Speaker 1: Welcome to Unexplained Extra with me Richard McClane Smith, where
Speaker 1: for the weeks in between episodes, we look at stories
Speaker 1: and ideas that, for one reason or other, didn't make
Speaker 1: it into the previous show. In our last episode, two
Speaker 1: More Names, we took a deep dive into the beguiling
Speaker 1: mystery of the so called Summerton Man. Some of you
Speaker 1: may recognize this story as a chapter taken from my book,
Speaker 1: and as many of you will know, there's been quite
Speaker 1: a significant development at the story since I wrote it,
Speaker 1: namely that the man appears to have finally been identified. However,
Speaker 1: rather than a mend the story, I thought it might
Speaker 1: be better to have someone else a little more qualified
Speaker 1: explain the latest developments, and so for this week's extra,
Speaker 1: we're going to do something different. Physicist and electronic engineer
Speaker 1: Professor Derek Abbott of the University of Adelaide has perhaps
Speaker 1: done more than anyone to help uncover the Summitton Man's identity.
Speaker 1: In July twenty twenty one, he made the stunning announcement that,
Speaker 1: thanks to his tireless work and that of genealogist Colleen Fitzpatrick,
Speaker 1: they had finally cracked the mystery that kind of leads
Speaker 1: me to my first question, I suppose, which is when
Speaker 1: did you first hear about the summriton Man mysteries? Is
Speaker 1: something that you presumably weren't aware of before you went
Speaker 1: to Australia. Correct. I had never heard about it, and
Speaker 1: the first time I heard of it was about ninety five.
Speaker 1: I just happened to me in a laundromatte watching my clothes,
Speaker 1: was around and picked up one of those magazines that
Speaker 1: they leave in there, and it was an article about
Speaker 1: the top ten top ten unsolved mysteries in Australia, and
Speaker 1: I think this was ranked as number two, but one
Speaker 1: was the disappearance of Harold Holt and put it down.
Speaker 1: Never did anything with it until two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: where I saw an extended newspaper article that gave a
Speaker 1: lot of detail and even reprinted the so called summrton
Speaker 1: Man's code that he had written on the back of
Speaker 1: the poetry book. And so that's what got my interest up.
Speaker 1: At the beginning, I thought, Okay, I have no idea
Speaker 1: whether this actually is even a code or not in
Speaker 1: the first place, but let's see if I can set
Speaker 1: this for a project for my students and the statistical
Speaker 1: tests on the letters and see if we can determine
Speaker 1: if it's a code or not. You say, your students,
Speaker 1: what was your job at the time, Well, professor at
Speaker 1: a at the University Badelaide and in the electrical engineering department,
Speaker 1: and doing statistical analysis of data is something we do,
Speaker 1: and you know, cryptosecurity and things as another thing we do.
Speaker 1: So we know about codes. So I got my students
Speaker 1: over the years to a set of many projects, to
Speaker 1: various different students, and we looked at it over and
Speaker 1: over again and compared it against all known World War
Speaker 1: two type ciphers, and we were able to eliminate virtually
Speaker 1: all of them. And it's looking like it isn't actually
Speaker 1: a code. It just looks like the first letters of
Speaker 1: words in the English language. We can say it's actually
Speaker 1: English because we've tested it against other first letters of
Speaker 1: words in other languages and English always comes out tops statistically.
Speaker 1: So so that's what we think it is. And so
Speaker 1: we think it's just something pedestrian that you know, it's
Speaker 1: just an aide de memoir. It's just the first letters
Speaker 1: of words. It could be anything. It could be, you know,
Speaker 1: his horse betting strategy or trying to solve a puzzle
Speaker 1: in a newspaper. Could we don't think it's anything anything conspiratorial, right,
Speaker 1: And was it actually written in the book or was
Speaker 1: it sort of marked onto, sort of scored onto it.
Speaker 1: It was on the it was on the back cover, okay,
Speaker 1: and it was very light. So it's unclear from the
Speaker 1: old newspaper reports whether it was very lightly penciled or
Speaker 1: whether it was just a press through from another page.
