It all started when an unidentified man’s body was found on Somerton Park Beach, south of Adelaide. Little did the public know that this mystery would later be known as The Tamam Shud Case, and would be one of the most intriguing unsolved mysteries of all time.
This Print article takes us all the way back to 1948. To be more specific, it takes us to 6:30 am, 1st December, when police were contacted shortly after locals discovered the body of a dead man laying on the beach. The man’s head was resting against the sea wall, with his feet crossed and his legs extended, which lead detectives to believe that he died while sleeping.
After authorities searched the man, they found an unused second-class rail ticket from Adelaide to Henley Beach, a bus ticket from the city that may or may not have been used, a narrow aluminium American comb, a cigarette packet containing seven cigarettes, all of which were of different brands, and a quarter-full box of Bryant & May matches.
According to John Burton Cleland, the man was aged 40 to 45 and was 5ft 11in (180cm) with fair/ginger coloured hair and grey eyes. He was wearing a white, blue and red tie, a white shirt, brown socks, boots and trousers and a double-breasted jacket of “American tailoring”. All the labels on his clothing had been removed, and he was clean-shaven and had no ID card, wallet or hat (which was extremely unusual, considering this was in 1948). And while police thought this was an act of suicide, they could not match any of the man’s dental records to a known person, which led police to call an autopsy.
This later revealed that the estimated time of death was 2AM on the 1st of December and that the last thing the man had eaten was a pasty, which was eaten 3-4 hours before the somerton man’s death. Although the tests failed to show any foreign substance in the body, Dr. Drwyer, the main pathologist had this to say about it:
“I am quite convinced the death could not have been natural … the poison I suggested was a barbiturate or a soluble hypnotic…”
Fast-forward to January 14th 1949: the staff at the Adelaide railway station found a brown suitcase that they checked into the station’s cloak room at 11:00 AM. The suitcase was believed to be the Somerton man’s suitcase as all the labels were removed, much like his clothes. Inside it was a light brown pair of trousers with sand on each cuff, a screwdriver, a size 11 pair of slippers, a red dressing gown, pajamas, shaving items, a small square of zinc and several other random objects. There was also an unusual orange waxed thread card that wasn’t available in Australia, but was also used in all of the man’s other clothing. There were no identification marks on any of the man’s items except for T.Keane on his tie, Kean on a waistcoat and Keane on a laundry bag. This leads police to believe whoever wrote the names purposefully did it to trick authorities into thinking that that was the mystery man’s name.
In June of 1949, authorities found a small, rolled-up piece of paper found in a hidden pocket in the man’s trousers. The paper only had two words: Tamam Shud (ended/ finished), which was a phrase from a poetry book commonly known as The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
This case happened over 70 years ago, so there is some speculation as to when the actual copy of the book was found. While some old articles claim that locals found the book a week before the Somerton man was discovered, others claim that it was discovered just after his body was found. We do, however, know who found the copy. A man who goes by the name of Ronald Francis claimed that he never suspected the book to be connected to any sort of mystery until he read an article talking about the rolled up piece of paper.
The reason why I am mentioning this is because it is one of the only physical clues about who the Somerton Man was. On the back of the book was an unlisted phone number and an encrypted message, which is yet to be solved in a way that pleases the public.
Detectives later discovered that the unlisted phone number we mentioned earlier belonged to nurse Jessica Thompson.
This lead police to interview her on the case. During her interviews, Jessica had admitted that an unknown man attempted to visit her and ask a neighbour about her. She mentioned this happened in late 1948, but also denied having any relations to the mystery man and had no idea why he would have her number. When Detective Sergeant Leane showed her a picture of the man, he described her reaction as “completely taken back, to the point of giving the appearance that she was about to faint”. Thompson had an interview with Gerry Feltus in 2002, and according to him, she looked evasive and didn’t feel like talking about it.
Theories:
Theory #1:
The first theory I will be covering is the idea that the Somerton Man was actually a spy (sounds like a stretch, I know). This was widely believed due to the extreme circumstances surrounding his death. Not to mention, there were two sites next to Adelaide that were of interest of spies: The Radium Hill uranium and the Woomera Test range. It is extremely interesting to think of this Mystery man as an undercover spy; but many people believe that this is not the case due to the very little evidence and lack of explanations.
Theory #2
This theory takes us to 2011, when a woman reached out to a biological anthropologist named Maciej Henneberg about an identification card she found in her father’s belongings. The ID card belonged to a man called HC Reynolds. According to Henneberg, the similarities of the ears were a very good match and also found close features such as the nose, lips and eyes. The biggest identifier found by Maciej was a mole on the cheek that was the same position and shape in both pictures.
