the somerton man solved
In trying to solve the Somerton Man case, Abbott became part of it. [62] On 5 December, The Advertiser reported that police were searching through military records after a man claimed to have had a drink with a person resembling the dead man at a hotel in Glenelg on 13 November. [11] In news media, books and other discussions of the case, Thomson was frequently referred to by various pseudonyms, including the nickname "Jestyn" and names such as "Teresa Johnson ne Powell". 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. "I'm hoping, ashis name gets out there, there will be somebody that will have an old photo album in a garden shed somewhere.". The Somerton man mystery began in the early hours of December 1, 1948, when beachgoers found a body lying on Somerton beach in Adelaide. Derek Abbott, from the University of Adelaide, said that. She appeared as if she was about to faint. Read about our approach to external linking. [50], When she was shown the plaster cast bust of the dead man by DS Leane, Thomson said she could not identify the person depicted. Was he murdered? (modern). The case of the Somerton Man In 1948, the body of an unidentified man was found on Somerton Beach in Adelaide, Australia. My thread-bare Penitence a-pieces tore.[44]. The couple moved into a flat in Bromby Street, South Yarra. The Tamm Shud case AKA the disappearance of the Somerton Man is arguably one of Australia's greatest true crime mysteries and was solved in July. A month after his death, police found a suitcase believed to belong to him at the Adelaide Railway Station. 1994: The Chief Justice of Victoria, John Harber Phillips, studies the evidence and concludes that poisoning was due to digitalis. In 1945, at the Clifton Gardens Hotel in Sydney, she had given it to an Australian Army lieutenant named Alf Boxall, who was serving at the time in the Water Transport Section of the Royal Australian Engineers. What was unusual was that there were no spare socks found in the case, and no correspondence, although the police found pencils and unused letter stationery. [24] With wartime rationing still enforced, clothing was difficult to acquire at that time. In addition, witness statements have disappeared from the police file over the years.[8]. The ear shapes shared by both men were a "very good" match, although Henneberg also found what he called a "unique identifier"; a mole on the cheek that was the same shape and in the same position in both photographs. Is British seaman's identity card clue to solving 63-year-old beach body mystery? He was fond of poetry and wrote several poems of his own, "most of them on the subject of death, which he claims to be his greatest desire", Dorothy stated. [35] Cleland remarked that if the body had been carried to its final resting place then "all the difficulties would disappear". If you're a professor at Adelaide University in Southern Australia, you do everything you can to solve it. New DNA analysis suggests a body found on a beach in Australia in 1948 belongs to Carl Webb, an electrical engineer from Melbourne. Did this woman die because her genitals were cut? "It's an story that has captured the imagination of people across the state, and, indeed, across the world - but I believe that, finally, we may uncover some answers," South Australian Attorney General Ms Chapman said. Tucked inside the watch pocket in his pants was a slip of paper with Persian words printed on it which meant "finished.". [115] South Australia Police had not verified the result, but stated they were "cautiously optimistic that this may provide a breakthrough". There was blood mixed with the food in the stomach. Victoria detectives disproved all the claims and said that "other investigations" indicated it was unlikely that he was from Victoria. VideoThe secret mine that hid the Nazis' stolen treasure, LGBT troops take love for Eurovision to front line, Why an Indian comedian is challenging fake news rules. 14 January 1949: Adelaide railway station finds the brown suitcase belonging to the man. 58. "Somerton Beach Mystery Man", Transcript, Broadcast 27 March 2009. Some observers cited the code found on his copy of The Rubiyt, as well as the apparent attempts to mask his identity, as evidence that he was a Russian spy. 7 p.m.8 p.m.: Various witness sightings. The spleen was strikingly large about 3 times normal size there was destruction of the centre of the liver lobules revealed under the microscope. A professor who has dedicated decades to solving one of Australia's most enduring mysteries claims he has d. Although it was a very common practice to use name tags, it was also common when buying secondhand clothing to remove the tags of the previous owners. 14 March 1958: The coroner's inquest is continued. At least two sites relatively close to Adelaide were of interest to spies: the Radium Hill uranium mine and the Woomera Test Range, an Anglo-Australian military research facility. Interestingly, the book contained several handwritten annotations, including a suspected code and the phone number of a nurse, Jessie Jo Thomson, who lived near the site where the body was discovered. The coat had not been imported, indicating the man had been to America or bought it from someone of similar size who had been.