17 – A Dead Man’s Hair
Here we have a plaster-cast bust of a human head and protruding from said bust were said to have been several salvageable hairs. The bust itself is over seventy years old and over its life has been handled countless times and kept in as many places – on a shelf, in a glass case, as an exhibit in a museum, court offices, in a police station. The bust has been displayed many times for national and overseas newspapers, more than a few TV specials and despite all the handling the couple of fragile seventy year-old hairs that survived were used to determine that Carl Webb was the Somerton Man.
Gordon Cramer’s pic of the bust etc as exhibited in the SA Police Museum. GC didn’t mention seeing any remaining hairs.
https://tamamshud.blogspot.com/2022/11/a-visit-to-sa-police-museum.html
We don’t know if Paul Lawson was meticulous about cleaning up his work but can assume so as it was destined to be an important police exhibit in the unsolved Somerton Body Case, by cleaning I mean running a damp cloth over the hardened cast and possibly using a cleaning agent. As we can see below Lawson had no compunctions about handling the bust so it’s not hard to imagine him running his hand affectionately over the top of his creation. It looks irresistible. We know he was very proud of his work particularly as it was a groundbreaking process.
We don’t know how Lawson maintained the bust – kept it free of dust and grit just as we don’t know how careful the police were when they had it in their possession. Whether they took any special care when transporting it from place to place, if they handed it around amongst themselves, took it to the local pub, sat it up on the bar and threw down a few celebratory schooners.
We don’t know if any of the dozens who wished to view the bust were allowed to handle it, move it this way or that for a better look. Senior police too took a special interest, as did Professor Cleland, as did Stuart Littlemore.
All of that coming and going and seventy years on Professor Derek Abbott was able to harvest a few remaining hairs, hairs that may have been as fragile as spun glass.
DA … the younger version.
The Somerton Man .. 
Only a single rootless hair plucked from the bust at a whim by a colleague of DA, then a decade or more later re submitted for DNA analysis through a ‘groundbreaking’ process developed by a US based, non profit company of two (now defunct), was needed for the identification it seems. That is if we don’t include the T. Keane suitcase white tie ‘to die for’ which one of the Abbott team declared to be the clincher, whether in the first instance or as conclusive proof of the farse be anyone’s guess I guess.
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I remember Dome publishing a list of all the kit sent back home after Keane died, there was no white tie.
https://ciphermysteries.com/2022/08/28/john-russell-keane-jack-keane
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Ah Peteb, you got the wrong tie my man. The one in question was the SM suitcase tie, nothing to do with John Keane RAAF who died in Ireland 1943.
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Well, there you go then.
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A few comments that might shed a little light on the display at Thebarton Police Museum.
The bust has been zealously guarded for most of its life. Encased in a clear plastic cube, special permission is required to remove and examine it. The hair extraction was done around 10 years ago which, I think, was around the time the 3D laser scan was carried out. There were numerous hairs selected from the head of the bust, According to prof Abbott, most, save one, were sent to the lab recommended by Dr Fitzpatrick. That lab was chosen because in 2019 they claimed a breakthrough in the extraction of DNA from hairshaft only rootless samples. They published a number of successful case studies on their website but I have not seen any academic papers describing these successes. They have not published any further cases since October 2022. I and, I understand, others have tried to contact the company without response. There are those in the industry who cast doubt on the claims made.
Back to the samples, the first batch of hairs were sent and drew a blank in testing. This left just the one rootless hair it being 5 cms in length. (NB hair grows at 1cm a month, allowing for normal hair start point it would suggest maybe 2 months actual growth between haircuts) This last hair scored exceptionally well according to Professor Abbott. And these, as the saying goes, is history. A stroke of luck? My view is that it has to be more than that. I had been told by Paul that in order to keep the man’s hair in place during the application of the plaster, his hair was smothered in mortuary soap. You’ll note how flat the hair is on the bust. Flattening it didn’t guarantee that a few hairs wouldn’t break free and pop up into the plaster. What is more surprising is that the rootless hair contained DNA material. Mortuary, medical grade soap contains a cocktail of chemicals including sodium hypochlorite (bleach) and hydrogen peroxide another bleach type chemical. Both of these destroy DNA on contact.
Of further interest is the fact that this body had been embalmed and Laurie the undertaker made 4 visits a week for 3 consecutive months topping up the body with chemicals each visit. And amongst those chemicals was formaldehyde which shared the previously mentioned chemicals murderous capabilities when it comes to DNA. And the last remaining 5cm strand of rootless hair survived it all. It’s a Miracle.
