Season 06 Episode 22 Extra: Closing the Webb

namely that the man appears to have finally been identified. However, rather than a mend the story, I thought it might be better to have someone else a little more qualified explain the latest developments, and so for this week's extra, we're going to do something different. Physicist and electronic engineer Professor Derek Abbott of the University of Adelaide has perhaps done more than anyone to help uncover the Summitton Man's identity.

In July twenty twenty one, he made the stunning announcement that, thanks to his tireless work and that of genealogist Colleen Fitzpatrick, they had finally cracked the mystery that kind of leads me to my first question, I suppose, which is when did you first hear about the summriton Man mysteries? Is something that you presumably weren't aware of before you went to Australia. Correct. I had never heard about it, and the first time I heard of it was about ninety five.

I just happened to me in a laundromatte watching my clothes, was around and picked up one of those magazines that they leave in there, and it was an article about the top ten top ten unsolved mysteries in Australia, and I think this was ranked as number two, but one was the disappearance of Harold Holt and put it down.

Never did anything with it until two thousand and seven, where I saw an extended newspaper article that gave a lot of detail and even reprinted the so called summrton Man's code that he had written on the back of the poetry book. And so that's what got my interest up.

At the beginning, I thought, Okay, I have no idea whether this actually is even a code or not in the first place, but let's see if I can set this for a project for my students and the statistical tests on the letters and see if we can determine

if it's a code or not. You say, your students, what was your job at the time, Well, professor at a at the University Badelaide and in the electrical engineering department, and doing statistical analysis of data is something we do, and you know, cryptosecurity and things as another thing we do.

So we know about codes. So I got my students over the years to a set of many projects, to various different students, and we looked at it over and over again and compared it against all known World War two type ciphers, and we were able to eliminate virtually all of them. And it's looking like it isn't actually a code. It just looks like the first letters of

words in the English language. We can say it's actually English because we've tested it against other first letters of words in other languages and English always comes out tops statistically. So so that's what we think it is. And so we think it's just something pedestrian that you know, it's just an aide de memoir. It's just the first letters of words. It could be anything. It could be, you know, his horse betting strategy or trying to solve a puzzle

in a newspaper. Could we don't think it's anything anything conspiratorial, right, And was it actually written in the book or was it sort of marked onto, sort of scored onto it. It was on the it was on the back cover, okay, and it was very light. So it's unclear from the old newspaper reports whether it was very lightly penciled or whether it was just a press through from another page. My guess it was just very very light pence all

and so yeah, so interesting. It's actually, you know, not only is it not a code, but probably not relevant to the specific book therefore, or the phone numbers that were also found in the book, yes, there was some right next to the circle colode bus some numbers. One turned out to just be a local bank, and another turned out to be a lady who had trained as a nurse, who lived in fact five minutes away from where the man was found dead, five minutes walk away.

So joining the dots, the police thought, well, she must know something about this guy, so knocked on her door and so do you know have you seen this book before? And she said yes, and they go a h, so you know about the sky coundad On Beach and she goes, she back pedals and says, oh, no, no, I just meant I've seen a Rubo yat Abmarkayam before, which is what the book was, right, And so they dragged her into see a plaster cast. So they had made off

the dead body, so it's a death mask. I ought to add that this had happened about six months after he had died. Yes, So they dragged her in to have a look at the plaster cast, and apparently she was quite evasive and very uncommunicative and behaved very strangely. She just looked down at the floor for the whole interview and didn't even look at the plaster cast, right, And so the police thought she knew something. But they push her because you know, this wasn't classed as a homicide.

