The evening of November 30, 1948, was warm in Glenelg, a southwest suburb of Adelaide in the state of South Australia. As many of the locals enjoyed an end-of-spring stroll along nearby Somerton Beach they noticed a man lying on his back with his head propped against a seawall, his legs extended out, and his feet crossed. Some had seen him twitching and squirming at approximately 7:00. Believing he was a drunk who was sleeping one off, they did not approach him.

The following morning, two jockeys exercising their horses on the beach came upon a similar scene and initially came to the same conclusion. Upon approaching the man, however, they realized he was deceased.

The cause of the “Somerton Man’s” death could not be conclusively determined and his fingerprints were not matched to any on file with the Australian Police, Scotland Yard, or the FBI.  Over two-hundred-fifty people suggested to have been the “Joe Bloggs” (the Australian equivalent of a John Doe) have been disproven.

In 2022, a researcher announced DNA tests unveiled the name of the man on the sand. The findings have not been confirmed by investigators, but it appears that after over seventy-three years, the Somerton Somebody has been identified.

The Somerton Man

The Somerton Man did not appear to be a bum or a derelict, as he was clean-shaven and dressed in professional attire, wearing a white shirt and a tricolored striped red, white, and blue necktie; the rest of his ensemble of trousers, socks, recently-polished shoes, knitted V-neck pullover, and a fashionable light brown double-breasted American-made jacket, were all brown. Oddly, all of his clothing’s labels had been removed and he had no hat, which were worn by most men of the time.

An unlit cigarette was behind the man’s ear and a half-smoked cigarette was on his coat’s right collar. He did not have a wallet or any money.

The man had not drowned; his clothes and body were dry.

A Reconstruction Of How The Man Was Found

The shoes appeared to be bespoke (custom-made and tailored to the wearer’s feet) and had the cobbler’s last number of “206B” embossed on the inside leather.

The necktie was of particular interest, as the stripes’ slopes followed American convention.

 

The Somerton Man’s Shoes And A

Similar Tie To The One He Was Wearing

Several items were found in the man’s pockets: an unused second-class rail ticket from Adelaide to Henley Beach, a distance of roughly twelve kilometres (seven miles); a used bus ticket from the city to a locale three kilometres (just under two miles) north of where he was found; two combs, one plastic and the other of narrow aluminum found to have been manufactured in the United States; a half-empty packet of Juicy Fruit chewing gum; an Army Club cigarette packet containing seven cigarettes of a different brand, Kensitas; and a quarter-full box of Bryant & May matches.

The matches were British as were the cheap Army Club cigarettes; Kensitas was an upper class Scottish brand.

Some Of The Items Found

Pathologist John “Barb” Dwyer found that the man had an enlarged spleen and that his heart, stomach, and liver were deeply congested with blood. The time of death was estimated at 2:00 a.m. on December 1, about four-and-a-half hours before he was found by jockeys Neil Day and Horrie Patching, and approximately seven hours after he was last seen trembling.

Dr. Dwyer believed, but could conclusively determine, that the man’s death resulted from heart failure caused by poisoning, possibly from swallowing a barbiturate or soluble hypnotic (sleeping pill.) An undigested pasty, similar to an American meat pie, was ruled out as the source.

Deputy Government Chemical Analyst Robert Cowan found no common types of poisons or any alcohol in the man’s organs. University of Adelaide Physiology and Pharmacology professor Dr. Cedric Hicks, however, suspected he had been injected with variants of two highly toxic drugs that evaporate quickly without leaving any trace. He suspected the man’s movements as seen by beachgoers seven hours before he is believed to have died could have been a convulsion.

The names of these drugs, digitalis and ousbain, AKA strophanthin, were not made public until the 1980s. Both are types of steroids developed to treat heart failure. If not monitored and used incorrectly, they can cause severe toxicity, including dangerous arrhythmias, confusion, and vision changes. Strophanthin, derived from an African plant, is noted for its use as arrow poison by East African tribes, particularly the Somali, in hunting and warfare.

The Somerton Man’s body was embalmed, with the use of specialized overseas techniques, on December 10, nine days after being discovered.

Autopsy Photographs

Five weeks later, on January 14, 1949, an unclaimed brown suitcase at the Adelaide Railway Station was deemed that of the Somerton Man. It had been checked into the station cloakroom after 11:00 a.m. on November 30, 1948, roughly eight hours before he was seen on the beach.

