Selects: The Baffling Case of the Body On Somerton Beach

have even been some updates since we recorded. So prepared to be baffled and engrossed. Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and today is a very special day. We have a special guest producer, Matt been a while. It has been a while, man, it's been since like two fourteen or something. Yeah, and Matt is one half of the stuff they don't

want you to know. Oh yeah, that's right. There's three of them, and we are sort of awkwardly recording two of the same shows they've done. So Matt's just sitting there with his arms crossed, shaking his head back and forth. So we're trying not to look at him. Are you doing? I'm good except for Matt looking at us like that. What do you do for the eclipse? I looked at the eclipse unwisely? Um from where from my house? I

didn't I didn't see a full the full schmo. I figured you guys would be exactly the type to drive two hours to see it. No you did, though, huh, yeah, how was it? Well? I don't want to be one of those dudes. But the difference between in full eclipse is all the difference in the world. I saw it put. I can't remember who put it, but they said that the difference between seeing a partial eclipse and a full eclipse is the difference between kissing a person and marrying

a person. Oh well, that's from the legendary eclipse article from The Atlantic from okay, who wrote it? Oh man? Um? I even like sent myself the link to read it today and I haven't read it. It's probably Tina Turner, the height of her career was It was written by Annie Dillard. Okay, it's called total Eclipse, and I haven't ready yet. But it's supposed to be just remarkable, and that's exactly how she put it, and it was I think so. So that would have been a year before

Bonnie Tyler came out with Totally Eclips of the Heart. Yeah, it was two. Yeah. I cried, and like five other people with this cried like spontaneously. Tears were coming out of my face and I was like, what is happening to my body? Did you? I mean, what have you concluded? I don't know, man, it was just overwhelming. That's neat to stare at the corona and we're going like too

probably Texas for the next one. Like I'm going to every path of totality that I can get to between now and the time that I died here in the clip side. Now I'm a totalitat, totalitist to tattlest Yeah, and it was we almost didn't go, like literally that morning we were debating and I was like, it's two hours away, let's just get in the car and go. That's very cool. Um. And my daughter saw it, which was weird for her, like she knew something was up

even at two years old. Yeah, the Sun's cane black, Yeah, and stars came out and crickets chirped, and it was just really strange. Yeah, uh yeah, it was very quick two minutes. But I think the one in two thousand seven is going to have a four and a half minute totality. When is it two seven years from now? Okay, and that's that great. Maybe we'll drive to Texas too, Well, i'll drive together. Well, if you won't drive two hours,

where are you gonna go to Texas? Oh hey, if I ever have a good reason to go to Texas, I'll take it. Well, it's Texas. And then I mean we may go to Akron because that's where Emily's from. It goes through Akron, the kind of over to Maine on that you guys should just follow it in your van. Well, you know, I wondered, what how fast? Of course you can't do this, but how fast would you have to

travel the speed of the moon? Stay in the path of totality the speed of the moon, which is what like a hundred million miles an hour or something like that. I don't know. Listen to our Moon episode. It's my new drug totality. That's neat man. Yeah, I'm glad that happened to you. Happened on me got all get all over me. Uh, how okay, you want to talk about this the eclipse. No, you know what's funny is that we didn't do it podcasts on eclipses. No, I thought

about that. We never have, I know, And it's just just like us, Moon goes in front of sun, moon goes away from Sune, it goes up, it goes there. Uh yeah, that's just figures. I'm sure we'll end up talking about like we'll do an epis so don't unlike the effective an eclipse on plants first, and then you know, some other tangentially related episode, and then maybe after that we'll do how eclips work. Maybe if we're still around in seven years there you go. How about that's a

good idea. And I jinks just before by saying we won't be around, which is an opposite jinks I was gonna say, is that a jinx? Yeah, that's to ensure that we will be around. Smart, thank you. So we're talking today, Chuck about a pretty unusual mystery. Are you familiar with this one before? Yeah? We I think we covered this in an Internet roundup or something. Oh yeah, yeah,

I mean we definitely talked about it. But I scoured our archives and I didn't find an official show, So I wonder where it came up, because yeah, I mean we've talked about it for sure, um, and then it was a lot of times you would do one of your best things you've read this week, we would then do an internet roundup piece on that. Okay, that's probably where it came up. Then, did you're like, this is so good it should be seen by dozens of people exactly?

I want to share it with the twenty Um. Yeah, I probably guess the article that I did the best stuff we've read this week on would have been the Body on Somerton Beach I think is what it was called. Is the Smithsonian article from years and years it was? Um, so yeah, there's been plenty of good articles about it. That one, uh is a good one. There's one from California Sunday magazine called the Lost Man. Yeah, just some good stuff out there. If this floats your boat, it does.

But let us set let us set the theme for you, okay, because this story takes place in Adelaide, in uh, South Australia, which is not just a place, it's a state as well. Did you know that? Yeah, I wonder what they call how they pronounced Adelaide there probably not like I just said it, um, but in Adelaide, South Australia, Adelaides the capital. Uh it's a from what I understand, And we haven't been there yet, but we probably will maybe next year.

I'm not going to Adelaide though, I don't know. It sounds kind of neat and creep a little weird, right, but weird in some weird ways. So um Adelaide is this This place is kind of known as the murder murder capital of Australia, but it doesn't have necessarily like the highest homicide rate in Australia. It just has a history of kind of weird, gruesome, grizzly murders. Yeah. I think if you've had more than two or three like dismemberment type murders, that you're on the map, and they

definitely have. There was there was a very famous case in the sixties of the um the Beaumont children who went missing off of a beach called Glenn L Beach. I think that's probably how you say it um, which is near Adelaide, and uh, we're never heard from again, no trace was ever found. We should do an episode on that one too. Um there was the family yeah, uh so dubbed by the cops in the seventies and eighties.

