The Somerton Man
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I'm Kate Winkler-Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the last 25 years writing about true crime. And I'm Paul Holes, a retired cold case investigator who's worked some of America's most complicated cases and solved them. Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most compelling true crimes. And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring new insights to old mysteries.

Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime cases through a 21st century lens. Some are solved and some are cold. Very cold. This is Buried Bones. ♪♪

Hey, Kate. It's good to see you again. Good to see you, too. How's it going? I'm doing pretty good. What's going on on your end? Well, I just had something unusual happen. I

I don't know if you're a napper, but I actually was able to take a nap right before. Is this a big conversation we're going to have? This is a big conversation. I am a napper. Are you really? So my dad was a napper. He was a law professor at UT. He had a couch in his office, and he would take a nap every afternoon. Like, I don't know, a nap? It's an hour and a half. That doesn't seem like a nap. That's stretching into an early bedtime. But he could sleep in a

In almost any situation, his car, he fell asleep on a tractor kind of one time. I mean, he could snooze. Are you that kind of a guy? Because I am not that kind of a guy. No, no, no. You know, I do what I call my old man nap. And so usually it's right around mid-morning to noon-ish.

And I'll lay down, I'll put headphones on and listen to my music, and I don't fall asleep. It's more of a meditation, but it definitely gives me more energy to finish out the day. And I typically, like before we sit down and go through a story, I'll do my nap right before, so my mind is fresh. Really?

Really? I did not know that. That's your pre-buried bones ritual is taking a nap. Mine is listening to Tina Turner and driving around in circles in my neighborhood, and yours is taking a nap. Yep. I have to have all the energy to put up with you, Kate.

Well, listen, with this case we're going into, I hope you took a supersonic nap because this is a big, big case. And it's been in the news lately and it's set in Australia. And I'm not even going to ask because I'm just going to say 99% chance you have not been to Australia. I have not been there, but I hope to get there someday.

Well, this is a mystery. It is Cold War. It is spies. It is somebody who shows up on a beach and we cannot figure out for a very long time who he is. And so this is victim profiling, I think in a way, victimology. And I know that this is an area you really like talking about. And we talk about how important understanding who the victim is and who their circle is is.

is in these cases. So I think this is something you're going to be able to dig into. That's great. Victimology is huge. And so I'm looking forward to learning about who the victim is. Okay, well, let's go ahead and set the scene. So we are in Australia, 1948, and it's late November. And we are in Adelaide, Australia, in an area called Somerton Park. It

It's a seasonably warm evening, end of November, and there are people walking along a beach that's populated. This is not a huge beach in Florida where loads of people are around, but this is not isolated like some of the other beaches we've talked about that have become crime scenes. There's a little bit of a setup, but lucky for you, I have a lot of photos. Maybe unlucky for you, I don't know how helpful they're going to be, but they'll be interesting for you to see. I know I try to pick cases where...

I have some photos available, and we don't always have those, so I know you'll be happy to see anything at this point. I'm such a visual person. It really does help. Even if it's not something that's overly informative about the crime, it gives me a better idea about the case. I agree, and there are some nice photos that we have available. Okay, so we are on this beach. We're in, as I said, Adelaide,

And there is a couple walking along the walk that runs alongside the beach and it's about 7.15 at night. And it's a businessman and his wife and they're just trying to enjoy a night out. They're in an area of the beach, as I said, where there are people around. It's not isolated. And they spot something that is weird but not completely alarming. So this is the scene. You have to imagine the scene.

There's a man who is in a slouched position, so legs on the ground. He's sitting in a seated position. He's slouched over against a nearby retaining wall, and his legs are stretched out in front of him. And the couple is concerned, but then he puts his arms in the air, and they assume that he's drunk. So they don't intervene. They just pass by, and he's slumped over.

So about 15 minutes later, another couple comes by. They assume the same thing. He's either drunk or he's asleep. But they do think it's odd that he's not swatting away any of the mosquitoes that are flying nearby because it's a warm night. Nevertheless, they continue on their way and nothing comes of this. Six o'clock the next morning, the businessman who was with his wife at 7.15 comes back to the beach. He wants to go for a swim.

And he's shocked that the man is still sitting in the same position, legs out, slumped over. But now there are people who have gathered around him and they're starting to call for help because it appears like he's dead.

And now his feet are crossed at the ankles. And I want to show you two pictures just before we get into details about I know you want to know all about the autopsy and everything else that we can figure out. But I wanted to show you the scene if we're talking about the classic. Is this a murder? Is this an accident or is this a suicide? So let me just show you. Is that OK if we just jump right into the photos? Of course, let's do it. OK. OK.

So you see the area of the beach where he was sitting. There's a wall there and some staircases. And he slumped up against this wall. And this is where people spotted him. And there's another photo when you want it of a police officer who is posing the way that he was found in the same location.

So this is a photo where I'm seeing this fairly dramatic change in elevation. The photographer is standing on the beach, probably closer to the water, towards what appears to be a concrete-type retaining wall. And then the land behind that retaining wall rises fairly dramatically. It's fairly steep, up to a roadway. And then there are buildings in the background which appear possibly to be fairly gnarly,

you know, sizable houses or maybe commercial structures. There's an X that I'm presuming marks the spot where the man was leaning up against the retaining wall. If his back is to the retaining wall, that means he's facing the water to his left appears to be a staircase that initially goes up on top of the retaining wall.

And then there's a small landing. And then there's another staircase that goes up this steep slope to the roadway above him. So immediately what I'm noticing is, is that where the man is positioned, people that are above him would really struggle to see him just because of the change in elevation. They might be.

see the top of his head, depending on how tall this retaining wall is, and his feet sticking out. But he would be obscured. But the people who are on the beach, and I believe the couple that you said were walking the night before were on a walkway on the beach, they would easily be able to see him. Yeah. And let me show you the other perspective here. This is the one of the officer who is posing. Now you can actually see from this reenactment how

how tall the retaining wall would have been. Now, also the caveat here is this death happened in 1948. This reenactment happened in the 1970s. So I don't know what structurally might have changed, but at least you can see, you know, the way that they sort of

posed him. Yeah, you know, there's a dramatic change when you take a look at now, it's just the retaining wall and the entire elevated land is gone. It looks like they've lowered. Why would they do that? This is really weird. I don't know. It doesn't make any sense. Yeah. It looks like they leveled everything to just where the retaining wall was. Right. They removed a ton of land or there was significant erosion.

that had occurred and now they're having to address that and lowering stuff. But at least the position of the officer posing as the victim, the way that he's leaning up against the retaining wall, he's not bent at the waist, he's bent at the neck. And so this is a interesting position for somebody to voluntarily get into. It would be very uncomfortable versus just sitting down and using the retaining wall to support your back as you're sitting normally.

