The Rest Is History - 257. Australia: The Mystery of the Somerton Man

Episode Date: November 19, 2022

In today’s Australian-themed World Cup episode, Tom leads us through the incredible true story of the Somerton Man, a murder mystery that involves an Adelaide Beach, Persian poetry, and unexpected marriage. All will be revealed… Join The Rest Is History Club (www.restishistorypod.com) for ad-free listening to the full archive, weekly bonus episodes, live streamed shows and access to an exclusive chatroom community. Twitter:   @TheRestHistory   @holland_tom   @dcsandbrook   Email: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. G'day and welcome to The Rest Is History. So we are now into our great World Cup saga and we are turning to perhaps not one of the obvious football nations, but these days a perennial qualifier, and that is the great country of Australia. And Tom, I believe for the Australian theme today,

you've chosen the life and career of Ian Botham. Is that correct? Very good, yes. Of course, Australia's real sport is cricket, not football. No, Dominic, I have not chosen the life and career of Ian Botham. I have chosen the mystery of the Somerton Man, which is Australia's top mystery. Top mystery.

And I learned about it when I went to the beautiful city of Adelaide, known as the city of churches, probably Australia's mellowest city. But also I learned when I was there at this literary festival, because I had a whole day of talks devoted to it, it has the most extraordinary array of murders that have been perpetrated in Adelaide. So it's a city of churches and it's a city of murders. And the thing that struck me about these murders is that basically a kind of terrible or fascinating or intriguing murder comes along pretty much once every decade. And they seem to correspond to the kind of the trends in detective fiction so yeah so um in the 90s when thomas harris was you know busy with hannibal lector and science the lambs and all that kind of stuff um you have the snow town murders and snow town was a place in all i think north of Adelaide. But they're also known as the Bodies in the Barrels murder.

Barrels, plural. Barrels, plural, because these are the remains of eight victims that were found in plastic barrels in an abandoned bank vault. Very grisly. Yes, a very horrible story. Very, very Thomas Harris. very very thomas harris um and then in the 70s there were the truro murders where there were uh seven women who were murdered by two very unpleasant men but and the whole story again when you read it has a kind of real quality of one of those dark kind of dirty harry type films i mean right kind of noir cops on the edge all that kind of stuff uh But the most intriguing of the Adelaide murder stories is the one that you get

in the 40s. And this is The Mystery of the Somerton Man, which would be a title that you might get, say, from Naya Marsh or Marjorie Allingham, or I guess Dorothea O'Sears, or even Agatha Christie. I mean, it's that golden age, the queens of crime. And this is the most extraordinary story. And when I heard about it, I kind of became mildly obsessed by it. And I think quite a lot of people who stumble across this story do become obsessed. And in fact, towards the end of this episode, we'll come to someone who became really obsessed. So the Somerton Man is named after Somerton Park Beach, which is about seven miles outside the centre of Adelaide. So Adelaide is, for those people who don't know, Adelaide is whereabouts in Australia?

It's South Australia. Right. South Australia. And it's the one of the biggest, it's the fifth biggest city in Australia? Third, I think. I think it's the third largest, I think, after Sydney and Melbourne, I think. Okay. May have got that wrong.

But not directly relevant to the drama and intrigue of the story. Let's not get bogged down in the size of cities. I mean, we're not a geography podcast. What are its major industries? What's the name of its river? If we were a geography podcast, I think we'd have been taken off more than a year ago. I mean, we can provide that as kind of maybe supplementary information perhaps later. But I don't have those facts to hand at the moment.

Okay. So the story begins on the 30th of November, 1948. And of course, that is, you know, it's the beginning of the Australian summer because they do things all the way around there. And in the evening, it's not a busy beach. It's not Bondi Beach. But, you know, there's not a busy beach. It's not Bondi Beach. But, you know, there's the odd person strolling out. And somebody sees this man who is lying on his back with his head propped up against the seawall on the beach. And the man lifts his arm, waves, and then puts it back down again.

