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Diana Dors' Missing Millions

A

Anonymous

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Did anybody else see this programme??

Diana leaves her son a list of letters and the search to break the code takes him to Bletchy Park, through masonic codes and then onto high-tech code breakers.

More info. here
channel4.com/culture/microsites/D/diana_dors/index.html
Link is dead. What's left of the Channel 4 website materials can be accessed via the Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/2004101...om/culture/microsites/D/diana_dors/index.html

See later posts for the MIA text that could be salvaged.
 
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I caught the end of it. Rather unfulfilling in that the guy just gave up and went home at the end.
 
Take at look at the forum on the link I gave people are coming up with some good observations.
 
seemed a very sophisticated code and time consumeing to write down... i presume she did that when she knew she was dieing. And since at least some of the info was in the "little black book" why bother?..ws the bookto be destroyed?.. didnt the tax man go over here documents after her death?....



i very much fear i look rather like her son...minus the beard
 
Originally posted by sidecar_jon [/i
i very much fear i look rather like her son...minus the beard
Click to expand...


I thought he was rather dishy ;)

It seemed to be a bit far-fetched to me too but they did make the point that she was an intelligent woman who liked games but even then why deprive your kids of what's rightfully theirs. maybe she thought she had more time to help them or perhaps she wasn't banking on hubbie topping himself.
 
Blueswidow said:
I thought he was rather dishy ;)

It seemed to be a bit far-fetched to me too but they did make the point that she was an intelligent woman who liked games but even then why deprive your kids of what's rightfully theirs. maybe she thought she had more time to help them or perhaps she wasn't banking on hubbie topping himself.
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oh yes she was cleaver alright...just it seemed so complex..tho maybe im seeing it from the decodeing end (where it should be complex after all)... what is the proceedure for gaining money from banks under theses circumstances?...i would presume that the bank will just flat hold on to any money it can?...
 
Whats the betting the guy writes a book about it? cynic, who me?
 
Originally posted by sidecar_jon
[

i very much fear i look rather like her son...minus the beard
Click to expand...



from the forum of the link posted by Blues...


"like a disco version of David Brent with a ponytail ".... excuse me while i go take an overdose..
 
Hm.... not very sure about the dishy bit.. but then I like my men tall, slim, toned and short haired. BUT here's a question he said he couldn't track down any of the people and the bank accounts because he didn't have first names. However, why didn't he try and track down Bowen - after all he had had that bank statement in his hand when he saw the guy who had bought his mum's suitcases and her belongings. It would have been a start at any rate !
 
It must have been so odd for him to see pictures that he made as a child ending up in the house of a grubby man he had never met.
Where did that guy get the money to buy the suitcases?

If I worked at a bank in one of the towns on the list I would be looking through the dorment bank accounts under those names.
 
Years ago I read her first autobiography, probably ghost-written in the 60s when she was 'Britain's Answer To Marilyn Monroe' or something. She got up to some tricks, I can tell you!

It was called 'Swingin' Dors'. Very catchy title.

edit- eek, found it here !
 
taras said:
I caught the end of it. Rather unfulfilling in that the guy just gave up and went home at the end.
Click to expand...

Call me an old cynic if you like, but I got the distinct impression he gave up because he couldn't get the money. He didn't have an awful lot to say about his mother did he? And I thought it a bit funny, that on hearing about Alan Lake's suicide his first thought was not for his little brother, left without his parents, but for the code/money.

Actually I got quite a kick out of the fact he went home with nothing - sorry Diana!
 
Well, he did say he'd only spent about six months with her during his lifetime.

But he did have leads, why did he sound so resigned at the end? Why bother asking viewers to help at all?

What happens to the money in bank accounts left unused for over twenty years, anyway?
 
Apparently my aunt and uncle knew his father, Dickie Dawson, vaguely. He was a bus conductor who lived in the same town. But as Mark (?) lived in the US with Dickie, I'm sure there's nothing new they could tell him. In any case, the secret appears to be Dianas and Alan Lakes.

Like Papa Lazarou, I was bothered that he was more concerned about the loss of cash vis-a-vis Lake's suicide, rather than his half-brother's loss of father etc. But maybe Channel 4 were ruthless with editing and tried to keep it sharp and relevant. I try to not be cynical but sometimes it doesn't work.