This one's really freaky. These were supposedly just like regular professional men, presumed men who had a sort of cabal of torture and murder of young boys, basically like season one of True Detective, but in real life in Australia, with a well with an equally weird ending. Right, yeah, the sky just opens up. It's a total eclipse. Uh. And that one again unsolved, right, Uh, it was never it was I think one person was convicted, but the

people that he implicated were never charged or convicted. What about the bodies in the barrel thing? That's all you need to say. Okay, there's a string of group of murders called the bodies in the barrels murders. Right, it's a lot of pluralization, it is. Uh. And then, um, so the idea that the one we're talking about, which is the death of just one man, a non violent death possibly um who was found on a beach almost

seventy years ago. For that to still have Australia and like the world in its grips today, it must be a pretty interesting case, agreed, And it is. Yeah, so I guess we should go back in time, getting the old Way back machine and travel south to Adelaide post war Adelaide. Look how beautiful it is here. It's hot. I smell shrimp cooking on the barbie, um drinking a Foster's. Yeah, it's like a fifty five gallon drum of foster and lots of other Australian tropes are happening all around me.

There's a crocodile dundeees over there. Why there? When we tour there, they're going to really get because like after the show, the first show, you can run us out of town. They find New Zealand wants us. Yeah. New Zealand say, yeah, come on over here. Uh so Adelaide is um, Well, it's an interesting place post war Um. Apparently there was. It was kind of a place where you could go to sort of real if you want to disappear and rewrite your life. That wasn't a bad

place to do it. Um. There was a lot of black marketeering going on. Apparently it was really hard to get your hands on a car. Um. So there's like a big black market for cars of all of all stolen nous, all levels of stolenness. Um. Yeah, there's there's just a certain amount of post war scarcity that was still going on, and there's a lot of espionage going

on to right. So the Cold War had just started in Australia was in this weird position where there were a lot of Soviet spies running around, there were a lot of Brits and American spies running around, and the British themselves were conducting secret rocket tests in the country. So there was um, there was a lot of espionage, a lot of black marketing um, and a lot of people who were not who they claimed to be floating

around this country, running around and floating right. So that brings us to a very important date for the story. Tuesday November, about seven in the evening. There was a jeweler named John Lyons and his wife. They were taking a little stroll there on Somerton Beach, which I'm sure as lovely um, and they saw something we were They were walking towards glenn Elk so I guess they're connected beaches, yeah, yeah, And they saw something interesting on the sea wall there.

They saw a man lying in the sand, but very well dressed in a suit kind of propped up on the sea wall there as if he were sort of sitting up about sixty ft away. In America, that's twenty yards. In Australia it is a certain amount of meters about twenty Okay, really is that what works? Man? It's pretty close to the yard in the meter are very similar. Um, and he he was doing something interesting, so they say, uh, he extended his right arm upward and then just let

it fall back down to the ground. And they thought that looks like a passed out drunk guy, or maybe a barely wake drunk guy, maybe trying to have a cigarette or they I mean, it was remarkable and that they made a mental note of it, but they just kept walking and whatever. I think his suit being on the beach was probably one of the big deals. Yeah, he was very sharply dressed, not just wearing a suit on the beach like the studio was wearing. Was pretty nice,

pretty nice. Um In About a half hour later, another couple walked past, and this this time the guy wasn't moving at all. Um and apparently he had a whole swarm of mosquitoes around his face, and the boyfriend says to the girlfriend that guy must be dead to the world. If he's not noticing those mosquitoes, he must just be absolutely wasted, so that they were clearly closer, I guess. So I think it's seen mosquitoes on his face, Yeah, for sure, because from twenty yards it's a tough thing

to see. I don't know, for a straining mosquitoes are all right. So the next morning, um became pretty clear what was going on here, that this was a dead man. The same jeweler John Lyons. He went for a little morning swim, as you were to do in Australian the mornings when you're hungover, and he saw a bunch of people crowded around where the guy was and it was it was on. It was as a dead dude. Yeah, the dude was in basically the same position he'd seen

him in the night before. That that crowd was like, he's dead, croy key and uh yeah, so Lions is like that was pretty surprising and that's the end of John Lyons. Yeah, but very important here, and that they are the only people who supposedly saw this body move right, super important. So, um, within about a few hours, the body is in the morgue at the hospital and as being examined, and just from the initial examination there was a lot of um, just weirdness that immediately came out. Right.

So remember the guys like sitting up against the sea wall. Um, his legs are extended out, his feet are crossed. There was a cigarette, depending on who you ask, either a half burned cigarette, either dangling from his mouth or on the collar of his shirt as if it had fallen from his mouth. Um. And when he was taken into the morgue that the doctor said that he was probably

dead by two am. Yeah, and most likely when they did the full autopsy, a man named On Dwyer said he was probably poisoned initially, even though there were no traces of poison, which is a little odd, right, But the reason he said that is because when they cracked the guy opened this, this this John Doe, who's widely become known as the Somerton Man. Um, his organs were all kinds of messed up. He had blood and his stomach along with his final meal, which was a pasty.

