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The man probably died of the poison, but it is unclear what. Among his articles was a book with a secret code that no one could crack. All the labels on the men’s clothing were cut so it wasn’t even clear where it came from. Police managed to find a man’s possible lover, but she only guessed even more puzzles.
On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of this strange story, the abc.au portal explained how this strange story unfolded, why the case could not be resolved in this way, and whether we can ever hope to discover what happened in the Adelaide suburbs in 1948. in December.
The body was found on the beach.
Locals are happy to visit Somerton Beach in the Australian suburb of Adelaide in the summer. They enjoy the sand, the waves and the sun here.
However, in 1948. December 1 then 16-year-old Neil Day found this one to be more bizarre. He and his friend rode horses early in the morning, a common pastime in these areas.
They noticed from a distance a man who appeared to be asleep. He was lying on his back and his face was looking at the sky.
“We didn’t pay much attention to it because people loved sleeping on the beach on hot summer nights at the time,” Day told ABC.
Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain Photo / This is what the beach where the body was found looked like. The location of the body is indicated by X
The young men traveled a few more kilometers along the coast. When he returned, he noticed that the man was lying in the same place, so he came to see if everything was fine for him.
“We didn’t see if he was breathing, so my friend Horrie jumped off the horse and moved the man. He was dead. It was a shock to us, we have never seen anything like this,” said N.Day.
The dead man wore a brown suit, was shaved, and appeared to be in his 40s. He had a half-smoked cigarette on his chest and crossed legs.
Jack Lyons, another man on the nearby beach, called the police. Thus began a decades-long mystery.
Attempts to hide identity
Police have launched an investigation, which has so far not been discontinued. In general, it was not uncommon to find dead bodies on the beach then. They were suicide launchers or swimmers thrown to the ground without appreciating their strength.
However, this man was not swept ashore by the waves. Her clothes were dry.
He had several personal items in his pockets: a comb, a matchbox, a used local bus ticket, an unused second-class train ticket, a pack of gum, and a pack of cigarettes.
However, none of these things helped establish his identity. There were no wallets, no identity documents, or any other items to help identify or at least originate in their pockets. He became known as the “Somerton Man”.
Someone really wanted to make it as difficult as possible to identify a man. Even the clothing labels were cut so it is not clear where they were purchased.
Later, witnesses appeared claiming to have seen a similar man lying in the same spot already the day before, but he didn’t come any closer, thinking he was just asleep or drunk.
The cause of the man’s death remained unclear. An autopsy showed that his spleen was unusually swollen, three times larger than it should be, and there was internal bleeding from his stomach and liver.
However, there were no signs of violence on the man’s body. The autopsy showed that, in addition to these things, the man was in “excellent health” before his death.
The forensic expert was unable to provide clear conclusions after the autopsy. He noted that the cause of death was likely cardiac arrest, and the arrest was caused by a poison; nothing else could explain such signs.
But he also pointed out what poison could have been, he doesn’t know. And that no trace of the poison known to him was found in the body.
It is also unclear if the death was a murder or a suicide, and if the man died on the beach, or if they only brought his body from another location.
The man’s teeth were unusual: his side bites did not grow at all and his canines had grown alongside the front bites. However, no dental clinic could find a patient whose dental description matched that of a “Somerton man”.
The man’s fingerprints and posthumous photo were distributed through international police channels, but did not match any fingerprint or photo known to the police in any country.
Wikimedia Commons / Public domain photo / Posthumous photo of a Somerton man
This was the first time that local police encountered a body that they were unable to identify. And that’s where the weirdness of the case just started.
Additional findings
In the course of the investigation, six weeks later, in 1949. In January, an unknown person’s suitcase was found in the warehouse at the Adelaide train station. They left it in storage the day before the body of a “Somerton man” was found, and no one took his suitcase.
Since the man’s pocket contained an unused train ticket, as mentioned, police speculated that the suitcase may belong to a “Somerton man”. The assumption was correct. But the contents of the suitcase guessed even more puzzles.
Several garments were found in the suitcase, but their labels were cut, as was the clothing found on a man’s body. It was only possible to discover that at least the coat was actually sewn in the U.S., but it was unclear whether the man brought it himself or received it from someone in Australia.
A roll of thread was also found in the suitcase, a thread that is not sold in Australia. The police discovered that the dead man’s pants were sewn with exactly the type of thread they had on this roll. This helped conclusively demonstrate that the suitcase belonged to the man.
Another suitcase contained scissors, a set of blades, a sheathed knife, and shoe polish. Neither of these elements helped establish the man’s identity or why he might have died.
Wikimedia Commons / Public domain photo / Suitcase and clothing
It is true that the names “T. Keane” or “Kean”, but they also did little to help: in no English-speaking country was a person with this or a similar name missing at the time.
Because even the labels were cut from other garments, the researchers speculated that these names were left on purpose to mislead those who found them.
Strange findings continue
However, the most interesting finding of the case was found only a few months later.
The pathologist, who reexamined all of Somerton’s belongings, found a previously unnoticed worn piece of paper at the bottom of his pants, with only two Persian words printed, “Tamam Shud.”
Translated from Persian, these words meant “it is all over.” Police soon discovered that the pamphlet had been torn from a book by the poet Omar Khayyam in the 12th century. The “Rubyatai” books are one of the most famous books of Persian poetry. And the poem that ends with these words talks about how important it is to fully enjoy life and not regret anything before death.
This made the public even more interested. Newspapers began to write more and more about the case.
Police spoke to the public through a local newspaper asking if anyone could have seen or seen a Rubayatts book, from which a page with the words “Tamam Shud” would be torn off. Authorities hoped that the book could determine what happened here.
After a while, the local businessman brought the book to the officers, from where exactly that page was torn.