Would anyone care to look into the chemical composition of plaster and its effect on human hair samples?
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The exhibit at Thebarton Police barracks is encase in perspex and special permission is required before anyone gains access.
The hair samples were harvested approximately 10 years ago, around the same time that the 3D laser scan of the bust was taken.
A number of rootless hairs made up the sample lot.
According to Professor Abbott all but one of the hairs were sent off to Astrea for analysis. Astrea being the company recommended by Colleen Fitzpatrick based on the fact that said company in 2019, made a claim that they had successfully obtained DNA from rootless hair shafts. The company posted a number of success stories up until October 2022, no stories have been published on their website since then. I have tried to contact them a couple of months ago but no response as yet. I have not seen any academic papers from them.
The first batch of hairs returned a negative result. So it was that there was only one, 5cm, rootless hair sample left which was duly sent to the lab. This sample returned a positive result according to the Professor. An amazing outcome for a number of reasons.
Paul Lawson had told me that in order to keep the man’s hair flat so it wouldn’t get tangled up in the plaster which is as we see in the bust, he smothered the hair in mortuary soap. Mortuary soap is by its nature, medical grade and it contains sodium hypochlorite ( a form of bleach). This soap also contains hydrogen peroxide another bleaching agent. Both these chemicals destroy DNA on contact. Then we need to consider Laurie the undertaker and embalmer of the Somerton Man’s body. Laurie made 4 visits a week for 3 straight months, 50 visits in all, to the morgue to top up the fluids and keep the body in good condition. Amongst the chemicals in embalming fluid is formaldehyde. When it comes to DNA, formaldehyde shares the same murderous capability as the chemicals found in mortuary soap.
Head plastered in DNA killing mortuary soap, body awash with formaldehyde and that one single rootless hair defied the odds and carried its precious payload of DNA to the now defunct ( we think) Astrea laboratory. And it was there that the scientists recovered positive DNA results.
Goodness, have we all witnessed a Miracle?
Whilst I am here, has anyone any idea what the effects on human hair are when it is embedded in plaster for 74 years?
Oh! One last thing. Professor Abbott was fully aware of the mortuary soap issue.
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Thanks Gordon … appreciated.
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I think it might be an idea to embed the laser scan video. Apparently lasers are lethal to DNA.
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Gordon, if the hair was duff, suspect, where did Carl come from?
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Good question. How did that one good hair get there and when? When did Mr Boniface or other family members provide samples?
It seems unlikely that a hair could have survived the soap and embalming fluid treatment and have yet to understand the effect of modeling plaster on DNA.
What are the possible ways that such a hair could find its way into the profs posession?
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More’s to the point PB, where did DA’s unlikely SM contender decamp to after leaving Melbourne in mid ’47, if he ever did that is. Whilst there is admittedly a case for Dof Webb’s known familial links to Dr. Bennett which does include her old man there is not a scintilla of evidence to support any conivance between them, or a third party in Gerald Keane who was likely in town for work with the ballet when the deal went down.
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Something’s crook in Rookwood ..
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Nothing crook in Collingwood. Sorry for the interuption couldn’t be helped.
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PeterBowes…”Gordon, if the hair was duff, suspect, where did Carl come from?”
Exactly! I’ve been wrestling with this point for a while now!…. Why Carl?
Of all the different DNA that must have contaminated that bust throughout the decades..(fallen hairs, sweat, skin fragments)…how have we come up with some every-day-Joe…an “everyman”…a total non-entity that even his own family and friends couldn’t be arsed to take a photo of.
(Or is that exactly why he was picked?)
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Em has raised a relevant point, timely but certainly not for the first time, that the beach body’s height may have been mis measured as 5′ 11″ on day one and never questioned on veracity. According to Dr. John Dwyer his slab candidate was “tallish” then at the June inquest Prof. John Cleland could do no better when saying “height to be advised”. So looks like indecision from two eminent physicians who both chose to disregard such important detail. Perhaps Gordon Cramer might care to give expert opinion on his favorite subject of post mortem slab shrinkage etc., such being a last ditch effort at getting to the heart of the hotly debated matter.
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I contacted Norma’s son from her first marriage , he said he had requests for information on the Webb family before the Somerton Man story went public which is curious 🤔
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Shabs, how long before it went public?
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He didn’t say, he just said he’d had a few people contact him over the past few years even before it went public.
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Want to try for better detail? Do you reckon he’ll give more?
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No, he didn’t seem too interested to be honest.
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Thanks Shabs, we’ll happily go with what you’ve given us. Now give yourself a pat on the back, help yourself to some petty cash and take the rest of the day off.
