Murder: True Crime Stories - MYSTERY: The Somerton Man

Episode Date: February 6, 2026

In 1948, an unidentified man was found dead on an Australian beach with no wallet, no ID, and a cryptic message hidden in his clothing. Despite decades of investigation, his identity—and cause of death—remained a mystery. Was he a spy, a poisoned lover, or something else entirely? This episode unpacks one of the world’s most enduring cold cases, filled with coded messages, missing clues, and a relentless search for the truth that continues more than 70 years later. If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Murder True Crime Stories to never miss a case! For Ad-free listening and early access to episodes, subscribe to Crime House+ on Apple Podcasts. Murder True Crime Stories is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios 🎧 Need More to Binge?  Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of…, Serial Killers & Murderous Minds, Crime House 24/7, and more wherever you get your podcasts! Follow me on Social Instagram: @Crimehouse TikTok: @Crimehouse Facebook: @crimehousestudios YouTube: @crimehousestudios To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On the Crime House original podcast, serial killers and murderous minds, we're diving into the psychology of the world's most complex murder cases. From serial killers to cult leaders, deadly exes, and spree killers, we're examining not just how they killed, but why? Is it uncontrollable rage, overwhelming fear? Or is it something deeper? Serial killers and murderous minds is a Crime House Studios original. New episodes drop every Monday and Thursday.

Follow wherever you get your podcasts. This is Crime House. An unclaimed suitcase, a Soviet spy, an unbreakable code, and a man without a name. There are some things in life we may never know the answers to. It's an uncomfortable thing to realize and something that not everyone is willing to accept. In 1948, a man was found dead on a beach in South Australia. At first, it seemed like an open and shut case. The police were certain someone would come forward to claim him and explain how he ended up there.

But that never happened. Instead, the case went cold. Although there were plenty of clues, the authorities had no idea who the man was or how he died. At a certain point, it seemed like this was one mystery that would never be solved. But over 60 years later, someone picked up where the police left off. He was determined to solve the puzzle once and for all. And against all odds, he blew the case wide open. This is the story of the Somerton man.

People's lives are like a story. There's a beginning, a middle, and an end. But you don't always know which part you're on. Sometimes the final chapter arrives far too soon, and we don't always get to know the real ending. I'm Carter Roy, and this is Murder, true crime stories, a crime house original powered by Pave Studios. New episodes come out every Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Thank you for being part of the crimehouse community. Please rate, review, and follow the show. And for early, add free access to every episode. subscribe to Crimehouse Plus on Apple Podcasts.

Welcome back to another episode of Murder Mystery Fridays where I'm covering unsolved cases with questions that I can't get out of my head. The ones where the evidence points in multiple directions and every theory feels like a possibility. Today, I'm diving into one of Australia's most enduring mysteries. It's a case that's fascinated me ever since I heard about it,

the Somerton man. In December 1948, a man was found dead on the beach in Adelaide, South Australia. He had no wallet, no ID, and apparently no one was looking for him. Along the way, detectives found several clues, but they were nearly impossible to unravel. As the questions continued to mount,

so did the conspiracy theories. Some people thought he was a Soviet spy or a wayward sailor, others believed he was killed in a black market deal gone wrong. Thanks to one determined engineering professor, some of those questions were finally answered. But over 75 years later, others remained buried in the sand. All that and more coming up. December 1st, 1948 was the first day of summer in Australia. In Adelaide, the capital of the state of South Australia, hot weather was rolling in.

16-year-old apprentice horse jockey Neil Day and his 35-year-old friend Horace Horrie Patching got up early that day. It would be too hot for their horses to exercise later, so they went down to the beach shortly after sunrise to ride along the shore. As they were making their way across the sand, they noticed a man wearing a brown suit slumped against the sand. sea wall with his feet pointing toward the ocean. They figured he got drunk and spent the night there. But on the way back from their ride, at around 6.30 a.m., Neil and Hori saw the man was still there in the exact same position. Hori dismounted and tried to wake the guy up by lifting one of his legs, and that's when he realized this man was dead, already cold and stiff with rigor mortis. Soon another beachgoer ran home and called the police.

