August 12, 2011
The Body on Somerton Beach
Mortuary photo of the unknown man found dead on Somerton Beach, south of Adelaide, Australia, in December 1948. Sixty-three years later, the man's identity remains a mystery, and it's still not clear how – or even if – he was murdered.
Most murders aren’t that difficult to solve. The husband did it. The wife did it. The boyfriend did it, or the ex-boyfriend did. The crimes fit a pattern, the motives are generally clear.
Of course, there are always a handful of cases that don’t fit the template, where the killer is a stranger or the reason for the killing is bizarre. It’s fair to say, however, that nowadays the authorities usually have something to go on. Thanks in part to advances such as DNA technology, the police are seldom baffled anymore.
They certainly were baffled, though, in Adelaide, the capital of South Australia, in December 1948. And the only thing that seems to have changed since then is that a story that began simply—with the discovery of a body on the beach on the first day of that southern summer—has bec0me ever more mysterious. In fact, this case (which remains, theoretically at least, an active investigation) is so opaque that we still do not know the victim’s identity, have no real idea what killed him, and cannot even be certain whether his death was murder or suicide.
What we can say is that the clues in the Somerton Beach mystery (or the enigma of the “Unknown Man,” as it is known Down Under) add up to one of the world’s most perplexing cold cases. It may be the most mysterious of them all.
Let’s start by sketching out the little that is known for certain. At 7 o’clock on the warm evening of Tuesday, November 30, 1948, jeweler John Bain Lyons and his wife went for a stroll on Somerton Beach, a seaside resort a few miles south of Adelaide. As they walked toward Glenelg, they noticed a smartly dressed man lying on the sand, his head propped against a sea wall. He was lolling about 20 yards from them, legs outstretched, feet crossed. As the couple watched, the man extended his right arm upward, then let it fall back to the ground. Lyons thought he might be making a drunken attempt to smoke a cigarette.
Half an hour later, another couple noticed the same man lying in the same position. Looking on him from above, the woman could see that he was immaculately dressed in a suit, with smart new shoes polished to a mirror shine—odd clothing for the beach. He was motionless, his left arm splayed out on the sand. The couple decided that he was simply asleep, his face surrounded by mosquitoes. “He must be dead to the world not to notice them,” the boyfriend joked.
It was not until next morning that it became obvious that the man was not so much dead to the world as actually dead. John Lyons returned from a morning swim to find some people clustered at the seawall where he had seen his “drunk” the previous evening. Walking over, he saw a figure slumped in much the same position, head resting on the seawall, feet crossed. Now, though, the body was cold. There were no marks of any sort of violence. A half-smoked cigarette was lying on the man’s collar, as though it had fallen from his mouth.
The body reached the Royal Adelaide Hospital three hours later. There Dr. John Barkley Bennett put the time of death at no earlier than 2 a.m., noted the likely cause of death as heart failure, and added that he suspected poisoning. The contents of the man’s pockets were spread out on a table: tickets from Adelaide to the beach, a pack of chewing gum, some matches, two combs and a pack of Army Club cigarettes containing seven cigarettes of another, more expensive brand called Kensitas. There was no wallet and no cash, and no ID. None of the man’s clothes bore any name tags—indeed, in all but one case the maker’s label had been carefully snipped away. One trouser pocket had been neatly repaired with an unusual variety of orange thread.
By the time a full autopsy was carried out a day later, the police had already exhausted their best leads as to the dead man’s identity, and the results of the postmortem did little to enlighten them. It revealed that the corpse’s pupils were “smaller” than normal and “unusual,” that a dribble of spittle had run down the side of the man’s mouth as he lay, and that “he was probably unable to swallow it.” His spleen, meanwhile, “was strikingly large and firm, about three times normal size,” and the liver was distended with congested blood.
In the man’s stomach, pathologist John Dwyer found the remains of his last meal—a pasty—and a further quantity of blood. That too suggested poisoning, though there was nothing to show that the poison had been in the food. Now the dead man’s peculiar behavior on the beach—slumping in a suit, raising and dropping his right arm—seemed less like drunkenness than it did a lethal dose of something taking slow effect. But repeated tests on both blood and organs by an expert chemist failed to reveal the faintest trace of a poison. “I was astounded that he found nothing,” Dwyer admitted at the inquest. In fact, no cause of death was found.
The body displayed other peculiarities. The dead man’s calf muscles were high and very well developed; although in his late 40s, he had the legs of an athlete. His toes, meanwhile, were oddly wedge-shaped. One expert who gave evidence at the inquest noted:
I have not seen the tendency of calf muscle so pronounced as in this case…. His feet were rather striking, suggesting—this is my own assumption—that he had been in the habit of wearing high-heeled and pointed shoes.
Perhaps, another expert witness hazarded, the dead man had been a ballet dancer?
The mystery gets stranger after the jump.
All this left the Adelaide coroner, Thomas Cleland, with a real puzzle on his hands. The only practical solution, he was informed by an eminent professor, Sir Cedric Stanton Hicks, was that a very rare poison had been used—one that “decomposed very early after death,” leaving no trace. The only poisons capable of this were so dangerous and deadly that Hicks would not say their names aloud in open court. Instead, he passed Cleland a scrap of paper on which he had written the names of two possible candidates: digitalis and strophanthin. Hicks suspected the latter. Strophanthin is a rare glycoside derived from the seeds of some African plants. Historically, it was used by a little-known Somali tribe to poison arrows.
More baffled than ever now, the police continued their investigation. A full set of fingerprints was taken and circulated throughout Australia—and then throughout the English-speaking world. No one could identify them. People from all over Adelaide were escorted to the mortuary in the hope they could give the corpse a name. Some thought they knew the man from photos published in the newspapers, others were the distraught relatives of missing persons. Not one recognized the body.
By January 11, the South Australia police had investigated and dismissed pretty much every lead they had. The investigation was now widened in an attempt to locate any abandoned personal possessions, perhaps left luggage, that might suggest that the dead man had come from out of state. This meant checking every hotel, dry cleaner, lost property office and railway station for miles around. But it did produce results. On the 12th, detectives sent to the main railway station in Adelaide were shown a brown suitcase that had been deposited in the cloakroom there on November 30.
The suitcase left by the dead man at Adelaide Station – with some of its perplexing contents
The staff could remember nothing about the owner, and the case’s contents were not much more revealing. The case did contain a reel of orange thread identical to that used to repair the dead man’s trousers, but painstaking care had been applied to remove practically every trace of the owner’s identity. The case bore no stickers or markings, and a label had been torn off from one side. The tags were missing from all but three items of the clothing inside; these bore the name “Kean” or “T. Keane,” but it proved impossible to trace anyone of that name, and the police concluded–an Adelaide newspaper reported–that someone “had purposely left them on, knowing that the dead man’s name was not ‘Kean’ or ‘Keane.’ ”
The remainder of the contents were equally inscrutable. There was a stencil kit of the sort “used by the Third Officer on merchant ships responsible for the stenciling of cargo”; a table knife with the haft cut down; and a coat stitched using a feather stitch unknown in Australia. A tailor identified the stitchwork as American in origin, suggesting that the coat, and perhaps its wearer, had traveled during the war years. But searches of shipping and immigration records from across the country again produced no likely leads.
The police had brought in another expert, John Cleland, emeritus professor of pathology at the University of Adelaide, to re-examine the corpse and the dead man’s possessions. In April, four months after the discovery of the body, Cleland’s search produced a final piece of evidence—one that would prove to be the most baffling of all. Cleland discovered a small pocket sewn into the waistband of the dead man’s trousers. Previous examiners had missed it, and several accounts of the case have referred to it as a “secret pocket,” but it seems to have been intended to hold a fob watch. Inside, tightly rolled, was a minute scrap of paper, which, opened up, proved to contain two words, typeset in an elaborate printed script. The phrase read “Tamám Shud.”
The scrap of paper discovered in a concealed pocket in the dead man's trousers. 'Tamám shud' is a Persian phrase; it means 'It is ended.' The words had been torn from a rare New Zealand edition of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
Frank Kennedy, the police reporter for the Adelaide Advertiser, recognized the words as Persian, and telephoned the police to suggest they obtain a copy of a book of poetry—the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. This work, written in the twelfth century, had become popular in Australia during the war years in a much-loved translation by Edward FitzGerald. It existed in numerous editions, but the usual intricate police enquiries to libraries, publishers and bookshops failed to find one that matched the fancy type. At least it was possible, however, to say that the words “Tamám shud” (or “Taman shud,” as several newspapers misprinted it—a mistake perpetuated ever since) did come from Khayyam’s romantic reflections on life and mortality. They were, in fact, the last words in most English translations— not surprisingly, because the phrase means “It is ended.”
Taken at face value, this new clue suggested that the death might be a case of suicide; in fact, the South Australia police never did turn their “missing person” enquiries into a full-blown murder investigation. But the discovery took them no closer to identifying the dead man, and in the meantime his body had begun to decompose. Arrangements were made for a burial, but—conscious that they were disposing of one of the few pieces of evidence they had—the police first had the corpse embalmed, and a cast taken of the head and upper torso. After that, the body was buried, sealed under concrete in a plot of dry ground specifically chosen in case it became necessary to exhume it. As late as 1978, flowers would be found at odd intervals on the grave, but no one could ascertain who had left them there, or why.
The dead man's copy of the Rubaiyat, from a contemporary press photo. No other copy of the book matching this one has ever been located.
In July, fully eight months after the investigation had begun, the search for the right Rubaiyat produced results. On the 23rd, a Glenelg man walked into the Detective Office in Adelaide with a copy of the book and a strange story. Early the previous December, just after the discovery of the unknown body, he had gone for a drive with his brother-in-law in a car he kept parked a few hundred yards from Somerton Beach. The brother-in-law had found a copy of the Rubaiyat lying on the floor by the rear seats. Each man had silently assumed it belonged to the other, and the book had sat in the glove compartment ever since. Alerted by a newspaper article about the search, the two men had gone back to take a closer look. They found that part of the final page had been torn out, together with Khayyam’s final words. They went to the police.
Detective Sergeant Lionel Leane took a close look at the book. Almost at once he found a telephone number penciled on the rear cover; using a magnifying glass, he dimly made out the faint impression of some other letters, written in capitals underneath. Here, at last, was a solid clue to go on.
The phone number was unlisted, but it proved to belong to a young nurse who lived near Somerton Beach. Like the two Glenelg men, she has never been publicly identified—the South Australia police of 1949 were disappointingly willing to protect witnesses embarrassed to be linked to the case—and she is now known only by her nickname, Jestyn. Reluctantly, it seemed (perhaps because she was living with the man who would become her husband), the nurse admitted that she had indeed presented a copy of the Rubaiyat to a man she had known during the war. She gave the detectives his name: Alfred Boxall.
At last the police felt confident that they had solved the mystery. Boxall, surely, was the Unknown Man. Within days they traced his home to Maroubra, New South Wales.
The problem was that Boxall turned out to be still alive, and he still had the copy of the Rubaiyat Jestyn had given him. It bore the nurse’s inscription, but was completely intact. The scrap of paper hidden in the dead man’s pocket must have come from somewhere else.
It might have helped if the South Australia police had felt able to question Jestyn closely, but it is clear that they did not. The gentle probing that the nurse received did yield some intriguing bits of information; interviewed again, she recalled that some time the previous year—she could not be certain of the date—she had come home to be told by neighbors than an unknown man had called and asked for her. And, confronted with the cast of the dead man’s face, Jestyn seemed “completely taken aback, to the point of giving the appearance she was about to faint,” Leane said. She seemed to recognize the man, yet firmly denied that he was anyone she knew.
The code revealed by examination of the dead man's Rubaiyat under ultraviolet light. (Click to see it at a larger size.) It has yet to be cracked.
That left the faint impression Sergeant Leane had noticed in the Glenelg Rubaiyat. Examined under ultraviolet light, five lines of jumbled letters could be seen, the second of which had been crossed out. The first three were separated from the last two by a pair of straight lines with an ‘x’ written over them. It seemed that they were some sort of code.