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I was finding Webb stuff on Myheritage as early as March/April last year and seem to recall making mention of a specific target name and it’s researcher when I found it around August. It’s probably not important as the word was getting around of something big about to break in June or early July.
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One of the researchers in particular used the name Bennett as in Adelaide’s Dr. ‘Death of day one notoriety. Some will recall Nick Pelling’s unwsise early contacts with one of his sons re Dorothy Webb/D’arcy who was a relative of the Bennetts on the Robertson paterhal side.
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@GuzzRating
If you take time to research the process of ‘slip casting’, that’s the process used by Paul Lawson when he made the bust, amongst volumes of information you will find that there are instances of the use of human hair being added to the slip cast mixture as a binding/strengthening agent. This hair could be sourced from numerous locations, you’ll find adverts on Trove. Businesses would buy hair from hairdressers and barbers etc.
The questions would relate to the materials purchased by Paul and whether or not they were bought because they contained human hair. Alternatively, Paul may have sourced some directly himself. I came across the term,’ Fibrous Plaster’ This is the more industrial version of the product I think and it could contain, in days gone by, material such as horse hair, hogs hair, and even dog and cat hair. Human hair is far smoother than animal hair and that is one reason why it would be used rather than hair from an animal.
Just finding that the inclusion of human hair in ‘Pottery Plaster’ occurred, casts (no pun intended) additional and significant doubt about the source of the hair claimed to be from Carl Webb.
In the discussions I had with Paul Lawson, I did not ask the question regarding the possibility of hair in the mixture, at that time it wasn’t top of mind and Carl Webb had not emerged. I did ask whether he had given samples of the hair to Professor Abbot and he replied in the negative.
Not sure whether others here have read April 2023 article in the IEEE magazine, US version. It is the Professor’s account of how the whole process worked. In it, you will read that he admits that Forensic scientists would dispute the methodology which it turns out was based on ‘imputation’ an engineering approach, and not normal forensic procedures which are of course extraordinarily strict. Worth bearing in mind that there was only one hair that the whole identification was based on, just the shaft thereof. That hair would be destroyed in the DNA analysis process. Here’s the link:https://spectrum.ieee.org/somerton-man
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When I mentioned the use of salon hair in fine formed plaster casting busts for artisic creations some years ago, not a soul thought to respond, either in agreement or negatively. I even named Mdm. Josephine’s in Hindley Street as a hair source of choice a good choice and run by the younger sister of a tailor named named Ugo (Hugh) Pozza. Obviously GC has done some follow up in depth research into such inclusion as a ‘fixer’ as opposed to horse hair, so a much belated ‘good on you Gordon’ for your heads up…sort of?
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Seems like the trail is Carl Webb to the DNA instead of the DNA to Carl Webb?
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@John
I hadn’t seen that comment but if you will point me at it I will happily credit you on the blogpost.
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Gordon: accreditation on TS/BS, or lack thereof doesn’t faze one way or the other mate but, you can check it out on Nick’s once authoritive SM site should you be after more clarity. Related post(s) were probably from 2019 and the appropriate reference would be Mdm. Josephine’s Solon or Angela Josephine Piazza nee Pozza 1948. Hope that helps.
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Shabby: it was plain from the very start and stated as such well before the FB secondments were invited over to Nick’s place for a freeforall. Seems you are finally getting the message with your suggestion of DNA substituting as the cart before the bakers nag. Of course the T. Keane white tie was always first in line for Carl’s name game ruse as is intimated by Colleen Fitzpatrick.
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Oops, actual comment was 2022, the original post was 2014
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Johnno, try 2014:
https://ciphermysteries.com/2014/01/10/new-somerton-man-page#comment-465566
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Have searched but not been able to find the reference, I believe you but it’s just not turning up in the search. If you could find it John it would certainly add value to this current discussion.
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GC: It’s so frustrating to search through old CM threads these days. My posts on the subject were quite lengthy and were accented towards methodology especially regarding salon hair’s preference to sisal fibre or animal hair in fine museum grade plaster casts.
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@ Gordon… That’s pretty astounding.
If the plaster mix could have contained hair from some random barbers shop (or from a horse)…then wouldn’t Colleen Fitzpatrick have been aware of that, and cautioned Abbott about being so triumphant in identifying Carl Charles Webb! You’d think a prominent forensic scientist, like herself, would not want her name associated anywhere near to a DNA test that relied on material with such a dubious provenance…unless Abbott was being a bit coy with her when he presented the hair to be tested.
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Lurker: right Madam Josepine but wrong year and wrong thread. Thanks for your efforts though, and maybe it will jog someone’s memory, if indeed it be worth the trouble.