So he's clearly fine. Another group of people look down and they see him there and he moves but they do know something which is odd which is that he's surrounded by mosquitoes but he's not swatting them away so that they know that and they think yeah he's moving he's moving so they think nothing more of it the beach empties night comes down dawn first of december and there are two jockeys who are practicing riding up and down on the beach and they see this bloke lying there and they wave to him no no response they gallop up the beach and they come back and he still hasn't moved and so they get off their horses and they

go and look at him and he's dead he's dead so this is a great story this make great film and he is there he is he's leaning there he's got his head against the seawall and there is a great story this make great film and he is there he is he's leaning there he's got his head against the seawall and there is a cigarette that has fallen from his mouth onto the lapel of his jacket very there are various accounts either it's it's it's not been smoked or it's been half smoked right so the various accounts of this and the police come they go through his pockets uh they find a rail ticket from Adelaide, which is unused. They find a bus ticket, which does seem to have been used. They find a comb that's been made in the United States.

They find a juicy fruit gum, which is also much more available in the United States than in Australia. They find a cigarette pack, army club cigarette pack, which is very cheap cigarettes. And inside, there are more expensive brands of cigarettes. And that's unusual because normally it's the other way around. Normally- Yeah, you wouldn't hide expensive cigarettes in there. So that's odd. But what's even odder is the fact that every single label on the item of clothing that this man is wearing has been surgically removed. There is no wallet. There is absolutely nothing to identify who he is in any way at all. So the police take the body to the local station, to the morgue, and they produce a report on him.

He is a man who is about 40, early 40s, 40, maybe up to 45. Very good looking man, kind of short hair, slight hint of salt and pepper to it very very well built uh no calluses on his hands uh so clearly not a manual laborer um his shoes are beautifully polished which is very very strange if he's been walking up and down a beach yeah they seem to have been just freshly polished so that's very odd and and when they look at his legs his his toes are kind of bunched together and he has the the very pronounced muscles of someone who might have been walking either on high heels or perhaps using uh ballet slippers and so the the person doing the autopsy suggests

that he may have been a ballet dancer so okay all very intriguing these are very agatha christie style clues very very so then they do they do the autopsy and they find he has a perfectly healthy heart he does have an enlarged spleen uh so that's that is something that's wrong and they find that there is an excess of blood in his liver, in his kidneys, and in his stomach. And this apparently is a strong suggestor of poison. But they can't work out what, if it is poison, and it does seem to be poison because that's what the excess of blood seems to point to. Yeah, because there's no sign of violence.

There's no sign of violence at all. But they can't identify what the brand of brand of poison is so if it is a poison it's something quite rare and sophisticated so they're they don't know who this man is did he die of natural causes uh was it suicide was it murder and if it was murder who murdered him the time of death is pinpointed at 2 a.m so in the morning in the morning so kind of midway between you, the people who saw him where he was raising his arm and then when he's found the next morning on the 1st of December. So they don't really know what to do with this. And so they embalm him, they embalm the body to preserve it. And then they start looking around for further clues. And of course, an obvious place to look is in the local station, the cloakroom. They find it in the main station in Adelaide,

and they find his suitcase. And what they find there in a way is as frustrating as everything before. They know that it's his because they find a brand of kind of waxed US thread made in the United States, which is the same that he'd been using to darn a rip in his trousers. So it must be his suitcase. There's no correspondence. So again, there's no clue as to who this man is no spare socks interestingly very peculiar again all the labels have been removed from his clothes apart from a tie a laundry bag and a vest and on that on the tie you get t keen so that's k-e-a-n-e you get keen the name on a laundry bag and you get keen k-e-A-N-E. You get Keane, the name on a laundry bag, and you get Keane, K-E-A-N on the vest. And so they think, ah. His name is Keane.