Speaker 1: My guess it was just very very light pence all
Speaker 1: and so yeah, so interesting. It's actually, you know, not
Speaker 1: only is it not a code, but probably not relevant
Speaker 1: to the specific book therefore, or the phone numbers that
Speaker 1: were also found in the book, yes, there was some
Speaker 1: right next to the circle colode bus some numbers. One
Speaker 1: turned out to just be a local bank, and another
Speaker 1: turned out to be a lady who had trained as
Speaker 1: a nurse, who lived in fact five minutes away from
Speaker 1: where the man was found dead, five minutes walk away.
Speaker 1: So joining the dots, the police thought, well, she must
Speaker 1: know something about this guy, so knocked on her door
Speaker 1: and so do you know have you seen this book before?
Speaker 1: And she said yes, and they go a h, so
Speaker 1: you know about the sky coundad On Beach and she goes,
Speaker 1: she back pedals and says, oh, no, no, I just
Speaker 1: meant I've seen a Rubo yat Abmarkayam before, which is
Speaker 1: what the book was, right, And so they dragged her
Speaker 1: into see a plaster cast. So they had made off
Speaker 1: the dead body, so it's a death mask. I ought
Speaker 1: to add that this had happened about six months after
Speaker 1: he had died. Yes, So they dragged her in to
Speaker 1: have a look at the plaster cast, and apparently she
Speaker 1: was quite evasive and very uncommunicative and behaved very strangely.
Speaker 1: She just looked down at the floor for the whole
Speaker 1: interview and didn't even look at the plaster cast, right,
Speaker 1: And so the police thought she knew something. But they
Speaker 1: push her because you know, this wasn't classed as a homicide.
Speaker 1: If you look at the police file, they always believed
Speaker 1: it was actually a suicide. That was their, yeah, their
Speaker 1: strong belief. And you know, if it was classed as
Speaker 1: a homicide, you know they could put the heavies on
Speaker 1: over but that was not the case here, and so
Speaker 1: they just let her go. Right. So there's me with
Speaker 1: the working on the code many years later, and the
Speaker 1: circle code, and you know, at the beginning of my work,
Speaker 1: you know, I didn't really know if it was a
Speaker 1: code or not. It hadn't come to any conclusions. So
Speaker 1: I was thinking, well, if it is a code, maybe
Speaker 1: I'm going to need some context. Maybe I need to
Speaker 1: find out this lady's name. Perhaps her name is a
Speaker 1: key to this code or something like that. So I
Speaker 1: set about trying to find out who she was, because
Speaker 1: her name was never published, but they did published sufficient
Speaker 1: detail that the newspapers said, you know which hospital she
Speaker 1: had trained in, the Royal Malls Shaw Hospital in Sydney,
Speaker 1: and that she lived very close to where the man
Speaker 1: was found dead and stuff like that. So using the
Speaker 1: hospital records and electoral Royal records and stuff, I was
Speaker 1: able to figure it out. It was like a huge
Speaker 1: chicksaw puzzle, right, But yes, I found out and her
Speaker 1: name was Joe Thompson. That's the name she went by, right,
Speaker 1: that comes from your work, So I didn't know that. Yes,
Speaker 1: well it was known to police, but he you know,
Speaker 1: they had never let that out, right, And so it
Speaker 1: was confirmed later by police that are alive who didn't
Speaker 1: know her name, and they didn't confirm that, and so
Speaker 1: She was born Jesse Harkness, but went by the name
Speaker 1: Joe Thompson later in life spelled Jacob, which I believe
Speaker 1: is a bit of a Scottish name, isn't it. And
Speaker 1: her heritage, if you trace her family tree back, does
Speaker 1: go back to Scotland in fact, right, So she was
Speaker 1: also known as Jessica. Is that right? Jessin? Is that?
Speaker 1: Because I've read that too. Well, she was born Jesse
Speaker 1: Jesse Harkness was her maiden name, but then she changed
Speaker 1: her first name. Well, she was known as Joe to
Speaker 1: all her family and friends, right. I think it was
Speaker 1: her husband that her husband to be that nicknamed her that.
Speaker 1: On her gravestone, it doesn't say Jesse though, it says
Speaker 1: Jessica because you know, it's descendants that put stuff on
Speaker 1: gravestones and the person who is buried is never responsible
Speaker 1: for it. The work you put into that finding out
Speaker 1: her name, at this point you kind of becoming more
Speaker 1: interesting to getting to the bottom of the mystery. How
Speaker 1: does this sort of expand into Yeah, so I was
Speaker 1: starting to after I found the context, you know, found
Speaker 1: out this lady's name and found more context of the time,
Speaker 1: it is sort of drew me in I got really
Speaker 1: interested in all the events of the time. I was
Speaker 1: realizing more and more that this wasn't a code as
Speaker 1: time went on, and so I thought, actually, the real
Speaker 1: problem here is to identify the man, not the code.
