The Somerton Man Case: The Death No One Could Explain

Summary

Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore

Episode: The Somerton Man Case: The Death No One Could Explain

Crime House | January 7, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, hosts Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore take a deep dive into Australia's most infamous unsolved mystery: the Somerton Man case. They guide listeners from the mysterious discovery of an unidentified, well-dressed body on an Adelaide beach in 1948 all the way to recent breakthroughs that may have finally solved the riddle—answering not only the question of "who" but "how" and "why." The episode thoroughly analyzes the evidence, untangles the theories (spy? suicide? murder?), and delivers compelling storytelling around one of true crime's most iconic cold cases.

Tone: Engaged, conversational, occasionally light-hearted, but always respectful and detail-oriented.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Discovery on the Beach

• Timeline of Discovery:
  • Nov 30, 1948 (Evening): Witnesses John Lyons and his wife see a man in a brown suit slumped against a seawall at Somerton Park Beach. The man briefly raises his arm, so they assume he is drunk and move on. (04:44-05:45)
  • Others: Olive Neal and date Gordon also notice the man, but just his legs; Olive remarks he isn’t swatting mosquitoes—“perhaps he’s dead.” (05:10)
  • Dec 1, 1948 (Morning): 16-year-old Neil Day and his friend Hori Patching see the man still unmoved; upon closer check, he is dead and already cold. John Lyons (again) confirms the man is the same as the night before, and police are called. (06:34-07:49)

2. The Clues Begin: Clothing & Personal Effects

• Unusual Wardrobe (08:19)
  • The Somerton Man was overdressed for summer (four upper layers, trousers, dress shoes)—but notably missing any clothing tags and a hat, which was almost mandatory in 1948.
  • American-style tie and stitching; speculation of American connections.
• Personal Items (10:04)
  • No wallet, no ID, no money; items included chewing gum (unusual in Australia then), bus & train tickets, cigarettes (expensive ones in a cheap brand’s pack), combs, and matches. The lack of ID raises questions—was he hiding his identity? (11:57)
• Autopsy Findings (12:54)
  • No visible trauma; estimated age 45, fit and healthy, large calf muscles (possibly a dancer/cyclist), odd dental features (born without two lateral incisors, rare ear shape).
  • Internal: massively enlarged spleen, organ swelling, blood in the stomach—but no cause of death found. Suspicion of undetectable poison or rare self-inflicted death. (17:16)

Quote:
“This man’s spleen was three times normal size... but the examiner didn’t think that’s what killed him.” —Morgan (15:04)

3. Identification Attempts & Early Dead Ends

• Misidentification (20:32)
  • Initial media rumor identifies him as E.C. Johnson—who promptly walks into police to prove he's alive. (21:29)
• Fingerprints/Photographs (21:49)
  • Prints checked in Australia, FBI, Scotland Yard—no matches. Wide circulation of post-mortem photos, though facial recognition is notoriously unreliable post-mortem. (22:12-23:10)
  • Unique anatomical features: ear shape (rare), dental anomalies (rare; 2% of people born without those teeth). (24:48)
• Physical Preservation
  • The body is embalmed to allow further attempts at identification. None yields a match. (25:30)

4. Major Clues Uncovered

A. The Suitcase (26:47)

• Located at Adelaide railway station; matched by contents and repaired clothes.
• Items marked “T. Keen/Keen” didn’t match any missing person report—perhaps bought secondhand or misdirection. (27:23)
• Ship tools and stenciling brush hint at a maritime connection, but evidence is inconclusive. (28:49)

B. The Hidden Scrap: "Tamam Shud" (30:58)

• Found hidden in a tiny, concealed fob pocket in his trousers by Dr. Cleland.
• Two words, Persian for “the end” or “finished”—a direct reference to the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, a book popular at the time. The search for a matching copy begins. (31:05)

C. The Rubaiyat Book and the Code (40:12)

• July 1949: A local chemist turns in a Rubaiyat found in his car at Somerton Beach, with the “Tamam Shud” page torn to match the scrap.
• Inside the cover: a local phone number and a strange series of seemingly random letters—an unbreakable code. (41:58)
• The phone number links to Jessica “Justin” Harkness, whose reaction to seeing the Somerton Man’s plaster cast is shock and distress—she denies knowing him, fueling speculation. (48:48-50:39)
• The Navy fails to crack the code; many theories, including a book cipher, substitution cipher, or personal mnemonic. No confirmation. (43:42-47:57)

Quote:
“It’s giving international spy.” —Kayla, on the coded message and clues (43:02)

5. Theories Over the Decades

• Spy Theory
  • Many hallmarks: missing ID, tags cut, cryptic message, undetectable poison, postwar espionage climate.
  • Comparison to historical cases (Isdal Woman, Harry Dexter White). (36:35)
• Personal/Family Theory
  • Connection through Jessica Harkness and her son Robin, whose rare dental and ear traits matched the Somerton Man.
  • Suggestion: Robin might be the Somerton Man’s son—possibly why Jessica concealed knowledge. (53:59)
• Genetic & DNA Research Breakthrough (57:33-68:25)
  • Prof. Derek Abbott and genetic genealogist Dr. Colleen Fitzpatrick use hairs from the plaster cast and, later, exhumed remains for DNA.
  • Matched via genealogical research to Carl Webb, an electrical instrument maker from Victoria, Australia; missing from records since 1947.

6. The Final Reveal: Carl Webb

• Profile of Carl Webb (69:07)
  • Born 1905, Melbourne; technical education, worked as instrument maker.
  • Troubled marriage to Dorothy; patterns of abuse, suicide attempts, poems about death (Rubaiyat theme connection).
  • Dorothy left him in 1946; her divorce papers list poems on death as a fixation. (70:25)
  • Possibly traveled to Adelaide searching for Dorothy; circumstances of death remain mysterious—no conclusive findings on the exact poison or method. (72:13-74:34)

Quote:
“He has written many poems, most of them on the subject of death, which he claims to be his greatest desire.” —Dorothy’s divorce petition (71:43)

7. Ongoing Questions and Alternative Theories

• Not everyone agrees: Some suggest alternate identities (Austrian spy Carl Joseph Halban), though no DNA evidence so far.
• Unsolved Mysteries: The code remains unbroken, the poison undetected, the role of Jessica Harkness ambiguous. (75:27)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Morgan (04:14): “This case had me spiraling… Stuff is still not adding up in this case.”
• Kayla (24:48): “That immediately stuck out to them—this top part of his ear was bigger than the lower. That’s only 1 to 2% of Caucasian men.”
• Kayla (33:01): “His grave was marked, ‘Here lies the unknown man who was found at Somerton Beach, 1st of December 1948.’ The townspeople came together and funded that.”
• Kayla (36:06): “Digitalis comes from a toxic foxglove plant… but it’s saved a lot and killed a lot. Some say a former US secretary died from it.”
• Morgan (41:58): “And get this—you guys—this chemist had the weirdest story about how he came into possession of this book… someone just threw it into his backseat!”
• Kayla (53:59): “This whole story only got pieced together after both Jessica and her son Robin had passed away years and years later, but this is the most likely version…”
• Morgan (62:19): “Their family jokes that he married her for her DNA, which may or may not be true!”
• Kayla (71:43): “He has written many poems, most of them on the subject of death, which he claims to be his greatest desire.”
• Morgan (72:50): “We’re tucking him in. Bye, Carl.”

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Beach Discovery & Witnesses: 04:44 - 08:19
• Autopsy & Unique Physical Features: 12:54 - 17:16
• First Misidentification & Forensics: 20:32 - 23:10
• The Suitcase & Contents: 26:47 - 29:31
• Discovery of Tamam Shud Scrap: 30:58 - 33:01
• Coroner’s Inquest & Poison Theory: 33:49 - 36:41
• Link to Jessica Harkness: 48:48 - 53:59
• Robin’s Genetics and Ballet Career: 57:33 - 59:52
• DNA Analyses & Carl Webb Identification: 64:23 - 69:02
• Carl Webb’s Troubled Life & Divorce: 69:07 - 74:05
• Ongoing Theories, Unresolved Questions: 74:10 - 77:13

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Unanswered Questions & Current Status

• The code among the letters in the Rubaiyat remains unbroken—spy, suicide note, or something else?
• What poison—if any—was used, and how did Webb acquire it?
• The full nature of Jessica Harkness’s connection is still speculative.
• Alternative hypotheses (e.g., other possible identities) circulate, but genetic evidence strongly supports the Carl Webb identification as of 2022.

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Final Thoughts from the Hosts

Kayla (78:37): “Thank you for joining us on this mystery. I mean, what do you guys think—is it solved? Is there still more to be done? Can we put this one to bed?”