He must be, you know, it's just T Keane. So they, obviously they go through all the missing people, register who might be T Keane, not a trace, no sign of anyone T Keane who's gone missing. So they, they try and work out where's this guy come from? He's obviously come from somewhere. So he could have come in. They look at the train train schedules he could have come in from a local town but they think that's unlikely because someone like that would have been seen and they go to all the local towns and nobody remembers seeing anyone corresponding to this guy so the only other train that came in was from melbourne so i think he must have come from melbourne he probably checked his suitcase he bought a ticket to to go to the station then he discovered that there was a bus

going directly to where he wanted, namely to Somerton, that area. So that's why he took the bus. So they think that's probably what happened on the 30th of November. And the decision of the inquest is that it is likely to be poison. So that's kind of the ruling. They don't know what it is, though, what kind of poison. They take a plaster cast of his head and his shoulders and then they bury him in one of

the cemeteries in Adelaide and basically it seems like no one's ever going to find out who he is or anything but then then they find a further clue and this is where it gets really really Dorothy Alsae's I mean it's it's so like a kind of 1940s detective story. And do you think we should have a break at this point? I do. I'm absolutely on tenterhooks, Tom. I can't. I'm greatly looking forward to my own screen. Well, it's brilliant.

It's an absolutely brilliant. It's such an improbable clue that you'd think this could only have been made up in a detective story. But I will reveal what it is when we come back from the break. It's exciting. So we'll see you after the break. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we come back from the break. It's exciting. So we'll see you after the break. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment.

It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Welcome back to The Rest Is History. Tom Holland, you are taking us through the mystery of Somerton Man. So we're in late 1940s Australia in Adelaide.

And Tom, very tantalisingly before the break, you said you had an amazing clue to reveal. Yes,, very tantalisingly before the break, you said you had an amazing clue to reveal. Yes, a further clue. So what is the clue? So the pathologist is going through the clothes of the Somerton man again, and he discovers right buried down in one of the pockets, the kind of the smallest pocket, he finds a very, very tiny, tiny roll of paper that's been wound up so tightly that he has to use scalpels to extract it from the lining, from the fabric. And he unrolls it. And there he sees printed on it, Tamum Shad. And they go, you know, Tamum Shad? What the hell's that? So they investigate and they discover

that it's Persian. So Alianzari would have been straight onto it. And it means it is done, it's finished, it's over, you know, this is the end. And it comes from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, you know, famous Persian poet, polymath from the 11th, 12th century, translated by the Victorian poet Edward Fitzgerald in the middle of the 19th century. And this Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is that version. That is so bizarre. Just those words, Tamat Shad. And it's been ripped out from an edition of Fitzgerald's poems, the Fitzgerald translation.

And so the police put out an alert saying, does anyone have a copy of this book? Could you look and see whether it's been, the Tamham Shad has been ripped out from it? And they wait. And in due course, amazingly, someone comes forward and says, yes, I've got it. And the story of this man who doesn't want to be, you know, his identity is kept quiet, is that his car was parked by Somerton Park Beach and his windows were open because it was hot. And he came back, you know, having been on the beach and he discovers that this book had been thrown in through the window and he hadn't thought anything more of it. You know, it wasn't anything that particularly attracted his attention. It must have seemed weird to him though. Yeah, it was weird.

Books of Persian poetry through car windows. He did think it was weird, which is why he kept it and why he remembered it was weird it's a persian poetry through yes he did think it was weird which is why he kept it and why he remembered it and it's why when when he reads the announcement the police announcement he turns to the relevant page and discovers that tamer shad is missing from it that this is the very copy yeah and so the police the police inspect it and they find that there are five lines of random letters in the back. And one of these lines has been crossed out and has been put again at the bottom. And they're incomprehensible.