Anyway, it was all a very sorry affair. Especially the This Is Your Life clip which stated that Diana hadn't seen her then teenage son for 4 years. Again, I try not to judge but if such a reunion brought so many tears from her, why couldn't she have seen her son sooner?

So here I am speculating on two deceased Diana's, neither of whom I knew and never will. :hmph:
 
Anonymous said:
See later posts for the MIA text that could be salvaged.
Click to expand...

Here is the full text presented in the MIA website's homepage.
Who Got Diana Dors' Millions?

Diana Dors was adored by the British public. A star of the silver screen for nearly forty years, the woman once dubbed the 'English Marilyn Monroe' was a larger than life character who seemed to have it all – fame, riches, beauty.

When she died in 1984 her estate was worth only £200,000, a seemingly small sum for someone who had been successful for so long, yet her eldest son, Mark Dawson, had reason to believe that there was a lot more money to be found. 18 months before her death, Diana had given her son an envelope containing a sheet of code. A code that she said would lead Dawson to a sum of £2,000,000 that she had hidden away in bank accounts and safety deposit boxes across Britain.

Diana Dors also told her son that her third husband, Alan Lake, had the key to the code but when he committed suicide just five months after Dors died, it looked as though the location of her millions would be lost for good.

Only now, 20 years later, has Mark Dawson begun to unravel the mystery of his mother's secret fortune but, as he travels from his Los Angeles home to the UK, will he be able to crack the code and find out where the money lies?
Click to expand...
https://web.archive.org/web/2004101...om/culture/microsites/D/diana_dors/index.html
 
Here is the text presented on the MIA webpage addressing the code.
How The Code Was Cracked

Diana Dors was an avid fan of crosswords and used her interest in such puzzles to great effect when hiding her fortune. The sheet of paper that she gave her son, Mark, was written in her own hand and consisted of a top line of 17 symbols, followed by a series of groups of 5 letters set out in a table, 5 columns wide and twelve rows deep.

In attempting to crack the code, Mark consulted a member of the team that had broken the German Enigma code during the Second World War, who told him that that the key to the remaining code was most likely to be a memorable sentence or phrase chosen by his mother.

Mark also consulted Inforenz, a company specialising in encryption and codes to analyse the paper, as well as conducting his own research, which took him to the library of the Grand Lodge of England after he discovered that his grandfather had been a freemason.

It was in this library that Mark made the breakthrough that revealed what information the page held. Diana Dors had used two codes, one for the title of the page (the 17 symbol list) and another for the groups of 5 characters. Mark learned that the top line was encrypted using an old freemason code based upon a Tic-Tac-Toe board, and found that the symbols revealed the page title, "Locations and Names". However, the rest of the page appeared to use a completely different form of encryption.

Thankfully for Dawson, Inforenz had developed cryptography software that suggested a possible ten-letter key that might break the code. The key was DMARYFLUCK, a phrase immediately familiar to Mark, for his mother's real name had been Diana Mary Fluck.

When this key was used to decipher the code, it gave a list of names and locations across Britain. The first name matched that of a bank statement that had been found amongst Alan Lake's old papers, which in turn matched figures and dates listed in the 'little black books'.

Despite this confirmation, there is still insufficient detail with which to trace the money. It is possible that there may have been another sheet of paper that may have given bank details to match the names and locations but nobody knows what could have happened to such a paper and so the mystery goes on.

If you think you may be able to help solve the mystery as to the whereabouts of Diana Dors' fortune, then get in touch now...
Click to expand...
https://web.archive.org/web/2004022...ulture/microsites/D/diana_dors/code/code.html
 
Here is the list of locations and names obtained when the code was cracked.
DianaDors-List-Locs&Names.jpg
https://web.archive.org/web/2004010...rosites/D/diana_dors/locations/locations.html
 
Xanatic* said:
I should think some of those names should be enough, how many Pyewackets can there be in Brighton?
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Probably very few, as Pyewacket was a 17th-century imp.

lnterestingly, Pyewacket was also the name of a cat in the 1958 Kim Novak flick Bell, Book and Candle. This suggests strongly that Dors’ code wasn’t just a list of “people in places”, but had at least one more layer.

maximus otter
 
So Diana Dors left millions of dollars in 1984, and her family is unable to locate it?
I'm confused, that was almost 40 years ago - and why would she leave a puzzle as the locator?
Don't banks have lists of unclaimed funds, and one would think that in 40 years that would stick out like a sore thumb?
 