Breaking a code from only a small fragment of text is exceedingly difficult, but the police did their best. They sent the message to Naval Intelligence, home to the finest cipher experts in Australia, and allowed the message to be published in the press. This produced a frenzy of amateur codebreaking, almost all of it worthless, and a message from the Navy concluding that the code appeared unbreakable:
From the manner in which the lines have been represented as being set out in the original, it is evident that the end of each line indicates a break in sense.
There is an insufficient number of letters for definite conclusions to be based on analysis, but the indications together with the acceptance of the above breaks in sense indicate, in so far as can be seen, that the letters do not constitute any kind of simple cipher or code.
The frequency of the occurrence of letters, whilst inconclusive, corresponds more favourably with the table of frequencies of initial letters of words in English than with any other table; accordingly a reasonable explanation would be that the lines are the initial letters of words of a verse of poetry or such like.
And there, to all intents and purposes, the mystery rested. The Australian police never cracked the code or identified the unknown man. Jestyn died a few years ago without revealing why she had seemed likely to faint when confronted with a likeness of the dead man’s face. And when the South Australia coroner published the final results of his investigation in 1958, his report concluded with the admission:
I am unable to say who the deceased was… I am unable to say how he died or what was the cause of death.
In recent years, though, the Tamám Shud case has begun to attract new attention. Amateur sleuths have probed at the loose ends left by the police, solving one or two minor mysteries but often creating new ones in their stead. And two especially persistent investigators—retired Australian policeman Gerry Feltus, author of the only book yet published on the case, and Professor Derek Abbott of the University of Adelaide—have made particularly useful progress. Both freely admit they have not solved mystery—but let’s close by looking briefly at the remaining puzzles and leading theories.
First, the man’s identity remains unknown. It is generally presumed that he was known to Jestyn, and may well have been the man who called at her apartment, but even if he was not, the nurse’s shocked response when confronted with the body cast was telling. Might the solution be found in her activities during World War II? Was she in the habit of presenting men friends with copies of the Rubaiyat, and, if so, might the dead man have been a former boyfriend, or more, whom she did not wish to confess to knowing? Abbott’s researches certainly suggest as much, for he has traced Jestyn’s identity and discovered that she had a son. Minute analysis of the surviving photos of the Unknown Man and Jestyn’s child reveals intriguing similarities. Might the dead man have been the father of the son? If so, could he have killed himself when told he could not see them?
Those who argue against this theory point to the cause of the man’s death. How credible is it, they say, that someone would commit suicide by dosing himself with a poison of real rarity? Digitalis, and even strophanthin, can be had from pharmacies, but never off the shelf—both poisons are muscle relaxants used to treat heart disease. The apparently exotic nature of the death suggests, to these theorists, that the Unknown Man was possibly a spy. Alfred Boxall had worked in intelligence during the war, and the Unknown Man died, after all, at the onset of the Cold War, and at a time when the British rocket testing facility at Woomera, a few hundred miles from Adelaide, was one of the most secret bases in the world. It has even been suggested that poison was administered to him via his tobacco. Might this explain the mystery of why his Army Club pack contained seven Kensitas cigarettes?
Far-fetched as this seems, there are two more genuinely odd things about the mystery of Tamám Shud that point away from anything so mundane as suicide.
The first is the apparent impossibility of locating an exact duplicate of the Rubaiyat handed in to the police in July 1949. Exhaustive enquiries by Gerry Feltus at last tracked down a near-identical version, with the same cover, published by a New Zealand bookstore chain named Whitcombe & Tombs. But it was published in a squarer format.
Add to that one of Derek Abbott’s leads, and the puzzle gets yet more peculiar. Abbott has discovered that at least one other man died in Australia after the war with a copy of Khayyam’s poems close by him. This man’s name was George Marshall, he was a Jewish immigrant from Singapore, and his copy of the Rubaiyat was published in London by Methuen— a seventh edition.
So far, so not especially peculiar. But inquiries to the publisher, and to libraries around the world, suggest that there were never more than five editions of Methuen’s Rubaiyat—which means that Marshall’s seventh edition was as nonexistent as the Unknown Man’s Whitcombe & Tombs appears to be. Might the books not have been books at all, but disguised spy gear of some sort—say one-time code pads?
Which brings us to the final mystery. Going through the police file on the case, Gerry Feltus stumbled across a neglected piece of evidence: a statement, given in 1959, by a man who had been on Somerton Beach. There, on the evening that the Unknown Man expired, and walking toward the spot where his body was found, the witness (a police report stated) “saw a man carrying another on his shoulder, near the water’s edge. He could not describe the man.”
At the time, this did not seem that mysterious; the witness assumed he’d seen somebody carrying a drunken friend. Looked at in the cold light of day, though, it raises questions. After all, none of the people who saw a man lying on the seafront earlier had noticed his face. Might he not have been the Unknown Man at all? Might the body found next morning have been the one seen on the stranger’s shoulder? And, if so, might this conceivably suggest this really was a case involving spies—and murder?
Sources
‘Body found on Somerton Beach.’ The Advertiser (Adelaide, SA), December 2, 1948; ‘Somerton beach body mystery.’ The Advertiser, December 4, 1948; ‘Unknown buried.’ Brisbane Courier-Mail, June 15, 1949; GM Feltus. The Unknown Man: A Suspicious Death at Somerton Beach. Privately published: Greenacres, South Australia, 2010; Dorothy Pyatt. “The Somerton Beach body mystery.” South Australia Police Historical Society Hue & Cry, October 2007; Derek Abbott et al. World search for a rare copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Accessed July 4, 2011.
[...] gold-plated puzzler, all right. Confused? I’m afraid you probably still will be even after reading the full article here [...]
Pingback by “Tamám Shud” « A Blast From The Past — August 12, 2011 @ 9:31 pm
That’s absolutely fascinating. Thanks so much for posting it here, Mike.
Comment by Steve Duffy — August 12, 2011 @ 10:05 pm
Obviously a deep cover US secret services CIA agent.
The question one should ask are what was going on in the covert space in Australia at the time. I would start with a thorough going over of all the people in the case, it seems a few may have been likely contacts. The nexus is the book in the car. All lines radiate from that and one of the two individuals is likely involved. The nurse was likely a cover or contact established during the war years.
It may have been an espionage intrigue started during the war years and involving a post war covert operation with threads leading back to the Germans or the Russians.
Comment by lewis — August 12, 2011 @ 10:21 pm
There are a number of errors in the article. Two that spring instantly to mind are:
(i) At the time John Cleland was simply “Professor”, not “Professor Emeritus” as the article says.
(ii) The article suggests that “cyanosis” is a form of poisoning. This is incorrect. Cyanosis is discoloration of the skin that happens to all dead bodies. The Word “cyan” here refers to the blue tinge in the skin and *not* to “cyanide” as suggested by the write of this article.
There are other errors but that will do for now!
Comment by Felicity West — August 12, 2011 @ 10:39 pm
Our source for [i] is Gerry Feltus’s book (p.79), which describes Cleland as ‘Emeritus Professor John Burton Cleland, a legally qualified doctor in the Department of Pathology at the University of Adelaide’. We’d be happy to stand corrected on this if he is in error.
We have fixed [ii] to correct this misapprehension. Thank you for drawing it to our attention.
Comment by Mike Dash — August 12, 2011 @ 10:49 pm
I stand corrected. Mr Feltus is correct. Cleland was Professor until 1948, then became Emeritus in 1949. As he didn’t get onto the case until 1949, he would have been Emeritus at the time. My bad.
The article above doesn’t say who the author is. Is that you Mike?
Comment by Felicity West — August 12, 2011 @ 11:17 pm
The Russian word for “rocket” is buried in that note, if you read it literally using the Cyrillic alphabet and allow the “n” (which looks as much like a “k”) to be a “k.” There are other Slavic-looking words in the note.
Comment by Tim — August 13, 2011 @ 12:39 am
Of the 4 lines of letter code, the latter 2 lines represent
“My Life Is All But Over And I Am Quickly Cold
I Thank The Master That Saves All Men’s Souls That Gather All Below”
It is a red-herring suicide reference to obfuscate a spy murder.
Comment by c. lawrence — August 13, 2011 @ 3:50 am
I’m glad to hear people are still researching this very eerie case.
If anyone is ever brilliant enough to solve it, perhaps they can turn their attention to the Voynich Manuscript.
Comment by Undine — August 13, 2011 @ 12:53 pm
High-heeled shoes do not enhance calve muscles – in fact they make them more slender. Flat-heeled shoes does, and by the way dance shoes are rather flat heeled
Comment by Courtaud — August 13, 2011 @ 3:39 pm
As someone who has been involved with looking into this mystery for some years, and as an Australian, I am pleased to see it receive a mention on your illustrious website. Where, doubtless, some fine minds will contribute further insights. If only Sherlock Holmes had had the Internet!
Soon I will post a link to an Australian dry cleaning and launderers association site. There were laundry marks on the inside pocket of the pair of trousers the Deceased was wearing. Three separate sets of numbers.
All in all, I think Mike Dash should be congratulated most warmly for executing an excellent summary of this bizarre and tantalising case. Well done Mike and thank you. Thanks to the Smithsonian mag blog site too.
Comment by Eeee-vent-you-a-leeee — August 14, 2011 @ 1:08 am
Interesting, given the body’s age was late forties, there is no reference to additional items that could identify the body such as the presence or lack of dental work, scars, old injuries, medical conditions etc. Also not much information on how the body may give clues to the type of work or activities the person did e.g. were the hands rough or smooth, conditions of the nails, was he tanned or not compared to others etc (November is summer in Australia). It is definately a puzzler but it seems more information could have been gleaned when the body was examined.
Comment by Alex Chaplin — August 14, 2011 @ 2:50 am
The lack of detailed description is more a matter of shortage of space than it is of the shortcomings of the South Australia police – this article is already rather longer than we ideally wanted for this site in the days of tl:dr. The Unknown Man did in fact have several scars: three small ones inside the left wrist, one about an inch long inside the left elbow, and one (which might have been a boil mark) on the upper left forearm. His nails were well cared for and there was no sign he had engaged in heavy manual work. His teeth were quite peculiar; he was missing a pair of lateral incisors, and Derek Abbott notes this is an inheritable genetic trait.
Comment by Mike Dash — August 14, 2011 @ 3:24 am
Here is the link to the National Dry Cleaners and Launderers Pty Ltd website and their article on the mysterious laundry marks found on the pocket lining of his trousers:
http://www.nationaldrycleaners.com.au/
Attention Alex: If you go back to the end of Mike Dash’s article above, you will see a couple of links which might answer some of your questions. Failing that the Face Book site most certainly should. Nearly 300 photographs!
Comment by Eeee-vent-you-a-leeee — August 14, 2011 @ 7:38 am
I say the poor fella was an undercover-sort, as well as my fellow-readers seem to think. To add intrigue to an already fascinating, real-life (or should I say ‘real-death’!) mystery, I suggest that the different flavors of cigarettes, his somewhat asymmetrical, good looks (for a dead guy), and the perchance notion he fancied (…and/or sought employment which required the wear of) women’s shoes, shoes of a dancer or entertainer. Perhaps, if an entertainer, the required uniform was complete feminine dress. This would be a good cover for someone dedicated & careful enough to not get caught.
Or suppose he was a regular Joe who preferred women’s dress, was discovered to really be a man? Even in 2011, there are some who are intimidated by those who seem to ‘buck against the norm’. Ahh. The guesses are endless!
Once again Dr. Dash has put to us, his readers,a delicious, irresistible mystery that is worthy of attention. At the very least, some good old-fashioned Hollywood-style attention would be fun, wouldn’t it? Thanks, Mike!
Comment by Maggie S. — August 14, 2011 @ 11:07 pm
Where did the nurse work during WWII? If she was an army nurse maybe she was used by a spy to gain access or information on a military base or a particular patient.