This is more akin to laying down and using the retaining wall to prop your head up. Okay, well, let me tell you some more details here. Police, of course, are searching this man, and they're trying to get information based on the things that they find on his clothing. What is he wearing? And this is where the victimology begins. So they're making some notes here. One is that he's very well-dressed in an expensive and fashionable suit that

that looks like would have been an American tailor would have made, not Australian necessarily. And let's get this part of the way. He's unidentified. So there is no identification on him. They have no idea who this person is. The people and the police who have reported to the scene don't recognize him. So this is a mystery man. He has a white shirt on. He has a nice tie, brown pants, socks and shoes. So this is what's interesting. He has a half-smoked cigarette on

tucked into the collar of his jacket.

as if it had fallen out of his mouth while it was lit. Okay. I mean, what does that mean? He's sitting there and he dies or someone kills him in the middle of him smoking the cigarette? Well, you know, based on the witness descriptions, the man appears to be, you know, he's leaning up against this retaining wall in that weird position. And that couple sees him, raises his arms up. So he's still at that point capable of doing voluntary acts, right?

But his position suggests, you know, like they said, they thought possibly he was drunk. You know, he's possibly in the process of losing consciousness over the course of time. And if he did have a cigarette in his mouth, then yes, you know, that would be something that would just naturally drop. And it sounds like the collar area would be a location where the cigarette butt would come to rest. But I wouldn't make that assumption. You know, that's one possibility. But

Is this from somebody who interacted with him? You know, right now, I don't know anything about was there any violence done to this man? If he was a victim of homicide, could the offender have inadvertently dropped a cigarette? You

You have a lot of people that are kind of crowding around him going, hey, are you okay? You know, the next morning, you know, could the cigarette butt be contamination from, you know, the witnesses that are approaching the body. So there's a multitude of possibilities right there. But good thing that they noted it. It could be valuable evidence.

So you are an investigator in this area. You report to this and you look at him fully clothed and just see that there is no evidence of trauma. We don't see an obvious gunshot wound, stabbing, no blood, no bruising, no defense, nothing.

This is just somebody who looked like he died naturally on the beach. And we'll get more details on that. But just as an investigator who shows up there, you are just seeing someone who could have died from alcohol poisoning, from all you know, sitting on the beach. And that's where it becomes important for early investigators to start noting what they can remember.

about the victim. Here we have temporal information. We have witnesses that are seeing him make what appears to be a voluntary movement of his arms the night before. So they can put a timestamp on that the man was there at least by that time. Now, is there obvious signs of death? And what are those signs? Is there some lividity? Is he cool to the touch?

start noting that because that will give some more information in terms of how long he sat in the position until he passed away. And then it's moving the body. Is there rigor present and what's behind the body? So there, you know, there's a lot of stuff that needs to be noted early on just to start getting a better sense of

how quickly he died or how long he stayed alive after that initial couple saw him. Well, a doctor hasn't arrived yet, but the investigators, while they're there, are searching his body feverishly to try to find information. They find a couple of different tickets on him. There's a rail ticket.

that was not used that would have taken him from the area where he was found to a place called Henley Beach. They have no idea what the significance is. There's a bus ticket that seemed to have taken him from a bus station to where he was in Somerton. There are two hair combs, including an aluminum comb that looks like it might have been manufactured in the United States.

So you see where this is going. They're seeing a lot of things that are seemingly from America on this man. So you had mentioned that his suit, the way it was tailored, was more in the style of the United States tailors versus Australian. Okay. Correct.

So we have a half empty pack of Juicy Fruit gum. There's an Army Club cigarette packet that has been restocked with cigarettes that are a more expensive brand. And this is the reverse of what usually happens. Usually you have a very expensive package and people just keep resupplying it with very cheap cigarettes so they can look like, you know, they have more money. So my first thought

was I wonder if he's doing that to hide wealth because he's wearing a nice suit. I'm not sure what the motivation would be from this man. Maybe because people ask him for a cigarette. I know that was very common. And maybe he thought, well, you know, I don't want people to know that I smoke expensive cigarettes because I don't want to give them away. Sure. You know, but there's also...

just maybe an everyday life scenario where the cigarette package for the expensive cigarettes just kind of deteriorated on him for whatever reason. He tore it open weird and it was like, well, I need something to hold on to these cigarettes and grabbed another cigarette packet just to be able to do it without any intent of trying to disguise the types of cigarettes he had access to. Definitely a possibility.

So let me tell you what the results are of the autopsy. I usually tell you this a little bit later, but I think this is all important and this really does help with the victimology. So when the doctor examines this man, who's been nicknamed in the meantime, the Somerton man, which I guess is better than John Doe, the doctor looks at him and decides that he died around 2 a.m. on the next morning when the two couples spotted him. So they spotted him at 7.50

And then no one else reported walking by him at that point. It looks like he died around 2 a.m. They think he's about 45 years old. As I said before, there's no cuts or bruises or wounds, anything on the outside of his body. So when they strip him down, that's the case. There's no external damage from what anybody could see.

He appears to be in very, very good shape. He's got very muscular thighs, and many of the authorities and onlookers said that he actually looks like a ballet dancer. So he must have really had some definition, I suppose, because they're really trying to figure out the best way to describe him because this becomes a big mystery. So does that seem significant or helpful? This feels along the lines of the very small feet thing.

case that you and I talked about earlier in the season. Well, there's, you know, we're talking about a case in 1948. You know, they're so limited in terms of their techniques to identify somebody and they would have to rely on the public. So any type of characteristic of this victim is

that would stand out to the general person would be something that they would want to record and put out there to see if somebody goes, oh, I remember this guy with, you know, he had very muscular legs, you know, he's a bicyclist or a ballet dancer.

You know, something along those lines. So sure, that's interesting. But it's also, you know, telling that, okay, here's somebody that is physically active. Of course, there's genetics that play a part in terms of, you know, how muscular a man is naturally.

but likely is physically active to support this part of his physique. Additionally, it seems like, and I haven't heard the rest of the autopsy, but it doesn't sound like somebody who has any type of natural condition that would cause him to have premature death. No, not so far. They look at the heart.

The heart looks like that of a 45-year-old man in perfect physical health. Great physical health, actually, is the quote. But there are problems with other parts of his body. So this is where I really need your help. And I'll read this exactly. The doctor said there are clear signs of congestion in the man's brain, liver, pharynx.

kidneys, stomach, and spleen. They said that his spleen is about three times its normal size, and there's a large amount of blood in his heavily congested stomach. Oh. What is that? It sounds like there could have been a disease state caused by a virus, as well as potential poisoning. Poisoning would cause all of that blood in the stomach? Yes.

