The Record
Every claim below is sourced to a document in the family archive, the press corpus, or the Swiss federal and court records. Plain, dated, and checkable, for journalists, researchers and anyone verifying the case.
At a glance
| Dates | Born in Caracas, December 20, 1947. Reported missing from Washington, November 1965. Died in Miami, February 4, 2019. |
|---|---|
| Figures as printed | $10 million in Washington in 1965; 30 to 50 million bolívares in Caracas; 40 to 150 million francs in the Swiss and European papers; one lawyer put it below five million bolívares. |
| Public exhibits | Twelve newspaper exhibits, in the archive and in the press file. |
| Languages of the record | English, Spanish, German, French. |
Anna Maria Hitz was a Swiss-Venezuelan heiress born in Caracas on December 20, 1947. She was the only child and sole heir of Othmar John Hitz, a Swiss businessman who built a coffee and real estate fortune in Venezuela. She died in Miami, Florida, on February 4, 2019.
She was reported missing from Washington, D.C. in November 1965, weeks before her eighteenth birthday. The Washington Post ran it on the front page on November 23, 1965, under the headline “D.C. Heiress to $10 Million Fortune Missing.” Three days later she was located in Caracas, married and with a newborn daughter.
The estate was reported at $10 million in Washington in 1965, at 30 to 50 million bolívares in Caracas, and at 40 to 150 million francs in the Swiss and European papers; one lawyer put it below five million bolívares. In 1963 UPI reported the money frozen in a Swiss bank. Othmar Hitz had signed most of his holdings into other people’s names, chiefly his lawyer’s. He died on July 4, 1958. No member of the family has ever collected the fortune.
Goldspatz means golden sparrow. The Swiss press used it, and the golden caged bird, during her childhood, when she was the subject of a custody war fought across two countries and was removed by each of her parents in turn, once from a street outside her school in Flurlingen in January 1961.
In January 1966, jewels and securities were seized from safe-deposit boxes at two Caracas banks. Per the family, a court-ordered exhumation of Othmar Hitz found the grave empty.
La Verdad reported on 12 January 1966 that Hitz had handed his assets to third parties in 1948 to evade a claim by the Venezuelan state, and El Nacional reported on 18 January 1966 that they were held in Lina Rosa Fuentes’s name. Últimas Noticias reported on 13 January 1966 that the will naming who held what was never found. The counter-reading is carried too: Naranjo Ostty told La Esfera the estate never reached five million bolívares. The full mechanism is File 06.
The case is documented in an archive of more than 500 documents: 144 family originals (1941 to 2019), about 200 press items (1959 to 1966) and the Swiss state records, in four languages: The Washington Post, The Evening Star, The Washington Daily News, the Herald Journal of Logan Utah, the Evening Bulletin of Philadelphia, BILD, BLICK, the Prättigauer Zeitung, El Nacional, La República and La Verdad, along with court papers, letters and photographs held by the family.
The Archive
Every fact on this page is drawn from an archive of more than 500 documents (144 family originals, 1941 to 2019; about 200 press items, 1959 to 1966; the Swiss federal and court records), in four languages, kept and read by the women of the Hitz family since 1965. The research method is taught free at the research page.