[16][28]. (Carls brother Roy also died in a prisoner-of-war camp the same year.) "It's a triangulation from two different, totally distant parts of the [family] tree," Prof Abbott told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. He also found no evidence indicating the identity of the deceased. Video, 00:02:36, The secret mine that hid the Nazis' stolen treasure. [63], In early January 1949, two people identified the body as that of 63-year-old former wood cutter Robert Walsh. Professor Abbott said Webb was born in Footscray on November 16,1905 to Richard August Webb (1866-1939) and Eliza Amelia Morris Grace (1871-1946). Who killed 'Little Red Riding Hood'? 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. On 3 December 1948, a day after The Advertiser named him as the likely victim, E.C. The South Australia Police Major Crime Branch, who still have the case listed as open, will investigate the new information. Australian guilty in 'Claremont serial killings' case, Why science could free Australian 'serial killer', Russia launches pre-dawn missile attack on Ukraine, Explosion derails train in Russian border region. Abbotts research was undertaken with American genealogist Colleen Fitzpatrick. (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. He said their investigations had also found a link to the name "TKeane" which was printed on the Somerton Man's tie. "[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. A researcher in the case of the Somerton Man says he has solved the decades-old mystery, identifying the figure as a Melbourne-born electrical engineer. C.I.B. Shown the plaster cast by Paul Lawson, she does not identify the man as Alf Boxall, or any other person. [113][116], Dorothy recalled one instance in March 1946 in which her husband apparently attempted suicide with an overdose of ether. Theories abounded, including that the person - dubbed Somerton Man - was a spy. The Tamm Shud case, also known as the Mystery of the Somerton Man, is an unsolved case of an unidentified man found dead at 6:30 am, December 1st of 1948, on the Somerton Park beach, just south of Adelaide, South Australia. 16 November 1905: Carl "Charles" Webb born in Footscray, Melbourne, Victoria. 16 October 1912: Prosper Thomson is born in central Queensland. He said after using hairs from a plaster bust of the man to gather DNA evidence, researchers in Australia and America had further narrowed the search "to build out a family tree containing over 4,000 people". Theres almost a sequel film here, [not] of who is Somerton man?, but now its the mysterious case of Charles Webb., Remains of mystery Somerton man exhumed 70 years after his death, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. Beachgoers found the body lying against a seawall on Somerton Beach in Adelaide on 1 December, 1948. "So it's not out of the question that these items of clothing he had with TKeane on them were just hand-me-downs from his brother-in-law.". Meilan Solly acute gastritis hemorrhage, extensive congestion of the liver and spleen, and the congestion to the brain. The autopsy also showed that the man's last meal was a pasty eaten about three to four hours before death,[8] but tests failed to reveal any foreign substance in the body. He buys a ticket for the 10:50a.m. train to Henley Beach but does not use it. It was noted that the movement seen by witnesses at 7 p.m. could have been the last convulsion preceding death. Police begin work to exhume the body in the early hours of Wednesday morning. [8][83] Any further attempts to identify the body have been hampered by the embalming formaldehyde having destroyed much of the man's DNA. [80] International circulation of a photograph of the man and details of his fingerprints yielded no positive identification. The identity and cause of death. His identity has never been determined, but there are several theories about his origin. Carolyn Bilsborow, a film-maker and director of the documentary Missing Pieces about Somerton man, said the news was incredibly exciting. Bilsborow said: Now that weve got his name, theres still so many questions. Johnson, about 45, of Arthur St, Payneham, was found on Somerton Beach, opposite the Crippled Children's Home yesterday morning. But to find out that hes Australian, from Victoria, and that he died, and no one obviously noticed he was missing, or no one followed up with the police that he was missingI find that particularly kind of tragic. She said the news also turns on its head the theory in her documentary that Australian ballet dancer Robin Thomson was the son of Somerton man. [9][30] There is no record of the station's bathroom facilities being unavailable on the day he arrived. The Somerton Man code was actually cracked in late June 2020. [32] Soon after being interviewed by police over her harassment, Mangnoson collapsed and required medical treatment. Johnson identified himself at a police station. 10 p.m.11 p.m.: Estimated time he had eaten a pasty based on time of death. 