The Somerton Man is discovered (1948): “He took his secrets to the grave. but his DNA brought him home."

 

The Somerton Man is discovered (1948): 

“He took his secrets to the grave. 

but his DNA brought him home." 

 

The Somerton Man case is the ultimate "rabbit hole" of Australian history. It’s a cocktail of Cold War paranoia, unrequited love, and cryptic puzzles that remained unsolved for over 70 years.

Here is the detailed breakdown of how the mystery unfolded.

 

1. The Discovery: December 1, 1948:

At 6:30 AM, the morning sun hit Somerton Park Beach in Adelaide. Passersby noticed a man slumped against the seawall near the Crippled Children’s Home. He looked like he was sleeping, but his body was cold.

The State of the Body:

·        Appearance: He was a well-built man in his 40s, remarkably fit, with "wedge-shaped" calf muscles—often seen in dancers or people who frequently wear high-heeled boots.

·        Attire: Despite the warm weather, he was dressed in a suit and tie. Most chillingly, every single label had been meticulously cut out of his clothing.

·        Possessions: He had no ID, no wallet, and no money. All he had was a bus ticket to Glenelg, a train ticket, a packet of chewing gum, and a box of matches.

·        The Autopsy: The pathologist found his spleen was three times the normal size and his stomach was filled with blood, suggesting congestion. However, no known poison was detected in his system. It was as if he had simply stopped living.

 

2. The Secret Pocket and "Tamám Shud":

Months passed. The body remained unidentified. Just as the case was going cold, a forensic expert did a final sweep of the man's clothing. He found a tiny, tightly rolled scrap of paper hidden in a "secret" fob pocket sewn inside the man's trousers.

It bore two words in a formal Persian font: "Tamám Shud" ($تمام شد$).

Translated, it means "It is finished" or "ended." Investigators eventually traced the scrap to a very specific, rare edition of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, a book of 12th-century Persian poetry.

 

3. The Mystery Car and the Code:

A local man eventually came forward, claiming he had found that exact copy of the Rubáiyát tossed into the back of his car, which had been parked near the beach on the night of the death.

On the back cover of the book, police found two things that changed the case forever:

1.   The Code: Five lines of capitalized letters that looked like a cipher. To this day, the world’s best cryptographers (including those from the Navy and FBI) have failed to crack it.

2.   The Phone Number: An unlisted number belonging to a nurse named Jessica "Jo" Thomson, who lived just 400 meters from where the body was found.

4. The "Jo" Connection

When police showed Jo Thomson a plaster cast of the dead man’s face, she reportedly nearly fainted. She denied knowing him but mentioned she had once owned a copy of the Rubáiyát and had given it to a man named Alfred Boxall during WWII.

Police thought they had their man—until they found Alfred Boxall alive and well, still in possession of the book she’d given him. The mystery man wasn't Boxall. Jo remained tight-lipped until her death, taking whatever she knew to the grave.

 

5. Modern Science: The 2022 Breakthrough:

For decades, theorists suggested he was a Soviet spy or a jilted lover. In 2021, the body was exhumed for DNA testing.

In July 2022, Professor Abbott of the University of Adelaide, working with American genealogist Colleen Fitzpatrick, announced they had found a match. They identified the Somerton Man as Carl "Charles" Webb, an electrical engineer and instrument maker from Melbourne.

 

Why was he there?

While the DNA solved the who, the why remains tragic. Webb was a man who struggled with his mental health; his wife had left him and moved to South Australia. It is now believed he traveled to Adelaide to find her, likely despondent and carrying a book of poetry that reflected his state of mind.

The lingering question: Even if we know his name, the "code" in the back of the book remains uncracked. Was it a code at all, or just the scribblings of a man losing his grip on reality?

 

To dive deeper into the Somerton Man mystery, we have to look at the evidence that kept cryptographers and amateur sleuths awake for decades.

Here is an analysis of the "Somerton Cipher" and the strange physical clues that modern science had to navigate.

 

The Uncracked Code

The back of the Rubáiyát contained five lines of penciled letters. The second line is struck out, suggesting the author made a mistake while "encoding" or writing.

·        The Structure:

Plaintext

W R G O A B A B D

M L I A B O I

W T B I M P A N E T P

M L I A B O A I A Q C

I T T M T S A M S T G A B

·        The Theories: Some believe it is a One-Time Pad cipher, which is mathematically impossible to crack without the "key." Others suggest it is an initialism—where each letter represents the first letter of a word in a sentence (likely English or German). If it’s a personal message or a poem, we may never know the words behind the letters.

 Unique Physiological Markers

Before DNA testing was possible, investigators relied on "anomalies" to identify the man. These markers were so specific that many thought they pointed to a secret bloodline or a very specific profession.

 

Feature	Description	Significance
Hypodontia	He was missing his upper lateral incisors (teeth next to the front teeth).	A rare genetic trait found in only about 2% of the population.
Cymba Concha	The upper hollow of his ear was larger than the lower hollow.	Another rare genetic marker was used to link him to potential descendants.
High Calf Muscles	Extremely pronounced, high-set calf muscles.	Usually seen in athletes or those who wear high-heeled boots (like "Cuban heels," popular in the 40s).

 

The Mystery of the Suitcase

On January 14, 1949, staff at the Adelaide Railway Station found a brown suitcase that had been checked in on November 30, 1948—the day before the body was found.

Inside the suitcase was:

·        A red check dressing gown and slippers.

·        A screwdriver and a sharpened table knife.

·        Barbour's brand orange waxed thread. This was the "smoking gun" because this rare thread was exactly what had been used to repair a pocket in the Somerton Man's trousers.

The DNA "Final Act":

When Professor Abbott identified him as Carl Webb, the story shifted from an international spy thriller to a domestic tragedy. Webb was a moody, "melancholic" man who liked betting on horses and writing poetry. His disappearance from Melbourne in 1947 matches the timeline perfectly. He likely died of digitalis poisoning or a similar substance that causes heart failure without leaving easy traces, though the coroner never officially ruled it a suicide.

*********************************