Thinking Sideways: Taman Shud

all of the legwork on this thing. They'll also notice if you had listened to what we're calling the last twenty six episodes before and you're re listening now, the music and sound effects are gone. Yes, we've we've gone back to straight audio, so be warned. We sound a little different today than we do in what you're about to listen to. Yeah, enjoy, Bye bye, thinking sideways. I don't understand. You never know stories of things. We simply don't know the answer too. Okay, do you guys want

to hear a story chase? There is not a car chase. There is a murder though. Oh that's good enough, that works. I like that sweet? All right? You ready? Yeah. The victim was found dead at six thirty am December one, under a street lamp in Australia. That is all we know about this man. Mm hmm. That's that was a short story. I gotta say. Anyway, everybody, thank you for listening. I have more information, but we should introduce ourselves first. Yeah,

I'm I'm Steve, I'm Joe. So you want to hear more? Yeah, okay. So that's all we know really about him, the man he was found dead. Those are the only facts about those are about him, Okay, okay. So there's this mystery surrounding his death. So the first thing that was a little weird was that somebody called the authorities. Obviously, they came and they took him away to do an autopsy. And the first thing they noticed that was weird was

that all of the clothing identification marks, tags, etcetera. Had been removed from his suit and shirt and tie and all that stuff. That's a little weird. So not not a single label, and a single label what about his underwear? Not a single label any of his unwar for that matter. So then they did the autopsy, which revealed that this

guy was in exceptional health. He had a half digested pastry in his stomach, there was congestion to his brain and stomach that would have been consistent with poisoning, except for that. They tested his blood and there was no poison in his system at all, So he just mysteriously died. Yes, and his spleen was three times too big, but that won't kill a man. What causes splain enlargement and brain and stomach congestion? What causes that? I don't know and

nor do they. They eventually placed the jacket that he was wearing to America, but it was weird because when they sent the dental records and fingerprints, it didn't match anyone who had lived there. Ever, and where was he found again? Australia? Where in Australia the coach of the Somerton Beach where the heck is up? Did in adelaide? Yes? So um, when they traced his close to America, does that mean they traced it to an American manufacturer, to

an American tailor or what American manufacturer? So they were they were store about clothes they weren't tailored. Upon further examination of his clothes they found a secret pocket and his pants which contained a little tiny scrap of paper with the words Taman shrewd printed on it, um which in. I think it's Arabic means nished or ended. They figured out that this was last page from a book, a very rare translation of this book called the Ribiotro that one.

But because I know how to say words, it was an extremely rare translation of that. Uh So they of course did the logical thing and started an Australia White search for any and all of these translations of this book. Some guy, just some random guy mentioned just after a couple of months of this search going on, he said, oh, you know, I found an exact copy of that book in the backseat of my car that was parked like

two blocks away from where you guys found. This guy the right him, no, damn, So he brought he brought his book. They said, oh, we'll look into it, okay, And the back page had been torn out, which was consistent because he had the back page in his little secret pocket. And they found this code written on the next back page. Okay. Now, this is a code that has been proven to be an actual code. They've decided that it has actually code coded message, but has never

been solved. So they don't know what kind of cipher it is. They don't know the cipher Okay, as far as anyone can tell, he made this cipher up. But it's not long enough for them to get any patterns, to establish any patterns to be able to break this code. So, yeah, how many letters are in the message? Oh? No, I mean, is it's it ten or is it fifty or or what? For lines? Four lines of texts? It's a really simple cipher. I think the problem is is that there's not enough

of it. There's not enough. There's not enough of it to figure out what the key to the site for it, So they don't know if it's a substitution or some Yeah, you can probably figure out if a substitution cipher a message. You probably could, but it's probably a one time pad, which is why they can't break it. So, and what is a one time pad? Joe? Oh yeah, the one

time pad. Yeah, for those of you who don't know what that is, it's like a one time pad is when you either generate a sequence of random numbers, or you use like a book or a newspaper article, whatever, and assigned numbers to all those and then say you for every every number in your message or every letter in your message, just converted to a number. So A

is one, B is two. And then if you're using and say it books, the one time pad, you convert that into the same kind of numbers, add those to your characters, and then if somebody else has that same pad to translate it with. And it's not it's not