Morgan (78:49): “Yeah, and as always, at Crime House, we really value your support… until next time.”

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Further Engagement

• Follow @CluesPodcast on Instagram or @CluesPod on YouTube for visuals and case updates.
• Learn more or get involved with the DNA Doe Project at dnadoeproject.org.

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This episode offered a riveting journey through forensic sleuthing, decades of speculation, and the power of modern science to finally put a name to the Somerton Man. Yet, as the hosts stress, some mysteries remain—inviting listeners to weigh in and keep the discussion alive.

Transcript

[Vanessa Richardson]

Hi, Crime House community. It's Vanessa Richardson. Exciting news. Conspiracy theories, cults and crimes is leveling up. Starting the week of January 12th, you'll be getting two episodes every week. Wednesdays, we unravel the conspiracy or the cult, and on Fridays, we look at a corresponding crime. Every week has a theme. Tech, bioterror, power, paranoia, you name it. Follow conspiracy theories, cults and crimes now on your podcast app because you're about to dive deeper, get weirder, and go darker than ever before.

[Crime House Announcer]

This is Crime House.

[Kayla Moore]

Today we're going to head to Australia to dig into one of the most mysterious cases that we've ever covered. The Somerton man. In 1948, this unidentified man was found dead on a beach in South Australia. He was well dressed and he had with him a note. But decoding it would prove to be incredibly difficult.

[Morgan Abshur]

Very difficult. After more than 75 years of extensive investigation, the case has finally been cracked wide open. The Summerton man finally has a name. Hi, guys. Welcome back to another episode of Clues, where we sneak past the crime scene tape to explore the key evidence behind some of the most gripping true crime cases.

[Kayla Moore]

I'm Kayla Moore. I'm going to be the one diving deeper into the timelines, the backstories and the court files on these cases.

[Morgan Abshur]

And I'm your Internet sleuth, Morgan Abshur. And I'm the one who's diving into the clues and talking about some of the lesser known details and pulling out the threads that just don't add up.

[Kayla Moore]

At Crime House, we value your support. Follow Clues to share your thoughts on social for ad free listening and early access, subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. Let's get into the case and the clues that defined it.

[Crime House Announcer]

Reggie, I just sold my car online.

[Kayla Moore]

Let's go, Grandpa. Wait, you did?

[Crime House Announcer]

Yep, on Carvana. Just put in the license plate, answered a few questions, got an offer in minutes. Easier than setting up that new digital picture frame.

[Kayla Moore]

You don't say.

[Crime House Announcer]

Yeah, they're even picking it up tomorrow. Talk about fast. Wow.

[Kayla Moore]

Way to go.

[Crime House Announcer]

So, about that picture frame. Ah, forget about it. Until Carvana makes one, I'm not interested.

[Morgan Abshur]

Car selling made easy on Carvana. Pick up these may apply. Well, the holidays have come and gone.

[Kayla Moore]

Once again, but if you've forgotten to get that special someone in your life a gift. Well, Mint Mobile is extending their holiday offer of half off unlimited wireless.

[Morgan Abshur]

So here's the idea. You get it now, you call it an early present for next year.

[Kayla Moore]

What do you have to lose?

[Morgan Abshur]

Give it a [e-mail] Switch limited time 50% off regular price for new customers. Upfront payment required $45 for 3 months, $90 for 6 months or $180 for.

[Kayla Moore]

12 month plan taxes and fees.

[Morgan Abshur]

Extra speeds may slow after 50 gigabytes.

[Kayla Moore]

Per month when network is busy. See terms.

[Morgan Abshur]

This case had me spiraling.

[Kayla Moore]

It's a crazy one. It's a really, really good mystery.

[Morgan Abshur]

Is insane. Buckle up everyone, because we are gonna take you for a wild ride down under.

[Kayla Moore]

If you loved this one, Morgan, can I give you a recommendation? Not biased at all on this? I did an episode for Heart Starts Pounding on the Isdal Woman. Oh, she's a woman in Norway who was found in the 1970s. They still don't know who she was, but like the way she was found, the circumstances revolving around her death are very, very, very mysterious. And hearken back to this mystery too. So I think you would really like that episode that we did.

[Morgan Abshur]

Okay, I'll check it out. I think this is gonna be a really good one. I still am holding some of the theories very close, near and dear because even though we have groundbreaking evidence.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah.

[Morgan Abshur]

Stuff is still not adding up in this case.

[Kayla Moore]

Stuff still doesn't add up. But I love cases that have a, a good update. And so we're gonna get into what that update is, the whole thing. But for now, just a quick reminder, if you're watching this on YouTube, you're gonna see some photos, videos. You might hear some stuff that's all gonna help you visualize this case. And if you're listening on the audio version, you can see those same assets over on our Instagram that's Clues podcast.

[Morgan Abshur]

On Instagram and a quick content warning. This episode does include brief descriptions of suicide and domestic violence, so please listen with care.

[Kayla Moore]

All right. This case begins on the last day of spring in Australia. November 30, 1948. In Adelaide, the capital of South Australia, hot weather was starting to roll in. To cool off. A jeweler named John Lyons and his wife headed to Somerton park Beach around 7pm for a sunset stroll. As they walked along the beach, they saw a man wearing a brown suit slumped against a seawall with his feet pointing towards the ocean. And the man didn't appear to be moving. So for a moment, the couple paused and looked at him. They thought he might be dead, but then they saw the man raise his right arm and let it fall. So John and his wife just figured that he was probably drunk and the two of them kept on walking. About a half hour later, someone Else came along. It was a woman named Olive Neal and her date Gordon Straps. And they sat down on the beach overlooking the ocean. And they could see the same slumped over man from their vantage point, but only from the waist down. They basically could just see his legs. And Olive found it strange that the man wasn't slapping at mosquitoes like everyone else on the beach was. So that's when she turned to Gordon and said, maybe in jest, perhaps he's dead. Around this same time, Olive noticed a man in a gray suit and hat standing on the road above the seawall, looking down at the possibly dead man below. But that is really where our witness statements end, at least until the next morning. So on December 1, 1948 it is officially the first day of summer in Australia. 16 year old apprentice horse jockey named Neil day and his 35 year old friend Horace or Hori Patching got an early start to their day. It would be too hot for their horses to exercise later, so they were going to go down to the beach shortly after sunrise and ride along the shore. And they also passed the slumped over man in his brown suit leaning against the seawall. The two of them kind of assumed that he had slept on the beach overnight. It wasn't unusual in the area. I mean, maybe he was drunk and just laid down to take a nap there. However, on their way back from their ride, which was at 6:30 in the morning, Neil and Hori saw that the man still hadn't moved from that same odd position he was in. So it didn't really appear anymore like he was sleeping. Also, it didn't look like he was breathing. Now Hori dismounted the horse and tried to wake the guy up by lifting one of his legs. And that's when he realized that this man was definitely dead. Already cold and stiff with rigor mortis. Then there was John Lyons, the same man who was walking on the beach with his wife the previous evening. He was now in the ocean having an early morning swim and he saw the men and their horses gather around something on the beach. So he hopped out of the water. He wanted to see what was going on. And as soon as he saw the man, John realized that it was the same guy that he had written off as drunk moving his arm the night before. Which means that Helen and John might have been some of the last few people to see this man alive. After John confirmed that he was dead, he ran home and he called the police. And by the time he jogged back to the beach, it was around 6:45 in the morning police Constable John Moss was on his way to greet him. None of the witnesses had any idea at the time that this was happening, that they were about to become part of Australia's most enigmatic and most enduring mystery of all time.