Ronnie Jersey said:
So Diana Dors left millions of dollars in 1984, and her family is unable to locate it?
I'm confused, that was almost 40 years ago - and why would she leave a puzzle as the locator?
Don't banks have lists of unclaimed funds, and one would think that in 40 years that would stick out like a sore thumb?
Click to expand...

“There's big money stored away waiting to be reclaimed. It's believed that there's more than £1 billion in old bank and building society accounts alone. There's also lost cash in Premium Bonds, pensions, investments and insurance policies – potentially more than £20 billion in total.”

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/reclaim/reclaim-lost-assets-free/

maximus otter
 
This all sounds really off. I didn't know much about Dors, but reading just on line summaries, her life was a series of disasters stemming from poor judgment and bad luck. After her performing days were more or less over she wrote an autobiography with the stated intent of providing retirement funds. One autobiography by an over the hill film performer couldn't provide that much money. It wouldn't surprise me if she did not have any considerable savings when she died. But she was not known for being totally nuts, and only someone off the rails leaves an estate to a son in code. It's fun to think that they might, but they don't. Also, as someone pointed out above, in the UK as in the US banks are required to publish information on mystery accounts, and if the safety deposit box is not paid for it eventually gets opened. That amount of money is an incentive for someone to write to every bank branch in the UK asking for their help in locating such an account or box. I think the son is aiming at a book or movie of his own, and so far I don't see evidence to believe in the L2B.
 
I don't blame the son for continuing his search for that amount of money. Just wondering why Dors would make such a 'puzzle' of her money in the first place, and with 3 sons and a husband who, I'm sure, could have used that money?
Isn't it dreadful that her 3rd husband, Alan Lake, couldn't face life without her, and committed suicide a few months after her death? Such a beautiful woman, too short a life, guess it's true that you really can't have it all.
 
EnolaGaia said:
Here is the text presented on the MIA webpage addressing the code.

https://web.archive.org/web/2004022...ulture/microsites/D/diana_dors/code/code.html
Click to expand...
EnolaGaia, many thanks for bringing this up – this is a story that's new to me. And it's a genuinely bizarre one befitting the life of Diana Dors.

The last film I saw her in (on TV) was the truly odd and disturbing Deep End, where she was in a scene that's, er, hard to describe. Handily it's on YouTube:

Deep End was directed by Jerzy Skolimowski, who also directed The Shout, one of my all-time favourite films and full of Fortean themes:

That said, I'm now off to Brighton to find Mr or Ms Pyewacket. Cooper in Bristol and Morris in Cardiff are closer, but I feel there may be a few more of them, followed by Dante in Manchester...
 
cycleboy2 said:
EnolaGaia, many thanks for bringing this up – this is a story that's new to me. And it's a genuinely bizarre one befitting the life of Diana Dors.

The last film I saw her in (on TV) was the truly odd and disturbing Deep End, where she was in a scene that's, er, hard to describe. Handily it's on YouTube:

Deep End was directed by Jerzy Skolimowski, who also directed The Shout, one of my all-time favourite films and full of Fortean themes:

That said, I'm now off to Brighton to find Mr or Ms Pyewacket. Cooper in Bristol and Morris in Cardiff are closer, but I feel there may be a few more of them, followed by Dante in Manchester...
Click to expand...
I’ve got both of those films on dvd. Deep End is a very odd film, I’m not sure why I like it.
 
Ronnie Jersey said:
I don't blame the son for continuing his search for that amount of money. Just wondering why Dors would make such a 'puzzle' of her money in the first place, and with 3 sons and a husband who, I'm sure, could have used that money?
Isn't it dreadful that her 3rd husband, Alan Lake, couldn't face life without her, and committed suicide a few months after her death? Such a beautiful woman, too short a life, guess it's true that you really can't have it all.
Click to expand...
Do you remember this?;
 
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