It's like a pocket Yeah, delicious hot pocket hand tie. Yeah. Um that sounds dirty hand pie. Yeah. Um, there's his spleen was enlarged and engorged with blood. Yeah, that's not a good sign and firm. His liver was giant and bloody, not unusual for Australians that fifty five gallon Joma Foster. His pupils were smaller than normal and just quote unusual

whatever that means. Right, uh. And then they say that he had a little spittle on the side of his mouth that you know, like, you know, I thought that was a pretty tacky thing to note. Yeah, just leave the guy alone. He's dead, like sleepy drool is what I thought. If I'm pretty, if I'm so pretty that I just have a little bit of spittle coming down my mouth when I'm dead, I'll be more than happy. Oh you mean, if you if that's the only thing. Yeah,

I agreed. I mean, come on, give the guy a break. Well, you know, they were doing forensics. Yeah, so, and indeed they did, and they kept saying like this gotta be poisoning, like his organs are all kinds of messed up, but there was no trace of poisoning. They brought in this guy named Cedric Stanton Hicks, the hand PI and there, Yeah, nothing's wrong, right. They gave it to Eugene and he

was still standing afterwards. Yeah, so it's all good. Um. So Sir Cedric Stanton Hicks comes in and says, well, let me let me see this, and he um concluded that it was probably one of two poisons that would have done this kind of damage resulted in heart failure. We didn't say that, so they concluded he probably died from his heart failure. Ultimately, Um, but that wouldn't have

left a trace. And he did not feel like it was a responsible move on his part to say these things out loud on the record during the coroner's inquest. So he wrote them down and the car was like, okay, all right, picked him up and read and what he read was Digitalis and Struugh Phantom and Sir Cedric said, he said it, I didn't write. He goes, oh gosh, did I say that out loud? That sounds like something that you've seen the movie, just you know, added for

the drama. But apparently it really am right. So he read those names. I don't know if you read those names, but at least those names were recorded onto the record. Uh. Sir Cedric Stanton Hicks suspected the strophanthem although later investigators I feel sure it was probably the digit tell us. It sounds like it doesn't matter which one it was because they were both kind of used and I think

are maybe still used the treat heart disease. Is that true? Yeah, Um, and then you can get them with the prescription from a pharmacy. I don't know if they're still used. Maybe they are, but they definitely were common at the time or obtainable in in just about every major city. Um. So they have an idea of maybe what poison it was. But again it bears pointing out again and again that they no one has ever found any direct evidence that

the man was poisoned. And to this day, two thousand, seventeen and beyond, if you're listening to this years from now, um, they still don't know how he died. Yeah, and you they may still be looking because this is one of those like the dB Cooper when we did. That's one of those cases where amateur sluice on the Internet are

still trying to figure stuff like this out. And unless we come up with some really amazing technologies in the next ten twenty years or something like that, the time is passing quite quickly on this case and D. B. Cooper as well, where we may never know may remain a mystery forever unless we invent time travel. Then somebody will go back and figure those out. So the dude, it looks a little bit like Harvey Kitel, he asked me. He does, And you think so? I mean, look up

a picture of this guy. If you're not in your car, you can look him up. There are two very famous photos I guess from the autopsy scene. Um, just straight onto his face and then sort of you know, from the side with his eyes open. Yeah, it looks like Harvey Kitell. It looks like a wasted Harvey Kitel, which is to say, he looks like Harvey Kitel. Um, so he's in about his mid forties. Yeah, I guess a

younger Harvey Keitel. Yeah. Uh, he's wearing this double breasted suit. Um. I saw that he was wearing a nit pull over with a necktie. Who And this sounds like we're being um two specific by saying the stripes slanted from left to right. But we're not. We're not. That will come into play. Well, just hang onto that nugget. Yeah, put that one in your pipe for later. He had no hat, which was weird for that time. Oh, I hadn't ran across that, but yeah, I've never seen that there was

a hat. Yeah, and they never found a hat, but it would be unusual for a man of late forties to not have a hat. Yeah, I guess so. For doors were huge. I'll bet Panama hats were huge down in Adelaide at the time. For doors in Australia were literally huge. It's like the sombreros made of tortillas melted cheese in the middle man. Is that a thing? It

was on the Simpsons too. Hat. Uh. What else? He had weird feet, yeah, wedge shaped feet, they said, and that his his shoes seemed to be molded almost to his feet. The real weird giveaway was his calves. His calves were remarkable. They were bulbous below the just below the knee. And the guy who who performed the autopsy, I think it was Dwyer, said, Uh, this is like what dancers or people who wear high heels, just the

kind of calves that they have. He said, look at that, he looks like Lena Horn the Oh my gosh, it is hon Uh. Yeah, so that that's definitely notable. Um uh The other thing they found out too was um. A couple of physical traits that he had which will come into play later on his ear. His simba, which is the upper hollow portion of the ear hollow caved in. Yeah, the rolled over part up here, No, like just the upper you know hole than the lower part. Yeah, we've

ever done show on ears, have we? We should? The simba is larger than the cave um, which is a fairly rare thing. So I would guess the cabum is where your eardrum leads to your ear drum. Yeah, that's where you put your finger when you want to write. But if you go, if you put your finger up over that ridge does not. That's the simba. Yeah, so yeah, that would be weird if this one was bigger than that one. Yeah. It's a pretty rare genetic trait, as

were his strange teeth. Yeah, he had something called hypodontia, which is he was missing his lateral incisors, which are the teeth that most people have between their front teeth and their canines. His lateral incisers never developed, so his canines were adjacent to his front teeth. Yeah, and it's um. Would you say hypodontia. That that can be as common as like you never get your wisdom teeth, but in

this case those particular teeth, that was pretty rare. Something like, well, I saw hypodontia in in so that would include not getting wisdom teeth. Huh, well, in any teeth, not developing his hypodone I got. Well, I don't know if hypodonta in general or just this type of hypodonta of the population. Yeah, it's specifically for those teeth. Was pretty rare. Yeah, two, pretty rare. Like everyone's got those teeth, and people at home are like, why are you saying all these weird stuff?