[Morgan Abshur]

One of the first things that Constable Moss noticed about the man was what he was and wasn't wearing, which is our first clue, the Somerton man's clothing. Even before rummaging through his pockets for his id, the constable noticed that the man's clothes were dry so he couldn't have washed ashore from the ocean. He also thought that the man was wearing a lot of clothing for such hot weather. On his upper body he had a singlet, it's an Australian term for undershirt, a white button down shirt. Over that, a brown wool pullover cardigan and a double breasted suit coat that's four layers on a day with highs close to 76 degrees Fahrenheit or like 24ish Celsius. He was also warmly dressed on his bottom half wearing jockey shorts or boxers, socks, brown trousers, which did resemble some type of Australian trouser brand called Stamina. However, what he wasn't wearing was also really mysterious. He wasn't wearing a hat, which in 1948 it was pretty much like norm etiquette for men to always be wearing hats. They were only removed indoors or when greeting a lady on the street. Like all men wore hats outside and nobody saw the man even the previous night with a hat on. So it was unlikely that he had just lost it. As for the accessories he did have, the Somerton man wore brown lace up shoes, a red, white and blue tie and a handkerchief in his pocket. When they really started inspecting his clothes more though, they noticed that none of his clothes had any tags in them. And like the ones that would have had a tag, it looked like it had been removed. And so this created a lot of speculation about him maybe trying to hide his identity. In 1948, most Australian clothing brands had only recently started sewing tags onto the clothing. So he could have just cut the tags off his shirt and coat because they bothered him. I'm one of those people, I hate a scratchy tag. But they actually ended up bringing in a tailor, just someone like to really analyze the clothes because they didn't really have that much to go on. And the tailor noticed that there were a few odd things about the clothes. For one, his tie, the stripes were higher on the right hand side, which was how ties in the United States were made back then. The stripes on Australian Ties usually went the other direction. And the stitching in his coat was a style exclusively used in the US at the time. So it had to have come from the States. Whether he bought it there or had gotten it secondhand, it's kind of unclear. But this tailor's expert opinion kind of was giving investigators, like the Somerton man either wasn't from here, was a traveler, or maybe had served and had traded with people from the US it just made this mystery even more intense. Well, after examining all these clothes, even with expert opinions, Constable Moss checked the pockets for any sign of identity. Which brings us to our second clue. Somerton man's personal items. Unfortunately for Constable Moss, this man did not have a wallet on him. He had no money. He had been dead for hours at this point, though, just on the beach. So somebody could have picked his pockets, but it's also possible he left his wallet and ID somewhere else. However, there were a few other things of note, like a pack of chewing gum in his pocket, which also could have pointed to him being American, because chewing gum was mostly an American practice at this point. He also had a used bus ticket to Glenelg, which was only about 2 miles from the beach. So he may have gotten off the train there recently. But there was also an unused train ticket to Henley beach, which was about eight miles away. So did he have plans to continue along on his travels? They also noticed he was carrying cigarettes and a pack of matches with him, and two thirds of them had already been used up. But there was something odd about this that they noted. He was carrying really expensive cigarettes, and he had placed them in a cheaper brand's packaging, which, like, that's just. Yeah, that's odd. Weird. Apparently, men at the time would often put cheaper cigarettes in expensive cigarette packages to look richer, but he was doing the opposite, almost to look poorer. They assumed he was also carrying two different hair combs, one of which was a style more often used by Americans than Australians. It seemed like he was serious about keeping his hair neat. It had been recently cut. But none of this was pointing to this guy's true identity. But police, they weren't super concerned at this point. You know, it was early. They had just found him, and they figured it would only be a matter of time before friends or family came forward, reported someone with similar features missing. But things only got more complicated from here. Which brings us to our third clue, the autopsy results. Now, based on the autopsy, you can kind of see why people didn't really just assume he was dead from the start. There was no wounds, no sign of trauma, he had no blood on him. So the autopsy was really going to be critical to understanding what actually happened to him. The morning after he was found, at around 7:30am a pathologist named Dr. John Dwyer performed a postmortem examination. It was estimated earlier that the man's time of death was about 2am so he had been deceased for about 7 1/2 hours. When he was found. Dr. Dwyer guessed that he was probably about 45 years old. They noted that he was 5 foot 11 inches tall with gray eyes, strawberry blonde hair that was beginning to go gray, and an overall healthy physique. This is something that they really kind of took note of during this autopsy report is he had these unusually large, well built calf muscles. Like this is something that just gets repeated again and again about this case. And, you know, they don't have a lot to go on, so they're, they're speculating on anything they can. They also noticed that he had like, pointed toes. So because of this, they are thinking, hey, maybe he's a cowboy that's been wearing heeled boots. Maybe he's a ballet dancer or rides bikes long distances. That could explain the calf muscles and pointed toes. This is something we noted in our research that investigators also kind of picked up on. He wasn't circumcised, so he certainly wasn't of Jewish heritage. So that ruled out people to look at. But whoever he was, he seemed to care about his appearance, like we said. I mean, he was well groomed, had just trimmed his nails before he died. Interestingly though, he was missing nine upper and nine lower teeth. And most of the teeth he was missing were kind of in the back of his mouth. But two of those missing teeth were actually his lateral incisors. And I'm sitting here, I'm like, okay, which ones are those? So if you're looking at your teeth, you got your front teeth, and then the ones next to your two front teeth are the ones he was missing.

[Kayla Moore]

Oh, so it would have been kind of buck tooth.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah. So he had the two front teeth and then his canines got it, your pointy teeth. And there wasn't an obvious gap in his mouth that they noticed. So Dr. Dwyer actually thought that he didn't lose these teeth. He likely never had them at all, which was a pretty big discovery for them. It turns out only 2% of people are born missing certain teeth. And as we know, dental records are a huge clue, oftentimes used to help identify people. So they figured this could help them however, investigators were never able to find a dental match. Regardless, though, there were other things that Dr. Dwyer found during his autopsy that again, seemed to, like, deepen the mystery for them. This man's spleen was three times normal size, likely caused by a condition that developed over time. Dr. Dwyer thought it could have been from a lot of different chronic diseases, cancer, autoimmune infections. But he didn't think that was what actually killed our guy. What caught his attention was some unexplained blood in the stomach, along with some food that had been eaten about three to four hours before he died. His liver showed signs of damage, and several other organs, including his brain, were also swollen. But his heart appeared totally healthy and normal. Even so, Dr. Dwyer determined the immediate cause of death as heart failure. But he made it clear that he didn't think the man's heart failed naturally because again, there was no underlying heart disease or sign of a heart attack. Instead, the damage to his stomach and liver strongly suggested that he had taken some sort of drug or poison. But Dr. Dwyer couldn't prove that theory. Tissue samples taken from the body all tested negative for common poisons and drugs. He also noted that most poisons that led to bleeding in the stomach would also cause violent vomiting. The man hadn't vomited. His last meal was still in his stomach. At this point, the doctor is just insanely confused. His enlarged spleen indicated that he could have some kind of chronic illness, but it wasn't advanced enough for him to die from it so suddenly. So either a fit, apparently healthy, middle aged man had died of an underlying condition or that didn't appear to be at a terminal stage, or this was a homicide or suicide using an undetectable rare poison. One of this week's partners is RK I don't know about you, but sometimes I just want to go out and be social with friends, but not have an alcoholic beverage. I love having an option where you can get a good mocktail. Or maybe try RK or maybe you're.

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[Morgan Abshur]

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[Kayla Moore]

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[Morgan Abshur]

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[Kayla Moore]

So while the medical examiner couldn't figure out exactly how he had died, police expected that it would at least be easy to identify the man who they were now calling the Somerton Man. And maybe once they knew who he was, you know, you can go find this person's medical records and that would help explain his death. And although it was going to be difficult because there was nothing on him that identified him, it didn't really take long for them to find their first lead. So the day after the body was found, that's December 2, 1948, a local newspaper called the Advertiser reported on the discovery and claimed that the police believed that John Doe was a local man named E.C. johnson. We don't know exactly why this tentative ID was made, but we do know that it was completely wrong because turns out E.C. johnson is still alive. He actually walked over to the police station a day later on December 3rd to prove it. I see you.

[Morgan Abshur]

He's given a mark on the botched board. I'm like, why are you releasing someone's name without at least like checking on them?

[Kayla Moore]

I know. And then they have to go and be like, guys, I'm alive.

[Morgan Abshur]

You imagine seeing your own obituary printed. It's giving murder.

[Kayla Moore]

I'm seeing like your relatives obituary, like thinking that what if this person had kids the panic. And you're just putting that out there.

[Morgan Abshur]

Come on, guys, botch.

[Kayla Moore]

So the police had to take another approach. And later that same day they photographed and they fingerprinted the body. There were no matches for the fingerprints either in Adelaide or elsewhere. They even sent them to the FBI in the United States because of the potential American connection and Scotland Yard in the uk, hoping that maybe there'd be some match. But no good results turned up there either.

[Morgan Abshur]

As for the photographs they took, that is clue number four for us. The photos were widely distributed in the hopes that somebody might recognize the victim. As a side note, I've been going back on Facebook recently and I've been noticing so many posts with deceased people getting put out by local agencies in hopes to have someone identify them. Really don't know why this is on Facebook, popping up on my Facebook.

[Kayla Moore]

They're putting dead bodies on there for people to see.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah, yeah. Same as what we did with Somerton. Man. It's still a thing today.

[Kayla Moore]

That's really. I didn't know that.

[Morgan Abshur]

End up on my Facebook page. This is.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah. If anyone else is getting that on Facebook, please let me know because that's. I'm sorry. Curious about that.