That businessman was a local pharmacist who lived near where a “Somerton man” was found.
The circumstances in which he found the book were also quite strange. When the husband died, the pharmacist’s wife’s brother, driving his car, simply found a book on the floor of the car. Thinking that she was the husband of a sister, he put her in a trunk. The pharmacist himself didn’t even pay attention to the book at the time.
For a long time, the book remained motionless. It was only after the book search was published that Freeman realized that the book that was there was the one the police were looking for. Then he took him to the police. Probably someone just threw that book out the window of their car to get rid of it in a random place.
The book provided the latest suggestions: strange text reminiscent of a coded message, and a couple of phone numbers were handwritten on the inside cover.
Image from Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain / Code found in the book
When the public found out, the case finally became known across Australia: No one doubted that spies, undercover agents or something like that were involved here. Furthermore, when the Cold War had just started, there was a reorganization of the Australian secret services and a uranium mine near Adelaide.
Tips didn’t help
However, these tips didn’t go far, either. Cryptographers couldn’t decipher the five-line code, which consisted of dozens of letters, in any way.
There were also questions about whether it was a code: it was speculated that it was simply a meaningless letter intended to confuse something, or that the person who wrote the text had written it for personal use and the text consisted only of abbreviations known to him. In this case, the text cannot be decrypted.
It was also unclear if the second line of code was removed because the author of the text entered an error, or if that removal was also part of the code.
Of the phone numbers found in the book, only one was operational. It belonged to the nurse at the local hospital Jessie Thomson, who was then 27 years old. She lived just a few hundred meters from where the body of the “Somerton man” was found.
Of course, the police questioned her immediately. This happened in 1949. in July. Thomson told police that he once had a Rubayat book, which he had given to a family soldier a few years ago, but said he did not recognize the “Somerton man,” who knew nothing of him and could not imagine why. what had had it. number.
He also asked that his name not be released so that his reputation is not harmed.
Initially, the police considered him to be a family soldier and that he could be a dead man. But he was able to find it: he was alive, working in another city and still had a book.
Police also showed Thomson a plastic bust with the accurately restored head and shoulders of a “Somerton man.” Authorities hoped he would revive his memory.
According to detectives investigating the case, when he saw the bust, he obviously got upset “behaved strangely”, almost passed out, but didn’t say why, and claimed he didn’t know what it was like here. Today, that bust is in the South Australian Police History Society Museum.
Since there was no clear evidence that Thomson knew anything about “Somerton’s man” or his death, officials were released.
Since then, he has refused to cooperate with the police, no new material evidence has been found, and the case has remained secret.
1949 In the summer the man was buried in the Adelaide Cemetery. On his tombstone, “the remains of an unknown man found on Somerton Beach rest here.” His grave can still be visited now.
Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain Photo / An inscription on the grave of the man of Somerton
DNA tests can help
Many of the witnesses to the case are now dead, but the case is still open.
Authorities found information about a somewhat similar death in 1945, four years earlier, when a body of George Marshall from Singapore was found with a book from the same edition of Ruby’s in the chest in Sydney, another Australian city.
The investigation later showed that the man committed suicide by poisoning. According to some investigators, these cases may be related, and officials investigating the death of a Singaporean may have examined something, but that is unclear.
Sometimes new procedural steps are taken. For example, when technology has already allowed it, a genetic analysis of a man’s hair was performed. Somerton’s hair is still glued to her plastic bust.
The analysis showed that the man’s mother was from Europe, but no longer revealed anything special.
Thomson died in 2007. It wasn’t until 2013 that the public realized the fact that it was related to the study. – his name had not been released until then.
Immediately rumors began to surface in Adelaide that she was the lover of a “Somerton man” and that Thomson’s son Robin Thomson was the man’s biological son.
2013 Thomson’s daughter Kate Thomson also told the media that her mother told her that she knew the identity of a “Somerton man” when she was still alive. But he also said that he would never tell anyone about him.
So far, not only the South Australian police but also amateur detectives are trying to solve the case. One of those attempts even ended in a love story.
Professor Derek Abbott of the University of Adelaide has spent more than 20 years investigating the case. When he in 2013. When he tried to explain the connection between Thomson and the “Somerton man”, Thomson was already dead.
Instead, the scientist met Rachel Egan, Thomson’s daughter, who lives in New Zealand. If you believe the rumors, the granddaughter of a “Somerton man”. They started making friends and eventually started a family and got married.
Abbot came up with the idea of comparing Egan’s DNA and “Somerton’s man,” perhaps her grandfather. Such a comparison would reveal whether Thomson was the lover of a “Somerton man” and Robin was, in fact, the son of a “Somerton man”.
The fact that this can be confirmed by the fact that Robin Thomson’s teeth were as distorted as a “Somerton man”. Only 1-2 percent have such dental distortion. human, and is genetically inherited. So the chances are just a coincidence they are very low.
The only problem is that the South Australian state government has long disagreed with such an investigation, as it would require the body to be exhumed. Only in 2018 the government’s attitude has changed.
The state attorney general, Vickie Chapman, has indicated that she will accept an exhumation of the body and a DNA test, but only if non-taxpayers pay for it.
In other words, there must be someone to finance the entire process and provide all assurances that the exhumation and DNA testing will be carried out reliably, in accordance with all the rules and with a clear plan.
2018 In the late 19th century, Professor Abbot ABC indicated that he and his wife would try to raise 20,000. dollars needed to perform the exhumation.
According to him, even if it turns out that R. Egan is not his grandson, more accurate genetic information would help him find his possible relatives even in other parts of the world.
“Of course, there will be a lot of unanswered questions, but it’s likely to help us figure out who it was.” Even if we are not his family, there is a family somewhere in the world that has a right to know what happened to him, “Egan told ABC.
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