Which is the most accurate likeness?
The bust?
Or the photo?
… and if you choose the photo as being the most accurate, why did they bother with making a bust?
“I am required to find, if I can, who the deceased was and how, and where he died. I will, I fear, be unable to answer these questions unless further evidence should be obtained*. For this reason I have directed that a cast be made of the deceased’s features, and that the cast be photographed. These photographs may give a better idea of the deceased’s appearance than those which have been published previously, and they will be available for publication.” Coroner Cleland 17 June 1949.
*Further evidence was obtained, being the finding of the Rubaiyat by chemist Freeman, the emergence of Harkness as a person of interest and the nature of her relationship with Boxall.
“He died on the shore at Somerton …” Coroner Cleland 14 March 1958.
The Somerton Man .. 
Maybe it’s me but, I cannot understand why a bust is deemed to be more realistic than a few, actual ‘true’ photos of the SM. Why would photos of the bust be more realistic than Jimmy Durham’s photos? Were there two lots of photos taken, and only a couple released to the media? So, in June 1949 Coroner Cleland was requiring more evidence about the SM, one of which was where he died. In March 1958 Coroner Cleland was able to confirm that the SM died at Somerton, so the finding of a Rubaiyat and Jessie’s involvement was enough evidence, for Coroner Cleland that the Somerton shore was the site of the SM’s death. I wonder was there any other evidence that Coroner Cleland was aware of and kept under wraps? If Jessie’s involvement was seen as crucial, why didn’t the police pursue this matter further?
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I’m thinking that if you were to line up all the male major players in the case and shake each one of their hands you might notice something in common with them all …
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all have their fingers crossed ?
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Not quite squire .. you need to do some homework.
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Does it include rolled up trouser legs?
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The one thing about those blokes, whether they be police or any political persuasion, when they met in secret, which they did, nobody left any publicly availability minutes of their meetings ..
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If they did, there sure would be a big can of worms, no doubt about that.
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Coroner’s Cleland request for a bust to be made, was something in the back of his mind, that, photos could be manipulated? So, in his view he left nothing to chance?
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SM looks up Jess’s phone number in a telephone booth at Adelaide Railway Station and calls her and jots her number down on the Rubaiyat. “I’m here at the station in a phone booth. See you sometime after lunch. Will call you again then. Got a train ticket to Henley Beach”
Jess: “That’s nowhere near Glenelg. Take the steps next to the phone both up to North Terrace and cross over. Hop on a St Leonards bus and that will take you straight to Glenelg. St Vincent pub in Jetty Road is pretty good for a counter lunch. Call me again from there”
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No. 1: That’s a pretty good scenario as to what may have happened. Especially, if Prosper was working in the city and Jessie didn’t want him to know about meeting a former lover(?). But, wouldn’t a pub be risky? Locals probably knew Jessie and, when the body was found, why no recognition to the police? I suppose it’s possible that, since the SM knew her address and, despite Jessie wanting to meet at the pub, he refused and told her I’m heading to your address?
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We can invent any manner of scenarios. We just don’t know. In mine, I was saying that he would call Jess again from the pub, not meet her there. He calls her from the pub. “See you in 15, I’m on my way” She then calls the cops. “Pick him up in Moseley Street, he’s on his way”. He leaves the pub, the chemist shop is in the same building, the chemist’s car is right out the front of the front bar door and SM tosses the Rubaiyat in the car as he comes out of the pub and then heads down Moseley Street.
That’s right. No recognition from any member of the public. Nobody saw this guy anywhere. Not at the railway station, not checking his luggage in, not buying his Henley train ticket, not at the bus stop, not on the bus, not in the street, not in the pub. Nowhere. There’s only one possible explanation, which is the photos that were given out to identify him, are not him.
I don’t see him as a former lover. I think that is the cover that they all wanted everyone to believe, ie he gets rejected and goes to the beach nearby and tops himself.
I see all of them in a plan to trap a spy with an intelligence network behind it, and because of his US items it appears to be the CIA. But again, you can’t prove it. There was a body on the beach in the evening and a different body on the beach the following morning. He didn’t get up in the middle of the night, go to the pie cart outside the GPO in Franklin Street to get a pasty, and then head back down to Somerton beach to the exact same spot to continue his suicide mission. You ain’t gonna get anything at Glenelg in that era at that time of night. It’s all locked up and everyone’s home in bed. So if he wasn’t on the beach and that was another person, a ruse, he was intercepted in Moseley Street by the suits in the afternoon, taken to the lock up where he was interrogated and then dumped on the beach just before dawn. Jess was within walking distance. Jess was a nurse, there was a nursing home right across the road. Some things are coincidental but there’s too much of it in all of this. So I prefer to look at the obvious.
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No. 1: Interesting scenario, one thought about the photos is Paul Lawson’s diary note of “original body”, something he was either unable/unwilling to tell me about. As you mention, he was picked up by the police, questioned and, possibly given different clothes to wear, all with labels torn/removed. Driven to the beach and left there. Perhaps the police also gave him something to eat, something guaranteed to work within a few hours? And, if Jessie worked at the CCH, on a night shift perhaps, she could have easily crossed the road and monitored the situation.
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Clive: We could be getting close to how things unfolded
It certainly within the realms of possibility that if Jess did make the phone call to Angas Street police station, a patrol car could be dispatched to Moseley Street very quickly, because the use of two-way radio in police cars in Adelaide started in June 1948 and by the end of November 1948 there would have been a fleet of them on the road, and possibly unmarked ones used by the suits. On patrol in the Glenelg area being a dense population area ie cruising Jetty Road or just parked waiting in anticipation of the call from Jess to pick up SM in Moseley St. It’s interesting that in the fleet was a police ambulance.
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Did Jess work at the CCH. A family member might know.
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Somehow I don’t think that Jessie’s daughter would confirm that Jessie worked at the CCH. I tried, a few years ago to find out names of staff who worked at the CCH in the late 1940’s but, it’s a big no-no, and if Jessie was a member of staff, you can guess the reason why. One of the things that Paul Lawson mentioned in a few of our talks was ‘Sgt. Schultz”, it’s as if he was trying to confirm something, then confirm nothing, all very puzzling.
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