Speaker 1: M Hey, everybody, it's me Josh, and for this week's
Speaker 1: Select I chose our two thousand seventeen episode about the
Speaker 1: Man on Somerton Beach, one of the most interesting unsolved
Speaker 1: mysteries we've ever encountered. Despite lead after lead, it remains
Speaker 1: unsolved today and seemingly will remain that way forever. And
Speaker 1: after listening to this one, if you liked it a lot,
Speaker 1: you can go further down the rabbit hole. There's plenty
Speaker 1: more stuff on it all over the web, and there
Speaker 1: have even been some updates since we recorded. So prepared
Speaker 1: to be baffled and engrossed. Welcome to Stuff you should know,
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant,
Speaker 1: and today is a very special day. We have a
Speaker 1: special guest producer, Matt been a while. It has been
Speaker 1: a while, man, it's been since like two fourteen or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Matt is one half of the stuff they don't
Speaker 1: want you to know. Oh yeah, that's right. There's three
Speaker 1: of them, and we are sort of awkwardly recording two
Speaker 1: of the same shows they've done. So Matt's just sitting
Speaker 1: there with his arms crossed, shaking his head back and forth.
Speaker 1: So 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
Speaker 1: didn't I didn't see a full the full schmo. I
Speaker 1: figured you guys would be exactly the type to drive
Speaker 1: two hours to see it. No you did, though, huh, yeah,
Speaker 1: how was it? Well? I don't want to be one
Speaker 1: of those dudes. But the difference between in full eclipse
Speaker 1: is 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: the height of her career was It was written by
Speaker 1: Annie Dillard. Okay, it's called total Eclipse, and I haven't
Speaker 1: ready yet. But it's supposed to be just remarkable, and
Speaker 1: that's exactly how she put it, and it was I
Speaker 1: think so. So that would have been a year before
Speaker 1: Bonnie Tyler came out with Totally Eclips 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 too
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 in the
Speaker 1: clip side. Now I'm a totalitat, totalitist to tattlest Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was we almost didn't go, like literally that
Speaker 1: morning we were debating and I was like, it's two
Speaker 1: hours away, let's just get in the car and go.
Speaker 1: That's very cool. Um. And my daughter saw it, which
Speaker 1: was weird for her, like she knew something was up
Speaker 1: even at two years old. Yeah, the Sun's cane black, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and stars came out and crickets chirped, and it was
Speaker 1: just really strange. Yeah, uh yeah, it was very quick
Speaker 1: two minutes. But I think the one in two thousand
Speaker 1: seven is going to have a four and a half
Speaker 1: minute totality. When is it two seven years from now? Okay,
Speaker 1: and that's that great. Maybe we'll drive to Texas too, Well,
Speaker 1: i'll drive together. Well, if you won't drive two hours,
Speaker 1: where are you gonna go to Texas? Oh hey, if
Speaker 1: I ever have a good reason to go to Texas,
Speaker 1: I'll take it. Well, it's Texas. And then I mean
Speaker 1: we may go to Akron because that's where Emily's from.
Speaker 1: It goes through Akron, the kind of over to Maine
Speaker 1: on that you guys should just follow it in your van. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I wondered, what how fast? Of course you
Speaker 1: can't do this, but how fast would you have to
Speaker 1: travel the speed of the moon? Stay in the path
Speaker 1: of totality the speed of the moon, which is what
Speaker 1: like a hundred million miles an hour or something like that.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Listen to our Moon episode. It's my
Speaker 1: new drug totality. That's neat man. Yeah, I'm glad that
Speaker 1: happened to you. Happened on me got all get all
Speaker 1: over me. Uh, how okay, you want to talk about
Speaker 1: this the eclipse. No, you know what's funny is that
Speaker 1: we didn't do it podcasts on eclipses. No, I thought
Speaker 1: about that. We never have, I know, And it's just
Speaker 1: just like us, Moon goes in front of sun, moon
Speaker 1: goes away from Sune, it goes up, it goes there.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, that's just figures. I'm sure we'll end up
Speaker 1: talking about like we'll do an epis so don't unlike
Speaker 1: the effective an eclipse on plants first, and then you know,
Speaker 1: some other tangentially related episode, and then maybe after that
Speaker 1: we'll do how eclips work. Maybe if we're still around
Speaker 1: in seven years there you go. How about that's a
Speaker 1: good idea. And I jinks just before by saying we
Speaker 1: won't be around, which is an opposite jinks I was
Speaker 1: gonna say, is that a jinx? Yeah, that's to ensure
Speaker 1: that we will be around. Smart, thank you. So we're
Speaker 1: talking today, Chuck about a pretty unusual mystery. Are you
Speaker 1: familiar with this one before? Yeah? We I think we
Speaker 1: covered this in an Internet roundup or something. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we definitely talked about it. But I scoured
Speaker 1: our archives and I didn't find an official show, So
Speaker 1: I wonder where it came up, because yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: we've talked about it for sure, um, and then it
Speaker 1: was a lot of times you would do one of
Speaker 1: your best things you've read this week, we would then
Speaker 1: do an internet roundup piece on that. Okay, that's probably
Speaker 1: where it came up. Then, did you're like, this is
Speaker 1: so good it should be seen by dozens of people exactly?
