Who Was The Somerton Man?

People are fascinated by mummies and the stories behind them. Think about King Tut and the ongoing research into what he looked like and how he lived. Or Ötzi the Iceman, a man who’d lived around 3105 BC, and whose mummified remains were found in the Alps on the 19th of September 1991. Then there are the Mummies of Llullaillaco, three Incan children who’d probably been human sacrifices, and whose mummified remains were found in a sealed chamber on top of a volcano on the Argentina-Chile border.

And then we have The Isdal Woman and The Somerton man, who passed away in 1970 and 1948 respectively. And ironically, we might know more about the aforementioned mummies than we do about the Isdal Woman and the Somerton Man.

But one of these mysteries has been solved, and based on the title, it shouldn’t be a mystery as to which one it is! So, let’s get to decoding this story, shall we?

The Somerton Man

At 6:30 am on the morning of the 1st of December 1948, two jockeys named Horrie Patching and Neil Day were exercising their horses on Somerton Park beach in the southern suburbs of Adelaide, South Australia, when they saw a man asleep on the beach. He lay with his head and shoulders against the sea wall, his legs pointed towards the ocean, and he looked dead to the world.

Being good, decent human beings, they went over to see if he was okay or just had one too many the previous night, but even when the two huge horses loomed over him, the man didn’t move. Horrie jumped off his horse, grabbed the guy’s leg, and pulled, but when that also didn’t wake him up, they realized that the man was, in fact, dead.

A jeweller named John Lyons was on his way to work when he saw that a small crowd had gathered on the beach. He went over to see what was happening, and when he was told that the man was dead, John hurried to the nearest payphone and called the police.

Detective Strangway and Constable Moss from the Brighton Police Department arrived on the scene, and they determined that the man didn’t have anything on him to identify him. He was clean-shaven, blonde, was wearing a grey and brown striped coat, brown trousers, a brown pullover, a white shirt, and a red, white and blue striped tie. An unlit cigarette lay on his collar, almost as if he’d fallen asleep with it still in his mouth.

His clothes were dry, and there was nothing to indicate that he’d washed up on shore. Apart from the footprints of the horses and the gathered crowd, there weren’t any other footprints next to the body which would indicate that someone had left him there.

John Lyons told the police officers that he’d seen the man the previous evening. John and his wife had been walking along the beach at around 7 pm when they noticed the man lying against the sea wall. He’d lifted an arm like he was trying to lift a cigarette to his mouth, and John had gotten the impression that the man was drunk. The News, a very creatively named Adelaide newspaper, reported that evening that a body had been discovered, and another couple came forward, confirming John’s story, and added that they’d also thought that the man was a drunk who’d passed out on the beach.

The body was taken to the Royal Adelaide Hospital where Dr. John Barkley Bennet performed the autopsy. The man’s clothing was removed and his pockets were searched, and Dr. Bennet found an unused train ticket from Somerton to Henley Beach in the north side of Adelaide, a used bus ticket for the Adelaide to Somerton bus, two hair combs, some chewing gum, a pack of cigarettes, and half a box of matches.

Dr. Bennet also noted that he didn’t have a hat with him when he was searched, which was unusual since hats were a standard part of a man’s outfit at the time. As I’m writing this, I also realized that the report doesn’t mention a wallet or any money, though none of the reports I’ve read have pointed it out.

The labels on his clothing had been removed, his finger- and toenails were cared for and had been unevenly trimmed with a pair of scissors, yellow stains on his fingers indicated that he was a heavy smoker, his hands were soft, indicating that he didn’t do manual labour, and he was missing all his molars. He had broad shoulders and was strongly built, and later, a taxidermist named Paul Lawson would note that the Somerton Man’s calves were high and defined –

..suggesting [that] he had been in the habit of wearing high-heeled and pointed shoes.

Lawson’s opinion was based solely on his habit of studying the legs of women ‘fairly critically’, leading him to conclude that women who habitually wore flat shoes had inferior calf muscles. And sure, I get that some men appreciate a great pair of legs. But that’s still creepy, man.