If you look at the police file, they always believed it was actually a suicide. That was their, yeah, their strong belief. And you know, if it was classed as a homicide, you know they could put the heavies on over but that was not the case here, and so they just let her go. Right. So there's me with the working on the code many years later, and the circle code, and you know, at the beginning of my work, you know, I didn't really know if it was a

code or not. It hadn't come to any conclusions. So I was thinking, well, if it is a code, maybe I'm going to need some context. Maybe I need to find out this lady's name. Perhaps her name is a

key to this code or something like that. So I set about trying to find out who she was, because her name was never published, but they did published sufficient detail that the newspapers said, you know which hospital she had trained in, the Royal Malls Shaw Hospital in Sydney, and that she lived very close to where the man was found dead and stuff like that. So using the hospital records and electoral Royal records and stuff, I was

able to figure it out. It was like a huge chicksaw puzzle, right, But yes, I found out and her name was Joe Thompson. That's the name she went by, right,

that comes from your work, So I didn't know that. Yes, well it was known to police, but he you know, they had never let that out, right, And so it was confirmed later by police that are alive who didn't know her name, and they didn't confirm that, and so She was born Jesse Harkness, but went by the name Joe Thompson later in life spelled Jacob, which I believe

is a bit of a Scottish name, isn't it. And her heritage, if you trace her family tree back, does go back to Scotland in fact, right, So she was also known as Jessica. Is that right? Jessin? Is that? Because I've read that too. Well, she was born Jesse Jesse Harkness was her maiden name, but then she changed her first name. Well, she was known as Joe to all her family and friends, right. I think it was her husband that her husband to be that nicknamed her that.

On her gravestone, it doesn't say Jesse though, it says Jessica because you know, it's descendants that put stuff on gravestones and the person who is buried is never responsible for it. The work you put into that finding out her name, at this point you kind of becoming more

interesting to getting to the bottom of the mystery. How does this sort of expand into Yeah, so I was starting to after I found the context, you know, found out this lady's name and found more context of the time, it is sort of drew me in I got really interested in all the events of the time. I was realizing more and more that this wasn't a code as time went on, and so I thought, actually, the real problem here is to identify the man, not the code.

The code is just a distraction. What would be really interesting is to find out who he is is. Around twenty ten, I in fact noticed that the plaster bust which is in the Police Museum here actually has hairs embedded in it because it was molded directly off the dead body. And you can tell these are real hairs that came off the body and aren't just something off the mortary floor, because they're all standing on end all information ripped directly off the body. So I thought, ah,

this is a potential source of DNA. So I got some permission in twenty eleven to grab some hairs out of the bus, which we did, and unfortunately the technology of the time wasn't good enough to extract DNA from a hair let alone hair that old. So anyway, we bit the bullet and in two thousand and fifteen our DNA lab at head Laid University had a go. We selected the three best hair roots that we had and

tried to get some DNA out of them. It did test positive for DNA, there was actually DNA there, so that was encouraging, but we got absolutely virtually nothing out of it. We got no sequence or all we were able to get was what's called his maternal happler group, and so we knew his mother's group was h and that's all we knew. So it was a little bit disappointing, but also exciting that at least there was viable DNA

in there. And so then in twenty and eighteen we had another crack at the lab at the university and bingo, we got the whole mitochondrial genome. That's all then from the mother's side. Unfortunately, that's not the sort of DNA you need to identify somebody. To identify somebody like this where you don't have any comparison to compare the person with, what you need to do is upload on genealogical DNA websites and find nearest cousins, you know, like ancestry dot

com and stuff like that. Now, those those websites people may or may not know this. The DNA they use is quite different to what police do. Police use quite long strands of DNA long sequences roughly around to three markers, depending on what jurisdiction you're in. Usually it's around twenty to twenty three. These DNA websites don't do that. They use much shorter DNA markers, and they use anywhere between half a million to two million of them. It's a

completely different ball game. It's the part of the DNA that's inherited from both the mother and the father, So the mitochondrial genome which we extracted was no good. We needed the part of the DNA that's the mixture of both parents, and these are called the autosomes. We only got sixteen thousand of those, and which was a huge breakthrough, but not enough. It's a way below half a million,

which is what's really needed. So I tried my best at seeing if I could make two with the sixteen thousand, and it just didn't work. It was a bit flop. Now a word from our sponsor, better help. It can be tough to train your brain to stay in problem solving mode when faced with a challenge in life, but when you learn how to find your own solutions, there's no better feeling. A therapist can help you become a better problem solver, making it easier to accomplish your goals,

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percent off your first month. That's better help dot com. Slash unexplained one zero around beginning of this year. In fact, I had another goal. This time I used a lab in the USA which had some latest cutting edge technology for extracting DNA from hair, and so I took my best hair root sent it off to them that I had nervously saved up since two thousand and eleven, always over ten years, and guess what, it was a big flop. It didn't give us a sequence, and so I was mortified.