Speaker 1: I want to share it with the twenty 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 Somerton Beach I think is what it was 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 this 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.
Speaker 1: Uh it's a from what I understand, And we haven't
Speaker 1: been there yet, but we probably will maybe next year.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to Adelaide though, I don't know. It
Speaker 1: sounds kind of neat and creep a little weird, right,
Speaker 1: but weird in some weird ways. So um Adelaide is
Speaker 1: this This place is kind of known as the murder
Speaker 1: murder capital of Australia, but it doesn't have necessarily like
Speaker 1: the highest homicide rate in Australia. It just has a
Speaker 1: history of kind of weird, gruesome, grizzly murders. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think if you've had more than two or three like
Speaker 1: dismemberment type murders, that you're on the map, and they
Speaker 1: definitely have. There was there was a very famous case
Speaker 1: in the sixties of the um the Beaumont children who
Speaker 1: went missing off of a beach called Glenn L Beach.
Speaker 1: I think that's probably how you say it um, which
Speaker 1: is near Adelaide, and uh, we're never heard from again,
Speaker 1: no trace was ever found. We should do an episode
Speaker 1: on that one too. Um there was the family yeah,
Speaker 1: uh so dubbed by the cops in the seventies and eighties.
Speaker 1: This one's really freaky. These were supposedly just like regular
Speaker 1: professional men, presumed men who had a sort of cabal
Speaker 1: of torture and murder of young boys, basically like season
Speaker 1: one of True Detective, but in real life in Australia,
Speaker 1: with a well with an equally weird ending. Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: the sky just opens up. It's a total eclipse. Uh.
Speaker 1: And that one again unsolved, right, Uh, it was never
Speaker 1: it was I think one person was convicted, but the
Speaker 1: people that he implicated were never charged or convicted. What
Speaker 1: about the bodies in the barrel thing? That's all you
Speaker 1: need to say. Okay, there's a string of group of
Speaker 1: murders called the bodies in the barrels murders. Right, it's
Speaker 1: a lot of pluralization, it is. Uh. And then, um,
Speaker 1: so the idea that the one we're talking about, which
Speaker 1: is the death of just one man, a non violent
Speaker 1: death possibly um who was found on a beach almost
Speaker 1: seventy years ago. For that to still have Australia and
Speaker 1: like the world in its grips today, it must be
Speaker 1: a pretty interesting case, agreed, And it is. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: I guess we should go back in time, getting the
Speaker 1: old Way back machine and travel south to Adelaide post
Speaker 1: 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 drum of foster and
Speaker 1: lots of other Australian tropes are happening all around me.
Speaker 1: There's a crocodile dundeees over there. Why there? When we
Speaker 1: tour there, they're going to really get because like after
Speaker 1: the show, the first show, you can run us out
Speaker 1: of town. They find New Zealand wants us. Yeah. New
Speaker 1: Zealand say, yeah, come on over here. Uh so Adelaide
Speaker 1: is um, Well, it's an interesting place post war Um.
Speaker 1: Apparently there was. It was kind of a place where
Speaker 1: you could go to sort of real if you want
Speaker 1: to disappear and rewrite your life. That wasn't a bad
Speaker 1: place to do it. Um. There was a lot of
Speaker 1: black marketeering going on. Apparently it was really hard to
Speaker 1: get your hands on a car. Um. So there's like
Speaker 1: a big black market for cars of all of all
Speaker 1: stolen nous, all levels of stolenness. Um. Yeah, there's there's
Speaker 1: just a certain amount of post war scarcity that was
Speaker 1: still going on, and there's a lot of espionage going
Speaker 1: on to right. So the Cold War had just started
Speaker 1: in Australia was in this weird position where there were
Speaker 1: a lot of Soviet spies running around, there were a
Speaker 1: lot of Brits and American spies running around, and the
Speaker 1: British themselves were conducting secret rocket tests in the country.