You're on the right track, I think, but I'm asking legitimately. I did not know that poisoning would cause something like that. You know, I think it depends on, you know, what the poison is, of course, but it would be something that the doctor is noting and there may be select poisons. And I'm thinking this sounds along the lines more of like your heavy metal type poisoning. Okay. And of course, you know, there's all sorts. I mean, he's got multi systems that are being impacted that contributed to his death, which

So that's where, okay, which poisons would cause this type of systemic shutdown of his organs with these physical characteristics, the congestion, the blood in the stomach?

Let me show you photos of him. And you can tell me, I don't know if you're going to be able to get much information off of these, but it's at least good for you to see because I don't often have photos of the deceased. So here is, there's two of them. And these are both photos that have been circulated for decades all over the media. Okay. So obviously these are photos after he's been transported, likely in the morgue.

The first photo is like a profile or portrait photo for identification purposes, showing his face straight on or near straight on wearing the shirt and he has a tie on and the tie is still secure around his neck.

You know, I'm looking at this photo and at least with the quality of the photo, it's a black and white photo. I'm not seeing any type of positional lividity going on in his face or bruising, lacerations. He literally looks like he's laying there with his eyes half open. Yeah. And then the lower photo is a profile photo from his right side.

I don't see anything that would indicate any type of violence whatsoever. There might be a mark on his right temple, close to his right ear. But if his eyes were shut, he would look like he's just sleeping. Yeah. And the shirt, you know, the shirt is important, right? You know, I don't see all of the shirt. I just see...

the upper front of the shirt, probably from chest height up, and the photo crops his shoulders. But this is a very light-colored shirt. It looks white in this photo. I don't see any staining on the shirt. The shirt is in its proper anatomic position. Nothing appears to be really...

out of place as if he had been in a struggle or he had been carried and deposited up against the retaining wall. Because when you're carrying a body that's, let's say, lifeless or unconscious, you know, the shirt's going to get disheveled. Buttons might be popped.

out of their normal position. And at least with what I can see, you know, this appears to be somebody who likely, you know, walked up to that retaining wall and just laid down. This is what makes the story so complicated.

Okay, let's go back to where we are with the investigation. So the doctor is stymied and he says, I know there's blood everywhere in, you know, congested stomach and his spleen is three times its normal size. He could not figure out

what this man died of. So he says that he died of heart failure, even though his heart was the best organ he had. Does that make any sense? Or is that a throw your hands up? I don't have anything else to say. This must be it. Well, you know, everybody's

Everybody thinks about heart failure like a myocardial infarction where there's a blockage that at autopsy, the pathologist would readily be able to find. But you can also have electrical issues with your heart. And so you get into like a ventricular fibrillation where the heart is no longer effectively pumping. And this can cause death.

but is not going to be something that is readily detectable because it's really just the electrical signal of the heart gets screwed up. Okay. And there may be other aspects that a pathologist would see that would be a clue that it would be this issue, but it's going to be a difficult thing

thing to really detect that autopsy. And so he's throwing a dart at the wall going, well, I'm not finding anything, but this is a possibility. Maybe he did have, you know, one of these atrial ventricular, you know, fibrillations where it's just like, nope, you know, he just could no longer continue, lay down against the wall, and then over time just died. Well, the doctor, I think, says essentially something is strange. And so he put

Heart failure, but that he felt like it was unnatural. So somebody caused this man's heart to stop. He suspects what you said, a poisoning. So they take blood samples and they send off the blood samples and it comes back and everybody's waiting to get the results. And they say, we couldn't find anything.

There's no common poison. That's, I think, a key, though. No common poison. So they couldn't say definitively there's nothing happening. They could not detect a specific poison. Now, what I didn't know...

that I think you can tell me. Is it right that you have to actually say, "I want to test for this? Okay. I want to now test for this. Okay." There's not like a catch-all, just come up with any poison that is in this person's system, is there? No. Even to this day, there isn't a catch-all process. Screening tests today can screen for certain classes of drugs in one screening test.

And oftentimes, pathologists, if they're not sure of what is the cause of death, but they think it is a toxic substance, then they will go after the most common screening test with the hope that it narrows down onto a drug that was ingested.

Now, also, the clinical findings at autopsy are significant. The observation of the congestion of the brain and the blood in the stomach and everything else, the pathologist will be taking a look at, well, which poisons can cause these symptoms, and then will request the lab to screen specifically for those poisons. So it is possible that the pathologist didn't ask for the right screening test, but we're also talking 1948.

If you think about the improvement in toxicology screening, this is in the decades where there were advances being made and you're starting to see some instrumental analyses being done. It's not just qualitative chemistry, microcrystalline tests as an example. They now are able to do that.

additional types of testing, but they weren't very sensitive. And when it comes to poisons, typically offenders utilize poisons in which it doesn't require a lot of that poison to kill somebody. And chances are there's a possibility they screened for the right substance, but they couldn't detect it because it was too low in this man's system. Mm-hmm.

So I want to make sure I understand just where you stand right now. There is a chance that this could have happened naturally or this could have been a poisoning. Is that right? Is it like a 50-50 at this point based on what you know about the congestion throughout the body and the blood? No, you know, I think that when I was talking about

the, you know, let's say it was an electrical issue with the heart. That was kind of an isolated thought related to pathologist attributing the cause of death to heart failure, but not finding cardiovascular disease. Yeah. But taken the totality of the findings that autopsy showed,

This does seem to be OK. There is something that is systemic in this man's system. Now, poisoning is one thing. We know that there's viruses that can cause significant organ damage, you know, and is there something weird like that going on? You know, and this man just happened to, you know, succumb to this virus while he was on the beach.

But generally, those diseases take time to develop and the person is feeling ill. So the likelihood of him just out wandering around in a suit with all the stuff on while he's sick seems unlikely. You know, it seems more likely that he has a poison and now it's hitting him while he's in this area.

Well, that's what investigators think. They think that he has been killed by some sort of undetectable or fast-acting poison that didn't show up in the test, just like you said. And the kind of enduring mystery around this man in identifying him has often come back to the idea that he was a spy. Right.

And that there's some reasons why people think that, that I'll tell you in just a little bit. I think it's the way he's dressed. He doesn't fit in the way that he has found the mystery around the way he has found. And also keep in mind, this is just a few years after World War II and the Cold War is coming.

So there were spy stories all over the place. This does not help the situation at all with the police. They are trying to figure out what is going on. And they latch onto the idea that he had this bus ticket. And they go to the station where he would have arrived on the bus. And they find, after looking a very long time and talking to the porters there, an unclaimed suitcase that has been checked on November 30th.

And they look inside and they find things that they think connect this suitcase to their John Doe. And the things inside are so odd. And I have a photo of the contents. But again, back to victimology here. There was supplies for stenciling that would have been common for somebody who was in the U.S. Navy, which they thought was very confusing. There were articles of clothing that the tags and the labels had been cut out.

which wouldn't have been uncommon because in rationing with World War II, people were buying secondhand clothes all the time and cutting the names out. But there are three shirts with a name, T. Keene, so T. Keene, handwritten inside. And they are looking desperately for T. Keene, and they can't find T. Keene at all. So they are getting these clues that become more and more sort of befuddling to the police.