This is my best hair root that I'd saved up. So then went to Plan B and sent them five centimeters of hair shaft with no root and guess what

we got two million markers. Wow. Yeah, So what we're able to do is were those two million markers were able to upload it and mind his nearest cousins that are alive today, and his top hit was a chap in Victoria, Australia, which is a state next door to me, and the other closest matches were also in Victoria, so straight off, this was not looking like a Russian spy

after all, or American or whatever. Another part of the story is another twist of the whole story, which we haven't gone into yet, is that Joe Thompson had a son born out of Wedlocke who mysteriously had features that looked rather like the Summerton Man, and one of the theories was perhaps he's the Summitton Man. So what I was able to do was compare the DNA of the Summerton Man to his daughter that's alive, the daughter of Joe Thompson's son, that is, who also I happened to

be married too. So that's another little twist. I don't know if you've explained that to the audience here. No, I haven't at all. So if you don't be able to go into that a little bit, because I mean, that is extraordinary, and yeah, my main question was, at what point did you meet your wife in this sort of journey of yours so to speak. I met my

wife around twenty ten. It was basically because Joe Thompson had passed away two years before I found out who she was, and then I thought, well, I should interview her son, Robin, But he had passed away like literally two months before I figured out how to contact him. So then I thought, well, does he have any descendants? So I interviewed a daughter of his, Rachel, and we hit it off and decided to get married the next day. So that's incredible. And then we really did get married

about three months later. So being married, obviously I had her DNA on tap and so immediately that's the first thing I did when we got the Summerton Man's two million markers is compared it against my wife and guess what, absolute zero match. Not a single scary in the class task as well? Was there not a story? I thought, I've read at some point that Joe Thompson had said something at some point much later in her life in

relation to the man's identity. Was that a fabrication in the paper, or had she alluded to knowing him at some point. People always said they thought she'd knew something, but she never admitted it. I see, So what you've probably been reading is probably people saying that I bet she knew something. Yeah right, So yes, so we ruled out my wife being related and hence her father, so that was interesting. So yeah, so we eliminated that possibility.

And then we started looking at these nearest cousins that were in Victoria. So the fact they were from Victoria, Australia meant straight away that you know, these the top matches, so you know, this guy's obviously not some Russian spy or American or whatever. It kind of eliminated all the fanciful theory straight away and just some ordinary bloke from the state next door. So from the top match, what we're able to do is and this is myself and

Colleen Fitzpatrick from America who's an expert genealogist. We worked on this together and built out the family tree. And because we were working in the dark, and you know, we didn't know which which direction the tree would go in and stuff like that, where to look in the tree, we obviously just went ballistic and just built out the tree too, like it was like at four thousand people

on it in the end. Wow. And then it seemed this chap in Victoria connected to a family quite quickly called Keene A K A N E. Right, And this is quite significant because as we all know, the Summerton man had the name Keene written on some items of his clothing, written in India ink. And he even had a laundry bag with the name Keen stenciled on it. Right, And laundry bags with stenciled names is a very sort

of World War two army type thing. So what's he doing with these items with the name Keen on them? So Colleen immediately said, oh, I bet he's a Keen, because you know it is connecting to this Keene family. And so she was part and pun very Keen on this. And we're looking at these Keens and we couldn't find any of missing. They were all fine, they all were well accounted for, and they had all had dates of

death way after nineteen forty eight. We're thinking back to the drawing board and I was saying, I'm saying to Colleen, you know, I think this whole Keen thing is a distraction. It's a coincidence. You know, it's a common name. Okay, so there's somebody on this family tree or four thousand with the name Keen, and he happens to have that name on his tie. You know, it could just be a coincidence. And so I say to her, look, I

think we'd better move on. And so what we do is we then find we then look at other people on the tree that don't have dates of death right, And that can happen for all kinds of reasons, you know, birth deaths and marriage officers, particularly in the world from World War two times, you know, can have information lost, you know, or there could be some flood or something.

