A search concluded that no T. Keane was missing in any English-speaking country. Fitzpatrick told the Guardian she and Abbott started with a match in a DNA database (a so-called DNA-cousin to Somerton man) and then built out his family tree until they found someone who fit the description of who they were looking for. In his pocket were bus and train tickets, chewing gum, some matches, two combs and a pack of cigarettes. He said he had tracked down and spoken to Mr Webb's living relatives. The man's body was found propped up against the seawall at Somerton Beach in Adelaide on December 1, 1948. This would be consistent with the copy of the Rubaiyat, which also focuses on the subject of death. [14][18] On 22 November 1959 it was reported that one E.B. Tragic End To Four-day Search For Father And Son, "BOXALL ALFRED: Service Number NX83331". Though the state coroner has yet to confirm the pairs findings, Abbott tells the Guardians Natasha May that as a scientist, he is confident in the accuracy of the analysis. "I have spoken to them, except they're all of a generation well below him and so none of them knew himand have no photos in their old family albums or in their garden sheds, unfortunately," he said. [17], He was dressed in a white shirt; a red, white and blue tie; brown trousers; socks and shoes; a brown knitted pullover and fashionable grey and brown double-breasted jacket of reportedly "American" tailoring. "Somerton Beach Mystery Man", Transcript, Broadcast 27 March 2009. [44], In 1994, John Harber Phillips, Chief Justice of Victoria and Chairman of the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, reviewed the case to determine the cause of death and concluded that, "There seems little doubt it was digitalis. Its hard to see this as anything other than intentional, Fiona-Ellis Jones, host of The Somerton Man Mystery podcast, tells the Australian Broadcasting Companys (ABC) Bridget Judd. [113][116], Dorothy recalled one instance in March 1946 in which her husband apparently attempted suicide with an overdose of ether. This article contains content provided by Twitter. Officer in Charge, No. 2023 BBC. Professor Abbott also said there was a potential explanation as to why the Melbourne resident was in Adelaide. However, a bus conductor named Leslie Francis Wytkin (or Wytkins) handed in a copy of the. This service may include material from Agence France-Presse (AFP), APTN, Reuters, AAP, CNN and the BBC World Service which is copyright and cannot be reproduced. [78] The coroner could not determine the young Mangnoson's cause of death, although it was not believed to be natural causes. [32] Soon after being interviewed by police over her harassment, Mangnoson collapsed and required medical treatment. x [42] (Subsequent research suggests that her future husband, Prosper Thomson, was in the process of obtaining a divorce from his first wife in 1949, and that he did not marry Jessica until mid-1950. The man's body was found on 1 December 1948 on Somerton beach in the South Australian city of Adelaide. The card, a document issued in the United States to foreign seamen during World War I, was given to Henneberg in October 2011 for comparison of the ID photograph to that of the Somerton man. [59][60] That same day, The News published a photograph of the dead man on its front page,[61] leading to additional calls from members of the public about his possible identity. For the next 70 or so years, speculation and increasingly outlandish theories dominated discussion of the Somerton Man. 15 January 1948: Boxall arrives back in Sydney from his last active duty and is discharged from the army in April 1948. [49] She suggested that her mother and the Somerton man may both have been spies, noting that Jessica Thomson taught English to migrants, was interested in communism, and could speak Russian, although she would not disclose to Kate where she had learned it or why. The South Australian Grandstand Bookmakers Association paid for the service to save the man from a pauper's burial. During their drinking session, the mystery man supposedly produced a military pension card bearing the name "Solomonson". Privacy Statement There is no evidence that police knew in 1949 that she was not married. [32] Mangnoson believed that this situation could be related to her husband's attempt to identify the Somerton Man, believing him to be Carl Thompsen, who had worked with him in Renmark in 1939. 16 RACHEL EGAN'S DNA LINKED TO PROSPER THOMSON.. by peterbowes on May 31, 2021. Here's what they think of a Voice to Parliament, Prime minister says urgent care clinics will start relieving pressure on NT's busy emergency wards in coming months, Trump requests mistrial in rape civil case, NRL concedes error on crucial golden point call. [110], Abbott's research indicates Webb enjoyed betting on horses, thus the coded messages could be horse names. In December 1948, a man was found dead on Somerton Beach in a suburb of Adelaide. The researchers hope to address these mysteries and more through archival and genetic research. From there, the trail went cold. He also held a torn scrap of paper with the Farsi words Tamam Shud, or "it's finished" printed on it. [91][92], An exhumation was carried out on 19 May 2021. A post-mortem ruled he had died from. 30 November 1948. This may provide clues to the country where it was purchased. There is a . 