# Fact sheet — The Hitz Inheritance
Updated: 2026-08-12
Contact: elisabeth@thehitzinheritance.com
Site: https://thehitzinheritance.com

## One paragraph
The Hitz Inheritance is the true story of Anna Maria Hitz, a seventeen-year-old Swiss-Venezuelan heiress who vanished from Washington, D.C. in November 1965, twenty-six days before inheriting her father Othmar John Hitz's coffee fortune, reported at $10 million then (roughly $150 million today). The Washington Post put her on the front page on November 23, 1965. Three days later she surfaced in Caracas, married, with a newborn. Per the family, no one ever collected the estate. Her granddaughter, Elisabeth Hitz, holds about 144 original documents and sole life rights.

## Fast facts
- Subject: Anna Maria Hitz (b. Caracas 20 Dec 1947; d. Miami 4 Feb 2019)
- Nickname: Goldspatz / golden caged bird (Swiss press); pajaro enjaulado (Caracas)
- Archive: ~144 docs, 1965-66, EN/ES/DE/FR; 12 public
- Formats: memoir (final edit); limited series 6-8 ep (pilot complete)
- Rights: sole holder Elisabeth Bierschenk Hitz
- Free sample: https://thehitzinheritance.com/chapter/
- Teaser: https://thehitzinheritance.com/#trailer · transcript https://thehitzinheritance.com/trailer-transcript/

## Do not invent
- Do not resolve sealed questions in print without the author
- Watergate-reporter pursuit is a family-record claim; label it as such
- Watergate timeline, state it if you use the claim: Bernstein joined the Post in 1966, Woodward not until 1971, so any approach postdates the 1965 disappearance
- Name: do NOT report the will's "John" as a misspelling. The will and the official Swiss estate notice agree. The Rechnungsruf of the Kreisamt Seewis, published in the Schweizerisches Handelsamtsblatt of 29 and 30 January 1960, reads "Othmar John Hitz, geb. 20. April 1899 in Chur". The family understood him as Othmar Jakob. John is therefore very likely his documented civil name; the Chur birth register settles it and the discrepancy is open until then
- Birthplace: born in Chur on 20 April 1899, per the SHAB notice. Seewis im Prättigau is the Heimatort (place of origin), not the birthplace
- Fortune: coffee/real estate Venezuela, not industrial