Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Speaker 1: Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and today is a
Speaker 1: very special day. We have a special guest producer, Matt.
Speaker 1: Been a while. It has been a while, man, it's
Speaker 1: been since like two fourteen or something. Yeah, and Matt
Speaker 1: is one half of the stuff they don't want you
Speaker 1: to know. Oh yeah, that's right. There's three of them,
Speaker 1: and we are sort of awkwardly reporting two of the
Speaker 1: same shows they've done. So Matt's just sitting there with
Speaker 1: his arms crossed, shaking his head back and forth. So
Speaker 1: we're trying not to look at him. Are you doing.
Speaker 1: I'm good except for Matt looking at us like that.
Speaker 1: What do you do for the eclipse? I looked at
Speaker 1: the eclipse unwisely, um from where from my house? I didn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't see a full the full SCHMO. I figured, you, guys,
Speaker 1: this would be exactly the type to drive two hours
Speaker 1: to see it. No you did, though, huh yeah, how
Speaker 1: was it? Well? I don't want to be one of
Speaker 1: those dudes. But the difference between in full eclipse is
Speaker 1: all the difference in the world. I saw it put.
Speaker 1: I can't remember who put it, but they said that
Speaker 1: the difference between seeing a partial eclipse and a full
Speaker 1: eclipse is the difference between kissing a person and marrying
Speaker 1: a person. Oh well, that's from the legendary eclipse article
Speaker 1: from The Atlantic from okay, who wrote it? Oh man? Um?
Speaker 1: I even like sent myself the link to read it
Speaker 1: today and I haven't read it. It's probably Tina Turner
Speaker 1: that the height of her career was. It was written
Speaker 1: by Annie Dillard. Okay, it's called total Eclipse and I
Speaker 1: haven't ready yet, but it's supposed to be just remarkable,
Speaker 1: and that's exactly how she put it, and it was
Speaker 1: I think so. So that would have been a year
Speaker 1: before Bonnie Tyler came out with Total Eclipse of the Heart. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was two. Yeah. I cried, and like five other
Speaker 1: people with this cried like spontaneously. Tears were coming out
Speaker 1: of my face and I was like, what is happening
Speaker 1: to my body? Did you? I mean, what have you concluded?
Speaker 1: I don't know, man, it was just overwhelming. That's neat
Speaker 1: to stare at the corona and we're going like two
Speaker 1: probably Texas for the next one, like I'm going to
Speaker 1: every path of totality that I can get to between
Speaker 1: now and the time that I died here and the
Speaker 1: clip said, now I'm a totalitur to totalitists. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it was we almost didn't go, like literally that morning
Speaker 1: we were debating and I was like, it's two hours away,
Speaker 1: let's just get in the car and go. Um and
Speaker 1: my daughter saw it, which was weird for her, like
Speaker 1: she knew something was up even at two years old. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The sun's calm, black, Yeah, and stars came out and
Speaker 1: crickets chirped and it was just really strange. Yeah. Uh yeah.
Speaker 1: It was very quick two minutes, but I think the
Speaker 1: one in two thousand seven is going to have a
Speaker 1: four and a half minute totality. When is it two
Speaker 1: seven years from now? Okay, and that's that great. Maybe
Speaker 1: we'll drive to Texas too, Well, i'll drive together. Well,
Speaker 1: if you won't drive two hours, where you gonna go
Speaker 1: to Texas? Oh hey, if I ever have a good
Speaker 1: reason to go to Texas, I'll take it. Well, it's Texas.
Speaker 1: And then I mean we may go to Akron because
Speaker 1: that's where Emily's from. It goes through Akron. The kind
Speaker 1: of over to Maine on that you guys should just
Speaker 1: follow it in your van. Well, you know, I wondered
Speaker 1: what how fast? Of course you can't do this, but
Speaker 1: how fast would you have to travel the speed of
Speaker 1: the moon stay in the path of totality the speed
Speaker 1: of the moon, which is what like a hundred million
Speaker 1: miles an hour or something like that. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Listen to our moon episode. It's my new drug totality.
Speaker 1: That's neat man. Yeah, I'm glad that happened to you,
Speaker 1: happened on me. Get all over me. Uh, how okay?
Speaker 1: You want to talk about this the eclipse. No. You
Speaker 1: know what's funny is that we didn't do it podcasts
Speaker 1: on eclipses. No, I thought about that. We never have,
Speaker 1: I know, And that's just just like us, Moon goes
Speaker 1: in front of sun, moon goes away from sun, right, Uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's just figures. I'm sure we'll end up talking about
Speaker 1: like we'll do an episode on unlike the effect of
Speaker 1: an eclipse on plants first, and then you know, some
Speaker 1: other tangentially related episode, and then maybe after that we'll
Speaker 1: do how eclipse work maybe if we're still around in
Speaker 1: seven years. There you go about that's a good idea
Speaker 1: and have jinks just before by saying we won't be
Speaker 1: around just an opposite jinks. I was gonna say, is
Speaker 1: that a jinx? Yeah, that's to ensure that we will
Speaker 1: be around, got sart. So we're talking today, Chuck about
Speaker 1: a pretty unusual mystery. Are you familiar with this one before? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think we covered this an Internet roundup or something.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I mean we definitely talked about it,
Speaker 1: but I scoured our archives and I couldn't find an
Speaker 1: official show. So I wonder where it came up, because yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we've been talked about it for sure. Um.
Speaker 1: And then it was a lot of times you would
Speaker 1: do one of your best things you've read this week.
Speaker 1: We would then do an Internet roundup piece on that. Okay,
Speaker 1: That's probably where it came up, because you're like, this
Speaker 1: is so good it should be seen by dozens of people. Exactly.
Speaker 1: I want to share it with the twenty Yeah. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I probably guess the article that I did the best
Speaker 1: stuff we've read this week on would have been the
Speaker 1: body on so Merton Beach. I think is what it's called,
Speaker 1: is the Smithsonian article from years and years it was, um,
Speaker 1: so Yeah, there's been plenty of good articles about it.
Speaker 1: That one, uh is a good one. There's one from
Speaker 1: California Sunday magazine called The Lost Man. Yeah, just some
Speaker 1: good stuff out there. If us floats your boat, it does.
Speaker 1: But let us set let us set the theme for you, okay,
Speaker 1: because this story takes place in Adelaide, in uh, South Australia,
Speaker 1: which is not just a place, it's a state as well.
Speaker 1: Did you know that? Yeah? I wonder what they call
Speaker 1: how they pronounced Adelaide there? Probably not like I just
Speaker 1: said it, um, but in Adelaide, South Australia, Adelaides the capital. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's a from what I understand. We haven't been there yet,
Speaker 1: but we probably will maybe next year. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to Adelaide though, I don't know. It sounds kind of
Speaker 1: neat and a little weird, right, but weird in some
Speaker 1: weird ways. So, um, Adelaide is this? This place is
Speaker 1: kind of known as the myrtle murder capital of Australia.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't have necessarily like the highest homicide rate
Speaker 1: in Australia. It just has a history of kind of weird, gruesome,
Speaker 1: grizzly murders. Yeah, I think if you've had more than
Speaker 1: two or three, like dismemberment type murders, that you're on
Speaker 1: the map, and they definitely have. Yeah, there was. There
Speaker 1: was a very famous case in the sixties of the
Speaker 1: um the Beaumont children who went missing off of a
Speaker 1: beach called Glenn l Beach. I think that's probably how
Speaker 1: you say it, um, which is near Adelaide, and we're
Speaker 1: never heard from again, no trace of was ever found.
Speaker 1: We should do an episode on that one too. Um
Speaker 1: there was the family Yeah, uh so dubbed by the
Speaker 1: cops in the seventies and eighties. This one's really freaky.
