The story fascinated Olivia Rutigliano since she was 12, so, as a college student, she decided to crack the case.

While studying at the University of Pennsylvania, she was able to study cases of stolen Oscars thanks to a research grant. An email to the Academy revealed that Alice’s case had quietly been solved a decade prior.

The “mystery man” actually turned out to be Henry King, who directed Alice in In Old Chicago, the film she was being awarded for. Following the afterparties, Alice’s colleagues gave the Oscar to her, and she had to take it to the Academy to be engraved herself. 

However, Alice died the year after her Oscar win, and the award seemingly disappeared sometime after that.

Several years after her search began, Olivia, then a PhD student at Columbia, decided to find the missing Oscar. Eventually, she found out that a Dallas auction house had sold it, though they’d wrongly labeled it as a “replacement” of Alice’s original Oscar. However, Olivia was unable to get in touch with the anonymous buyer to tell them the truth.

In 2018, she told Mother Jones, “My plan is to keep talking about Alice Brady’s not-stolen Oscar and hope that the message gets to them.”