And by 6.45 a.m., police constable John Moss arrived on the scene. One of the first details he noticed was that the man's clothes were dry, which meant he couldn't have washed up from the sea. Not only that, but the man was wearing a lot of clothing for how hot it was that day. He had on a singlet, the Australian term for an undershirt, a white button-down shirt over that, a brown wool pullover or cardigan, and a double-breasted suit coat. On the bottom, he wore jockey shorts or boxers, socks, and brown trousers. Despite how many layers he had on, the man wasn't wearing a hat, which Constable Moss thought was strange.

In 1948, it was etiquette for men to wear hats, which were only removed indoors or greeting a lady on the street. All men wore them outside. As for the accessories he did have, the man wore brown, lace up shoes, a red, white, and blue tie, and there was a handkerchief in his pocket. But none of the clothes he was wearing had any tags. In fact, both his shirt and jacket appeared to have had the tags removed. And there was also something odd about the tie. The stripes were higher on the right-hand side, which was how ties in the United States were made back then. The stripes on Australian ties usually went the other way. And the type of stitching on his coat was exclusively used in the U.S. at the time.

That meant it had come from America. But how did this man get his hands on it? Those details were interesting, but they still didn't explain who he was. Constable Moss checked his pockets for any sign of his identity, but the man didn't have a wallet or any money on him. Still, there were a few other notable items, including a used bus ticket to Glenelg, just about two miles from the beach.

Constable Moss wondered if he'd gotten off the train there recently. But there was also an unused train ticket to Henley Beach, about eight miles away. It seemed like the man had plans to continue his travels before he died. Unfortunately, none of this pointed to his true identity. Still, the police didn't seem too worried about that just yet. Well, they figured it was just a matter of time until family and friends came looking for him. Until then, the authorities needed to learn more about the man and how he died.

The man had no wounds, signs of trauma or blood on him when he was found. So performing an autopsy was the only way the authorities could find out what actually happened. The day after the body was discovered on December 2nd, a pathologist named Dr. John Dwyer performed a post-mortem exam. He estimated the man had been dead for about seven and a half hours by the time the jockey found him. Dr. Dwyer also guessed he was around 45 years old. He was 5 feet 11 with gray eyes, strawberry blonde hair that was starting to. gray and an overall healthy physique. He had unusually large, tight calf muscles, like someone might get if they wore high heels frequently. This made people wonder if he worked on a cattle

ranch wearing heeled cowboy boots. However, ballet dancing or riding a bike long distances could also explain it. Whoever he was, he seemed to care about his appearance. He was well-groomed, and had just trimmed his nails before he died. One of the most important details Dr. Dwyer noticed was that the man was missing nine upper and nine lower teeth, mostly in the back of his mouth. Two of those were his lateral incisors, which go between the front teeth and the canines.

But there wasn't an obvious gap in his mouth, which made Dr. Dwyer think he probably didn't lose those teeth. chances were he never had them at all. That was a huge discovery. Just about 2% of people are born missing certain teeth. Because dental records are essential in identifying John and Jane Does, this unique detail could help set the man apart. But that wasn't the only thing they learned from the autopsy.

Dr. Dwyer noticed there was some unexplained blood in the man's stuart. stomach, along with the food that had been eaten about three to four hours before he died. His liver showed signs of damage and several other organs, including his brain, were also reportedly swollen. But his heart appeared totally healthy and normal. Despite all that, Dr. Dwyer determined the immediate cause of death as heart failure, but he made it clear that he didn't think the man's heart failed naturally. There was no sign of underlying heart disease or a heart attack.

Instead, the damage to his stomach and liver strongly suggested he'd taken some sort of drug or poison. The problem was tissue samples taken from the body all tested negative for common poisons and drugs. Dr. Dwyer also noted that most poisons that lead to bleeding in the stomach would also cause violent vomiting. But the man hadn't vomited up his last meal. So either a fit, apparently healthy, middle-aged man had died of an underlying condition that didn't appear to be at a terminal stage, or this was a homicide or a suicide using an undetectable rare poison. Dr. Dwyer's theory was certainly compelling, but it was almost impossible to prove. It also didn't help identify the victim who quickly became known. as the Somerton man in the media because he'd been found on Somerton Beach.