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Guzz
It’s quite a plot isn’t it. Have you done any research into DNA cases that involved hair found in plaster or concrete? I don’t know enough about the chemistry but I think there’s a process of oxidisation that takes place as the material ‘cures’. To my limited understanding, that process can lead to the production of other chemicals that damage or destroy DNA.
It would be surprising if part of the DNA hair testing protocols didn’t include searching for other hair samples from the same source.
One last thought is whether or not testing of hair samples for gender took place. The latter isn’t mentioned anywhere in the stories emanating from pro Webb DNA factions.
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@Gordon (as requested one of several related posts circa 2019/20)
“If anyone ever wondered about the accumulated hair left on the floor and of a salon and thought perhaps it may have been used by fine plaster (bust) casters, they’d be right on the money. Selected floor sweepings are sold off for use in the trade and mixed with courser fibres or horse hair to line the split forming cases before creating the actual solid repl.ica of their creation which in the case with Paul lawson should have been Somerton Man. Just about evetyone must know by now, I’ve spoken on the subject often enough, that those few celebrated hairs taken from the completed bust years later by DNA analysts might not have been those of the originzl mortuary specimen, whether it had been the beach body or a substitute. One reason we can feel sure that the extracted hairs are not from the body be that when Paul spoke of creating the cast, he mentioned using a gel solution to keep the scalp hair from impeding his laying on process”.
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So, it may well be that the actual DNA hair may well have nothing to do with the SM? Or, is it at all possible that the hair in question, could have been from another body at the morgue, which remained on the slab?
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A John Doe?
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Well, we know that Tibor was in the morgue at the same time, plus others?
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No unknown bodies in West Terrace at the time meaning at the time the bust was made. But there were plenty of bodies went through the morgue between December and June 49.
You have to wonder about all the hairs bar one having roots. And the rootless one was a full length 5 cm. So the shorter hairs came out with roots attached and the long ones root broke off.
That doesn’t sit well.
Thinking about the hair from salons, is it likely that they would pull hair out roots and all? I wonder if the hair that was sold was priced up according to whether it had roots or not?
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I realise I’m saddling up an old horse, but knowing that Leane insisted matches were found with the body suggests SAPOL had something to do with transporting the body to the steps as per O’Donohue’s witness. And if that was the case then their involvement may not have ended there, if you know what I mean.
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Pete
Its a fair comment and I hope you’ll forgive me if I appear to be heading off at a tangent.
The Police for some years after the cessation of hostilities were still in semi military mode. Part of that was down to a previous Commissioner who had links to Government and other associations. It was part of a culture which had difficulty changing to civilian policing mode. Special Branch would have been at the core of that culture although with the impending launch of ASIO that too was modifying its stance as of 1949.
The Soviets were rightly seen as a major threat especially in Australia home of rocket and atom testing even before Woomera. So that sets some if the whys and wherefores of the Police culture at the time, they were a defacto arm of the intelligence services.
Shifting focus a little, a question for you. How many spies were caught, tried and executed in Australia in WW2 and early Cold War years? A quick search might turn up a few internees even some from Loveday. But little apart from that if you exclude high profile diplomats whose cases were being worked but not publicly from the late 40s.
I think it likely that the war amongst intelligence operatives was hidden from public view and that its also likely that there were casualties on both sides. But who were the executioners and where did the bodies go? How would these events be hidden? I think you might find a higher than usual incidence of suicide by poisoning.
It wouldn’t be politic to have the Intelligence services seen to be involved in any clean up efforts. Better to have that done at a local level perhaps.
Bottom line is that I think that the Police services did what they had to do in order to protect the interests of National Security and there would have been little option.
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Thanks John,
It certainly corroborates the position really well. I will post that if it’s OK? My belief is that just by its very existence, the knowledge that human hair could and indeed was used as a binding/strengthening agent in plaster casts throws all the other theories out of the window until such time as and if the exhumed remains are matched to Charles Webb. Eckhardt Toll’s words ring so true regarding his view of Academics, not all but many, he thought to be stupid and some were deeply so.
Thanks again John, it’s a big step forward in exposing the shambles that the DNA theory has become.
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Clive #
Bill Cohen, who lived nextdoor but one to Freeman’s Fullerton Rd. pharmacy “was in the morgue” same flamin morning as Bluey Somerton; what’s more he was strongly built and just half an inch shy of the qualifying height of five eleven in socks’n jocks. Beats hell out of poor sad Tibor who was short bald and a week too late for a PM three for one deal at the hands of ‘barb’ Dwyer, the butcher of Tobruk in 1941/42 when the whips were cracking. (in jest).