Comment by Les — August 14, 2011 @ 11:07 pm
Jestyn was indeed an army nurse during the war, and then worked in the North Shore Hospital in Sydney, which is where she met Alfred Boxall. By 1948 she was no longer nursing. Derek Abbott has collected a good number of details about her nursing career and his site should be your next port of call.
Comment by Mike Dash — August 14, 2011 @ 11:17 pm
If I’m not mistaken, this case was an inspiration for Stephen King’s novel The Colorado Kid.
Steve O’Rourke, USA
Comment by Steve O'Rourke — August 14, 2011 @ 11:23 pm
Alex, the man appeared to have tanned legs quite high up close to his crotch. The inquest noted that it looked like and old tan that had faded a bit. The man had very soft hands & feet with no callouses. It seems he had a remarkable physique with broad powerful shoulders going down to a narrow waist, and had very high pronounced calf muscles like a ballet dancer. As Mike says, the lateral incisors were missing. But this means that his canines grew next door to his middle teeth, so there are no gaps. Most of his back teeth were missing, but that was normal in those days.
Comment by ArmChairDetective — August 15, 2011 @ 7:32 am
Perhaps I’m seeing the obvious, but it seems to me that the nurse and her husband may have had something to do with it. I could see him being the father of her child, he starts to blackmail her to tell the husband, gets the poison to keep him quiet, husband finds out, confronts the guy, poisons him, takes him to beach to dump body, tells wife to never acknowledge knowing him. Sees him dead, and memories freak her out, but remember to keep quiet. I wonder what the nurse’s husband profession was.
Strong calf muscles are also a sign of a long-time swimmer.
Comment by Marie Deever — August 15, 2011 @ 9:36 pm
wow… very mysterious! i’ll be puzzling over this one for quite some time. be sure to post any updates in the case!
Comment by Kate — August 15, 2011 @ 11:52 pm
@Mike Dash: What do you make of the theory left above?
“My Life Is All But Over And I Am Quickly Cold
I Thank The Master That Saves All Men’s Souls That Gather All Below”
Interesting…
Comment by A. Nonymous — August 16, 2011 @ 1:40 am
Most of those with an interest in this case seem to agree that the letters in the dead man’s Rubaiyat are some sort of initial code. Derek Abbott has used the code as an exercise for University of Adelaide students, who have been tasked with analysing it, with interesting results – see the video summary here (and there’s a much more detailed look, including an impressive collection of primary source material for the mystery that anyone who’s getting really interested in the case should access, on the university website here). But attempting to actually fit words to the code is fraught with difficulty, because it means attempting to put oneself into the mind of a total stranger who lived in quite a different time and place.
My feeling is that it’s possible to get four or five words of what looks like quite good sense this way – I quite like “My life is all but over”, for instance – but that all such attempts get strained over a longer sequence of letters. There’s another quite believable interpretation of the fifth line, which might begin: “It’s time to move to South Australia”, but again it’s hard to continue that promising start without producing an increasingly implausible word sequence.
Comment by Mike Dash — August 16, 2011 @ 8:28 am
Has anybody tried to track the font in the Tamam Shud slip of paper? Looks quite peculiar and might help to find the publisher.
Comment by Courtaud — August 16, 2011 @ 12:51 pm
Developed calf muscles = cyclist or bicycle infantry?
Comment by Marc — August 17, 2011 @ 2:33 am
Surely the police can exhume the body and get some DNA
Comment by Terry — August 17, 2011 @ 3:49 pm
If I am murdered, I hope it is in Australia. These detectives take their investigating seriously!
Comment by cheryl — August 17, 2011 @ 6:25 pm
The font used in the copy of the Rubaiayat looks Celtic. This was a fashionable script not only for books related to Celtic themes, but for books related to Oriental themes.
Comment by Ajlin — August 18, 2011 @ 1:15 am
@Courtaud; @Ajlin
I think the font is meant to look ‘Arabian’ – though in those days there was nothing like the wide variety of types available to us today, so it’s entirely possible it was nothing of the sort. Certainly the type most closely resembles a font called Uncial, which was based on the Irish script of the same name and hence designed to look like handwritten “Celtic” writing – so I think you are correct in your identification.
The type is definitely distinctive and, yes, it can be used to help track down the publisher. Derek Abbott explains how on his Facebook page; to avoid making you go through the hassle of logging on, here’s what he says:
One possible interpretation of this bit of information is that the W&T book was such a cheap paperback edition that the printers didn’t much care what paper stock they printed it on. They may have loaded their machines with whatever scrap or surplus stock they had to hand, so it’s possible the same edition of the book appeared on several quite different grades and colours of paper.
Comment by Mike Dash — August 18, 2011 @ 10:25 am
My first impressions of this case:
* He appears Russian, perhaps Jewish. A Soviet wartime spy?
* Clothing labels removed is SOP for covert operations.
* No ID is also SOP for covert operations.
* Nurse Jestyn was clearly familiar with the deceased and was privy to his identity.
* His Rubaiyat copy appears to be a spy tool, not a genuine book.
* Indecipherable codes written in the Rubaiyat.
With these facts alone, one could conclude that he was a spy possibly seeking to re-connect with his old contact (Jestyn) for unknown reasons. He was promptly liquidated in the process by someone in government intelligence with access to rare poisons which would hide their crime.
Just my take!
Comment by Spuchy — August 18, 2011 @ 5:08 pm
This is a truly fascinating case and made for a great read. Thanks so much for posting it.
Re: comment 27 made by cheryl
They really went to great lengths, didn’t they? As I read along I couldn’t help but wonder why. An anonymous corpse on the beach is undoubtedly an intriguing mystery, but when you imagine the time and resources that went into solving this particular case to no avail… it strikes me as strange that they would have gone to all the trouble. Slow crime day? Astoundingly curious detectives? Does anyone have any insight on this?
Comment by Taryn — August 18, 2011 @ 7:39 pm
Indeed, very captivating.
Comment by MCayrow — August 18, 2011 @ 8:20 pm
Twins.
Comment by Joe — August 18, 2011 @ 10:17 pm
I don’t think it is possible to assume any ethnicity from this man’s looks, other than that he is white. His ancestry could be anything from the Baltic to the British Isles (though not very Mediterranean). He’s got the remains of a pasty in his stomach – a meat pie probably bought from a vendor at the beach. That implies he went there to meet someone. After all, he isn’t exactly dressed for the beach, so perhaps the meeting was decided on at the spur of the moment, otherwise he might have been more inconspicuously dressed. Again, the inappropriate clothing would make him more visible to a contact.
He is seen moving earlier – but this isn’t verifiable. Let’s say he was conscious as he fell ill – if he was a native, it would have been natural to seek help. If he was there under suspicious circumstances, and he would have known that he was, then he would not have wanted to draw attention to himself until he had seen his contact or accomplished his mission. Then he might have tried to get help for himself. However if he spoke another language, he would be giving himself away.
The evidence of the “dancer” legs – why did someone think dancer rather than bicyclist or other sport? What else develops the legs more than other body parts? Scottish dancing? Cossack dancing? Horseback riding? Running up and down stairs on a ship? Are there healed injuries which could point to something? Why are his scars not mentioned?
Who hears about him? Does his death send a message? The noting of repairs to a coat looking like “American” type stitches is probably a red herring, because where did all the garment workers (mostly) come from in the US, the kind of tailor who might repair a coat in those days? From the Baltic areas and the Pale of Settlement. You’re not going to have distinctly “American” stitching in an industry dominated by people from Prussia, Poland — so the coat repairs could still be Russian.
A lot of emigration to Australia in those days, wasn’t there? That it might be a solitary man without family would not be impossible. Why is it that we are led to think of him as a spy rather than a smuggler? How do you distinguish between them in their tradecraft? What if what he had on him got stolen and he was killed? Is the suitcase really his? Unless you break down all the evidence and check for the biases of the investigators at the time, and their knowledge of their world, adding your own updated knowledge, it will be impossible to get a sense of who he was. When the Soviet Union first fell, it was learned that Julius Rosenberg really was a spy. Maybe someone knows this guy too. Unless he was a smuggler, dealing in diamonds or something, and got burned by his contact.
Comment by musings — August 19, 2011 @ 5:06 am
This article was brought to my attention by one of my blog regulars who reads a lot of esoteric stuff (but its nothing to do with my blog so I won’t link it). He knows I’m Australian so wondered if I know anything about it.
Just spent a few hours reading and watching some YouTube links someone cited and any related links. This one from the ABC’s Stateline mentions getting DNA evidence and being able to determine his likely surname from their DNA database. They also had a professor mention his unusual ears, which may or may not go along with his unusual teeth.
I don’t have a facebook account so I could access that link but I do have some further questions.
1) Given his ears and teeth, are those features specific to certain types of Europeans or just a random genetic deformity that appears from time to time across European people?
2) The suitcase issue struck me as odd. The photo above is in colour, so it must have been taken well after it was found but the Stateline report mentions it had been lost or destroyed. How did they determine that it was his? By fingerprints? If so, did they find any other fingerprints (apart from their own)?
3) Do they still have the cigarettes or were they ever tested for toxicology?
4) The Glenelg book: was the torn strip of paper with Tamam Shud on it actually from that book found in the car? The article just says it must have come from somewhere else.
Was the book fingerprinted? Why did the police assume that the number was a phone number and that it was a local one? It did turn out to appear to be a correct assumption, but was it really?
Why did it take so long to determine the publisher? Surely the book had an imprint that would have listed those details. Unless it was a book used by spies.
5) Jestyn’s neighbours: were they questioned? Did they identify the man from his photograph? Did they mention any characteristic features like an accent, etc.?
6) Jestyn’s husband: what did he do? Could he also have worked in intelligence?
7) If the cipher for the code letters is a first letter one, then the existence of the Q is extremely valuable since it is so rare. Few English words begin with Q. However, I agree with “c. lawrence” that it is irrelevant.
Comment by Gary Rumain — August 19, 2011 @ 5:06 am
@ Taryn: Adelaide is a small town (although it is the capital of South Australia). Apart from the Beaumont children disappearance (1966), I am unaware of any major crime issues in Adelaide until the Snowtown murders. So you can assume that the police did have a lot of spare time to spend on this.
Comment by Gary Rumain — August 19, 2011 @ 5:14 am
Some of my questions appear to be answered by this Wiki page. The piece of paper was from the book.
Comment by Gary Rumain — August 19, 2011 @ 6:46 am
@ Musings: A pasty isn’t a meat pie but similar to a Cornish pastry. Contains mince meat but not gravy as a pie would. The shape is entirely different too.
The clothes he wore would have been normal street clothes for the time. Perhaps for a salesman or a businessman. Or someone going to church or to see someone relatively important.
If he was Australian, I would guess sport for his legs. Cricket or rugby being the most likely. He probably wasn’t tall enough for Aussie Rules (but you never know). However, they drew a lot of attention to the calves, like they were unusually developed.
Note that the coat mentioned wasn’t repaired. See the Wiki link I cited previously. It says it was made with that style of feather stitching that could only be machine made in the US at the time.
I don’t think he was an immigrant. If he was, his English would have been quite poor and people he dealt with would have noticed that and mentioned it to the police but there seems to be no notes about it. I would guess he was a native English speaker, so went about his business unnoticed.
Even if he had an American accent, that would have been unusual and noticed too.
The suitcase puzzles me. Was it his or a plant by someone who murdered him? It could be a red herring. The only connection is the orange thread (unless there was a fingerprint match).
The remarks are that a merchant seaman of third officer rank might possess those items. Was this ever confirmed by the police by asking one? The modified knife is unusual so its purpose might be a clue.
Comment by Gary Rumain — August 19, 2011 @ 9:56 am
A quick round-up to answer some of the questions posed that haven’t already been dealt with in this comments thread:
@ Marie Deever. Gerry Feltus refers to Jestyn’s husband as “Prestige Johnson” without explaining why he chose that very unusual first name for the pseudonym. One imagines there was a reason.
