The Tamám Shud case, most often referred to as The Somerton Man case, is quite the mystery. The more I researched this and read more details, the more intrigued I became. I had already heard of this a few years ago, but just like other unsolved mystery cases, there is new developments which then require new research. There is so many details involved and a lot of different theories as to who he could have been. In total, I had over 9 pages worth of notes from this case, which likely means this will be a very long read. I hope you guys are ready, and enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed researching and writing this for you.
On December 1st, 1948 police were called to Australia's Somerton Beach near Glenelg
(6.8 miles SW of Adelaide) after the body of a man was found. The man had been found with his head resting against the seawall, laying back with his legs almost fully extended and one of his arms resting on his chest.
At first glance, it seemed as if the man had died in his sleep. While searching for identification, police discovered a few items. In his right collar pocket, they found an unlit cigarette and in his coat pockets, they found an unused train ticket from Adelaide to Henley Beach and a bus ticket from the city, though it could not be confirmed whether or not that particular ticket had been used. They also discovered an aluminum comb, a half-empty packet of Juicy Fruit gum, and 'Army Club' cigarette packet containing 7 different brand cigarettes and a quarter full box of matches.
Police were told by several witnesses that on the night of November 30th, they had seen a guy who resembled the dead man found on the beach and he had been seen in the same area where the body was found. The witnesses stated that around 7pm, they noticed him extend his right arm all the way out to its fullest extent and then suddenly drop it limply. A couple also came forward and claimed that around 7:30pm - 8:00pm while they were out for a walk, they noticed the man laying down under a street lamp leaning against the seawall and then later realized that he had not moved for over 30 minutes. They thought it odd that he was not reacting to the bugs and mosquitoes around him but the couple figured that he was either extremely drunk or had fallen asleep so they continued on their walk. Another witness stated that they had noticed another man looking at the body from above while standing at the top of the stairs but then left shortly after. In 1959, 4 years after the incident, someone had also told police that while walking along the beach, they had noticed a well dressed man carrying another man on his shoulders sometime during the night before the body was found. A police report was created but nothing else ever came of that particular claim.
After the man was taken into custody, a pathologist began to examine the body. The man appeared to be of "Britisher" appearance and was estimated to be between 40-45 years of age. He was in "top physical shape" and stood at 5'11''. He had grey eyes, fair hair (almost ginger) although some grays around his temples, broad shoulders and a slim waist. The pathologist noticed the man's hands were clean and showed no signs of manual labor. While examining the feet, he noted that the man's toes met in a wedge shape like those of a ballet dancer or someone who frequently wears tight shoes such as pointed boots. He also had strong upper calf muscles which would further back up the theory that the man could have possibly been a dancer or perhaps wore tight, pointed shoes with a slight heel on a daily basis. When he was found, the man was dressed in a white shirt with a red and blue tie, brown trousers, socks, shoes and a brown knitted pullover. He also had a grey, double breasted tailored jacket which was believed to have been made in America (USA). Strangely, none of his clothing items had tags on them. They had all been purposefully removed. He also did not wear a hat, which was quite unusual for the time period. He did not carry a wallet so no identification was provided and his dental records did not match those of any living person. Another thing the pathologist recorded was that the man was clean shaven.
The pathologist's report was very thorough and detailed, not only in regards to what the unidentified man had been wearing, but also in the internal findings. While conducting the autopsy, they discovered the man had likely passed away around 2am on December 1st. His heart appeared to be of normal size with no defects. His brain showed some abnormalities that had caused some vessels that are not commonly seen to become highly visible. There was also signs of congestion in the brain, pharynx, stomach, and kidneys.
The gullet reportedly had some whitening of superficial layers (mucosa) and some ulcerations in the middle. The stomach, aside from being highly congested also contained blood mixed with food. The spleen was 3x the normal size and there appeared to be damage to the liver lobules which was detected with the use of a microscope. All in all, there was signs of severe congestion in several parts of his body and some damage to some of his internal organs. His last meal was determined to have been ingested roughly 3-4 hours before death, but the pathologist was unable to find any foreign or unnatural substances. Regardless of his lack of evidence, the pathologist was convinced that the man's cause of death had not been natural. He believed the man had likely died of poisoning possibly by a barbiturate or a soluble hypnotic which would be hard to detect. With no other information available, and having exhausted all possible testing, the man was embalmed on December 10th, 1948 without being identified.
