Late 1946: Harkness moves to Mentone to temporarily live with her parents. And from 4000 names, the pair narrowed it down to one - Carl Webb. Code experts were called in at the time to decipher the lines, but were unsuccessful,[42] and amateurs also attempted to crack the code. Contrary to Abbotts initial suspicions, the new DNA survey showed no genetic ties between Egan and Webb, definitively proving that Robin was not Webbs son. "Somerton Beach Mystery Man", Transcript, Broadcast 15 May 2009. There has been persistent speculation that the dead man was a spy, due to the circumstances and historical context of his death. [83], The South Australian Police Historical Society holds the plaster bust, which contains strands of the man's hair. The pair analysed DNA evidence from hairs caught in a plaster cast made of the mans face more than half a century ago by investigators. Somerton Man body-on-the-beach mystery solved as family secrets unravel | Australian Story ABC News In-depth 1.22M subscribers Subscribe 21K Share 1M views 2 months ago #AustralianStory. "All this time we've been publishing the autopsy photo, and it's hard to tell what something looks like from that", Abbott said. However, in July 1949, Boxall was found in Sydney and the final page of his copy of Rubaiyat (reportedly a 1924 edition published in Sydney) was intact, with the words "Tamam Shud" still in place. The Somerton man mystery began in the early hours of December 1, 1948, when beachgoers found a body lying on Somerton beach in Adelaide. This would explain why the Somerton Man was wearing clothes of US origin and with the name Keane on them: they could have been handed down to him from his brother-in-law or nephew. Some answers may come soon, some may take years, and some may never be answered, Abbott tells ABC. [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. The man was well-built, about 40 to 50 years old, 5. The case of the Somerton Man In 1948, the body of an unidentified man was found on Somerton Beach in Adelaide, Australia. 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. The three sons would eventually work at the family bakery. They found that the Somerton Man belonged to haplogroup H4a1a1a, possessed by only 1% of Europeans. Beyond the DNA results linking the Somerton Man to Webb, Abbott and Fitzpatrick found ample archival evidence supporting the identification. 2023 Smithsonian Magazine WTBIMPANETP [100] The media have suggested that Robin Thomson, who was sixteen months old in 1948 and died in 2009, may have been a child of either Boxall or the Somerton man and passed off as Prosper Thomson's son. [115] South Australia Police had not verified the result, but stated they were "cautiously optimistic that this may provide a breakthrough". 6:30am: Found dead by John Lyons and two men with a horse. Another couple who saw him from 7:30pm to 8pm, during which time the street lights had come on, recounted that they did not see him move during the half an hour in which he was in view, although they did have the impression that his position had changed. [34], Early in the inquiry, Cleland stated, "I would be prepared to find that he died from poison, that the poison was probably a glucoside and that it was not accidentally administered; but I cannot say whether it was administered by the deceased himself or by some other person. [2] There has been intense speculation ever since regarding the identity of the victim, the cause of his death, and the events leading up to it. [101][102] The family has a painting of the Somerton man hanging in their home, believing him to be family. Copies of Rubaiyat, as well as the Talmud and Bible, were being compared to the code using computers to get a statistical base for letter frequencies. Born in 1946, Robin enjoyed a career as a dancer with the Australian Ballet Company. From there, the trail went cold. Carl moved out in 1947 and no official records revealing his subsequent whereabouts have been found as of 2022.[113][116]. 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". [13], Another witness came forward in 1959 and reported to the police that he and three others had seen a well-dressed man carrying another man on his shoulders along Somerton Park beach the night before the body was found. The chance that this was a coincidence has been estimated as between one in 10,000,000 and one in 20,000,000. [2] An editorial called the case "one of Australia's most profound mysteries"[2] and noted that if he died by poison so rare and obscure it could not be identified by toxicology experts, then surely the culprit's advanced knowledge of toxic substances pointed to something more serious than a mere domestic poisoning. 1 December 2 a.m.: Estimated time of death. After finding a match to a distant cousin, the researchers constructed a family tree of some 4,000 people. 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. Also inside were a shaving brush, shoe polish, a knife, scissors, a screwdriver and assorted attire, some of which was labeled with variants of the name T. Astonishing Legends. I solved it when I was looking back at my old notes on the tamam shud code, which had a solution. There is no record of the Adelaide railway station's bathroom facilities being unavailable and no ticket in his pocket to suggest he visited the Public Baths, outside of the station. The man's body was found on 1 December 1948 on Somerton beach in the South Australian city of Adelaide. Is climate change killing Australian wine? [95] It was reported that the body was exhumed as part of Operation Persevere and Operation Persist, which are investigating historical unidentified remains in South Australia. A plaster bust of the so-called Somerton Man, Investigators have never been able to decipher the code found in the man's book, Who killed 'Little Red Riding Hood'? 14 January 1949: Adelaide railway station finds the brown suitcase belonging to the man. I sworebut was I sober when I swore? In November 2013, three of their relatives gave interviews to the Channel Nine current affairs program 60 Minutes. Please enable Javascript or try a different browser. 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. 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.
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