a substitution cipher, because it is a substitution cipher. But it's not like you're substituting a letter for another letter consistently for B. Yeah, yeah, exactly, and so and so those are impossible to break, at least it's far as I know, maybe with modern supercomputers, and and yet you know in Google and everything like that, maybe one time pads are impossible break. People as recently as two twelve have tried to decipher this and it can't be done. Yeah,

and yeah, and so it's a one time pad. Obviously the ruby out of Iams probably not, the probably not the key, probably not. Also, in the back of this book there was a telephone number. It was an unlisted telephone number belonging to a nurse who lived like four hundred meters north I'm sorry, undred feet of where the body was found. So of course the police go to investigate, and she says Oh yeah, I owned a copy of

that book. But in nine at the Clifton Gardens Hotel in Sydney, I gave it to a lieutenant named Alfred Boxell because we were in love. Weird, okay, Why is an unlisted number of years in the back this? Okay? So maybe this is Alfred Boxer Boxer Boxhall. It's one of those three things. She said that they were in love. But late nineteen mystery man had asked her next door neighbor about her and nobody really knows who that was. And that was just before this guy showed up. Honestly,

the mystery man. The mystery man was that was that identified as being our dead body. So they showed her a picture of him on the lab. It wasn't gruesome. You can find this picture online easily. It just looks like he's sleeping. And she said, no, I don't know who that person is. But according to the detective, she was completely taken aback, to the point of giving the appearance that she was about to faint. Lying. So they start thinking, all right, boxall' is the dead man. This

is his copy. It all makes sense, that's why he's here. He was lieutenant in the Army. He's really doing something kind of clandestine until voxel shows up just out of the blue. No, he's working maintenance in the Randwick bus depot, which is I think not even in Australia. So he showed up or they tracked him, the tracks him down and he still has his copy. Ohs plot thickens. He still has his copy. And it's the same edition obviously, and the last pages obviously still there. Um. But she

had sir written, uh handwritten a verse out. It was verse seventy on the front cover. It was the same thing. What's with these people who do stuff like that? It's it's it's extremely rare, probably valuable copy of this edition of this book and you just write all of you know, yeah, well is that? Is that a smart thing to do? It was beautiful the verse that she wrote. But why would you to face a book like that? M hm

now sorry for our librarian audience. The um. So in March of two thousand nine, a team led by a professor decided that they would crack the code by testing the body for DNA. Oh yeah, that makes sense right, except for that none of the DNA of his body survived, buried him they actually exhumed the body, exumed the body, and it was just you know, he had been buried and imposing and it was embed him, didn't they Yeah, but they do. You would think they'd be able to

find a little DNA somewhere, but they apparently couldn't. But they were going to use DNA to identify who he was. Yes, they're going to try, at least, not that there were DNA records then, but they could maybe trace it to

someone who was living now, you know whatever. Um. Additionally, this st the same investigative team said that police had found that the packet of cigarettes that he had had different a different brand of cigarettes inside of the pack, and the police had originally said, oh, well, this is

a common army like thing. You buy the one pack of expensive ones, and then you buy a bunch of cheap ones and you just keep feeling your expensive box with your cheap cigarettes, so it looks like you're smoking more expensive cigarettes, except for that the cigarettes that were in his box were more expensive than the box cigarettes, so they thought maybe there had been some poison administered that way, although again they never found any poison in

his system. It was obviously techniques and there's yeah, there's the potential that they just missed it. And then in two thousand eleven, a woman contacted some really sad cold case detective who's still assigned to this case because it's never been closed, and said that she found an identification card of an HC. Rentals Reynolds that she had found in her father's possession. It was a document from the United States to foreign semen given given during World War One.