They start doing a little bit of profiling just based on his face. They think he looks European. They don't think he looks Australian or American in that way. I'm not quite sure what they think are the features that would make him more European than anything else. That seems like a dangerous prospect, no? Yeah, you know, and when you first showed me the photos of his face, my initial thought is he looked older than 45, right?

But we're also talking about an era where people weren't wearing sun protection at all ever, you know, so prematurely aging. Now, this the suitcase is is there anything about the suitcase that also suggests that it originated out of the United States?

That is about it. The U.S. Navy stenciling. And they never find a good answer for that. But let me show you the suitcase real quick and the contents inside the suitcase. So you could see the suitcase. It's big and there's a lot of odd items. There's some more in there. There's a shoe shine. It looks like a shoe shine wax there.

a lot of different items, but an odd assortment. What's your impression of some of the things that are found in here? - Well, this photo is showing the suitcase in the backdrop. It almost to me looks like a very large briefcase. - Yeah. - It's got the two latches, it's got a handle, it has what appears to be an evidence tag.

And then a pile of assorted tools almost. Yeah, there's tools. There's the Kiwi brand shoe polish, which I didn't realize Kiwi has been around that long. I've used that many times on my work shoes over the years. Yep.

Odd pieces of fabric, like in strips, you know, a little green container. It almost looks like one of these travel soap containers, plastic containers that is clamshell like. But yeah, I would want to be able to sit down and really study

you know, everything that's in here so I could get a better sense because I'm most of the stuff I'm not even able to identify the way that it's piled up all the various tools of the wooden handled tools, etc. I don't know what those are. Yeah. I also see a toothbrush or appears to be a rectangular case that's close on the left hand side that's closest to briefcases black and

rectangular case. That looks like about the size of a case that would contain like a straight razor, you know, the old-fashioned razors that one would use. But it is an odd assortment. Now, outside of this was at the station where the victim had a bus ticket to, do they have anything else that...

conclusively ties the suitcase to the victim. There is a unique waxy thread that was found on his clothing. And this type of thread, which I'm not 100% sure what it was used for, is also found in this case.

And also it went unclaimed on the same day that his ticket says he arrived in Somerton. So they're making the assumption. I think that the ties match like it all seems to kind of come together and they're just making an assumption that this belongs to him. I guess this waxy thread was very unusual. OK.

You know, of course, today, like I see a spoon that was in the side of the suitcase, you know, I'd be pursuing DNA testing to see if the victim's DNA was on these objects. Toothbrush would be great. Toothbrushes are hit or miss, believe it or not. But yes, that's another source of potential DNA. And just for confidence that the suitcase and the objects in there are positively tied to the victim. So I know any leads there.

that develop from these objects, I have confidence that it's something that's connected versus I'm just chasing down a lead that has no bearing on the victim whatsoever. They are saying, the police are saying, we are sure that this belongs to him. And I can tell you now, knowing all the information, this belongs to him.

So you can make assumptions however you want based on the material, knowing that this is his suitcase. This man, we don't know who the man is yet. So, okay. Kate just telling me the suitcase is conclusively tied to the victim and therefore it must be tied to the victim. Okay.

This is a leap of faith with me, Paul. Trust me, this is the suitcase. I know I throw red herrings at you sometimes. This is the real deal. This is the trauma you've done to me over this past season. Trauma. Experience the glamour and danger of the roaring 20s from the palm of your hand in

In June's Journey, you have the chance to solve a captivating murder mystery and reveal deep-seated family secrets. Use your keen eye and detective skills to guide June Parker through this thrilling hidden object mystery game. June's Journey is a mobile game that follows June Parker, a New York socialite living in London. Play as June Parker and investigate beautifully detailed scenes of the 1920s

while uncovering the mystery of her sister's murder. There are twists, turns, and catchy tunes, all leading you deeper into the thrilling storyline. This is your chance to test your detective skills. And if you play well enough, you could make it to the detective club

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Discover your inner detective when you download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android. That's June's Journey. Download the game for free on iOS and Android. So they do something that I think is always interesting. They make a plaster bust of

of the man's facial features because, of course, they're trying to figure out who this person is. I've always found this fascinating. I've seen there are death masks and there are also live, what they call live masks. The people I write about, Edward Ruloff, Burke and Hare, have all had this done to them. So this was used for identification.

and here is his plaster of Paris mask. And it looks like they did the majority of his body. And of course, they did it directly on his body. So this is something that they distributed throughout the media to try to identify this man. And frankly, to calm people down who thought that there was a spy in this area of Australia. And what is going on? Yeah, you know, I am perplexed on why they even bothered to do this. He was in...

Such good condition. I know. Those photos of him, from my perspective, are so much better to put out there to the public to identify than this, unless they're concerned about the fact that he's dead in those photos. I know that doesn't offend you. Believe it or not, it would offend most people, especially in the 1940s. You know, an artist, though, could be...

exactly replicate his face based on those photos to go in there versus doing this entire casting process. That's a lot of effort. I know. And I'm not sure it gives you anything, you know, even though if you rotate this three-dimensional bust, you know, of course,

We see the world in three dimensions. So being able to see this bus from different angles might trigger somebody say, oh, I saw that man here. I know who that man is versus looking at a two dimensional photo.

But they're doing this and distributing it to the public. And so they're making it two dimensional. Yeah, it's odd. I mean, it's not helpful. It doesn't seem like I'm kind of curious how it could be. But OK. So in 1949, he's buried. And remember, he was discovered in 1948 at the end of the year. So he's buried. And a few weeks into the investigation, there is a clue that pops up.

Inexplicably, they miss something on his body in the pants, and they find it several weeks later, which I hate to be hard on investigators in the 1940s, but I'm not sure how they would have missed this. So there is a fob pocket. Do you know what a fob pocket is? Hmm.

No, but I'm sure you're going to tell me. I actually knew before this story because my dad used to have pants that had this. It's a tiny, tiny little pocket that you use to hold a pocket watch and it's on your pants. And you've seen them. You just didn't know they were called a Bob pocket. Okay. That is correct. Yep. So inside the pocket, they had missed this. This is a couple of weeks later. There is a piece of paper folded up inside the pocket.

And it says, and I'm going to go slowly with all of these translations. It says, which is printed. It's not handwritten. It's something that's been taken out of a book. And detectives learn that this phrase is Farsi. And it means it is ended or it is finished or finished. And it's been ripped from the last page of a fairly popular book,

called The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. And I know I butchered that. I'm sorry. It's a book of poems that were published in the 11th century exploring death and the afterlife.

