It ain’t over until it’s over.
Put that saying down to Yogi Berra, yank baseball player, the same bloke who was responsible for “It’s like deja-vu all over again”
Well, the Carl Webb Mystery is far from over, never mind what people are saying, we still don’t know all the whys and wherefores. All we know is who he was. The whys are still orphans.
For instance – Jessica Harkness – she knew enough about Alf Boxall to suggest she’d done a fair bit of homework on him by the time Detective Canney rolled up to her front door to ask why her phone number was connected to Carl Webb whose body was found just a couple of hundred yards away from her home six months previously. Carried there in fact. Laid out. Stripped of ID. Not a penny in his pocket. A secret message hidden in a secret pocket. Sounds like something out of a Hollywood post-war thriller.
Then, in the company of three detectives and Paul Lawson she all but lost it when viewing his bust, but not too much as she gave the same one word answer to all their questions.
No. No. NO.
This lady had a secret buried so deep a roomful of experienced detectives couldn’t shake it out of her.
Same with Gerry Feltus when he interviewed her years later, same silence. The lady was stone. And for what? An out of work instrument maker over from Melbourne who repaired his clothing with industrial strength thread and carried a collection of paraphenalia that could open locked doors and start cars?
Then, getting back to Boxall, how come Jessica was able to give the police the whole boxful on him, as in where he worked, drank and lived when he told his interviewer (Littlemore) he never even knew what her last name was? And after looking at the video of that interview a hundred times the more I’m convinced Boxall didn’t even remember meeting her in the first place.
You want more?
Stuart Littlemore, Charles Wooley and Gerry Feltus all had the opportunity to ask if Jessica Harkness was also know as Jestyn. Wooley interviewed her daughter, Kate, Littlemore interviewed Boxall and Feltus spent an hour with the lady herself .. and none of them asked the question. Now you’ve got everybody from Derek Abbott to Gordon Cramer referring to her as such. Jestyn this and Jestyn that like they have some inside information we don’t.
You’re nowhere near the end of it Professor.
Come to think of it, when the NSW police first rousted Boxall and he showed them the Jestyn Rubaiyat do you think they might have asked him the Jestyn question, or at least passed the information onto SAPOL so they could ‘continue with their local enquiries.’
No.
Never happened.
Where did he die? How did he die? Who was with him when he died? Who carried him from where he died to where he was found? Whose Rubaiyat was found in Freeman’s car? Who knew what Tamam Shud meant and why did they hide the slip of paper it was written on in his fob pocket? And finally, what influenced Jessica to keep silent all the way to her grave.
An out of work instrument maker over from Melbourne who repaired his clothing with industrial strength thread and carried a collection of paraphenalia that could open locked doors and start cars?
Yogi Berra was on the money.
It ain’t over until its over.
The Somerton Man 
So, the ID mystery is laid to rest after all these long years.
Somehow this is not entirely satisfying. We are still in the dark about all the other mysteries in this case. Why was Mr. Webb (now that we have a proper name for TSM) in Somerton Park? What was his connection with Jessica Thomson? Did anyone notice he has the same first name as Carl Thomsen – the itinerant bush whacker from Renmark?
He had a lot of siblings. Someone is going to have a photo and more information. It is also just possible there is a family member alive who remembers him, although he seems to have been a bit of a loner especially after several deaths in his family leading up to his disappearance and what seems to me like a suicide.
And the code… after all looks like horse betting notes. No mystery there.
The T Keane on the tie business is finally resolved. Okay I admit that is satisfying 🙂
Seems like he was into some shady business with Prosper. Let’s keep digging!
If the code was related to a horse race meeting, say five races with a varying number of horses running, some 11 others 9, then it would make better sense for Webb to use their racing numbers rather than their names, particularly as some racehorses have two …
From Matthew Kleid’s comment above –
“Did anyone notice he has the same first name as Carl Thomsen – the itinerant bush whacker from Renmark?”
I think Keith Mangnosen knew the identity of the man he viewed in the morgue.
Keith may have met him via Jessica, knew him as Carl and assumed his surname was Thomson. Was Carl ever introduced as Prosper’s brother? Or perhaps I should say – George’s brother! (This mob sure were loose with names and surnames; Miss Harkness or Sister Thomson? Carl or Charles? Jessica or Jo? Jestyn?)
Perhaps Carl and Keith and Prosper had been associates for years.
Keith certainly was an erratic type, but when he comes up with the name Carl Thomsen I cannot dismiss him with “Wrong! You loony!”
And so I come to this conclusion.
Keith knows who it is, but to say so is dangerous. He thinks Carl has been killed by one or other of the Thomsons. His criminal associates have progressed to homicide. He’s already in too deep. Escaping to the sand dunes of Taperoo ended in disaster, and now the body count climbs again – poor Carl! Keith wants to tell the authorities who it is – but he’s no grass!
So he cobbles together the victim’s first name with killer’s surname and dresses it with a bit of Renmark red herring. The vague phony Nordic heritage is just to change the spelling of the surname. Not his fault they then went looking too hard in Renmark to find a man who never was.
Then the papers report on the recent attempts at identification, and publish Keith’s name and suburb. Carl Thomsen of Renmark is far too much disclosure! Thank goodness that by this time Keith has obtained the sanctuary of Parkside asylum – but his wife receives threats!
Keith gave two names as a gift of a lead for investigators, and throws in a Renmark/Thomsen backstory for misdirection. Trouble is – anyone who has glanced at his contribution has been looking the giftwrapping and totally missed the gift.
Maybe.