8:30a.m. to 10:50am: The Somerton Man is presumed to have arrived in Adelaide by train. Solving Australia's coldest case", "Maternal inheritance of human mitochondrial DNA", "Ubiquitinated Sperm Mitochondria, Selective Proteolysis, and the Regulation of Mitochondrial Inheritance in Mammalian Embryos", "Somerton man mystery 'solved' as DNA points to man's identity, professor claims", "Somerton Man face search suggests correct Charles Webb is in Swinburne football photo", "Somerton Man Charles Webb's true identity revealed in family photographs and divorce papers", "Carl 'Charles' Webb's prisoner-of-war brother bears resemblance to Somerton Man", "Somerton Man mystery 'solved' as Adelaide uni researcher names body on beach", "Somerton Man cold case: SA Attorney-General Vickie Chapman grants conditional approval to exhume body", "Der Somerton Man: Eine dokumentarische Fiktion in drei Dimensionen,", Archival newspaper articles on the Taman Shud Case, Reddit AMA interview with Taman Shud researcher Derek Abbott, SA Police Historical Society Oct 2007 Newsletter on the case, SA Police Historical Society October 2010 article on Jimmy Durham who worked in the case, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Somerton_Man&oldid=1151307234, Undeciphered historical codes and ciphers, Articles containing Persian-language text, Articles with unsourced statements from June 2016, Short description is different from Wikidata, All Wikipedia articles written in Australian English, Wikipedia articles in need of updating from December 2015, All Wikipedia articles in need of updating, Articles with self-published sources from November 2018, Articles with unsourced statements from April 2022, Articles needing cleanup from December 2022, Articles with sections that need to be turned into prose from December 2022, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0. A month after his death, police found a suitcase believed to belong to him at the Adelaide Railway Station. [5], Carl Webbs father Richard August Webb (died in 1939) had emigrated to Australia from Hamburg, Germany. Webb was then a 35-year-old instrument maker. The scrap had been torn from the final page of a copy of Rubaiyat of Omar Khayym, authored by 12th-century poet Omar Khayym. The chance that this was a coincidence has been estimated as between one in 10,000,000 and one in 20,000,000. Between 8:30a.m. to 10:50am: There is no satisfactory explanation for what The Somerton Man does during these hours. The pathologist, Dr. Dwyer, concluded: "I am quite convinced the death could not have been natural the poison I suggested was a barbiturate or a soluble hypnotic". In all this soup and ocean of DNA cousins, we were able to connect one of them to Carls father and one of them to Carls mother, Fitzpatrick tells the Times. The police said this was the first time they knew that such action was needed. [76] The Mangnosons had been missing for four days. And so he was buried in Adelaide cemetery in 1949 with a tombstone reading: "Here lies the unknown man who was found at Somerton Beach.". The Somerton Man case has been an enigma since his body was discovered in 1948. What was unusual was that there were no spare socks found in the case, and no correspondence, although the police found pencils and unused letter stationery. Researchers now say the man is Carl Charles Webb, an electrical engineer from Melbourne. They found that the Somerton Man belonged to haplogroup H4a1a1a, possessed by only 1% of Europeans. All Episodes Topics Blog Shop About Contact SUBMIT A LISTENER SEGUE . DNA Researchers Name the Somerton Man, Australia's 73-Year-Old Cold Case. With the original copy lost in the 1950s, researchers have been looking for a FitzGerald edition. He had a sister who lived in Melbourne and was married to a man named Thomas Keanelikely the T. Keane whose name appears on the clothing in the Somerton Mans suitcase. Public interest in the case remains significant for several reasons: the death occurred at a time of heightened international tensions following the beginning of the Cold War; the apparent involvement of a secret code; the possible use of an undetectable poison; and the inability of authorities to identify the dead man. Explore in 3D: The dazzling crown that makes a king. Born in 1946, Robin enjoyed a career as a dancer with the Australian Ballet Company. He said after using hairs from a plaster bust of the man to gather DNA evidence, researchers in Australia and America had further narrowed the search "to build out a family tree containing over 4,000 people". 14 January 1949: Adelaide railway station finds the brown suitcase belonging to the man. [36] Public library officials called in to translate the text identified it as a phrase meaning "ended" or "finished" found on the last page of Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. [53], Thomson also said that while she was working at Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney during World War II,[42] she had owned a copy of Rubaiyat. [63], In early January 1949, two people identified the body as that of 63-year-old former wood cutter Robert Walsh. We had all these grandiose ideas about him being Russian, American and European. [49], Roma Egan, the widow of Jessica Thomson's son Robin, and Robin and Roma's daughter Rachel Egan, also appeared on 60 Minutes. The coroner will be asked to confirm the identification. Australian guilty in 'Claremont serial killings' case, Why science could free Australian 'serial killer', Russia launches pre-dawn missile attack on Ukraine, Explosion derails train in Russian border region. The cryptographers reported that it would be impossible to provide "a satisfactory answer": if the text were an encrypted message, its brevity meant that it had "insufficient symbols" from which a clear meaning could be extracted, and the text could be the "meaningless" product of a "disturbed mind". Although they commented between themselves that it was odd that he was not reacting to the mosquitoes, they had thought it more likely that he was drunk or asleep, and thus did not investigate further. The heart was of normal size, and normal in every way small vessels not commonly observed in the brain were easily discernible with congestion. Shown the plaster cast by Paul Lawson, she does not identify the man as Alf Boxall, or any other person. To view this content choose accept and continue. 