Speaker 1: These were supposedly just like regular professional men, presumed men
Speaker 1: who had a sort of cabal of torture and murder
Speaker 1: of young boys, basically like season one of True Detective,
Speaker 1: but in real life in Australia, with a well with
Speaker 1: an equally weird ending. All right, yeah, the sky just
Speaker 1: opens up. It's a total eclipse. Uh. And that one
Speaker 1: again unsolved right, Uh, it was never it was. I
Speaker 1: think one person was convicted, but the people that he
Speaker 1: implicated were never charged or convicted. What about this bodies
Speaker 1: and the barrel thing? That's all you need to say,
Speaker 1: there's a string of group of murders called the Bodies
Speaker 1: and the Barrels murders. Right, it's a lot of pluralization. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then, um, so the idea that the one we're
Speaker 1: talking about, which is the death of just one man,
Speaker 1: a non violent death, possibly um who was found on
Speaker 1: a beach almost seventy years ago. For that to still
Speaker 1: have Australia and like the world in its grips today,
Speaker 1: it must be a pretty interesting case. And it is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I guess we should go back in time, getting
Speaker 1: the old way back machine and travel south to Adelaide,
Speaker 1: post war Adelaide. Look how beautiful it is here. It's hot.
Speaker 1: I smell shrimp cooking on the barbie, um drinking a Foster's. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like a fifty five gallon DRUMA foster and lots
Speaker 1: of other Australian tropes are happening all around me. There's
Speaker 1: a crocodile dundeees over there. Why there? When we tour there,
Speaker 1: they're going to really get because like after the show,
Speaker 1: the first show, we can run us out of town.
Speaker 1: You say, fine, New Zealand wants us. Yeah. New Zealand say, yeah,
Speaker 1: come on over here. Uh so Adelaide is um, Well,
Speaker 1: it's an interesting place post war Um. Apparently there was.
Speaker 1: It was kind of a place where you could go
Speaker 1: to sort of real if you want to disappear and
Speaker 1: rewrite your life, that wasn't a bad place to do it. Um.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of black marketing we're in going on.
Speaker 1: Apparently it was really hard to get your hands on
Speaker 1: a car. Um. So there's like a big black market
Speaker 1: for cars of all of all stolenness stolens um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's just a certain amount of post war scarcity
Speaker 1: that was still going on, and there was a lot
Speaker 1: of espionage going on to right, So the Cold War
Speaker 1: had just started in Australia was in this weird position
Speaker 1: where there were a lot of Soviet spies running around,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of Brits and American spies running around,
Speaker 1: and the British themselves were conducting secret rocket tests in
Speaker 1: the country. So there was, um, there's a lot of espionage,
Speaker 1: a lot of black marketing um, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people who were not who they claimed to be floating
Speaker 1: around this country running around and floating right. So that
Speaker 1: brings us to uh, a very important date for the story. Tuesday,
Speaker 1: November about seven in the evening, there was a jeweler
Speaker 1: named John Lyon Ends and his wife. They were taking
Speaker 1: a little stroll there on Somerton Beach, which I'm sure
Speaker 1: as lovely. Um, and they saw something weird. They were
Speaker 1: walking towards glenn Elk, so I guess they're connected beaches. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they saw something interesting on the sea wall there.
Speaker 1: They saw a man lying in the sand, but very
Speaker 1: well dressed in a suit, kind of propped up on
Speaker 1: the sea wall there as if he were sort of
Speaker 1: sitting up about sixty feet away. In America, that's twenty yards.
Speaker 1: In Australia it is a certain amount of meters about
Speaker 1: twenty Okay, really is that what works? Yeah, it's pretty
Speaker 1: close to the yard in the meter are very similar. Um.
Speaker 1: And he he was doing something interesting, so they say, uh,
Speaker 1: he extended his right arm upward and then just let
Speaker 1: it fall back down to the ground. And they thought
Speaker 1: that looks like a passed out drunk guy, or maybe
Speaker 1: a barely wake drunk guy, maybe trying to have a
Speaker 1: cigarette or they I mean, it was remarkable and that
Speaker 1: they made a mental note of it, but they just
Speaker 1: kept walking and whatever. I think his suit being on
Speaker 1: the beach was probably one of the big deals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was very sharply dressed, not just wearing a suit
Speaker 1: on the beach like the studio was wearing. Was pretty nice,
Speaker 1: pretty nice. Um In About a half hour later, another
Speaker 1: couple walked past, and this this time the guy wasn't
Speaker 1: moving at all. Um and apparently he had a whole
Speaker 1: swarm of mosquitoes around his face. And the boyfriend says
Speaker 1: to the girlfriend that guy must be dead to the
Speaker 1: world if he's not noticing those mosquitoes, he must just
Speaker 1: be absolutely wasted. So they were clearly closer, I guess,
Speaker 1: so I think it'd see mosquitoes on his face, Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure, because from twenty yards it's a tough thing
Speaker 1: to see. I don't know, pretty strange mosquitoes are, right.
Speaker 1: So the next morning, um became pretty clear what was
Speaker 1: going on here, that this was a dead man. The
Speaker 1: same jeweler John Lyons He went for a little morning swim,
Speaker 1: as you were to do in Australian the mornings when
Speaker 1: you're hungover, and he saw a bunch of people crowded
Speaker 1: around where the guy was, and it was it was on.
Speaker 1: It was as a dead dude. Yeah, the dude was
Speaker 1: in basically the same position you'd seen him in the
Speaker 1: night before. That that crowd was like he's dead, croy
Speaker 1: ky and uh yeah, so Lions is like, wow, that
Speaker 1: was pretty surprising. That's the end of John Lyons. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but very important here and that they are the only
Speaker 1: people who supposedly saw this body move right, super important. So, um,
Speaker 1: within about a few hours, the body is in the morgue,
Speaker 1: get the hospital and as being examined, and just from
Speaker 1: the initial examination there was a lot of um, just
Speaker 1: weirdness that immediately came out right. So remember the guys
Speaker 1: like sitting up against the sea wall. Um, his legs
Speaker 1: are extended out, his feet are crossed. There was a cigarette,
Speaker 1: depending on who you ask, either a half burned cigarette,
Speaker 1: either dangling from his mouth or on the collar of
Speaker 1: a shirt as if it had fallen from his mouth. Um,
Speaker 1: and uh. When he was taken into the morgue that
Speaker 1: the doctor said that he was probably dead by two am. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and most likely when they did the full autopsy, a
Speaker 1: man named John Dwyer said he was probably poisoned initially,
Speaker 1: even though there were no traces of poison, which is
Speaker 1: a little right. But the reason he said that is
Speaker 1: because when they cracked the guy opened this this this
Speaker 1: John Doe who's widely become known as the Somerton man. Um,
Speaker 1: his organs were all kinds of messed up. He had
Speaker 1: blood and his stomach along with his final meal, which
Speaker 1: was a pasty, a delicious hot pocket handie. Yeah um,
Speaker 1: that sounds dirty hand pie. Yeah. Um, there's His spleen
Speaker 1: was in enlarged and engorged with blood. That's not a
Speaker 1: good sign. His liver was giant and bloody, not unusual
Speaker 1: for Australians, that fifty five gallon drama foster. His pupils
Speaker 1: were smaller than normal and just quote unusual whatever that means. Right. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then they said that he had a little spittle
Speaker 1: on the side of his mouth that you know, like,
Speaker 1: you know, I thought that was a pretty tacky thing
Speaker 1: to note. Yeah, just leave the guy alone. He's dead,
Speaker 1: like sleepy drool, is what I thought. If I'm pretty,
Speaker 1: if I'm so pretty that I just have a little
Speaker 1: bit of spittle coming down my mouth when I'm dead,
Speaker 1: I'll be more than happy. Oh you mean, if you
Speaker 1: if that's the only thing, Yeah, I agreed. I mean,
Speaker 1: come on give the guy to break well, you know,
Speaker 1: they were doing forensics. Yeah, so, and indeed they did,
Speaker 1: and they kept saying like this gotta be poisoning, like
Speaker 1: his organs are all kinds of messed up, but there
Speaker 1: was no trace of poisoning. They brought in this guy
Speaker 1: named Cedric Stanton Hicks. Yeah, nothing's wrong, right. They gave
Speaker 1: it to Eugene and he was still standing afterwards. Um, So,
Speaker 1: Sir Cedric Stanton Hicks comes in and says, as well,
Speaker 1: let me let me see this, and he um concluded
Speaker 1: that it was probably one of two poisons that would
Speaker 1: have done this kind of damage resulted in heart failure.