Speaker 1: The code is just a distraction. What would be really
Speaker 1: interesting is to find out who he is is. Around
Speaker 1: twenty ten, I in fact noticed that the plaster bust
Speaker 1: which is in the Police Museum here actually has hairs
Speaker 1: embedded in it because it was molded directly off the
Speaker 1: dead body. And you can tell these are real hairs
Speaker 1: that came off the body and aren't just something off
Speaker 1: the mortary floor, because they're all standing on end all
Speaker 1: information ripped directly off the body. So I thought, ah,
Speaker 1: this is a potential source of DNA. So I got
Speaker 1: some permission in twenty eleven to grab some hairs out
Speaker 1: of the bus, which we did, and unfortunately the technology
Speaker 1: of the time wasn't good enough to extract DNA from
Speaker 1: a hair let alone hair that old. So anyway, we
Speaker 1: bit the bullet and in two thousand and fifteen our
Speaker 1: DNA lab at head Laid University had a go. We
Speaker 1: selected the three best hair roots that we had and
Speaker 1: tried to get some DNA out of them. It did
Speaker 1: test positive for DNA, there was actually DNA there, so
Speaker 1: that was encouraging, but we got absolutely virtually nothing out
Speaker 1: of it. We got no sequence or all we were
Speaker 1: able to get was what's called his maternal happler group,
Speaker 1: and so we knew his mother's group was h and
Speaker 1: that's all we knew. So it was a little bit disappointing,
Speaker 1: but also exciting that at least there was viable DNA
Speaker 1: in there. And so then in twenty and eighteen we
Speaker 1: had another crack at the lab at the university and bingo,
Speaker 1: we got the whole mitochondrial genome. That's all then from
Speaker 1: the mother's side. Unfortunately, that's not the sort of DNA
Speaker 1: you need to identify somebody. To identify somebody like this
Speaker 1: where you don't have any comparison to compare the person with,
Speaker 1: what you need to do is upload on genealogical DNA
Speaker 1: websites and find nearest cousins, you know, like ancestry dot
Speaker 1: com and stuff like that. Now, those those websites people
Speaker 1: may or may not know this. The DNA they use
Speaker 1: is quite different to what police do. Police use quite
Speaker 1: long strands of DNA long sequences roughly around to three markers,
Speaker 1: depending on what jurisdiction you're in. Usually it's around twenty
Speaker 1: to twenty three. These DNA websites don't do that. They
Speaker 1: use much shorter DNA markers, and they use anywhere between
Speaker 1: half a million to two million of them. It's a
Speaker 1: completely different ball game. It's the part of the DNA
Speaker 1: that's inherited from both the mother and the father, So
Speaker 1: the mitochondrial genome which we extracted was no good. We
Speaker 1: needed the part of the DNA that's the mixture of
Speaker 1: both parents, and these are called the autosomes. We only
Speaker 1: got sixteen thousand of those, and which was a huge breakthrough,
Speaker 1: but not enough. It's a way below half a million,
Speaker 1: which is what's really needed. So I tried my best
Speaker 1: at seeing if I could make two with the sixteen thousand,
Speaker 1: and it just didn't work. It was a bit flop.
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Speaker 1: Slash unexplained one zero around beginning of this year. In fact,
Speaker 1: I had another goal. This time I used a lab
Speaker 1: in the USA which had some latest cutting edge technology
Speaker 1: for extracting DNA from hair, and so I took my
Speaker 1: best hair root sent it off to them that I
Speaker 1: had nervously saved up since two thousand and eleven, always
Speaker 1: over ten years, and guess what, it was a big flop.
Speaker 1: It didn't give us a sequence, and so I was mortified.
Speaker 1: This is my best hair root that I'd saved up.