“Prestige” does not seem to have had one particular job and had some links with the criminal world. Derek Abbott’s information notes:
Abbott also notes that Prestige may have had some involvement in the housing crisis that hit post-war Australia, which would imply he dabbled in property development. He’s also known to have had links with the town of Broken Hill, and here Abbott notes:
@ Terry. So far no DNA analysis has been done. The embalming fluid used to preserve the dead man’s body would apparently have damaged the DNA in his cells, but there are two other possible sources: his bones and teeth ought still to yield a match, and there are also some ginger-coloured hairs embedded in the plaster bust taken of his torso. The hair roots would also be potential sources of a good DNA sample.
Recently a third party (presumably an amateur investigator, though we don’t know this for sure) made an application to exhume the body which was denied – only an application from a family member, I think, would be received sympathetically, though most likely the man’s family don’t realise there’s a mystery to be solved. There’s also the problem that even if the Australian police could be persuaded to match the DNA to their database, Somerton Man may not have been Australian at all…
Of course, today it’s possible to do far more than was the case in the 1940s and one thing that is now often used by archaeologists is a tooth analysis that can show where the person concerned was brought up. This is done by measuring the ratio of strontium and oxygen isotopes found in tooth enamel. The ratio of these isotopes, compared with the ratio of found in drinking water in various regions, can help determine where an individual lived when their teeth were forming during childhood. I’ve seen this used in British digs where skeletons have been traced back to origins in Germany and Scandinavia, so if the remains ever are exhumed, it would be fascinating to have a strontium/oxygen isotope analysis performed.
@ Spunchy. There is an alternate theory to explain why all the clothing labels were missing: perhaps Somerton Man was an indigent who purchased his clothing from charity stores. I have no idea if such shops routinely removed clothing labels, but it would square with him being found penniless – he had no money on him, and the police found only sixpence in his suitcase.
@ Musings. The identification of Somerton Man with the suitcase was indeed made because of the thread. This, incidentally, was a waxed orange Barbour thread which was not available in Australia – another intriguing clue. Its rarity, plus the fact that the suitcase was deposited in Adelaide station on 30 November, the date SM appeared in Glenelg carrying tickets that showed he had travelled from Adelaide, makes it almost certain the two were connected.
@ Gary Rumain. There is quite a long list of things one would have thought the SA police would have tried, and showing the neighbours photographs of SM and fingerprinting the book and the suitcase are high among them, but if they did any of those things, I’ve found no trace of the results. I think we can assume that some questions were asked about the possible link between SM and the sea, but with so many ports and so many ships (especially in the aftermath of WWII) it’s highly unlikely these were at all exhaustive.
Derek Abbott says that only 1-2% of the population share the ear type displayed by both SM and Jestyn’s son – which is that the usually smaller upper cavity of the ear is larger than the lower one. If the son also shared the lack of lateral incisors (which Abbott says he did), the chances of a link between SM and the child must be pretty high.
Since 1948 the police have unfortunately destroyed the physical evidence in the case, including the suitcase and the cigarettes, so it’s not possible to conduct further tests on them.
Comment by Mike Dash — August 19, 2011 @ 10:46 am
More on the case and its contents. It had been checked into the Adelaide station cloakroom after 11:00am on 30 November 1948. He would have had a check for this but obviously it wasn’t discovered by the police or they would have found the suitcase before railway staff notified them.
Did he throw the check away or was it taken by someone else? He also possessed no money by which he could return to the city. So he was either robbed or he planned not to return (i.e. suicide).
The suitcase contained a size seven red felt pair of slippers. These are too small for his height. Since he’s about my height, he should fit a size 9 or 9 and a half shoe (Aust. shoe sizes).
Were the other clothing items in the suitcase in his size?
Jetsyn’s son was born in 1947. One year before the Somerton Beach man died. Jetsyn died in 2007 and her son in 2009. Since both her son and the Somerton Beach man both had anodontia, there is a strong chance they are related. He could be the father or a relative.
According to the Wiki page’s timeline, there are some odd coincidences happening in a specific area of Sydney around the time Jetsyn was there.
Here is a link of Mosman on Google Maps http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=-33.832708,151.236548&spn=0.035185,0.052528&t=h&z=15&vpsrc=6
The Royal North Shore Hospital at St. Leonards (or Gore Hill) is to the west of Mosman. Since its very unlikely Jetsyn owned a car, she would have had to have traveled by bus to get there. Either the 143 or 144 (assuming Sydney buses haven’t changed their route numbers). Both bus routes run via the hospital onto Mosman.
I’m puzzled what Boxall would be doing there. He lived to the south (other side of Sydney Harbour) and was in the army at the time. There are navel installations near Mosman but I’m not aware of any army ones.
It also says the phone number traced to Jetsyn was unlisted. Why? In whose name was the phone account? If Telstra has kept the old PMG records, the account name might be traced (assuming the number is known).
Lastly, look closely at this larger image of the code http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/SomertonManCode.jpg The first letter on the last line doesn’t really look like an I or a letter at all. Its more like some vertical highlighting. Plus its spaced from the other letters. So the line might really begin TTMTS.
There’s some argument over the first letter of the first and second lines. It looks to me like a W that’s been changed to look like an M. Very odd.
I would like to see the phone number. There’s a chance the first two digits are represented as letters (very common at the time). Do they match the letters in the code?
I can’t say if it was his handwriting but was he a left or a right hander? (A small callous on the inner side of the first joint of the middle finger would indicate which hand he used if this was noted in the autopsy) That still doesn’t prove anything but if the note was in a certain hand and that doesn’t match the victim’s then we at least know its not his handwriting.
Comment by Gary Rumain — August 19, 2011 @ 10:49 am
Mike, thank you for your response. I’ve had some more ideas.
The Wiki page states that after the war Jestyn had moved to Melbourne and married. It doesn’t say when or to whom. Since her son was born in 1947 and she remarried in 1950 (the timeline just says she married), was this to a different man?
Records should reveal the marriage details of the first husband. The name of the father of Jestyn’s son should also be on his birth certificate. This may provide some further clues.
I suspect that SM may have been Australian and from either Melbourne or Sydney. Checking the names on the above certificates may help – especially if the person or persons on them cannot be traced further. I’m basing this on a presumed relationship beyween SM and Jestyn.
Comment by Gary Rumain — August 19, 2011 @ 12:38 pm
Gary – Thanks for your comments. I had in mind a Cornish pasty actually, such I have bought in London. I might have called it a pie, but that’s just my American slang for a folded-over pastry such as children used to get in their lunchboxes filled with cherry and such, but not open and dripping. Also popularly called tarts, even though not open either.
I was thinking about something from a street vendor like those Indian samosas.
I see where you are going with the feather stitching – machine made.
He needn’t have spoken much. But when he did, his English might have been just fine no matter what his origins. This is the post-war/ cold war period. In a few years, there will the trial of Rosenbergs; Julius had a file in the Soviet Union – he really was working for them, as was (I believe this is the relationship) his wife’s brother. So that pair really were spies, and not just set up for propaganda purposes. Considering the later story also of Claus Fuchs and the spies in Britain (of course these were elite people), you could have some people who went to Russia from English speaking countries and who returned as spies, people of such low status that they caused little mention.
There is something really too coincidental to be ignored here: the nurse’s phone number being found in the book and then her self-serving declaration that she really did give the book to someone and his name (who conveniently had the book). How long would it take for her to backfill this story? She could put the cover-up into motion as soon as she was connected and use a Boxall to help her. Because that first book really did lead to her, nicknamed “Jestyn”.
All the stuff about his possibly being her child’s father – when was the child born? And isn’t it true that spies and smugglers reproduce just like anyone else? But the book contained cyphers, and that does not seem to involve a soap opera with returning lovers, but something else.
Comment by musings — August 19, 2011 @ 4:55 pm
The key to this mystery is the other man who died in connection with a copy of the Rubiyat. The so-called 7th edition did not exist. What are the odds of two men dying with the same book figuring in the case? I’d say pretty long. Jestyn did not ‘almost faint’ because the unknown man was a lost lover. She was fearful of being exposed as a spy and investigation of the dead man would eventually lead back to her. An investigation of the Jewish man from Singapore will eventually reveal the identity of the John Doe.
Comment by Zeek Wolfe — August 19, 2011 @ 8:38 pm
Musings, about the pasty, Australia never had a very strong tradition of street vendors. We did have a few pie carts (very rare though). It was more likely SM bought it from a pie shop or cake shop. Or at a pub. Trouble was, none of these places would have been open much past 6pm in those days. Odd that the coroner didn’t realise that and more correctly estimated the time of death. Instead of 2am it would have been 9pm (he estimated that the pasty was eaten at 10 or 11pm. This means it was either cold or he got it wrong. If we assume SM ate it at 6pm, then 9pm the previous night makes more sense).
I have an American friend living near me. He once told me a story about when he first immigrated to Australia in the 1970s and worked in a country town outback at the time. He mentioned how locals got all excited about him and his accent as they’d never met an American in real life. So an American in Adelaide in 1948 would have really stood out. If he’d spoken to Jestyn’s neighbours, they would have notice the accent. I’ve had the same experiences in the US and Canada in the past decade. Not some much in the big cities but in smaller towns, my accent got noticed.
So my guess is he was either Australian, British or from New Zealand (less likely) rather than the US or Canada.
The contents of the suitcase suggest the merchant marine, which would explain where he bought the coat and thread. However, his clothes and physical characteristics suggest he was more upper class.
The missing clothing labels is a real mystery but it doesn’t automatically mean he was a spy. That would be too much of a giveaway. If he was murdered, the murderer could have removed them to prevent identification. Remember, a lot of the clues may be red herrings.
There are also clues in what wasn’t found – money, wallet, luggage check. Did he dispose of these? Or were they removed by someone else?
The Wiki page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taman_Shud_Case gives us some more details. Enough for me to guess that Jestyn’s son is somehow related to SM. I thought of using ancestry.com http://search.ancestry.com.au/search/category.aspx?cat=34 to search records. Assuming the name isn’t required, her places of birth and death and the years might be enough to find a match or two. And the son’s birth and death years will help narrow that down further. I’m assuming the father’s name is recorded and its not her second husband’s name or Boxall’s name.
Jestyn’s handwriting (allegedly) is in Boxall’s copy (I wonder if it still exists?) so that could be matched to the photos of the handwriting in the other copy. But I suspect the handwriting in that copy is SM’s. I suspect he got or was given her number and he wrote it down in the book she once gave him.
Don’t forget that the book was very rare. The police at the time couldn’t even find a copy to compare against. So the chances Boxall could find one would have been remote. However, Jestyn could have had a copy she could have sent to him.
Comment by Gary Rumain — August 20, 2011 @ 2:03 am
Gary,
There were Army bases in Mosman. Georges Heights and Middle Head was one until only very recently. Primarily an artillery position for the defense of Sydney Harbour and sometime hospital.
In the 1940s, the buses would more likely to have been trams.
Comment by Rick — August 20, 2011 @ 3:56 am
The suggestions that the man was a foreigner ignores a few facts about Australia at the time.
The first shipload of post War migrants arrived in Australia in November 1947. They were (generally) young men (av age 24) and their whereabouts were very strictly monitored (my father, who was on that first ship, had to report on a regular basis to the local police station – it is still possible to trace his movements around Australia through these records).
Foreignors were so noticeable that my father reported people following him down the street.
Migrant communities also tended – as a result – to be fairly tight knit. Again, although my father travelled far more widely than most, and to some extent ‘rejected’ the migrant community, if he didn’t make contact in some way regularly they would ask the police to look for him.
Given that someone who was noticeably foreign stood out in this way, you wouldn’t use anyone who had a foreign appearance as a spy, either.
So, if he was a migrant, he was pre WWII one – which would have meant, I would have thought, that he was highly visible in his own community.
Anonymity suggests someone who blended in with the crowd.