The suitcase was unlocked and packed full; its contents consisted of clothing items including an American style “shirt coat,” a pair of light brown trousers with sand in the cuffs, a tartan scarf, four pairs of underpants, pyjamas, and a size seven red felt pair of slippers.

   

The Stub And Some Of The Clothing In The Suitcase

The luggage also housed a necktie, a singlet, and a laundry bag. In contrast to the clothing the man had been wearing, these items had labels. Written in India ink was “T. Keane” on the tie and “Kean” on the singlet, while the name “Keane” was printed on the laundry bag. Each item also had, respectively, the dry-cleaning marks 1171/7, 4393/7 and 3053/7, but they could not be traced.

Because wartime rationing was still enforced, clothing was difficult to acquire and it was a common practice at the time to place name tags on one’s garments. These clothes appeared secondhand and it was also customary to remove the previous owner’s tags.

No missing person named or resembling “T. Keane” was found in any English-speaking country. Investigators surmised that if foul play were involved, the killer had tried to conceal the Somerton Man’s identity by removing the clothing tags and had either overlooked the “Keane” tags or purposefully left them intact in an effort to mislead.

   

The Lone Clothing Marks

Other items in the suitcase included shoe polish, an electrician’s screwdriver, a table knife cut into a short sharp instrument, a ladies’ hairpin, a pair of sharpened scissors, a small zinc square likely used as a protective sheath for the knife and scissors, a razor strop embossed with “Kent St, Sydney” in the leather and a stenciling brush, typically used by merchant ships’ third officers to designate cargo. Pencils and unused letter stationery were also found, but without any correspondence.

The luggage also housed an orange waxed thread card of Barbour, a luxury designer and manufacturer of ready-to-wear clothing and accessories. The thread was the same as that used to repair the pocket lining of the trousers the man was wearing.

Barbour was an English brand but, intriguingly, its products were not available in Australia.

Other Contents

The suitcase’s front gusset and the coat’s featherstitching were American-made. The coat had not been imported, suggesting the man had been to America or had purchased it from someone of similar size who had been in the States.

The Suitcase Was American

Police believe the man had arrived at the Adelaide Railway Station by overnight train from either Melbourne, Sydney, or Port Augusta. Melbourne and Sydney are each east of Adelaide, approximately seven-hundred-twenty-five kilometres (four-hundred-fifty miles) and 1,370 kilometres (eight-hundred-fifty miles,) respectively. Port Augusta is roughly three-hundred-ten kilometres (one-hundred-ninety-two miles) to Adelaide’s northwest.

The man may have showered and shaved at the nearby City Baths, though no ticket for the facility was found on him. The government centre had a public swimming pool, but not, despite its name, a public bathing facility. Afterwards, it is surmised that he returned to the railway station and purchased a ticket for the 10:50 a.m. train to Henley Beach, approximately thirteen kilometres (eight miles) north of Somerton Beach, but he never boarded. Instead, he checked his suitcase at the station cloak room before taking a city bus to Glenelg, where he was seen along Somerton Beach that evening and found deceased the following day.

X Marks The Somerton Beach Spot

The Somerton Man was buried at Adelaide’s West Terrace Cemetery on June 14, 1949, seven-and-a-half months after he was found. The Salvation Army conducted the service free of charge, and a group of locals pooled their money to pay for the plot and the headstone pictured below.

The Somerton Man Is Laid To Rest 

One week later, Adelaide City Coroner Thomas Erskine (T.E.) Cleland completed the coronial inquest of the Somerton Man, concluding he had died an “unnatural death,” concurring it had likely resulted from a poison, most likely a glucoside (chemically derived from glucose) that had been intentionally ingested.

Dr. Cleland, however, could also not definitively determine poisoning as the cause of death nor could he state with any degree of certainty whether the dosage had been administered by the decedent (i.e. a suicide) or by another party (i.e. a homicide.) He also could not conclusively say the man had actually died where he was found on the beach.

Shortly thereafter, taxidermist Paul Lawson made a plaster cast of the man’s head, shoulders, and hands; the body was re-examined by University of Adelaide professor and pathologist John “Burtie” Cleland, a distant cousin of T.E. Cleland. He determined the man was between forty to forty-five-years-old, five-feet-eleven inches tall, and had weighed approximately one-hundred-eighty pounds. His hair was ginger-coloured and slightly greying around the temples and behind the ears. The man bore three small scars on his left wrist and single one-inch scars on his upper left forearm and left elbow.