Dr. Bennet found that the man was in good physical shape, but that his body was cold and damp after lying on the beach all night. He had most likely passed away from heart failure at around 2 am on the morning of the 1st of December, but Dr. Bennet told the police officers that he suspected that the man had been poisoned since blood had pooled in the man’s stomach.

In his autopsy, Dr. Bennet explained that the stomach was red and ‘congested’, that small blood vessels in the brain were swollen and ‘congested’, his liver globules had been destroyed, and that the liver and spleen were swollen. Yet, when the blood was tested for known poisons, it came back negative.

The unknown man’s fingerprints were taken so that copies of them could be sent to every police department in Australia and New Zealand for identification, and descriptions of him were published in various newspapers, explaining that he was estimated to be around 40 years old, was 1.8 metres tall, had hazel brown eyes, blonde, greying hair, and had been wearing a clean, American-made suit when he passed away. According to an article published in The Advertiser on the 4th of December, over twenty people had come to identify the Somerton Beach body, including a woman from Blackwood whose husband had been missing for more than a week. But no one was able to positively identify him, and by the 10th of December 1948, the decision was made to embalm the body and put it on ice until he could be identified.

Because no one in Adelaide had been able to identify him, the police theorized that the man might have travelled to the city shortly before his death, so they asked the local train stations and hotels if they’d come across any abandoned suitcases. On the 14th of January 1949, staff at the Adelaide railway station handed the police a brown suitcase that had been left in the cloakroom on the 30th of November 1948 – the day before the Somerton Man’s body was found.

Detectives Dave Bartlett, Lionel Leane, and Len Brown might have hoped that they’d find some answers when they opened the suitcase, but instead, they had even more questions. All they found were a dressing gown, a pair of slippers, underwear, pyjamas, a shaving kit, and a pair of dirty trousers with sand on them. Which was really inconsiderate of the Somerton Man, because who doesn’t travel with their full medical history, their birth certificate, and their banking details neatly kept in a plastic sleeve on top of their clothing in their suitcase?

The items of interest they found were an electrician’s screwdriver (which means that it had been insulated against electric shock), a sharpened knife, a pair of scissors, a sheath to keep them in, and a stenciling brush. The police also found waxed orange thread in the suitcase, and explained that at some point, the Somerton Man had fixed a hole in his trouser pocket using that same orange thread, enabling the police to positively link him to the suitcase. They also found a tie, a laundry bag, and a singlet (aka a vest) that had been labelled with the name “T. Keane” in the suitcase.

So, was the Somerton Man’s name T. Keane?

Well, no. The police couldn’t find any records of a missing man named T. Keane, and theorized that it was possible that the Somerton Man had bought the clothes second-hand, since brand-new clothes were still hard to come by just 3 years after WWII had ended. Which meant that the police had once again run out of leads. An inquest into his death had been opened, but it was put on hold until more evidence could be found, and the decision was made to finally put the Somerton Man to rest.

In June 1949, Paul Lawson made a plaster cast of the body, and the Somerton man was buried on the 14th of June at the West Terrace Cemetery. His headstone read –

Here lies the unknown man who was found at Somerton Beach 1st Dec 1948

The plaster cast, autopsy photos of the Somerton Man’s face, and some information on him was put on display at the Adelaide Museum in the hope that someone would recognize him, but the police still had one more lead to follow.

In or around May 1949, the Somerton Man’s clothes had been re-examined, and someone found a piece of rolled-up paper inside a fob-pocket – aka, a smaller, separate pocket in the trousers where fob watches could be kept safe from the damage inflicted by loose coins and scratchy keys.

