The Somerton Man

An unidentified man was discovered on a beach in Somerton Park in 1948. He was wearing dress clothes and had pristine shoes, despite being on the beach.

The cause of death was thought to be poison, and a very suspicious note was found on him. What kind of conspiracy could be tied to the Somerton man?

Would you help a man that seemed a little out of place?

Are there messages sent that the public never realizes?

What happened to an Australian man on the 1st of December?

What is up, Bizarros? This week we try to figure out The Somerton Man’s Identity.

 The Mystery Of The Somerton Man

On December 1st, 1948, a man was found dead on Somerton Beach.

Somerton is a beach in Australia it’s near the city of Adelaide. The beach is located southwest along the coastline.

The mysterious man’s death and identity rocked the small city at the time because this type of thing did not happen.

Two people riding horseback called the police at 6 a.m.

The well-dressed man was found propped up in a sitting position against the wall in the sand of the Australian Beach.

This was not a usual case; the way they found him was extremely bizarre. He wore a nice clean suit and polished shoes. The autopsy found him to be in his early 40s.

In his pocket, he had a bus ticket that was bought somewhere else and going to a different location other than Somerton. This scrap of paper seemed to imply that he was not in Somerton the night before. He also had a train ticket to the nearby Henley Beach. But this ticket had not been used.

He also had in his pocket an aluminum comb, a half-empty pack of gum, a box of matches, and a pack of Army Club brand cigarettes, but the brand of cigarettes inside the pack was actually Kensitas.

Who Was The Somerton Man?

After police talked with the locals, they learned that the people on horseback were not the first to see the man sitting there. Several people said the saw this man sitting against the wall the night before and assumed he was sleeping or just drunk.

A couple even said they saw him around 7 pm the night before. They watched as he slowly raised his arm and then let it fall limp at his side. He didn’t move again after that.

Another couple saw him later in the evening and noted that it was strange that he was wearing a suit at the beach but kept walking

The initial investigation concluded that because there were no obvious signs of trauma, the man fell sick and sat against the wall to try to relax, but he passed in the night. Some speculate that it could have been heart failure. 

Until…

Everything changed with the conclusion of the investigation.

The coroner John Berkeley came to the conclusion that the man died no earlier the 2 am. So when everyone walked past him, he was still alive.

They also found he was in great shape. It didn’t make sense that this healthy man would just drop dead. So they began to look for signs of foul play. 

There were some signs that pointed to the Somerton Man being poisoned.

His pupils were small and unusual

His spleen was 3 times larger than normal.

The kidney, stomach, and liver were all filled with congested blood.

It seemed as though this was a clear poisoning, although when they sent samples to chemists, they found no signs of any chemicals.

The other strange thing about this man is that they couldn’t identify him. They couldn’t find any kind of wallet or any other form of ID. 

They couldn’t find evidence of this man’s existence at all. They couldn’t find his dental records, they couldn’t find fingerprints that matched.

No one seemed to recognize him.

By the end of December, the police in Adelaide decided to search for anything belonging to the man in hotels and railway stations.

And they finally found something they thought could give them a clue. They found a suitcase that had been in storage since November 30th.

The suitcase was typical. It had things you’d expect a suitcase to have, except it also had a brush used to stencil and a thread that was not available in Australia. It also had stich work coast that was not Australian, but American.

The running theory from this is that the man was a sailor who went back and forth to America.

Later pathology professor John Burton Cleland pointed out things investigators missed.

He highlighted that the man’s shoes were more than clean; they were perfect. There was no way the man had walked on the beach in those shoes.

There was also no vomit found near the body, a sign of poison. John Cleland proposed that the man had been poisoned elsewhere and dumped at the beach.

When they went through the man’s clothes again, they found a small fob pocket for watches that had a rolled-up piece of paper that read “Tamám shud.”

Tamam Shud is Persian and means “It means finished” or “ended.”

This led the police to consult with a local poet Frank Kennedy. He wrote a book on Persian poetry. The last line of his book ended with Tamám Shud.

The main theory is that the Somerton man was a spy who met a mysterious end at the hands of another country.

Later on a book found that had been thrown out of a car. This book had a Russian cipher on the back cover. The book belonged to Joe Thompson, who lived 5 minutes away from where the man was found.

Why would he have this book? Did he know who the man at Somerton Park Beach was?

Somerton Man Theories

A Government Conspiracy.

The idea that the Somerton Man was a spy. Spies leave messages in plain sight, and the dead man on the sea wall couldn’t be more in plain sight.

Coupled with the fact that there was the book with Russian cipher on it and the man having a piece of paper with Tamam Shud written on it. 

Has The Somerton Man’s Identity Been Confirmed?

Last year there was a claim that his identity had been figured out through DNA. The Somerton man was identified as Carl “Charles” Webb a 43-year-old electrical engineer from Melbourne, Australia.

A big connection came from people going through family records, and Colleen Fitzpatrick told the Guardian

“Webb was born in 1905 but was later identified “as a person with no death record.”

He truly had no one in his life. He lived with his wife and moved to track her down when she left him to move to South Australia.

Just because they have this name, Carl Webb doesn’t answer all the questions. There were still ciphers written in books in Russian that were attributed to the Somerton man, and it doesn’t explain his mysterious death.

If he was tracking down his wife, how did he end up dead on a beach in Somerton?

Is The Somerton Man Carl Webb?

 What do you think, Bizarros?

Is the mysterious man really Charles Webb?

Was he a spy? 

Let us know in the comments.

Citations:

Adelaide city explorer

Biographics.org

The Guardian