Speaker 1: So then went to Plan B and sent them five
Speaker 1: centimeters of hair shaft with no root and guess what
Speaker 1: we got two million markers. Wow. Yeah, So what we're
Speaker 1: able to do is were those two million markers were
Speaker 1: able to upload it and mind his nearest cousins that
Speaker 1: are alive today, and his top hit was a chap
Speaker 1: in Victoria, Australia, which is a state next door to me,
Speaker 1: and the other closest matches were also in Victoria, so
Speaker 1: straight off, this was not looking like a Russian spy
Speaker 1: after all, or American or whatever. Another part of the
Speaker 1: story is another twist of the whole story, which we
Speaker 1: haven't gone into yet, is that Joe Thompson had a
Speaker 1: son born out of Wedlocke who mysteriously had features that
Speaker 1: looked rather like the Summerton Man, and one of the
Speaker 1: theories was perhaps he's the Summitton Man. So what I
Speaker 1: was able to do was compare the DNA of the
Speaker 1: Summerton Man to his daughter that's alive, the daughter of
Speaker 1: Joe Thompson's son, that is, who also I happened to
Speaker 1: be married too. So that's another little twist. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you've explained that to the audience here. No,
Speaker 1: I haven't at all. So if you don't be able
Speaker 1: to go into that a little bit, because I mean,
Speaker 1: that is extraordinary, and yeah, my main question was, at
Speaker 1: what point did you meet your wife in this sort
Speaker 1: of journey of yours so to speak. I met my
Speaker 1: wife around twenty ten. It was basically because Joe Thompson
Speaker 1: had passed away two years before I found out who
Speaker 1: she was, and then I thought, well, I should interview
Speaker 1: her son, Robin, But he had passed away like literally
Speaker 1: two months before I figured out how to contact him.
Speaker 1: So then I thought, well, does he have any descendants?
Speaker 1: So I interviewed a daughter of his, Rachel, and we
Speaker 1: hit it off and decided to get married the next day.
Speaker 1: So that's incredible. And then we really did get married
Speaker 1: about three months later. So being married, obviously I had
Speaker 1: her DNA on tap and so immediately that's the first
Speaker 1: thing I did when we got the Summerton Man's two
Speaker 1: million markers is compared it against my wife and guess what,
Speaker 1: absolute zero match. Not a single scary in the class
Speaker 1: task as well? Was there not a story? I thought,
Speaker 1: I've read at some point that Joe Thompson had said
Speaker 1: something at some point much later in her life in
Speaker 1: relation to the man's identity. Was that a fabrication in
Speaker 1: the paper, or had she alluded to knowing him at
Speaker 1: some point. People always said they thought she'd knew something,
Speaker 1: but she never admitted it. I see, So what you've
Speaker 1: probably been reading is probably people saying that I bet
Speaker 1: she knew something. Yeah right, So yes, so we ruled
Speaker 1: out my wife being related and hence her father, so
Speaker 1: that was interesting. So yeah, so we eliminated that possibility.
Speaker 1: And then we started looking at these nearest cousins that
Speaker 1: were in Victoria. So the fact they were from Victoria,
Speaker 1: Australia meant straight away that you know, these the top matches,
Speaker 1: so you know, this guy's obviously not some Russian spy
Speaker 1: or American or whatever. It kind of eliminated all the
Speaker 1: fanciful theory straight away and just some ordinary bloke from
Speaker 1: the state next door. So from the top match, what
Speaker 1: we're able to do is and this is myself and
Speaker 1: Colleen Fitzpatrick from America who's an expert genealogist. We worked
Speaker 1: on this together and built out the family tree. And
Speaker 1: because we were working in the dark, and you know,
Speaker 1: we didn't know which which direction the tree would go
Speaker 1: in and stuff like that, where to look in the tree,
Speaker 1: we obviously just went ballistic and just built out the
Speaker 1: tree too, like it was like at four thousand people
Speaker 1: on it in the end. Wow. And then it seemed
Speaker 1: this chap in Victoria connected to a family quite quickly
Speaker 1: called Keene A K A N E. Right, And this
Speaker 1: is quite significant because as we all know, the Summerton
Speaker 1: man had the name Keene written on some items of
Speaker 1: his clothing, written in India ink. And he even had
Speaker 1: a laundry bag with the name Keen stenciled on it. Right,
Speaker 1: And laundry bags with stenciled names is a very sort
Speaker 1: of World War two army type thing. So what's he
Speaker 1: doing with these items with the name Keen on them?