[Morgan Abshur]

People were not happy in the comments, I'm sure. Now these photos were widely distributed in hopes that somebody might recognize the victim. But obviously he. He probably looked pretty different in the photos than when he was alive. There's an Australian professor named Derek Abbott who has spent years investigating this case. And he posted a video on YouTube kind of explaining why most people are almost unrecognizable in post autopsy photos. Even famous people that you really like, you know what they look like and there's a bunch of reasons for that. But basically the autopsy process changes things like head shape, skin tightness. I mean, you're also relaxed, so it's just difficult to recognize someone when they're dead. Yeah, I feel like that's why a.

[Kayla Moore]

Lot of times you hear Families saying that it was like a tattoo or something very distinctive about the body, which is how they actually made the id. It's not just like looking at the face.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah. And, you know, there are a bunch of features that don't change after death. Nose, ear, hairline, of course, teeth, which we already talked about being pretty significant. So even though those postmortem photos might have made it difficult to identify just on facial recognition, they did give a few identifying features that people could find helpful. One of those features was actually his unusual ear shape. This is an ear shape found in only 1 to 2% of Caucasian men. So on the normal ear, you have your Simba and your cavum. Your cavum, the lower, like, hole in your ear.

[Kayla Moore]

The cavum is, like, where your eardrum would. Like where the hole to your eardrum is.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yep. That's where you stick your Q tip that you're not supposed to do, actually. But that hole is bigger than the upper Simba.

[Kayla Moore]

Wait, let me look at your ear so I can see. Yeah, okay, so I see. That makes sense. Yeah.

[Morgan Abshur]

On yours, it's my Simba's, like, really tiny, you guys. So on the Somerton man, his was opposite.

[Kayla Moore]

So this top part of his ear was bigger than the lower part of his ear.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yes.

[Kayla Moore]

And that immediately stuck out to them.

[Morgan Abshur]

Immediately sticks out to investigators because it's only 1 to 2% of Caucasian men.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah.

[Morgan Abshur]

And along with the teeth thing, I mean, he's missing those two lateral teeth.

[Kayla Moore]

And they believe that he was probably born without them. It's not like he had them removed later in life.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah, yeah. They noted that the lateral incisors just looked like they were just never there.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah.

[Morgan Abshur]

So it ruled out a lot of people. For them, I mean, they were looking at a very specific individual. And so that is what police spent the next several weeks doing.

[Kayla Moore]

So through the rest of December, going into January of 1949, they kept getting all these tips on missing people, but every time that they would look into them, they just weren't a match for the body. Police decided that they were going to have the Somerton man embalmed with formaldehyde. That way his body wouldn't decompose any further before an ID could be made.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah, they were just keeping him on ice.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah, they really just wanted to preserve him, just in case. Yeah, A few people did come forward saying that they thought they recognized the photos or maybe knew of Missing persons fitting the victim's description. But all of those possible IDs ended up being ruled out by One mismatched trait or another. For instance, police ruled out a missing man who was a woodcutter because there were no calluses on the Somerton man's hands. So they were, like, really looking for specific indicators of who this guy could be. It seemed like the summertime man didn't do a lot of manual labor. They also spent time going through military records, sending the fingerprints out to more law enforcement agencies and searching the area for the man's missing possessions. Like maybe he was wearing a hat that night and it got misplaced or something. And maybe his wallet was somewhere near him. And finally, on January 14, six weeks after the body was found, they got something new.

[Morgan Abshur]

Our fifth clue. His suitcase. So remember how there was that unused train ticket in his pocket? On a hunch, the police had went over to the Adelaide Railway station to check for any evidence. Maybe there was something there at the. At the time, all the train stations offered luggage. Police went to go see if any suitcases had been left behind. And there was a suitcase in the cloakroom. It had been dropped off on November 30, the day before he died, between 11am and noon, and it was still there. Investigators could check it out themselves. As soon as police opened it, they felt sure that it did belong to their victim. It contained a card of brownish orange thread meant for mending clothes, which did match recent repairs that were found on the Somerton man's jacket. The clothing in the suitcase would have fit him. Some of the underwear were the exact same size and style that Somerton man was found in. Unfortunately, the most important item, his wallet, presumably containing his id, was not in the suitcase. However, there were three items with a possible name on them. There was a tie that was marked T Keen, a singlet was marked Keen, and a laundry bag was marked Keen. Unfortunately, there was no missing Keen that seemed to match the Somerton man's description. So police believed those items might have been bought secondhand or maybe even deliberately mislabeled to help disguise this man's identity. With the exception of the keen items, most of the clothing in the suitcase was either tagless or had its tags removed, like the clothing the victim was wearing. But besides the clothing, there were a few other items, most of them pretty common things like a toothbrush and razor. But the suitcase also contained some other mystifying items. It had some envelopes and airmail stickers used for writing letters to people overseas. Suggesting, again, maybe. And a broad connection.

[Kayla Moore]

Maybe.

[Morgan Abshur]

The most interesting thing, though, when they got to the suitcase, was a hint at what the victim did for work. There were several tools inside of it. A screwdriver, two pairs of scissors, one of which was actually broken, a sheath knife, a length of cord, pencils, and something called a stenciling brush. At the time, these brushes were used by sailors for stenciling important markings onto cargo crates. So maybe he worked at sea. That would kind of fit the idea that this person traveled the world and collected clothes and was mailing letters. But on the other hand, none of the clothing in the suitcase matched what a sailor would be wearing during a voyage.

[Kayla Moore]

And so after the suitcase is found, things kind of just get lost in this frustrating holding pattern. Over the next five months, from January to June, people kept coming forward with all these tips on the Somerton man's identity. And every single one of these tips just gets ruled out. Meanwhile, the Somerton man remained at the morgue, embalmed and refrigerated, just waiting for someone to come by and make an id. The theory was, at this point at least, that he most likely wasn't from South Australia and that his family would probably want him buried closer to home. So they weren't going to just go ahead and bury him in a pauper's grave. And while they still had his body, they figured that they would try a few more tactics to identify him. So on June 7, just over six months after he died, a plaster cast was made of his head and his shoulders. They also do this one final kind of Hail Mary play. They call in Sir John Burton Cleland, a famous Australian scientist and pathologist. Among his very impressive credentials, he had personally completed over 7,000 autopsies.

[Morgan Abshur]

That's a lot.

[Kayla Moore]

And Cleland mostly agreed with the original autopsy's conclusions. And he felt like the likely cause of death was suicide by undetectable poison, even though they were not really able to find proof of that. Though he did find one new and very important detail.

[Morgan Abshur]

While he was examining the Somerton man's clothing, Cleland found a tiny fob pocket that Dr. Dwyer had missed. The fob pocket is essentially this, like, useless little pocket that some jeans still have that you can maybe fit, like a quarter or a key into. Today, it's mostly decorative, but the original purpose was for holding your pocket watch. But the Somerton man's fob pocket wasn't in the usual place, like, up by the top, larger pocket. It was sewn just to the right of his fly and so well hidden. Dr. Dwyer missed it completely when he first examined him. But Cleland noticed it, and it had something in it, a tiny Piece of folded paper, which is our sixth clue. It was a scrap of paper that had been torn out of something and it had just two words printed on it, Tamam Shud. Someone there noted that it's Persian and when they had it translated, it roughly translates to the end or finished. It wasn't too hard to figure out where this piece of paper had come from. One of the most popular books at the time was the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. It's a lengthy Persian poem book that was translated into English by Edward Fitzgerald. The book first came out in 1859 and was a pretty instant hit for the English speaking world. And the Rubaiyat's message is all about living in the moment and the importance of love. So people really turned to it for inspiration and guidance during hard times. By 1948, it was a book almost everyone in Australia had read. You were just as likely to find it on a farmer's bookshelf as in a professor's library. So the book itself didn't really help identify the Somerton man, but finding his specific copy, where this page was torn out of might. There were no books in his suitcase, no books at the train station left behind. So the hunt for that specific copy was on.

[Kayla Moore]

Well, before they could launch a search for the Suburton man's book, the police had to deal with his body because on June 14, six and a half months after he died, it was finally decided that the Somerton man should be laid to rest because it was really starting to look like no one was going to come claim him. Yeah, he ends up getting buried at the West Terrace Cemetery in Adelaide. And because the case was so high profile at that point, the ceremony was kept secret to prevent crowds from showing up in mass. Only a handful of people connected to the case attended the short service. His grave was initially marked with a simple wooden cross saying, quote, unknown Summerton body. And that was later replaced by a tombstone reading, here lies the unknown man who was found at Somerton Beach, 1st of December 1948.

[Morgan Abshur]

Which I believe, like the townspeople came together and funded that because they just wanted him to have something that is so sweet.