Speaker 1: So there was um, there was 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 a very important date for the story.
Speaker 1: Tuesday November, about seven in the evening. There was a
Speaker 1: jeweler named John Lyons 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 we were They
Speaker 1: were walking towards glenn Elk so I guess they're connected beaches, yeah, 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 ft 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? Man? 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 world.
Speaker 1: If he's not noticing those mosquitoes, he must just be
Speaker 1: absolutely wasted, so that they were clearly closer, I guess.
Speaker 1: So I think it's seen 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, for a straining mosquitoes are
Speaker 1: all right. So the next morning, um became pretty clear
Speaker 1: what was going on here, that this was a dead man.
Speaker 1: The same jeweler John Lyons. He went for a little
Speaker 1: morning swim, as you were to do in Australian the
Speaker 1: mornings when you're hungover, and he saw a bunch of
Speaker 1: people crowded around where the guy was and it was
Speaker 1: it was on. It was as a dead dude. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the dude was in basically the same position he'd seen
Speaker 1: him in the night before. That that crowd was like,
Speaker 1: he's dead, croy key and uh yeah, so Lions is
Speaker 1: like that was pretty surprising and that's the end of
Speaker 1: John Lyons. Yeah, but very important here, and that they
Speaker 1: are the only people who supposedly saw this body move right,
Speaker 1: super important. So, um, within about a few hours, the
Speaker 1: body is in the morgue at the hospital and as
Speaker 1: being examined, and just from the initial examination there was
Speaker 1: a lot of um, just weirdness that immediately came out. Right.
Speaker 1: So remember the guys like sitting up against the sea wall. Um,
Speaker 1: his legs are extended out, his feet are crossed. There
Speaker 1: was a cigarette, depending on who you ask, either a
Speaker 1: half burned cigarette, either dangling from his mouth or on
Speaker 1: the collar of his shirt as if it had fallen
Speaker 1: from his mouth. Um. And when he was taken into
Speaker 1: the morgue that the doctor said that he was probably
Speaker 1: dead by two am. Yeah, and most likely when they
Speaker 1: did the full autopsy, a man named On Dwyer said
Speaker 1: he was probably poisoned initially, even though there were no
Speaker 1: traces of poison, which is a little odd, right, But
Speaker 1: the reason he said that is because when they cracked
Speaker 1: the guy opened this, this this John Doe, who's widely
Speaker 1: become known as the Somerton Man. Um, his organs were
Speaker 1: all kinds of messed up. He had blood and his
Speaker 1: stomach along with his final meal, which was a pasty.
Speaker 1: It's like a pocket Yeah, delicious hot pocket hand tie. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Um that sounds dirty hand pie. Yeah. Um, there's his
Speaker 1: spleen was enlarged and engorged with blood. Yeah, that's not
Speaker 1: a good sign and firm. His liver was giant and bloody,
Speaker 1: not unusual for Australians that fifty five gallon Joma Foster.
Speaker 1: His pupils were smaller than normal and just quote unusual
Speaker 1: whatever that means. Right, uh. And then they say that
Speaker 1: he had a little spittle on the side of his
Speaker 1: mouth that you know, like, you know, I thought that
Speaker 1: was a pretty tacky thing to note. Yeah, just leave
Speaker 1: the guy alone. He's dead, like sleepy drool is what
Speaker 1: I thought. If I'm pretty, if I'm so pretty that
Speaker 1: I just have a little bit of spittle coming down
Speaker 1: my mouth when I'm dead, I'll be more than happy.
Speaker 1: Oh you mean, if you if that's the only thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agreed. I mean, come on, give the guy a break. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, they were doing forensics. Yeah, so, and indeed
Speaker 1: they did, and they kept saying like this gotta be poisoning,
Speaker 1: like his organs are all kinds of messed up, but
Speaker 1: there was no trace of poisoning. They brought in this
Speaker 1: guy named Cedric Stanton Hicks, the hand PI and there, Yeah,
Speaker 1: nothing's wrong, right. They gave it to Eugene and he
Speaker 1: was still standing afterwards. Yeah, so it's all good. Um.
Speaker 1: So Sir Cedric Stanton Hicks comes in and says, 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 wrote them down and the car was like, okay,
Speaker 1: all right, picked him up and read and what he
Speaker 1: read was Digitalis and Struugh Phantom and Sir Cedric 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've seen the movie, just you know, added for
Speaker 1: the drama. But apparently it really am right. So he
Speaker 1: read 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 digit tell us.