On January 14th, 1949 Adelaide police discovered a brown suitcase with no tags. It had apparently been checked into the railway station's cloakroom around 11am on November 30th, 1948 and it was thought by police that the suitcase had belonged to the Somerton man. Inside the suitcase they found a checkered dressing gown, size 7 red felt slippers, 4 pairs of underwear, pajamas, shaving supplies, brown trousers with sand in the cuffs, an electrician's screw driver, a table knife which had been modified and cut down into a short, sharp instrument and a pair of scissors that had been sharpened at the points. They also found some zinc which they believed had served as a sheath to protect the man from the sharp utensils and a stenciling brush that was commonly used by third officers on merchant ships to stencil cargo. Even stranger, they discovered some unusual thread card that was not of Australian origin and some of that thread had been used to sew a hole in the pants of the dead man. Again, none of the clothing items in the suitcase contained any tags, but the police discovered the name "T. Keane" on a tie, "Keane" on a laundry bag and "Kean" on a singlet along with some dry cleaning marks reading 117/7, 4393/7 and 3053/7.
Police believed that whoever had removed the tags had possibly overseen those details or perhaps left them there knowing that the dead man's name was not T. Keane.
When police looked into the name, they came up empty handed. There was no "T. Keane" missing from any English speaking country and when they looked for a dry cleaner that could possibly provide them with further information they became frustrated when that too, proved fruitless. The only information gathered was that the suitcase itself was not an Australian made product and had been imported, which meant the man had either traveled to America and purchased it there or had likely bought it from someone who had. Similarly, a coat that was found was also discovered to be made in America so it was very possible the dead man had traveled there at some point or knew someone who frequented the U.S.
They also looked into the train tickets and compared them to records of tickets sold. They thought the man had arrived at the Adelaide railway station by overnight train from Melbourne, Sydney or Port August. Due to the state that his body was found in, it was believed that the man had shaved and showered at a city bath before heading to back to the railway station to purchase a ticket for the 10:50am ride to Henley beach. For whatever reason, the man did not end up taking the ride there after purchasing the ticket but he did check in his suitcase before leaving the train station and ultimately catching the city bus to Glenelg.
An Inquest of death that had been started a few days after his death was adjourned until June 17th, 1949. When they re-examined his body they made several new discoveries. They noticed that his shoes were freshly polished and the soles were clean which would mean that the man couldn't have been walking around all day. It brought up a new theory that maybe the man had actually passed away somewhere else and then was brought over to the beach and positioned there. That would also explain why there was no evidence at the site such as vomit or scattered sand due to the convulsions he could have had if he had been poisoned. A professor of physiology and pharmacology stated that there was a possibility that the man died of poisoning from a substance that was untraceable. He suggested cardenolide-type and cardiac-glycosides. He mentioned that the only thing that did not support this theory was that there had been no evidence of the man vomiting, which would have most certainly happened if he had been poisoned. On the other hand, it could explain when the man was seen extending his arm to it's full extent as him convulsing for the last time before he died. Despite all of these suspicions, they never were able to determine a definite cause of death.
Although they were unsuccessful with determining the cause of his death, they did find even more mysterious clues that were missed before. In the clothing the man was wearing, they discovered something sewn into one of his trouser pockets. Upon further investigation, they were able to determine that the mysterious item was a gold piece of paper with the words "Tamám Shud" printed on them. Immediately, the police were contacted and they began contacting public library officials where it was discovered that the paper had been ripped out from a copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Someone was also able to translate the phrase's meaning to "ended" or "finished" which just made things far more interesting.
Police conducted a nation-wide search to try to find the exact copy of the book where the phrase had been ripped out from. A photograph of the scrap was also released to the public in hopes that someone would recognize it and provide more information. Due to this, the copy form which the scrap came from was actually located. It was found that it was from a 1941 edition of Edward FitzGerlad's translation of the Rubaiyat that was published in New Zealand. The person who located the copy has never been publicly identified but it was said that the book had been found in the back of a car around the time that the body had been discovered. So whoever found it, kept it a secret until they realized the importance of that book. In order to determine the significance of that book to the case, if any, they asked the public library officials about the theme of the Rubaiyat and police were told that the story has a message of living life to its fullest and having no regrets. This then sparked the idea that the man could have also possibly committed suicide and further complicated the case.
