Taman Shud Case

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The Somerton Man

A plaster cast of the dead body of the unknown man taken by the police in 1949.
Born c. 1903
Died December 1, 1948
Somerton, Adelaide, Australia
Cause of death Of an unknown poison
Burial place West Terrace Cemetery,
Adelaide, South Australia
Gravesite: P3, 12, 106
Residence Unknown
Nationality Unknown
Occupation Unknown
Known for Mysterious death

The Taman Shud Case, also known as the "Mystery of the Somerton Man", revolved around an unidentified man found dead at 6.30am, December 1, 1948 on Somerton beach in Adelaide, Australia.

Contents

[edit] Victim

The man, of European appearance, was thought to be aged about forty to forty-five and in top physical condition[1]. He was 180 cm tall, with hazel eyes, fair hair, slightly grey around the temples[2], wide shoulders, a narrow waist, hands and nails that showed no signs of manual labour, big and little toes that met in a wedge shape, like those of a dancer, and calf muscles formed high in his leg, consistent with people who regularly wore high-heeled shoes. He was dressed in a fashionable European grey and brown double-breasted coat, white shirt, red and blue tie, brown trousers, socks and shoes and a brown knitted pullover[3], although all labels on his clothes were missing[2]. Clean-shaven and with no distinguishing marks[2], he carried no identification and his dental records did not match any known person.

When police arrived, they noted no disturbance to the body and that the man's left arm was lying beside his body and the right arm was bent double. A half-smoked cigarette was on the right collar of his coat. A search of his pockets revealed a used bus ticket to Glenelg (the adjoining suburb to Somerton), an unused rail ticket to Henley Beach, a narrow aluminium American comb[4], sixpence, an Army Club cigarette packet containing cigarettes of a different brand, Kensitas, and matches.

Witnesses came forward to declare that on the evening of 30 November they had seen a man resembling the dead man in the same spot near the Crippled Children's Home where the dead man was later found. They recounted that he had not moved during the time he was in view of them (in one case for half an hour) but they had thought he was drunk or asleep, and so did not investigate further[5]

[edit] Autopsy

An autopsy was held and found that the time of death was around 2am on 1 December, that his stomach was highly congested with blood and his heart had failed, traits consistent with poisoning[5]. However, besides the revelation that the man's last meal was a pasty, tests failed to reveal any foreign substance, although poisoning remained a prime suspicion (the pasty was not believed to be the source of the poison). Other than that, the coroner was unable to reach a conclusion on the man’s identity, cause of death or whether the man seen alive at Somerton Beach on the evening of 30 November was the same man, as nobody had seen his face while he was alive. A photograph of the man and details of his fingerprints were widely circulated throughout the world but no positive identification was made[5].

Due to the body remaining unidentifiable, the body was embalmed on 10 December 1948, the first time in the memory of the police that such a situation had occurred[6].

[edit] Media reaction

The two daily Adelaide newspapers, the Adelaide Advertiser and the Adelaide News, covered the death in separate ways. The Advertiser, a morning broadsheet, first mentioned the case in a small article on page three of its 2 December 1948 edition. Entitled "Body found on Beach", and found between an article on the state cabinet review of holidays and a death after a fall at a Broken Hill race course, it read:

"A body, believed to be of E.C. Johnson, about 45, of Arthur St, Payneham, was found on Somerton Beach, opposite the Crippled Children's Home yesterday morning. The discovery was made by Mr J. Lyons, of Whyte Rd, Somerton. Detective H. Strangway and Constable J. Moss are enquiring."[7]

The News, an afternoon tabloid, featured their story of the man on its first page, giving more details of the dead man[2].