And this was, during the 1940s, a popular book. So this was not unusual. It was odd that this one section that is translated to say, it is finished, is put in this dead man's pocket. Either he did it or somebody else did it as what, like a sign or a message? Yeah, you know, that is bizarre. And it gets worse. This gets way worse. There's all kinds of

weird things about this. Just so you know, I don't want you to relax very much because there are weirder things with this story. Well, you know, of course,

This is an important piece of evidence. But at the same time, is it related to his death? That is part of the complexity in many of these whodunit cases is oftentimes, you know, people are just living their normal lives and there's an innocent explanation for the types of like indicia that's found in their pockets. But sometimes it can be overinterpreted as being related to his death. This Farsi phrase says,

is suspicious, you know, that it's in his pocket and he dies. It's odd. It's something that I have to pay attention to. But also now if we are in this realm of spy versus spy, you know, is there invisible writing on this? You know, is there indented writing? Is there something there that has more information that

And that this was just a way to disguise the buried or hidden information on this piece of paper. Well, I have more confusing information, so I'm going to try to go slowly and don't say anything until I finish because it's quite a little trail we have to go down. You're shutting me up then. I need you to be quiet for just a minute because I know you're going to ask questions. And then when I say nothing could be determined, then you could start talking about that.

Yes, ma'am. Okay. So a little while later, after they start circulating this information to the public, someone comes forward. And it's a man who says that he was completely freaked out because his car was parked with the windows down very close to where this man was found on Somerton Beach. The man who owned the car went out for a swim. His windows were down. He came back

And there was a copy of that book, a rare copy of that 1941 book, The Rubaiyat. And they look, and of course, that little page is missing with that phrase. They look at the book, and they say, this is obviously the book. He said, I don't own this book. Someone obviously threw it into the back of my car. He's cleared before you even ask. He's been cleared. He's not involved with this.

And they look at the book and they see the strip of paper is gone. So this is obviously a match to them. Then they find a phone number scrawled on the book's back cover as well as something that looks like a code. And this is why people are freaked out about this story and still kind of are when you get more information, is it looks like there's a secret code inside.

The FBI, Scotland Yard, everyone you could think of is trying to break this code. And I have a photo of the code. So now we really are in spy versus spy. But they can't determine what it means. Now you can talk.

Oh, this is fascinating. So there's I think there's two perspectives to look at this. The victim himself was carrying this book and the message in the book is what's important here.

And he recognized that he had been poisoned, he was going to die. So he secreted this book near where he died. And it just so happened that there was this car here with open windows. And then he had torn that piece of paper to be a clue to whoever discovered his body to look for that book. And of course, the owner of the car comes forward and is able to put two and two together on that front.

Or the other perspective is, is that whoever poisoned this man, and I'm assuming that that is what the investigation, the investigators feel, is

happened to the victim is that they're the ones that, in essence, threw this book into this car and either placed this piece of paper in his pocket and this was a message to somebody, whatever that message is, but they wanted that connection between the victim and that book.

But why not just leave the book by the body? It is odd. But I think you have to look at it from both perspectives. Either the victim did it or an offender did it. And really, that's the question we're drilling down to. I think we can rule out an accident. It doesn't seem like an accident. I think probably we can rule out natural causes, although I know you believe that it could be a virus.

But things get weirder and weirder. Yeah, you know, and at this point, with the context of the case, the victimology, everything else, I'm ruling out, you know, some disease state caused all this, the systemic. I do think that some external toxin did this. And I'm running through certain things in my head. And I'm wondering, did they ever test the cigarettes for a toxin?

No, that would have been smart. I don't think they did. I don't think they did. I think they were just looking at the blood and, you know, any of the organs or anything. I'm going to show you right now, though, the code, which we don't know is a code. But the FBI and Scotland Yard certainly are trying to work on it. And they are coming up empty with this code. And they just said this just doesn't look like anything we've ever seen. And this has been examined for decades.

And current codebreakers say this doesn't look like anything we've ever seen, and it might not be anything. Right. You know, and of course, the code, everything that I'm seeing in this code, it's one, two, three, four. You've got five lines of what appear all to be uppercase English letters.

Obviously, it's not a simple substitution cipher. Otherwise, it would have been cracked very quickly. What I do know, just with the Zodiac cipher, is that the Zodiac ciphers that have been able to be recently cracked using modern computer algorithms and individuals that are high-level experts when it comes to cryptology...

is that you do need to have a fair amount of the code in order to be able to crack it. And I'm looking at this

And each line is roughly eight or nine letters long. You hope that they're utilizing the same code throughout, you know, for each line. But each line by itself is about the same length of the Zodiac cipher that to this day they have not been able to crack.

because it's too short. And so I'm wondering if that's the issue here. You know, and this is where getting some of these high-end cryptology experts on this today, it would be fascinating to see if they could do something with this code. I'm assuming you're going to tell me they've done modern work on this or... They have. And it's still a mystery. Okay. It's a mystery. It's a big mystery. Well, one other point that I just want to make, though, as you think about World War II, you

You know, the Germans were using the Enigma machine, you know, and this was a very complex cipher that the Allies weren't able to crack until he got their hands on this machine. You know, so even back during this era, you know, there was sophisticated cipher technique.

that probably without having the key, you know, modern instrumentation, modern computers likely would not be able to crack. It is so confusing and throws the investigation into a tailspin because once this gets out in the media, you can imagine that

The fear that this causes, the spy and who's out there and can we trust anybody? And it really was sort of fear mongering in a way. OK, so let's move through here again. We've got this book with the page gone. We've got this bizarre code that we don't even know if is a code or not. And we have a phone number. So the investigators want to know whose phone this is. And they track it down to a 27 year old nurse who's

a woman named Jo Thompson. And she's about five minutes from where the Somerton man's body was discovered.

They go to her house. She says, I don't want to talk to you. She says, I don't know who this guy is. I don't know why he has my phone number. I don't know how that book ended up in the car. But she says she does know the book, but so did everybody. This was a very popular book in the 1940s. She said she had given a 1945 copy to an army officer named Alf Boxall.

And she says, you know, maybe he has something to do with this. He was rumored to be in the Army's intelligence unit. So now when the media gets a hold of this, this becomes a very big story. She's also a little nervous because a man has been poking around her house and, you know, nothing has happened. But people have seen this strange man kind of in and around the outside of her house.

So she's alarmed. And this is, of course, even more intriguing to the public. So the police eventually try to track down Alf Boxall. He is not the man who was found on the beach. He is alive.

And they are at a dead end yet again because we cannot identify this man still. And, you know, it's been a year or two so far while the police are working this case. Yeah. And you mentioned that Boxall was Army intelligence. Is that Australian Army intelligence? Yeah. So not American, as we were talking about. So we haven't found any real indicator of his nationality.