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.. [38] The book was missing the words "Tamm Shud" on the last page, which had a blank reverse, and microscopic tests indicated that the piece of paper was from the page torn from the book. The divorce was granted in April 1952. [2] An editorial called the case "one of Australia's most profound mysteries"[2] and noted that if he died by poison so rare and obscure it could not be identified by toxicology experts, then surely the culprit's advanced knowledge of toxic substances pointed to something more serious than a mere domestic poisoning. There was congestion in the second half of the duodenum. [5], Carl Webbs father Richard August Webb (died in 1939) had emigrated to Australia from Hamburg, Germany. [2], A number of possible identifications have been proposed over the years. The secret mine that hid the Nazis' stolen treasure. The links to Thomson go back to the scrap of paper with the Persian words for finished found in the mans fob pocket in his trousers. The 5-foot-11, 40- to 50-year-old man carried no money or identification. I was convinced that he was from Europe maybe a displaced person after the second world war [who] was here alone., But to find out that hes Australian, from Victoria, and that he died, and no one obviously noticed he was missing, or no one followed up with the police that he was missing I find that particularly kind of tragic.. May 1950: Jessica and Prosper Thomson are married. [7] He was clean-shaven[7] and carried no identification, which led police to believe he had committed suicide. [32] He added that this evidence fitted in with the theory that the body may have been brought to Somerton Park beach after the man's death, accounting for the lack of evidence of vomiting and convulsions, which are the two main physiological reactions to poison. [86][needs update] Some independent researchers believe the ID card belonged to Horace Charles Reynolds, a Tasmanian man who died in 1953 and therefore could not have been the Somerton man. In July 1949, a local man came forward with a copy of The Rubiyt that hed found tossed into the back of his car around the time of the Somerton Mans death. Although the last character in this line of text looks like an "L", it is fairly clear on closer inspection of the image that this is formed from an "I" and the extension of the line used to delete or underline that line of text. The site at tamamshud.blogspot.com shows exactly how it was uncovered and gives the precise methodology so that anyone can test it for themselves. ][88], Prosper Thomson died in 1995 and Jessica Thomson died in 2007. A suicide note perhaps? [3][4] South Australia Police and Forensic Science South Australia have not verified the result, but South Australia Police said they were "cautiously optimistic" about it. When police arrived, they found the man lying in the sand with his head resting on the sea wall, with his legs out in front of him, and his ankles crossed. (As for the American origins of the attire, Abbott speculates that Keane bought the clothing second-hand from a G.I. [110] Initially there were no known pre-death photographs of Webb, but further investigation uncovered his likely presence in a 1921 Swinburne University football team photograph, though the image did not identify Webb directly,[112] and in November 2022 Australian Story revealed photographs of Webb from the 1920s found in a Webb family photo album. A smuggler. As Hilary Whiteman reports for CNN, a new DNA analysis suggests the Somerton Man is Carl Charles Webb, an electrical engineer from Melbourne who vanished from the public record in April 1947. [113] Earlier the ABC had published photos of Webb's brother, Roy Webb, claiming they resembled the Somerton Man. Mystery of Somerton man's identity solved after 73 years, researchers in Australia say Cryptic clues about man found on an Adelaide beach in 1948 spawned theories of jilted lovers and cold. They may or may not have been cohabiting. He noted that the man's shoes were remarkably clean and appeared to have been recently polished, rather than in the condition expected of a man who had apparently been wandering around Glenelg all day. But after more than 70 years, a researcher says he's solved the mystery - Somerton Man was Carl Webb. For the next 70 or so years, speculation and increasingly outlandish theories dominated discussion of the Somerton Man. [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. On December 1, 1948, an unknown man was found lying dead on the sand on Somerton Beach next to the neighborhood of Glenelg, about 7 miles (11 km) southwest of Adelaide, South Australia. [75] Lying next to him was his unconscious father, Keith Waldemar Mangnoson. In September 1946, Dorothy fled from her husband, following years of physical and verbal abuse. He said he had tracked down and spoken to Mr Webb's living relatives. A former ballet dancer. Its hard to see this as anything other than intentional, Fiona-Ellis Jones, host of The Somerton Man Mystery podcast, tells the Australian Broadcasting Companys (ABC) Bridget Judd. The secret mine that hid the Nazis' stolen treasure. 