To part quote Derek Abbott ‘There’s two things that bug me.’
Derek Abbott was talking about socks and why TSM didn’t have any spare pairs in his suitcase.
I’m talking about the train and bus tickets found in his pocket.
Some things go way beyond police incompetence, matters so basic to a police investigation even the newest recruit would know better, but who am I to talk because it’s taken a lot of years for me to realise how badly SAPOL performed when investigating the Somerton Man case. Though I’m not alone because NOBODY got onto it. Not Gordon Cramer, bless him, nor Nick the Dome Pelling or the good Professor and his team of gatherers. Ruth Balint didn’t see it and neither did Mike Dash or Stuart Littlemore, John Sanders, remember him? Nothing there either .. plus all the dozens of Somerton Man talking heads we’ve seen on TV, the documentary makers. Clive, matey, how come? You roosters out there reading this. All of us noddies. What a bloody hopeless shower ..
because ..
if Detective Strangway had asked someone to duck down to Adelaide Railway Station in the days shortly after the Somerton Man’s body was found to check who was on duty when the Henley Beach ticket was issued he would have had the benefit of meeting up with Doug Townsend long before he was finally interviewed. Same with Arthur Holdeness, the bus ticket seller, then, being a smart copper our man might have wandered over to the left luggage office and had a chat with Ralph Craig about the possibility of a piece of unclaimed luggage possibly left in his racks … think of it, asking the three men who dealt with the Somerton Man only days earlier what they remembered about him.
But it didn’t happen that way, did it? And nobody knows why.
The Somerton Man 