History in the ceiling

Old photographs found inside a home in Lighthouse Point send Monique Bourassa Fuchs on a sleuthing mission to find the owner

LIGHTHOUSE POINT – For a quarter of a century, an envelope filled with military photographs from the Vietnam War era lay tucked away in the ceiling of a home in Lighthouse Point.

The long-forgotten photos found new life last week after a worker replacing the kitchen ceiling found the envelope resting on insulation above the kitchen, where they must have fallen after being stashed in the nearby attic.

Curious, homeowner Monique Bourassa Fuchs opened the envelope.

Inside were 64 photos she’d never seen before along with yellowed newspaper clippings, two military badges and a letter from the late FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to Robert D. Wells. The letter, dated July 9, 1969, advised him to apply for a special agent position when he returned home from his military travels.

“I thought, ‘Oh my God, I need to find the owner,’” Fuchs, 65, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel on Wednesday. “I really would like to find the family. Because these are not my photos.”

Fuchs, a hospice nurse whose late husband bought the home in 1994, embarked on a sleuthing mission soon after the photos were found on Sept. 10.

She spent more than a week trying to locate the family of Robert Wells, a Marine whose travels took him to Vietnam, Cuba, Puerto Rico and Panama.

Thinking he might be dead, she spent five hours searching Google, trying to find relatives.

She knew from one of the news clippings that he had a son named Judson. She found a man by the name of Judson Wells, but not the right one.

She emailed the History Channel and googled addresses in Connecticut and California linked to Wells.

She even called the FBI, thinking maybe they could help. No such luck.

“I called the FBI because Mr. Wells applied for a job there in 1969,” Fuchs said.

She was told they could not help her because Hoover is no longer with the agency.

“I know, he’s dead,” Fuchs said, shaking her head.

Finally, she turned to the Sun Sentinel for help.

A quick call to the Broward County Property Appraiser’s Office — which confirmed Wells bought the house in July 1993 and sold it in May 1994 — and a search of voter rolls did the trick.

Robert Wells, a captain in the U.S. Marines when he left the service in December 1972, now lives with wife Barbara in Delray Beach.

He had no idea the photos had gone missing, he said.

“I can’t believe all this,” said his wife of 41 years. “This is the wildest story I’ve ever heard.”

Wells, 74, was more interested in the letter from J. Edgar Hoover than the photos.

He had no idea he’d left the letter behind when he moved all those years ago.

“I thought I still had that letter from J. Edgar Hoover,” said Wells, who applied to the FBI after some buddies landed jobs there. “To tell you the truth, I was shocked he wrote me back. I write to him and I’ll be darned if he didn’t write me back.”

Wells said he was “flabbergasted” someone had gone to so much trouble to find him over some old photos.

And Fuchs was thrilled to learn Wells was only a county away.

“This is so cool,” she said. “I tried for a week to find him. And you did that in one day!”

AMY BETH BENNETT/SUN SENTINEL PHOTOS Monique Bourassa Fuchs looks over photos from the Vietnam War era that workers found above her kitchen while doing repairs at her Lighthouse Point home. She tracked down the owner, Robert Wells, 74, living in Delray Beach.

Workers doing repairs on Monique Bourassa Fuchs’ home found an envelope with more than 60 photos.

AMY BETH BENNETT/SUN SENTINEL A letter signed by J. Edgar Hoover was in an envelope containing old photos from a Marine’s military travels. The envelope was stashed in the ceiling above the kitchen of a Lighthouse Point home for 25 years, left behind by Robert Wells, now of Delray Beach.