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. Webb, who was born in the Australian state of Victoria in 1905, fit the bill. Division, ", See, for example; Gumundsson, H.H. " Several years ago, Ms. Egan had her DNA analyzed, and links were found to people in the United States (including relatives of Thomas Jefferson ). [96] The authorities have said that they intend to take DNA from the remains if possible. [97], In March 2009, a University of Adelaide team led by Professor Derek Abbott began an attempt to solve the case through cracking the code and proposing to exhume the body to test for DNA. 27 July: Sydney detectives locate and interview Boxall. The discovery was made by Mr J. Lyons, of Whyte Rd, Somerton. Egan was Robins granddaughter. Last month Ms Chapman said the decision to exhume the body followed "intense public interest" in the case. Somerton Man body-on-the-beach mystery solved as family secrets unravel | Australian Story ABC News In-depth 1.22M subscribers Subscribe 21K Share 1M views 2 months ago #AustralianStory. And I would like to find out what happened to Dorothy," she told CNN. [note 6] The father was taken to a hospital in a very weak condition, suffering from exposure;[75] following a medical examination, he was transferred to a mental hospital. Born in Footscray, a suburb of Melbourne, on November 16, 1905, Webb was the sixth child of a German-born man and an Australian woman, writes ABCs Rebecca Opie. [22], On 14 January 1949, staff at the Adelaide railway station discovered a brown suitcase with its label removed, which had been checked into the station cloakroom after 11:00am on 30 November 1948. The pathologist, Dr. Dwyer, concluded: "I am quite convinced the death could not have been natural the poison I suggested was a barbiturate or a soluble hypnotic". The three sons would eventually work at the family bakery. 26 July: The unlisted phone number discovered in the book is traced to a woman living in Glenelg (Jessica Thomson, previously Harkness). A jacket and tie with their tags cut off, unused train and bus tickets and a scrap of paper with the printed words tamm shud, meaning finished in Persian. Copies of Rubaiyat, as well as the Talmud and Bible, were being compared to the code using computers to get a statistical base for letter frequencies. The card, a document issued in the United States to foreign seamen during World War I, was given to Henneberg in October 2011 for comparison of the ID photograph to that of the Somerton man. When no one came forward to identify Somerton man, authorities were left with only cryptic clues to guide them. Prof Derek Abbott from the University of Adelaide said on Monday he believes the man found on 1 December 1948, was Carl Charles Webb, a 43-year-old electrical engineer from Melbourne. [2] There has been intense speculation ever since regarding the identity of the victim, the cause of his death, and the events leading up to it. "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 man's body was found propped up against the seawall at Somerton Beach in Adelaide on December 1, 1948. Between 8:30a.m. to 10:50am: There is no satisfactory explanation for what The Somerton Man does during these hours. While the mystery man's remains were exhumed last year by SA Police, Professor Abbott has in the meantime persisted with his own independent efforts to crack the case. x "Somerton Man mystery 'solved': Professor identifies man found on beach in 1948" from news.com.au Sleuths amateur and professional alike have been puzzled for years by the discovery in 1948 of an unidentified man's . The man was well-built, about 40 to 50 years old, 5. Despite authorities public appeals and mounting media coverage of the mystery, no one was able to positively identify the Somerton Man. DNA Researchers Name the Somerton Man, Australia's 73-Year-Old Cold Case. Also in the suitcase was a thread card of Barbour brand orange waxed thread of "an unusual type" not available in Australiait was the same as that used to repair the lining in a pocket of the trousers the dead man was wearing. 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 . The Somerton Man has been exhumed what happens now? The 5-foot-11, 40- to 50-year-old man carried no money or identification. Abbott and Rachel married in 2010 and they have three children. Did this woman die because her genitals were cut? Mack stated that the reason he did not confirm this at the viewing was a difference in the colour of the hair. Between 11:00a.m. and 11:15a.m: Checks a brown suitcase into the railway station cloak room. Police arrived on the scene the following morning after receiving reports of a dead body on Somerton Beach. 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. When an employee looked inside the case he told Harvey he had found an object inside the case he described as looking like a "needle". [5], On 1 December 1948 at 6:30am, the police were contacted after the body of a man was discovered on Somerton Park beach near Glenelg, about 11km (7mi) southwest of Adelaide, South Australia. The man was well-built, about 40 to 50 years old, 5. "The first cousin we found was on his paternal sideand the second one we found was on the maternal side," he said. [113], The marriage was not a harmonious one, largely due to Carl's personality. [79], J. M. Gower, secretary of the Largs North Progress Association, received anonymous phone calls threatening that Mrs. Mangnoson would meet with an accident if he interfered while A. H. Curtis, the acting mayor of Port Adelaide, received three anonymous phone calls threatening "an accident" if he "stuck his nose into the Mangnoson affair". 