Questions
The questions people actually ask about the 1965 Hitz case, answered plainly and sourced to the family archive.
Anna Maria Hitz was a Swiss-Venezuelan heiress, born in Caracas on December 20, 1947, and the sole heir of the businessman Othmar John Hitz. At seventeen she was reported missing from Washington, D.C., and appeared on the front page of the Washington Post on November 23, 1965. She died in Miami on February 4, 2019.
The Hitz Inheritance is the true story of the 1965 disappearance of Anna Maria Hitz and the fortune that was never found, reconstructed by her granddaughter from a family archive of about 144 documents in four languages. It is a book in progress and a documented case file published online.
Yes. She was located in Caracas within days of the front-page story, married to Ulrich Bierschenk and with a newborn daughter. The person was found quickly. The estate was never resolved, and that is the part of the case that remains open.
Not in 1965. As a child she was removed by each of her parents in turn during a custody war fought across Swiss and Venezuelan courts, and the Swiss press covered both episodes. In 1965 she left of her own accord. When the word kidnapped attached to her a third time, it was the first time it was wrong.
Contemporary reports put the estate of Othmar John Hitz between 10 and 30 million US dollars, and Swiss reports between 43 and 129 million Swiss francs. The 1965 figure of $10 million is roughly $100 to $150 million in today's money.
Othmar Hitz signed most of his holdings into other people's names, chiefly his lawyer's, to shield them from a tax dispute. The counter-documents proving his ownership disappeared. A will registered in Caracas in 1954 later vanished from the registry. Jewels and securities were seized from two Caracas banks in January 1966. No member of the family ever collected the estate.
Goldspatz means golden sparrow. The Swiss press used the name during her childhood, when she was the subject of a public custody dispute and a fortune she could not reach, and used it again when she disappeared in 1965.
The family has searched the official Swiss dormant-assets registry for accounts under the family names. As of July 2026 no published dormant account matches. Swiss dormant accounts are published only after sixty years without contact, so the registry is checked periodically.
Elisabeth Bierschenk Hitz, her granddaughter, who holds the family archive and sole life rights. The project began as an oral history at New York University and includes recorded interviews with family members who lived the events.
Yes. Life rights are held solely by Elisabeth Bierschenk Hitz, which makes the chain of title a single signature. Details are on the rights page.