Who cares to just settle down? Everybody settle down because it's all going to come into play. We haven't said anything that will not come back into play. Al Right, should we take a break? I think we should. Everybody's getting all riled up. Let's take a break, and then we're going to detail, uh, for about fifteen minutes what was in his pockets? Okay, chuck, So we went over the body. Yeah, it's time to go through his personal effects, which were kind of weird in and of themselves. All

about the details. So when you're talking about murders and disappearances and then unsolved after seventy years. Yes, you need to pay attention to the detail. What kind of podcast cops would we be if we were just like, Yeah, he just sort of looked like Harvey kit Tell and he's in a suit d and no good. That sounded like Harvey kit Tell. Yeah it did, didn't it? Yeah it was. It was my Harvey kite Tel on the piano. Oh man, what a movie? Um? All right? So in

his pockets he had a peck of juicy fruit. The juicy fruit, yeah, chewing gum stuff. He had some matches, Bryant and May matches. He had, uh, well, he had a lot of tickets in his pocket. He had a an unused train ticket from Adelaide to Henley Beach, had a bust ticket from Adelaide to Glenelg And then he had a ticket, a used ticket that said he had come from arrived there by by bus from the railway

station there. Yeah, from the Adelaide railway correct. Yeah. Uh. He also had um a pack of cigarettes that were weird Army Club army. The pack of cigarettes was an Army Club pack, but inside with something called conceitas which

was a much more expensive brand. So that makes no sense, Like, that's the opposite of the only thing that could make sense, which is he just kept the expensive pack and would put cheap cigarettes in it to look fancy, right, unless he didn't want people bumming the expensive ones off of him, so he kept a cheap pack or right, The likelier story is that he bombed some a bunch of cigarettes off of somebody and put them in his his own pack, al right, Like, hey man, he got a smoke or

seven or seven interesting or perhaps they were poisoned and put in that pack. That's another possible explanation to write. So um his his that was like the extent of his personal effects, aside from his clothing. Right, there was no idea he had a couple of combs, okay hair combs. More to the point, there was no idea, no idea, no no wallet, no cash. Kind of odd for sure, and his clothes were odd in and of themselves. Right.

So again, he was wearing a very nice suit. But the um makers labels of all of his clothes have been from what I understand, carefully snipped away. Yeah, I saw one explanation for this that made it seem a

little less odd um, which was back then. Apparently people oftentimes would because there were nice clothes, were not scarce, but he wanted to keep them for yourself, so you would write your name a lot of times on your like suit jackets and things, and then if you ever went to sell them second hand, you would flip out those labels. So that's one explanation that's not bad. I don't know if that's a reach or not, but at

least something could make sense out of that. But the other thing could mean that this person was being dumped and no one wanted them to know who they were. It's a possibility to or that he didn't want anyone to know who he was. That's another possibility as well. That's what a lot of people think, that he was trying to cover up his own identity as well. Um, his his trousers I think had a little repair done with orange thread bear with us um, and then that

was about it. They they they took fingerprints of the guy and spread around to no avail. But the fingerprints, right, they they've figured out after a little a while. I'm not sure when, but this would have been so November December one is when he was found. This is to this is like July to us in the northern Hemisphere, the beginning of July. So starting to get hot down there, right, You can only keep a body for so long in the nineteen forties in summer in Adelaide, it's already a

hot place to begin with. And um, the authorities were like, we we can't keep this guy above ground any longer. So somebody had the bright idea of making a plaster bust of him, and they did, and they kept it at the Morgan and they buried him in a pretty smart way if you ask me. Yeah, they buried him, uh with this marker. Here lies the unknown man who was found at Somerton Beach first December, and he was buried just in really dry ground so if they ever

needed to get in there they could. And they encased him in concrete as well to realize, like, keep him preserved as much as possible if you ever needed to be exhumed, right correct. So, um, like I said, they took the set of fingerprints and they're still looking for this guy. They buried him finally, but they're like, this is driving us insane. Who was this man? What happened? To him. Um. So they spread the fingerprints all over Australia. They started to send him around to America, the UK,

it just English speaking countries. Yeah. They also, uh like kind of before they got rid of the real body, they brought people in locals to see if anyone could identify them. I think afterward they probably showed quite a few people the bust and they were just trying to

do anything and nobody, nobody could recognize who this person was. No. I mean some people saw like pictures of the bust or the death pictures that are famous now in the newspaper, and we're like, oh, that kind of looks like uncle Ted. And then they go in and see him and be

like it's not uncle Ted. Um. And so this this the fact that this is becoming a weird unsolved mystery already, like just quickly after the case started to capture the nation's attention a little bit, and the police, the the the South Australia State Police were not shy about publicizing stuff as needed, Like as they developed breaks in the case, they would tell the newspapers about it, and the newspapers

would tell the rest of the country. So it became a pretty big sensation in Australia so much so that a lot of people are just basically take it for granted that the man was not Australian. That were he Australian, some more several people would have come forward because the case had that much exposure nationally. Yeah, and I am just guessing here, but I imagine in this part of Australia probably wasn't there weren't like millions of people living there.

I don't know how small of the town it was, but I don't think it was like some huge city, was it. Well, yeah, Adelaide's the capital of South Australia, but is it How was there was like at least five people there? And I'm going to say, at the minimum, someone's going to write in and tell us so all right, and I'm gonna be mad that we didn't know. No, Australians are nice about things usually, Yeah they are, aren't they? They're the Canadians of the South. So they decided the

cops decide very smartly. Um, you know what, We're gonna widen this investigation. We're going to see if anywhere in town someone has found something there, any possessions that this guy might have left behind. Since he was just found with what was in his pockets, surely there's something, and

in fact there was. They discovered there was a suitcase, brown suitcase in a cloak room that was left there on November, which was the night before the morning that he was found the first time he was seen on the beach. It was no lead, it was and because he had that ticket that showed he had taken a bus from the Adelaide rail station, that was one of the first places detectives went. Uh, and they found this suitcase, um, that had been left there, like you said, on November. Inside, Um,