[Kayla Moore]

Then three days after the funeral on June 17, the coroner's inquest began. Now, a coroner's inquest is a court proceeding after the autopsy intended to determine the cause and manner of death. But the coroner, Thomas Cleland, knew from the beginning that it was probably going to be impossible in this case. Before even questioning any of the experts, he opened the proceedings by saying, quote, I am required to Find, if I can, who the deceased was and how, when and where he died. And I will, I fear, be unable to answer these questions unless further evidence should be obtained. Just kind of calls it from the beginning that this is going to be really hard, guys. That's pretty much how the rest of the proceedings went as well. After two days of testimony from witnesses, detectives, the pathologists, the inquest ended on June 21st with an inconclusive verdict. They were still no closer to settling on the victim's identity, his cause of death, or his manner of death.

[Morgan Abshur]

That inquest did get us our seventh clue, though. Yeah, A new piece of info came from a pharmacology professor who was called to testify about potential poisons. He had an idea about what substances might have killed the Somerton man and then would have been able to disappear without a trace in the body. Some that wouldn't show up upon further testing. Yeah, but this pharmacology professor was so scared to possibly call public attention to even the existence of these poisons that he wouldn't speak their names out loud in the courtroom because he was so.

[Kayla Moore]

Afraid that people would read about them and then try to go buy them, probably. Yeah, that makes sense.

[Morgan Abshur]

So instead, he passed a note to the coroner with two words on it, quote, digitalis and strophan thin. Strophanthin is derived from African plants. It was notably used by indigenous people of Somalia to poison the tips of hunting arrows. Digitalis comes from a toxic foxglove plant, but in small doses, it can have therapeutic effects. It's been used for centuries as a treatment for heart failure, interestingly enough.

[Kayla Moore]

Interesting.

[Morgan Abshur]

But it's also supposedly killed a lot of people, including, by some accounts, former U.S. treasury Secretary Harry Dexter White.

[Kayla Moore]

Fun fact, keep that one in your back pocket.

[Morgan Abshur]

Here's what's fascinating, though. Secretary White supposedly had died of digitalis poisoning In August of 1948, less than four months before the Somerton man died. But after that, it came out that White was actually, get this, a Soviet spy.

[Kayla Moore]

Mm. I mean, this whole thing has spy written all over it, but that's what I think.

[Morgan Abshur]

So people are really starting to wonder, could a similar thing have happened to the Somerton man? With no real answers from the inquest, detectives went back to the drawing board and they decided their last shred of hope in finding out this man's true identity might lie in that little piece of paper they found. Tamam.

[Kayla Moore]

Shudder.

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[Crime House Announcer]

Hey Crime House Community. I'm Carter Roy, the host of Murder True Crime Stories. If you listen to true crime because you want more than just what happened, this show is for you. On Murder True Crime Stories, we take deep dives into history's most notorious murders. But we don't stop at the crime scene. We look beyond the headlines to understand the real story and the people who are impacted the most. Because these cases aren't just mysteries. They're lives, families, communities that were changed forever. Whether a case is solved or unsolved, my goal is for you to walk away understanding why these stories still matter and why they deserve to be told with care. Each episode explores the darkest corners of true crime while keeping the focus where it belongs on the human cost. If you're already part of the Crime House community, Murder True Crime Stories is a natural. Next Listen New episodes drop every Tuesday and Thursday beginning January 16th. New episodes will also drop every Friday. Follow Murder True Crime Stories on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen.

[Kayla Moore]

A search of local libraries failed to find a Rubaiyat with the words Taman shudder torn out. So on July 21, 1949, a month after the coroner's inquest, police publicly announced that they were looking for copies of a Rubaiyat with a torn back page. Within 24 hours, they got 49 calls from locals offering up copies of the book. The next day, on July 23, a local chemist walked into the police station carrying a copy of a Rubaiyat with the words Taman should torn out. And it perfectly matched the scrap that the Somerton man had, which is our eighth clue.

[Morgan Abshur]

And get this, you guys, this chemist had the weirdest story about how he came into possession of this book. So he thinks that while parked near Somerton beach on November 30, someone threw it into his backseat through an open window. Now this would have been the day before the Summerton man died. And the place the chemist parked that day was walking distance from where his body was found. Later, the chemist saw his brother in law reading the book, just kind of assumed it was his. But afterwards, his brother in law stuck the book in this guy's glove box, presumably for safekeeping, which is where it stayed until the chemist saw a newspaper headline saying that the police were looking for a copy of that book. And then he handed it over to investigators. And they found it contained even more critical clues. Investigators discovered that there was some faint writing on the last page, the same page that Tamam Shud had been torn out of. It couldn't be read clearly with the naked eye, but under UV light, police were able to make out two things. A local phone number x3239 and a series of random letters with the second line crossed out. And we're going to post a picture for you guys. So you can see this on our YouTube and our Instagram. Seemingly it's just a bunch of letters on a couple different lines. So like the first line, for example, is W, R, G, O, A, B.

[Kayla Moore]

A, B, D. Yeah, almost like you could scramble it to spell a different word.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah. What is that?

[Kayla Moore]

Something.

[Morgan Abshur]

An anagram. Yeah, whatever those are.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah, it's confusing.

[Morgan Abshur]

It's giving.

[Kayla Moore]

There's some sort of. Yeah, like it's a, like a code. Like each letter is associated with a different letter and it could spell a word if you cracked it.

[Morgan Abshur]

If you could crack it, if you had a cipher for it. It's confusing because some lines are crossed out and none of the lines like they look like they can spell anything. Like a few of the letters are a little ambiguous. Like there's two W's that could also be read as M's, and the I in the last line could be a V. Either way, it is extremely puzzling. They can't crack it on their own. It's, it's really making it look like this guy could actually be an international spy.

[Kayla Moore]

Well, on July 27, 1949, four days after they get the book, the police send the code to the Australian Navy code breaker. This is something we see a lot. They're always sending it to the Navy to be like, can you break this code? Hoping that the Australian Navy code breaker could quickly tell them what the note said. But unfortunately he's not able to conclusively crack it. And they're kind of like, well, if he can't do it, no one can. Neither has anyone else in the last 77 years since this mystery began. It's still not cracked. To this day, we still don't really know what it means.

[Morgan Abshur]

Uncrackable. There are a few theories on this, though. One is that the code was a substitution cipher. These are basically codes where one letter gets substituted for another. These ciphers were used pretty often to pass messages between spies in World War II and the Cold War. This encryption code is essentially unbreakable by anyone who doesn't have its specific key. In the case of the Somerton man, the key seemed to be his exact edition of the Rubaiyat, making this what's called a book cipher or a one time pad. This is like really crafty code breaking lingo for us all here. The gross oversimplification is each letter in the code corresponds to a letter in the book. The person receiving the message follows a bunch of steps to figure out what letter corresponds with what using the book. So a Q could equal A or B equals Y, but both parties need to have the exact same edition of the book to decrypt it. All this to say, you guys, if the Somerton man was using the book for his key, he could have had been a current or former spy, maybe from Russia as part of the Cold War. That could fit with some of the other evidence, like not carrying any form of id, not matching any Australian dental records, and the fact that at this point, his most likely cause of death was, is looking like an undetectable poison.

[Kayla Moore]

But the best way to prove this by theory would be to decode the message and figure out what he was saying, you would think. And somehow police lost or destroyed the copy of the Rubaiyat that the Tom and Shud scrap came from. So despite an extensive search. Modern investigators have never been able to find an identical copy to try and run the code against. Botch it.

[Morgan Abshur]

Botch it.

[Kayla Moore]

However, in 2013, students at university of Adelaide created a software program designed to use a scanned first edition copy of the Rubaiyat, the same edition that the Summertime man was connected to. They generated tens of thousands of possible decryption keys for the Somerton man code, and unfortunately, none of them appeared to be correct. That doesn't mean that the book didn't contain the key, but so far, nobody's been able to prove it did.

[Morgan Abshur]

That brings us to another pretty prominent theory, though, that it wasn't a substitution cipher or a book cipher at all. It could have actually been an initialism, meaning that the first letter correlated with a word which the Somerton man would remember based on what he jotted down. Specific letter H equals hotel. Like he would know. Yeah, but to an average bear, it's just a bunch of letters.

[Kayla Moore]

Right, right, right. But it really is a sentence that only he knows based on, like, the first letter.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah, yeah. It would jot his memory. And if that's the case, there is no key, because the key was in his memory. But that hasn't stopped people from kind of trying to figure this out. Some people think he was writing a poem in the same style of the Rubaiyat because the code has four lines, if you don't count the crossed out one. And the Rubaiyat is written in four line poems. There have been a few proposed versions of the Somerton Man's poem passed around online, with several of them translating the beginning of line four, which is M, L, I, A B, O as my life is all but over.