Two words had been printed on this carefully torn piece of paper – the words “Tamám Shud”. The detectives took the piece of paper to the Public Library, where the librarians identified it as belonging to the last page of a book called “Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam”, specifically the 1941 edition of Edward FitzGerald’s translation, which had been published by Whitcome and Tombs, a bookseller and printing company based in Christchurch, New Zealand. The entirety of the Rubaiyat is a love poem that explains that you should live life to the fullest and have no regrets when it’s your time to die. The words “Tamám Shud”, means “The End”, and apparently, the Rubaiyat had been quite popular at the time.

The newspapers reported on the find, and a man identified only as “Ronald Francis” came forward with a copy of the Rubaiyat, explaining that someone had tossed it into the back of his car in November 1948. The torn piece of paper matched a hole that had been torn underneath the last verse in Francis’ copy, but stranger still, a note had been written in pencil on the last page of the book, which the police would later theorize was a coded message.

Alongside the note was a telephone number, and when the police called it, a 27-year-old woman referred to as “Jestyn” answered the phone. When the police asked if she was familiar with the “Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam”, she told the police that she used to have a copy of the Rubaiyat. She’d been an army nurse, and back in 1945, she’d been caring for an Australian Army lieutenant named Alf Boxall.

It was implied that the two of them had had a relationship, and she gave him her copy of the Rubaiyat. She hadn’t seen him since. She lived just 5 minutes’ walk from Somerton Park beach, and had heard of the body discovered there, but hadn’t thought that it had anything to do with her.

However, she did tell the police that an unknown man had come to her house earlier that day. He’d been asking her neighbours if a nurse lived there, and they confirmed that she did. Her neighbours told him that Jestyn wasn’t home, and the man left.

In July 1949, Jestyn was asked to go and see the body at the Adelaide Museum, and Detective Lionel Leane asked her if she recognized him. She said that she didn’t. The police managed to find the army lieutenant that she’d cared for and found that not only was he still alive, he still had the copy of the Rubaiyat, and hadn’t been to Adelaide in years.

The investigation had reached a dead end, and the inquest into the body found on the Somerton Park beach was closed. In it, Professor Cleland, the city coroner explains that –

The report I have received indicates –

The identity of the deceased is quite unknown;

That his death was not natural;

That it was probably caused by poison;

That it almost certainly was not accidental.”

“The natural and simple explanation of the circumstances…may be that the deceased died by his own act, but as we are dealing with circumstances which are not ordinary, it may be that the natural explanation is not the true explanation.”

“Until the circumstances exclude the possibility that the deceased died through the act of someone other than himself, the possibility of murder must remain under consideration.

Over the course of the next 70 years, thousands of people would tell his story, multiple investigations would once again look into his case, and the Somerton Man became famous for being “one of Australia’s most profound mysteries”. Internet sleuths tried their best to find an answer in the Rubaiyat, experts were called in to decode the note he’d left, and hundreds of people would come forward, claiming to know who the Somerton Man had been.

So, let’s get into two of the most well-known theories regarding the identity of the Somerton man.

The American Spy

On the 12th of December 2015, the body of a middle-aged Caucasian man was found on the Saddleworth Moor in North West England. An autopsy revealed that he was between 65 and 75 years old, and had died of strychnine poisoning. A surgical plate in his hip linked him to Pakistan, but his fingerprints didn’t match any on record in Pakistan, the UK, or other countries. In January 2017, he was identified as being the 67-year-old David Lytton, a “bit of a loner” who often travelled to Pakistan with his girlfriend and had simply decided to end his life on the Saddleworth Moor that day.

On the 16th of September 2001, the body of a man claiming to be Lyle Stevik was found in a motel room in Amanda Park, Washington. He was found hanging in the wardrobe of the room, didn’t have any luggage with him, and had left money and a note, apologizing for the mess. All of the information he’d left at the motel he was staying at, was false, so the police were unable to positively identify him. Renowned genealogist Colleen Fitzpatrick later used his DNA to locate his family, and they confirmed his identity, though they asked not to make it public.