Yeah. So this woman, I imagine they must have done a fairly significant background check on her. Do you know what her occupation was? She was a nurse and just didn't want to talk to the police. They showed her the plaster bust of the man. She had a very strong reaction, they said. She seemed fearful and nervous and she almost fainted.

And they think that she knew the man. But she says, I don't recognize him. I have no idea who this person is. But again, you know, the only connection we have is Alf Boxall, who's alive. Mm-hmm.

and says, I don't know anything about this case. And that's it. Yeah, you know, she most certainly could be a participant in some sort of intelligence activity and hiding that fact. This is local law enforcement that's hitting her up. You know, she's working, let's say, for Australian intelligence or maybe some other, you know, government. She's not going to say, oh, you know, she's probably having to stay silent for national security concerns or whatever operation is going on. But

But there's also this phone number. Let's say, let's make an assumption that she is not a participant in any of this type of activity related to the crime. That phone number may have just been provided to the victim in order to call that phone to gain access to that property. Hey, you know, I'm blah, blah, blah, whatever the ruse would be, because there's something on that property that the victim needed to obtain. Yeah.

And, you know, if this man had been murdered and this was the killer's book, not the man's book, but the killer's book, you know, she might not have any idea who this person is. He could know her. She could not suspect that somebody in her life would have done this. There's just a host of possibilities. But Alf produces the book that Joe had given him. And there's no page ripped out. There's no there's nothing. I mean, this is the book. Her story is checking out.

She is freaked out though. And she says to the police, "Please do not release my name. I don't need to be involved with any of this. I'm worried about my family."

And I'm worried about my young son and the impact that it's going to have on him. So I would expect that you've heard that a lot. I mean, are there people who are just desperate to stay out of this and not even out of fear for their life, but just scared to death of media attention in general? I mean, not everybody's out there bragging that they've been involved or a witness or anything in a crime case.

No, this is common. You know, in terms of witnesses who do not want any attention whatsoever, they'll request, I don't want my name in the case file. I don't want to be called to court and all sorts of different reasons why. You know, some of them are involved in their own criminal activity. They don't want that exposed. Sometimes they're a witness because they're visiting somebody they shouldn't and they happen to be

you know, talked to and they're like, my significant other will find out, you know, that I was over here. You know, there's so many different reasons why people do not want to be a part of this. So it's not surprising that this nurse is not wanting to be a participant in the investigation.

That doesn't put up any red flags. And you think if she says, yeah, there's been some man that's been poking around my house. Now, you know, she knows that there's a dead guy that had access to her phone number. You could see where what's going to happen to me. You know, I could see where there'd be genuine fear. Yeah. She was very afraid. She did not want to be identified. And as the police continue to try to work this case, there are fewer and fewer leads. And eventually it goes cold.

And it is dormant for decades and decades until we have a superhero in this case. And I love the superheroes. And we like to brag about them because these are people who come forward with resources who care about this story. There is an engineering professor at the University of Adelaide, and he decides to take up this case 50 years later.

He said, I think we can figure out what happened in this case. So this is quite a journey. We have come out of the 1940s and are now into the early 2000s when Derek Abbott takes this case. He reads about it in an article. He's from the area. He lives in this area. And he's instantly sucked in and he says, maybe we can figure this out. So he zeroes in on the phone number found on the back of that book.

And they had not identified Joe. Remember, she told the police, absolutely not. The media never figured out who she was. So remember, this is the 2000s. So Professor Abbott takes these old phone books and looks, and it takes him forever, weeks, to look at each number, and he finally finds Joe.

and he finds out who she is. One, and I don't know how you feel about this, he really was focused on Jo Thompson and saying, there's no way this is a coincidence. She had to have been connected to this case. So this is what he does, and this is a big leap.

He says, I wonder if she's connected because of her son, because it's not clear who Robin, the son, who Robin's father was. And Robin, the boy, would have been a baby when this happened. And that year, he finds out that Joe had been living with a long-term partner who she later married, but she had been pregnant before they got together. So Joe's husband was not Robin's biological father.

So this is a big leap of faith that turns out to be pretty interesting. I mean, is that just guessing and going on a whim? Or, I mean, does this seem logical to you? She has to be involved, doesn't she? I wouldn't say she has to be involved. I think it's just a consideration. It's just, you know, it's a lead. You have to follow the lead to the end. You know, the son connected through this very young boy at the time of the crime, and

Obviously, the boy's not going to be involved in the case. And so saying, well, who's the boy's father? And is that the reason why that phone number was present? And maybe it is this male that has at least, I'm assuming, access into the house, lives there off and on or lives there permanently. So I think that is just a logical conclusion that this professor made. Yeah.

Yeah, he's really grasping at straws, except he's getting some pretty good evidence here. And here's why. This just seems much more than a coincidence. He finds out that the Somerton man, the unidentified man, and the boy, Robin, Joe's son, have two unique genetic features that they share.

One is hypodontia, which is missing teeth. It's a dental disorder that's only present in 2% of the population. I have a photo of the teeth. 2%, that just seems for them to share that and be in the same town, that just seems incredible or am I really overblowing this? Yeah.

Well, obviously, you know, the rareness of this dental condition is something that you have to pay attention to. But as I've experienced, coincidences do occur. So I can't put too much weight on it. So, you know, one thing that that I did see about this hypodontia is that it is considered congenital and that it can be passed through generations.

So now you have this man and this boy sharing this relatively rare congenital condition. So that, of course, could indicate that this man could be the biological father. But I wouldn't rely upon that. I would be doing DNA testing such as a paternity test to be able to do that.

There's one other thing I told you. There's two really odd features that these two people share. Another is a unique ear feature. They both have upper ear hollows that are larger than their lower ones. And apparently this is very unusual.

That also only affects 1% to 2% of the population. ABC Australia, which is a huge network, said the chance of coincidence is estimated at between 1 in 10,000 and 1 in 20,000. Of these two things happening with two people in the same area. Well, it is interesting. Now, those particular features, like the hypodontia being congenital, oftentimes there's other features associated

that coexist with hypodontia. And so if this ear feature is linked to hypodontia, for me, it's more important to determine people who have hypodontia, what percentage of them also have this ear feature. And so I wouldn't draw the conclusion that the presence of these two unusual features is

is highly significant unless they were completely unlinked genetically.

And then that becomes a little bit more significant because now it's just like what we do in DNA when we do population statistics is we need to have the various markers in the DNA to be unlinked. So if you inherit one marker, you're not more likely to inherit another marker. And this allows us to be able to generate statistics using what we call the product rule. The same thing with these phenotypic features, the hypodontia as well as the ears, you're

Are they unlinked? If they are, then yes, the presence of this adult man and this boy, that really starts to get me to lean towards, okay, he appears to possibly be the biological father. Just to throw in another little bit of oddness here, Robin, gladiator.

