The problem with Alf Boxall’s part in this movie
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If … Detective Canney had shown Harkness a copy of Durham’s photo of SM,
then … she would have known immediately he wasn’t Alfred Boxall,
so .. there would have been no need to involve Boxall in the investigation, no need to bother the Sydney police, no need to have them visit Alf in his workshop, no need for them to travel out to Maroubra where he lived (correction: the Sydney police had no interest in going to see Boxall’s ROK .. which in itself raises even more questions about the investigation (thanks JS)
but … it did serve one purpose in that a lot of time and effort was needlessly wasted,
or perhaps not so needlessly wasted if a ‘higher authority’ needed the time given by the publicity of Boxall’s alleged involvement to prepare a position.. one that also involved using three detectives to put the frighteners on Harkness when they escorted her to the museum to view the bust,
… when only one would have done the job.
The Somerton Man .. 
Think you’ll agree that Alf Boxall, in his interview with Liitlemore, page 113/114 on Inside Story recalls emphatically that police from Sydney/Adelaide/Melbourne interviewed him only at his workplace, not his home, but that when he got back home after work, the press were waiting for his arrival in droves demanding satisfaction. He reckons the Telegraph went with the story for a week.
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I thought they went with him to take a look at the ROK, see if there was a hole in the back page..
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Once again he insisted they, the cops, were not at all interested in seeing the ROK, either the dual language or the wife’s copy, neither of which were endorsed according to Alf from memory?
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Bit of a lapse that, you reckon?
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We’re all singing from the same hymn sheet
Only simpletons see Carl Webb as Somerton man
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Alf says that the Sydney Telegraph were all over the story for a week after his interview with the filth. So how is that we’ve not picked up on it. See to it Clive if you have time on your hands!
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John: Only newspaper item I can find was in the “Barrier Daily Truth” 28 Jul 1949 P2. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/140891272?searchTerm=A. Boxall
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Interesting to re-read the ’tiser 27 July ’49 piece about Jestyn and the Rubaiyat.
“Somerton Body Case Detectives investigating the Somerton body mystery yesterday interviewed a woman who had given an Australian Army lieutenant a copy of the “Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.” which she believed could be identical with the book found in a motor car at Glenelg last year.”
Identical? They are about as different as a copy of the Australian Women’s Weekly is from the Book of Kells.
“The woman said that she subsequently went to live in Melbourne, where she was afterwards married. After her marriage she received a letter from the man. She replied telling him that she was now married.”
But Alf denied contacting her. From the Inside Story transcript:
S – Did you ever contact her again?
B – No.
S – Never wrote to her, or anything like that?
B – No.
He adds that he never knew her surname.
“After seeing a plaster cast of the head and shoulders of the dead man. the woman said that she could not say whether the dead man was the lieutenant she had known.”
C’mon, that bust wouldn’t look life Alf even if he HAD snuffed it and been pumped full of petrol.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/36678021?searchTerm=%22boxall%20rubaiyat%22
https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/NAAMedia/ShowImage.aspx?B=7937872&T=P&S=120
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Should we tell her that we might have heard that same story once or twice, ad infinitum even, just like all of her tiresome repeats, as if we’ve had our heads in the sand all these years?
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“She replied telling him she was now married”. Ok, well if that was the case, why didn’t Canney ask Jessie for the address of that man? Or, was she talking about another member of the Australian Army she had given a copy of the ROK as a gift? Either way, she led Canney up the garden path.
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Durham’s photo of SM is not bad as a cut and paste for that era
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I was referring to Hurfo’s (mofo) typical repeat of old news Clive; not to Jessie’s ad verbatum well rehearsed and oft reported rag lines to honest Det. Errol Canney per se!
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