[Kayla Moore]

Whoa.

[Morgan Abshur]

Kind of implying that maybe he was, you know, suicidal at the time of writing this. But there's no way to prove any of these translations are right or wrong. I mean, it's all kind of speculation. You could take those same letters and have it mean a totally other different sentence. My lamb is a big orb.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah.

[Morgan Abshur]

You could just go forever. You could go forever.

[Kayla Moore]

I'm sure. Yeah. Wow.

[Morgan Abshur]

I mean, there's a lot of rabbit holes. You could go down on Reddit about what this cipher means, but as of right now, no one has been able to crack it.

[Kayla Moore]

Now, most amateur cryptographers trying to crack this case seem to believe that it falls into either the one time pad type of code or the initialism type of code. But a few people actually believe that. The problem is that this code isn't in English. Maybe we're looking at it all wrong if we're trying to decipher it using English, because the Rubaiyat was translated from Farsi, and there have been several attempts to transliterate the code into Farsi characters and make words out of that, but none of those attempts have really resulted in a clear message either. Another amateur cryptographer wrote an entire book trying to prove that the message was actually a suicide note in Arabic transliterated into Roman letters. But that feels very, very, very complicated and it wasn't really a clear message, so it was hard to prove that as well.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah, they're kind of grasping at straws with the cipher at this point. But police did get another clue from the last page of this book, which is that Adelaide phone number. Our ninth clue. On July 26, 1949, four days after police got this copy of the Rubaiyat, presumably the Somerton Mans, police traced the phone number to a 27 year old nursing student living nearby who called herself Justin. However, her legal name at the time of the investigation was Jessica Ellen Harkness. When the police paid her a visit, Jessica admitted that she was familiar with the Rubaiyat. She had actually given a copy of the book to a friend named Elf Boxall. However, Jessica was certain that it couldn't be the Somerton Man's copy because she had actually handwritten a transcription of one of the poems of in the copy that she gave Elf, and there was no handwritten message in the Somerton Man's Rubaiyat. Still, Jessica agreed to go and view the plaster cast of the Somerton man in person. That same day, in hopes of finally identifying him, police brought Jessica to the mold maker's office where the cast was stored. Fun fact, you guys. This was actually a taxidermist. And when she saw this mask, according to the taxidermist, she appeared obviously upset. In fact, he describes her looking so unsteady, she looked as if she might faint. So he went to like go stand behind her to catch her if she did. Everyone in the room was sure that Jessica did recognize him and their case was solved right then and there. Clearly she's having a reaction. But when she pulled herself together, Jessica flatly denied recognizing the face in the plaster cast.

[Kayla Moore]

And of course, police wondered why someone would refuse to identify a person that it seemed like they knew. At first they thought that maybe the Somerton man was Jessica's friend Alf Boxel, and that she was afraid to be connected with a possible murder case. But the next day, on July 27, detectives found Alf Boxel alive and well at his home address. So, once again, they assumed that someone was dead who actually wasn't dead. Just didn't really look into it.

[Morgan Abshur]

I'm like, number three. Is that number three for us here?

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah, I guess back in the day, like, you couldn't just Google someone's obituary, so it was, like, maybe harder to figure out if someone was alive or dead. But they clearly have phones.

[Morgan Abshur]

Give them a jingle. Come on, Alf, where you at?

[Kayla Moore]

And when Alf was asked about the Sommerton man, he said that he knew nothing about him. A day after that, on July 28th, Alf's wife gave police his copy of the Rubaiyat with Jessica's handwritten inscription. So if Jessica ever wrote her phone number in another copy of the Rubaiyat and gave it to someone else, she wasn't telling the police. And unfortunately, Jessica's phone number was the last really serious lead the original investigators ever got. After that, the case just kind of goes cold. Despite the occasional attempts to revive it over the coming decades, Jessica's reaction to the plaster cast still seemed like it was an important clue. I mean, you can't legally force someone to answer questions if they don't want to, especially. She's not really arrested for anything.

[Morgan Abshur]

No.

[Kayla Moore]

And amateur investigators couldn't find her over the years because police didn't publicly release her full name until after she died. Still, people kept trying to figure out why she would react that way if she didn't recognize the Somerton man.

[Morgan Abshur]

It's very confusing why she would react that way. And this is where people have gone down the rabbit holes over the years. They first kind of looked to Jessica's boyfriend at the time, but did later become her husband, a guy named Prosper Thompson. Now, there were rumors about him selling black market goods through classified ads. So there's a theory that maybe the Somerton man got into some kind of conflict with Prosper, and then maybe he was killed because of it. There's also, again, that spy angle. If the Somerton man was a spy who died after passing along a coded message, some people think Jessica must have been involved in espionage, too. And a lot of people kind of jumped to that because Jessica was a nursing student working in a medical setting. So for her to have that reaction to this plaster mask was kind of unnerving for them.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah, it's not even. You're not seeing the dead body even. You're just seeing a plaster caster. You see, she's probably freaking out for a different reason.

[Morgan Abshur]

That is what they assume. And again, you kind of look to this book one, why is her number in the back of this book? But she didn't give it to him. But she gave a copy of the book to someone else. Did she give a bunch of different men the copy of this book? Like why is her number in it? If you don't know this person, why is your number in the book? And if it's not his book, then whose book would have your number? Yeah, it's not offs. There's other theories that people really go down.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah, there's another theory that's a little bit more personal too. Jessica and Prosper actually had a baby boy named Robin. He was born in July of 1947. He was just turning 2 when police tracked Jessica down. But Jessica eventually admitted to a friend that she met Prosper when she was already pregnant. So this whole story only got pieced together after both Jessica and her son Robin had passed away years and years later. But this is the most likely version of what happened In October of 1946, when she was 24 years old, Jessica left nursing school, maybe because she was pregnant. Shortly after that, she met a very handsome man who was also married at the time, 34 year old salesman Prosper Thompson. Without even divorcing his wife, Prosper and Jessica ran off to Adelaide together in early 1947. That July, Prosper put his name on baby Robin's birth certificate, despite knowing that he wasn't the father. By July 1949, when the police came knocking at Jessica's door, Prosper was in the process of getting divorced so that he could finally marry Jessica. And that brings us to the reason Jessica might have refused to identify the Somerton Man. Maybe this guy was Robin's biological father. Or maybe Jessica thought that he was. If so, getting involved with this case might expose the secret that she was trying to run away from. And that was going to be the last thing Jessica wanted when she was about to finally get legally married. She was going to put all of that in jeopardy. So this theory goes that she decided she would never say a word to anybody about the Somerton man again. And if that was her plan, it did work. Jessica and Prosper got married the next year, in 1950. In the early 1950s, they had a little girl named Kate. Jessica eventually returned to the medical field. She worked in a mental health facility. Robin apparently lived his whole life without ever even being questioned about the Somerton man case. But he was still able to provide some key evidence. So earlier in this episode, we were talking about a professor named Derek Abbott at the University of Adelaide who spent over A decade of his life trying to unmask the Somerton Man. Interestingly, he wasn't a professor of criminology or forensics or anything related to solving crimes. He actually taught electrical engineering. But in 2009, Professor Abbott happened to see a story about the Somerton man in a magazine, and he thought that the unbreakable code would be a fun project for his electrical engineering students, since they need to understand encryption and decryption methods, mostly because power systems can be targeted by hackers and spies. So Professor Abbott thought that he would see if his students could figure out how to decrypt the code in the ruby the Somerton man had. He didn't mean to necessarily get obsessed with the case, but that is what ended up happening. Anyways, Professor Abbott became determined to figure out the identity of the Somerton man himself. And he really believed, at least after reading everything he could about the case, that Jessica was the key to the entire thing. So he starts digging into Jessica a little bit more specifically, he starts digging into her son Robin's backstory. And what he found found really surprised him.

[Morgan Abshur]

Robin Thompson, or the Samarton Man's possible son, did pass away in 2009, but Derek Abbott found something out about him. Robin had a long career as a professional ballet dancer. As you guys will remember, on the autopsy exam, the Sommerton man was noted to have unusually strong calves and was believed to either be a dancer, a bicyclist, or someone who wore shoes with a high heel at work. But more importantly, Robin's dance career meant that there were a lot of photos taken of him. And so when Professor Abbott gets a hold of these photos, he notices two things. First, Robin's ears had the same unique shape as the Somerton Man's, where that upper hollow of the ear is larger than the lower hollow, which, again, only about 1 to 2% of Caucasian men have this trait. But Robin's smile was even more unusual. He was missing his lateral incisors, two of the 18 teeth that the Samarton man was missing. And the medical examiner believed he was born with, rather than having them pulled later on. And like the Samarton Man, Robin's canines were directly next to his front teeth without there being a significant gap. Which means that he was probably born with this same genetic detail. Professor Abbott actually calculated the probability of this being a coincidence as somewhere between 1 in 10 million and 1 in 20 million. But to prove Robin was actually the son of the Somerton man, he was going to need a lot more than math.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah, the Only way to know for sure was to compare the Somerton man's DNA with a sample from Robin. Getting the summer to man's DNA would probably require exhuming his body. So Professor Abbott decided to start with the easier of the two tasks. Getting a sample from Robin or a living relative of Robin's.