there was some stuff that linked it to the guy. Yeah, I mean it was full of stuff. Um. It was clearly someone who was traveling a lot. There were lots of clothes, shirts and scarves and underwear and pajamas and handkerchiefs. There were two pairs of scissors, one broken pair, one in a sheath, Um, like a shave kit, screwdriver, Um, lots of just normal travel things, razor, razor strap, all the junk you would expect that multiple pairs of scissors is a little weird. Thread but the thread was the

big one, orange thread. Yeah, barber not Australian brand barber thread which perfectly matched where his trousers were stitch. So it's got to be him, right, that's the thing that really links him with the suitcase. Um. There was also some stencils for stenciling cargo. Yeah, that was a little weird, very weird. Um. And there was a suit jacket that had a what's called a feather stitch. Um, while stitching is the lightest stitch, right, And they're like, we don't

do this in Australia. We don't even have the sewing machine that can do this in Australia. Yet A taylor said, this is an American coat, Yeah, with their feathers. Well, he's a Hamms stitch right. Uh. And then inside some

of these clothes, uh was the name keen? Because I told you people wrote on their clothes A lot said T keen, T dot keen, K E N E or k A N. And the best cops could figure is they someone did that to to sniff everyone off the case, right because they've around and there was no t Keen or any Keen that they couldn't put their their fingers on. Who's missing? Um? And the tie years later, like the

cops at the time didn't know this. I wonder if they noticed that it was slanting one way or another, but the they probably just knew it looked weird for some reason. They couldn't put their finger on. But at the time in Australia, the U the ties slanted left or right, and this guy's tie slanted right to left, and that was the style in America. It's like everything's opposite. Didn't this so weird? Summer's winter and winter summer flush the toilet? It was in a different direction. I think

that's an urban legend. No, I think that's true, right, No, I did a something on it. Really, Yeah, I think it's an urban legend. It's really has to do with um, the uh, the shape of the drain. What in That's what I was so looking forward to pooping in Australia. You can still do it. Well, you probably should. Actually, while we're there, I'm going to, but I'm not. The

joy is is dead. Well, just don't watch it flush. Yeah, but you might be better off actually in this way, I've just been used to my poop turning into such a direction my whole life. I was really ready for something new, all right, I'm sorry, so the tie is opposite. They said, this is an American tie, like you said. Uh. And then they brought in um and actually we should say those were internet sleuths, like within the last ten fifteen years who figured that one out. Yeah, all right,

good for you Internet. Uh. Finally, in April, police brought in a dude, an expert pathologist named John Cleveland, and this was a big deal. Apparently the cops in South Australia were not as thorough as you would think because they didn't even check his little pocket watch pocket, a little pocket inside your pocket, because there was a really key piece of evidence rolled up in there. Yeah, this one broke the case wide open. It seemed like it would.

There was a little scrap of paper rolled up very tightly in this pocket and written on it in some pretty fancy type setting were the words TAMUM showed T A M A M S h U D. And the cops said, what was this first orange thread? Not some weirdo words rolled up in this guy's pocket? What is this? And John Cleveland said, you dopes, it's called a lead. You didn't check his pocket? In his pocket? He said no,

So they would figure out in a little while. By a stroke of luck, it seems that um tamum showed means it is finished where it is done, or in this case, the end in Persian. It sounds very h random and out of left field that anybody would know this, But a reporter working the police beat there said named Frank Kennedy, said, no, that I know what that's from. That's from a twelveth century book of Persian poetry of Omar Kayyam. And that just sounds so out of left field.

But in fact, that book had been translated by an English poet named Edward Fitzgerald, and it was kind of a big deal once it was translated into English. So it wasn't like just so the word of looking for obscure that nobody would know what it was. No, it was extremely popular in the in the West after that, I think even in America, like there's a Peanuts comic

strip that makes reference to it. Even it was a big It was one of those things where like people might not know about it, but there are plenty people out there who did. And one of the reporters recognized there, right, So they realized then that they needed to find the copy of the Rubiat that this came from, and they started looking and looking and looking, and they couldn't find it. So the state police did what they had been doing all along. They went to the newspapers and they said, hey,

we found this weird scrap of paper. It says tamam shoot. We're told that it comes from the Rubyat and specifically it's the last words of the Rubiat right with the last words of the last poem, right um and go go to it. Media and the media went wild and let everybody know. And it turns out so this is April when they found the Um the scrap of paper, and in July they got another break based on finding

that scrap. A guy came forward and said, you know what, I found this copy of the Rubyat in the backseat of my car, which had been parked by sohmer Tion Beach around the time the man who was found on sommer To Beach was found. And I have no idea whose it is. It's just been I put it in my glove compartment. It's been sitting there until I read

this article in the newspaper. Yeah. Presumably his windows rolled down or his car was unlocked, and whoever ripped this thing out because they did find out that part was ripped out from his book, just tossed it in the back seat this guy's car, Right, not very smart if you're trying to cover your tracks. No, but maybe you're

not trying to cover your tracks, right. So they now have the copy of the Ruby Yacht that the scrap of paper that came that was found in the sohmer to man's trousers came from, yeah, which by all accounts is a one of a kind printing, right, Yeah, like a one off, yes, and not an addition of hundreds, like a single printing of this one book, right, but

supposedly as part of an addition. I can't remember which edition it was by this printer, but for years people have been trying to track down a copy from that edition and they can find it. Well, somebody finally found one. They're like, this is not the exact same book that the cops found with the Somerton manor associated with Somerton Man, which is a very odd thing, totally. Um, So in

this book they get another huge break. This breaks the case open even further, right, They're like, surely we're going to figure it out now, Yeah, this was huge. They found uh two local phone numbers. One was a bank phone number which didn't lead to much of anything, and another one X three to three nine uh, belong to Well, they found a couple of things. They found the stumber that belonged to a woman, a nurse named Jessica Thompson,