Speaker 1: It sounds like it doesn't matter which one it was
Speaker 1: because they were both kind of used and I think
Speaker 1: are maybe 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 amazing technologies in the
Speaker 1: next ten twenty years or something like that, the time
Speaker 1: is passing quite quickly on this case and D. B.
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, he asked me.
Speaker 1: He does, And you think so? I mean, look up
Speaker 1: a picture of this guy. If you're not in your car,
Speaker 1: you can look him up. There are two very famous
Speaker 1: photos I guess from the autopsy scene. Um, just straight
Speaker 1: onto his face and then sort of you know, from
Speaker 1: the side with his eyes open. Yeah, it looks like
Speaker 1: Harvey Kitell. It looks like a wasted Harvey Kitel, which
Speaker 1: is to say, he looks like Harvey Kitel. Um, so
Speaker 1: he's in about his mid forties. Yeah, I guess a
Speaker 1: younger Harvey Keitel. Yeah. Uh, he's wearing this double breasted suit. Um.
Speaker 1: I saw that he was wearing a nit pull over
Speaker 1: with a necktie. Who And this sounds like we're being
Speaker 1: um two specific by saying the stripes slanted from left
Speaker 1: to right. But we're not. We're not. That will come
Speaker 1: into play. Well, just hang onto that nugget. Yeah, put
Speaker 1: that one in your pipe for later. He had no hat,
Speaker 1: which was weird for that time. Oh, I hadn't ran
Speaker 1: across that, but yeah, I've never seen that there was
Speaker 1: a hat. Yeah, and they never found a hat, but
Speaker 1: it would be unusual for a man of late forties
Speaker 1: to not have a hat. Yeah, I guess so. For
Speaker 1: doors 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 the sombreros made of tortillas melted
Speaker 1: cheese in the middle man. Is that a thing? It
Speaker 1: was on the Simpsons too. Hat. Uh. What else? He
Speaker 1: had weird feet, yeah, wedge shaped feet, they said, and
Speaker 1: that his his shoes seemed to be molded almost to
Speaker 1: his feet. The real weird giveaway was his calves. His
Speaker 1: calves were remarkable. They were bulbous below the just below
Speaker 1: the knee. And the guy who who performed the autopsy,
Speaker 1: I think it was Dwyer, said, Uh, this is like
Speaker 1: what dancers or people who wear high heels, just the
Speaker 1: kind of calves that they have. He said, look at that,
Speaker 1: he looks like Lena Horn the Oh my gosh, it
Speaker 1: is hon Uh. Yeah, so that that's definitely notable. Um
Speaker 1: uh The other thing they found out too was um.
Speaker 1: A couple of physical traits that he had which will
Speaker 1: come into play later on his ear. His simba, which
Speaker 1: is the upper hollow portion of the ear hollow caved in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the rolled over part up here, No, like just the
Speaker 1: upper you know hole than the lower part. Yeah, we've
Speaker 1: ever done show on ears, have we? We should? The
Speaker 1: simba is larger than the cave um, which is a
Speaker 1: fairly rare thing. So I would guess the cabum is
Speaker 1: where your eardrum leads to your ear drum. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: where you put your finger when you want to write.
Speaker 1: But if you go, if you put your finger up
Speaker 1: over that ridge does not. That's the simba. Yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be weird if this one was bigger than
Speaker 1: that one. Yeah. It's a pretty rare genetic trait, as
Speaker 1: were his strange teeth. Yeah, he had something called hypodontia,
Speaker 1: which is he was missing his lateral incisors, which are
Speaker 1: the teeth that most people have between their front teeth
Speaker 1: and their canines. His lateral incisers never developed, so his
Speaker 1: canines were adjacent to his front teeth. Yeah, and it's um.
Speaker 1: Would you say hypodontia. That that can be as common
Speaker 1: as like you never get your wisdom teeth, but in
Speaker 1: this case those particular teeth, that was pretty rare. Something like, well,
Speaker 1: I saw hypodontia in in so that would include not
Speaker 1: getting wisdom teeth. Huh, well, in any teeth, not developing
Speaker 1: his hypodone I got. Well, I don't know if hypodonta
Speaker 1: in general or just this type of hypodonta of the population. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's specifically for those teeth. Was pretty rare. Yeah, two,
Speaker 1: pretty rare. Like everyone's got those teeth, and people at
Speaker 1: home are like, why are you saying all these weird stuff?