58. In 1945, at the Clifton Gardens Hotel in Sydney, she had given it to an Australian Army lieutenant named Alf Boxall, who was serving at the time in the Water Transport Section of the Royal Australian Engineers. He then stated its absence was not unknown but that he could not make a "frank conclusion" without it. [83], The South Australian Police Historical Society holds the plaster bust, which contains strands of the man's hair. "For more than 70 years, people have speculated who this man was and how he died," South Australia Attorney General Vickie Chapman said. All rights reserved. Last month Ms Chapman said the decision to exhume the body followed "intense public interest" in the case. "It's an story that has captured the imagination of people across the state, and, indeed, across the world - but I believe that, finally, we may uncover some answers," South Australian Attorney General Ms Chapman said. WTBIMPANETP They suggested that the Somerton man was Robin's father and, therefore, Rachel's grandfather. There was congestion in the second half of the duodenum. Just trying to put together a paper trail of who he was, or might have been. Tucked inside the watch pocket in his pants was a slip of paper with Persian words printed on it which meant "finished.". In July 1949, a local man came forward with a copy of The Rubiyt that hed found tossed into the back of his car around the time of the Somerton Mans death. A jilted lover poisoned by his paramour. Its up to the cops to make the legal determination of who this guy was.. One of the biggest mysteries in modern Australian history may have finally been solved. [113] Earlier the ABC had published photos of Webb's brother, Roy Webb, claiming they resembled the Somerton Man. However, the police did state that the body was consistent with that of a man who had been a wood cutter, although the state of the man's hands indicated he had not cut wood for at least eighteen months. Working in conjunction with US investigator Colleen Fitzpatrick, Professor Abbott said that, in March this year, suspicions fell on Webb, who was born in 1905 but later identified "as a person with no death record". Some observers cited the code found on his copy of The Rubiyt, as well as the apparent attempts to mask his identity, as evidence that he was a Russian spy. Per a 1949 inquest report, a doctor who examined the Somerton Man's remains placed his time of death around 2 a.m. Most accounts state that the book was found in an unlocked car parked in Jetty Road, Glenelg either in the rear floor well, or on the back seat. The Somerton Man's fingerprints were sent around the world, but no one could identify him. (Cryptography experts contend that the string of letters dont actually constitute a code; Abbott, for his part, tells ABC they probably represent the first names of horses Webb bet on. [32] Mangnoson stated that "the car stopped and a man with a khaki handkerchief over his face told her to 'keep away from the police or else'". [B]ut I cannot say whether it was administered by the deceased himself or by some other person.. Reflecting on the identification, Carolyn Bilsborow, a filmmaker who directed a 2018 documentary about the Somerton Man, tells the Guardian: We had all these grandiose ideas about him being Russian, American and European. [note 6] The father was taken to a hospital in a very weak condition, suffering from exposure;[75] following a medical examination, he was transferred to a mental hospital. Another theory concerns Boxall, who was reportedly involved in intelligence work during and immediately after World War II. That's fingerprints for you. [32], In 1949, the body of the unknown man was buried in Adelaide's West Terrace Cemetery, where the Salvation Army conducted the service. (A spool of thread in the suitcase matched the orange stitches used to repair the mans clothing.) [11] They speculated he had showered and shaved at the adjacent City Baths (although there was no Baths ticket on his body) before returning to the railway station to purchase a ticket for the 10:50a.m. train to Henley Beach, which, for whatever reason, he did not board. "The fact he [Thomson] has a rare dental and ear condition matching the Somerton Man appears to be an extraordinary coincidence.". [5], On 1 December 1948 at 6:30am, the police were contacted after the body of a man was discovered on Somerton Park beach near Glenelg, about 11km (7mi) southwest of Adelaide, South Australia. No new findings are recorded and the inquest is ended with an. 1986: The Somerton Man's brown suitcase and contents are destroyed as "no longer required". Abbott and Rachel married in 2010 and they have three children. [51][56] Boxall was now working in the maintenance section at the Randwick Bus Depot (where he had worked before the war) and was unaware of any link between the dead man and himself. On December 1, 1948, an unknown man was found lying dead on the sand on Somerton Beach next to the neighborhood of Glenelg, about 7 miles (11 km) southwest of Adelaide, South Australia. Did he die by