What you seem to be missing is that you need one person alive and willing to prove that he's the owner of those private keys.
Since we don't have anybody doing that, all this soap opera has not much of a meaning. I'd say that this is the point you are missing.
I think even the proof that one is/was the owner of those private keys is not enough anymore. The more time passes, the highes the chances are for someone's privkey to collide with someone else's address. While this is not a very realistic scenario, it's not practically impossible. So if someone "finds out" 50 years from now who owned those private keys, chances are this is just a random coincidence and collision that proves nothing.