Speaker 1: We didn't say that, so they concluded he probably died
Speaker 1: from his heart failure. Ultimately, Um, but that wouldn't have
Speaker 1: left a trace. And he did not feel like it
Speaker 1: was a responsible move on his part to say these
Speaker 1: things out loud on the record during the coroner's inquest.
Speaker 1: So he said, so he wrote them down, and the
Speaker 1: corner was like, okay, all right, picked him up and
Speaker 1: read and what he read was digitalis and Struff Phantom said,
Speaker 1: he said it, I didn't write. He goes, oh gosh,
Speaker 1: did I say that out loud. That sounds like something
Speaker 1: that you'd seen the movie, just you know, added for
Speaker 1: the drama, but apparently it really am So he read
Speaker 1: those names. I don't know if you read those names,
Speaker 1: but at least those names were recorded onto the record. Uh.
Speaker 1: Sir Cedric Stanton Hicks suspected the strophanthem, although later investigators
Speaker 1: I feel sure it was probably the digitalist. It sounds
Speaker 1: like it doesn't matter which one it was because they
Speaker 1: were both kind of used and I think are maybe
Speaker 1: still used. The treat heart disease. Is that true? Yeah? Um,
Speaker 1: and then you can get them with the prescription from
Speaker 1: a pharmacy. I don't know if they're still used. Maybe
Speaker 1: they are, but they definitely were common at the time
Speaker 1: or obtainable in in just about every major city. Um.
Speaker 1: So they have an idea of maybe what poison it was.
Speaker 1: But again it bears pointing out again and again that
Speaker 1: they no one has ever found any direct evidence that
Speaker 1: the man was poisoned. And to this day, two thousand
Speaker 1: seventeen and beyond, if you're listening to this years from now, um,
Speaker 1: they still don't know how he died. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: they may still be looking because this is one of
Speaker 1: those like the dB Cooper when we did. That's one
Speaker 1: of those cases where amateur sluice on the Internet are
Speaker 1: still trying to figure stuff like this out. And unless
Speaker 1: we come up with some really um amazing technologies in
Speaker 1: the next ten twenty years or something like that, the
Speaker 1: time is passing quite quickly on this case and dB
Speaker 1: Cooper as well. Where we may never know may remain
Speaker 1: a mystery forever unless we invent time travel, then somebody
Speaker 1: will go back and figure those out. So the dude,
Speaker 1: it looks a little bit like Harvey Kitel, do you
Speaker 1: think so? I mean, look up a picture of this guy.
Speaker 1: If you're not in your car, you can look him up.
Speaker 1: They're two very famous photos. I guess from the autopsy scene. Um,
Speaker 1: just straight onto his face and then sort of you know,
Speaker 1: from the side with his eyes open. Yeah, it looks
Speaker 1: like Harvey Kitell. It looks like a wasted Harvey kite Tel,
Speaker 1: which is to say, he looks like Harvey Kuitel. Um,
Speaker 1: so he's in about his mid forties. Yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: a younger Harvey Kitel. Yeah. Uh, he's wearing this double
Speaker 1: breasted suit. Um. I saw that he was wearing a
Speaker 1: nit pull over with a necktie. Who and this sounds
Speaker 1: like we're being um two specific by saying the stripes
Speaker 1: slanted from left to right, but we're not. We're not.
Speaker 1: That will come into play. Well, just hang onto that nugget.
Speaker 1: Put that one in your pipe for later. He had
Speaker 1: no hat, which was weird for that time. Oh, I
Speaker 1: hadn't ran across that, but yeah, I've never seen that
Speaker 1: there was a hat. Yeah, and they never found a hat.
Speaker 1: But it would be unusual for a man in the
Speaker 1: late forties and not have a hat. Yeah, I guess so.
Speaker 1: Fedoras were huge. I'll bet Panama hats were huge down
Speaker 1: in Adelaide at the time. For doors in Australia were
Speaker 1: literally huge. It's like sombreros made of tortilla's melted cheese
Speaker 1: in the middle. Man. Is that a thing? It was
Speaker 1: on the Simpsons nancho hat. Uh? What else? He had
Speaker 1: weird feet, yeah, wedge shaped feet, they said, and that
Speaker 1: his his shoes seemed to be molded almost to his feet.
Speaker 1: The real weird giveaway was his calves. His calves were remarkable.
Speaker 1: They were bulbous below the just below the knee. And
Speaker 1: the guy who who performed the autopsy, I think it was.
Speaker 1: Dwyer said, Uh, this is like what dancers or people
Speaker 1: who wear high heels, just the kind of calves that
Speaker 1: they have. He said, look at that, he looks like
Speaker 1: Lena Horn. The Oh my gosh, it is Lena Horn. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that that's definitely notable. Um. Uh. The other thing
Speaker 1: they found out too was, um, a couple of physical
Speaker 1: traits that he had which will come into play later
Speaker 1: on his ear. His simba, which is the upper hollow
Speaker 1: portion of the ear caved in. Yeah, the rolled over
Speaker 1: part up here, No, like just the upper you know,
Speaker 1: hole than the lower part. Yeah. Yeah, we've ever done
Speaker 1: show any ears, have we we should? The simba is
Speaker 1: larger than the cave um, which is a fairly rare thing.
Speaker 1: So I would guess the cavum is where your ear
Speaker 1: drum leads to your ear drum. Yeah, that's where you
Speaker 1: put your finger when you want to write. But if
Speaker 1: you go, if you put your finger up over that ridge,
Speaker 1: doesn't that's the simba. Yeah, so yeah, that would be
Speaker 1: weird if this one was bigger than that one. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty rare genetic trait, as were his strange teeth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he had something called hypodontia, which is he was missing
Speaker 1: his lateral incisors, which are the teeth that most people
Speaker 1: have between their front teeth and their canines. His lateral
Speaker 1: incisors never developed, so his canines were adjacent to his
Speaker 1: front teeth. Yeah, and it's um would you say hypodontia
Speaker 1: that that can be as common as like you'd never
Speaker 1: get your wisdom teeth, But in this case, those particular teeth,
Speaker 1: it was pretty rare. Something like, well, I saw hypodontia
Speaker 1: in so that would include not getting wisdom teeth. Huh, Well,
Speaker 1: in any teeth, not developing a hypod I got you. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know if hypodontia in general or just this
Speaker 1: type of hypodontao of the population. Yeah, it's specifically for
Speaker 1: those teeth. Was pretty rare, gotcha? Yeah? Two, pretty rare.
Speaker 1: Like everyone's got those teeth, And people at home are like,
Speaker 1: why are you saying all this weird stuff? Who cares?
Speaker 1: Just settle down? Everybody, settle down because it's all going
Speaker 1: to come into play. We haven't said anything that will
Speaker 1: not come back into play. All right, Should we take
Speaker 1: a break. I think we should. Everybody's getting all riled up.
Speaker 1: Let's take a break and then we're going to detail,
Speaker 1: uh for about fifteen minutes. What was in his pockets? Yeah, okay, chuck.
Speaker 1: So we went over the body. Yeah, now it's time
Speaker 1: to go through his personal effects, which were kind of
Speaker 1: weird in and of themselves. Right about the details. So
Speaker 1: when you're talking about murders and disappearances and then unsolved
Speaker 1: after seventy years, yes, you need to pay attention to
Speaker 1: the detail. What kind of podcast cops would we be
Speaker 1: if we were just like, yeah, it just sort of
Speaker 1: looked like Harveard Kite Tell and he's in a suit
Speaker 1: d and no good. It sounded like Harvey Kite Tell.
Speaker 1: Yeah it did, didn't it. Yeah it was. That was
Speaker 1: my HARVEYD. Kite telling the piano. Know, oh man, what
Speaker 1: a movie? Um? All right, So in his pockets he
Speaker 1: had a pack of juicy fruit. The juicy fruit, Yeah,
Speaker 1: chewing gum. He had some matches, Bryant and May matches.