That same day on December 2nd, they photographed and fingerprinted the body, and they embalmed him with formaldehyde so he wouldn't decompose further before an identification was made. However, there weren't any matches for the fingerprints in Adelaide or anywhere else. Local police even sent them to the FBI and Scotland Yard, but no good results turned up. And despite the promising lead on the dental records, those didn't return any matches either. Meanwhile, the photos were widely distributed

in the hopes that somebody might recognize the victim. Through the rest of December and into January, 1949, a few people did come forward. They thought they recognized the photos or knew of a missing person fitting the victim's description. However, all of those possible identifications ended up being ruled out by one mismatched trade or another. For example, police ruled out a missing man who was a woodcutter because there was no calluses on the Suburton man's hands, which meant he couldn't have done hard manual labor.

Investigators also spent time sending the fingerprints out to more law enforcement agencies and searching the area for the man's missing possessions, like his hat and wallet. Still, none of that led them any closer to getting answers. Until finally, on January 14, 1949, six weeks after the body was found, they learned something new. Like I mentioned earlier, there was a used bus ticket and unused train ticket in the victim's pocket. Because of that, the police went to the Adelaide Railway Station to check for evidence.

At the time, all train stations offered luggage storage. Sure enough, there was a suitcase in the cloakroom that had been dropped off on November 30th, the day before he died, between 11 a.m. and noon. And it was still there. As soon as the police opened it, they felt sure it belonged to their victim. It contained a card of brownish-orange thread for mending clothes, which matched recent repairs. on the Somerton man's clothing, and the clothes inside would have fit him. Some of the underwear was the exact same size and style the Somerton man was found in. Unfortunately, the most important missing item, his wallet, which presumably contained his ID, wasn't in the suitcase. However, there were three items with a possible name on them. A tie was marked, T. Keene. and the singlet and laundry bag were both marked keen, though one had an E at the end and the other didn't.

However, there were no missing keens that seemed to match the Somerton man's description. So police believe those items were either bought secondhand or deliberately mislabeled to help disguise the man's identity. Besides the clothing, the suitcase also contained some envelopes and anteliorably. airmail stickers used for writing letters to people overseas. This suggested the Somerton man was in touch with someone abroad. But maybe the most interesting thing they got from the suitcase was a hint about what the victim did for work. He had several tools, like a screwdriver, two pairs of scissors, a sheathed knife, a length of cord, pencils, and something called a stenciling brush. At the time, stenciling brushes were often used by sailors for stenciling important markings onto cargo crates.

If the Somerton man worked at sea, that would fit with the idea that he traveled the world, collecting clothing and mailing letters. On the other hand, none of the clothing in the suitcase matched what a sailor would wear during a voyage. After the suitcase was found, things settled back into a frustrating holding. pattern. Over the next five months from January to June of 1949, people kept coming forward with tips on the Somerton man's identity, but nothing stuck. Meanwhile, the Somerton man remained in the morgue, embalmed and refrigerated. The theory was that he most likely wasn't from South Australia, and his family would probably want him buried closer to home. And while police still had his body, they figured they'd try a few more tactics to identify him.

On June 7th, just over six months after the Somerton man died, a plaster cast was made of his head and shoulders. Around this same time, the authorities also made one final Hail Mary. They called in Sir John Burton Cleland, a famous Australian scientist and pathologist. Cleland mostly agreed with the original autopsy's conclusions. He also felt like the most likely cause of death was suicide by undetectable poison, although he was unable to find proof, though he did find one new, very important detail.

It would go on to define the case and mystify the world for decades to come. Stuck in that winter slump, try dove men, plus care aluminum-free deodorant. All it takes is a small change to your routine to lift your mood. And it can be as simple as starting your day with the mood-boasting sense of Dove Men Plus care-aluminum-free deodorant.