In June 1999, the body of the 41-year-old Ricky McCormick was found in a cornfield near West Alton, Missouri. He’d been murdered, and in his pockets, the police found two pages filled with code. The codes were handed over to the FBI for analysis, and they even established a website for it where the public could try and decipher it.

But in 2012, Ricky’s family found out about the code on a news broadcast about his case, and they told reporters that the mysterious code in Ricky’s pockets didn’t mean anything because Ricky was illiterate. According to his mother, he’d often write nonsense in notebooks and then proudly refer to it as his “writing”, and his cousin explained that Ricky “couldn’t spell anything, just scribble.”

But why am I telling you this?

Because in neither of these cases did anyone for one moment think that they were spies. The Cold War was still raging when the Isdal woman died, and one of the main theories surrounding her death is that she’d been a spy. And when the Somerton man died under similar ‘mysterious’ circumstances, many people were still returning from prisoners of war camps or had been in the army. So, naturally, many people just assumed that he had to have been a spy. In particular, an American spy. After all, spy movies like Ministry of Fear, Notorius, Foreign Correspondent, Cloak and Dagger, and Background to Danger had all implied that there were spies everywhere. (Ps, I also have NO idea what these movies are about. I just Googled spy movies from the 1940’s)

There were multiple reasons why people thought that the Somerton man had to have been an American. For one, a local tailor named Hugh Pozza told the police that the suit the Somerton Man had been wearing had been mass manufactured in the US, since the stitches had been ‘feathered’, which was apparently a trademark of a certain brand of industrial sewing machines that were used in the US. Secondly, the pathologist had also jumped on the conspiracy wagon and had noted that the Somerton man had combed his hair from the front to the back, not with the usual side part that was in fashion in both the UK and Australia at the time.

The Somerton man had had two combs in his possession when he’d died – a plastic one, and an aluminum comb that had been manufactured in the US. The Juicy Fruit bubble gum he’d carried had also been manufactured in the US, but by that logic, he had to be British as well, since the cigarettes and the matches he’d carried were both imported from the UK.

Then, of course, there was the note written on the back of the Rubaiyat, which has since become known as the ‘Tamám Shud Cipher’. The police had sent copies of the note to Naval Intelligence for help in deciphering it, but they were unable to provide any answers. Amateur sleuths had tried deciphering it, but they’d also come up blank, and over the years, multiple blog posts, websites, and Reddit users have tried their best to come up with answers.

Some think that the phrase is a secret spy message and that the Somerton man’s copy of the Rubaiyat is the key to deciphering the code, but the book had allegedly gone missing. Others think that each letter represents a word and that the letters are a key to remembering a certain phrase. And others think that it might be the Somerton Man’s final goodbye. But there are some who believe that Nurse Jestyn is the key to solving the cipher, which brings us to the next theory –

The Army Nurse and the Soldier

During the initial investigation, Detective Lionel Leane didn’t reveal the names of some of the people involved in the case in order to protect their privacy – in particular, the real names of Ronald Francis, the man who’d found the copy of the Rubaiyat in the back of his car, and Nurse Jestyn, the nurse whose phone number had been written in the back of it. Instead, he used aliases for them in his reports, which made it almost impossible for his successors to locate them.

In 1975, Detective Gerry Feltus was assigned to the case of the Somerton Man, and in his book, The Unknown Man: A Suspicious Death at Somerton Beach, he explains that the first step he took was to try and identify Jestyn, since her phone number directly linked her to both the Rubaiyat and the Somerton Man.

He managed to find an old phonebook from the late 1940s, and paged through it until he came across the number that had been written on the back of the Rubaiyat. The number belonged to a Jessica “Jo” Thomson, nee Harkness, who’d been born in 1921 in Marrickville, New South Wales, and Feltus managed to track her down. Back in 1948 she’d been living with a married man named George Thomson, whom she’d marry in the 1950’s once his divorce was finalized, and had a one-year-old boy named Robin. According to Feltus, she’d been evasive and didn’t want to talk about the Somerton Man, and reiterated the fact that she didn’t know who he was, bringing his investigation to an abrupt end.