Grows up to be a ballet dancer, which everybody said they thought perhaps the Somerton Man was a ballet dancer because of those really long, strong legs of his. So these three things together really encourages the photo that I'm about to show you, which is...

A fantastic dual photo of the Somerton man alongside Robin for you to be able to look at and say definitively, oh yeah, they're totally related. These guys are definitely related. So here's the photo. It's very eerie. They actually do look a lot alike to me.

What do you think? Yeah, you know, this photo, I'm seeing the profile of the Somerton man next to Robin. Robin's, you know, his face is more turned towards the camera in his photo. I mean, there is similarity in terms of the facial features, the prominent nose, the shape of the nose that I can discern. You know, I'm looking at Robin's ears versus Somerton man's ears. And, you know...

Right now, those features, I would just dismiss. I can't draw any type of conclusion on that. But, you know, I do see, you know, some similarities. I personally would never put weight on that. For me, it's like, what does the DNA say? I want to know the DNA. Right.

No, I agree with you. But this theory really propels Professor Abbott to keep going. This has been important to him. He thinks that if this is what happened, he thinks that perhaps Somerton Man came down to see Joe and Robin the son, and maybe he died for just a random reason on the beach. It was a natural cause. We don't know what happened.

But that she didn't want to identify him. He's not saying she killed him. I think he's saying she did not want to be involved because she knew him. She knew the paternity of Robin. She didn't want to upset the partner she was with to say the father of my son is dead on a beach. I mean, that would be upsetting to anybody.

This is his strongest theory so far. But this man, Professor Abbott, our hero, goes for 20 years and pursues this case until he finally gets some answers. And I will tell you, this is not the answer. This is not what the conclusion is.

Yeah. You know, part of the early investigation, you know, if they're trying to find a link between the victim and the nurse, Joe, they're going to be talking to neighbors. You know, they're of course, you would think somebody would be coming forward saying, yeah, he would be coming over. And they obviously didn't find anything like that. No, this is all conjecture from Professor Abbott. And that's it. This is just his best guess.

of a case that happened more than 50 years earlier. Sure. And I do want to say, I think it's a reasonable idea to pursue for sure. Yeah. It's the closest we have as of right now until 2018. And now we're going to start talking your language. Derek Abbott is tired of not knowing definitively what happened. So he links up with a forensic genealogist.

and her name is Colleen Fitzpatrick. And he says to her, what do we need to figure this out? And she said, do we have anything of his? Do we have any hair samples? And he says, well, I don't have a brush. We have combs, but there was nothing there and they weren't preserved.

And she and he figure something out. They did that bust. Remember I told you the plastered bust that was important? Yeah. There's hair in it because they did it on his body. And there's hair caught, and the hair is what saves the day over a four-year period. So here's the way this unravels. In 2018, they extract hair samples from the bust, which had been done 60 years earlier in

And they were at the South Australia Police Museum. They go into the museum. This is like my dream.

There's just something sitting there in plain sight that you can then take. I mean, first of all, I'm shocked that something that has not been properly preserved has the veracity, I guess, to be used. And it works to an extent. It works. So I'm surprised that something sitting in a museum could be used. Are you? No, not at all. You know, this is where...

They created the bust. It's an intimate contact with the victim's body. And of course, the hairs get trapped in the casting material.

It doesn't surprise me that those hairs would survive all these years. And DNA, when properly preserved, is a very hardy molecule. You know, one of the things that if I were looking at that bust to get the victim's DNA is, in addition to those hairs, I'd be swabbing the mouth. I'd be swabbing the nose areas because you're going to get a lot more DNA from those areas than out of those hairs.

But they did a great job by thinking of the bust. If there was no other physical items from the victim that had been preserved since 1948. So that, what a, you know, first stroke of luck and what a brilliant thought. Oh, yeah. It's such dedication from Professor Abbott with all of this. So first, they are able to extract a mitochondrial genome of the Somerton man, and they're able to get his race and

But they're not able to point conclusively to his identity until they extract additional DNA just last year from more hair. The forensic genealogist was able to build out a family tree of 4000 people. And finally, they land on a name using descendants on both sides of his family.

The man's name was Carl Webb. So this is a name we had not heard before. And now we're going to find out, is Carl Webb a spy? Was he the father of Robin Thompson? How did he know Joe? You know, all of this stuff that happens. So this is all from being able to take this strand of hair and extracting DNA and working incredibly hard. They were able to use

Carl Webb's siblings being able to cross-reference all of this. So it was a remarkable work. Just, I mean, I'm amazed that this could have happened 60 years later. Yeah, well, this is genetic genealogy. Part of the advances since 2018 and Golden State Killer is the ability to start getting DNA from rootless hairs. And in all likelihood,

They probably use Dr. Ed Green's lab, who has a specialty in going after rootless hairs and has been highly successful. You have to get that genealogy compatible DNA profile first before you can start using the genealogy to identify your unknown person. And so now this case, that's what, 60, 70 years old. The technology is there to be able to do this.

So let me tell you about Carl Webb, who went by Charles. He was born in November of 1905, 43. So the doctor was pretty accurate. He said around 45. So this guy's 43. He is not American. He is Australian. He was born in Victoria. And he was living at the time of his death in Melbourne, Australia.

And he had worked as an electrical technician and an instrument maker. The investigators were off because they thought he was a foreigner and very, very wealthy. And Carl was not. He was kind of middle class and someone who was detached from his family. To me, this is where it gets a little bit sad. We don't know anything that happened to Carl after 1947 happened.

Because there's no day of death. That's how they know, partially besides the DNA, that this is definitively him. There's no date of death. There's no death certificate. He just drops off after 1947, and he was found dead in 1948. So at the time of his death, the family was very fragmented. His parents were dead. He had a brother and a nephew who had died in World War II.

And he had a brother who was very ill. He had a sister who died in 1955. So seven years after his death, she didn't know he died. And she left him a lot of money in her will, which is just so sad. You know, of course, the attorney went looking for him and couldn't find him. And they just assumed that he was living somewhere else. But he really didn't seem to have anybody alive.

who was attached to him. A couple of interesting things. Remember T. Keene? That was the name written on the labels inside of a few of the shirts that were found inside Carl's suitcase. Right. Right. So we didn't know who this was. And this is why I could tell you that this was certainly his suitcase.