Speaker 1: Who cares to just settle down? Everybody settle down because
Speaker 1: it's all going to come into play. We haven't said
Speaker 1: anything that will not come back into play. Al Right,
Speaker 1: should we take a break? I think we should. Everybody's
Speaker 1: getting all riled up. Let's take a break, and then
Speaker 1: we're going to detail, uh, for about fifteen minutes what
Speaker 1: was in his pockets? Okay, chuck, So we went over
Speaker 1: the body. Yeah, it's time to go through his personal effects,
Speaker 1: which were kind of weird in and of themselves. All
Speaker 1: about the details. So when you're talking about murders and
Speaker 1: disappearances and then unsolved after seventy years. Yes, you need
Speaker 1: to pay attention to the detail. What kind of podcast
Speaker 1: cops would we be if we were just like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he just sort of looked like Harvey kit Tell and
Speaker 1: he's in a suit d and no good. That sounded
Speaker 1: like Harvey kit Tell. Yeah it did, didn't it? Yeah
Speaker 1: it was. It was my Harvey kite Tel on the piano.
Speaker 1: Oh man, what a movie? Um? All right? So in
Speaker 1: his pockets he had a peck of juicy fruit. The
Speaker 1: juicy fruit, yeah, chewing gum stuff. He had some matches,
Speaker 1: Bryant and May matches. He had, uh, well, he had
Speaker 1: a lot of tickets in his pocket. He had a
Speaker 1: an unused train ticket from Adelaide to Henley Beach, had
Speaker 1: a bust ticket from Adelaide to Glenelg And then he
Speaker 1: had a ticket, a used ticket that said he had
Speaker 1: come from arrived there by by bus from the railway
Speaker 1: station there. Yeah, from the Adelaide railway correct. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: He also had um a pack of cigarettes that were
Speaker 1: weird Army Club army. The pack of cigarettes was an
Speaker 1: Army Club pack, but inside with something called conceitas which
Speaker 1: was a much more expensive brand. So that makes no sense, Like,
Speaker 1: that's the opposite of the only thing that could make sense,
Speaker 1: which is he just kept the expensive pack and would
Speaker 1: put cheap cigarettes in it to look fancy, right, unless
Speaker 1: he didn't want people bumming the expensive ones off of him,
Speaker 1: so he kept a 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 interesting or perhaps they were poisoned and
Speaker 1: 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 he had a couple of combs, okay hair combs.
Speaker 1: More to the point, there was no idea, no idea,
Speaker 1: no no wallet, no cash. Kind of odd for sure,
Speaker 1: and his clothes were odd in and of themselves. Right.
Speaker 1: So again, he was wearing a very nice suit. But
Speaker 1: the um makers labels of all of his clothes have
Speaker 1: been from what I understand, carefully snipped away. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: saw one explanation for this that made it seem a
Speaker 1: little less odd um, which was back then. Apparently people
Speaker 1: oftentimes would because there were nice clothes, were not scarce,
Speaker 1: but he wanted to keep them for yourself, so you
Speaker 1: would write your name a lot of times on your
Speaker 1: like suit jackets and things, and then if you ever
Speaker 1: went to sell them second hand, you would flip out
Speaker 1: those labels. So that's one explanation that's not bad. I
Speaker 1: don't know if that's a reach or not, but at
Speaker 1: least something could make sense out of that. But the
Speaker 1: other thing could mean that this person was being dumped
Speaker 1: and no one wanted them to know who they were.
Speaker 1: It's a possibility to or that he didn't want anyone
Speaker 1: to know who he was. That's another possibility as well.
Speaker 1: That's what a lot of people think, that he was
Speaker 1: trying to cover up his own identity as well. Um,
Speaker 1: his his trousers I think had a little repair done
Speaker 1: with orange thread bear with us um, and then that
Speaker 1: was about it. They they they took fingerprints of the
Speaker 1: guy and spread around to no avail. But the fingerprints, right,
Speaker 1: they they've figured out after a little a while. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure when, but this would have been so November
Speaker 1: December one is when he was found. This is to
Speaker 1: this is like July to us in the northern Hemisphere,
Speaker 1: the 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 him
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 a weird unsolved mystery already,
Speaker 1: like just quickly after the case started to capture the
Speaker 1: nation's attention a little bit, and the police, the the
Speaker 1: the South Australia State Police were not shy about publicizing
Speaker 1: stuff as needed, Like as they developed breaks in the case,
Speaker 1: they would tell the newspapers about it, and the newspapers
Speaker 1: would tell the rest of the country. So it became
Speaker 1: a pretty big sensation in Australia so much so that
Speaker 1: a lot of people are just basically take it for
Speaker 1: granted that the man was not Australian. That were he Australian,
Speaker 1: some more several people would have come forward because the
Speaker 1: case had that much exposure nationally. Yeah, and I am
Speaker 1: just guessing here, but I imagine in this part of
Speaker 1: Australia probably wasn't there weren't like millions of people living there.
