SALT LAKE CITY — One Millcreek resident found a bag containing memorabilia belonging to the Jason Bateman family after moving into their home.
Jacob Branon moved into his Millcreek home in October 2023 when he noticed the bag.
“We thought, there's no way, right? There's no way this is the same Bateman family,” he said. “As far as we know, the box in the bag was not there when we first did our walk around the place. We could be wrong, but pretty sure we would have noticed something like that. And then on our second day, we're just doing another walk around, and that's when we noticed a big red box and a big green bag.”
Inside the bag were personal history, photos, and handwritten letters that seemingly belonged to the Bateman family.
Branan tried reaching out to Bateman’s agents, but was unable to. The bag was forgotten about until a couple of days ago.
“I was just going through my photos, found those pictures and was like, oh yeah, we never found anything with it that's still just sitting in our house. Maybe somebody in the Salt Lake Community has some sort of connection,” he said.
Branan was skeptical it was Jason’s family at first, until he saw one specific newspaper clipping.
“It was really shocking when we first opened it up and we saw that it was Bateman's, you know, that obviously didn't ring any crazy bells,” he said, “that's when we came across that news article talking about Jason Bateman on Little House on the Prairie, and that's when dots started connecting.”
Branan slowly discovered the Batemans had a personal tie to Utah.
“Seemingly they lived within five minutes of where we live now, just who would have thought? Small world,” he said.
Branan posted his find on Reddit several days ago, receiving many replies.
Some even claim to be distant relatives of the family.
Branan said the main goal is to get it back into the right hands.
“If somebody messaged me out of the blue and said, Hey, I found a box filled to the brim of your parents' and grandparents' history, I mean, I would certainly at least want to see it,” he said.
Even if that means trying to track down the movie star himself.
“Jason, if you ever watch this, let me get you your stuff back. Ideally, if I can get it to somebody who you or Kent fully endorses to possess it totally okay with me. I just want to make sure it's given back to the right person,” Branan said.
FOX 13 News reached out to the owner and executive producer of Bateman’s podcast “Smartless” in attempt to reach out to Bateman, but did not receive a response.