But it's a good place to start. So we did find a couple of people close to this Keen family that looked like they didn't have a date of birth. One of them we were able to find a photo four and Colleen was saying, hmm, this photo does look a bit like the Summerton man. And I was saying that it doesn't doesn't look like him to me, you know. But there's a trouble with all fuzzy photos. You can make them look like anything. You want really, And so we had a bit of a disagreement over that, and

then another chat. A person of interest was a guy who was born by the name Carl Webb in nineteen o five but went by the name Charles Webb later in life. You know, no, no date of death. Couldn't find a photo on him, but we thought, well, we

ought to check this one as well. So what I did was because the tree had been built out through the Keen family, which was in fact by marriage, because his sister Freedom had married a guy called Keene, what we thought we should do is well, go away from that side of the family tree and look at the summer to Man's mother and tunnel her tree down and find somebody on that side of the family that it is alive today and test their DNA. And so we did,

and guess what it didn't match. It was a big flot So there's another twist, and thought, oh my god, what's gone wrong here? And here's the twist. The twist is that the Sumrton Man's mother for Charles Webb's mother, I should say, is didn't Her maiden name was Grace. But we found out that her supposed father wasn't mister Grace. It was another chap. Wow it was mister Morris, and I don't think she ever knew herself who her real

dad was. Wow, how did you find that out? That was interesting that there were some genealogists already on ancestry dot Com who looked like they had figured this out and so were by poking around on family trees there had We saw that. And the interesting thing about this was Colleen went straight for this. She said, Yep, this is right, this is he's a Morris. And I'm actually skeptical. So it's me going, oh, I don't I'm not sure there's enough evidence for this, because you know, it looks

like there's some suppositions here and things like that. So what we did is we okay, well let's say it is Morris. Then, so we tunneled down the mother's side family tree, assuming the correct father now, and get this part of the family tree correct, find an alive person who was prepared to descendant, who was prepared to be tested. So I rang them up Kenny. It was very helpful and he agreed, and I think a couple of months later his DNA came through and it was a match.

Bingo it's amazing. So get this. Not only did we get this match, and so not only did it prove straight away that hey, Charles Webb is the Summerton Man, because we've got to like a triangulation now from too distant different parts of the family tree meeting point, so it's a triangulation, but it also proves that his mother was really a Morris all in one hit. Yeah. Then what we did is usually with this sort of work, one doesn't just do one confirmation. One looks for many.

So what we're able to then do is look to see who else is on the database that's close to our new chap that we had just found and see if they also matched as Summerton Man. And we found another one, so we found another triangulation point. And then what I was able to do is contact close descendants of Charles Webb. So I found a granddaughter of one of his sisters, and I also found a great grandson

and great granddaughter of his eldest brother. And so got all these people tested, and every time it was a fantastic match. And the amount of DNA overlap we're just kept increasing and increasing as we've got you know, these closer family relatives. It's just now completely beyond all reasonable doubt that you know, Charles Webb is the Summerson man. Yeah,

that's it's incredible. And I mean, how do these people how did they feel, I mean, firstly being approached, but secondly sort of finding themselves now part of this story in a way? Is it something? Because I guess the whole thing about the story of the sum To Man is there's the question, there's a sort of ethical question about whether this is maybe he wanted to die anonymously.

You know, maybe maybe there's an element of that wanting to sort of retreat from the world, and we are now interested in trying to sort of stir that back up in a way, maybe against the man's wishes. But did actually people find it? Were they thankful? Was it a sort of reassuring thing? Well, it they were thankful. They were very pleased to help. And without exception, it just so happens that, you know, all the people are

contacted were actually genuinely interested in their own family tree. Yeah, some of them had even drawn out their family tree and did wonder what happened to Uncle Charlie, you know, And there was no oral history that had been passed down from their family to say what had happened to him. Yeah, so they were quite pleased to have it all worked out. Could you tell us what we do know about Charles Webber? What you what you know or what has been found

