Somerton Man cold case remains unsolved, almost 70 years on
THE man sat against a wall on a city beach. He was clean-shaven and wearing a shirt and tie. And he was dead. When police searched the body for identification, the mystery only deepened.
IN early December 1948, a man sat against a beach wall on Somerton Beach in Adelaide.
He was clean-shaven and wearing a shirt and tie.
And he was dead.
When police searched the body for identification, the mystery only deepened.
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All the tags on his clothing had been removed and the man didn’t appear to have suffered any injuries.
There was a secret pocket in his pants with a piece of paper torn from a book.
Text on the paper said “Tamam Shud”, meaning “The end” or “It is finished” in Persian. It appeared to be from an obscure poetry book called the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.
An abandoned suitcase was later found at an Adelaide train station that contained items including clothing, shaving items, scissors and a dinner knife sharpened to a point.
Woollen thread found in the case matched that on the dead man’s trousers, and the name “Keane” was written on some of the clothes, including the tie, but that also led nowhere.
Police were at a dead end for weeks, guessing at the man’s identity and developing theories that he might have been poisoned, until a local Glenelg man came forward.
He had a copy of the exact same poetry book — he said he had found it in his car and suspected it had been thrown through the open window.
Police were stunned when they found the page containing the Tamam Shud text had been torn out.
But a bigger surprise came when the back page of the book was treated with chemicals during a coronial inquiry.
It revealed five lines of scrawled letters, previously invisible, that baffled investigators.
The dead man no longer appeared to be an unfortunate drifter or petty crim.
They might well have been dealing with a spy who met with foul play.
Despite attempts that started in 1948 and have lasted seven decades, the code has never been cracked.
But the book found in the car provided a further important clue — it contained the phone number of local nurse Jo Thomson, who lived a short distance from where the body was discovered.
She told police the body might have been that of Alf Boxhall, who she had gifted a copy of the book.
Police went on that theory until Boxhall himself walked into a police station and declared himself alive.
And he had a copy of the book, as Thomson had suggested; she had even written a message to him inside the front cover and all the pages were intact.
Since the ’40s, rumours and theories have swirled around the unknown man, including his involvement in British intelligence at a time when Woomera was used by allied military.
Some believe he was in a secret relationship with Jo Thomson and they had a son together.
It was known that Thomson had a son, with an unknown father, who went on to be a ballet dancer.
It was speculated that toned calf muscles on the Somerton beach body indicate the boy could have taken his interest in dancing from his potential father.
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Other theories suggested links between the dead man, Thomson and the man who found the book, or at very least that there was an active spy ring somewhere in the area.
The original piece of coded paper has since been lost and only photos remain.
But analysis by some sleuths has led to the theory that the letters contain much smaller written messages inside their lines.
One theorist even estimated more than 1000 tiny letters written at an almost microscopic level in the passage.
Other investigators have dismissed those claims, saying surviving images of the original page are not sharp enough to show anything concrete.
A funeral for the Somerton man was held six months after his body was found.
At his grave in West Terrace Cemetery a tombstone reads: “Here lies the unknown man who was found at Somerton Beach, 1st December 1948.”
Originally published as Somerton Man cold case remains unsolved, almost 70 years on