And so is it a code? So they hand it out to all their top boffins, their top code breakers, and nobody can crack it. And so they wonder, is it a kind of shorthand? You know, is it an abbreviation? You know, what is it? Nobody can work out what these letters mean but there's more there are two phone numbers oh this is great stuff one of the phone numbers is the number of a local bank okay but the other phone number is the number of a woman who lives

about 400 meters from where the body was found oh and the police keep her name, again, they keep her name secret, but in due course, it comes out that she's a woman called Jessica Thompson, who goes by the nickname of Jess. She's a nurse. She has a small boy, a small son, and she's taken down to the station and she looks at the plaster cast and she says she doesn't know him. She has no idea who he is. But according to the policeman who watches her, he says that when she goes to see the body, she was so completely taken aback to the point of giving the appearance she was about to faint. So that's literally what the policeman says. Right. She denies knowing who the Somerton man is.

But she says, yes, the reboot of Omicami is actually my favorite book I love it and I actually gave a copy to uh to this man uh who I met when I was working as a nurse in Sydney uh and he was a lieutenant in the Australian army a man called Alf Boxall and so the police think well obviously the dead man is Alf Boxall case closed brilliant yeah yeah but then he's found alive so it's not alf boxall so strange and so that basically is that is where they end their investigation so what are the theories as to what's been going on and there are various theories. So the first theory is that the Somerton Man was a spy. And this is 1948.

I was about to say Cold War. Classic Cold War. Yeah. The Cold War is kicking in. And there are reasons why particularly Russian spies might be interested in Adelaide. Because about 300 miles northwest of Adelaide, there is a test range called the Woomera Test Range, which at the time is the second busiest rocket range outside Cape Canaveral. And it's headquarters for an Anglo Australian project to develop V2 technology. So you could see why the Russians might be

interested in it. Adding to the kind of swirl of paranoia around this is the fact that the mysterious Alf Boxall may well have been involved in intelligence and on top of that uh according to jessica thompson's daughter speaking many years later her mother spoke russian and was very interested in communism oh my word the plot thickens so yeah so you know no hard evidence there but enough to for the conspiracy theorists to get their teeth into yeah because i'm trying to wonder i'm trying to work out what the conspiracy theory here would be i think the conspiracy theory is that she is a spy that she is a spy but who's the dead man because if box or has he has is the man claiming to be box or not box or well various theories

perhaps uh he is an american agent who's been killed by Jessica. Because he was on her case. On her case. Yeah. Perhaps he's a communist agent who Jessica's a double agent. There are any number of permutations. And why the Rubaiyat, maybe they're communicating through the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, sending each other verses. Exactly. And another variation on this is that perhaps he was involved in gun running to Israel, which is being, you know, in the midst of being founded at this point.

So perhaps he's involved with Palestinians, perhaps he's involved with the Israelis. So the explanations are very much bred of the Cold War paranoia or the kind of post-colonial wars that are breaking out in this period. But there is another theory altogether, which is that it's nothing to do with spies. It's nothing to do with the Cold War, Basically, it's a doomed love affair involving Jessica Thompson, who at the time that the Somerton Man is found, was the mistress of a man called Prosper Thompson, which is where she gets her name from. But she wasn't married to him at that point. He was a married man at that point. And he only leaves his wife and settles down with Jessica in 1950. And at the time, Jessica has this small boy, as I mentioned, who she's called Robin,

who seems to have been born around 1947. And in due course will be brought up as Prosper's son. And Robin Thompson, when he grows up, Dominic, what profession do you think he takes up? It's Australia. So no, it's most un-Australian career. He's un-australian career he's a he's a fire ranger no he's a ballet dancer he becomes a ballet dancer tom this is comes a ballet dancer wheels within wheels yeah and this intrigues a man at the university of adelaide called derrick abbott who is an englishman who's emigrated to Australia, very involved in electrical

engineering. He's a physicist. And he becomes obsessed with the story in the way that lots of people have done. But he is the big Somerton man sleuth. And his theory is that Robin was the son of Jessica Thompson and the Somerton man. And the Somerton man had a kind of strange ear, a kind of distinctive ear pattern. And I can't remember exactly what it is. He had certain teeth were missing. Robin also had these, he had the same ears and teeth, and these are genetic markers. And so the ballet dancing, the teeth, the ears, the circumstantial evidence that he was born you know unknown father so derrick abbott's theory is is that robin was was the summerton man's son and obviously what he really needs is dna to try and prove that hold on if robin was summerton man's son yeah and summerton man has been killed just

a few hundred yards or whatever from where jessica thompson was living with his son yeah then summerton man might have been trying to visit his son or something perhaps or perhaps he committed suicide who was who murdered him that's the question again open question but perhaps he committed suicide i mean perhaps you know maybe he had a he went to see his son jessica wouldn't let him in he goes off lies down takes some poison or something perhaps because he's a spy. And this is why Jessica reacts in that way when she sees him. But then what about the rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and the strange message? Indeed. Indeed.

