Somerton Man: Professor claims he has solved the identity of man found I solved it when I was looking back at my old notes on the tamam shud code, which had a solution. Initially, the letters were thought to be words in a foreign language[38] before it was realised it was a code. She nursed him back to health, only for him to scold her for it and become more violent. They suggested that the Somerton man was Robin's father and, therefore, Rachel's grandfather. [32] The contents of the boy's stomach were sent to a government analyst for further examination. 15 January 1948: Boxall arrives back in Sydney from his last active duty and is discharged from the army in April 1948. MLIAOI [115] South Australia Police had not verified the result, but stated they were "cautiously optimistic that this may provide a breakthrough". [7], As one journalist wrote in June 1949, alluding to the line in Rubaiyat, "the Somerton Man seems to have made certain that the glass would be empty, save for speculation". Just trying to put together a paper trail of who he was, or might have been. Inside his pocket were the printed words "Tamam Shud", which means "finished . Theories abounded, including that the person - dubbed Somerton Man - was a spy. [citation needed], After discovering that Robin Thomson had died in 2009, Abbott contacted Rachel, the daughter of Roma Egan and Robin Thomson, who had been adopted and grew up in New Zealand. Dubbed by authorities and the press as the Somerton Man, the man was found smartly dressed and slumped against a wall on a beach near Adelaide, Australia, in 1948, leading to a labyrinthine . Did this woman die because her genitals were cut? [63], In early January 1949, two people identified the body as that of 63-year-old former wood cutter Robert Walsh. He had no wallet, no cash, and no ID. In October 1951, three years after the Somerton Mans death, Dorothy placed a notice in the Age newspaper stating that she had begun divorce proceedings against Webb on the grounds of desertion. One newspaper article refers to the book being found about a week or two before the body was found. Was there a connection with Jo, the nurse? The torn-out fragment found in the Somerton Mans pocket perfectly matched a gap on the final page of the discarded copy. There is no record of the Adelaide railway station's bathroom facilities being unavailable and no ticket in his pocket to suggest he visited the Public Baths, outside of the station. Also, the other "L" has a curve to the bottom part of the character. Somerton Man: One of Australia's greatest mysteries solved | news.com On the inside back cover, detectives read through indentations left from previous handwriting: a local telephone number, another unidentified number, and text that resembled a coded message. "For more than 70 years, people have speculated who this man was and how he died," South Australia Attorney General Vickie Chapman said. The man was well-built, about 40 to 50 years old, 5. Mystery of dead man on beach: was he a Victorian? The handwriting found in the back of a book of the Rubiyt of Omar Khayym, theorised to be a sort of code. Though the state coroner has yet to confirm the pairs findings, Abbott tells the Guardians Natasha May that as a scientist, he is confident in the accuracy of the analysis. [51] According to Leane, he described her reaction upon seeing the cast as "completely taken aback, to the point of giving the appearance that she was about to faint". "Now there's the historical work of actually digging further and finding out about the man's life and his circumstances and what might have exactly led to this particular situation," he said. The identity and cause of death. And. 14 January 1949: Adelaide railway station finds the brown suitcase belonging to the man. The man's body was found propped up against the seawall at Somerton Beach in Adelaide on December 1, 1948. Speaking with ABCs Ben Cheshire and Susan Chenery in 2019, Abbott speculated that Robin was the Somerton Mans son; Thomson, he proposed, had failed to identify him because she was in a relationship with another man who would go on to be her husband, and she just didn't want this ghost from the past coming back to mess up her current existence.. However, the police did state that the body was consistent with that of a man who had been a wood cutter, although the state of the man's hands indicated he had not cut wood for at least eighteen months. They had a son named John, who died in World War II in 1943. Its much more than identifying the Somerton man as Carl Webb, its also solving the mystery of how and why he died that may take years.. He was put to rest in an Adelaide cemetery under a headstone reading only "the unknown man". [B]ut I cannot say whether it was administered by the deceased himself or by some other person.. South Australia Police consulted their counterparts overseas and distributed information about the dead man internationally, in an effort to identify him. There is also an "X" above the last "O" in the code, and it is not known if this is significant to the code or not. Meilan Solly 14 March 1958: The coroner's inquest is continued. [52] In an interview many years later, Paul Lawson, the technician who made the cast and was present when Thomson viewed it, noted that after looking at the bust she immediately looked away and would not look at it again. An Australian researcher claims to have solved a 73-year-old mystery by identifying a man found dead on a beach, CNN said in a report. Also written on the back cover was the phone number of young nurse later identified by Abbott as Jo Thomson who lived a five minute walk away from where the man was found dead. [45] A 2014 analysis by computational linguist John Rehling strongly supports the theory that the letters consist of the initials of some English text, but finds no match for these in a large survey of literature, and concludes that the letters were likely written as a form of shorthand, not as a code, and that the original text can likely never be determined.