who will talk about in a minute. And then they also found, um, you know how we did our We did our episode on spies, and one of the things sometimes spies would do would have these throwaway pads that they would literally write things on and you could make an impression such that, you know, it's like the kid's trick where you rip that page off and you have what looks like a blank page that's the impression of what was written above it. And in this little kids

will use a pencil, let's see what it says. But in this case he used a UV light to see what by all accounts is a five line code. And the code is pretty odd. Yeah, I mean I think we should read it. It It will sound like gibberish. But if you're into code breaking, you probably already know about this one. But if not, here we go all capital letters. Line one is w R G o A B A b D. Second line m l I A O I

that was scratched out. Interestingly, third line W T b I M P A n E t P, fourth line M l I A again that's repeated B O A I A q C, and finally I T T M T S A M S T G A B go break it, right the eagle has landed at midnight, which

they basically said, go break it, and no one could know. Um. Yeah, a lot of amateur code breakers because again they went to the media like you're saying, um, go break it, and a lot of code breakers tried and failed, and then um they contacted the Australian Naval Intelligence Service and they tried and failed, and either the Naval Intelligence Service or later UM sleuths concluded that it was for there's too little information to ever break it, that you didn't

have a key that you needed to have, um. And then it may have been as simple as the first letter of a list that he was trying to remember, right, because apparently they bear of a resemblance frequency wise the first letters of common words in the English language. So it's possible that like it's it's a to do list, that the guy was just trying to remember, you know, by these groceries, go see this person at this time,

that kind of thing. It is a lot of letters, and a lot of people say, no, this is obviously this spy codebook. Don't be naive. So the the cops they there's the code breaking thing that they're doing. Then simultaneously they're like, well, maybe we should call this local phone number, and they did, and on the other end a woman picked up and uh, it turned out like you said to be Jessica Thompson, and you want to take another breaks. We're going to take a break and

we'll get to Jessica Thompson right after this. Yeh, we should say, coming back from break. We just got compliments from Matt. This is like praise from Caesar on something like this. Look what happened to Caesar though. Yeah, on your birthday. Matt said, you guys really doing a great job. And Josh said, you didn't tell us that. Go back to sleep, all right, So we promised talk of Jessica Thompson. This is a really good lead. They called her up. She answered the phone. It's a good first step in

my movie version. Atly she answered the phone and went Uh, she's a nurse. She was married, she had a kid named Robin Thompson. Robin a boy though, right, Uh. And her maiden name was Harkness. Um. And this has kept private for a lot of years. Her name was she asked him to keep it a secret. And I read a bunch of accounts, most of which said that, you know, know, she may have had a few boyfriends here and there affairs. Um. The paternity of Robin Thompson was called into question more

than once. So um. I think that the general idea was that she was probably just trying to keep this quiet too, so she, you know, in the nineteen forties, wouldn't be outed as a trollop, right, And the cops said, sure, no problem. And actually, to this day, the state police have never publicly identified Jessica Thompson as the mystery woman whose phone number was written in the Somerton Man's copy of the Rubiyat. But in two thousand and thirteen, her

family came forward and publicly identified her. And even though the police haven't confirmed it, it's been known for so many years that that was probably who it was. That again, it's basically taken for granted as a fact. Of the case that she is that woman. Yeah, her nickname was Justin j E. S t y N. That's how she inscribed copies. So this Ruby Yacht, um, well, and I guess that sort of gives away what happens next. Yeah. The cops are like, okay, okay, we've gone through a

lot to get to you. Lady. Have you given a copy of this twelfth century book of Persian poetry called The Ruby Yacht to anybody? And she goes, yes, I have. And the cops are like, yes, we're about to figure it out. And they said who who have you given it to? And she said a bloke named Alfred Boxall. They said, okay, we'll call you back, and they hung up and ran around looking for Alfred Boxall. Well, yeah,

they probably figured, you know, that's Harvey Kitell uh. And they were unfairly to Albert Alfred Boxall disappointed when they found he was alive and well in New South Wales. And he said, yeah, I got the book right here. She h. She gave them to all her lovers. Uh. There was speculation that perhaps, you know, she gave it to him over drinks one night, that he perhaps had

been one of her lovers. Yeah, oh yeah, and I think it's probably absolutely correct because she had inscribed it, like I said, with justin and that's how the cops referred to here on their case files. Uh. So they went, you're alive, great, and he said, yeah, but I've got the book like not all was lost and it was intact. That's correct. So they said, oh, you gotta be kidding me. This lead the lead of all leads. I was gonna break this case wide open. It it's a dead end,

are you? Are you kidding me? And one of the officers developed a permanent scarf from banging his head slowly against the wall. Right. He couldn't be stopped, couldn't be consoled. And so they said, okay, a lady, your phone number was in this thing, so we want you to come

down to the Morrigan. Just take a look at this bust we made of the dead guy and um and they said, also, is there anything else, anything weird happened to you and like the last year or so, And she said, well, the only thing I can think of is that my neighbors said to me once when I came home one day that and some man they didn't know it, called on my house and uh, that was it. That's the literally the weirdest thing that's happened to me. Knocked on her door that she didn't know, her neighbors

didn't know. It happens to me like three times a week. Um. So as they bring her in to look at this bus, Detective Sergeant Liona Lean and uh, he was one of the two leads that was not an Australian accent. No, and um, I don't know what kind of backs and it was. It was mid Atlantic, but I was not trying to do Australian. Uh. And he said that quote she was completely taken aback to the point of giving the appearance she was about to faint end quote like

