The way forward … updated.
WARNING … this post contains unpleasant reading.
Sep 20
8 Comments
The part fingerprinter Patrick James Durham wasn’t asked to play in the Somerton Man case.
It's often been said that proof the suitcase and its contents belonged to the Somerton Man hangs by a thread and that's not an exaggeration by any means. But it didn't have to be that way.
Beyond the grave / The Somerton Man … ABC TV, September 6th. The full transcript.
Over 3 months now since the exhumation ..
Reasons enough to believe the Somerton Man didn’t die where he was found.
Remarks by Professor Cleland, Coroner Cleland and Professor Stanton Hicks.
Aug 11
Ex SAPOL Gerry Feltus was the Detective in charge of the cold case investigation and his book ‘The Unknown Man’ is required reading. The pity is that both the softcover and e-Book versions are no longer available.
Feltus stands by his claim that the Freeman Rubaiyat exists and states in his book that ‘two (un-named) reliable sources’ told him they had seen it.
He also writes that the two images shown above were not of the original Rubaiyat and torn page ..
Why Dr Colleen Fitzpatrick chose her words very carefully.
.. and some unwarranted doubt raised by Professor Derek Abbott.
150,000 pairs of trousers similar to those worn by the Somerton Man were sold in 1948 – all with fob pockets.
They were not ‘hard to find’ as Gordon Cramer would have you believe.
Was the Somerton Man one of the many Germans working in the Salisbury Weapons Complex?
1948 - The enemy amongst us.
12. Instances of false reporting in the early stages of the Somerton Body Case.
We’ve already established through re-reading GF’s book that the commonly accepted and widely published images of both the Freeman Rubaiyat and the torn page were not of the original, meaning the press mocked them up after talking to the police.
We were told in another press report published only days after Freeman handed his Rubaiyat to DS Leane that it was torn from a Rubaiyat published in New Zealand by Whitcombe and Tombs spelt Toombs. The report also included the false image of the Freeman Rubaiyat..
One irresistible implication is that this information was also provided by the police. The other that it is also false – for reasons that have yet to become clear.
The press was in close contact with the investigating police prior to and post inquest as you would expect, particularly after DS Leane let them have a look at the Taman Shud slip and acknowledging his senior administrative background in the police force and the importance of the case, it’s hard to imagine him authorising any release of false information.
Yet he did. Twice.
One mistake is acceptable, two is not. Three makes them all deliberate.
8. The post-war conspiracy between the United Kingdom and Australia to secretly procure German scientists and technicians – some destined to work in the weapons development industry in Salisbury, a suburb of Adelaide.
‘Britain secretly organised the recruitment and transfer to Australia of scores of leading Nazi scientists and weapons specialists after the second world war, newly declassified Australian government papers disclosed yesterday.
The German scientists sent to Australia under a top secret Anglo-American project codenamed Operation Matchbox included SS and Nazi party members. The leading Nazi-hunting watchdog, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Jerusalem, yesterday demanded an investigation into the recruitments ordered by Britain and the US, and said Australia was a haven for “holocaust perpetrators and mass murderers”.
According to documents obtained by the Sydney Morning Herald, the British government decided within four months of the end of the war to poach “a limited number of German scientists and technicians on defence research to develop military potential at Germany’s expense.”
Ian Traynor, The Guardian, August 1999.
Some of these men named below agreed to work in America, others in Australia. We have no birthdates and don’t know where and when they died. We don’t know if the Somerton Man is amongst them.
File DEFE 41/38 .. 1 of 3 files.
Jun 30
5. Proof the code is an acrostic depends on whose edition of Omar Khayyham’s quatrains you are looking at.
Imagine asking Australia’s foremost post-war decoding unit to determine if a code was an acrostic without providing them with the book it was written on.
~~
W R G O A B A B D
Meet Clarke Willis Walton (1885-1938), cotton goods manufacturer, small-time amateur printer and well-respected American publisher.
‘Walton published at least 15 small (17.5cmX12cm) numbered limited editions of the Rubaiyat.. For An Omarian Alphabet (cover pictured end of post) he selected 26 quatrains by 24 translators (2 each from Fitzgerald and Thompson) and associated each quatrain with a different letter of the alphabet. To each quatrain he added a caption of the form, A IS for Allah, the Lord of Omar or M IS for Morning, time for youth to rise.’
That’s generally the picture, and if we use Walton’s Omarian Alphabet on the first line of code – this is the result.
