I'm wondering if offering an open bounty to the community would be a good way to fix this huge crisis.
That's possible but only allow reputable members to join the bounty. Because if it's not and someone is able to crack that(unlikely in your situation) and they don't have reputation in here, they'll easily forgeta about the bounty and leave you clueless and hopeless. Anyway, it seems that there is a direction being told you to and you're trying to do it, I can't do anything with that and just wishing you luck if this is a real recovery journey. 1.55 BTCs is a lot already in current price we have.