So Derek Abbott realises that basically the only way to solve this riddle is to get DNA. Yeah. What he really needs, he needs DNA from the Somerton man, and he needs DNA from either Robin or one of Robin's children. And Robin, by this point, has died. But he has left behind a daughter called Rachel. Yeah. And Derek Abbott gets in touch with Rachel.

And within a day of meeting her, they're engaged to be married. A day? A day. Golly, they didn't mess about so uh derrick abbott and rachel robin's daughter jessica's granddaughter get married hold on i'm just trying to get my head around this so the expert stroke conspiracy theorist stroke amateur sleuth the professor was he a professor or whatever whatever he is he has now married the possible granddaughter of the Somerton man.

Of the man whose death he's investigating. Yes. Well, Agatha Christie probably wouldn't put that in, I don't think. Exactly. And they have three children and they're very happily married. That's nice. Love each other very much. And Rachel has joked that he only married her for her DNA.

Well, surely that's... Isn't that why anybody gets married tom ultimately yeah i suppose i suppose but uh but obviously he so he's desperate to to dig up the corpse of the summerton man and extract dna that's a weird thing isn't it to be married to somebody just say i can't wait to dig up your grandfather so um the uh the the local legal authorities say no you can't do it so what he does is he goes and looks at the death mask of the Somerton man. And there he finds various hairs that have been left in the plaster. And he extracts the hairs and he discovers that they're good enough to get the DNA.

And I don't know, whatever scientists do, you'd know, Dominic, they work on the DNA. I love science. Yeah. Does DNA work? Yeah, he does DNA work. And he teams up with this american genealogist called colleen fitzpatrick and you know they're operating on the assumption that that that robin was the son of summerton man and therefore the summerton man had an affair with

with jessica thompson and this is the key to the whole riddle and this summer 26th of july they announced the results of the dna tests it was just this summer just this summer and do you think that robin was summerton man's son i want to say yes but i'm going to say no because no he wasn't he wasn't he wasn't so they have now identified they've managed to identify uh who it was they know who summerton identified, they've managed to identify who it was. They know who Somerton Man was. They know who Somerton Man was. They're kind of 100% certain.

It hasn't been officially accepted by the Australian police, but they, I've listened to the American specialist explain it in very DNA related terms. I didn't understand it, but it sounded very, very authoritative. So it is a man called Carl Webb webb charles webb he was known as and he was the sixth child of an australian german couple born in melbourne and he had a brother-in-law and the brother-in-law's name thomas keen but you don't normally walk around with a suitcase your brother in law's clothes do you no you don't so i mean there are i mean maybe he was short of clothes i don't know but i mean you know there is, there is that, that is linking, you know, there is a link.

There is a definitive link. Okay. And he'd been married to Thomas Kean's sister and he'd left his wife in April 1947. And that was the last record of him. There is no other record of him after that. So he dies, you know, if it is this guy, if it is Carl Webb, he died in, in, on the 1st of December. So, you know, that's quite a while where he's gone missing.

And in 1951, his wife began divorce proceeding against him on the grounds that he deserted her and other other details that we know about carl webb we don't have a photograph of him but we know that he enjoyed poetry so hence the revite yeah yeah maybe and we know that he enjoyed betting on horses and so uh derrick abbott's theory is that that the mysterious code is in fact the names of horses, maybe runners, so he could bet on them or something like that. Why had he cut out all the names in his clothes? Don't know. So there are lots of mysteries that remain. Why did he have cheap cigarettes and expensive... Don't know.