But Feltus didn’t believe her, and neither did Paul Lawson, the taxidermist who’d made the cast of the Somerton Man’s face, since he’d been there when she was questioned, and he felt certain that she’d recognized him. Her own daughter, Kate, didn’t believe her either, since in 2014, she’d tell the news program 60 Minutes that her mother had known who the Somerton Man was –

…she told me that it was a mystery that was only known to [an intelligence] level higher than the police force.

Kate explains that her mother had been paranoid and secretive, and Kate was convinced that Jo Thomson had been a Russian spy. According to Kate, her mother had been teaching English classes to Russian migrants, and she’d told Kate that she was surprised that she could still understand Russian. But when Kate asked her mother when she’d learned Russian, Jo changed the subject.

In 2009, another man would come knocking at Jo Thomson’s door. He was Professor Derek Abbot, and he’d become obsessed with the case of the Somerton Man. He’d learned everything he could about the case and also came to believe that Jo Thomson was the key to solving the case. Only, by the time he managed to track her down, he learned that she’d passed away in 2005.

Prof Abbot spoke to Kate Thomson, and she revealed that her mother had already been pregnant with her eldest son, Robin, when she met George Thomson, reportedly telling her daughter that she’d been lucky that George had agreed to marry her.

This led Prof Abbot to believe that the Somerton Man and Jo Thomson had had an affair sometime before July 1947 – more than a year before the Somerton Man died. The two split up, and a pregnant Jo then met and moved in with George Thomson, giving birth to the Somerton Man’s son, Robin.

And there were a few hints that his theory was correct. The Somerton Man had a condition called hypodontia, which means that he’d been born without his two upper lateral incisors – the teeth next to your front incisors. And before anyone points out that babies are born without teeth – they are actually born with all their teeth already embedded in their jawbone, which makes x-rays of a baby’s skull particularly freaky looking.

Anyway, Robin Thomson had also been born with hypodontia, and because it’s a genetic condition, Prof Abbot felt sure that there was a chance that they could be related.

Furthermore, Paul Lawson had – creepily – noted that the Somerton Man’s calf muscles had been well-developed, and it was later suggested that he might have been a ballet dancer. And, as fate would have it, Robin Thomson had been a ballet dancer with the Australian Ballet, so Prof Abbot had an anatomist from Adelaide University named Prof. Maciej Henneberg look at photos of Robin and compare them with photos and the plaster cast of the Somerton Man. According to Prof. Henneberg –

Professor Abbot asked me to look at the teeth and the ear of the Somerton Man and compare to the same features of the person who is supposed to be his son. I found they are similar.

Prof. Henneberg explained that the earlobes of both men were attached to the sides of their heads instead of drooping a little, and because both men had hypodontia, Prof. Henneberg made the assumption that they were definitely related –

[The] combination of two similarities doesn’t happen that often, probably one in ten-thousand times. Therefore, it is likely that the Somerton man and [Robin Thomson] are actually related.

But by this reasoning, I could also be related to the Somerton Man since my earlobes also aren’t droopy, so Prof. Henneberg’s methods seem about as scientific as phrenology (which is the study of the shape and size of the human skull that was thought to enable phrenologists to determine one’s personality).

The only way to confirm that Robin Thomson was definitely related to the Somerton Man, was to compare their DNA. Prof Abbot managed to track Robin down, but when he tried to contact him, he was told that Robin had sadly passed away just two months earlier, and that his body had been cremated. Jo’s younger daughter, Kate, couldn’t help out either, since she was thought to be Robin’s half-sister, so her DNA wouldn’t be a match to the Somerton Man’s.

Prof Abbot talked to some people, and eventually found out that Robin Thomson had dated a woman named Roma Egan while he studied at the Australian Ballet School, and the pair had a daughter together named Rachel. So Prof Abbot reached out to Rachel in 2010 and told her about the Somerton Man. They met for dinner, and he asked if she would allow him to take a sample of her DNA and have an anatomist study her teeth to determine if she, too, had hypodontia. She doesn’t.