[Morgan Abshur]

Unfortunately, by the time Professor Abbott got to it, Robin had passed just two months before he really got into this investigation of his own. And Robin had been cremated, so there was no way to get his DNA.

[Kayla Moore]

Well, he was still able to get in touch with Robin's daughter, who is named Rachel. In 2010, when Professor Abbott reached out, Rachel was willing to meet up and discuss a DNA sample. Except they both got more than they bargained for. Professor Abbott and Rachel actually ended up falling in love. This part is so crazy. They fell so head over heels for each other, they ended up getting engaged the day after they first met.

[Morgan Abshur]

When you hear them discuss this date that they went on, because it wasn't meant to be a date, like, he reached out to her, kind of gave her a breakdown of the case. Like, hey, have you heard about this? This is the Somerton man. You know, I think there could be a DNA connection between you and your family. And Rachel has a really interesting backstory. So Rachel was born actually when her dad, Robin and mom Roma were in New Zealand. Her. Her dad was a part of a ballet company that had been working there. But she describes it as, like, she was very unplanned and they couldn't afford to keep her. So Rachel was put up for adoption. She did not find out she was adopted until, like, after she was 18, when a social worker reached out to her. And for her, it actually brought her so much peace because Rachel had always grown up loving ballet, but no one in her family loved ballet. Like, there was no ballet connection. So when Abbott was approaching her to be like, hey, let's figure out if this is where you're from, she's like, oh, my God, I'd love more answers because I was put up for adoption, and, like, I'm not close, and I want more answers.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah, someone who really wants to help her build her story.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah. And so she leapt at this dinner meeting, which quickly devolved into a date. And, like, they joke about it, but he says that she asked him to marry her the next day. And she jokes that, no, it was you that asked me. But basically, the day after this first date, they're in love, they're engaged, and.

[Kayla Moore]

They are still married. They still have three kids together.

[Morgan Abshur]

Three kids.

[Kayla Moore]

Their family apparently jokes that he married her for her DNA, which honestly may or may not be true.

[Morgan Abshur]

No, she actually did fall out with her mom because of that.

[Kayla Moore]

Oh, wow.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah, her mom was, like, very, like, oh, no. Like, he's with you for your DNA. And like her. She describes it in an interview like she fell out with her mom because of that.

[Kayla Moore]

Wow.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah.

[Kayla Moore]

Wow. Wow, wow, wow, wow. That is wild. I didn't know about that.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah.

[Kayla Moore]

Well, Professor Abbott didn't stop there, though. If DNA from one of Robin's family members was good, DNA from too would be even better. So Professor Abbott reached out to Robin's sister, who was still alive. Kate. Not only was Kate willing to help, but she had a couple really big theories of her own that she wanted to share. Kate explained that she believed her mother Jessica, was a Soviet spy and might have even killed the Somerton man herself. Kate said that she asked her mother directly about the Somerton Man's identity, and Jessica replied that she did know who he was, but it was information reserved for people at a level higher than the local police. Kate also said Jessica spoke Russian and would not disclose where she learned it or how she knew Russian.

[Morgan Abshur]

I got chills. Literally. How does she know Russian?

[Kayla Moore]

However, ultimately, it seemed like Kate wasn't as on board with the rest of her family when it came to testing the DNA. She felt like this was her dad's mystery and he had passed away already. Robin had already passed away. And so it just almost wasn't fair to him to now solve it, now that he couldn't know the answers himself.

[Morgan Abshur]

Make that Choice himself.

[Kayla Moore]

In 2013, Professor Abbott asked the Attorney General of South Australia to have the Summertime man exhumed so that Rachel and Rachel's mother, Roma Egan, could all finally know the truth. And the exhumation request was ultimately denied. But then, six years later, in 2019, a new request was approved. But there was one really big condition with this, though. If the Somerton man's possible relatives wanted him exhumed, they would have to pay for it themselves. The country was not gonna pay for this, and it was gonna be around $20,000. So Professor Abbott just kind of gets straight to it. He starts working on raising the money, and in the meantime, he found another way that he was attack this puzzle.

[Morgan Abshur]

This is where we get our 10th clue. As Professor Abbott became well known for his work on the Somerton man case, he got access to some of the original evidence, including that plaster cast of the man's head and torso, which, hey, just a Note for y' all out there, when I die, don't let a taxidermist do this to me. I don't want any cast. It turns out that in this cast, there were a lot of hairs from the man's face and chest that got trapped in the plaster. So in 2012 and 2018, the University of Adelaide helped extract DNA from those hairs. But they didn't get much new information. All they were able to confirm was that the man's mother had European ancestry. But Professor Abbott still had some hairs left to test. And he had read about a new technology that allowed nuclear DNA to be recovered from hair, which could then give a way more specific profile on a person. So Professor Abbott hired a California company to do the job. And using state of the art methods, they recovered 2 million unique DNA markers, way more than had been previously extracted. And this was fantastic news. But there was a big, big twist. The first person Professor Abbott wanted the new DNA compared to was, of course, his wife, Rachel, Robyn's daughter. And based on those tests, they were definitely not a match.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah. By this time, the local authorities were eager to do some DNA tests of their own. Between advances in DNA technology and also this big renewed public interest in the case, it seemed like it was the right time to do this. So on May 19, 2021, the Somerton man was finally exhumed. A team, including an anthropologist, a pathologist, and multiple DNA specialists, extracted as much usable DNA as they could from the remains. But they also knew that they had their work cut out for them because the body was embalmed with formaldehyde, and that can actually destroy DNA. Unfortunately for Professor Abbott, he wasn't given access to those samples.

[Morgan Abshur]

But like a lot of the cold cases we've covered, this one ended up on the desk of a genetic genealogist. Professor Abbott teamed up with Dr. Colleen Fitzpatrick, who co founded the DNA DOE project and led the first team to ever solve a cold case using genetic genealogy. So, a baddie. Using the consumer DNA database, GEDmatch, she and Abbott built out a profile of 4,000 potential matches. And this is similar to what we saw in our Golden State case, our Jeannie Childs case. You get a bunch of matches and you kind of have to go down this family tree. And so they took on the painstaking process of eliminating matches one by one, and it took them months. In this case, anybody who had a confirmed date of death could be dropped from the list because the Somerton man was buried as a John Doe. And given the age range they were looking for Most of the potential matches did have death certificates, but one didn't. An Australian man named Carl Webb. He disappeared from official records after 1947 and had never had a documented death. To get a more definitive match, though, Professor Abbott and Dr. Fitzpatrick needed DNA from one of Carl's living relatives. Using the same process, they found a living relative in Victoria, Australia. He agreed to provide a sample which did confirm he was the Somerton man's first cousin thrice removed. I don't get the removed stuff, but maybe one of you can explain it. So if you're, of course Kaylin would know.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah, well, I, Yeah, I love genealogy stuff. I've built out my whole family tree. But if your cousin has, I guess it would be your cousin's like great grandchild at that point would be three times. First removed is their kids, second removed is their kids, and then so on, so forth.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah, we're gonna really dive into this.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah.

[Morgan Abshur]

And there was another exciting detail they gathered from this. Carl had a brother in law named Gerald Thomas Keene. So the items in the Somerton man's suitcase marked keen might have been hand me downs from gerald. So on July 26, 2022, exactly 73 years after Jessica's strange interview with the police, Professor Abbott and Dr. Fitzpatrick formally announced their findings. As far as they were concerned, the mystery of the Somerton man's identity was solved. The Somerton man was Carl Webb.

[Kayla Moore]

But Carl's life is really as mysterious as his death.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah, it is.

[Kayla Moore]

Here's some of the stuff we know about him. So he was born in 1905 in Victoria, Australia. He was the youngest of six siblings born to a German Australian baker named Richard August Webb. According to family photo albums, he played soccer for the Swinburne Technical College's under 16 team in Melbourne. He must have also picked up some technical skills there, because after the family bakery closed down, he worked as an electrical instrument maker. That occupation fits with the electrician's screwdriver that was found in the Summertime man's suitcase. In 1941, at age 35, while he was living in Victoria, Carl married a 21 year old pharmacist and podiatrist named Dorothy Jean Robertson. Unfortunately, most of the rest of what we know about Carl comes from Dorothy's divorce papers, which were filed on June 29, 1951. So that was years after he died.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah.

