A different telling of the Somerton Man story .. Part 1
The night he died from ingesting a poison he ate a pasty at an unknown location, then was seen being carried by a well-dressed man along the Somerton Beach foreshore by four witnesses. He was found the next morning laid by a set of stairs leading to the road, arranged as if sleeping, his head resting on the seawall, a partly smoked cigarette wedged under his chin.
After being transported to the morgue his clothing was searched and found not to contain anything that identified him, however the search also revealed he had no matches in his pocket so the existence of the partly smoked cigarette could be questioned. This mistake was soon corrected and a box of matches was produced and placed with his belongings.
He was thought to be about 45, was 5’11 tall and in good physical condition excepting for some internal matters that may have been caused by the poison that killed him. This poison was not able to be identified.
At a later date a slip of paper with the words Tamam Shud was found in his fob pocket and an abandoned suitcase was retrieved from Adelaide Train station which was identified as belonging to him by virtue of a spool of thread that matched some repairs to the clothing he was wearing. Fingerprinting the items found in the suitcase was not considered necessary though the body itself was fingerprinted and a print cards were sent to the FBI as well as Australian police stations.
Not long after the inquest into his death was adjourned some six months later, the book the slip was cut from was handed in to the police by a man they chose not to identify.
Subsequent investigations showed that the book’s back cover contained a code and a local telephone number. The book and the page the slip was cut from were never photographed and the book itself appeared to have been lost by the police only days after receiving it. A subsequent cold case investigation could only identify two individuals who confirmed seeing it. The code has never been deciphered.
.. to be continued
The Somerton Man .. 
The code gives us clues nonetheless
One thing is for sure, there isn’t any microcode
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Was the SM seen, by anyone, in the same location after 8.00pm on 30 Nov? What are the odds that, the SM was ‘removed’ soon after 8.00pm and was the same man being carried down the beach at 10.00pm that same night? That’s after his trousers had been exchanged, with the ‘unusual thread’ used on his trousers, thus ensuring a ‘positive’ link with the suitcase when it was ‘discovered’?
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You’d expect the police to treat it as a possible crime scene. Take some photos there for future reference. The surroundings, tide mark, position of body, his face, his size, the clothes he was wearing, items he had with him at the time. The need to identify him through those pictures if he had no ID on him. Most people left the house without ID in those days. No driver’s licence, nothing on you. But they knew that wasn’t where he died so they didn’t need any photos at the scene which would just lead to questions being asked about what was in the photos and that might give themselves away.
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A warm night, the man looking down from the footpath was wearing a grey suit and a hat. Adelaide CIB dressed like that in those days. He was a copper, a detective. If things got sticky and they were blown, he just walks down to the body on the beach, gives it a shake. You ok ? Yeah I’m fine, fell asleep. The “dead guy” gets up and walks away.
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No. 1: Was it police procedure to take photos, in the 1940’s etc, whenever a body was found at a possible crime scene? I guess the question is, why were no photos taken in this case? If the police, as you state, knew he died somewhere else, you would think that the police would have taken some photos; just to make it look ‘official’ and, cover their backs, so to speak. And, as you remark, the photos may have raise questions as to exactly what he was wearing, position of his body etc. Yet the lack of photos was never raised at the enquiry.
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Clive, I think you’d have to find a similar case at about the time to see how they handled that .. in this case, the timing was pretty tight. Find the body, call the cops, search the body, remove the body.
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Yeah, I take your point about timing. There are a couple of cases I came across: “Leader” 24 Dec 1942, Page 1: “Police photographer Hudd, took photo of dead body”. “News” 5 Apr 1944 Page 1: “Police photographer Durham photographed the body”.
“News” 16 May 1947, Page 1: ‘Unidentified man found near Victoria Racecourse on Tuesday (13 May). No papers, identity on him. Dry cleaner tag found. Fingerprints taken but, nothing in police files”.
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“News” 5 Apr 1944 Page 1: “Police photographer Durham photographed the body” as you would expect for normal police procedure. He wasn’t on the beach 1 December 1948 to take photographs and should have been but told not to of course. Didn’t even go there later to take photos of the spot on the beach or surroundings so that the coppers could get a feel by studying the photos back at Angas Street for what may have happened. They already knew. Tight timing to keep the charade moving along and keep a tight control on what was allowed to be known and seen.
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They knew all about Somerton man before he got to Australia. They could have arrested this guy when he arrived at Mascot airport, but it was better to let it play out. Let him travel through to Adelaide and you can gather more intel on him. Find out his contacts, intercept his messages, observe his chat meets, build a picture of his network. He’s not a lone wolf. He’s got airfares and accommodation paid for and he reports in using letter envelopes and air mail stickers. Because Boxall was living in Sydney he was a good choice to be tasked with shadowing Somerton man when he arrived at Mascot and through to Adelaide. In 1948 teletype messages were sent using Baudot code. Because of that Teletype Model 15 machines were limited to capital letters and figures. The Somerton man code is a handwritten teletype format all in uppercase and / symbol as a delimiter. Made to look like it was hand copied from a teletype printout. A train line and level crossing X sign drawing were added to clarify “O” as Overland train. That really is all the instruction he needs to see. Take the Overland train to Adelaide. The Rubaiyat and coded message would have been dropped off at the front desk of the hotel in Melbourne where Somerton man stayed. The Rubaiyat is the recognition signal for his identification after arrival in Adelaide. The Jess and Boxall episode with the Rubaiyat suggests that Boxall who was shadowing Somerton man was the one who delivered a Rubaiyat to the hotel in Melbourne with the message in it. It’s likely that Somerton man did suicide as they said, but not on Somerton beach. More likely in the cells at Angas Street. If he was involved in more serious crimes, such as murder, he’s got two choices, you get extradited back to the US and fry in the chair, or you can do it this way here. Then they disposed of the body on Somerton beach near where Jess lived and concocted a cover-up story that he was a former lover and was rejected by her and went down to the beach to end it all. To find out who he was you need to trace back through his arrival at Mascot, back through San Francisco and movements in the US before that.
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So, somewhere along the line is Jessie and her involvement in this case. The way the police dealt with Jessie tells its own story. They had her telephone number, they showed her the bust and her reaction, apparently only noted by Paul Lawson, not by the other police officers, again, tells its own story. The inaction by the police to check Jessie’s background i.e. claiming she was married, was a ‘Sister’ etc reinforces a view that they were told forget about her.
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The things that really bugs me about the idea of some grandiose conspiracy with SA Police and other higher authorities being involved in SM’s demise and cover up is that why, oh, why did SAPol go to such extra ordinary lengths:
If there were some officers in active pursuit of identifying the body who were not involved in the conspiracy, I’m sure they would have been persuaded from letting 1 – 4 from ever happening!!
Concern about matches and a lack of crime scene beach photos pale in significance to the aforementioned steps taken that have probably never been repeated for an unknown body here in Australia, let alone the rest of the world.
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Feltus was on the outer and not privy and kept in the dark like the rest of the flatfoots. National security. Need to know basis only.
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No. 1: ML/AB(O)=Melbourne/Adelaide By Overland and the two long lines represent railway lines? Perhaps, AIA=Arrives In Adelaide? Can’t workout what QC represent, the only thing that came to mind with QC, if we think of their position in the alphabet, then Q=17 & C=3, therefore 17.03 could be a time?
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