Comment by mehitabel — August 20, 2011 @ 5:08 am
I suspect Jestyn may have been a classic honey trap, one whose relationship may have resulted in a child in the year prior. For whatever reason, Somerton Man gets left out in the cold with a burn notice. After not finding Jestyn at her house during the day, it would have been easy for Jestyn and her handlers to have arranged a rendevous at the beach that fateful evening. He dresses in his best suit expecting to have an amorous seaside reunion, only to be met by a man who will eventually poison him. Tragedy in its purest Greek form.
Comment by Slim Pickens — August 20, 2011 @ 12:30 pm
Another thought… The wedge shaped toes, large calf muscles, and legs of an athlete could be the result of extensive use of swim fins, which are uncomfortable even today. Imagine how they must have hurt your feet when crudely made with 1940s rubber and less sophisticated manufacturing. Maybe he’s just an abalone diver, or Perhaps it’s another indication of sophisticated training?
Comment by Slim Pickens — August 20, 2011 @ 12:42 pm
There’s a couple of things that have my attention. Catching a tram from the city to the beach to commit suicide seems very unusual and very public. Give it’s November, there’s a good chance alot of people would have been on the beach at the time. Glenelg was Adelaides closest and most popular destination for beach goers and well connected by the tram (about a 10 minute ride).
Further, the handwritten letters appear to be written by different writers or by somebody not well practiced in written English. Or they could be written with the non-dominant hand. If you look at the ‘A’ for example, it is barely consistent. I’m no expert however – just an observer. The ‘W’ also appears awkwardly written and the stroke weights (or maybe the degrees of pressure applied to the page) appear to vary.
I’m an Adelaide resident having lived here 35 years. I’d only once heard of this case before. I have a friend who is a handwriting analyst at a local forensic laboratory and will forward this to her to see if she can shed any more light.
Comment by Phil — August 20, 2011 @ 1:06 pm
Rick, good points about the trams and the army positions. But I don’t think these were bases as such. Just defensive artillery positions. I was trying to figure out how Jestyn would have met Boxall. He worked for Sydney Buses at Randwick before and after the war. I guess since there’s no obvious connection, they must have met via a social event or via friends.
Slim, would SM really have risked going to her home, which she shared with another man, for that? I think it unlikely. Wanting to see the child is more plausible.
Good point about the flippers. They still hurt my feet even today. But I doubt that they would have caused the pointed feet. That would have to form over a long period from childhood. The Wike page mentions his legs were tanned right up to the top – which is unusual because swimwear of the time wasn’t that high cut I think. When did Speedos first make it on the scene? Alternately, the feet may have been another artifact of his genetic deformity.
Australians have wider feet than most. This is due to wearing thongs (called flip flops in the US) and sandals in the long summer climate here – starting from childhood. I still recall an American lecturer at uni complaining about not being able to find narrow shoes to fit him. He was from New York. I remember having a brief discussion about this and finding out he’d never worn sandals as a child. So this fact may suggest that SM came from a cooler climate like the UK or the US.
Phil, one of my blog regulars, also from Adelaide cited this http://www.salife7.com.au/adelaide/places/historical/lost-suburbs The video on the page mentions lost suburbs and notes that North Glenelg used to be called St Leonards. Which, coincidentally, is the same suburb name in Sydney where Jestyn lived previously.
Use this image of the handwriting http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/SomertonManCode.jpg as its larger and clearer. Following your observations, the two Gs are also different, there are 4 different styles of B, the O of the Q doesn’t look like the other Os, and the two Ss are different (one has serifs and the other a stroke through it). The only consistent letters are O and T.
However, there is another explanation for all this. The Wiki page says that they were “faint pencil markings” but the image doesn’t appear faint. Perhaps someone traced over the letters to bring them up.
Comment by Gary Rumain — August 20, 2011 @ 3:48 pm
Thanks guys, you have made the comments suction as interesting as the article itself.
Comment by MCayrow — August 21, 2011 @ 5:00 am
I relented and joined facebook so I could see their photos. This one of the handwriting is markedly different http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=145551478846063&set=o.92730912666&type=1&theater
I don’t know where the extra details have come from as none of them are even remotely visible on the Wiki copy. (Disregard the greenish colour. I attribution that to the software that was used to add the highlighting circles)
No previous comments mention the GPO BOX number.
Also, it turns out Jestyn met Boxall in hospital, according to this http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150451284330026&set=o.92730912666&type=1&theater
Interesting graph and notes about circumcision http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150169262342926&set=o.92730912666&type=1&theater
Comment by Gary Rumain — August 21, 2011 @ 6:21 pm
One further resource:
An Australian librarian looks at the evidence. Lots of data mining leading to useful links. Includes Deep Web search results and the rather fascinating discovery that the word “Omar” appeared as a solution to a crossword clue in the Melbourne Argus no less than 11 times in 1948 – but not at all in any other newspaper. The final appearance of the word came exactly one month before Somerton Man’s body was found, but it began to appear again in 1949.
Of course this is highly reminiscent of the panic that took place in 1944 when it was discovered that several of the key code words devised to conceal aspects of the planning for the D-Day landings had begun appearing as solutions to clues in the Daily Telegraph‘s cryptic crossword.
Comment by Mike Dash — August 21, 2011 @ 7:03 pm
In the article it says that the unknown man may have been poisoned by an extremely rare poison that was also used to treat heart disease, and that it could be obtained at a pharmacy. Jestyn was a nurse. Is it possible that Jestyn her self could have procured the poison and given it to the unknown man? Even if she wasn’t a nurse at the time the man died, she may have been able to convince someone she knew to give her the doses she needed. Are there local pharmacy records available for the time that show a prescription for one of these poisons, or perhaps a quantity that went missing? If so could these be traced back to Jestyn?
Comment by angry_hippie — August 21, 2011 @ 8:01 pm
Mike Dash,
Thanks for linking to my blog article on the Taman Shud case. I just wanted to add two things:
1. I found the word ‘Omar’in the Argus crossword on 11 occasions in 1948. I want to stress that this is not really a clue that relates to the Taman Shud case, it just seems to be an interesting anomaly, but it was too interesting not to add to the article I wrote. I might put up a post at the Trove.nla.gov.au forums to ask if anyone there can explain it, but I can’t see any actual link to the case myself. As I indicated in my blog, I think the crossword developer was merely using the ‘Rubaiyat’ reference because it was in popular culture at the time (e.g. Gregory Peck used it in a film released in 1946, and Agatha Christie used it for the title of a book in 1942). My interest in writing about it was just to see if anyone who works as an indexer could possibly find something interesting in the digitised newspapers – i.e. could there be clues hiding in plain sight?
2. If anyone is interested in looking at some of the original articles on this in the digitised newspapers, many have been tagged with ‘Taman Shud’. It is also useful to look more widely at some of the stories in the papers at that time. There were daily Cold War stories from China, Europe, and Australia, and although we are fairly removed from it all today, it is easy to see from the papers that there was a real sense of crisis in 1948.
I don’t actually have a theory but sometimes the most simple explanation is the best. It seems unusual to me that if there was some sort of espionage involved that the man’s body would be left on the beach for the police to find.
Finally, the comments section here is a great resource for researchers, and very interesting to read. Although it is interesting to speculate, it is also important to remain respectful of the people involved.
Thanks everyone for posting.
Comment by A Searching Librarian — August 21, 2011 @ 11:17 pm
Interestingly, some short while,(a few months,) after the appearance of the body of Somerton Man on the beach, 11 spies were uncovered in the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs. Could of course be co-incidental I suppose.
As one respondent pointed out, there are also apparently some issues surrounding the book found in the car and the shape of the piece of paper torn from that book.
Great Post Mike and others who have contributed. Could be that the investigation is getting close to a conclusion.
Comment by Piper B — August 22, 2011 @ 3:33 am
The most obvious problem with the slip of paper and the torn page in the book is that their shapes do not match – yet the police (in the shape of Len Brown, a former detective on the case) stated that they did.
Derek Abbott’s site has a photo of the last two pages of what is supposed to be the Glenelg Rubaiyat showing a very large tear on the final page which has removed the words “Tamán Shud”. Again, you need to join the Facebook group he runs to view this. Professor Abbott comments:
Comment by Mike Dash — August 22, 2011 @ 9:13 am
@ gary rumain #40 above. re bus routes 143 & 144, RNSH to
Mosman. Less than unlikely. In the 1940s she would have
used the very excellent electric tram (stretcar) service,
possibly door-to-door direct, or with just one change of
lines at Crowsnest. They started ripping out the trams in
the mid 50s, replacing them with buses.
Comment by Kit Pricha – August 22, 2011 @
Comment by kit pricha — August 22, 2011 @ 9:23 am
@ Phil. The suicide theory is plainly less complicated and more believable than the spy theory, but it does have wrinkles of its own. The evidence seems to suggest that Somerton Man went to some lengths to conceal his identity before he died, but if we assume he planned to kill himself, we have to explain why he left his suitcase at the cloakroom at Adelaide station. Taking that action suggests he expected to return for it, yet the suitcase, like his body, seems to have been stripped of leads.
While it’s conceivable someone making preparations for suicide might strip his possessions of clues to his identity, doing the same to the suitcase and its contents prior to travelling makes no obvious sense if we take the “path of least resistance,” which is to assume that SM checked in his case expecting to return to it, went to find Jestyn to talk about their relationship and/or son, and as a result of that discussion spontaneously decided to kill himself.
There are certain bits of evidence that support the idea that the suicide was an impulsive decision – for example the lack of any cash, or means of getting cash, on SM’s body. He did travel with the money to return to Adelaide, though, since he apparently had enough to buy a pasty. To spend the cash you were planning to use to return to the railway station is a pretty final sort of thing to do. (Not that Glenelg was so far from Adelaide the distance couldn’t have been walked.)
I suppose we could modify the theory slightly and presume that SM had a pretty good idea that the meeting would not go well, and hence decided in advance to provide himself with the means to commit suicide in case it did not. You would have to assume some sort of thought process of that sort would have had to have gone on for him to have been carrying a rare poison such as digitalis or strophanthin with him.
But leaving the case implies there was also a good chance of his returning for it, in which case effectively vandalising his own possessions was a slightly strange thing to do.
Perhaps he got to Adelaide in a very depressed frame of mind, fully intending suicide, and leaving the case at the cloakroom was simply the easiest thing to do – easier than finding somewhere to dispose of it? That would tie in with the fact that the ticket he would have been issued for it was not on his body – he just threw it away.
But then again, the evidence of the two tickets to Glenelg in his pocket (one for a train, which he missed, and one for a tram, which he caught) has been used to suggest that between arriving at Adelaide and leaving for Glenelg, SM visited the local municipal baths to wash and shave. Someone capable of being that precise and proud of his appearance (see also the brightly polished shoes) doesn’t sound like someone depressed enough to dump a suitcase in the first convenient spot.
This just isn’t a case with any easy answers. Perhaps the real question is how much we’re all overthinking it. Most obviously, a lot of the mystery stems from the assumption that all the actions that led up to SM’s death were rational, intended and planned. But what if some of them were irrational, suicidal or mad?
Comment by Mike Dash — August 22, 2011 @ 9:43 am
[...] This is another brain-tickler, in unsolved criminal history. A man is found dead on a beach and no one can account for him or how he died. The more details that were found out, the more perplexing the case became! Read this excellent synopsis from the Smithsonian’s “Imperfect History” blog by click here. [...]
Pingback by Brush off the Dust Best of the Web, 8/14-8/19/11 | Brush off the dust! History now! — August 22, 2011 @ 5:04 pm
[...] while scanning through Smithsonian.com as a subscriber of their newsletters. The story is entitled Past Imperfect – The Body on Somerton Beach and the comments are as captivating as the article [...]
Pingback by A Real Mystery "Down Under" with "Casablanca" Intrique | Stephen A. Dowell's Blog — August 25, 2011 @ 12:34 am
There is always the possibility that he had his wallet on him when he went to the beach, and that it was taken by some passing opportunist when he was dead or dying.
Is there any possibility that cause of death was incorrect?
If he was wearing someone else’s clothes from a charity shop the scrap of paper could have already been in the pocket?