she knows who this dude is. She's a nurse, first of all. She was even looking at a body, but she's a nurse, so she wouldn't be freaked out by any of this. No, and again it wasn't even a body. It was a plaster bush, right. But she's like, and they go did you know him? And she goes, no, no, I didn't cut some heartburn, and uh, I have nothing more to say about this, so don't ever ask me, and she clammed up. Not weird at all. No, not at all. So immediately the cops are like, you know

way more than you're letting on. But apparently they didn't, you know, beat up people that they had in custody to get information out of them. So they let her go and just said, oh, well, I guess we'll never know the answer to this mystery. Yeah, there's a retired detective named Gary felt Us. Is it Gary? I thought Jerry G E R R Y Probably Jerry. Yeah, I'm you've convinced me that's funny. We we just crossed over

to one another side again. Uh. So he took up this case later in life, and um, he actually interviewed her in two thousand seven. He said she was evasive under questioning and like this lady knew something. Yeah, and again this guy him, he's a hobbyist, amateur sleuth on this case. I love those guys. But he had forty years experience as a detective in Adelaide, so he knows questioning people. Have you seen the Netflix documentary series The Keepers? No,

I haven't even heard of it. It is about a cold case murder of a nun um in the nineteen if these no nineteen sixties, I think, and uh, they're there are these amateur detectives that have been working on this all these years, these two women in particular that were students of this nun at school that are just amazing, and like, is this really get an appreciation for these people who like become obsessed with the solving these cases that aren't even like family members or anything, you know,

Is it a like jama or documentary ten part documentary series? Is wow? I gotta see that. Oh dude, It's one of the most upsetting things I've ever had to sit through. And that's all I'm gonna say. I've been waiting for this since I finished making um Making of a Murderer. Yeah, it's better, I think. I like that, but what what very disturbing stuff. Wow, I gotta go. You gotta leave it. So it hats off to you amateur sluice out there for for getting in the way of real police. No,

for for doing work that real police. These are cold cases that, yeah, they're hard pressed to get information anymore in most cases, It's true. So I was just kidding sniffing people off the case after the cops say right, And I was kind of mad not to get too derailed by this that these cold cases just sort of stay um cold. But then you think, like there's you know, you can't just concentrate on a forty year old murder case, and there's so many current things you've got to be

looking into. Plus it's hard, really, it's UM. All right. So back to Thompson evasive underquestioning UM later on her son, Robert, I'm sorry Robin, like we said earlier, Uh, he started looking into it, got really interested in in trying to figure this thing out. Oh he did, he did. I didn't know that. And he turned out to be a professional dancer, yes, with the calves of Lena Horn and the Australian Ballet right and hypodonta in exactly the same way that the Somerton Man had. And he had the

same ears. Yeah. So a lot of people again there's something that hasn't improven, but most people take as conclusive fact that Robin Thompson, son of Jessica Thompson, who didn't know the Somerton Man, was the son of the Somerton Man. Yeah. What I saw was between the ear and the teeth. Um. They put odds for both of those things at about it's quite a range between one and ten million and one and twenty million. Okay, but let's just say it's one in ten million. That's say it's one in a trillion.

At that point, it's the same thing basically, So eventually another was it the same amateur sleuth? Not Jerry Derek Abbott is a different sleuth. There are rivals. It's hilarious. They hate each other. Um. He got involved and said, you know what, I'm gonna get Robin in here for a DNA test. Um, Robin's a hymn, but it says here her is it him? Right? No? Uh, Robin's daughter was the one who took the DNA test. Bobbin is

long dead. Gotcha? Got you? Okay? Oh no, I think I had it backwards, and I don't think he got involved in trying to figure it out because he's dead. Okay, That's why I was like, I was kind of surprised, but gotcha. So he got her daughter to take a DNA test and then trace back the paternal lineage, which would have been um possibly the Somerton man, who by all accounts seemed like he was American, Yeah, which would

have explained the tie. Um. Perhaps the thread. Yeah, and what else the fact that no one in Australia could identify him or was willing to identify him. Um, so the the only thing left then after that is okay, well, somebody just dig up the Somerton man like he buried him in such a way so we could do this. Well, it turns out in Australia, from what I saw, there are two reasons that a judge will let you exhume a body. One is to contest a will. There's no

will or a state really in question here. And then the other one is to identify a lost soldier, a soldier lost at war. Other than that, you're gonna it's it's an up. It's an uphill battle getting a body exhumed. And two different times Derek Abbott, who actually um as an aside, married Robin Thompson's daughter who took the DNA test At his behest um. He petitioned twice to have Somerton Man exhumed, and twice he was turned down because um obsessive curiosity was not a good enough reason to

dig up a body. So he swabbed the inside of her cheek, and that was true love exactly. I gotta get in there over candle light. Um gave her. He gave her a hand pie. Oh my god. So here are the theories. Um well, I'm gonna go ahead and start with my favorite theory, which sort of is in

here but not really. Uh suicide. I think that perhaps, and I didn't invent this, but of the theories I've read, I liked this one, I think that he um it was an American man who had an affair with Jenny Nurse Thompson Justin and went there, traveled there, um found out she was pregnant. Uh In, was rejected and went down and killed himself by poison and was prepared to do so, and the other things I've read said that

he could. You know, the things that don't add up was like the body was found with no like vomit, which a lot of times happened. If you are poisoned, even if you're not, one of the last things you do is your life is ending is throw up. Usually oh really, yeah, Oh it's pretty common. No one ever tells you that. Yeah, like the dinner party. You've never

been told that. No one ever tells you two things in life that you poop when you have a baby, and you poop, and you throw up before you die, and you poop when you die, too, poop when you die. I think, so I guess that's why Elvis died on the toilet. Yeah, very affianted to go out with some dignity.