And they compared the photograph to the man who died and it was almost identical. They said it was a it was a very good match. They shared a few unique identifiers within their face, and then their ears were

the same. So the idea their ears he had a if you look closely at these pictures, he had a genetic defect in that it made part of his ear larger than other parts of his ear, like not like a normal ear, which is a genetic mutation found in like two percent of the population or something like that. It's incredibly uncommon. So that along with the fact that his face looked alike, and that makes more sense, I

got it just random. His years might be like a great way to find like relatives of those of his that yeah, so they said, oh, okay, so this is probably this guy. Uh. The ID card was issued in February on February eighteen to HC. Reynolds. Uh. It gave his nationality as British and his age as eighteen. Uh. They did searches in the U s National Archives, the UK National Archives, and the Australian War Memorial Research Center, and they have failed to come up with any actual

records of an HC. Reynolds. So it's a fake name or fake idea. They're not sure. Okay, but it is this man's I d so he he looks I mean he died this this story. He died in forty eight right, and the idea was issued in nineteen eighteen. Did you say so, it's thirty years later. He could have been in the picture. It's hard to tell. Yeah, I mean it's boy all black and white. It's kind of bad quality.

He could have been of that age. He also could have lied about his age to get into the military, although he was obviously lying about other things too, given that there's no record of him ever existing prior to what else? Did everything? So? So so Again, that idea was issued in nineteen eighteen by the Brits and they

had eaten by the United States. Okay, and so and but but he was a British nationality and it was one of those ideas they gave out during World War One when people who lived other places would come and say, I want to fight for the USA and like, okay, great, here's your idea. Okay. So so, in other words, it was never documented that he was actually a brit No.

I mean, you kind of assumed that they would have done some research into that, but maybe it was the time of war and things were kind of yeah, so okay, so that's all you guys get saying. So, but where was this idea the US? In the US, so he shows up at our doorstep will give an idea. It's like today, that's kind of similar. But we know that the stuff that he wrote in the on the page that they found in his pocket, it was just in his pants pocket, right. No, No, the last page of

the book was in his pants pocket. He had written the cipher in the back of this book. Ostensibly what happened is he had a copy of this book, he wrote his cipher out, tore out the last page, and threw it into the guy's car. I assume the guy has just left left his window open something something because he didn't know it wasn't his copy, so obviously in the back of his car. Obviously he threw his coded message in the back of the wrong car, I guess. And how how do we know that it's a cipher

and not just gibberish that somebody wrote down. There's been a lot of analysis about it by like real live code breakers. People have spent a lot of time decoding it, and there are pad earns, but not enough patterns to establish what letter it might be. There's repetition in that's indicative of it being English words. Okay, so it's based on the English line it's based on they're assuming it's

based on English. It may not be. It could for you know, it is entirely possible that he was just like a Russian who was like bored and deranged, wrote just random gibberish down. But well, entirely possible. You say, I'm gonna mess with somebody's head. I'm gonna write this could a message and put it back to somebody's car, and then we'll have this eternal mystery about it, and then I'll die. Yeah, I don't think he planned on

that bar. Yeah. Yeah, So the so the clues I'll point to, Um, this guy was either say Russian royalty, Um, he's the missing Princess Anastasia or something like that. That's pretty enough to be. Yeah, I mean, I don't know there's anybody like like checked out the Russian royal family to find out, like the bazaars to find out any of them had that genetic anomaly. None of them. Okay, yeah, so they're they're pretty sure that it is this guy

ht Reynolds. But yeah, well the other the other possibility is that he was just it could have been just like infiltrated into America by another foreign intelligence service with a bunch of money to pay agents, and he had scounded with it, which would explain why he was trying to hide and hide his wealth by you know, like taking the labels out of his out of his jackets and and putting expensive cigarettes in a cheap container. You know, so just keeping a little profile that way. I mean,

why why did somebody kill him? That's uh, you know, probably say let's let's say he's let's say he's a Soviet. Let's say they eventually caught up with him. That's if you double across those guys, they will they will not you know, eventually they'll find you probably, you know they do in every Hollywood movie they get pound out, yeah somewhere. Yeah. So, I mean, that's entirely a possible thing. I don't know, but it's just speculation. I don't know speculation. I did find.