Speaker 1: So Colleen immediately said, oh, I bet he's a Keen,
Speaker 1: because you know it is connecting to this Keene family.
Speaker 1: And so she was part and pun very Keen on this.
Speaker 1: And we're looking at these Keens and we couldn't find
Speaker 1: any of missing. They were all fine, they all were
Speaker 1: well accounted for, and they had all had dates of
Speaker 1: death way after nineteen forty eight. We're thinking back to
Speaker 1: the drawing board and I was saying, I'm saying to Colleen,
Speaker 1: you know, I think this whole Keen thing is a distraction.
Speaker 1: It's a coincidence. You know, it's a common name. Okay,
Speaker 1: so there's somebody on this family tree or four thousand
Speaker 1: with the name Keen, and he happens to have that
Speaker 1: name on his tie. You know, it could just be
Speaker 1: a coincidence. And so I say to her, look, I
Speaker 1: think we'd better move on. And so what we do
Speaker 1: is we then find we then look at other people
Speaker 1: on the tree that don't have dates of death right,
Speaker 1: And that can happen for all kinds of reasons, you know,
Speaker 1: birth deaths and marriage officers, particularly in the world from
Speaker 1: World War two times, you know, can have information lost,
Speaker 1: you know, or there could be some flood or something.
Speaker 1: But it's a good place to start. So we did
Speaker 1: find a couple of people close to this Keen family
Speaker 1: that looked like they didn't have a date of birth.
Speaker 1: One of them we were able to find a photo
Speaker 1: four and Colleen was saying, hmm, this photo does look
Speaker 1: a bit like the Summerton man. And I was saying
Speaker 1: that it doesn't doesn't look like him to me, you know.
Speaker 1: But there's a trouble with all fuzzy photos. You can
Speaker 1: make them look like anything. You want really, And so
Speaker 1: we had a bit of a disagreement over that, and
Speaker 1: then another chat. A person of interest was a guy
Speaker 1: who was born by the name Carl Webb in nineteen
Speaker 1: o five but went by the name Charles Webb later
Speaker 1: in life. You know, no, no date of death. Couldn't
Speaker 1: find a photo on him, but we thought, well, we
Speaker 1: ought to check this one as well. So what I
Speaker 1: did was because the tree had been built out through
Speaker 1: the Keen family, which was in fact by marriage, because
Speaker 1: his sister Freedom had married a guy called Keene, what
Speaker 1: we thought we should do is well, go away from
Speaker 1: that side of the family tree and look at the
Speaker 1: summer to Man's mother and tunnel her tree down and
Speaker 1: find somebody on that side of the family that it
Speaker 1: is alive today and test their DNA. And so we did,
Speaker 1: and guess what it didn't match. It was a big
Speaker 1: flot So there's another twist, and thought, oh my god,
Speaker 1: what's gone wrong here? And here's the twist. The twist
Speaker 1: is that the Sumrton Man's mother for Charles Webb's mother,
Speaker 1: I should say, is didn't Her maiden name was Grace.
Speaker 1: But we found out that her supposed father wasn't mister Grace.
Speaker 1: It was another chap. Wow it was mister Morris, and
Speaker 1: I don't think she ever knew herself who her real
Speaker 1: dad was. Wow, how did you find that out? That
Speaker 1: was interesting that there were some genealogists already on ancestry
Speaker 1: dot Com who looked like they had figured this out
Speaker 1: and so were by poking around on family trees there
Speaker 1: had We saw that. And the interesting thing about this
Speaker 1: was Colleen went straight for this. She said, Yep, this
Speaker 1: is right, this is he's a Morris. And I'm actually skeptical.
Speaker 1: So it's me going, oh, I don't I'm not sure
Speaker 1: there's enough evidence for this, because you know, it looks
Speaker 1: like there's some suppositions here and things like that. So
Speaker 1: what we did is we okay, well let's say it
Speaker 1: is Morris. Then, so we tunneled down the mother's side
Speaker 1: family tree, assuming the correct father now, and get this
Speaker 1: part of the family tree correct, find an alive person
Speaker 1: who was prepared to descendant, who was prepared to be tested.
Speaker 1: So I rang them up Kenny. It was very helpful
Speaker 1: and he agreed, and I think a couple of months
Speaker 1: later his DNA came through and it was a match.