614 June: The piece of paper bearing the inscription "Tamm Shud" is found in a concealed fob pocket. The hauntingly intriguing case of the Somerton Man has baffled researchers for decades. Abbott also tracked down the Barbour waxed cotton of the period and found packaging variations. 'Somerton man' mystery is 'SOLVED': Extraordinary twist in Australia's most baffling death 70 years after he was found dead on a beach with a coded note in his pocket. Advertising Notice The scrap had been torn from the final page of a copy of Rubaiyat of Omar Khayym, authored by 12th-century poet Omar Khayym. [6] The names were not released to the public until the 1980s as at the time they were "quite easily procurable by the ordinary individual" from a chemist without the need to give a reason for the purchase. In November 2013, three of their relatives gave interviews to the Channel Nine current affairs program 60 Minutes. It has been one of the most interesting cases in Australias history. A post-mortem ruled he had died from. Detective H. Strangway and Constable J. Moss are enquiring. 6:30am: Found dead by John Lyons and two men with a horse. The man's body was found propped up against the seawall at Somerton Beach in Adelaide on December 1, 1948. [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. They then tracked down the man's living relatives, using their DNA to confirm his identity. [18] About the same time, Ina Harvey, the receptionist from the Strathmore Hotel opposite Adelaide railway station, revealed that a strange man had stayed in Room 21 or 23 for a few days around the time of the death, checking out on 30 November 1948. Initially, the letters were thought to be words in a foreign language[38] before it was realised it was a code. Dismissing the enigmatic figure as a drunk or a soundly sleeping beachgoer, the couples made no effort to approach him. [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]. In his pocket were bus and train tickets, chewing gum, some matches, two combs and a pack of cigarettes. Was it suicide? The Somerton Man was an unidentified man whose body was found on 1 December 1948 on the beach at Somerton Park, a suburb of Adelaide, South Australia.The case is also known after the Persian phrase tamm shud (Persian: ), 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. His history and the autopsy findings suggest he committed suicide by poisoning himself.[113]. [50], It was determined the letter frequency of the message in the back of the Rubaiyat was considerably different from letters written down randomly; the frequency was to be further tested to determine if the alcohol level of the writer could alter random distribution. "Marriage and a mystery: Somerton Man's romantic twist", "The Somerton man died alone on a beach in 1948. Also, the other "L" has a curve to the bottom part of the character. [72] A seaman named Tommy Reade from the SSCycle, in port at the time, was thought to be the dead man, but after some of his shipmates viewed the body at the morgue, they stated categorically that the corpse was not that of Reade. By 4 December, police had announced that the man's fingerprints were not on South Australian police records, forcing them to look further afield. [108][109], On 26 July 2022, Abbott announced that he and genealogist Colleen Fitzpatrick had determined that the man was Carl "Charles" Webb, an electrical engineer and instrument maker born on 16 November 1905, in Footscray, a suburb of Melbourne. [17], He was dressed in a white shirt; a red, white and blue tie; brown trousers; socks and shoes; a brown knitted pullover and fashionable grey and brown double-breasted jacket of reportedly "American" tailoring. Did you talk to her about that at all?" At 6:30 am on December 1, 1948, police were called to Somerton Park beach south of Adelaide, South Australia after the body of a man was found. [16], In 1978, ABC-TV, in its documentary series Inside Story, produced a programme on the Tamm Shud case, titled "The Somerton Beach Mystery", where reporter Stuart Littlemore investigated the case, including interviewing Boxall, who could add no new information,[51] and Paul Lawson, who made the plaster cast of the body and who refused to answer a question about whether anyone had positively identified the body. Abbott had attempted to contact the Thomson family, but upon finding both Jo Thomson and her son Robin Thomson dead, sought expert opinion which showed biological links between Robin and the Somerton man likely due to sharing the same rare dental and ear conditions, on top of the muscular calves which helped Thomson become a professional dancer. Fitzpatrick told the Guardian she and Abbott started with a match in a DNA database (a so-called DNA-cousin to Somerton man) and then built out his family tree until they found someone who fit the description of who they were looking for. As a result of their conversations with Thomson, police suspected that Boxall was the dead man. Following a public appeal by police, the copy of Rubaiyat from which the page had been torn was located.