However, there was another hiccup in their master plan – they didn’t have a sample of the Somerton Man’s DNA.

So, multiple requests were lodged with the Attorney-General, asking for permission to exhume the body of the Somerton Man, and in 2013, Prof Abbot and Rachel Egan met with various news networks to tell the story of the Somerton Man and gain support for their cause. In 2017, they reported that they’d found hairs imbedded in the plaster cast, and had sent them off to be mapped. They were only able to extract and map the mitochondrial DNA, meaning the female line’s DNA, which, according to Prof Abbot, was about 1% of what they needed.

Then, in October 2019, Attorney-General Vickie Chapman approved their newest request, and told reporters that –

This man could be someone’s father, brother or cousin, and those relatives and friends deserve answers.

“South Australia Police has since come to me with the funding and an application, and I have approved it.

“It means that finally this case, which has been studied, investigated and followed for more than 70 years, will be re-examined, and, hopefully, many questions surrounding his enigmatic life will be answered.

But Dr. Linzi Wilson-Wilde, the Director of Forensic Science South Australia, warned that it was possible that they still wouldn’t have answers since –

The chemicals used in the embalming process can significantly break down any DNA present. It really is an unknown — we don’t know what the state of the remains is going to be, we don’t know the level of degradation.

The Somerton Man was exhumed on the 19th of May 2021, but Prof Abbot wasn’t allowed to extract a sample of the Somerton Man’s DNA since the body was now in the custody of the South Australia Police force. So Prof Abbot was forced to go back to the DNA sources they did have and work from there.

Prof Abbot enlisted the help of renowned genealogist Colleen Fitzpatrick and her non-profit, the DNA Doe Project, and together they re-tested the Somerton man’s hair, and this time, they got a viable sample. According to Colleen –

It was in a good shape to upload to those genealogy databases.

It was compared to Rachel Egan’s DNA, and indicated that they weren’t related, nullifying the theory that the Somerton Man and Jo Thomson had had an affair. In fact, the test confirmed that Robin Thomson had been the biological son of George Thomson, which seemed to indicate that Jo had actually been having an affair with George while he was still married.

Awkward.

Anyway, July 2022, Prof Abbot and Colleen Fitzpatrick reached out to the media, and on the 26th of that month, announced that the Somerton Man finally had a name.

Occam’s Razor

Now that they had a full DNA profile, Prof Abbot and Colleen Fitzpatrick uploaded the Somerton Man’s profile into GEDmatch, a genealogical research database that combines DNA profiles from sites like Ancestry.com, 23andMe, and FamilyTreeDNA.

And they found a match. His name was Jack Hargreaves, and he lived in Victoria, Australia. He’d already started working on his family tree, so Prof Abbot and Colleen jumped in and added onto it, trying to find out who the Somerton Man was.

And at one stage we had as many as 4000 people on the tree, so which one is it?

So they applied the process of elimination. They were looking for men who were born between 1898 and 1908. Then they looked for men who didn’t have a confirmed date of death, and one man stood out. He was a Goldilocks. He was the right age, didn’t have a confirmed date of death, and best of all, he was related to a man called Thomas G Keane – aka, T. Keane. According to Colleen –

When I saw the name Keane, that’s when my hair caught fire. That’s when I really knew we were on the offensive. We were going to get it because that wasn’t a coincidence.

His name was Carl Webb. He’d been born in 1905, and his date of death was noted as being ‘unknown’. Prof Abbot managed to track down a living relative named Antero Bonifacio, who also lived in Victoria, and gave him a call. Antero agreed to provide a sample of his DNA, and the results confirmed that Antero and the Somerton Man were related.

They had their man.

It turns out he wasn’t a spy, he wasn’t a ballet dancer, and all those crazy theories on the internet all came to nothing.