It was also later discovered that there was traces (writing indentations) on the back of the book that had been written in all capital letters. They were nonsensical and were immediately thought to be in another language, but it was later re-examined and suggested to be some sort of code. After contacting code experts, police were told that the letters were "meaningless" and were most likely the product of a "disturbed mind". The code remains undeciphered 'til this day.
Things got even more confusing when a phone number was also found in the book. The number belonged to a woman named Jessica Ellen (Jo) Thompson (1921-2007) from Sydney who lived in Mosley St. in Glenelg about 1,300 feet (400m) from where the man's body had been found.
When interviewed by the police, Jessica stated that she did not know who the man was or why he would have had her phone number or would have been in her neighborhood. She did mention that sometime in 1948, an unidentified man had been attempting to visit her and had been asking neighbors about her. It is important to note that while being interviewed, Jessica was said to have been "evasive" or acting like she "just did not want to talk about it" so investigators believed that she was not being truthful and that she did in fact, know the man's identity. This was further fueled when police, accompanied by a technician, showed Jessica a cast of the dead man's face and shoulders that had been previously made and her reaction was odd. She was reportedly "completely taken aback" to the point of appearing ill, as if she was going to faint. The technician who had made the cast also stated that as soon as she viewed it, she had immediately looked away and would not look at it again. In 1949, Jessica Thompson requested that her personal information not be kept by police and that it not be released to any third parties as it would be embarrassing and potentially harmful to her reputation and personal life. Police actually obliged and it has been thought that due to this, the investigation was hampered because she most likely knew far more than she disclosed to police.
In 1949, after over a year of his death the Somerton man was laid to rest in Adelaide's West Terrace Cemetery. Due to his identity being unknown, his services were conducted by the Salvation Army and were paid for by the Australian Grandstand Bookmaker's Association in order to prevent him from having a pauper's funeral.
Years after his burial, flowers began appearing at his grave site. A woman who was seen by police leaving the cemetery was questioned but claimed to not know anything. Around that same time, a woman named Ina Harvey who worked as a receptionist at a hotel across from the railway station mentioned to police that a strange man had stayed in the hotel in room 21 or 23 for a few days around the same time the body was discovered. She said the man was English speaking and came in carrying nothing but a small black case, resembling that of a musician's or possibly even a doctor's. One of her employees who entered his room became curious and had taken a peek into his bag and saw that the only thing inside was a small object described as looking like a 'needle'. The man checked out on November 30th, 1948.
Naturally, after so much information released by police, there was plenty of theories flowing in. One of the most popular theories is that the Somerton man was actually a spy. This was backed up by the strange circumstances surrounding his death and that there was at least 2 known sites near Adelaide that were of interest to known spies. One was a uranium mine and the other was a military research facility. If he had been a spy, he could have been murdered by someone to keep him quiet. Interestingly, in 2013 when Jessica's daughter Kate was interviewed by the show 60 minutes, she fueled this idea by stating that she not only believed that the Somerton man was a spy, but that she believed that her mother had been one as well and she knew the identity of the man. She stated that her mother taught English to migrants, was interested in communism and was fluent in Russian despite never having traveled there. She also stated that her mother was not the only one who knew his identity and that there was "someone higher than the police force" who knew exactly who he was.
Over the years, there have been hundreds of people who have claimed to know the identity of the man but none have been correct. In March of 2009, the University of Adelaide gathered a team led by professor Derek Abbott and began a quest to try to crack the code. A lot of interesting things were discovered that led them to believe that the Somerton man could have possibly been the father of one of Jessica Thompson's children. In order to confirm that, the team requested permission to exhume both Jessica's son's body and the Somerton man's body but the attorney general refused and Kate, the only living child of Jessica, also declined permission stating that such an act would be disrespectful to her brother. Despite this, the team continued on their quest and in In 2017, they submitted two hair samples that were in "perfect condition" to be analyzed. They had been found inside of the cast that was made of the body right after his death. Thanks to modern technology, just last year, it was able to be determined that the man belonged to Haplogroup H4a1a1a which is possessed only by 1% of Europeans.
Though a lot is now known, his identity is still a mystery and unfortunately, a lot of the information gathered by police has been lost or destroyed over time. The suitcase was destroyed by police in 1986, and strangely, many witness accounts have vanished without a trace. Whether or not we ever discover the true identity of the Somerton man is yet to be seen. Hopefully, with the information and technology available today, we can finally determine his identity and solve the mystery of The Somerton Man.
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