Speaker 1: I don't know how small of the town it was,
Speaker 1: but I don't think it was like some huge city,
Speaker 1: was it. Well, yeah, Adelaide's the capital of South Australia,
Speaker 1: but is it How was there was like at least
Speaker 1: five people there? And I'm going to say, at the minimum,
Speaker 1: someone's going to write in and tell us so all right,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna be mad that we didn't know. No,
Speaker 1: Australians are nice about things usually, Yeah they are, aren't they?
Speaker 1: They're the Canadians of the South. So they decided the
Speaker 1: cops decide very smartly. Um, you know what, We're gonna
Speaker 1: widen this investigation. We're going to see if anywhere in
Speaker 1: town someone has found something there, any possessions that this
Speaker 1: guy might have left behind. Since he was just found
Speaker 1: with what was in his pockets, surely there's something, and
Speaker 1: in fact there was. They discovered there was a suitcase,
Speaker 1: brown suitcase in a cloak room that was left there
Speaker 1: on November, which was the night before the morning that
Speaker 1: he was found the first time he was seen on
Speaker 1: the beach. It was no lead, it was and because
Speaker 1: he had that ticket that showed he had taken a
Speaker 1: bus from the Adelaide rail station, that was one of
Speaker 1: the first places detectives went. Uh, and they found this suitcase, um,
Speaker 1: that had been left there, like you said, on November. Inside, Um,
Speaker 1: there was some stuff that linked it to the guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it was full of stuff. Um. It was
Speaker 1: clearly someone who was traveling a lot. There were lots
Speaker 1: of clothes, shirts and scarves and underwear and pajamas and handkerchiefs.
Speaker 1: There were two pairs of scissors, one broken pair, one
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 1: thread which perfectly matched where his trousers were stitch. So
Speaker 1: it's got to be him, right, that's the thing that
Speaker 1: really links him with the suitcase. Um. There was also
Speaker 1: some 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 A taylor said,
Speaker 1: this is an American coat, Yeah, with their feathers. Well,
Speaker 1: he's a Hamms stitch right. Uh. And then inside some
Speaker 1: of these clothes, uh was the name keen? Because I
Speaker 1: told you people wrote on their clothes A lot said
Speaker 1: T keen, T dot keen, K E N E or
Speaker 1: k A N. And the best cops could figure is
Speaker 1: they someone did that to to sniff everyone off the case,
Speaker 1: right because they've around and there was no t Keen
Speaker 1: or any Keen that they couldn't put their their fingers on.
Speaker 1: Who's missing? Um? And the tie years later, like the
Speaker 1: cops at the time didn't know this. I wonder if
Speaker 1: they noticed that it was slanting one way or another,
Speaker 1: but the they probably just knew it looked weird for
Speaker 1: some reason. They couldn't put their finger on. But at
Speaker 1: the time in Australia, the U the ties slanted left
Speaker 1: or right, and this guy's tie slanted right to left,
Speaker 1: and that was the style in America. It's like everything's opposite.
Speaker 1: Didn't this so weird? Summer's winter and winter summer flush
Speaker 1: the toilet? It was in a different direction. I think
Speaker 1: that's an urban legend. No, I think that's true, right, No,
Speaker 1: I did a something on it. Really, Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it's an urban legend. It's really has to do with um,
Speaker 1: the uh, the shape of the drain. What in That's
Speaker 1: what I was so looking forward to pooping in Australia.
Speaker 1: You can still do it. Well, you probably should. Actually,
Speaker 1: while we're there, I'm going to, but I'm not. The
Speaker 1: joy is is dead. Well, just don't watch it flush. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you might be better off actually in this way,
Speaker 1: I've just been used to my poop turning into such
Speaker 1: a direction my whole life. I was really ready for
Speaker 1: something new, all right, I'm sorry, so the tie is opposite.