It'll keep you feeling fresh for up to 72 hours. And when you smell good, you feel good. Visit Dove.com to learn more. In June, 1949, a little more than six months after the Somerton man was found, renowned pathologist Sir John Burton Cleland took a look at the body. he found, changed everything. While he was examining the Somerton man's clothing,

Cleland found a tiny fob pocket that the original medical examiner had missed. The fob pocket is that useless little pocket some jeans still have that you could maybe fit a quarter into, but the Somerton man's fob pocket wasn't in the usual place near the top of a larger pocket. It was sewn just to the right of his fly and incredibly well hidden. Cleland noticed it, though, and it had something inside. A tiny piece of folded paper. It had been torn out of a book. There were just two words printed on it.

Tomom should. It's Persian and roughly translate. to the end or finished. And it wasn't too hard to figure out where this piece of paper came from. One of the most popular books at the time was the Rubiat of Omar Cayam. It's a long Persian poem that was translated into English by Edward Fitzgerald. The book first came out in 1859 and was an instant hit throughout the English-speaking world. The Rubiatt's message is all about living in the moment.

and the importance of love. So people turned to it for inspiration and guidance during hard times. By 1948, almost everyone in Australia had read it. So the book itself didn't really help identify the Somerton man, but finding his specific copy might. However, there were no books in his suitcase at the train station. The hunt for the copy was on. But first, the police had to do.

deal with the body itself. On June 14th, six and a half months after he died, the authorities finally decided it was time to lay the Somerton man to rest. It seemed clear that no one was coming to claim him. He was buried at the West Terrace Cemetery in Adelaide. Because the case was so high profile, the ceremony was kept secret. Only a handful of people connected to the case, attended the short service. His grave was initially marked with a simple wooden cross, saying, quote, unknown Somerton body. Later, it was replaced by a tombstone reading, here lies the unknown man who was found at Somerton Beach 1st December, 1948.

With a body buried, it was time to continue the search for the Somerton man's rubyot. one with the words to mom should torn out. After search of local libraries failed to find anything, police publicly announced they were looking for copies. The next day, July 23, 1949, a local chemist walked into the police station carrying a copy of the ruby yacht with the words to mom should torn out. It perfectly matched the scrap the Somerton man had.

The chemist had a pretty strange story. about how he got the book. On November 30th, 1948, he was parked near Somerton Beach when someone threw it into the open window of his car. Well, that would have been the day before the Somerton man died, and the place the chemist parked was walking distance from where the body was found. The chemist didn't see someone throw it into his car, but later he saw his brother-in-law reading the book. He asked where he got it, and his brother-in-law said he assumed it was the chemists.

He'd found it in his vehicle earlier that day. The chemist didn't think much of it, and the book ended up in the glove box for safekeeping. That's where it stayed until the chemist saw a newspaper headline saying the police were looking for a copy of the ruby yacht. But when he handed it over to investigators, they found it contained some other critical clues. There was some faint writing on the last page, the same page where to mom should, meaning the end, had been torn out. It couldn't be read clearly with the naked eye, but under ultraviolet light, police were able to make out two things. A local phone number and a series of random letters with a second line crossed out. This puzzling clue ended up turning this case into a...

global mystery. It also sparked a popular theory that the Somerton man was actually an international spy. That's because some people think the code was a substitution cipher. Substitution ciphers are codes where one letter gets substituted for another. These ciphers were commonly used to pass messages between spies in World War II and the Cold War. And the problem is, you can't break the code without having the key. In the case of the Somerton man, the key seemed to be his exact edition of the Rubiot, making this what's called a book cipher or a one-time pad. It's incredibly complicated, but simply put, each letter in the code corresponds to a letter in the book.

The person receiving the message follows a bunch of steps to feel. figure out the corresponding letter. So Q equals A or B equals Y, but both parties need to have the exact same addition of the Rubiot to figure it out. All to say, if the Somerton man was using the book for his key, he might have been a current or former spy, maybe from Russia as part of the Cold War. This would make sense considering some of the other evidence too. He didn't have an ID, his dental records didn't match any of those in Australia, and his most likely cause of death was an undetectable poison.

