Inside the Decades-Long Saga of Missing Alan Turing Artifacts

In 1965, the mother of famed breaker of Nazi codes Alan Turing donated a box of his items to the Sherborne School he attended for five years in Dorset, England. Nineteen years later, the items went missing—during the visit of an American woman named Julie Schinghomes, say school officials. She said she was researching Turing, and in CBS News' telling, it's not clear if she took the items or was given them by someone who didn't have the power to do so. The school thought they were gone for good, and there was no sign of them for more than 30 years. In 2018, Schinghomes, who had changed her name to Julia Turing, offered to lend some of her Turing artifacts to the University of Colorado.

The school's historians declined. "Evidently, they knew what they were looking at, or at least had a solid idea about the items' significance," per CBS. A search warrant was issued and the artifacts were found in her Conifer, Colorado, home. Turing—who 9News reports was not related to Alan Turing, as she has claimed—ultimately settled with investigators; she gave up her interest in the items and faced no criminal charges in the matter as a result. In late August, those investigators flew to England and returned them to Sherborne School.

The items were described in a press release as including "Alan Turing's PhD diploma from Princeton University, the Order of the British Empire Medal, a personal note from the King George VI of England, a number of school reports, and various photos." A BBC article from 2020 quotes some of what Turing said during a court appearance at the time: That Turing "lived brightly in my heart throughout my entire life beginning at the age of between eight and nine years old. ... I wish only the very best for the legacy of Alan Turing, that his belongings, I have had the privilege to be gifted and kept in my presence all these years and deeply cherished throughout my life with the very best of care that I could provide, may now... be handed over to the rest of the world to see and also admire as I did. That is my wish." (More Alan Turing stories.)