[Kayla Moore]

Dorothy was apparently unaware that Carl had been dead for two and a half years at that point. Her petition accuses him of desertion. Dorothy's divorce petition also Says that Carl was moody and mean from the very start of their marriage. He expected Dorothy to work and hand over her paycheck to him. On top of doing all of the housework and taking care of his sick mother.

[Morgan Abshur]

It's giving too hot takes. Reddit story. I know how toxic their relationship was.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah. Literally, most of the money went towards his habit of betting on racehorses, which just kind of adds to the absurdity of it all. When Dorothy became ill herself, Carl was angry with her for spending her money on medical care. And unfortunately did only get worse from there. By 1946, Dorothy said Carl was both verbally and physically abusive to the point of threatening her life. In March 1946, he attempted to take his own life, but Dorothy found him and she nursed him back to health, at which point his violence escalated even further. On September 13, 1946, Dorothy escaped from her home in Victoria. With the help of her father, she had to leave nearly all of her money and possessions behind. There's one particular line in the divorce petition that seems like it might be a key to the whole mystery. Dorothy writes, quote, he has written many poems, most of them on the subject of death, which he claims to be his greatest desire. The Rubaiyat is full of poems about death. And if Carl tended to write his own poetry, that dovetails perfectly with the theory that the secret code was an initialism representing a poem.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah. A lot of people also speculate it was just names of horses he was trying to bet on the track.

[Kayla Moore]

Absolutely.

[Morgan Abshur]

Still don't really know. Even now, knowing a little bit more.

[Kayla Moore]

About Carl, I know it's still a mystery. Dorothy lost track of Carl in April 1947, about 20 months before the Somerton man died. After leaving, Dorothy settled in Butte, Australia, about 90 miles from Adelaide. Professor Abbott thinks maybe that's why Carl ended his life in Adelaide. More than two years after Dorothy left him, he came looking for her and then died on the beach.

[Morgan Abshur]

There's one instance that Dorothy writes about, and it's unclear if this was his attempt or just issues with addiction, but she came home and found him, like, overdosed on ether. He had wet the bed and was just, like, staring up at the ceiling.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah.

[Morgan Abshur]

I mean, Carl is not really sad stuff.

[Kayla Moore]

In a way, though, it's good that the mystery was solved because now he'll stop being so famous. I think everyone can kind of put it to bed that it was this guy. He was really horrible to the woman he was married to, and, like, the mystery has been put to bed.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah, we're Tucking him in. Bye, Carl.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah, bye, Carl.

[Morgan Abshur]

Bye, Carl. Is the spy theory down the drain for everyone? I mean, it's still weird he had Jessica's number in his book.

[Kayla Moore]

It is strange. So I want to. I mean, I really do think you should listen to our Heart starts Pounding episode on the Easdal woman. The parallels are so, so striking to this because she was also found. All of the tags were missing on all of her clothes. She didn't have anything with her. She died under very mysterious circumstances. But her suitcase was found at the train station. It had been there for, like, a day. She had, like, checked into the train and then went for a walk. And there was also a secret code in her suitcase.

[Morgan Abshur]

Do you think she was a spy?

[Kayla Moore]

I do think she was a spy, but I think she was a honey pot. I think she was a sex worker that someone recruited to do espionage. Because if she was a spy, she was a very bad spy.

[Morgan Abshur]

I mean, that kind of goes to Carl. It's like Dorothy had to escape. Horrible. Like, horrible. I did read in her affidavit, too, that, like, he looked at her one day and said, like, we do not belong together. Like, yeah, they were clearly just, you know, you only got her one affidavit. I know, like, there's a lot of researchers that are like, you're getting only her side in the heat of the moment and this and that. But, like, it doesn't look great, right?

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah.

[Morgan Abshur]

Like, Dorothy. Like, poor Dorothy.

[Kayla Moore]

Horrible.

[Morgan Abshur]

But you wonder, in the time that they were done to when he was found, where was he? What was he doing? Did he get recruited to be a spy?

[Kayla Moore]

Also, how did he die? Like, there's still so many questions that I have. Like, was he ultimately the one that took his own life with a very hard to detect poison? Because that feels like a really strange way to do it. But who know? Who knows?

[Morgan Abshur]

I know he had past, like, a past history of using ether, but I looked it up, and ether would have been detected on an autopsy very easily.

[Kayla Moore]

Yeah.

[Morgan Abshur]

Even at that time. So, again, yeah, you wonder, like, how did he actually die on the beach that day?

[Kayla Moore]

Right, right. Exactly. Exactly. Well, this case has, like, truly fascinated people for over 75 years. Now. There's actually one theory about this that, like, I. We talked about a little bit. But in 2023, a group of people came forward to actually dispute Professor Abbott's findings. They claimed that the Somerton man is actually a man named Carl Joseph Halban, an Austrian spy and communist. Now, according to former lawyer and amateur investigator Sophie Halsman, Halban's family supports this theory.

[Morgan Abshur]

Interesting.

[Kayla Moore]

Sophie says that she's provided evidence to the South Australian police that will prove Halben is the real Summer to Man. She also promised to reveal her proof in a TV documentary. She was only going to do it if she was able to do it on tv. But two years later, nothing more has happened. And they also don't have the DNA.

[Morgan Abshur]

Evidence that nothing's been released from the Australian authorities either. Like, yeah, the true only thing we have, like this is coming from Professor Abbott who, you know, working with Colleen Fitzpatrick. This does seem very credible. However, her Australia and them exhuming the body, like none of that has been released and Professor Abbott was not privy to that.

[Kayla Moore]

So it's still not technically closed.

[Morgan Abshur]

No. We could, we could be punch an.

[Kayla Moore]

Update very soon, but in terms of like advocacy for this case, if you are the kind of person who gets really into cases like this, if you are Professor Abbott yourself, you might be interested to know that the DNA do project is always looking for volunteers. People with experience in investigative genetic genealogy can volunteer to work directly on cases. If that is not you, it is not me. They need people with other skills too. They need people that are good at other stuff. Maybe like us. They're looking for help with marketing, social media, general administrative tasks. Do you want to draft emails for them? Maybe they need help with writing, with fundraising and more. If you think that you actually might be able to help solve the next unidentified missing person case, you can go to DNA doe project.org and look for the how to help link at the upper right hand side of the page. I can't guarantee that you'll meet the love of your life like Professor Abbott did, but stranger things have happened.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah, cool organization. They're celebrating eight years. 250 cases, 140 names restored.

[Kayla Moore]

They're doing incredible work.

[Morgan Abshur]

Big project.

[Kayla Moore]

Really, really good work.

[Morgan Abshur]

Really big project. And now moving on to our missing person case, but we are actually going to highlight one of the DNA Doe projects cases that is ongoing right now.

[Kayla Moore]

That you could maybe volunteer for if you want to join.

[Morgan Abshur]

So we are highlighting the John Tuscan Doe 1998 case. On October 1, 1998, water surveyors from the city of Tucson came across the remains of a young man near a rural road in the desert. He was about 6ft tall, weighed 252 pounds, and authorities believe that he had been dead for a number of days. John Doe had short curly hair and wore tan shorts and a pullover shirt. Race is uncertain. However, they estimate that he was about 17 to 23 years old. There is a composite sketch we are going to be sharing with you guys. So if this person looks familiar to you, we will have a link for you to get in contact with the agency of jurisdiction. It is the Pima County Office of the medical examiner. The ID for the DNA DOE project is up 7236. There's also a few other links that we'll put in the description with a bit more information. That is all we have for this week. This episode of Clues and the Somerton man case.

[Kayla Moore]

Thank you for joining us on this mystery. I mean, what do you guys think? Is it solved? Is there still more to be done? Can we put this one to bed? All of your thoughts, theories, anything, drop them in the comments wherever you listen.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah, and as always at Crime House, we really value your support. So again, share all those thoughts. Subscribe and remember to rate, review and follow Clues to help others discover our show. That's all we got. Until next time.

[Kayla Moore]

Bye guys. Bye.

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[Kayla Moore]

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Looking for your next listen? Hi, it's Vanessa Richardson and I have exciting news. Conspiracy theories, cults and crimes is leveling up. Starting the week of January 12th, you'll be getting two episodes episodes every week. Wednesdays we unravel the conspiracy or the cult and on Fridays, we look at a corresponding crime. Follow Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you listen.