Speaker 1: He had, uh, well, he had a lot of tickets
Speaker 1: in his pocket. He had a an unused train ticket
Speaker 1: from Adelaide to Hindley Beach. He had a bus ticket
Speaker 1: from Adelaide to glenn Alk and then he had a ticket,
Speaker 1: a used ticket that said he had come from arrived
Speaker 1: there by by bus from the railway station there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: from the Adelaide railway correct. Yeah. Uh. He also had
Speaker 1: um a pack of cigarettes that was weird. Army Club Army.
Speaker 1: The pack of cigarettes was an Army Club pack, but
Speaker 1: inside was something called Conceitas, which was a much more
Speaker 1: expensive brand. So that makes no sense, Like that's the
Speaker 1: opposite of the only thing that could make sense, which
Speaker 1: is he just kept the expensive pack and would put
Speaker 1: cheap cigarettes in it to look fancy, right, unless he
Speaker 1: didn't want people bumming the expensive ones off of him,
Speaker 1: so he kept the cheap pack or right. The likelier
Speaker 1: story is that he bombed some a bunch of cigarettes
Speaker 1: off of somebody and put them in his his own pack,
Speaker 1: al right, Like, hey man, he got a smoke or
Speaker 1: seven or seven? Yeah, interesting, Or perhaps they were poisoned
Speaker 1: and put in that pack. That's another possible explanation to write.
Speaker 1: So um his his that was like the extent of
Speaker 1: his personal effects aside from his clothing. Right, there was
Speaker 1: no idea get a couple of combs, okay, hair combs.
Speaker 1: More to the point, there was no idea, no, no wallet,
Speaker 1: no cash. Kind of odd for sure, and his clothes
Speaker 1: were odd in and of themselves. Right, So again, he
Speaker 1: was wearing a very nice suit, but the um makers
Speaker 1: labels of all of his clothes have been from what
Speaker 1: I understand, carefully snipped away. Yeah, I saw one explanation
Speaker 1: for this that made it seem a little less odd um,
Speaker 1: which was back then. Apparently people oftentimes would because there
Speaker 1: were nice clothes, were not scarce, but you wanted to
Speaker 1: keep them for yourself, so you would write your name
Speaker 1: a lot of times on your like suit, jackets and things,
Speaker 1: and then if you ever went to sell them second hand,
Speaker 1: you would flip out those labels. So that's one explanation
Speaker 1: that's not bad. I don't know if that's a reach
Speaker 1: or not, but at least something could make sense out
Speaker 1: of that. But the other thing could mean that this
Speaker 1: person was being dumped and no one wanted them to
Speaker 1: know who they were. It's a possibility to or that
Speaker 1: he didn't want anyone to know who he was. That's
Speaker 1: another possibility as well. That's what a lot of people think,
Speaker 1: that he was trying to cover up his own identity
Speaker 1: as well. Um his his trousers I think had a
Speaker 1: little repair done with orange thread, bear with us um,
Speaker 1: and then that was about it. They they they took
Speaker 1: fingerprints of the guy and spread around to no avail. Right.
Speaker 1: They they've figured out after a little while. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure when, but this would have been so November December
Speaker 1: one is when he was found. This is too, This
Speaker 1: is like July to us in the northern hemisphere, the
Speaker 1: beginning of July. So starting to get hot down there, right,
Speaker 1: You can only keep a body for so long. In
Speaker 1: the nineteen forties in summer in Adelaide, it's already a
Speaker 1: hot place to begin with. And um, the authorities were like,
Speaker 1: we we can't keep this guy above ground any longer.
Speaker 1: So somebody had the bright idea of making a plaster
Speaker 1: bust of him, and they did, and they kept it
Speaker 1: at the Morgan and they buried him in a pretty
Speaker 1: smart way if you ask me. Yeah, they buried him,
Speaker 1: uh with this marker. Here lies the unknown man who
Speaker 1: was found at Somerton Beach first December, and he was
Speaker 1: buried just in really dry ground so if they ever
Speaker 1: needed to get in there they could. And they encased
Speaker 1: him in concrete as well to realize like keep them
Speaker 1: preserved as much as possible if you ever needed to
Speaker 1: be exhumed, right correct. So um, like I said, they
Speaker 1: took the set of fingerprints and they're still looking for
Speaker 1: this guy. They buried him finally, but they're like, this
Speaker 1: is driving us insane. Who was this man? What happened
Speaker 1: to him? Um? So they spread the fingerprints all over Australia.
Speaker 1: They started to send him around to America, the UK,
Speaker 1: It just English speaking countries. Yeah. They also, uh like
Speaker 1: kind of before they got rid of the real body,
Speaker 1: they brought people in locals to see if anyone could
Speaker 1: identify them. I think afterward they probably showed quite a
Speaker 1: few people the bust and they were just trying to
Speaker 1: do anything and nobody, nobody could recognize who this person was. No.
Speaker 1: I mean some people saw like pictures of the bust
Speaker 1: or the death pictures that are famous now in the newspaper,
Speaker 1: and we're like, oh, that kind of looks like Uncle Ted.
Speaker 1: And then they go in and see him and be
Speaker 1: like it's not Uncle Ted. Um. And so this this
Speaker 1: the fact that this is becoming an weird unsolved mystery already,
Speaker 1: like just quickly after the case started to kep sure
Speaker 1: the nation's attention a little bit, and the police, the
Speaker 1: the the South Australia State Police were not shy about
Speaker 1: publicizing stuff as needed, Like as they developed breaks in
Speaker 1: the case, they would tell the newspapers about it, and
Speaker 1: the newspapers would tell the rest of the country. So
Speaker 1: it became a pretty big sensation in Australia, so much
Speaker 1: so that a lot of people are just basically take
Speaker 1: it for granted that the man was not Australian. That
Speaker 1: were he Australian, some more several people would have come
Speaker 1: forward because the case had that much exposure nationally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I am just guessing here, but I imagine nine
Speaker 1: this part of Australia probably wasn't There weren't like millions
Speaker 1: of people living there. I don't know how small of
Speaker 1: a town it was, but I don't think it was
Speaker 1: like some huge city, was it. Well, Yeah, Adelaide's the
Speaker 1: capital of South Australia. Yeah, but is that how big
Speaker 1: was that? Think there was like at least five people there.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to say, at the minimum, someone's going
Speaker 1: to write in and tell us so all right, and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be mad that we didn't know. No, Australians
Speaker 1: are nice about things, usually yeah, they are. They're the
Speaker 1: Canadians of the South. So they decide. The cops decide
Speaker 1: very smartly. Um, you know what, We're gonna widen this investigation.
Speaker 1: We're going to see if anywhere in town someone has
Speaker 1: found something. There are any possessions that this guy might
Speaker 1: have left behind. Since he was just found with what
Speaker 1: was in his pockets, surely there's something. And in fact
Speaker 1: there was. They discovered there was a suitcase, brown suitcase
Speaker 1: in a cloak room that was left there on November,
Speaker 1: which was the night before the morning that he was
Speaker 1: found the first time he was seen on the beach.