So it turns out that T. Keene was actually Thomas Keene, and that was Carl Webb's brother-in-law. And he had given him some clothing. And so eventually that's how in 2022, once they figured out his true identity, they were able to put some pieces together. So now Professor Abbott has another theory about why Carl might have been in this area of Australia. He told ABC Australia that we have evidence that he separated from his wife and that

She moved down there and he was in Melbourne. And Professor Abbott thinks that Carl went down there to find her, to track her down. And I think there are so many odd things. You know, we don't know about the code. They didn't talk to the wife. The wife's been long dead. We don't understand what the code is. And as I said, there were contemporary code breakers who said, we don't think this is a code. And actually, Professor Abbott thought, tell me what you think of this. He thinks it was just like a note somewhere.

that Carl might have made like people would put down the first initial of horses in a horse race that they had heard were good, that this was just sort of some sort of personal code to him that it wasn't some Cold War spy versus spy thing happening. He basically said, I don't think it's that deep.

Well, you know, just the code itself. I think anything is on the table in terms of exactly what it is. But you can't remove that from the context of the circumstances of the case.

You still have the folded up piece of paper out of the book in Carl's pocket. You have the book that's been thrown into a nearby car to be discovered by the driver of that car. He has a suitcase at a station. Mm-hmm.

And you don't have anybody from the family that has been in contact with Carl for over a year. Yeah. On one hand, it sounds like he's somewhat semi-transient, but he also has expensive cigarettes. Yeah, and a nice suit. And a nice suit. Nobody in the family comes forward when they push out the image of the bust in the newspapers. Right.

even though the family is still somewhat local in this part of Australia, right? So Carl's been identified and they're taking a look at, well, these are his known occupations. I still can't resolve the circumstances surrounding his death. And let's say we go back to the idea of him being a spy. It's not like that's just going to be written somewhere, right?

Right. You know, so, you know, at least at this point, you know, and you may end up telling me something down the road. If I'm

Still investigating this case today, I can't resolve the circumstances of his death and just say, oh, it's just natural. We'll probably never know because I'm assuming he's been cremated or... He's been buried. He was buried. At this point, do I have a homicide? On a case this old, is it even worth...

going through the exclamation process to identify a potential offender that is likely dead. But it is something that for me, it's like, what is the cause of his death? If he has a poison in his system, then there's something very sinister going on. Those cigarettes are still around. I think they need to test those cigarettes because you can poison somebody through inhalation.

But you can also take your own life by taking poison. What we know, what we know, I think if we're looking at the simplest explanation, first of all, let's get this off the table. He is not the father of Robin Thompson. He was not the father. They did a DNA match and no, wasn't him. Why Joe's phone number was in this book, I have no idea. And they were never able to figure that out. But he is not Robin's father. Yeah.

So I think there's that. I think there's also the theory Professor Abbott wonders if his cause of death was actually he's had a couple of people mention this to him. Physitional asphyxiation because of the way that he was sitting. Does that make sense, too? I mean, somebody who's in despair, who has some poison or no poison at all, and he has heart troubles and he sits on the beach and just dies.

Well, positional asphyxia most certainly happens. Now, in my experience, it's usually when somebody is so inebriated that they get themselves into a position and they don't recognize they can't get themselves out of that position. And then they, in essence, they asphyxiate. Mm-hmm.

Right now, I think there's too many unanswered questions to write off Carl's death as being anything else besides homicide. And that's where, you know, I come out of this world. It's a homicide until proven otherwise. And at this point, with the information you've provided me, I'm going I'm still leaning towards homicide.

Well, for his part, Professor Abbott has come to his own conclusions. He said there's little evidence that he was a Cold War spy. He didn't know anybody except his ex-wife in the area from what anybody said. He was in a mental health crisis, it sounded like, over the divorce and might have been stalking her. We don't know. He followed her down and

you know, to find her on the beach. You know, we also come back to that little piece of paper, Temam Shud, which meant finished. He thinks it was a suicide note. He feels like he took something and that was the end of it. It can't be identified what he took.

but that he was, this was a man in despair. That's what he concludes, but he's also not a forensic investigator. So we're talking about two different things. I think that's the simple explanation. I certainly think there are other explanations that are much more exciting than that one, but that also is an explanation. It is a reasonable conclusion, but I,

I still feel that there's too many unanswered questions for me to be able to say or be comfortable in saying it is definitively a suicide. I would personally keep it open as homicide until I got more information. It's just, you know, seven years later, the likelihood of getting more information and answering some of these questions is

is unlikely. I think there's still a mystery surrounding this guy. Yeah, Professor Abbott reached out to his descendants and nobody had any new information. I mean, he was very isolated, it sounded like. And it sounded like he became more and more isolated as his marriage was falling apart.

I'll take a different tact from you because what I believe is that he probably went and found his wife. She said, bug off. I'm not interested in you anymore. You know, we're done. And in despair, he got something. I don't know what that would be. And that was the end of it for him.

I don't know why he had the suitcase at the bus station. Maybe he kept it. That was just a place for him to store it to figure out if he was even going to stay. I don't know why. You know, he had very expensive cigarettes in an inexpensive casing. I don't know why there's these weird letters if he was playing the ponies. We don't have a lot of answers here.

It is a mystery and it has been a big mystery in this part of Australia, but really to have answers and from an engineering professor who just said, we're going to figure this out and pursued this for 20 years. I think it's pretty remarkable because, you know, we talk about these old cases and, well, does it make a difference? It does. It always makes a difference.

to identify somebody and to have that conclusion. I believe everybody's life should be, you know, recognized for better or for worse and to just sort of be lost and buried with no marker really or

If there's a marker not having the correct identification there is very sad. So I'm glad that, for better or for worse, whatever Professor Abbott believes, that he was able to come to some kind of a conclusion here, even if what actually happened is a mystery. This case also underscores, you know, how important it is to identify your victim, to really do a thorough investigation.

Imagine how easy it would have been if they could have gotten Carl's name early on. They could go contact the ex-wife and say, hey, was he here? What was his demeanor like? And start really piecing things together and maybe, you know, conclude, yeah, this is truly a suicide. Now, you can't do that. Everybody's dead. You can't backtrack, you know, and try to figure out what was going on in Carl's head at this point in time.

Yeah. Boy, I'm uncomfortable with unsolved cases. I know that's your bread and butter, but it is not mine. And I throw these in. They just make me, I love a good conclusion. I do want to give a nod to you. And I know your love of cold cases and unsolved cases. So I'm going to throw these in every once in a while. This was a good one. It absolutely is. You know, it's a fascinating story. And, you know, almost as you're telling it, I was having, you know, flashes of like a James Bond movie. And

And, you know, kind of still going, well, maybe that's, you know, maybe, maybe, or it was just, yeah, just a guy down on his luck and took his own life. Yeah. Well, another case next week, Paul Holes, be here or be, what is it? It's be there, be square. That's it. I do not want to be square, so I will be there. How's that? Thanks.

This has been an Exactly Right production. For our sources and show notes, go to exactlyrightmedia.com slash buriedbones sources. Our senior producer is Alexis Amorosi. Research by Maren McClashen and Kate Winkler-Dawson. Our mixing engineer is Liana Squilacci. Our theme song is by Tom Breivogel. Our art

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