Speaker 1: They said, this is an American tie, like you said. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then they brought in um and actually we should
Speaker 1: say those were internet sleuths, like within the last ten
Speaker 1: fifteen years who figured that one out. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: good for you Internet. Uh. Finally, in April, police brought
Speaker 1: in a dude, an expert pathologist named John Cleveland, and
Speaker 1: this was a big deal. Apparently the cops in South
Speaker 1: Australia were not as thorough as you would think because
Speaker 1: they didn't even check his little pocket watch pocket, a
Speaker 1: little pocket inside your pocket, because there was a really
Speaker 1: key piece of evidence rolled up in there. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: one broke the case wide open. It seemed like it would.
Speaker 1: There was a little scrap of paper rolled up very
Speaker 1: tightly in this pocket and written on it in some
Speaker 1: pretty fancy type setting were the words TAMUM showed T
Speaker 1: A M A M S h U D. And the
Speaker 1: cops said, what was this first orange thread? Not some
Speaker 1: weirdo words rolled up in this guy's pocket? What is this?
Speaker 1: And John Cleveland said, you dopes, it's called a lead.
Speaker 1: You didn't check his pocket? In his pocket? He said no,
Speaker 1: So they would figure out in a little while. By
Speaker 1: a stroke of luck, it seems that um tamum showed
Speaker 1: means it is finished where it is done, or in
Speaker 1: this case, the end in Persian. It sounds very h
Speaker 1: random and out of left field that anybody would know this,
Speaker 1: But a reporter working the police beat there said named
Speaker 1: Frank Kennedy, said, no, that I know what that's from.
Speaker 1: That's from a twelveth century book of Persian poetry of
Speaker 1: Omar Kayyam. And that just sounds so out of left field.
Speaker 1: But in fact, that book had been translated by an
Speaker 1: English poet named Edward Fitzgerald, and it was kind of
Speaker 1: a big deal once it was translated into English. So
Speaker 1: it wasn't like just so the word of looking for
Speaker 1: obscure that nobody would know what it was. No, it
Speaker 1: was extremely popular in the in the West after that,
Speaker 1: I think even in America, like there's a Peanuts comic
Speaker 1: strip that makes reference to it. Even it was a
Speaker 1: big It was one of those things where like people
Speaker 1: might not know about it, but there are plenty people
Speaker 1: out there who did. And one of the reporters recognized there, right,
Speaker 1: So they realized then that they needed to find the
Speaker 1: copy of the Rubiat that this came from, and they
Speaker 1: started looking and looking and looking, and they couldn't find it.
Speaker 1: So the state police did what they had been doing
Speaker 1: all along. They went to the newspapers and they said, hey,
Speaker 1: we found this weird scrap of paper. It says tamam shoot.
Speaker 1: We're told that it comes from the Rubyat 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 know. And it turns out so this is
Speaker 1: 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 sohmer Tion
Speaker 1: Beach around the time the man who was found on
Speaker 1: sommer To Beach was found. And I have no idea
Speaker 1: whose it is. It's just been I put it in
Speaker 1: my glove compartment. It's been sitting there until I read
Speaker 1: this article in the newspaper. Yeah. Presumably his windows rolled
Speaker 1: down or his car was unlocked, and whoever ripped this
Speaker 1: thing out because they did find out that part was
Speaker 1: ripped out from his book, just tossed it in the
Speaker 1: back seat this guy's car, Right, not very smart if
Speaker 1: you're trying to cover your tracks. No, but maybe you're
Speaker 1: not trying to cover your tracks, right. So they now
Speaker 1: have the copy of the Ruby Yacht that the scrap
Speaker 1: of paper that came that was found in the sohmer
Speaker 1: to man's trousers came from, yeah, which by all accounts
Speaker 1: is a one of a kind printing, right, Yeah, like
Speaker 1: 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 can 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 manor 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. They found the stumber
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 rip 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 he used a UV light to see
Speaker 1: what by all accounts is a five line code. And
Speaker 1: the code is pretty odd. Yeah, I mean I think
Speaker 1: we should read it. It It will sound like gibberish. But
Speaker 1: if you're into code breaking, you probably already know about
Speaker 1: this one. But if not, here we go all capital letters.
Speaker 1: Line one is w R G o A B A
Speaker 1: b D. Second line m l I A O I
Speaker 1: that was scratched out. Interestingly, third line W T b
Speaker 1: I M P A n E t P, fourth line
Speaker 1: M l I A again that's repeated B O A
Speaker 1: I A q C, and finally I T T M
Speaker 1: T S A M S T G A B go
Speaker 1: break it, right the eagle has landed at midnight, which
Speaker 1: they basically said, 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 spy 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 uh, it turned out like
Speaker 1: you said to be Jessica Thompson, and you want to
Speaker 1: take another breaks. We're going to take a break and
Speaker 1: we'll get to Jessica Thompson right after this. Yeh, we
Speaker 1: should say, coming back from break. We just got compliments
Speaker 1: from Matt. This is like praise from Caesar on something
Speaker 1: like this. Look what happened to Caesar though. Yeah, on
Speaker 1: your birthday. Matt said, you guys really doing a great job.