Speaker 1: It was no lead, it was and because he had
Speaker 1: that ticket that showed he had taken a bus from
Speaker 1: the Adelaide rail station, that was one of the first
Speaker 1: places detectives went. Uh and they found this suitcase, um,
Speaker 1: that had been left there, like you said, on November,
Speaker 1: and inside, um, there was some stuff that linked it
Speaker 1: to the guy. Yeah, I mean it was full of stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: it was clearly someone who was traveling a lot. There
Speaker 1: were lots of clothes, shirts and scarves and underwear and
Speaker 1: pajamas and handkerchiefs. There were two pairs of scissors, one
Speaker 1: broken pair one in a sheath. Um, like a shave kit, screwdriver, Um,
Speaker 1: lots of just normal travel things, razor, razor strap, all
Speaker 1: the junk you would expect that multiple pairs of scissors
Speaker 1: is a little weird. Thread. But the thread was the
Speaker 1: big one orange thread yeah barber, not Australian brand barber thread,
Speaker 1: which perfectly matched where his trousers are stitched. So it's
Speaker 1: got to be him, right, that's the thing that really
Speaker 1: links him with the suitcase. Um. There was also some
Speaker 1: stencils for stenciling cargo. Yeah, that was a little weird,
Speaker 1: very weird. Um. And there was a suit jacket that
Speaker 1: had a what's called a feather stitch. Um. While stitching
Speaker 1: is the lightest stitch, right, and they're like, we don't
Speaker 1: do this in Australia. We don't even have the sewing
Speaker 1: machine that can do this in Australia. Yet that Taylor said,
Speaker 1: this is an American coat. Yeah, with their feathers. Well,
Speaker 1: he's a am a stitch right. Uh. And then inside
Speaker 1: some of these clothes, uh was the name Keen Because
Speaker 1: I told you people wrote on their clothes a lot
Speaker 1: said T keen T dot keen k E n E
Speaker 1: or k E A N. And the best cops could
Speaker 1: figure is they someone did that to to sniff everyone
Speaker 1: off the case, right, because they looked around and there
Speaker 1: was no t keen or any keen that they couldn't
Speaker 1: put their their fingers on. Who's missing? Um? And the tie?
Speaker 1: Years later, like the cops at the time didn't know this.
Speaker 1: I wonder if they noticed that it was slanting one
Speaker 1: way or another. I don't know, but the they probably
Speaker 1: just knew it looked weird for some reason. They couldn't
Speaker 1: put their finger on. Ye. But at the time in Australia,
Speaker 1: the the ties slanted left or right, and this guy's
Speaker 1: tie slanted right to left, and that was the style
Speaker 1: in America. It's like everything's oppose said, didn't this so weird?
Speaker 1: Summer's winter and winter summer flush the toilet? It was
Speaker 1: in a different direction. I think that's an urban legend. No,
Speaker 1: I think that's true, right, No, I did a something
Speaker 1: on it. Really, Yeah, I think it's an urban legend.
Speaker 1: It's really has to do with um, the uh, the
Speaker 1: shape of the drain. What man, That's what I was
Speaker 1: so looking forward to. Pooping in Australia. You can still
Speaker 1: do it well you probably should. Actually, while we're there,
Speaker 1: I'm going to but I'm not. The joy is is dead. Well,
Speaker 1: just don't watch it flush. Yeah, but you might be
Speaker 1: better off. Actually in this way, I've just been used
Speaker 1: to my poop turning into such a direction my whole life.
Speaker 1: I was really ready for something new. All right, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: So the tie is opposite. They said, this is an
Speaker 1: American tie, like you said. Uh. And then a brought
Speaker 1: in um and actually we should say those were internet sleuths,
Speaker 1: like within the last ten fifteen years who figured that
Speaker 1: one out? Yeah, all right, good for you Internet. Uh. Finally,
Speaker 1: in April, police brought in a dude, an expert pathologists
Speaker 1: named John Cleland. And this was a big deal. Apparently
Speaker 1: the cops in South Australia were not as thorough as
Speaker 1: you would think, because they didn't even check his little
Speaker 1: pocket watch pocket a little pocket inside your pocket, because
Speaker 1: there was a really key piece of evidence rolled up
Speaker 1: in there. Yeah, this one broke the case wide open.
Speaker 1: It seemed like it would. There was a little scrap
Speaker 1: of paper rolled up very tightly in this pocket and
Speaker 1: written on it in some pretty fancy type setting were
Speaker 1: the words tamum showed T A M A M S
Speaker 1: h U D. And the cops said, what was this
Speaker 1: first orange thread? Not some weirdo words rolled up in
Speaker 1: this guy's pocket? What is this? And John Cleveland said,
Speaker 1: you dopes, it's called a lead. You didn't check his pocket?
Speaker 1: In his pocket? He said no, So they would figure
Speaker 1: out in a little while by a stroke of luck.
Speaker 1: It seems that um temum showed means it is finished
Speaker 1: where it is done, or in this case, the end
Speaker 1: in Persian. Right, it sounds very h random and out
Speaker 1: of left field that anybody would know this, But a
Speaker 1: reporter working the police beat there said named Frank Kennedy, said, no,
Speaker 1: that I know what that's from. That's from a twelfth
Speaker 1: century book of Persian poetry called Rubaiyat of Omar Kayam.
Speaker 1: And that just sounds so out of left field. But
Speaker 1: in fact that book had been translated by an English
Speaker 1: poet named Edward Fitzgerald, and it was kind of a
Speaker 1: big deal once it was translated into English, so it
Speaker 1: wasn't like just so looking for obscure that nobody would
Speaker 1: know what it was. No, it was extremely popular in
Speaker 1: the in the West after that, I think even in America,
Speaker 1: like there's a Peanuts comic strip that makes reference to it.
Speaker 1: Even it was a big It was one of those
Speaker 1: things where like people might not know about it, but
Speaker 1: there are plenty of people out there who did. And
Speaker 1: one of the reporters recognized it, right. So they realized
Speaker 1: then that they needed to find the copy of the
Speaker 1: Rubiyat that this came from. And they started looking and
Speaker 1: looking and looking, and they couldn't find it. So the
Speaker 1: state police did what they had been doing all along.
Speaker 1: They went to the newspapers and they said, hey, we
Speaker 1: found this weird scrap of paper. It says Tamum shooed.
Speaker 1: We're told that it comes from the Rubiyat, and specifically
Speaker 1: it's the last words of the Rubiat, right with the
Speaker 1: last words of the last poem, right um, and go
Speaker 1: go to it media and the media went wild and
Speaker 1: let everybody you know. And it turns out so this
Speaker 1: is April when they found the um the scrap of paper,
Speaker 1: and in July they got another break based on finding
Speaker 1: that scrap. A guy came forward and said, you know what,
Speaker 1: I found this copy of the Rubyat in the backseat
Speaker 1: of my car, which had been parked by Sohmerton Beach
Speaker 1: around the time the man who was found on Somerton
Speaker 1: Beach was found. And I have no idea who'se it is.
Speaker 1: It's just been I put it in my glove Compartment's
Speaker 1: been sitting there until I read this article in the newspaper. Yeah,
Speaker 1: presumably his windows rolled down or his car was unlocked,
Speaker 1: and whoever ripped this thing out, because they did find
Speaker 1: out that part was ripped out from his book, just
Speaker 1: tossed it in the back seat this guy's car, right,
Speaker 1: Not very smart if you're trying to cover your tracks, No,
Speaker 1: but maybe you're not trying to cover your tracks, right.
Speaker 1: So they now have the copy of the Ruby Yatt
Speaker 1: that the scrap of paper that came that was found
Speaker 1: in the Sohmerton man's trousers came, yeah, which by all
Speaker 1: accounts is a one of a kind printing, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like a one off, yes, and not an addition of hundreds,
Speaker 1: like a single printing of this one book, right, but
Speaker 1: supposedly as part of an addition. I can't remember which
Speaker 1: edition it was by this printer, But for years people
Speaker 1: have been trying to track down a copy from that
Speaker 1: edition and they couldn't find it. Well, somebody finally found one.
Speaker 1: They're like, this is not the exact same book that
Speaker 1: the cops found with the Somerton Man associated with Somerton Man,
Speaker 1: which is a very odd thing, totally. Um so in
Speaker 1: this book they get another huge break. This breaks the
Speaker 1: case open even further. Right, They're like, surely we're going
Speaker 1: to figure it out now. Yeah, this was huge. They
Speaker 1: found uh, two local phone numbers. One was a bank
Speaker 1: phone number which didn't lead to much of anything, and
Speaker 1: another one X three to three nine, uh, belong to Well,
Speaker 1: they found a couple of things. I found this member
Speaker 1: that belonged to a woman, a nurse named Jessica Thompson,
Speaker 1: who will talk about in a minute. And then they
Speaker 1: also found, um, you know how we did our we
Speaker 1: did our episode on spies and one of the things
Speaker 1: sometimes spies would do would have these throwaway pads that
Speaker 1: they would literally write things on and you could make
Speaker 1: an impression such that, you know, it's like the kid's
Speaker 1: trick where you ripped that page off and you have
Speaker 1: what looks like a blank page that's the impression of
Speaker 1: what was written above it. And in this little kids
Speaker 1: will use a pencil, let's see what it says. But
Speaker 1: in this case, they used a UV light to see what,
Speaker 1: by all accounts is a five line code, and then
Speaker 1: the code is pretty odd. Yeah, I mean I think
Speaker 1: we should read it. It'll sound like gibberish. But if
Speaker 1: you're into code breaking, you probably already know about this one.