I don't know if you came across this when you were doing your research, but when I was brushing up on this, I did find one thing of somebody saying they might have figured out the cause of death. I don't know if you'd ever come across I have ever come across that. Okay, so I did find let's see this is this came out guy by name of John Phillips, who is the chairman of the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, and he is saying that based on the details, it's

likely that he died of digitalis um. Digitalis is known for engorging the organs prior to death. You're talking about the plant right right. It's a member of the foxglove family. So it's it's poison that people used to use as kind of an herbal remedy. They didn't know how it was supposed to be used, so they'd use it for heart issues or epilepsy or stuff like that, but they didn't understand the dosage, so they would typically end up

killing people unintentionally. And it enlarges all of the organs so well. But then the question is why was only his spleen Because your spleen is not the most sensitive of your organs. It was his spleen the only one that was in large. So his spleen was the only thought I'd seen something said that more than just his spleen wasn't No, he had a congestion of the heart and brain. But that's not I mean, that's not no, no, that's that's not an engagement or enlarge but at all.

So what condition is? But I don't know. I mean, this is just something I came across and I found interesting. It's very interesting. It's fifty years later and some guys saying, well, I just looked at the autopsy record, and this is what I say, and it's who knows. It could have been just somebody's you know, surprise attacked him in an innern you and he threw out you know, here's the answer to the Talman shrewd. Yeah, and you kind of you.

I guess you assume that in a time when a lot of people are dying from an overdose of a thing, you as an corner, as a corner, you might know what that looks like. Generally you would think you would think you not so. Anyway, by the way, when they found the body, how how long had he been dead? Just a couple of I think he died. They said that he died in the middle of the night. They found at six thirty in the morning. Ah. So the

question is the coded message the book? Why? So? It seems to me that if he was taking a message somewhere to drop it off, there was somebody and he but discovered he was being followed, he probably wanted to ditch that, to ditch that message, So the nearest car with an open window he dropped it in. Yeah. Well, I mean that's that's typical spy behavior. Yeah, he's get

rid of all incriminating evidence. Yeah. So so the other kind of interesting thing about this is that there are two cases that people talk about them maybe being linked. Really yes, because it seems like a weird one off. So you're saying there are other cases. Yes. The first one is the Marshal case that happened in June where uh, thirty four year old singapore man they knew that he wasn't a mystery man. His name was Joseph Saul Haim

Marshall was found dead a lot okay, Joseph Saul Haim Marshall. Uh. He was found dead in Ashton Park in Sydney with an open copy of the Rubiat on his chest, really the same edition, the same edition. Death was believed to be a suicide by poisoning. His was so it was the the addition right before addition that was involved in this case. But pages missing, no pages miss saying or anything like that. An he died of poisoning? Did they say what he died of? He said he committed suicide,

but what he used? Did he say? They thought that it was self inflicted, but they didn't say what. I'm guessing this that one doesn't get as much note doesn't And what year did this happen? An inquest was held. Gwyneth Dorothy Graham testified at this inquest that they had And why does she testify she was a witness. I'm not sure really details on that, but she testified and was found dead thirteen days later, faced down naked in a bath with her wrists split. Mm hmm. Did they

think that was suicide or do we know? I think they think it's like they think it's suicide, Like they think his death was a suicide. Like in other words, it was KGB. You say it's a suicide right until you figure out what really happened, and then changed the story. But you never figure out. So then, uh, the next one happened in June again, but this one in ninety where the body of a two year old Clive was found in a sack in some sandhills about twelve miles

down the coast from where they found the HC. Reynolds. For purposes, we're just going to call him HC. Reynolds. The guy from the first case, very very close lying next to him was his unconscious father. The father was taken to the hospital and was treated for exposure, and then they transferred him to a mental hospital. So he went crazy? I think so, yeah, because you know, his son died while he was right next to him in a bag or something. They like out and about that

day they've been missing for four days. Okay, okay, they never were able to tell what killed Clive, which was another mystery death. They said it's it wasn't natural causes, but they don't know what killed him. These contents of his stomach were sent to the government for analysis, but never came back with anything solid. Similar to HC. The mother said that she was threatened by a masked man

a couple of days before her son died. She said, quote, the car stopped and a man with khaki kerchief over his face told her to keep away from the police or else. Additionally, a similar, similar looking man had recently been seen lurking around the house, so somebody was stalking them while they were while the other two were missing. But we don't know who they were. Weird, So what would be the tie into centals exactly? Well, they were found very close to where he was found, and very

weird circumstances surrounding their death. That is weird. But but they weren't that close. They were miles rather than feet away, right twelve. Yeah, but you know, on the coast of Sydney or coast of Australia, so not that many weird things happen in this one little area, little area. So yeah, So did they ever find any of his possessions or anything else that he had left around. They found a brown suitcase. Um, it had been left in the railway station,

