
Documents and more
4
Languages
3
Continents
12
Public
The family kept everything since 1965: the clippings the wire services ran, the ones they never saw, the court papers, the letters, the photographs. Twelve documents are public, with the family's own pen marks still on them. The rest stay sealed until the story is told.
Printed in more than thirty papers in eight countries, 1959 to 1966 · a selection
- The Washington Post
- The Evening Star
- Washington Daily News
- The Evening Bulletin, Philadelphia
- The Herald Journal, Utah
- BILD, West Germany
- BLICK, Zurich
- Prättigauer Zeitung
- the Paris press
- El Nacional, Caracas
- Últimas Noticias
- El Mundo
- La República
- La Verdad
One seventeen-year-old girl. Three continents. Four languages. The family kept every page.
Dispatches From The Archive
The story, one document at a time.
The Open Questions
Sixty years. Four questions. No answers.
Everything below is in the printed record or the family's papers. None of it has ever been resolved.
Where is Othmar Hitz's body?
His widow said poison, and the doctor barred her from the ward for repeating it. When the grave was opened, there was no body in it.
Who poisoned whom?
The widow accused the mistress. The mistress accused the widow. The accusations ran in the Caracas press for months. Decades later, in the family's oral history, an apology arrived from one deathbed. For what, it never said.
Did both Watergate reporters chase this story?
It is in the family's records: that before Watergate, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein both pursued the Hitz story for The Washington Post, and that one was told to drop it while chasing it from South America. The dates belong next to the claim. Bernstein joined the Post in 1966. Woodward not until 1971. So any approach came years after the disappearance, not during it. The family turned the book away. It was never written, until now.
Where is the money?
A $10 million estate was counted in the papers, and Swiss papers printed up to 150 million francs. In 1963 UPI reported the money frozen in a Swiss bank. No one in the family ever collected a cent.
The documents that answer these questions exist. The family has been holding them for sixty years. Open the sealed file or follow the story below.
For agents, producers & scouts
Timeline · Comps · Series map · Trailer transcript · For producers · For literary agents · rights.md · ES DE FR
Questions
Is The Hitz Inheritance a true story?
Yes. It is built from the real archive: Swiss and Venezuelan court files, period press across three continents including The Washington Post, The Evening Star, El Mundo of Caracas, BLICK and BILD, and the family’s own papers, letters, and photographs.
Who was Anna Maria Hitz?
A seventeen-year-old Swiss-Venezuelan heiress to the $10 million coffee and real estate fortune of her father, Othmar John Hitz. In November 1965 she vanished from her Washington home, setting off an international search, and was found in Caracas: married, and holding a three-week-old daughter. The Swiss press called her the Goldspatz, the golden sparrow in the golden cage.
What is it being developed as?
A memoir written by Anna Maria’s granddaughter, and a six-to-eight-episode limited series. Both are built from the primary archive the family has kept since 1965.
How big is the archive?
more than 500 documents, among them 144 family originals (1941 to 2019) and about 200 press items (1959 to 1966): press clippings in four languages from three continents, plus court papers, letters, and photographs. Twelve are public. The rest stay sealed until the story is told. See the archive.
How much was the fortune?
The estate was reported at $10 million in 1965. The Venezuelan press counted 30 to 50 million bolivars, and Swiss and European papers printed figures from about 40 up to 150 million francs. In 1963 UPI reported the money frozen in a Swiss bank. No one in the family ever collected it.
Rights, press, or adaptation inquiries?
Elisabeth Hitz, the author and rights holder: elisabeth@thehitzinheritance.com
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Washington · Caracas · Zurich
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