Speaker 1: Bingo it's amazing. So get this. Not only did we
Speaker 1: get this match, and so not only did it prove
Speaker 1: straight away that hey, Charles Webb is the Summerton Man,
Speaker 1: because we've got to like a triangulation now from too
Speaker 1: distant different parts of the family tree meeting point, so
Speaker 1: it's a triangulation, but it also proves that his mother
Speaker 1: was really a Morris all in one hit. Yeah. Then
Speaker 1: what we did is usually with this sort of work,
Speaker 1: one doesn't just do one confirmation. One looks for many.
Speaker 1: So what we're able to then do is look to
Speaker 1: see who else is on the database that's close to
Speaker 1: our new chap that we had just found and see
Speaker 1: if they also matched as Summerton Man. And we found
Speaker 1: another one, so we found another triangulation point. And then
Speaker 1: what I was able to do is contact close descendants
Speaker 1: of Charles Webb. So I found a granddaughter of one
Speaker 1: of his sisters, and I also found a great grandson
Speaker 1: and great granddaughter of his eldest brother. And so got
Speaker 1: all these people tested, and every time it was a
Speaker 1: fantastic match. And the amount of DNA overlap we're just
Speaker 1: kept increasing and increasing as we've got you know, these
Speaker 1: closer family relatives. It's just now completely beyond all reasonable
Speaker 1: doubt that you know, Charles Webb is the Summerson man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it's incredible. And I mean, how do these people
Speaker 1: how did they feel, I mean, firstly being approached, but
Speaker 1: secondly sort of finding themselves now part of this story
Speaker 1: in a way? Is it something? Because I guess the
Speaker 1: whole thing about the story of the sum To Man
Speaker 1: is there's the question, there's a sort of ethical question
Speaker 1: about whether this is maybe he wanted to die anonymously.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe maybe there's an element of that wanting
Speaker 1: to sort of retreat from the world, and we are
Speaker 1: now interested in trying to sort of stir that back
Speaker 1: up in a way, maybe against the man's wishes. But
Speaker 1: did actually people find it? Were they thankful? Was it
Speaker 1: a sort of reassuring thing? Well, it they were thankful.
Speaker 1: They were very pleased to help. And without exception, it
Speaker 1: just so happens that, you know, all the people are
Speaker 1: contacted were actually genuinely interested in their own family tree. Yeah,
Speaker 1: some of them had even drawn out their family tree
Speaker 1: and did wonder what happened to Uncle Charlie, you know,
Speaker 1: And there was no oral history that had been passed
Speaker 1: down from their family to say what had happened to him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they were quite pleased to have it all worked out.
Speaker 1: Could you tell us what we do know about Charles Webber?
Speaker 1: What you what you know or what has been found
Speaker 1: out about him? So what we've been able to find
Speaker 1: out now is that Charles Webb was born in nineteen
Speaker 1: oh five. Is dad was a German immigrant from Hamburg
Speaker 1: and his mom was a local I believe of Scottish
Speaker 1: ancestry originally involved another Scotland connection there, and his dad
Speaker 1: was basically a baker. They grew up in various towns
Speaker 1: in Victoria, close to Melbourne, and his dad worked in
Speaker 1: various different bakeries. He seemed to change jobs quite a lot,
Speaker 1: but finally settled in nineteen twenty eight and bought his
Speaker 1: own bakery in a little town called Springvale which is
Speaker 1: now part of Melbourne, not so little anymore, but it
Speaker 1: was a little tiny place back then. And so they
Speaker 1: had the bakery in spring Vale, and so Charles and
Speaker 1: his brother Roy worked at the bakery also I believe
Speaker 1: his older brother Russell or Richard Russell. Sorry, And it
Speaker 1: seems by nineteen twenty eight the sisters had all left
Speaker 1: home and got married. Richard had also actually left home,
Speaker 1: but it seemed he came into work at bakery, but
Speaker 1: the two brothers were still at home and lived at
Speaker 1: the bakery with their parents, and we're working there. It
Speaker 1: seems also around nineteen twenty eight that he had trained
Speaker 1: as an electrical fitter and instrument maker, but also appears
Speaker 1: that he was also working at the bakery all at
Speaker 1: the same time. So one and we haven't been able
Speaker 1: to find his place of work. So I'm just wondering
Speaker 1: whether he was working at the bakery but also kind
Speaker 1: of doing it. It's electrical work on a contract basis,
Speaker 1: something like this. This is what I'm thinking, because it
Speaker 1: seems like he was doing two jobs at once as
Speaker 1: far as I can see. Ye, so this could possibly
Speaker 1: explain why there's no work colleagues of course, yeah, counting
Speaker 1: him as missing. The explanation why no family members came
Speaker 1: forward to say, look, this Chap's missing is if you
Speaker 1: look at the family, it seems that was one big,
Speaker 1: happy family around nineteen twenty eight. But around twenty nine, Richard,
Speaker 1: his eldest brother, his wife dies young and leaves him
Speaker 1: small children, which he then has to farm out to
Speaker 1: an orphanage, and then his brother Roy dies in nineteen
Speaker 1: forty three in World War Two. His nephew John Keene
Speaker 1: dies in nineteen forty three, also in World War Two.