[46]. [35] Cleland remarked that if the body had been carried to its final resting place then "all the difficulties would disappear". The theme of Rubaiyat is that one should live life to the fullest and have no regrets when it ends. [71] Following publication of the man's photograph in Victoria, twenty-eight people claimed to know his identity. The text has not been deciphered or interpreted in a way that satisfies authorities on the case. [27], Around the same time as the inquest, a tiny piece of rolled-up paper with the words "Tamm Shud" printed on it was found in a fob pocket sewn within the dead man's trouser pocket. Did he die by suicide? Between 11:00a.m. and 11:15a.m: Checks a brown suitcase into the railway station cloak room. [100] The media have suggested that Robin Thomson, who was sixteen months old in 1948 and died in 2009, may have been a child of either Boxall or the Somerton man and passed off as Prosper Thomson's son. The 5-foot-11, 40- to 50-year-old man carried no money or identification. (Supplied) The suitcase When passers-by discovered the man's body on December 1, 1948, he was dressed in a brown suit and had a half-smoked cigarette on his lapel. A photograph of the scrap of paper was released to the press.[36]. [11] In 2009 to 2011, Derek Abbott's team concluded that it was most likely that each letter was the first letter of a word. In trying to solve the Somerton Man case, Abbott became part of it. [73] By November 1953, police announced they had recently received the 251st "solution" to the identity of the body from members of the public who claimed to have met or known him. In September 1946, Dorothy fled from her husband, following years of physical and verbal abuse. x The researchers hope to address these mysteries and more through archival and genetic research. Read about our approach to external linking. Dr Coxon said tests of this kind were highly complex but investigators would use "every method at our disposal to try and bring closure to this enduring mystery". 16 RACHEL EGAN'S DNA LINKED TO PROSPER THOMSON.. by peterbowes on May 31, 2021. He was slumped against a seawall, dressed in a suit and tie. Lawson's diary entry for that day names her as "Mrs Thompson" and states that she had a "nice figure" and was "very acceptable" (referring to the level of attractiveness) which allows the possibility of an affair with the Somerton man. A month after his death, police found a suitcase believed to belong to him at the Adelaide Railway Station. If you're a professor at Adelaide University in Southern Australia, you do everything you can to solve it. Somerton Man - Wikipedia [41] In the back of the book were faint indentations representing five lines of text, in capital letters. 1986: The Somerton Man's brown suitcase and contents are destroyed as "no longer required". He said he had tracked down and spoken to Mr Webb's living relatives. All rights reserved. )[note 5] There is no evidence that Boxall had any contact with Jessica Thomson after 1945.[55]. The last mention of Webb in the historical record dates to April 1947, when he left his wife. In all this soup and ocean of DNA cousins, we were able to connect one of them to Carls father and one of them to Carls mother, Fitzpatrick tells the Times. When Thomson was taken by authorities to visit a death mask of Somerton mans face, the taxidermist present, Paul Lawson, told ABCs Australian Story last year it was obvious she knew the man. "[86], The ID card, numbered 58757, was issued in the United States on 28 February 1918 to H. C. Reynolds, giving his nationality as "British" and age as 18. The Somerton Man was a mysterious, unknown decedent, found on Somerton Beach near Adelaide, South Australia, on December 1, 1948. [106] While much of the DNA is degraded, in February 2018, the University of Adelaide team obtained a high-definition analysis of the mitochondrial DNA from the hair sample from Somerton Man. The case is also known after the Persian phrase tamm shud (Persian: ),[note 1] meaning "is over" or "is finished", which was printed on a scrap of paper found months later in the fob pocket of the man's trousers. Derek Abbott, from the University of Adelaide, says the body of a man found on one of the city's beaches in 1948 belonged to Carl "Charles" Webb, an electrical engineer and instrument . [116], Derek Abbott and Colleen Fitzpatrick believe that Carl had serious mental health issues and "spiralled down" after losing four close relatives in seven years. The body of a man found on a South Australian beach more than 70 years ago has been exhumed in the hope of solving one of the country's most intriguing mysteries. She said that she had received a letter from Boxall and had replied, telling him that she was now married. August 1945: Jessica Harkness gives Alf Boxall an inscribed copy of. Explore in 3D: The dazzling crown that makes a king. [66] Any thoughts that a positive identification had been made were quashed, however, when Elizabeth Thompson, one of the people who had earlier positively identified the body as Walsh, retracted her statement after a second viewing of the body, where the absence of a particular scar on the body, as well as the size of the dead man's legs, led her to realise the body was not Walsh. [32], Cleland speculated that, as none of the witnesses could positively identify the man they saw the previous night as the same person discovered the next morning, there remained the possibility the man had died elsewhere and had been dumped.
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