Comment by Suzanne — August 28, 2011 @ 3:05 am
Suzanne: The first minute I read your suggestion, the slip might have been in the second-hand clothes all the time, I got excited, and thought”Wow!”. Good point.
Then I gave it some more thought and thought, hey, didn’t they find a book in a street nearby with the slip torn out? Unless the Dead Man or whoever also picked up the book in a Second Hand shop at the same time as the clothes and later threw it away. But that still leaves the slip of paper dangling.
Nice distilation of questions and crystalised answers Mike Dash.Thanks.
Comment by Eeee-vent-you-a-leeee — August 31, 2011 @ 11:41 pm
Personally it seems like a dry n cut case. You have a man that goes to try and see his kid and it has already been stated that Jestyns new husband was into the criminal thing. Maybe the husband and wife plotted to kill SM to prevent the son from knowing the truth about his father. Maybe they stripped him of his identity. Jestyn was a nurse so it wasnt like she didnt have access to the drugs. But thats my theory!!!
Comment by katval — September 1, 2011 @ 6:51 pm
The librarian writes, “It seems unusual to me that if there was some sort of espionage involved that the man’s body would be left on the beach for the police to find.” This is the point that jumped out at me. Why would one or more murderers take such elaborate precautions to obscure the victim’s identity — and then leave his intact body in a public place? Even if he was a deep-cover agent of some kind, there would have had to have been many people fully capable of recognizing him.
Comment by Ken D. — September 3, 2011 @ 10:14 pm
Hi guys For all of those who find this story fascinating you should get a copy of Gerry Feltus’s book “the unknown man” It is an invaluable source of material and gives a great in site into the lives of everyday Australians before and after the war. It is a good read. I don’t think you can get it in book shops outside of Australia, but Gerry posted mine and signed the copy. It was a nice touch. He is an ex detective with vast knowledge on this case. He does not reveal the identities of jestyns family, as his previous occupation would not allow this and to protect the living families privacy. The gentlemanly thing to do.
The web site for Gerry is http://www.theunknownman.com Their are a number of links.
Comment by Jon perry — September 4, 2011 @ 3:20 am
I can’t resist commenting, as I grew up in Adelaide very close to Somerton Beach and my family occassionally discussed this case. It’s great to see it get some attention as I would love to see it solved one day!
Yes, Adelaide is a small-ish capital city but has an unusually high ratio of weird crimes and murders to its dubious credit. The Beaumont Children’s disappearance is the most famous until Snowtown in the late 1990s – but there are many more stories out there. Disappearances were frequent as I grew up in the 70s/80s (see Truro Murders, Richard Kelvin, and the so-called Family paedophile ring).
Adelaide’s provincialism, especially back then, also goes some way to explaining why we “want” this to be a spy murder, it’s much more exciting than a routine gay-related or otherwise domestic crime. It would be highly unusual for something of an espionage nature to occur in Adelaide, a city in the southern centre of Australia ringed by desert but a long way from the government and business centres of Canberra and Sydney. Unless, as someone noted it earlier, it could have been related to British nuclear testing at Maralinga, or a hangover from the War.
On a technical point, I had always heard that the key or ticket to the locker containing the suitcase was found on the man’s body, so there was more than the orange thread to link it to him. The City (where the locker was, at the central Railway station) is 8kms from Glenelg. The tram takes you straight from the centre of the city to Glenelg beach, and its about a 15 minute walk along the sand to Somerton.
I have to agree though that the elaborae activities used to remove labels from his clothes and posessions points to something unusual. Fascinating!
Comment by Ginger Sydney — September 5, 2011 @ 12:06 am
[...] The body on Somerton Beach still makes for an awesome mystery. [...]
Pingback by Hire Jim Essian - Friday Roundup: The “Fantasy Football” Edition — September 7, 2011 @ 5:22 pm
Yes Ginger, Adelaide did have its share of bizarre murders and disappearances. There was an impression Adelaide should have been more “respectable” than other Australian cities, because they didn’t adopt the system of importing British convicts to do the hard work. Other colonies did. As for Adelaide people needing to fantasize about the Somerton Man being a spy because it would be more “exciting” than say, gay-related crimes, maybe….But…The very year of the Somerton Mystery (back in February actually)Britain’s MI5 spy agency sent two senior members to Australia to reveal to Prime Minister Chifley that the US and Britain had broken Russian KGB codes, and there was clear evidence of a spy ring in Australia.This was Top Secret, and not revealed even when the U.S. broke off sharing atomic secrets with Britain because of Australia’s bad security record!That was from 1947. When the next big KGB defector gave evidence in Australia in 1954, he said he did not know what Russian Army Intelligence (GRU) agents had been up to in Australia, but Woomera, rockets and uranium (all in South Australia) would certainly have been top priority.The GRU had some very experienced agents in Australia through the 1940′s and 1950′s.
Comment by Eeee-vent-you-a-leeee — September 7, 2011 @ 8:05 pm
There was a case in Sydney (where I live) a couple of decades ago where a young man’s body was left on the side of a road, near the airport. Despite the publicity nobody identified him but science having advanced somewhat since 1948, they were able to prove that a metal plate in his leg (from an operation on a broken bone) came from a particular area in one of the eastern bloc countries (I forget which). He remained unidentified but police at the time concluded that it was an organised crime ring killing and the man was left in a conspicuous position as a message to certain others. This case reminds me a great deal of that one – you’d assume that the killer(s) could hide the body quite easily if they had wanted to. The book also seems to be a clue to others out there who know what it means.
Comment by Alexwill2 — September 8, 2011 @ 1:56 am
Our man did not have callous on either hands or feet and very smooth skin so I am leaning towards regular access to chlorine water or in other words, a pool. I mentioned this case with link on my blog so my readers (predominantly USA, Canada and UK) get to read about this fascinating Australian case.
Comment by Vidster — September 12, 2011 @ 5:13 pm
I think there is something wrong with the Dead Mans suitcase belongings.He was neat,shaved, combs,chewing gum, fingernails clean. But in his suitcase, his clothes had tears, looked like they’d been worn and not washed. Pencils and tools all looked old and not looked after. Smooth-hand guy with tradesmans things, like cut down knife, screwdriver, scissors, brush. Don’t add up.Fit guy at the beach, dressed for a funeral.
Comment by Eeee-vent-you-a-leeee — September 20, 2011 @ 2:05 am
Anodontia of the lateral incisors almost never occurs in isolation, but rather as one symptom of a broader syndrome. For example, Waardenburg’s Syndrome could account for the missing incisors, the unusual pupils noted by the coroner, the light ginger hair colouring and possibly the shape of the ears. Waardenburg’s would also indicate the possibility that he had a degree of hearing deficit. I’m not aware of a syndrome that would also account for enlarged calf muscles and pointed toes; it’s emtirely likely that these are acquired traits.
Just my two cent’s worth.
Comment by Bruce — September 21, 2011 @ 2:43 pm
From observing dead man’s photo & related comments:
a) Heavy Slavic features, Russia/Polish.
b) Items found in case were placed to confuse investigators of victim’s identity.
c) Lack of violent evidence on body, leads me to suspect
untraced poison, i.e. [digitalis] in stomach contents cleverly prepared by someone with medical knowledge/background.
d) Resulting in FATAL heart attack!
Thank you.
Comment by Leila Singh — September 21, 2011 @ 2:45 pm
What a fascinating article – and a fascinating debate :) I thought I’d add my thoughts.
The fact that flowers were left until 1978 interests me. Firstly, the fact that whoever sent them went to such trouble not to be found sending them – this suggests several possibilities: someone who read about him in the papers and felt bad for him (but then, why bother being so covert?), someone who knew him and didn’t want to be in the same kind of trouble, someone who was involved in his death (the killer, if it was a ‘hit’ whoever ordered it, and so on). It’s also interesting that the flowers stopped in 1978 – is this because whoever sent them died then, or became unable to continue sending them through a change in medical or economic circumstances? Or, if the man was a spy or somehow involved in smuggling or other types of organised crime, were they sent to draw someone out? If so, did they succeed or simply give up?
I’m no code-breaker, so I’m not going to embarrass myself with giving it a try, but I did wonder, given the possibility of naval / merchant navy / smuggling connections, whether the letters represented ship names, or locations etc. – similarly if he was involved in some kind of none-nautical organised crime. What if he’d simply figured out that something ‘dodgy’ was going on and gone to Jestyn for help?
I agree with mehitabel about the man probably being an immigrant – which would mean that he probably had a reasonable grasp of the language. (To be fair, he doesn’t look that Slavic to me, though admittedly, given the melting-pot of heritage that the UK is, I could be wrong). Also on the language point, if he were some kind of secret agent, surely approximating the local accent wouldn’t be too difficult for him, even if he were suffering the effects of the poison. Unless he decided not to ask for help – if he figured out he was dying and decided that there was nothing he could do – protecting someone, perhaps?
I’m not at all sure about the idea of Jestyn having a hand in killing him – her reaction as decsribed seems to have been more along the lines of surprise at his death than anything else. Surely someone who had gone to such lengths to conceal SM’s identity wouldn’t be phased by a police interrogation – similarly someone who acted as a ‘honey trap’.
Also, on the observation that Jestyn may have been a honey trap, who’s to say – if there is a spy connection – that she herself wasn’t a spy? Female agents certainly weren’t unheard of at the time.
On the suitcase: who’s to say that the killer (if there was one, and I think there probably was) didn’t take it from somewhere else – a primary or secondary crime scene, perhaps (maybe wherever they met, or the poison was administered / cigarettes were planted) and then drop it off at the station? It would certainly explain the lack of the check, and the attempts to remove any identyfying information – the possibility of matching the thread might not immediately occur to someone.
If this was a suicide, why would you go to the length of poisoning your cigarettes? There are much less complicated ways of doing the deed. Also, which is impossible to say without a re-examination of they now-destroyed evidence, were all the cigarettes contaminated? In which case, who would have access to that much exotic poison?
Incidentally, do we know why Sir Hicks preferred strophanthin over digitalis? If it was because of the availability of the former, what’s to say – given the possibility of foreign influence here – that the poison was not brought in from elsewhere? Also, given how common foxgloves are in various parts of the world (assuming, for the moment, that it was digitalis), how do we know that the drug wasn’t home-made?
Mike made an excellent point about his behaviour not necessarily being rational, which does rather throw a spanner in the works. Given the meagre amount of money to his name (assuming some opportunist didn’t rob him at some point between the pasty and death) he seems like a man in desperate circumstances. Perhaps he went to Jestyn to ask for help?
‘It is ended’ definitely seems to be a message to someone (unless, as has been pointed out, it had nothing to do with SM but was left in second-hand trousers). It seems, given where it was found, unlikely to have been left by the killer… If SM did leave it, could it be a message to Jestyn (or someone else), saying that whatever was going on had stopped (I keep returning to the idea that he might be protecting her and the child)? Or symbolic of the end of a particular job (i’m hesistating to use the word ‘mission’), or a career – crime or spying. Perhaps it was some kind of bizarre personal talisman (I know a few people who carry specific things around with them because they mean something to them – perhaps he had nowhere else to carry it). Of course, there is also the possibility that it had nothing to do with his death at all.
As ‘A Searching Librarian’ noted, it seems unlikely that the body should be left so publicly if secret agents were involved – there are more covert ways of sending that kind of message. It does seem more likely that if he was placed on the beach by the mysterious man mentioned in the police statements that it was intended as a warning by some variety of organised crime branch. I also wondered if, feeling and recognising the effects of the poison, he might make his way to somewhere like a beach to die – assuming that he felt nothing could or should be done. Perhaps the mysterious man was a well-meaning member of the public thinking he was drunk and helping him get there?
There is also the possibility that the efforts to remove his identity from both his person and his effects were in an effort to protect him or his family from something or someone – even something as simple as a ruined reputation. The person who sent the flowers, perhaps?
Anyway, I’ve probably bored you all to death by now. As I said before, an excellent article and an engaging discussion!
