The Original Body?
You folks are the experts… so could somebody please help me here in understanding these couple of notes Paul Lawson wrote in his diary when he was building the cast.
Appreciated.
pic courtesy of GC and pinched off Big Footy.
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The Somerton Man .. 
It’s called
a Freudian slip
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What? Webb was a cross-dresser?
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No! Mrs. Webb was the cross dresser.. er Dorothy from memory. As for Dinham’s call to Paul Lawson re disposal, could he have said in jest, “ab-original body” ie., yeller feller with the tanned legs, funny lug holes and uncut apendage. Chas Dinham was known to be a wise guy in the sqad room; Paul on the other hand not being into humour and deaf as a beetle besides. So anything goes.
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I smell a rat ..
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Paul Lawson’s service file is now up on NAA. Two things stand out in that he was a strapping six footer but with constitutional disorders that provided him with no marching or heavy lifting cover. Contrary to his Adelaide museum bio giving his main five year WW2 posting as attending at R & R centres in NT., Can’t see no mention of that in his posting orders.
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This may just be a technical (blunt) note to self of PL. When casting, there is the original, a mold and a plaster cast. Although he seemed to be very fond of that bust.
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So, besides the companion of the beach, there appear at least two possibly incriminating pieces of evidence to have gone missing: the Freeman Rubaiyat and the victim’s braintissue.
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what’s surprising to me is that part of the Docs journal was shown to the public and us Sluethers,it’s just weird the way he wrote it, almost like he had Upper Echelons breathing down his neck.
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They were.
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More telling perhaps be that Paul Lawson eventually got over his wartime constitutional health problems by 1946, living to 103 and for the last seventy five years of it pontificating about his personal involvement in the Somerton Man case. Great man all the same.
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What came first, Lawson trying to close down his Littlemore interview or the made public news that Harkness almost keeled over when viewing the bust?
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Peteb #
You’ll recall Paul, in his ’78 televised account of folks being brought to see his SM assimile, telling Livermore that they be ordinary people, singles or couples specifically in the over forty age division. So much for Jo who was at the time only 28 and besides she was Thomson without a P as per the diary entry. All in all it would seem to pour water on Paul’s much later utube demo of a lady swooning as if about to faint. Needs reminding that that also present in the tiny room would have included a hairy demonic looking bust surrounded by five evil eyed balding Angas St. CIB suits. Did it happen or nay? we’re not to judge but there’rs one thing to note, no other witnesses to said event ever came forward far as we’re aware!
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I bet it reminded her of previous werewolf encounters, men by day and wolves by night. No wonder she fainted.
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John S .. fair enough, though why have we always assumed Lawson was thinking about Harkness when he tried to pull out of the interview?
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Clive #
Vinamold brings to mind a variety of local UHT milk? that I’d been using in my porridge for ages. ‘Vinamilk’ be the brand name and whatever they re constitute it from had my guts in a state where I’d needed constant overdosing on generic Zantac to get me through the day. Monday I gave Vina the flick and am now feeling fine. Weird product names ie., ‘Grow Plus’ abound here but, as opposed to the plant food in OZ ours be the top brand of post natal baby formula.
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Looks like it reads; ‘Ring from Constable Dinham”? So, if this was true why was Dinham concerned about disposal of the ‘”original body”? (Vinamold is a material used to make flexible molds). Perhaps, Paul was ‘economical’ in his writing due to the circumstances he found himself in? As JS states, he was a great guy, happy to help.
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My bad sorry … So when Paul put the name Mrs.Thompson in his diary, he may well have been referring to Caney’s witness Liz Thompson (Salotti) of Morgan who had ID’d the original beach body as George Walsh. Over the years memory dims and in this case, when John Ruffles caught up with him years later, seems Paul may have found the Jestyn yarn more appealing. Let us be mindful that Jessica was Leane’s protected anonymous witness and as such would not have been known to someone like Paul.