Speaker 1: But if not, here we go all capital letters. Line
Speaker 1: one is w r G O A B A b D.
Speaker 1: Second line m l I A o I that was
Speaker 1: scratched out. Interestingly, third line w T b I m
Speaker 1: P A n E t P, fourth line m l
Speaker 1: I A again that's repeated uh b O a I
Speaker 1: a q C. And finally I T T M T
Speaker 1: S A M S T G a B go break it,
Speaker 1: right the eagle has landed at midnight, which they basically
Speaker 1: said that go break it, and no one could know. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of amateur code breakers because again they went
Speaker 1: to the media like you're saying, um, go break it,
Speaker 1: and a lot of code breakers tried and failed, and
Speaker 1: then um they contacted the Australian Naval Intelligence Service and
Speaker 1: they tried and failed, and either the Naval Intelligence Service
Speaker 1: or later UM sleuths concluded that it was for there's
Speaker 1: too little information to ever break it that you didn't
Speaker 1: have a key that you needed to have um. And
Speaker 1: then it may have been as simple as the first
Speaker 1: letter of a list that he was trying to remember, right,
Speaker 1: because apparently they bear of a resemblance frequency wise the
Speaker 1: first letters of common words in the English language. So
Speaker 1: it's possible that like it's it's a to do list
Speaker 1: that the guy was just trying to remember, you know,
Speaker 1: by these groceries, go see this person at this time,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. It is a lot of letters,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people say, no, this is obviously
Speaker 1: this spike codebook. Don't be naive. So the the cops
Speaker 1: they there's the code breaking thing that they're doing. Then
Speaker 1: simultaneously they're like, well, maybe we should call this local
Speaker 1: phone number, and they did, and on the other end
Speaker 1: a woman picked up and it turned out like you
Speaker 1: said to be Jessica Thompson, and you want to take
Speaker 1: another break. We're going to take a break and we'll
Speaker 1: get to Jessica Thompson right after this. We should say,
Speaker 1: coming back from break, we just got compliments from Matt.
Speaker 1: This is like praise from Caesar on something like this.
Speaker 1: Look what happened to Caesar though, Yeah, on your birthday.
Speaker 1: Matt said, you guys really doing a great job. And
Speaker 1: Josh said, didn't tell us that. Go back to sleep,
Speaker 1: all right, So we promised talk of Jessica Thompson. This
Speaker 1: is a really good lead. They called her up. She
Speaker 1: answered the phone. It's a good first step in my
Speaker 1: movie version, at least she answered the phone and went, huh.
Speaker 1: She's a nurse. She was married, she had a kid
Speaker 1: named Robin Thompson. Robin a boy though, right, uh. And
Speaker 1: her maiden name was Harkness. Um, and this has kept
Speaker 1: private for a lot of years. Her name was she
Speaker 1: asked him to keep it a secret. And I read
Speaker 1: a bunch of accounts, most of which said that, you know,
Speaker 1: she may have had a few boyfriends here and there affairs. Um.
Speaker 1: The paternity of Robin Thompson was called into question more
Speaker 1: than once. So UM, I think that the general idea
Speaker 1: was that she was probably just trying to keep this
Speaker 1: quiet too. So she, you know, in the nineteen forties,
Speaker 1: wouldn't be outed as a trollop, right And then cops said, sure,
Speaker 1: no problem. And actually, to this day, the state police
Speaker 1: have never publicly identified Jessica Thompson as the mystery woman
Speaker 1: whose phone number was written in the Somerton Man's copy
Speaker 1: of The Rubiyat. Yeah, but in two thousand thirteen her
Speaker 1: family came forward and publicly identified her. And even though
Speaker 1: the police haven't confirmed it, it's been known for so
Speaker 1: many years that that was probably who it was. That again,
Speaker 1: it's basically taken for granted as a fact of the
Speaker 1: case that she is that woman. Yeah, her nickname was
Speaker 1: justin j E. S. T y N. That's how she
Speaker 1: inscribed copies of this Ruby Yacht. Um. Well, and I
Speaker 1: guess that sort of gives away what happens next. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The cops are like, okay, okay, we've gone through a
Speaker 1: lot to get to you. Lady. Have you given a
Speaker 1: copy of this twelfth century book of Persian poetry called
Speaker 1: The Ruby Yacht to anybody? And she goes, yes, I have.
Speaker 1: And the cops are like, yes, we're about to figure
Speaker 1: it out. And they said who who have you given
Speaker 1: it to? And she said a bloke named Alfred Boxall.
Speaker 1: They said, okay, we'll call you back, and they hung
Speaker 1: up and ran around looking for Alfred Boxall. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: they probably figured, you know, that's Harvey Kitel uh. And
Speaker 1: they were unfairly to Albert Alfred boxall disappointed when they
Speaker 1: found it. He was alive and well in New South Wales,
Speaker 1: and he said, yeah, I got the book right here.
Speaker 1: She she gave them to all her lovers. Uh. There
Speaker 1: was speculation that perhaps they you know, she gave it
Speaker 1: to him over drinks one night, that he perhaps had
Speaker 1: been one of her lovers. Yeah, oh yeah, And I
Speaker 1: think it's probably absolutely correct because she had inscribed it,
Speaker 1: like I said, with Justin and that's how the cops
Speaker 1: referred to her on their case files. Uh. So they went,
Speaker 1: you're alive, great, and he said, yeah, but I've got
Speaker 1: the book like not all was lost and it was intact.
Speaker 1: That's correct. So they said, oh, you've got to be
Speaker 1: kidding me. This lead, the lead of all leads. I
Speaker 1: was gonna break this case wide open. It it's a
Speaker 1: dead end, are you Are you kidding me? And one
Speaker 1: of the officers developed a permanent scarf from banging his
Speaker 1: head slowly against the wall. He couldn't be stopped, couldn't
Speaker 1: be consoled, And so they said, okay, a lady, your
Speaker 1: phone number was in this thing, so we want you
Speaker 1: to come down to the Morrigan just take a look
Speaker 1: at this bust we made of the dead guy and
Speaker 1: um and they said, also, is there anything else, anything
Speaker 1: weird happened to you and like the last year or so,
Speaker 1: And she said, well, the only thing I can think
Speaker 1: of is that my neighbors said to me once when
Speaker 1: I came home one day that and some man they
Speaker 1: didn't know it, called on my house and uh, that
Speaker 1: was it. That's the literally the weirdest thing that's happened
Speaker 1: to me on her door. Her neighbors didn't know. It
Speaker 1: happens to be like three times a week. Um. So
Speaker 1: as they bring her in to look at this bus,
Speaker 1: Detective Sergeant Liona Lean and uh, he was one of
Speaker 1: the two leads that was not an Australian accent, ok.
Speaker 1: And um, I don't know what kind of backs and
Speaker 1: it was. It was mid Atlantic, but I was not
Speaker 1: trying to do Australian. Uh. And he said that quote
Speaker 1: she was completely taken aback to the point of giving
Speaker 1: the appearance she was about to faint end quote like
Speaker 1: she knows who this dude is. Yeah, she's a nurse.
Speaker 1: First of all. She was even looking at a body,
Speaker 1: but she has a nurse, so she wouldn't be freaked
Speaker 1: out by any of this. No, and again it wasn't
Speaker 1: even a body. It was a plaster bus. Yeah, right.
Speaker 1: But she's like and they go, did you know him?