By the next day, E.C. Johnson was no longer believed to be the missing man[8] (Johnson having walked into a police station to identify himself)[4] and on 3 December, the News published a photograph of the dead man on its front page[9] leading to further calls from members of the public about the possible identity of the dead man. By 4 December police had announced that the man's fingerprints were not on South Australian police records, forcing them to look further afield[10]. On 5 December the Advertiser reported that police were searching through military records after a man claimed to have drunk with a man resembling the dead man at a hotel in Glenelg on 30 November. During their drinking session, the mystery man supposedly produced a military pension card bearing the name "Solomonson"[11].

There were a number of possible identifications of the body made, including one in early January 1949 when two people identified the body as that of 63 year old former wood cutter Robert Walsh. Police were skeptical, believing Walsh to be too old to be the dead man but 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[12]. Any thoughts that a positive identification had been made were quashed however when Mrs Elizabeth Thompson, one of the people who had earlier positively identified the body as Mr Walsh, retracted her statement after a second viewing of the body, where the absence of a scar on the body and the size of the dead man's legs led her to realize the body was not Mr Walsh[13].

[edit] The brown suitcase

Adelaide Railway Station, where a brown suitcase, believed to belong to the dead man, was found.
Adelaide Railway Station, where a brown suitcase, believed to belong to the dead man, was found.

A new twist in the case occurred in January 1949 when staff at Adelaide Railway Station discovered a brown suitcase with its label removed that had been checked into the station cloak room at 11am on 30 November[5]. In the case there were clothes identical to those the man had been wearing, most with all identification marks removed, along with a stencilling brush, a knife and a pair of scissors as used on merchant ships for stencilling cargo. They also found the name "T. Keane" on three items, along with three dry cleaning marks. Initially, this was traced to a local sailor, Tom Keane but the body at the morgue was found not to be the missing sailor[3]. A search concluded that there was no other T. Keane missing in any English-speaking country and a nation-wide circulation of the dry-cleaning marks also proved fruitless. In fact, all that could be garnered from the suitcase was that a coat in the case was of American origin[5].

Police checked incoming train records and believed the man had arrived by overnight train from either Melbourne, Sydney or Port Augusta. They believed he then showered and shaved at the adjacent City Baths before returning to the train station to purchase a ticket for the 10.50am train to Henley Beach, which, for whatever reason, he did not catch. He then checked in his suitcase at the station cloak room before catching a bus to Glenelg.

[edit] Inquest

Tombstone of the Unknown Man found at Somerton Beach, Adelaide, at his gravesite. He died December 1, 1948, and was buried on June 14, 1949.
Tombstone of the Unknown Man found at Somerton Beach, Adelaide, at his gravesite. He died December 1, 1948, and was buried on June 14, 1949.

A coronial inquest into the death initially commenced a few days after the body was found but was adjourned until April 1949[5]. The investigating pathologist Sir John Burton Cleland re-examined the evidence and found in one trouser pocket a piece of paper with the words "Taman Shud" printed on it[1]. This is a phrase, meaning "the end," found on the last page of a collection of poems called the The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. When this evidence was released to the public, a local doctor revealed he had found a copy of The Rubaiyat in the back seat of his unlocked car in Glenelg on the night of 30 November 1948[3]. The book was missing the words "Taman Shud" on the last page and tests indicated that the piece of paper came from the book.

The Rubaiyat's last verse, immediately before "Taman Shud" …

And when thyself with silver foot shall pass
Among the Guests Star-scatter'd on the grass
And in your joyous Errand reach the Spot
Where I made One - turn down an empty Glass!

… led police to theorise that the man had committed suicide by poison, although there was no other evidence to back the theory.

In the back of the book were faint pencil markings of four lines of capital letters:

MRGOABABD
MTBIMPANETP
MLIABOAIAQC
ITTMTSAMSTGAB

Code experts were called in to decipher the lines but were unsuccessful. Also found in the back of the book was a woman's phone number. The woman said that she once owned a copy of the Rubaiyat but had given it to an army lieutenant named Alf Boxall when she was in Sydney during World War II. Police believed that Boxall was the dead man until they found Boxall alive. He still had his copy of The Rubaiyat, complete with "Taman Shud" on the last page. The woman now lived in Glenelg but denied all knowledge of the dead man or why he would choose to visit her suburb on the night of his death. She also asked that as she was now married she would prefer not to have her name recorded to save her from potential embarrassment of being linked to the dead man and Boxall. Amazingly, police agreed, leaving subsequent investigations without the benefit of the case's best lead.