Dr. Cleland noted the deceased had been in “top physical condition,” having broad shoulders and a narrow waist. He speculated the man could have a ballet background because of his wedged-shaped toes and particularly striking high and pronounced calf muscles, attributes which are common with dancers.

 

Plaster Cast Images Of The Somerton Man

Professor Cleland also re-examined the man’s clothing and belongings. Found sewn deeply within a fob pocket of the trouser pocket was a rolled-up scrap of paper printed with the words “Tamám Shud,” a Persian phrase meaning “ended” or finished.”  The perhaps symbolic finding suggested the Somerton Man may have committed suicide.

Tamám was misspelled as “Tamán” in many contemporary newspaper articles, and the error is often repeated in subsequent reports.

The New Moniker Of The Somerton Man Case

“Tamám Shud” comprises the last line of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, an eleventh-century collection of poems emphasizing one should make the most of life and have no regrets when he or she dies. The book was popular during the 1940s and was a common gift among families and lovers.

On July 22, 1949, an Adelaide businessman who lived near Somerton Beach told police he had found a copy of The Rubaiyat with a portion torn from the last page tossed into the back seat of his car parked on Jetty Road near Somerton Beach on November 30, 1948, the day the man was found.  Microscopic tests determined the snippet found in the Somerton Man’s pocket was from that particular book, a rare 1941 New Zealand edition of English poet and writer Edward FitzGerald’s 1859 translation.

The name of the man who had found the book has never been revealed.

The Paper Is Traced

Two handwritten phone numbers were on the book’s inside back cover. One was that of a local bank while the other was for Jessica “Jo” Thomson, a twenty-seven-year-old nurse who lived in Glenelg, only approximately four-hundred metres (just over 1,300 feet), from Somerton Beach. Neighbors had told investigators they had seen a man resembling the individual found on the beach knocking on her door shortly before the body was found.

Jo had no explanation as to why the man would have her phone number or why he would have come to her home. She said she did not know him, but investigators said her immediate reaction upon seeing the man’s bust suggested otherwise.

Jo Thomson

While working at Sydney’s Royal North Shore Hospital in 1945, the then-unmarried Jesse “Jo” Harkness said she had given a copy of The Rubaiyat to Alf Boxall, an Army Lieutenant serving with the Royal Australian Engineers, working in the Water Transport Section. Shortly after moving to Melbourne following the end of World War II, she said he had written her and that she had replied, saying she was now married. There is no evidence they had any subsequent contact.

Alf Boxall soon rose to the rank of Lieutenant in the Australian Army and was found to have been involved in Australian Intelligence from 1945-48, during and after World War II. He was thought to be the Somerton Man until he was found working in the maintenance section of Sydney’s Randwick Bus Depot in July 1949. He still had the copy of The Rubaiyat Jo had given him, confirmed a 1924 edition published in Sydney, intact and including the final page with the words “Tamám Shud.”    

Alf Boxall

Records indicate Jesse “Jo” Harkenss had married Prosper “George” Thomson in 1950, the year after he had divorced his first wife, Queenie. Jo had also had a son, Robin, born in 1947, the year before the Somerton Man was found.  Late in her life, she told friends that he was not George’s son, without naming the father.

Jo And Baby Robin

Robin Thomson had been a dancer for several years with the Australian Ballet, during which time he had noticeably pronounced calf muscles. He and the Somerton Man also shared other unique physical characteristics.

                     

      Dancing Robin Thomson                         Robin’s Pronounced Calves 

Both men had their two lateral incisor teeth missing, a form of hypodontia, an often inherited genetic trait possessed by only 2-7% of the population. In addition, whereas the upper hollow of most people’s ears, called the cymba, is narrow and small, and the cavum, the lower hollow, is usually large, the ears of the Somerton Man and Robin Thomson are the reverse, being inverted.

These distinctive physical traits led to speculation that Robin Thomson had been a love child of Jo Thomson and the Somerton Man.  It has been suggested that the latter came to Adelaide hoping to see his son, and that he committed suicide on the beach after being rebuffed by Jo.

   

The Somerton Man And Robin Thomson

Have Similar Unique Physical Characteristics

At Jo’s request, police always provided the media with pseudonyms when referencing her, generally referring to her as ”Jestyn.” Her name was made public as a possible connection to the Somerton Man only after her 2007 death.