Speaker 1: And she goes, no, no, I didn't. Just got some heartburn,
Speaker 1: and uh, I have nothing more to say about this,
Speaker 1: so don't ever ask me. And she clammed up. Not
Speaker 1: weird at all, No, not at all. So immediately the
Speaker 1: cops are like, you know, way more than you're letting on.
Speaker 1: But apparently they didn't, you know, beat up people that
Speaker 1: they had in custody to get information out of them.
Speaker 1: So they let her go and just said, oh, well,
Speaker 1: I guess we'll never know the answer to this mystery. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a retired detective named Gary felt Us. Is it Gary?
Speaker 1: I thought Jerry g E R R Y Probably Jerry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm you've convinced me. That's funny. We we just crossed
Speaker 1: over to one another side again. Uh. So he took
Speaker 1: up this case later in life, and um, he actually
Speaker 1: interviewed her in two thousand seven. He said she was
Speaker 1: evasive under questioning and like, this lady knew something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and again this guy was him. He's a hobbyist, amateur
Speaker 1: sleuth on this case. I love those guys. But he
Speaker 1: had forty years experienced as a detective in Adelaide, so
Speaker 1: he knows questioning people. Have you seen the Netflix documentary
Speaker 1: series The Keepers. No, I haven't even heard of it.
Speaker 1: It is about a cold case murder of a nun
Speaker 1: um in the nineteen nineteen sixties, I think, And uh,
Speaker 1: they're there are these amateur detectives that have been working
Speaker 1: on this all these years. These two women in particular,
Speaker 1: learn that were students of this none at school that
Speaker 1: are just amazing, And like, is this really get an
Speaker 1: appreciation for these people who like become obsessed with the
Speaker 1: solving these cases that aren't even like family members or anything,
Speaker 1: you know, Is it a like jama or documentary ten
Speaker 1: part documentary seriousness? Oh wow, I gotta see that. Oh dude,
Speaker 1: It's one of the most upsetting things I've ever had
Speaker 1: to sit through. And that's all I'm gonna say. I've
Speaker 1: been waiting for this since I've finished making Um Making
Speaker 1: of a Murderer. Yeah, it's better, I think. I like that,
Speaker 1: But what what very disturbing stuff. Wow, I gotta go
Speaker 1: any you gotta leave it. So hats off to you,
Speaker 1: amateur sluice out there for for getting in the way
Speaker 1: of real police, no, for for doing work that real police.
Speaker 1: These are cold cases that they're hard pressed to get
Speaker 1: information anymore in most cases. So I was just kidding
Speaker 1: sniffing people off the case after the cops say, right,
Speaker 1: And I was kind of mad not to get too
Speaker 1: derailed by this, that these cold cases just sort of stay. Um.
Speaker 1: But then you think, like there's you know, you can't
Speaker 1: just concentrate on a forty year old murder case, and
Speaker 1: there's so many current things you've got to be looking into.
Speaker 1: Plus it's hard um. All right, So back to Thompson
Speaker 1: evasive under questioning UM later on her son Robert, I'm sorry, Robin,
Speaker 1: like we said earlier, Uh, he started looking into it,
Speaker 1: got really interested in trying to figure this thing out.
Speaker 1: Oh he did, he did. I didn't know that. And
Speaker 1: he turned out to be a professional dancer with the
Speaker 1: calves of Lena Horn and the Australian Ballet right and
Speaker 1: hypodancha in exactly the same way that the Somerton man had.
Speaker 1: And he had the same ears. Yeah, so a lot
Speaker 1: of people, again, there's something that hasn't been proven, but
Speaker 1: most people take as conclusive fact that Robin Thompson, son
Speaker 1: of Jessica Thompson, who didn't know the Somerton Man, was
Speaker 1: the son of the Somerton Man. Yeah, what I saw
Speaker 1: was between the ear and the teeth. Um, they put
Speaker 1: odds for both of those things at about it's quite
Speaker 1: a range between one and ten million and one and
Speaker 1: twenty million. Okay, but let's just say it's one in
Speaker 1: ten million. That's say it's one in a trillion. At
Speaker 1: that point, it's the same thing basically, So eventually another
Speaker 1: was it the same amateur sleuth? Not Jerry Derek Abbott
Speaker 1: is a different sleuth. There are rivals. It's hilarious they
Speaker 1: hate each other. Um. He got involved and said, you
Speaker 1: know what, I'm gonna get Robin in here for a
Speaker 1: DNA test. Um, Robin's a hymn, but it says here
Speaker 1: hers him right. No, Uh, Robin's daughter was the one
Speaker 1: who took the DNA test. Bobbin is long dead, gotcha,
Speaker 1: got you? Okay? Oh No, I think I had a
Speaker 1: backwards and I don't think he got involved in trying
Speaker 1: to figure it out because he's dead. Okay. That's why
Speaker 1: I was like, I was kind of surprised, but gotcha.
Speaker 1: So he got her daughter to take a DNA test
Speaker 1: and then trace back the paternal lineage, which would have
Speaker 1: been um possibly the Somerton man, who by all accounts
Speaker 1: seemed like he was American, Yeah, which would have explained
Speaker 1: the tie um perhaps the thread yeah uh. And what else?
Speaker 1: The fact that no one in Australia could identify him
Speaker 1: or was willing to identify him. Um. So the the
Speaker 1: only thing left then after that is okay, well, somebody
Speaker 1: just dig up the Somerton man like he buried him
Speaker 1: in such a way so we could do this. Well,
Speaker 1: it turns out in Australia, from what I saw, there
Speaker 1: are two reasons that a judge will let you exhume
Speaker 1: a body. One is to contest a will. There's no
Speaker 1: will or a state really in question here. And then
Speaker 1: the other one is to identify a lost soldier, a
Speaker 1: soldier lost at war. Other than that, you're gonna it's
Speaker 1: it's an up, it's an uphill battle getting a body exhumed.
Speaker 1: And two different times Derek Abbott, who actually um as
Speaker 1: an aside, married Robin Thompson's daughter who took the DNA
Speaker 1: test at his behest um He petitioned twice to have
Speaker 1: Somerton Man exhumed, and twice he was turned down because
Speaker 1: um obsessive curiosity was not a good enough reason to
Speaker 1: dig up a body. So he swabbed the inside of
Speaker 1: her cheek, and that was true love exactly got get
Speaker 1: in there over candle light. Um gave her. He gave
Speaker 1: her a hand pie. Oh God, So here are the theories.
Speaker 1: Um well, I'm gonna go ahead and start with my
Speaker 1: favorite theory, which sort of is in here but not
Speaker 1: really uh suicide m I think that perhaps, and I
Speaker 1: didn't invent this, but of the theories I've read, I
Speaker 1: liked this one. I think that he um It was
Speaker 1: an American man. We had an affair with Jenny nurse
Speaker 1: Thompson Justin and went there, traveled there, um found out
Speaker 1: she was pregnant. Uh In was rejected and went down
Speaker 1: and killed himself by poison and was prepared to do so.
Speaker 1: And the other things I've read said that he could.
Speaker 1: You know, the things that don't add up was like
Speaker 1: the body was found with no like vomit, which a
Speaker 1: lot of times happened if you are poisoned, even if
Speaker 1: you're not one of the last things you do is
Speaker 1: your life is ending is throw up. Usually, Oh, it's
Speaker 1: pretty common. No one never tells you that. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: the dinner party. You've never been told that. No one
Speaker 1: ever tells you two things in life that you poop
Speaker 1: when you have a baby, and you poop and you
Speaker 1: throw up before you die, and you poop when you
Speaker 1: die too, when you die. I think, so, I guess
Speaker 1: that's why Elvis died on the toilet. Yeah, very efficient
Speaker 1: to go out with some dignity. Um, so where was I? Oh?