Oh, the other way around. Yeah, we don't know that. Why did he have the legs of a ballet dancer? He doesn't seem to be a ballet dancer. The legs of a ballet dancer. It's like a sort of Greek myth creature, isn't it? The body of a man and the legs of a ballet dancer. Did he like wearing stilettos? I mean, you know, we don't know. Yeah, there's no connection with Jessica Thompson at all. Not that they know? No. That was an absolute red herring. No. Well, why did he phone her? Because her name was in the book.

So had he perhaps had a relationship with her behind the back of Robin's father and Prosper, whatever his name is? And what about Mr. Boxall? He was a red herring as well. I think he does look a bit of a red herring, but again, we can't be sure. We don't know what, you know, what this, if it is Carl Webb, we don't know what his connection is to Jessica Thompson. We don't know why he came to Somerton Beach. We don't know what caused his death. We don't know what his connection is to Jessica Thompson. We don't know why he came to Somerton Beach. We don't know what caused his death. We don't know whether he killed himself, whether it was natural causes, whether he was murdered, and if he was murdered by whom.

I mean, all of this remains unknown. And it's so tantalising. And so there's still a huge scope for kind of investigation. But I think that one of the things that's interesting about it and perhaps suggestive more generally for the historiography of conspiracy theories and sensational murder theories. So I'm thinking of looking at you, Jack the Ripper, is that people were attracted towards the most grandiose theories, that he was a spy, that he was an American agent, perhaps that he was a refugee from Europe, that he was involved in espionage. I mean, the theories were that had the most currency. And I remember these were the theories that I

heard when I first heard this talk in Adelaide about him. They were the most dramatic theories. Yeah, of course. But actually, you know, he'sralian bloke from melbourne and and when he died nobody seems to have noticed that he died i mean he just vanished but that's very golden age of detective fiction because in agatha christie's book she would create these incredibly elaborate scenarios with clocks and with sort of the abc murders and stuff and yet the solution is always very banal and very humdrum and it's about money or it's about sort of disappointment in love or something and all of that was a smokescreen the reality is very kind of mundane

that's the magician's trick isn't it yeah and you're saying that with this as well that ultimately and of course the interesting thing is that the conspiracy theory is a bread of the political climate of the 1940s completely so they're all about the old war anxieties and things yeah oh tom this is joe this is this is the single best thing I've ever heard about Australia. It's, it's, it's a great story, isn't it?

It's a really great story. Actually, I think we should, I think we should go to Australia and I'd like to go to this beach. And I think not only should we do, you know, a sort of the trip style in the footsteps of summits and man, I think we

should try and crack the case sandbrook and holland investigate ah that's a series isn't it cops on the edge cops on the edge i'm afraid you'd very much be the inspector lestrade figure and i would be that i would be the tall angular sherlock holmes you'd be the pipe smoking sidekick i hate to tell you this i am am Kevin Waitley and you are Lawrence Fox. Nonsense. I'm John Thor. You're Kevin Waitley. Well, anyway, so there it is. And so, I mean, I think actually, interestingly, this is almost the first episode we've done where we don't, you know, it's history that as yet is massively waiting to be written. So we've, you know, this extraordinary history that as yet is massively waiting to be written.

So we've, you know, this extraordinary development that we've got to this summer, but still so many questions to be answered. Well, that is a brilliant, a brilliant topic, Tom. And I don't think if we, if in the rest of this World Cup series, we have a story to top that or even to equal it, I will be absolutely amazed. So as you would say, that was an absolute tour de force. Thanks, mate. All right. Good on you. Well, we shall see you, I suppose, tomorrow for more World Cup-themed podcasts.

Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to the rest is history for bonus episodes early access ad-free listening and access to our chat community please sign up at rest is history pod.com that's rest is history pod.com i'm marina hyde and i'm richard osmond and together we host the rest is entertainment restishistorypod.com