But the only way to figure it out was to crack the code. On July 27, 1949, four days after receiving the book, the police sent the code to an Australian Navy codebreaker, hoping he could tell them what had said. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to crack it, and neither has anyone else in the 77 years since. And we probably never will. Somehow, the police lost or destroyed that specific copy of the Rubiot. And despite an extensive search, modern investigators have never found an identical copy to try and run the code against. Luckily, though, that code wasn't the only thing the code was. police got from the scrap of paper. They also had the Adelaide phone number. On July 27th,

1949, four days after police got the rubiat, they traced the phone number to a 27-year-old nursing student living nearby named Jessica Ellen Harkness. When the police paid her a visit, Jessica admitted that she was familiar with the rubiote. She had even given a copy of the book to a friend named Alf oxal. But Jessica was certain it wasn't the Somerton man's copy. She'd handwritten a transcription of one of the poems in the copy she gave Alf, and there was no handwritten message in the Somerton man's Rubiat. Still, Jessica agreed to view the plaster cast of the Summerton man in person that same day in hopes of finally identifying him. As soon as she sought, she became

visibly upset. In fact, she looked like she might faint. Everyone in the room was sure Jessica recognized him and their case was solved. But when she pulled herself together, Jessica flatly denied recognizing the face in the plaster cast. She stuck to that story for the rest of her life and refused to speak to the police about the case ever again. But the authorities, weren't giving up that easily. They wondered why she refused to identify a person she seemed to know. They thought maybe the Somerton man was actually Jessica's friend, Alth Boxel, and she was afraid to be connected with a possible murder. But the next day, July 27th, detectives found Alth Boxel alive and well at his home. When he was asked about the Somerton man, he said he knew nothing about him.

A day after that, Alf's wife gave police his copy of the rubiates with Jessica's handwritten inscription. Unfortunately, that was the last serious lead the original investigators ever got. But the story was far from over. In the years since, people have fixated on Jessica and why she reacted the way she did. some thought it had to do with her love life. Reportedly, her boyfriend at the time, who later became her husband, was a shady guy named Prosper Thompson. He was widely rumored to be selling black market goods through classified ads.

Some people think the Somerton man got into some kind of conflict with Prosper, and Jessica believed Prosper killed him. But there was another more personal. theory. Jessica and Prosper had a baby boy named Robin, who was born in July in 1947. He was just turning two when police tracked Jessica down. But eventually, Jessica admitted to a friend that she met Prosper when she was already pregnant. This whole story only got pieced together after both Jessica and her son Robin had passed away. But this is the most likely version of how it happened.

In October, 1946, 24-year-old Jessica left nursing school, perhaps because she was pregnant. Shortly after that, she met a handsome but married, 34-year-old salesman named Prosper Thompson. Without even divorcing his wife, Prosper and Jessica ran off to Adelaide together in early 1947. That July, Prosper put his name on baby Robin's birth certificate, despite knowing he couldn't be the father. By July, 1949, when the police came knocking on Jessica's door, Prosper was in the process of getting divorced so he could finally marry Jessica, which brings us to the reason Jessica might have refused to identify the Somerton man. Maybe he was Robin's biological father, or at least Jessica thought he was. If so, getting involved with the case

might expose the secret she was trying to run away from. So the theory goes, she decided to never say a word to anybody about the Somerton man again. And if that was her plan, it worked. Jessica and Prosperer got married the next year in 1950. In the early 1950s, they gave Robin a little sister, Kate. Jessica eventually returned to the medical field, working in a mental health facility. Robin apparently lived his whole life without ever being questioned about the Summerton man case and never knowing the truth about his father. Even so, Robin still provided some key evidence.

After decades without any answers, the Somerton man case was ice cold, but the mystery was still alive and well, especially in Australia, and in 2009, a local Adelaide man decided to try to solve it once and for all. Derek Abbott was a professor at the University of Adelaide. Interestingly, he didn't teach criminology or forensics. He actually taught electrical engineering. That year, he happened to see a story about the Somerton man in a magazine. He thought the unbreakable code would be a fun project for for his electrical engineering students. He didn't mean to get obsessed with the case, but that's what happened.

