Dispatches From The Archive

The story, one document at a time

In 1965 the same girl was on front pages in Washington, Philadelphia, Utah, Germany, Switzerland, France and Venezuela. The family kept an archive that now holds more than 500 documents. Twelve are public. These dispatches take the biggest ones, in order, and tell you exactly what each one did to my family.

What is in the Hitz archive dispatches?

Dispatch No. 01 · July 16, 2026 Who was Anna Maria Hitz, the missing heiress of 1965? Twenty-six days before she was due to inherit a $10 million estate, a seventeen-year-old girl vanished from Washington. The front page did the rest. The Washington Post, front page, November 23, 1965: D.C. Heiress to $10 Million Fortune Missing Dispatch No. 02 · July 16, 2026 “Stop this ridiculous persecution”: the cable that ended the search Three days after the front page, a telegram arrived from Caracas. Eleven words of it ended an international search. Her mother read it and did not believe it. The Evening Star, Washington, November 26, 1965: D.C. Heiress Wires Mother She's Wed, Safe in Venezuela Dispatch No. 03 · July 16, 2026 The Goldspatz: why the Swiss press called her the golden caged bird Before she was the missing heiress, she was the Goldspatz: the golden sparrow in the golden cage. The nickname was affectionate. Nothing about the cage was. BLICK, Zurich, December 16, 1965: Goldspatz versöhnt Dispatch No. 04 · July 16, 2026 The empty grave of Othmar Hitz He built the fortune. He died in 1958. And when the family finally got the grave opened, there was nothing inside it. Family and court records on the death and exhumation of Othmar Hitz, Hitz family archive Dispatch No. 06 · July 16, 2026 The millionaires and the beggar: one photograph, two fortunes Caracas, January 1966. A photographer catches the heiress to thirty million bolivars outside police headquarters. Standing beside her, by chance, a beggar with a single coin. Caracas press photograph and caption, January 1966, Hitz family archive Dispatch No. 08 · July 16, 2026 The first viral story: three continents in seventy-two hours Before the internet had a word for it, the wire services did the same job. One front page on a Tuesday. By the weekend, the same girl's face in six languages. The Washington Post, November 23, 1965 Dispatch No. 09 · July 23, 2026 The night watchman Washington, September 1964. The man an heiress would vanish with was guarding the door: twenty-five, born in wartime Warsaw, working three jobs. Hitz family archive and family oral history Dispatch No. 10 · July 23, 2026 The dictator’s fall February 1958. Venezuela began seizing everything the dictator’s circle had touched. Othmar Hitz had signed his fortune into the name of a lawyer inside it. Judith Ewell on the Pérez Jiménez extradition; Hitz family archive Dispatch No. 11 · July 23, 2026 The finishing school Washington, 1963. A Virginia finishing school taught her that she modeled every day of her life. Her papers had already made her a year older than she was. Hitz family archive; The New York Times on Cappa Chell Dispatch No. 12 · July 31, 2026 Before Watergate Per family records, both future Watergate reporters pursued the 1965 missing-heiress story. What the archive holds, labeled carefully. Hitz family archive and family records

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