Comment by Parlanchina — September 23, 2011 @ 1:48 pm
Thank you for a fascinating article and comments.
Some of the circumstances remind me of Dorothy L Sayers “Have His Carcase” 1932, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Have_His_Carcase in which the victim is encouraged to behave in a mysterious way with the eradication of identification, notes, codes, and so on. So another angle would be that the clues and absence of clues are part of a scam, in which the victim’s sense of intrigue and greed are played on.
Just a thought.
Comment by JacAbsolute — September 23, 2011 @ 2:29 pm
Some have commented that Jestyn’s son had similar genetic issues and looks to SM with the popular theory being that SM is the boy’s father. One alternate thought would be that SM could have been Jestyn’s brother. This would help explain her shock at his death and the genetic issues that could run in the family. Just a thought!
Comment by SDchen — September 24, 2011 @ 3:05 pm
Just a few points:
(1) As to the photo of the code itself, it it possible that the letters were darkened by the newspaper that may have originally run the photo of it? Photo editing was known to have been done in the past by newspapers whenever they ran a picture that possessed indistinct elements.
(2) As to the code, I think it entirely possible that the first letter of lines one and three are W. Note how the shapes of these letters differ from the M’s used in lines three, four, and five. Further, I think that the order of the lines could be either one-three four-five, or one-four, three-five. It is clear that line two was written in error (as if someone “lost their place” when copying down the text, however, whether this was a situation where line two was intended to be after line one or after line three remains to be solved. Logically speaking, I would guess that the scenario is that the crossed out line was meant to come after the line following, because if it was just a matter of miscopying the line, then why not cross it out and then repeat it over again? More likely it was meant to come after line three. One-three, four-five, then seems most likely with two discarded totally like so:
WRGOABABD
WTBIMPANETP
MLIABOAIAQC
ITTMTSAMSTGAB
Whether this is some form of substitution code or whether it is a big anagram using the first letter of a number of words also remains to be seen.
(3) In regard to the missing clothing labels, I find this most intriguing. In the mid-90s, one of the guys I went to university with was ex-US Army. One of his compulsive habits, as I recall, was to take all the tags off everything he bought. He mentioned this to me when he was sitting in the student lounge one morning taking all the tags off of his backpack. He said that it was a habit he picked up in the service; the reason was to prevent identification (presumably by enemy soldiers) should he get careless and leave belongings behind. He also showed me the inside of his parka — he had taken all the tags out of it too. I have also known people to remove any identifying marks from items they donate to charitable organizations for resale by them, such as removing clothing labels or cutting their names out of books, or even removing whole pages if there was a dedication written there — not that my book example has anything to do with the Rubiyat in this case, mind you.
(4) In regard to the items in the suitcase, I have always seen mention of the fact that there was a spool of orange Barbour thread found inside, and the fact that such thread was not sold in Australia, but I have never seen any information as to where Barbour thread is made or sold. I assume we are talking about a product of Barbour Threads Ltd, located in Lisburn, UK. Perhaps it could be ascertained where Barbour did sell its thread outside of the UK, if at all for some more possible insight as to the origin of SM. Another thing to check is whether Barbour had any contracts with the British military to supply thread during the war. Also, orange seems like a strange color to use when repairing one’s pants, but perhaps that is all that SM could find to get the job done, but perhaps orange thread had a certain use that SM was involved with, hence his accessibility to it.
(5) I have to agree that the tools found in the suitcase hardly go along with items that may have been used by SM especially when one regards the description of the condition of SM’s hands. This would suggest that the suitcase wasn’t his, but then there is that bothersome presence of the Barbour thread in the suitcase and on SM’s pants. But then, that could mean that only the thread was his, and the other items belonged to someone else. Is it possible that he may have “found” the suitcase elsewhere. As well, I see no mention (although I may have missed it) of there being any sewing needles present; supposedly if SM’s pants were freshly mended, he would surely have kept the needle.
(6) As to SM having no money and nowallet, I suppose it is possible that he either lost his wallet or that it was taken from him at some point. The need for personal identification was just as important at that time as it is today.
Comment by Glenn in Winnipeg — September 28, 2011 @ 12:25 pm
One other comment: Much has been made of the fact that SM at the time of his death was smoking Kensitas cigarettes, which were contained within an Army Club cigarette packet. The question asked by most is that while it can be understood that some people might put a cheaper cigarette into a packet from a more expensive cigarette, why would someone do the opposite, ie, put an expensive cigarette into a packet from a cheaper brand. That’s a good question, but the answer might be disappointing.
During World War II, when everything was rationed, one of the things that many companies did was come up with alternate packaging for their items in order to try to cut down on the use of needed resources. Many cigarette companies sold their product wrapped in cellophane; purchasers could then put the cigarettes into a cigarette case or into whatever packaging they had held onto.
As Australia in the late 40s was still undergoing rationing on many items, this could be one reason for the discrepancy between cigarette and cigarette package brands.
Comment by Glenn in Winnipeg — September 28, 2011 @ 2:52 pm
I’d bet on suicide. From the description of his last moments, seems like he swallowed poison, sat on the beach, lit one last cigarette, and waited calmly to die. If one really wanted to OD on a prescription drug, it wouldn’t be hard to swipe some from an acquaintance’s medicine cabinet.
Comment by Buglet — October 3, 2011 @ 12:34 pm
It does seem likely that the “unknown man” was a covert or clandestine intelligence agent – but much more likely that he was Russian (or other Eastern Bloc) than from the United States (or other Western country).
The article makes no mention of ASIO (Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation) which was established in 1949 because of concerns about Soviet espionage activities in Australia.
If ASIO had any interest in the case (which seems very likely given the trade craft paraphernalia associated with it), then ASIO’s records might reveal more about the unknown man. With the changes to Federal Freedom of Information legislation earlier this year, those records might now be accessible.
Comment by Craig — October 4, 2011 @ 12:03 am
Regarding the “code”, I believe it is too short and unclear to try direct attacks and I would first concentrate on *how* it was written. Does it look like it was written on a moving vehicle? It seems to me like it is most likely that the crossed out line was deleted because it was a mistake and the correct line is the following similar one. He wrote O and started the vertical stroke of the B and then realized he had transposed the correct BO to OB so he crossed it out, did another line and then again the crossed-out line correctly. So I would ask the experts under what conditions is this type of mistake most likely to happen?
For example, if my code is the first letter of every word or every line of a poem I know by memory it seems like this error is unlikely. If I am doing some kind of computing, like with a Vignere cypher, the probability goes up exponentially. How about listening to characters being broadcast over radio and they are later repeated as a group? (Like trying to write down the lirics to a song by leaving the line when you fall behind and then going over the entire song again.) Given the text is so short it may be that it can never be decyphered but I believe a lot of information could be deduced without cracking the message itself.
Even if the message was cracked it would be so short that it may shed little light on the case. It may be that the code was not a message but a key in which case it is useless without the cyphertext.
It seems to me the authorities left a lot to be desired in their proceedings. The loss or destruction of evidence over the years, the deference given to Jestyn, etc. Jestyn was the person who could have told us something about the man but she is gone and that information is probably lost forever.
Comment by Alf — October 31, 2011 @ 9:14 am
@SDchen. It is unlikely the dead man would be Jestyn’s brother as he would be identified by now. He was much more likely to have been a recent migrant at the time.
@Mike. Jestyn was not an army nurse. If you recheck all the info on her there is no evidence for that. In fact it seems there is doubt that she even received nursing qualifications.
@Mike. Interesting why Gerry chose the name “Prestige” as it doesn’t sound like the sort of name you’d give someone who is involved in a bit of low level crime. You made a good point. Here are some random thoughts:
1) Gerry could be alluding to him being ambitious and wanting some sort of prestige.
2) In Adelaide there is a car yard called “Prestige Motors”
and it seems he dealt in WWII black market items including cars. Maybe cars was his main thing? So the name “Prestige” may simply be an allusion to cars. An in-joke only people from Adelaide would understand!
3) Maybe Prestige’s real name was an odd sounding name beginning with a P such as: Padget, Peregrine, Phineas, Pomeroy, Prescott, Prospero, Procter, Preston….or something like that. Who knows?
Or maybe it’s all of the above and Gerry was making a very clever pun all all aspects? Smart guy!
Comment by A. Nony Mous — November 3, 2011 @ 9:11 pm
After having read a lot of information about the so-called Tamam Shud case, I’ve reached some conclusions but at the same time some questions have arisen.
One of the first things that drew my attention was that most “dramatis personae” of this bizarre story remained out of the stage from the very beginning.
-What happened to Keith and Roma Mangnoson?
-What happened to Gwenneth Dorothy Graham and the man she went with to her house the day she committed suicide? (Three years before the SM was found dead)
-what happened to Tom Keane? Did he ever appear to claim that he was still alive? Why did the SM have some stenciling stuff among his belongings? Did the real sailor Tom Keane and the SM agree to swap something? Did the SM give the sailor a symbolic amount of money for his identity? Why did the SM have a tie with the name T.Keane on it? Wasn’t that important enough for the cops to investigate the reason why a missing person had apparently a tie with his name in another man’s suitcase? There are some things here that I can’t really understand. I repeat, wasn’t that important? I’m trying to understand the reasoning of cops at that time. Let’s see. An unknown man has a tie with a name on it but it’s not his, it’s a missing sailor’s tie. However, according to this sailor’s shipmates, that tie wasn’t his either. Besides, the SM has some stenciling stuff but his hands show that he hasn’t worked on a ship (or done any hard work). What’s the meaning of all this? Any idea?
Someone, I can’t remember who, told that the fact of having that peculiar ear and having anodontia were just symptoms of something else. I’ve been searching about those physiological characteristics. In medical terms, it’s called ectodermic dysplasia. Mainly it affects men because it’s a genetic problem in chromosome X. The disease is transmitted from mother to child. It affects skin, hair, nails, and teeth. There are more than 150 variants of the same disease and it’s divided in turn into four main groups, it depends on what physical characteristics the person has developed:
-tricodysplastic (lack of body hair or at least having little hair on eyebrows, chest, legs, etc)
-onicodysplastic (nails are affected and they show strange forms)
-dentodysplastic (teeth have an uncommon shape, they seem inverted cones like those of a shark)
-hippohydrotic (the patient can’t control his own body temperature and needs special care and the most important thing: they can’t tolerate warm places because this can result in death. They have no sweat glands so their bodies cannot regulate the quantity of water to refresh when it’s warm around).
Other interesting features are:
-respiratory infections
-white or quasi-transparent skin
-low nasal bridge (the bridge is lower than in a normal nose, it’s compared to a saddle)
-pointed ears with a bigger cavum and a smaller cymba (Prof. Derek Abbott’s observation)
-a fissure on upper lip, which is also thinner.
-prominent pointed chin and wide forehead
-wedged toes or even fusion of toes
-deafness
After this, have a look at the Somerton dead body: his eyebrows, his eyes, his pointed ears, his chin and specially the bridge of his nose. Of course, I don’t mean all these physical features appear at the same time in the same person. But the person, as I said before, will develop those belonging to one variant or another, among the four possible.
I hope you haven’t fallen asleep after this explanation and sorry for such strange medical terms and for my awkward English.
Comment by Carmen — November 7, 2011 @ 8:45 am
At this point in time late 1948 Asio was in it’s infancy or still not officially commissioned.
This murder/ professional hit was the catalyst and motive to start Asio in Australia.
A person employed or hired by the Intelligence Services at the time was most likely instructed to carry out this clandestine kill using a very rare poison or a person who had knowledge and access to such a rare poison derived from a plant.
The mystery man in question was most likely a Merchant Seaman/ Deck Officer rating/ rank and probably of UK origin.
At the time of his death he would have probably been on shore leave as it was most likely his ship would have been in port at the time of his death or sailed on without him.
The suit case found in the cloak room of the Railway Station was probably a set up or red herring along with the removed clothing labels to throw the police off the trail.
