Who saw the Freeman Rubaiyat?
Below is a comprehensive list of those* (South Australia only) involved in the Somerton Body investigation and who may have had an abiding interest in viewing the Freeman Rubaiyat.
During Feltus’ cold case investigation only two of them admitted seeing the book. He named neither of them though we can assume one was DS Leane.
Const. Bartlett. Mounted Const. Boyce. Detective L. Brown. Const. Canney. Professor Cleland. Coroner Cleland. Const. Copeland. Cowan R.J. Const Curtis. Const. P. J.Durham. Dwyer LQMP. Det. Sgt. Evans. Sgt. Fenwick. Const. Forby. Det. Sgt. Gill. Det. Gollan. Det. Sgt. Gully. Det. Harvey. Sir Cedric Stanton Hicks. Supt. Homes. Det. Sgt. Hopkins. Const. Horsnell. Mounted Const. Knight. Paul Lawson. Det. Sgt. Leane. Const. McCallum. Det. Sgt McGrath. Sgt. Mertin. Det. Sgt. Moran. Const. Moss. Mounted Const. Napier. Navy Intelligence Office. Det. Noblet. Det. O’Doherty. Insp. Partridge. Insp. Ridgley. Insp. Ross. Supt. Sheridan. Const. Storch. Det. Strangeway. Const. Sutherland. Det. Sgt. Thomas. Const. Venning. Mounted Const. Walker.
Then there’s this …
’Perhaps the investigation of a suspicious death falls under the jurisdiction of coroner, perhaps he should have at some stage subpoenaed the major witnesses who were eventually identified to give evidence.’ Gerry Feltus talking about Jessica Harkness, Alf Boxall, Chemist Freeman and D.S. Leane, none of whom were called to give evidence before Cleland issued the final inquisition on 14 March 1958.
*Some may have died prior to Feltus’ cold case investigation.
The Somerton Man .. 
If Freeman had any sinister connection to the case, I’ll never understand why he would come forward with the book he found in his car when he could just have easily destroyed it.
Why bring attention to himself?
LikeLike
But we can (and many have) taken that a step further….you’re dumping a body on a beach and you have a little book to get rid of. Why throw it in a car? You have a coastline of ocean that can destroy it, you have a plethora of bins and drains and other places to dispose of it throughout Somerton and Glenelg, but you choose to throw it in a car in the middle of Jetty Rd. Why?
1) Someone is being followed and wants to subtly get rid of something (maybe)
2) Someone was a passenger in the car and it fell out of their pocket
3) It was thrown from somewhere (a moving bus, a window above) and landed in the car by chance
4) It was picked up by someone in the street and put in the car (e.g. someone getting out of their friends car sees it in the gutter and assumes it fell out the car)
5) it was deliberately planted in *that*car
6) hypothetical segue that I’ll add later
GC was always a fan of %1, and it’s one of a handful of things he’s plausible about. NP’s car theory was something like #5. Various loons on different sites have commented some variants of the others.
6: What if the Freeman Rubaiyat was a prank gone wrong? What if Freeman and his BiL (or whoever the other person in the car was) thought they’d hand in a torn Rubaiyat for a lark. To their surprise, the police went with it (even though the tear couldn’t possibly have matched the slip (and it didn’t)). Now things snowball out of control as the media latches on – they’re hardly going to walk into the local station and say “sorry fella’s, we was ‘avin a lark”. Maybe it’s a long stretch that they would have by chance handed in a version that was sufficiently similar (the paper matched), but…..
It’s very hard to make sense of *everything* about the TS slip and the Rubaiyat:
– The mismatch in shape (‘neatly trimmed’) and tear
– The confusion over Rubaiyat type – the Boxall one is a total different format to the Freeman one
– The possible Wytkins Rubaiyat
– The fact it ended up in the car
– The missed TS slip in the first place
– The existence of the TS slip (if it’s a suicide note, why hide it? If it’s an ID why is it secreted away (if you’ve used it why hold on to it, if you’re killed because it’s inufficient ID why re-stash it on the body, if it’s part of a bigger conspiracy how did it become public rather than disappear….etc)
– Glenelg is a reasonable walk from Alvington – why go to a public place full of bins where something could be discretely (And untraceably) disposed of, and instead chuck it in a car where it’s likely to draw attention
I’ve always been struck that a lot of what we knows about this case seems to be hard to put together because the explaantion of one piece of evidence contradicts another. But the more I’ve thought about it, the TS slip and the subsequent Rubaiyat investigations seem to be the most baffling, and possibly the single items that seem most confounding….
LikeLike
I thought SM had lunch in the St Vincent pub in Jetty Road. The chemist shop was in the same building and Freeman’s car was outside. SM got wise after a few ales, and saw the Rubaiyat was being openly used to ID him, so while having his counter lunch in the front bar he ripped the Tamam Shud out and stuffed it in his fob pocket, to still keep the recognition signal, and when he came out the pub door, the car was right there in front of him, so the ale he had, made him careless and he tossed the book through the window. Then he turned the corner and headed down Moseley St where he was arrested in an unmarked cop car and taken to Angas Street cop shop and late at night given a pasty got from Cowleys Pie Cart outside the GPO in Franklin St. The good bloke coppers took it across Victoria Square to the lock up for him. Just before dawn they dumped him on the beach. Jess kept lookout from the hospital across the road. Of course all of this is pure fantasy…or is it.
https://collections.slsa.sa.gov.au/resource/B+71569
LikeLike
There’s insufficient detail to join the dots about Somerton man to work out who he was, where he came from, what he was doing here, and about his death
LikeLike
Unless he’s positively identified as Carl Webb.
LikeLike
Guzz Rating: Possibly Freeman thought he was doing ‘his public duty’, he handed the Rubaiyat over to the police and probably thought no more about it. Especially since the police kept his name out of the media.
LikeLike
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/36678225.
Here’s another mystery – why did Alf Boxall give his copy of the Rubaiyat to his wife?
“‘ere love, this was given to me by a little nurse when I was in hospital back in the war.”
“What the hell Alf! Think you’re Errol Flynn do you? Make you’re own sodding dinner while I read a bit of poetry!”
And where is this book now?
Last seen with Gordon Cramer and a roll of sellotape?! “It’s coated I tell you!! Coated, coated, coated….”
LikeLike