Professor Abbott became determined to identify the Summerton man himself. And he believed Jessica was the key to the whole thing. He started digging into her story, and what he found blew the whole case wide open. Investing is all about the future. So what do you think's gonna happen? Bitcoin is sort of an ever,

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Summerton man was found dead in South Australia, a local engineering professor named Derek Abbott picked up where the investigation left off. He thought the key to identifying the Somerton man was a woman named Jessica Thompson. More specifically, her son Robin Thompson, who some people believed might have actually been the Somerton man's child. By the time Professor Abbott started looking into Robin, he'd already passed away. but there were still plenty of clues that seemed to connect him to the Somerton man. It turned out, Robin had a long career as a professional ballet dancer. And remember, the Somerton man had unusually strong calves

and was believed to be either a dancer, a bicyclist, or someone who wore high-heeled shoes at work. But more importantly, Robin's dance career meant there were lots of photos taken of him. When Professor Abbott got his hands on some of those photos, he noticed two things. First, Robin's ears had the same unique shape as the Somerton man's, where the upper hollow of the ear is larger than the lower hollow. Only about 2% of white people share this trait. But Robin's smile was even more unusual.

He was missing his lateral incisors. two of the 18 teeth the Somerton man was missing. Professor Abbott believed the Somerton man was probably born without those teeth based on testimony from the pathologist, and he thought Robin may have had the same exact genetic abnormality. Professor Abbott calculated the probability of this being a coincidence as somewhere between one in 10 million and one in 20 million. But to prove Robin was the probability,

the son of the Somerton man, he's going to need more than math. The only way to know for sure was to compare the Somerton man's DNA with a sample from Robin, but doing that meant exhuming the Somerton man's body. Professor Abbott decided to start with the easier side of the two tasks, getting a sample from one of Robin's living relatives, so he got in touch with Robin's daughter, Rachel Egan. When Professor Abbott reached out in 2010, Rachel was willing to meet up and discuss a DNA sample. Except they both got more than they bargained for. Professor Abbott and Rachel fell so head over heels for each other, they got engaged the day after their first meeting.

They're still married today and now have three children together, though the family still jokes that that Professor Abbott married Rachel for her DNA. Professor Abbott didn't stop there, though. If DNA from one of Robbins' family members was good, DNA from two would be even better. So Professor Abbott reached out to Robin's sister, Kate Thompson, who was still alive. Not only was Kate willing to help,

she had some bombshell theories of her own. Kate said she believed her mother, Jessica, was a Soviet spy, and may have even killed the Somerton man herself. According to Kate, she'd asked her mother directly about the Somerton man's identity. Jessica replied that she knew who he was, but it was information reserved for people at a level higher than the local police. Kate also said Jessica spoke Russian and wouldn't disclose where she learned it.

This was more than enough for Professor Abbott to believe he was on the right track. As Professor Abbott became well known for his work on the Somerton Man case, he got access to some of the original evidence, including the plaster cast of the man's head and torso. It turned out, there were lots of hairs from the man's face and chest trapped in the plaster. In 2012 and 2018, the University of Adelaide helped extract DNA from the hairs, but they didn't get much new information.

All they were able to confirm was that the man's mother had European ancestry, but Professor Abbott still had some hairs left to test. He'd read about new technology that allowed nuclear DNA to be recovered from hair, which could give a much more specific profile of the person. He hired a California company to do the job, and using state-of-the-art methods, they recovered two million unique DNA markers. That was way more than the previous tests had extracted. It was fantastic news, but there was a big twist.

The first person, Professor Abbott, wanted the new DNA compared to, was, of course, his wife, Rachel, Robin's daughter. And based on those tests, they were definitely not. a match. It wasn't what anyone expected. But Professor Abbott wasn't giving up just yet. Eventually, he teamed up with Dr. Colleen Fitzpatrick, who co-founded the DNA Doe Project, and led the first team to ever solve a cold case using genetic genealogy. Using the Consumer DNA database Jedmatch, she and Abbott built out a profile of 4,000 potential relatives. Then they began the painstaking process of eliminating matches one by one, which took months. In this case, anybody who had a confirmed date of death could be dropped from the list because

the Summerton man was buried as a John Doe. And given the age range they were looking for, most of the potential matches did have death certificates. But one didn't. An Australian man named Carl Webb. He disappeared from official records after 1947 and never had a documented death. To get a more definitive match, though, Professor Abbott and Dr. Fitzpatrick needed DNA from one of Carl's living relatives. Using the same process, they found a home heating system salesman in Victoria, Australia.