suicide? The tags on his suit had been cut off, and forensic examiners suspected he had been poisoned. Or maybe a final goodbye to a lover.. All that could be garnered from the suitcase was that the front gusset and featherstitching on a coat found in the case indicated it had been manufactured in the United States. For 73 years, the identity of a well-dressed man found slumped by a sea wall of Somerton beach, south of Adelaide, in 1948 has been a mystery leaving room for theories featuring jilted lovers and cold war spies. Video, The secret mine that hid the Nazis' stolen treasure, The mystery death haunting Norway for 46 years, MasterChef Australia host Jock Zonfrillo dies, NFL player's daughter, aged two, drowns in pool, Banana artwork in Seoul museum eaten by visitor, Donald Trump arrives in Scotland on golf visit, Indian 'killer' elephant relocated to tiger reserve, Ding becomes China's first male world chess champion. [42] The police agreed a decision that hampered later investigations. 26 July 2022: Derek Abbott announces that his DNA analysis has identified the man as Carl "Charles" Webb, an electrical engineer and instrument maker born in Melbourne in 1905. University of Adelaide researcher Derek Abbott believes the unknown man found slumped and lifeless at Adelaide's Somerton Beach on December 1, 1948, was Carl "Charles" Webb, a 43-year-old engineer and instrument maker. "[82] Phillips supported his conclusion by pointing out that the organs were engorged, consistent with digitalis, the lack of evidence of natural disease and "the absence of anything seen macroscopically which could account for the death". In a later interview Lawson describes her behaviour as being very odd that day. He was fond of poetry and wrote several poems of his own, "most of them on the subject of death, which he claims to be his greatest desire", Dorothy stated. A researcher in the case of the Somerton Man says he has solved the decades-old mystery, identifying the figure as a Melbourne-born electrical engineer. Video, 00:02:36Who killed 'Little Red Riding Hood'? A day after meeting each other, Abbott and Egan decided to wed. People have said that possibly Derek married me for my DNA,Egan joked to ABC in 2019. One of the witnesses told the police she observed a man looking down at the sleeping man from the top of the steps that led to the beach. Accessing the man's remains may be a first step in a process to build a DNA profile and uncover answers in one of the country's most famous cold cases. WRGOABABD Sleuths amateur and professional alike have been puzzled for years by the discovery in 1948 of an unidentified man's . [68] Detectives from Victoria initially believed the man was from there because of the similarity of the laundry marks to those used by several dry-cleaning firms in Melbourne. We knew this day was going to come at some point, she said. The only problem is that the body is six feet under and seven decades old. Interestingly, the book contained several handwritten annotations, including a suspected code and the phone number of a nurse, Jessie Jo Thomson, who lived near the site where the body was discovered. Professor Abbott said after more than a decade on the case, the discovery felt like summitting a mountain. Theories abounded, including that the person - dubbed Somerton Man - was a spy. In a 1978 television interview Stuart Littlemore asks: "Mr Boxall, you had been working, hadn't you, in an intelligence unit, before you met this young woman [Jessica Harkness]. Australia's Greatest Mystery The Somerton Man An unknown dead body on an Adelaide Beach in post-war Australia In 1948 an unknown nameless man washed up on Somerton Park Beach in Adelaide,. The parties interested in the analysis agreed to cover the costs. Professor Abbott said Webb was born in Footscray on November 16,1905 to Richard August Webb (1866-1939) and Eliza Amelia Morris Grace (1871-1946). As a result of their conversations with Thomson, police suspected that Boxall was the dead man. Abbotts research was undertaken with American genealogist Colleen Fitzpatrick. [97], In March 2009, a University of Adelaide team led by Professor Derek Abbott began an attempt to solve the case through cracking the code and proposing to exhume the body to test for DNA. Ive already been on Trove to see if theres any presence of Charles Webb coming up in the old newspapers. "We can't say for sure, but we can speculate," he said. Between 11:00a.m. and 11:15a.m: Checks a brown suitcase into the railway station cloak room. | READ MORE. Other curious finds baffled authorities. We still dont know who he is, or what he was doing. [14] "Francis" had not considered that the book might be connected to the case until he had seen an article in the previous day's newspaper. [42] In his book on the case, Gerry Feltus stated that when he interviewed Thomson in 2002, he found that she was either being "evasive" or she "just did not wish to talk about it". 1 December 2 a.m.: Estimated time of death. [106] While much of the DNA is degraded, in February 2018, the University of Adelaide team obtained a high-definition analysis of the mitochondrial DNA from the hair sample from Somerton Man. The two daily Adelaide newspapers, The Advertiser and The News, covered the death in separate ways. [103] However, Rachel Egan's DNA has been analysed and links were found to the grandparents of Prosper Thomson. [75], Following the death, the boy's mother, Roma Mangnoson, reported having been threatened by a masked man who, while driving a battered cream car, almost ran her down outside her home in Cheapside Street, Largs North.