21 The only items not photographed were the most important
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 ..
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The Somerton Man 
To think the entire Rubáiyat find in Freeman’s car never happened and the police never had the original book is an interesting theory, but I would not consider the police at the time to have that kind of imagination and creativity. In the beginning they didn’t even know where “Tamám Shud” originated from. I find Gordon 1552’s research compelling and it is quite believable to me that the book was photographed like around noon and the pic published around 5 p.m or so. But my first idea had also been that Freeman and /or his brother in law could well have “sold” the info /photo to the press before handing the book over. Imo that wouldn’t contradict their privacy protected at all. Was “handling of sensitive evidence” even done in this case at all, since it was seen as a probable suicide? Btw I believe I read somewhere a while ago that the “Tamám Shud” piece of paper was scientifically examined and the paper matched unequivocally the paper of the edition that was brought in.
Thanks Regine S .. appreciated. And I fully agree that the police would have not had the imagination to devise such a ruse.
Could be wrong, but as I understand it the paper match was more of a “yeah the paper seems similar enough”.
I don’t pretend to know what sort of analysis they do, but would they be able to tell specific pages apart in the 1940/1950? How similar would 2 pieces of paper be from the same ream? Could they be cut from the same bigger piece of paper? Would 2 pages from the same print run appear the same?
I guess where I’m going is I’ve never heard the match even hinted at being “unequivocal” – and I’d be interested to know how similar or different 2 pieces of paper from the same source might be, and how good would a 1950s lab be at working that out.
MyName .. the best I can do with that is to quote from Brown’s evidence (Fletus P166) “The paper on which the words are written (Tamam Shud) is known as coated wood free art paper, substance of 28X36, 56 lbs to 500 sheets. This is the paper which is before me. I did not compare this paper with that in the Collins book.* If this is a Collins impression, the one which I saw would be a different impression. The type pf paper I have is is the type used in book manufacture. It appears to be much the same sort of paper as appeared in the Collins book. Different impressions of the same book might be printed on different paper. These words appear at the end of the first edition, at the end of the second edition the word Tamam appears.”
*The Collins book was the one Brown found at Beck’s Bookshop and which was a match for the Tamam Shud slip when he passed the TS slip over the the Tamam Shud wording on the Collins edition last page.
Well, if the police didn’t have the imagination to devise a ruse like this, perhaps the “higher authority”, that Jessie alluded to, did?
My view is that the weakest link of the whole scheme was that there is no physical evidence that the Freeman Rubaiyat ever existed ..
You would have thought that, if the police had the ‘real’ Rubaiyat in their possession, they would have been shouting from the rooftops, not this subterfuge
There’s no shortage of photos of the evidence: the careful mounting of the tools, tie and thread on one of the detective’s Masonic folders, Leane and Brown standing over the open suitcase with everything spilled out onto the floor, the display of evidence as seen in Littlemore’s interview, where even the TS slip is visible .. but no Rubaiyat.
‘Leane must have misplaced it in his filing system,’ said Brown. It’s worth while checking the transcript of that interview to see what a hash Brown made of explaining it away.
A hypothetical view. Please bear with me for just a while.
The ‘Freeman’ Rubaiyat was found because it needed to be found.
1. Detective Brown had said that the torn slip was a perfect match for the gap in the page of the Rubaiyat. (I don’t think he said when it was found but stand to be corrected on that.)
2. The Freeman Rubaiyat and the torn slip are not a match. Some have said that the Somerton Man must have nibbled the edge so that it was approximately rectangular, there is no evidence to support that.
3. The forensic evidence states that the paper type in the torn slip was ‘similar’ to that of the book.
3.Given that all the above is correct, it is possible that the real book was found sometime earlier giving time for it to be thoroughly examined, the code page was revealed in that time.
4. In the interim, another copy of the same edition of the book was sourced for comparison purposes. It is possible that differences were found, perhaps the original book contained much more information than just the words of Omar.
5. The ‘Freeman’ copy was ‘found’ at a more appropriate time, perhaps to meet the needs of a new plan based on the events thus far.
That’s my take and it’s based on what is already generally known plus some additional information that has come my way in recent times.