Was the Freeman Rubaiyat really lost?
On 8 January 1949 DS Leane was put in charge of the Somerton Body Case.
On 11 January Det. Brown joined the team.
On 23 July the Rubaiyat was handed in to Leane.
On 25 July (abt) Det. Canney spoke with Jessica Harkness.
On 26 July Leane and other detectives conveyed Harkness to the SA Museum to view the cast.
At about this time Leane and Brown were moved to other duties.
At about this time the Rubaiyat was suspected to have been lost in Leane’s filing system…
because …
.. on July 29, only six days after it was handed in, SA police only sent a photo of the code and a ‘similar’ Rubaiyat to the Director of Naval Intelligence in Melbourne.
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Despite my poor understanding of police procedures in the late forties it strikes me as odd that there could have been someone within the investigation in a senior enough position to deny Australia’s Naval Intelligence organisation and their decryption experts the opportunity to examine the original Rubaiyat to ascertain whether there were codings (or other information) inside the book as there were on the back cover.
Then again perhaps there was.
And that might explain why the Rubaiyat was never seen again.
The Somerton Man .. 
Did the Director of Naval Intelligence (DNI) query the fact that his office only received a photo of the Code and, a Rubaiyat supposedly similar to the Rubaiyat handed in to SA police? I wonder what the outcome would have been if the DNI had insisted his office had to look at the original Rubaiyat, only to be told, sorry it’s been ‘misplaced’? Perhaps the DNI did request the original Rubaiyat, and the reply they received was also ‘misplaced’.
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Years ago I asked NickP whether it would make any difference to a cryptographer having a similar copy of the Rubaiyat rather than the original – he said no. It wouldn’t matter. I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t say the same about the Voynich Manuscript.
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It would depend, wouldn’t it?
If the cipher is totally independent of the Rubaiayat, then, of course it doesn’t matter.
If the cipher relies on something in the Rubaiyat, then you simply need an equivalent Rubaiyat (provided verse numbered the same, language used is exactly the same etc)
<Insert snide remark about microcode needing the exact copy unless you can lift it from a totally independent medium>
So it shouldn’t matter to the cryptographer – unless there is something specific about that booklet that relates to the cipher (e.g. if someone put a dot under letters that you need for the decryption, or something similar).
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There is always the possibility the code indicates where in the book a message may be found.
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No matter which way you look at it, ‘similar’ is just not the same as an original item. It’s like me, the owner of a Monet painting (wish I was), painting an exact copy, it’s still not the original.
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Clive. Want to get into something rather topical in so much as the subject of the lost Ron Francis Rubaiyat is concerned. If so, then take your pal Peteb and go directly to NP’s poorly handled Hendrickson thread of 2018, in which Feltus gets away with his not so credible Ruby in the back of a little Minx deception ploy. You just so happened to get a well earned maze master medal for making it all happen.
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Feltus knew ..
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Not only did Clive break the news on Dr. Hendrikson’s Hillman Minx and the Rubaiyat find within, courtesy Derek Abbott. A week later he also announced a counter claim by Gerry Feltus for his chemist Freeman entry in the ROK stakes. It one the day despite evidence being full of holes. Everyone’s favourite true crime author made a written promise to return real soon with full details for his fawning fans.That was six years ago; We have not heard a murmer from his nibs in the interim.
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If we ignore all indications that Leane lost the ROK I would totally support SA POL keeping the Rubaiyat in their own evidentiary chain and not sending the original to Melbourne. You would have absolutely no control over the book fate sending it interstate and to a commonwealth agency. What would have been thorough would have been a photo of the code page plus a photo of every book page, cover, etc.. times in the late 40’s were still under some degree of austerity measures so maybe restricted budget and or supplies for photography. Just imagine having those photos now, confirming the bloody thing existed.
I’m still impressed the code markup was made on a photo of the code and not the book itself!!! But the fact the markup is on a photo indicates that a photo(s) (or at least a negative(s)) once existed, that we have not seen. Fact there was one means there could be others… photographers bracket their shots!
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