had been checked into the station coatroom. You know they do that sometimes you come in on training the way over. So how did they find it? That's gonna that would be an interesting story. I don't know itself. They found it like a month later, so I had just been there for a month. So they decided to report it to the police, because that's what you do for a month, you know, nobody's come back for it. And it had been checked on November, which was two days before. Two

days how many days are in November? One day before all right, So I assumed that I assume they completely want to everything with all the tags missing from all

the clothes. Yeah, yeah, he They found red checked dressing gown, a side that was size seven, red felt slippers of four pairs of underwear, pajamas, shaving items, a light brown pair of trousers with sand in the cuffs, an electricians screwdriver, a table knife cut down into a short sharp instrument, a pair of scissors with sharpened points, and a stenciling brush that was used by third officers on march merchant

ships for stenciling cargo. Also in the suitcase was a thread card of barber brand orange waxed thread of an unusual type not available in Australia that had been the same kind that was used to repair the lining of his secret pocket. His secret pocket, the secret pocket of his pants. They found the little piece of paper and

so he used on his pants. Then again, all of the identification marks had been removed from uh the clothing, except for they did find the name T. Keen on a tie uh and Keen on a laundry bag, and Keen on a singlet, along with some dry cleaning marks. So the name that was found on a car that they think links him isn't the same name that was on all the clothes some of the clothes that they found. Yes, they think that the clothes with the tags left on had been left on on purpose to be misleading. Oh,

because they knew that Keene was not the dead man's name. Somehow, it is a sneaky spy. I think it might be a spy. Very very weird. That's that. Yeah, it kind of fisted with my theory though I was a spy who was scandled with a bunch of phones. Is there anything that people that they can still use today to analyze I mean any of you know, his clothes or the briefcase or any of that. I mean, can't that all be taken on a coal storage and and gone

over with modern forensics? What would you gain from that? Well, they might find that piece of DNA or something that they couldn't see before when they just searched through you know, imaging technology or anything like that. I'm just I don't know, it seems like it's a cold case. It's got enough what's the word I'm looking for, Yeah, enough interests kind of traction that people would want to, you know, say well let's use the latest technology and see what we

can see inside of things or analyze from it. So I just curious, I mean, do we know what happened to any of the stuff that the that they took off of him? What happened to any of that stuff? Since it's a still open cold case, I would assume that they did not get rid of it, but that could be a false assumption. I don't know how things

work in Australia. Yeah, I would I would think that the best way to find out is to just ask the major intelligence services of the world, because you know, I'm guessing that he was a spy either that or escaped royalty, but probably a spy. So probably the Russians or the Brits or even the Americans actually know who this guy is. I don't know. This one's just so weird. But there's so many odd missing pieces to it. I mean,

it's weird cipher that there's no answer to. I mean, it could have been his grocery list for all we know. It's just so strange and it could have just been entirely ruse and who the hell knows. Yeah, yeah, but so last question, where he was found? Were there any rare bookstores nearby? Okay? Yeah, well a mystery, I think. But again I think probably the Russians or somebody who can solve this mystery pretty handily. You think it's uh, it's somebody's spy probably and I'm pro spy idea. Yeah.

And aliens do you think aliens? Aliens? Do you think aliens are everything? Aliens are My easy answer because I watch a lot of TV. I watch a lot of the History Channel, and the ancient Aliens are the ones that are responsible. Well on that, Okay, there we go, There we go. I think that if you, if somebody really seriously wanted to like solve the mystery, there's a lot of the stuff, A lot of the KGBS files from the past files and stuff have been and a lot of our intercepts and are of a lot of

their coded stuff has been declassified. If you wanted to go dig through all that, you might be able to actually, you know, find out who this guy is. I'm not going to do it because it would be a lot of work. You're motivated those Yeah, Well, if you decide to do that, you should send us what you find via email. Our email is Thinking Sideways Podcast at gmail

dot com. All of the information on this story, uh, plus probably some fun pictures of his face and the handwriting are on Thinking Sideways podcast dot com, which is our website. So yeah, I guess we'll talk to you next week. Okay, Yeah, see everybody,