He agreed to provide a sample, which confirmed he was the Somerton man's, first cousin three times removed. That's exactly the relationship between Carl Webb and the salesman, too. And there was another exciting detail. Carl had a brother-in-law named Gerald Thomas Keene. So the items in the Somerton man's suitcase marked Keen might have been hand-me-downs from Gerald. On July 26, 2022, exactly 73 years after Jessica's strange interview of the police, Professor Abbott and Dr. Fitzpatrick formally announced their findings. As far as they were concerned, the mystery of the Somerton man's identity was solved. The Somerton man was Carl Webb. However, Carl's life was just as mysterious as his death. And the details are

slim, but here's what we know. He was born in 1905 in Victoria. Australia, the youngest of six siblings. His father was a German-Australian baker, Richard August Webb, and according to family photo albums, Carl played soccer for the Swinburne technical colleges under 16 team in Melbourne. He must have also picked up some technical skills there, because after the family bakery closed down, he worked as an electrical instrument maker. that occupation fits with the electrician screwdriver in the Somerton man's suitcase. In 1941, 35-year-old Carl married a 21-year-old pharmacist and pediatrist named Dorothy Jean Robertson. Unfortunately, the only other details we know about Carl come from Dorothy's divorce petition filed on June 29, 1951.

And Dorothy was apparently unaware that Carl had been dead for two and a half. years by this time because her petition accuses him of desertion. It also says Carl was moody and mean from the very start of their marriage. He expected Dorothy to work and hand over her paycheck to him, on top of doing all the housework and taking care of Carl's sick mother. Most of the money went towards his habit of betting on horse races. When Dorothy became ill herself, Carl was angry with her, for spending money on medical care. And things only got worse from there. By 1946, Dorothy said Carl was both verbally and physically abusive

to the point of threatening her life. In March, 1946, he attempted to die by suicide. Dorothy found him and nursed him back to health, at which point his violence escalated even further. On September 13, 1946, Dorothy escaped from their home in victim, with the help of her father. She had to leave nearly all her money and possessions behind, but there was one particular line in the divorce petition

that seems like the key to the whole mystery. She wrote, quote, he has written many poems, most of them on the subject of death, which he claims to be his greatest desire. The rubiat is full of poems about death. And if Carl tended to write his own poetry, well, that dovetails perfectly with another theory that says the secret code actually represented a poem. Dorothy lost track of Carl on April 1947, about 20 months before the Somerton man died.

After leaving, Dorothy settled in Butte, South Australia, about 90 miles from Adelaide. Professor Abbott believed that might have been why Carl ended his life in Adelaide. More than two years after Dorothy left him, he came looking for her, then died on the beach. But that's still not the end of the story. In 2021, Australian authorities exhumed the Somerton man's body, a team including an anthropologist, a pathologist, and multiple DNA specialists extracted as much usable DNA as possible from the remains. But they never shared those samples with Professor Abbott.

In 2022, the South Australia police made a short statement confirming that they knew about Professor Abbott's announcement, but they didn't comment on whether they agreed with his findings. And the only other thing they said was that the forensic investigation is still active. Since then, they haven't said anything at all. It's hard to believe that all these years later, we still have so many questions. Although we might know the Somerton man's identity, we still don't know how he died or how Jessica knew him.

But if we can take away anything from this case, it's that no matter how far gone an investigation might seem, there's always hope. Thanks to Derek Abbott, the Somerton man's story continued, and we learn more than we ever thought possible. It just goes to show where there's a will, there's a way. Thanks so much for listening. I'm Carter Roy, and this is Murder True Crime Stories. Come back next time for the story of another murder and all the people it affected.

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And to enhance your Murder True Crime Stories listening experience, subscribe to Crimehouse Plus on Apple Podcasts. You'll get every episode early and add free. We'll be back on Tuesday. Murder True Crime Stories is hosted by me, Carter Roy, and is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. This episode was brought to life by the Murder True Crime Stories team, Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benadon, Natalie Pertzowski, Lori Marinelli, Yelan O'Ware, Sarah Camp, and Russell Nash. Thank you for listening. What drives a person to murder?

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