Jo Is Only Posthumously Known

In a 2013 interview on the Australian version of 60 Minutes, Jo and George Thomson’s daughter Kate said her mother had told her she knew the Somerton Man and that his name was also “known to a level higher than the police force.”

Noting that she had taught English to Russian migrants, could speak the language, and was sympathetic toward communism, Kate suggested her mum, as well as the Somerton Man, could have been spies.

   

Kate Thomson

The Somerton Man’s death occurred at the beginning of the Cold War and at a time of escalating international tensions. The Australian security agencies were reorganising into the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and two sites approximately five-hundred-kilometres (just over three-hundred miles) from Adelaide were of espionage interest: the Radium Hill uranium mine and the Woomera Test Range, an Anglo-Australian military research facility, home to an advanced rocketry program involving the United States and Australian military authorities. In addition, the United Kingdom was preparing to begin atomic testing eight-hundred kilometres from Adelaide, and evidence suggest secrets were already being leaked from Australia to the Soviet Union and that Russian intelligence operations were occurring in the Land Down Under.

Proponents of the Somerton Man being a Cold War spy theorize his death had been a “wet op” (“mokroye delo” in Russian,”) a covert action generally in the form of a sophisticated assassination without leaving clues to the manner in which it was carried out. The chosen method was generally by use of obscure poisons that, more often than not, fooled even the toxicology experts.

At the time, using books to deliver coded messages was a common espionage practice among the KGB as well as the CIA and Israeli intelligence.

Faint pencil markings of five lines of capital letters written on the inside back cover of The Rubaiyat from which the Tamám Shud paper found in the Somerton Man’s pocket had been torn were believed to have been some sort of encoded message.

The letters in the second and fourth lines were similar. Some theorized the apparent striking out of the letters in the second line suggested the coded message was written with an encryption error.

Neither the Australian Army or Navy, the United States Naval Intelligence, or the British intelligence agencies developed a possible deciphering of the supposed code.  A 1978 examination by Australian Department of Defence cryptographers also failed to develop a possible meaning of the letters. A 2014 analysis by American computational linguist John Rehling concluded they likely consist of the initials of some English text written as a form of shorthand, rather than a code.

Are The Letters A Code?

Spy advocates suggest the Somerton Man could have been known KGB spy Pavel Fedosimov, who was stationed at the Russian embassy in the United States. He was last seen in New York in July 1948, five months before the Somerton Man’s death.

American intelligence was tracking Fedosimov who is believed to have boarded a ship bound for Ukraine. Some reports have placed him subsequently going to Australia, but nothing has been found to corroborate them.

Pavel Fedosimov

Another person offered as possibly being the Somerton Man is the individual on this identification card found by an Adelaide woman in her father’s possessions in 2011. Such documents were issued in the United States to foreign seamen during World War I, with this particular card dated February 28, 1918, and issued to an H.C. Reynolds. His age is listed as eighteen and his nationality as British.

The National Archives of both the United States and the United Kingdom, as well as the Australian War Memorial, have not located any records relating to an H. C. Reynolds. Some independent researchers believe the card was issued to Horace Charles Reynolds, a Tasmanian man born in 1900 and who died in 1953, five years after the Somerton Man.

World War I Identification Card Of “H.C. Reynolds”

The Somerton Man’s brown suitcase was disposed in 1986 and the cigarettes found in his pockets were discarded without being tested for DNA. The copy of The Rubaiyat from which the Tamám Shud paper had been extracted has also been disposed and authorities say witness statements have been lost over the years.

Much of the Somerton Man’s DNA was destroyed by the embalming formaldehyde, but tests have showed that his maternal haplogroup is H4a1a1a, a lineage possessed by only 1% of Europeans.

Much Of The Evidence Has Is Gone

In May 2021, Australian Attorney-General Vickie Chapman authorized an exhumation of the Somerton Man’s remains. Just over one year later, his identity, after over seventy-three years, was purportedly determined.

An Artist’s Rendering Of The Somerton Man

On July 26, 2022, University of Adelaide Physics and Electronic Engineering Professor and Somerton Man researcher Derek Abbott, in conjunction with American Genealogist Colleen Fitzpatrick, announced genetic genealogy of the DNA obtained from the Somerton Man’s hair has shown him to be Carl “Charles” Webb, a forty-three-year-old electrical engineer and instrument maker.