I believe the police at the time knew more than meets the eye with this particualar case and they also knew that Security Intelligence was involved so they did not push too hard with their investigations. They where very easy on Jestyn when they interviewed her and they could have obtained more vital information from her during the course of their preliminary investigations.
The mystery man was probably single with no or very few family ties, most likely a loner and therefore no one to this day has ever come forward. He was a typical John Doe.
He was a very fit man for his age however it seems starnge that he was a smoker? even though smoking was quite fashionable during that era.
He may have been or a spy and on the other hand he may have been a person who met foul play and made to look like a spy to justify the kill which the soon to be Asio would have asked no questions.
Given time i believe that this long time mystery will be finally solved.
Comment by jack — November 12, 2011 @ 1:47 am
It could be the nasty work of a serial killer psychopath? with a Security Intelligence background with expert knowledge on exotic poisons and plants.
Probably the same person who killed the young boy and threatened both his parents the following year in 1949.
He may have went on to kill or murder other people as well ? if he was a serial killer psychopath as that is their general modus operandi.
I’m just thinking outside the box !!!!!!!!
Comment by Peter — November 13, 2011 @ 9:28 pm
The Somerton Man was very likely the Father of Jestyn’s son.
Jestyn was very likely a spy and also a registered nurse who worked for Intelligence at the time and some time earlier before Somerton Man’s death murder Jestyn would have been having an affair with him. Jestyn may have opened her mouth and told Somerton Man too much ie about her real background and a few security secrets which probably leaked out and hence a hit/ kill was necessary and Jestyn would have received a severe reprimand etc from her superiors. A trap and date was set up for Somerton Man to meet Jestyn and her son at her address as Jestyn only lived 800 metres from where Somerton Man’s body was found and the local ASIO hit man did the dirty work and the rest is history.
Somerton Man was possibly a spy? and Jestyn most likely knew the man who killed him.
Jestyn was most likely connected to the death by poison of George Marshall in 1945 who died in similar circumstanes as the Somerton Man.
The Police at the time knew that this case involved a Spy and Intelligence connection therefore they played or watered down their investigations and where very soft on Jestyn otherwise they where told by the Intelligence Service of the day to go easy on the case and just make it look like they where doing their job in the eyes of the public and then sweep it under the carpet.
The person who went to the Police about a year later in 1949 in regard to finding the copy of the book inside his car with the identical cut out of the words Taman Shud found on the Somerton Man inside his secret pocket of his trousers was most likely the same person that killed via poison the Somerton Man as his identity and occupation where supressed and the reason for the supression was also supressed as the reason most likely for this is because he was also a spy or security intelligence operative for the newly formed ASIO.
This was the cold war era and anyone suspect of being a communist or having any connection or associates who where communists would have been regarded as a major national security threat or a spy and they would have been watched like a hawk 24/7 and if necessary killed in such a way so as to look like either a suicide, heart attack or accident so as to not arouse any suspicion. That is the dark and sinsiter side of all World Security Agencies and each has it’s own operatives who specialise in this nasty field and that is what happened to the Somerton Man on that fateful day way back in 1948.
Sadly he was in wrong place at the wrong time and had a short affair with Jestyn otherwise he would have not met his tragic fate.
Comment by Albert — November 14, 2011 @ 9:13 pm
Is there a possible occult ritual killing connection concerning the Somerton Man?
Comment by Jim — November 18, 2011 @ 7:12 pm
Greetings Fellow Posters:
What if the real identity of Our Somerton Man turns out to be that of a: “NAZI RUNNING AWAY From His MURDEROUS PAST?!!!”
Thousands of Hitler’s Henchmen rapidly made their way to South America before/after allied troops surrounded Germany.
Comment by Leila Singh — November 21, 2011 @ 5:07 pm
My belief is the somerton man was an innocent man who had no spy connections and was a former friend of jestyn and the father of her son who on that fateful day went to visit jestyn to see his son. I believe that jestyn knew the man who murdered somerton man and i also believe that the same person responsible had at the time a security intelligence background and training and made the somerton man look like a spy with the suitcase at the railway station and the unknown poison along with the secret code note found in somerton man’s pocket.
I would say it is highly probable the somerton man was a seaman who worked on ships ie an officer and he would have been of US or UK origin.
The catylst or motive for his murder was to help justify the setting up of ASIO in Australia.
Comment by Andrew — December 3, 2011 @ 1:17 am
All the recent comments by Carmen, Jack, Peter, Albert and Andrew are interesting for their discussion of the spy hypothesis, in my opinion. I particularly like Albert’s reference to “the local ASIO hitman”. To keep a hitman on the payroll in each region, would have meant a hectic round of “bumping people off” Albert. I think we must keep this “spy theory” in perspective. Though, yes, there was a raging Cold War happening; yes, in Europe and elsewhere, people were being murdered for their spy involvement;but not in great numbers.I think the spy theory has been raised to point out that such things were going on elsewhere, (spying, secret squirrel activities,codes and breaking codes, poisoned umbrellas,spy versus spy stuff). But, at this stage other than the fact the dead man’s identity has been successfully kept secret, that an unidentified poison was involved, that some kind of jumbled lettering like a code was found, that labels were removed from his clothes, that his wallet, passport, money and hat were missing ….there has been no secret service file found with his photo in it. Nothing to officially link Somerton Man with spying. It is just that historically, spy versus spy games were actually happening in most Western countries – including Australia – at that time. The definite link so far, has not been made.If it was a spy-kill, it has this far been – as they say in Spyland- a successful “deniable operation”.
Comment by Eeee-vent-you-a-leeee — December 16, 2011 @ 5:37 pm
The guy was in the wrong place at the wrong time and he was lured to his death by a cunning person who had a contract to kill this guy and make it look like he was a spy by the method he was killed ie untraceable plant poison, tags removed from clothing and suit case left at railway station along with a bullshit code planted in the victims pocket.
This resulted in making it virtually 100% credible that the guy was a spy and remember it was the cold war era come commo paranoia so the cops closed the door on this case fairly quick and this was the catalyst to start ASIO in Australia in the following year in 1949. Commo back then was like pedophile today ie despised, low life, enemy, bad, evil, sick etc. It was a communist witch hunt in that era.
ASIO then and now had operatives in every capital city and territory in Australia and some with specialist covert black ops training for this purpose. Fact. They have branches in every city in Oz. Their HQ is in the ACT.
Comment by the wizard — December 30, 2011 @ 7:58 pm
And with regard to spy agencies like ASIO you can have a 9 to 5 job with an outside employer and when they need you they contact you and there is full time operatives as well.
Comment by the wizard — December 30, 2011 @ 8:02 pm
The man who murdered somerton man was a cold blooded killer and an expert with exotic poisons. He was also a serial killer, psycopath and narcissist.
He was a very cunning and clever man with a higher than average IQ with a military background.
This man would have went on to kill more innocent people in Adelaide as he was most likely a local man. He may have somerton man’s ID in his pocession this very day?
He may possibly be still alive today although he would now be an old man.
Maybe a death bed confession by this man will finally put closure on this mystery along with many other unsolved murders in South Australia.
Comment by cyclops — January 6, 2012 @ 6:43 pm
I had heard recently that somerton man was a British soldier in World War 1.
He was born about 1900 and ww1 was from 1914 to 1918 and he would have been the right age at that point in time and history.
Maybe somerton man could be traced via is ww1 service as there would be military records and possibly some old military photo’s of him in uniform that could connect him and possibly solve this long term mystery and nip it in the bud.
As far as an investigation perspective it would be a good starting point.
Secondly how about the south australian government posting a $500,000 reward for information leading to a conviction of the offender, now that may bring someone in the know out of the woodwork to give vital information and evidence to the sa police.
And finally somerton man’s body should be exhumed and even though he was embalmed with formaldehyde there is still a possiblity of dna evidence that may put final closure on this case. It well worth a try unless the sa government has something to hide and they know the facts and they don’t want the public to know?
Comment by Tim — January 8, 2012 @ 12:41 am
Jestyn was a spy and a nurse and Somerton Man was the father of her son. Somerton Man knew that Jestyn was a spy and he knew way too much and was seen as a threat to her, otherwise he may have potentially exposed her identity and the fact that she was a covert spy so a contract was implemented to kill him and make it look like he was a spy or an enemy of the state and not a cold blooded murder and the guy who killed him was a psychopath and a cold blooded killer and the same guy who killed the young boy in 1949 with an untraceable plant poison. The Killer would be a local man living in Adelaide. It also possible that Somerton Man knew the killer before his death as the other 2 guys who where killed under similar circumstances in Sydney and had a connection with Jestyn.
Jestyn may have said to the killer ” This guy ( Somerton Man ) knows you killed those 2 guys in Sydney” so the Killer was exposed and he then had to kill Somerton Man as he risked being incriminated or reported to the Police.
There is more than meets the eye with this case.
Comment by bird dog — January 12, 2012 @ 8:56 pm
Yes Jestyn knew the somerton man and the somerton man contacted her in regard to travelling to Adelaide. Jetsyn then organised with the killer/ murderer to kill somerton man as the killer was known to Jetsyn and he was the perfect man for the job or hit so the killer booked a room in a hotel opposite the Adelaide railway station with his death kit or tools of the trade and when somerton man arrived at the train station the killer tailed or followed somerton man down to Glenelg and Jetsyn’s house and then a bit further down to Someton Beach where Somerton met his fate.
The SA Police and the SA Government know a lot more however they have swept it under the rug as there is more than meets the eye with this case.
Comment by The Phantom — January 27, 2012 @ 7:38 pm
Here’s another possible scenario:
Jestyn’s reaction when seeing the face of SM reminded me of the movie ‘Niagara’. What if something similar happened here involving a love triangle with the killer being either Alfred Boxall or the man she was living with and later married? It would also explain why Jestyn never caved and finally revealed who SM was. She was way too involved and was trying to protect herself and her son as the murderer was close to her and could easily kill her too and/or reveal her dark secrets. All four — SM, Boxall, Jestyn, and the man she was living with could have all known each other from the war and been involved in spy related activities. Jestyn was romantically involved with all three men so they probably at least knew OF each other if not more directly.
If you’ve never seen ‘Niagara’ I mean… SM and Jestyn were secret lovers, obvious due to the fact he fathered her son. So SM and Jestyn plot to kill her current flame — Boxall or the man she was living with — (Jestyn supplies the poison to SM to carry it out). However, the other lover/spy figures it out and kills SM instead with that same poison and blackmails Jestyn to keep quiet forever either by threatening to expose her plot (and her illegitimate child (a big stigma back in those days) or simply by threatening to kill her, too. Maybe to cover his tracks he sent Jestyn a note ‘from’ SM that told her he couldn’t carry out the murder and was leaving instead. The killer removed all traces of SM’s identity and threw in red herrings to lead the police to suspect suicide (typical spy smarts).
The killer just didn’t figure on the police being able to trace the book back to Jestyn, so never expected she’d find out SM was murdered. Her reaction of nearly fainting at seeing SM dead seems to indicate more than just seeing a past lover — even the one who fathered her child — turn up dead. It seems to indicate a bigger shock — perhaps realization that Boxall or the man she was living with found out her secrets and killed SM.
SM and Jestyn are defiantly tied together, and the witness seeing one man carrying another on the beach at the same time SM died suggests a love triangle that ended in murder, with spy connection undertones.
Comment by SA — February 12, 2012 @ 7:52 pm
The Killer would have been quite a lot younger than SM and Jestyn. The young killer at the time would have probably lived in Adelaide.
It is also possible that the young killer was a new recruit for the then National Spy Agency which was ASIO the following year. He was most likely chosen to kill SM and he would have had a very comprehensive knowledge of plants, poisons, toxins and the methods of adminstering the lethal dose of the untraceable plant poison along with training in the art of making SM appear to be a Spy or having a Spy connection and being able to cover his tracks very well.
The killer could still possibly be alive today and most likely still living in Adelaide. He may have killed other people as well over the years and has not been caught or arrested to date as he would be a very cunning and methodical person.
Comment by cowboy — February 15, 2012 @ 9:57 pm