Prof Abbot was able to locate more of Carl Webb’s family, and found out that he’d been known as “Charles”. He was born to Richard and Eliza Webb on the 16th of November 1905 in Footscray, Victoria, and grew up in Springvale. He was the youngest of six children, and his family owned a bakery. During the great Depression, the bakery failed, and Charles trained to become an electrical instrument maker.

He used to play club football (aka soccer), which explained why he had such defined calf muscles, and often bet on horses, which might explain the ‘cipher’ noted in the back of the Rubaiyat.

He married a 21-year-old woman named Dorothy Robertson in 1941. Dorothy worked as a pharmacist and a chiropodist – aka a foot and hand doctor - and they moved to South Yarra in Melbourne, where they rented a flat. According to Dorothy, he loved poetry and wrote several poems of his own –

…most of them on the subject of death, which he claims to be his greatest desire.

Their marriage wasn’t a happy one. Charles Webb was often depressed, didn’t have any friends, and used to abuse Dorothy. In March 1946, she came home one night and noticed that the house reeked of ether.

I found him lying in a wet bed, gazing into space. He could hardly speak and was rambling.

Dorothy nursed him back to health, but once he was back on his feet –

…he told me that I was a fool to help him get better. From then on, he became more violent.

Dorothy left Charles in September 1946, and he moved out of their flat in 1947. In 1948, Dorothy was living in Bute, which was an hour and a half’s drive north of Adelaide. Charles’ older sister, Freda, was married to a man named Thomas Keane, and it is entirely possible that he stayed with them for a while before moving on, explaining why he had second-hand clothes that had been labelled as belonging to T. Keane in his possession.

Dorothy applied for a divorce in 1951, explained their history and her reasons for seeking a divorce in detail as a part of the application, and placed a notice in The Age newspaper that read –

To Carl Webb, formerly of Bromby-street, South Yarra, but now of parts unknown. Take notice that your wife, Dorothy Jean Webb, has instituted Divorce proceedings against you on the ground of desertion, and unless you enter an appearance…on or before the 29th day of October 1951, the case may proceed in your absence…

When he didn’t show up, Dorothy was granted a divorce, and Charles Webb seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth. None of his remaining family members had heard of an Uncle Charles before, or had even been aware that one of their family members had gone missing. According to Antero –

Why didn’t any of the siblings try and find out where he went? Did they know he’d gone to Adelaide and never came back?

“Or did he just go off and no-one knew where he was?

Now that we have all the puzzle pieces, Prof Abbot doesn’t think that Charles Webb had intended to kill himself. He theorizes that Charles had somehow found out that his wife was living in South Australia, and had travelled the 700km’s from Melbourne to Adelaide to look for her.

I agree, and I think that Charles then bought a ticket to Henley Beach – another suburb in Adelaide - checked his luggage, and then went looking for Dorothy at her last known address – the home of Jo Thomson. He hadn’t asked for Jo specifically, but had instead asked if a nurse (or a pharmacist, or a chiropodist) lived there. The fact that Jo had been an army nurse is pure coincidence.

He must have felt disheartened when no one knew what had become of Dorothy, resulting in him reaching a dead end. I think that after he left Jo’s house, he went to a bar where he proceeded to feel sorry for himself. He sat there all day and got so wasted that he was kicked out of the bar, leaving his wallet, his hat, and his book behind to be stolen by someone else.

He then stumbled along the beach, finally collapsed next to a wall, and then just sat there, too drunk to even light a cigarette.

Based on his autopsy results, it’s entirely possible that Charles had already been suffering from acute hemorrhagic erosive gastropathy – or stomach ulcers - which can be caused by heavy drinking. According to the Cleveland Clinic, it would have meant that his stomach lining had already been damaged and would have become irritated from the alcohol, resulting in blood mixing with his stomach contents.