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Given that, and remembering that Lawson had the blues looking over his shoulder for the length of the plaster cast job, would it be out of order to imagine they were the ones who knew who the body belonged to?
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So who was it informed the world at large on utube that five burley coppers closed in on the nice ‘level of beauty’ witness cast viewing inclosure…Catch 22 assertion in my view mate. I’m off down to me local by the far canal for a wet. On the morrow?
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Roger that ..
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“….early in the new year.” That’s what you were promised Peteb. Got any notions on when ‘early in the new year’ comes to an end and we might expect a belay notification vis. “Due to unforseen circumtances related to procedural set backs etc…” Your call.
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I got back I touch with the uniform who gave me that info, asked her if she might give me a heads-up when the news was about to be released and you guessed it, no response was forthcoming.
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Thought I may have spotted hint of a bleak leak on FB a couple of weeks back, this courtesy of Norm Webb’s kin Julie Holland; straight and to the point as in “FFS”. This following on from her post of a week before on a much more positive note, thanking the Almighty for bringing Charlie home at last … or summit.
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It can only mean what it says:
re disposal of original body
Otherwise it would just say:
disposal of the body (that you are working on)
So, there’s an original body
and a not so original body (being worked on)
What’s more
Lawson’s words in writing
are what constable Dinham said to him
and being only a constable
he unwittingly revealed
that another not so original body was used
for a certain purpose by Lawson
and the original body was being disposed of
meaning it was being buried, or burnt…
and that body is the body on the beach
which is Somerton man and it is then gone
I’d say Somerton man
is down the back of West Terrace Cemetery
in a paupers grave unmarked
and you will never find him.
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A bit like poor old Tibor Kaldor.
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No One #
There does happen to be just such a person whose remains be interred right down the back of West Terrace cemetery and who, whether by his own hand or nay, also died on 1 December 1948. I just happen to have spoken by phone to his son Bob who still has a copy of his father Bill’s death certificate.
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It’s true:
An estimated 50,000 people have been buried in unmarked graves at the West Terrace Cemetery.
Adelaide Cemeteries Authority chief Robert Pitt says up until the 1950s many of these paupers – or those without next of kin – were buried on top of each other, some numbering as many as 10 in a grave, in an undignified end to life.
The body can be stored at the city morgue in Divett Place, for months or even years, depending on inquiries made to contact family and friends.
https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/assisted-funerals-the-lonely-graves-of-bodies-unclaimed-by-families/news-story/a8fa3fb749778fe2514219454fabdb29
Note that he said up until the 1950’s ie 1948/49
Out of that 50,000 there would be a large percentage that have no identity on them. Street drunks, homeless living in the parklands and died, from interstate or overseas, jumped ship, no money on them, died and nobody can identify them from missing persons because nobody is looking for them, there’s no next of kin, or they are loners and nobody cares about them.
We don’t know if another not so original body had been stored for some time and used. So we don’t know if the man in the grave is the one who was on the beach. What’s more the dental records on the card are not official, there’s no date, no marking which says from man on Somerton beach and there may be a reason for that. No file reference for the morgue records. Nothing. Only a card that could have belonged to another person, it might be innocent, might not. Might be driven by that “higher authority” she talked about, and very likely
It would have been quite a convenient way to dispose of our Somerton man back in that era, down the bottom of West Terrace Cemetery in an unmarked paupers grave and it’s a fair bet that’s where he really is buried.
When you think about it, if you are going to dispose of a body in a Cold War scenario, you aren’t going to plonk that body in a grave that says here is the Somerton man where sometime in the future some wiseguy might say lets dig it up and see who it is.
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Perhaps the thinking was, back in 1949, that the grave with the Somerton Man’s name on it, would never be of any interest to future generations. Files do get lost/misplaced/destroyed etc, but of all the files that cannot be found, it would seem a bit odd that the SM’s file is one of them. Wonder if Leane/Brown ‘acquired’ this particular file for their own safe keeping?
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