Rumours began circulating that Boxall was involved in military intelligence during the War, adding to the speculation that the dead man was a Soviet spy poisoned by enemies unknown. The fact that the man died in Adelaide, the nearest capital city to Woomera, a top-secret missile launching and intelligence gathering site, heightened this speculation. It was also recalled that one possible location the man may have travelled to Adelaide from was Port Augusta, a town relatively close to Woomera.

[edit] Post Inquest

The simple burial site of the Unknown Man at the West Terrace cemetery in Adelaide. The tomb is located at grave site number 106 on row 12 of an area of the cemetery called "Plan 3." To find it is difficult, but it is easiest if visitors go to a road called "Road 5 East" and then walk about 40 paces along row 12.
The simple burial site of the Unknown Man at the West Terrace cemetery in Adelaide. The tomb is located at grave site number 106 on row 12 of an area of the cemetery called "Plan 3." To find it is difficult, but it is easiest if visitors go to a road called "Road 5 East" and then walk about 40 paces along row 12.

Following the inquest, a plaster cast was made of the man, who was then secretly buried at Adelaide's West Terrace Cemetery. The Salvation Army conducted the service and The South Australian Grandstand Bookmakers Association paid for the service to save the man from a pauper's burial[1].

Years after the burial, flowers began appearing on the grave. Police questioned a woman seen leaving the cemetery but she claimed she knew nothing of the man [3]. About the same time, the receptionist from the Strathmore Hotel, opposite Adelaide Railway Station, revealed that a strange man had stayed in Room 21 around the time of the death, checking out on 30 November 1948. She recalled that cleaners found a black medical case and a hypodermic syringe in the room[3].

There have been numerous unsuccessful attempts in the 60 years since its discovery to crack the code found at the rear of the book, including efforts by military intelligence, mathematicians and astrologers. While no answer has been accepted as correct, a leading theory is that the code indicates the initial letters of words. If this is true, then it has been suspected that the final line "ITTMTSAMSTGAB" could start "It's Time To Move To South Australia Moseley Street …" (Moseley Street is the main road through Glenelg)[5].

The identity of the deceased man and even the cause of death remain unsolved to this day.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c Pyatt, D. Mystery of the Somerton Man, Police Online Journal, Vol. 81, No. 4, April 2000.
  2. ^ a b c d "Dead Man Found Lying on Somerton Beach", The News (Adelaide), 1 December 1948.
  3. ^ a b c d e Jory, R. (2000) "The dead man who sparked many tales", Adelaide Advertiser, 1 December 2000.
  4. ^ a b The Adelaide News, "Dead Man Walks Into Police H.Q." 2 December 1948
  5. ^ a b c d e f g Clemo, M. (2004) "'Poisoned' in SA - was he a Red Spy?", Adelaide Sunday Mail, 7 November 2004, p 76.
  6. ^ Adelaide Advertiser, "Somerton Body Embalmed" 11 December 1948.
  7. ^ Adelaide Advertiser, "Body found on Beach", 2 December 1948
  8. ^ Adelaide Advertiser, "Dead man still unidentified", 3 December 1948
  9. ^ "Mystery of Body on Beach", The News, 3 December 1948
  10. ^ Adelaide Advertiser, "Somerton Beach body mystery", 4 December 1948
  11. ^ Adelaide Advertiser, "Still no clue to Somerton mystery", 5 December 1948
  12. ^ Adelaide Advertiser, "Somerton body said to be that of wood cutter", 7 January 1949
  13. ^ The Adelaide Advertiser, "Identity of body still in doubt", 10 January 1949

[edit] External links