W is for wine, Omar well knows. Quatrain LV1
R is for Rose, like a Ruby rare. Quatrain 1X
G is for Garden, that lovely place. Quatrain 1X
O is for Oblivion, cheat it if you can. Quatrain XV1
A is for Allah, the Lord of Omar. Quatrain CLXX
B is for Bahram, a great old sport. Quatrain XX1
A is for Allah, the Lord of Omar. Quatrain CLXX
B is for Bahram, a great old sport. Quatrain XX1
D is for Dowry, love to the bride. Quatrain CLXLV111
Sounds like a semi-religious love chant .. Omar style.
Perhaps the Somerton Man carried a copy of one of these memorable, traceable, numbered rare editions with him, or perhaps one of Walton’s 15 editions of The Rubaiyat, but seeing the police didn’t release an image of the Freeman Rubaiyat, we’ll probably never know.
https://omarkhayyamrubaiyat.wordpress.com/2020/07/14/an-omarian-alphabet/
*An acrostic (verse) is a poem in which the first letter of each line spells out a word, message or the alphabet.
fig:1
2. The Wiesenthal list of 22 Lithuanian Nazi collaborators ..
.. who settled in Australia after the war.
“In 2002 I had a lengthy conversation with Jessica Harkness.”
Why did the police re-interview Harkness in 1982, and why isn't anybody talking about it?
1 – A DEFINABLE PATTERN IN THE RUBAIYAT CODE
MRG OAB ABD
MTB IMP ANE TP
MLI ABO AIA QC
ITT MTS AMS TGAB
Every line consists of an odd number of letters.
Line 1 – 9
Line 2 – 11
Line 3 – 11
Line 4 – 13
M R G O A B A B D
M T B I M P A N E T P
M L I A B O A I A Q C
I T T M T S A M S T G A B
In every line consisting of over seven letters, the seventh letter is an A.
It’s as plain as day.
My work is done here …
The Somerton Man’s mtDNA haplogroup ..
From Byron Deveson.
It is interesting that Clive sees a resemblance to SM in the Scots-Irish actor Stephen Boyd (AKA Millar) because SM’s mtDNA haplogroup is present at significant levels in Ireland. See:
https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/mt-dna-h4/about/background
It appears that Scots-Irish were mercenaries in Finland in the 16th Century and that could explain the high incidence of the H4 haplogroup in Finland (and Iceland where it constitutes 9%?).
I am reminded that there was a large “tartan” scarf (shawl?) in SM’s suitcase. From memory the tartan looked like a military or an Irish tartan. Or even a Norwegian tartan. But the pattern is oblong and all genuine tartans appear to be square as a consequence of the weaving method.
Tweeds are often rectangular and SM’s “tartan” scarf appears to be a tweed, not a tartan. Unfortunately tweed patterns and colour were chosen for camouflage (hunting) and this is consistent with the appearance of the scarf/shawl in the black and white press photo.
Tweeds are often dun coloured to fit in with the Scottish landscape. A dark blue and green tweed such as the one from SM’s suitcase would be an exception from my vague memory of such things and this might be an overlooked clue. Dark green and blue suggests deep forest to me and, relying on dim memory, these are not abundant in Scotland or Ireland. I note that some estates had their own tweed pattern and some estates had private forests. The possible US belongings (comb, lighter and coat and chewing gum(?) from memory) bolster the case for SM being American and Scots-Irish DNA is concordant with US East Coast heritage.
I started building a family tree commencing with Robin Thomson’s likely forbears Tarleton Pleasants (1778-1836) and Tabitha nee Crew (1788-1819) but I found so much contradictory information that I gave up.
I started by assembling all the available material, regardless of the contradictions, with the intention of straightening it all out. But, I soon found that the descendants of this couple could not agree as to whom begat whom and when, so I didn’t stand a chance.
I pushed on in the hope that one of the descendant lines would show some connection to Australia, and some do. The Merryman family comes to mind. But, nothing crystallised and I decided that there was more than a thousand hours of research required and only a relatively small chance of success. So, there the Pleasants family tree rests.
Byron Deveson.
Scots-Irish actor Stephen Boyd (AKA Millar)
The Somerton Man
I just noticed that Stephen Boyd has a SM type ear and this is fairly rare. DA’s anatomist friend at the Uni says 1% prevalence, but I have yet to see one after years of furtively gazing at ears. It is a dangerous game – try it (furtively gazing at ears I mean). Byron D