The youngest of six children born in the Melbourne suburb of Footscracy in 1905, Charles Webb married Dorothy “Doff” Robertson, a pharmacist and chiropodist, in 1941. The couple settled in South Yarra, another Melborune suburb.

Doff, who died in 1998, said her husband was a loner, had mental problems, was verbally and physically abusive toward her, and that his violent temper worsened upon her nursing him back to health after he had attempted suicide by overdosing on ether in March 1946. She left him six months later.

The following year, Webb left Footscracy and disappeared; no official records of his subsequent whereabouts have been found. Family members mentioned of his moving to Cottlesloe, a suburb of Perth across the continent on the western edge, but that they then lost contact with him.

Doff was officially granted a divorce on the grounds of desertion in April 1952. Records show she was living in Bute, South Australia, one-hundred-forty-four kilometres (eighty-nine miles) northwest of Adelaide in 1951. She was likely also residing there in 1948, and her former husband may have traveled there hoping to find her.

The declaration of Charles Webb being the Somerton Man is promising because Doff had also mentioned he had written several poems, the majority of which had death as a theme, akin to The Rubaiyat. Webb also purportedly often bet on horses, and Abbott believes the letters in the book relate to those activities as opposed to an espionage-related coded message.

Webb also had many of the possessions of his late brother-in-law Jack Keane who had been killed in an air accident in Ireland in November 1943 while serving in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Reserve during World War II. Several items, including coins and a map of Chicago, suggested Keane had been to the United States and had purchased clothes while there. This may explain why Webb, presumed to be the Somerton Man, was wearing what are believed to be American garments with the name Keane on them.

A link between Charles Webb and Jo Thomson has not been established. I have not found anything stating if Webb ever partook in ballet. Abbott and Fitzpatrick say he was not involved in anything clandestine and have dismissed the suggestion of the Somerton Man being a spy.

Charles Webb At About Age Twenty-Five

The South Australia Police and Forensic Science South Australia have not yet corroborated Abbott and Fitzpatrick’s findings. Nevertheless, the Find a Grave site lists Carl Webb as the Somerton Man.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/162837769/carl-webb

If Charles Webb is confirmed to be the Somerton Man, the mystery of the man in the Adelaide sand will only be partially solved. It is still unknown how the man’s life ended and whether it was by his own hands or by that of another.

It Is Not Yet Ended

Abbott and Fitzpatrick say the autosomal DNA extracted from the Somerton Man’s hair has shown no conclusive link between him and Robin Thomson, who died in 2009. The rare similar physical features of their teeth and ears is called a “freak coincidence.”

Robin Thomson Is Not

 The Son Of The Somerton Man

Robin Thomson married Roma Egan while she was a student at the Australian Ballet. While across the Tasman Sea, after Robin had taken a position with the New Zealand Ballet Company, the couple had a daughter, Rachel. The pregnancy was not planned and they did not have the means to raise her.

Roma And Robin

Rachel Egan was adopted, raised in New Zealand, and moved to Brisbane, Australia, as an adult. Prior to the DNA findings, the evidence suggested she may have been the Somerton Man’s granddaughter.

Rachel met Derek Abbott through his investigation into the Somerton Man. They began a relationship, married in 2010, and now have three children.

Derek Abbott And Rachel Egan

An eerily similar death to that of the Somerton Man occurred three-and-a-half years earlier in Australia.

On June 3, 1945, the body of thirty-four-year-old Joseph Marshall, AKA George Marshall, was found on a secluded rock ledge overlooking Taylor Bay in Mosman, an upscale suburb of Sydney. Lying on his chest was a copy of The Rubaiyat and his death was ruled a suicide, likely resulting from poisoning, as a bottle of lemonade and an unknown powder lay near him.

At the time, Jo Thomson was working at Sydney’s Royal North Shore Hospital. Alf Boxall, who died in 1995, said she had given him her copy of The Rubaiyat in August, two months after Marshall was found dead, at the Clifton Gardens Hotel, a short walk from where he was found.

This earlier Australian death also involving poison and The Rubaiyat appears to be another “freaky coincidence.”

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/189263055/joseph-haim_saul-marshall

Joseph Marshall

SOURCES:

• The Advertiser (Adelaide, Australia)
• The Australian
• Australian Story
• Doe Network
• History’s Mysteries
• Missing Pieces Documentary
• The News (Adelaide, Australia)
• Sixty Minutes Australia
• Sydney Morning-Herald
• The Telegraph