Um so where was I? Oh? So he The thing I read said that perhaps he went down to the shoreline, drank the poison through that, you know, into the water, and maybe like vomited and riched there and then kind of went back up the beach and laid there to die and and maybe had one less cigarette. Very possible. So that's one. Another theory is that he died by poison, but that it was murder. Sure. As this case is being coming more and more publicized, the public came to

widely believed that he was a spy. And then as more details of the case spread out more and more over the decades um this this vision of aspyring emerged with Jessica Thompson as this communist spy master who was posing as a housewife, and Somerton Man was a spy who worked for her or arrival spy, and Alfred box All was a spy who worked for which would explain why she gave both of them copies of the Rubiyat and that actually the copies of the roof Biyat were

one time pads themselves, which we're actually the keys to crack the code. Right. Unfortunately, the cops uh in adelaide through the ruby At. That was the sommer to Man's away in the fifties. Yeah, they got rid of the suitcase in the eighties. He could maybe it was both. Maybe he was a spy who loved her, could have been. But the murder theory is that Alfred Boxhall murdered the man, or she had him murder him and then they took

his body to the seaside. Alfred Boxhall was actually confronted with that in the seventies on TV and he's like, that's pretty ridiculous everybody. Some people are like, we know you were in intelligence to World War Two. It turns out he was like an army engineer or something like that. He wasn't an intelligence and everyone said, that's just what a murderer would say. That's ridiculous on TV, so they right. So, the the idea that the sommer to Man's copy of

the Rubiat was basically a one of a kind. It seems definitely lends credence to the idea that it's possible he was a spy in that code for sure. Um, so that's another big, strong possibility. Here's the thing I saw too. In nine a third witness came forward share never before revealed story that he was on the beach in the wee hours of the morning and saw a man carrying an unconscious man over shoulder towards that spot, but was dark, could not identify anything, and nothing ever

came of that. Stuff like that, give me my money for the movie, right, stuff like that. I think it could be either it wasn't him or just you know, I don't know, you know how people are. They just make something up to get on the news. And then I thought the same thing with the hand raising up, like maybe that didn't even happen, Well, yeah, that was

That's another thing. Like what I realized from researching this, Chuck was that this this case has been so muddied with conjecture and fall truths um that have just spread across the internet that like, did the Lions ever recant their version of seeing him move? If so, then then maybe he was dead when he was taken out to the beach. Who knows, like you really have to dive in.

But if you if you want to dive in, this mystery, maybe even more than any others, is just uh, just a just an enormously deep rabbit hole to get sucked into, because I mean, even if they dug up so Merton Man, it's found conclusively that he was Robin Thompson's father, that still doesn't say who he actually was. It doesn't idea him. And it's just like how this mystery unfolded as the police were investigating it. You can, you can crack the case in one major way and it'll probably lead to

a dead end. There's still always this tantalizing mystery that we may never know so Merton Man. Tamim showed, okay stuff, I just said something in person. If you want to know more about so Merton Man, you should go listen to the stuff they don't want you to know episode on it or sure or watch it. I'm not sure

if it's video or audio maybe both, uh. And you can also check out The Lost Man on California Sunday Magazine and The Body on so Merton Beach on Smithsonian, among many many other great articles, and since I said many, it's time for listener mail. Uh, I'm gonna call this on accents and I gotta say, we got more email on stuttering and accents that I've seen in a long long time for real. Um, I don't know. I think a new Accents would be big. Stuttering really hit home

with a lot of people, I think. And the well there's that there's a stuttering email too. It's either going to be on the next one or the one that was just released. Okay, I didn't know any her right, he may have heard it here. It's upcoming. Hey, guys, listen to Accents. And I wanted to hopefully set up I set the record straight with Chuck's help. My name is Chris and I'm from New Jersey. I have heard Chuck mentioned a few times. He lived in New Jersey

for a bit. First off, where did you live? What brought you here? And why did you leave? Um? I lived in Bernardsville next to Basking Ridge. Um, sort of near Morristown is the biggest town that you might have heard of. Uh, what brought me there? I lived there after college because it was a free place to live because of a roommates parents who were out of the country in Australia. Actually, it's all coming together. They didn't want to sell their house, so they said, you guys

are done with college. You want to live here for free, hang out New York. And why did I leave? I left because they came back. It'd be weird if I was still living there. Uh. Anyway, he might be able to confirm my suspicions. People from New Jersey don't have an accent, but if they do, it's slight New York New York accent. At any um, now you definitely have accents. You're insane. In my opinion, many older adults have moved

from New York to New Jersey for the suburbs. Seeing many older people meet and talk about the street they grew up on in Brooklyn, or like I would like to make like it made clear that no one from New Jersey says New Joysey. That's true, if anything that is in New York accent, Chuck, can you confirm. I can confirm I never heard anyone say New Joysey, but I cannot confirm that there's no accent because I definitely have an accent to New Jersey. Um. In fact, one

of the things that I noticed. There's not so much an accent, but people in New Jersey would say button instead of button or like you know, words that are split in half like that, they would stop like a hard stop button. You don't talking about very New Jersey. And they call everyone kid. Yeah, I knew that a kid, even if they're older than you. I didn't appreciate that anyway. I hope Chuck agrees also, so uh, I hope he's a fan of pork roll and not Taylor Ham. I'm

a fan of Taylor pork Roll. I love the accounts. I thought that was the only pork Roll. Thanks for the endless amount of entertainment. Be seeing you guys in Brooklyn on the upcoming tour. So Chris Ortado from Highland Park, New Jersey. Nice. I can't wait to see at the Bellhouse. Thanks Chris. If you want to get in touchure with like Chris did, you can send us an email of Stuff podcast at how Stuff Works dot com and has always joint our home on the web, Stuff you Should

Know dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,