I think that he’d drunk so much that night that his already damaged liver had trouble processing the amount of alcohol he’d consumed, and he started suffering from alcohol poisoning. His breathing would have slowed, and as the night wore on, his body temperature would have plummeted as he slowly lost consciousness. Eventually, he passed out, fell into a coma, and died when his heart finally gave in.

In his autopsy report, multiple experts noted that he simply might have had “gastritis” or an inflamed stomach lining at the time of his death, but since the coroner insisted that he had to have been poisoned, most of their efforts went into identifying this deadly, unknown poison. But if his death had been noted as being a result of natural causes back in 1948, Carl Webb would have been lost to history and would have remained buried in an unmarked grave. Instead, through over 70 years of hard work, a sad and lonely man had his name and family restored to him, and as Rachel Egan explains –

It’s been really heartwarming to learn that the family that may not have missed him when he went missing and when he died, are now reclaiming him.

And so ends the mystery of the Somerton Man – according to Prof Abbot, at least. As I’m writing this, the South Australian Police still hasn’t released a report on their findings regarding the Somerton Man’s DNA, and they have explained that police procedure requires that they still need to verify that his DNA does indeed match the DNA of Carl Webb before they can confirm his identity. And since they don’t have a confirmed sample of Carl Webb’s DNA, it’s going to be particularly difficult to prove, leaving the case of the Somerton Man officially unsolved.

Frequently Asked Questions

When and where was the Somerton Man found?

The Somerton Man was found at 6:30 am on the morning of the 1st of December 1948 on Somerton Park beach in the southern suburbs of Adelaide, South Australia.

What was the Somerton Man wearing when he was found?

The Somerton Man was wearing a grey and brown striped coat, brown trousers, a brown pullover, a white shirt, and a red, white, and blue striped tie.

What items were found in the Somerton Man’s pockets?

An unused train ticket from Somerton to Henley Beach, a used bus ticket for the Adelaide to Somerton bus, two hair combs, some chewing gum, a pack of cigarettes, and half a box of matches.

What was the cause of death for the Somerton Man?

The Somerton Man likely passed away from heart failure at around 2 am on the morning of the 1st of December 1948, but Dr. Bennet suspected poisoning due to the condition of his stomach and other organs.

What was found in the Somerton Man’s suitcase?

The suitcase contained a dressing gown, a pair of slippers, underwear, pyjamas, a shaving kit, a pair of dirty trousers with sand on them, an electrician’s screwdriver, a sharpened knife, a pair of scissors, a sheath, a stenciling brush, waxed orange thread, a tie, a laundry bag, and a singlet labeled with the name “T. Keane.”

What was the significance of the phrase ‘Tamám Shud’ found on the Somerton Man?

The phrase ‘Tamám Shud’ means ‘The End’ and was found on a piece of paper in the Somerton Man’s pocket. It was identified as belonging to the last page of a book called ‘Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.‘

What was the theory about the Somerton Man being an American spy?

The theory suggested that the Somerton Man was an American spy due to the American-made suit he was wearing, the American comb and bubble gum found in his possession, and the mysterious circumstances surrounding his death during the Cold War era.

What was the theory about the Somerton Man’s relationship with Nurse Jestyn?

The theory proposed that the Somerton Man had an affair with Nurse Jestyn, resulting in the birth of her son Robin Thomson. This theory was based on similarities in physical traits and genetic conditions between the Somerton Man and Robin Thomson.

What was the final identified name of the Somerton Man?

The Somerton Man was identified as Carl Webb, also known as Charles Webb. He was born on the 16th of November 1905 in Footscray, Victoria, and was known to have a troubled past including a failed marriage and struggles with depression.

What was the conclusion about the Somerton Man’s death?

The conclusion suggested that Carl Webb, the Somerton Man, likely died from alcohol poisoning and complications from stomach ulcers, rather than being poisoned or murdered as initially suspected.

Sources

• Original Decoding the Unknown video: Who Was The Somerton Man?
• Hero image source by Qian2007 / openverse, by-sa.