Speaker 1: So he The thing I read said that perhaps he
Speaker 1: went down to the shore line, drank the poison through that,
Speaker 1: you know, into the water, and maybe like vomited and
Speaker 1: riched there and then kind of went back up the
Speaker 1: beach and lay there to die and and maybe had
Speaker 1: one less cigarette. Very possible. So that's one theory. Another
Speaker 1: theory is that he died by poison, but that it
Speaker 1: was murder. Sure. As this case is being coming more
Speaker 1: and more publicized, the public came to widely believe that
Speaker 1: he was a spy. And then as more details of
Speaker 1: the case spread out more and more over the decades
Speaker 1: um this this vision of aspiring emerged with Jessica Thompson
Speaker 1: as this communist spy master who was posing as a housewife,
Speaker 1: and sommerton Man was a spy who worked for her
Speaker 1: or arrival spy, and Alfred Boxall was a spy who
Speaker 1: worked for which would explain why she gave both of
Speaker 1: them copies of the Rubiyat, and that actually the copies
Speaker 1: of the Rubiyat were one time pads themselves, which were
Speaker 1: actually the keys to crack the code. Unfortunately, the cops
Speaker 1: uh in Adelaide through the ruby At. That was the
Speaker 1: summer to Man's away in the fifties. Yeah, they got
Speaker 1: rid of the suitcase in the eighties. Maybe it was both.
Speaker 1: Maybe he was a spy who loved her, could have been.
Speaker 1: But the murder theory is that Alfred Boxall murdered the man,
Speaker 1: or she had him murder him, and then they took
Speaker 1: his body to the seaside. Alfred Boxall was actually confronted
Speaker 1: with that in the seventies on TV and he's like,
Speaker 1: that's pretty ridiculous everybody. Some people are like, we know
Speaker 1: you were in intelligence World War Two. It turns out
Speaker 1: he was like an army engineer or something like that.
Speaker 1: He wasn't an intelligence and everyone said, that's just what
Speaker 1: a murderer would say. That's ridiculous on TV. So there right. So,
Speaker 1: the the idea that the so much to man's copy
Speaker 1: of the Ruby was basically a one of a kind,
Speaker 1: it seems definitely lends credence to the idea that it's
Speaker 1: possible he was a spy in that code for sure. Um,
Speaker 1: so that's another big, strong possibility. Here's the thing I
Speaker 1: saw too. In nine, a third witness came forward shared
Speaker 1: never before revealed story that he was on the beach
Speaker 1: in the wee hours of the morning and saw a
Speaker 1: man carrying an unconscious man over shoulder towards that spot,
Speaker 1: but was dark, could not identify anything, and nothing ever
Speaker 1: came of that. Stuff like that, give me my money
Speaker 1: for the movie, right, stuff like that. I think it
Speaker 1: could be either it wasn't him or just you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know, you know, people are they just make
Speaker 1: something up to get on. And then I thought the
Speaker 1: same thing with the hand raising up, like maybe that
Speaker 1: didn't even happen. Well, yeah, that was That's another thing.
Speaker 1: Like what I realized from researching this, Chuck, was that
Speaker 1: this this case has been so muddied with conjecture and
Speaker 1: false truths um that have just spread across the Internet
Speaker 1: that like, did the Lions ever recant their version of
Speaker 1: seeing him move? If so, then then maybe he was
Speaker 1: dead when he was taken out to the beach. Who knows,
Speaker 1: Like you really have to dive in. But if you
Speaker 1: if you want to dive in, this mystery, maybe even
Speaker 1: more than any others, is just uh, just a just
Speaker 1: an enormously deep rabbit hole to get sucked into, because
Speaker 1: I mean, even if they dug up sober to man,
Speaker 1: it's found conclusively that he was Robin Thompson's father, that
Speaker 1: still doesn't say who he actually was. It doesn't idea
Speaker 1: And it's just like how this mystery unfolded as the
Speaker 1: police were investigating it. You can, you can crack the
Speaker 1: case in one major way and it'll probably lead to
Speaker 1: a dead end. There's still always this tantalizing mystery that
Speaker 1: we may never know. So Merton Man, Tamim shooed, Okay,
Speaker 1: I just said something. Person. If you want to know
Speaker 1: more about so Merton Man, you should go listen to
Speaker 1: the stuff they don't want you to know episode on
Speaker 1: it or watch it. I'm not sure if it's video
Speaker 1: or audio, maybe both Uh. And you can also check
Speaker 1: out the Lost Man on California Sunday Magazine and the
Speaker 1: Body on Somerton Beach on Smithsonian, among many many other
Speaker 1: great articles. And since I said many, it's time for
Speaker 1: listener mail. Uh, I'm gonna call this on accents. And
Speaker 1: I gotta say, we got more email on stuttering and
Speaker 1: accents and I've seen in a long long time. UM,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think a new accents would be big.
Speaker 1: Stuttering really hit home with a lot of people, I think.
Speaker 1: And the well there's that there's a stuttering email too.
Speaker 1: It's either going to be on the next one or
Speaker 1: the one that was just released hitting on the order.
Speaker 1: You may have heard it here, it's upcoming. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: listen to accents. And I wanted to hopefully set up
Speaker 1: I set the record straight with Chuck's help. My name
Speaker 1: is Chris and I'm from New Jersey and I've heard
Speaker 1: Chuck mentioned a few times he lived in New Jersey
Speaker 1: for a bit. First off, where did you live, what
Speaker 1: brought you here, and why did you leave? Um? I
Speaker 1: lived in Bernardsville next to Basking Ridge. Um, sort of
Speaker 1: near Morristown is the biggest town that you might have
Speaker 1: heard of. Uh, and not far from Bedminster Golf Club.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, Um, what brought me there? I lived there
Speaker 1: after college because it was a free place to live
Speaker 1: because of a roommates parents who were out of the
Speaker 1: country in Australia. Actually, it's all coming together. They didn't
Speaker 1: want to sell their house, so they said, you guys
Speaker 1: are done with college. You want to live here for free,
Speaker 1: hang out New York. We said, sure, And why did
Speaker 1: I leave? I left because they came back. That'd be
Speaker 1: weird if I was still living there. Uh. Anyway, he
Speaker 1: might be able to confirm my suspicions. People from New
Speaker 1: Jersey don't have an accent, but if they do, it's
Speaker 1: slight New York New York accent at any. Um, No,
Speaker 1: you definitely have accents. You're insane. In my opinion, many
Speaker 1: older adults have moved from New York and New Jersey
Speaker 1: for the suburbs. Seeing many older people meet and talk
Speaker 1: about the street they grew up on in Brooklyn or
Speaker 1: the like. I would like to make like it made
Speaker 1: clear that no one from New Jersey says New Joysey.
Speaker 1: That's true. If anything that is in New York accent, Chuck,
Speaker 1: can you confirm. I can confirm I never heard anyone
Speaker 1: say New Joysey, but I cannot confirm that there's accent
Speaker 1: because I definitely have an accident in New Jersey. Um.
Speaker 1: In fact, one of the things that I noticed there's
Speaker 1: not so much an accent, but people in New Jersey
Speaker 1: would say button instead of button or like you know,
Speaker 1: words that are split in half like that. They would
Speaker 1: stop like a hard stop button. You know, I'm talking
Speaker 1: about very New Jersey. And they call everyone kid. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I knew that you ear that a kid, even if
Speaker 1: they're older than you. I didn't appreciate that anyway. I
Speaker 1: hope Chuck agrees. Also, I hope he's a fan of
Speaker 1: pork Roll and not Taylor Ham. I'm a fan of
Speaker 1: Taylor pork Roll. I don't if that accounts. I thought
Speaker 1: that was the only pork Roll. Thanks for the endless
Speaker 1: amounts of entertainment. He's seeing you guys in Brooklyn on
Speaker 1: the upcoming tour. So Chris Ortado from Highland Park, New Jersey.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to see at the Bellhouse. Thanks Chris.
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch with Chris, did
Speaker 1: you can hang out with me on Twitter at Josh
Speaker 1: I'm Clark. You can hang out with Chuck on Facebook
Speaker 1: at Charles W. Chuck Bryant. You can send us an
Speaker 1: email with Stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot com
Speaker 1: and has always joints our home on the web, Stuff
Speaker 1: You Should Know dot com. For more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Is that how stuff Works dot com.
Speaker 1: H