out about him? So what we've been able to find out now is that Charles Webb was born in nineteen oh five. Is dad was a German immigrant from Hamburg and his mom was a local I believe of Scottish ancestry originally involved another Scotland connection there, and his dad was basically a baker. They grew up in various towns in Victoria, close to Melbourne, and his dad worked in

various different bakeries. He seemed to change jobs quite a lot, but finally settled in nineteen twenty eight and bought his own bakery in a little town called Springvale which is now part of Melbourne, not so little anymore, but it was a little tiny place back then. And so they had the bakery in spring Vale, and so Charles and his brother Roy worked at the bakery also I believe his older brother Russell or Richard Russell. Sorry, And it seems by nineteen twenty eight the sisters had all left

home and got married. Richard had also actually left home, but it seemed he came into work at bakery, but the two brothers were still at home and lived at the bakery with their parents, and we're working there. It seems also around nineteen twenty eight that he had trained as an electrical fitter and instrument maker, but also appears that he was also working at the bakery all at the same time. So one and we haven't been able

to find his place of work. So I'm just wondering whether he was working at the bakery but also kind of doing it. It's electrical work on a contract basis, something like this. This is what I'm thinking, because it seems like he was doing two jobs at once as far as I can see. Ye, so this could possibly explain why there's no work colleagues of course, yeah, counting

him as missing. The explanation why no family members came forward to say, look, this Chap's missing is if you look at the family, it seems that was one big, happy family around nineteen twenty eight. But around twenty nine, Richard, his eldest brother, his wife dies young and leaves him small children, which he then has to farm out to an orphanage, and then his brother Roy dies in nineteen forty three in World War Two. His nephew John Keene dies in nineteen forty three, also in World War Two.

His dad dies in nineteen thirty nine, just after selling the bakery, and then Lue dies in nineteen forty seven, sorry, nineteen forty six, rather and basically all these events happen over this short space of time, and basically the family becomes all fragmented, you know. And it's the war as well, just after World turned. So they're all fragmented. They've had all these deaths, and they're probably not all speaking to

each other anymore, you know. I'm sure people are familiar with the idea of it happens in all families, you know, there are deaths and terms of events and family snatches. Don't speak to each other anymore. After a while, it happens. And then in nineteen forty seven, Charles and his wife separate, so obviously she's not speaking to him anymore either, and she passed for a divorce on Crowns with desertion. She doesn't know where his whereabouts is, and forty seven is

the last time we see him on any documentation. He drops off any electoral role records or anything like that. It's just totally disappears off the record. So it's very interesting. So and why did he go to Adelaide of all places? That's a bit mysterious. He's limited resident of Victoria. Why did he travel by train to Adelaide and and you know, go lie down on the beach and die? Very strange? And why the book in the car? Yeah, that's another thing.

So there's still still many strange mysteries that will probably never know and the mystery. I think the mystery will still live on, and I think the internet conspiracy theorists will still believe he's some sort of side. You know, these things will never go away. I'm sure we do have a possible hypothesis why he went to Adelaide of

all places. And a strange, strange twist is in his wife's divorce papers, divorce affer David, she lists her address as being in South Australia, right, which is the state where Adelaide is. So that's very interesting. But we don't know the date that she actually arrived here, but we've just pretend that perhaps she was here already, perhaps it was her that he had come to see. Yeah, so anyway, that's a mystery something for the Internet sleuths to ponder on.

What's next view in regards to the case. Are you going to continue? Is there more to find out that you're interested to know? And you mentioned also going do some work on the Voynache manuscript. Is that something also you're doing? Yeah? Yeah, so yeah, we're doing work on the Voynache manuscript. I probably should be spending more time on that and less time on this now because I think I think I've squeezed out about as much as

anyone can find on this case. I don't think we're going to find any other big nuggets on the Summerton man So maybe it's time to let this go and look at the Voynache. So yeah, we're working on that fast and furiously, and you know, I might we might have some interesting results on that by next to you to announce, Wow, look forward to hearing that. Thank you very much, really really appreciate your time. Thank you. If you enjoy Unexplained and would like to help supporters, you

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