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Peteb: who knows, maybe even a dead horse. From memory the matches were Brymay Redheads or Federal according the inquest press artist but, either way the box was said to be a quarter full ie., a count of nine going by average content of sixty in those days. Question being why did cops go to the fuss of giving a count at all, unless they were wanting to counter Const. Moss telling The Truth reporter that “he (SM) never had a match on him”.
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But no photos of the matchbox? It would seem that the police were selective in the information they showed/told Joe Public.
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No attempt to photograph a dead man on a city beach with no obvious cause of death should have been worthy of a photograph or two whilst the the body was insitu by Det. Strangways SOC team, not to mention the inquisitive press hounds. Not kosher according to Mossy Moss I’d say, Indeed, indeed!
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And not a fingerprint taken of any of the bright and shiny objects in the suitcase.
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Either the SAPOL were totally incompetent or the investigation was set up to fail from minute one.
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Thought this might interest you – tried to visit grave and bust in Adelaide last week:
https://randomfh.blogspot.com/2023/07/trying-to-visit-somerton-man.html
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Thanks Matt
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Matt
The SAPOL Museum is being closed down gradually. The plan is to build a hospital extension on that land. Took ages to test the ground, possibly related to CSIRO having some unusual experiments just across the Port Road in WW2. also possibly because it is believed to have been an aboriginal burial ground at one time.
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Matt #
Very interesting but not surprising that the grave is now not, or that there be no reminder in it’s place nor mention of two other bodies supposedly still in situ. Can we be sure that the bust is gone from the Sapol police museum at Thebarton. I distinctly recall one of our colleages having had access to it in an enclosed display case on 6th November 2022, duly posting a photograph for confirmation. Can’t imagine why it was disturbed from it’s secure chain of posesssion and stuck in some police storeage facility pending potential use as evidence somewhere down the track at a resumed Coroner’s Inquest not yet constituted.
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Pb: one for Dodger to mull over re his latest on FB Carl’s elevated strontium levels having likely been attributed to his work on Sher atomic site warning sirens circa. 1948. From my admittedly modest degree of past involvement, no tests were conducted in Australia until 1952, and furthermore the Sher sirens would sherly have been of fairly simple electronic magneto generator design and certainly not nuclear powered as ‘Dave’ would have you believe.
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Matt: So the bust is no longer available for public viewing. Thought going through my head is it going to disappear like the Rubaiyat? What’s the betting?
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Perhaps those who now possess the bust have also twigged at long last to the possibilty of additional supportive DNA material imbeded just below the by now hair depleted exposed surface area. No, no perhapses or possibles in this case game of first in best dressed…It’s a Goddamned London to a bloody brick mucking certainty, betcha!
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Clive. Like I said earlier, I wouldn’t bet against the corpse going AWOL or “accidently” destroyed. I know Pete has mentioned previously that the testing of the bod deady is being delayed simply due to a log-jam caused by the pandemic, but this has dragged on for more than two years now…
I expect there are facilities around the world that would DNA test the body for nowt! Just mail them a finger. (I’d even pay the postage! )
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Reading through Professor Abbott’s paper that was published in April on the US, IEEE site, he specifically mentions that the colour of the extracted sample hairs was brown.
In another, authoritative, article, researchers found that the distal (tip) end of hair samples in females was brown and in males, the colour at the distal end was always black. Here’s the link to the document:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9836136/
And here’s the link to the IEEE article in which the Professor clearly states that the colour of the hair was brown:
:https://spectrum.ieee.org/somerton-man
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Guzz: our overpayed, overstaffed federally funded forensic fellows with their fingers in Safcol’s Unknown Man uplift over two years ago are to all intents the same phonies who took a decade to falsely identify the 1942 Carley float remaines retrieved from Christmas Island. They confirmed said remains as Tom Clarke, a young sailor from HMAS Sydney to great acclaim and which just happened to co-incide with release of a book of the famous Clarke forbears authored of by Tom’s relatives, Canberra intellectual elites.
In that identification process the experts had a choice of three shipboard
crew to select from, eventually choosing the one with the best genealogical
credentials and a mouth full of flash Singapore gold teeth to boot…A dozen first attenders including the local island doctor from 1942 had at the time remarked on the decomposed body’s beautifuly preserved and sparkling white teeth; Lesson being for Keane punters is don’t expect too much from poor bluey Somerton’s accredited DNA ID mob, odds being that they’ll settle for Prof. Abbotts missing Melbourne man Carl Webb.
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