Speaker 1: His dad dies in nineteen thirty nine, just after selling
Speaker 1: the bakery, and then Lue dies in nineteen forty seven, sorry,
Speaker 1: nineteen forty six, rather and basically all these events happen
Speaker 1: over this short space of time, and basically the family
Speaker 1: becomes all fragmented, you know. And it's the war as well,
Speaker 1: just after World turned. So they're all fragmented. They've had
Speaker 1: all these deaths, and they're probably not all speaking to
Speaker 1: each other anymore, you know. I'm sure people are familiar
Speaker 1: with the idea of it happens in all families, you know,
Speaker 1: there are deaths and terms of events and family snatches.
Speaker 1: Don't speak to each other anymore. After a while, it happens.
Speaker 1: And then in nineteen forty seven, Charles and his wife separate,
Speaker 1: so obviously she's not speaking to him anymore either, and
Speaker 1: she passed for a divorce on Crowns with desertion. She
Speaker 1: doesn't know where his whereabouts is, and forty seven is
Speaker 1: the last time we see him on any documentation. He
Speaker 1: drops off any electoral role records or anything like that.
Speaker 1: It's just totally disappears off the record. So it's very interesting.
Speaker 1: So and why did he go to Adelaide of all places?
Speaker 1: That's a bit mysterious. He's limited resident of Victoria. Why
Speaker 1: did he travel by train to Adelaide and and you know,
Speaker 1: go lie down on the beach and die? Very strange?
Speaker 1: And why the book in the car? Yeah, that's another thing.
Speaker 1: So there's still still many strange mysteries that will probably
Speaker 1: never know and the mystery. I think the mystery will
Speaker 1: still live on, and I think the internet conspiracy theorists
Speaker 1: will still believe he's some sort of side. You know,
Speaker 1: these things will never go away. I'm sure we do
Speaker 1: have a possible hypothesis why he went to Adelaide of
Speaker 1: all places. And a strange, strange twist is in his
Speaker 1: wife's divorce papers, divorce affer David, she lists her address
Speaker 1: as being in South Australia, right, which is the state
Speaker 1: where Adelaide is. So that's very interesting. But we don't
Speaker 1: know the date that she actually arrived here, but we've
Speaker 1: just pretend that perhaps she was here already, perhaps it
Speaker 1: was her that he had come to see. Yeah, so anyway,
Speaker 1: that's a mystery something for the Internet sleuths to ponder on.
Speaker 1: What's next view in regards to the case. Are you
Speaker 1: going to continue? Is there more to find out that
Speaker 1: you're interested to know? And you mentioned also going do
Speaker 1: some work on the Voynache manuscript. Is that something also
Speaker 1: you're doing? Yeah? Yeah, so yeah, we're doing work on
Speaker 1: the Voynache manuscript. I probably should be spending more time
Speaker 1: on that and less time on this now because I
Speaker 1: think I think I've squeezed out about as much as
Speaker 1: anyone can find on this case. I don't think we're
Speaker 1: going to find any other big nuggets on the Summerton
Speaker 1: man So maybe it's time to let this go and
Speaker 1: look at the Voynache. So yeah, we're working on that
Speaker 1: fast and furiously, and you know, I might we might
Speaker 1: have some interesting results on that by next to you
Speaker 1: to announce, Wow, look forward to hearing that. Thank you
Speaker 1: very much, really really appreciate your time. Thank you. If
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