Speaker 1: And Josh said, you didn't tell us that. Go back
Speaker 1: to sleep, all right, So we promised talk of Jessica Thompson.
Speaker 1: This is a really good lead. They called her up.
Speaker 1: She answered the phone. It's a good first step in
Speaker 1: my movie version. Atly she answered the phone and went Uh,
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, 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 the 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. But in two thousand and 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. So 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 Kitell uh. And
Speaker 1: they were unfairly to Albert Alfred Boxall disappointed when they
Speaker 1: found he was alive and well in New South Wales.
Speaker 1: And he said, yeah, I got the book right here.
Speaker 1: She h. She gave them to all her lovers. Uh.
Speaker 1: There was speculation that perhaps, 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 here 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 gotta be kidding me.
Speaker 1: This lead the lead of all leads. I was gonna
Speaker 1: break this case wide open. It it's a dead end,
Speaker 1: are you? Are you kidding me? And one of the
Speaker 1: officers developed a permanent scarf from banging his head slowly
Speaker 1: against the wall. Right. He couldn't be stopped, couldn't be consoled.
Speaker 1: And so they said, okay, a lady, your phone number
Speaker 1: was in this thing, so we want you to come
Speaker 1: down to the Morrigan. Just take a look at this
Speaker 1: bust we made of the dead guy and um and
Speaker 1: they said, also, is there anything else, anything weird happened
Speaker 1: to you and like the last year or so, And
Speaker 1: she said, well, the only thing I can think of
Speaker 1: is that my neighbors said to me once when I
Speaker 1: came home one day that and some man they didn't
Speaker 1: know it, called on my house and uh, that was it.
Speaker 1: That's the literally the weirdest thing that's happened to me.
Speaker 1: Knocked on her door that she didn't know, her neighbors
Speaker 1: didn't know. It happens to me like three times a week. Um.
Speaker 1: So 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. No,
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. She's a nurse, first
Speaker 1: of all. She was even looking at a body, but
Speaker 1: she's a nurse, so she wouldn't be freaked out by
Speaker 1: any of this. No, and again it wasn't even a body.
Speaker 1: It was a plaster bush, right. But she's like, and
Speaker 1: they go did you know him? And she goes, no, no,
Speaker 1: I didn't cut some heartburn, and uh, I have nothing
Speaker 1: more to say about this, so don't ever ask me,
Speaker 1: and she clammed up. Not weird at all. No, not
Speaker 1: at all. So immediately the cops are like, you know
Speaker 1: way more than you're letting on. But apparently they didn't,
Speaker 1: you know, beat up people that they had in custody
Speaker 1: to get information out of them. So they let her
Speaker 1: go and just said, oh, well, I guess we'll never
Speaker 1: know the answer to this mystery. Yeah, there's a retired
Speaker 1: detective named Gary felt Us. Is it Gary? I thought
Speaker 1: Jerry G E R R Y Probably Jerry. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: you've convinced me that's funny. We we just crossed over
Speaker 1: to one another side again. Uh. So he took up
Speaker 1: this case later in life, and um, he actually interviewed
Speaker 1: her in two thousand seven. He said she was evasive
Speaker 1: under questioning and like this lady knew something. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: again this guy him, he's a hobbyist, amateur sleuth on
Speaker 1: this case. I love those guys. But he had forty
Speaker 1: years experience as a detective in Adelaide, so he knows
Speaker 1: questioning people. Have you seen the Netflix documentary series The Keepers? No,
Speaker 1: I haven't even heard of it. It is about a
Speaker 1: cold case murder of a nun um in the nineteen
Speaker 1: if these no nineteen sixties, I think, and uh, they're
Speaker 1: there are these amateur detectives that have been working on
Speaker 1: this all these years, these two women in particular that
Speaker 1: were students of this nun at school that are just amazing,
Speaker 1: and like, is this really get an appreciation for these
Speaker 1: people who like become obsessed with the solving these cases
Speaker 1: that aren't even like family members or anything, you know,
Speaker 1: Is it a like jama or documentary ten part documentary series?
Speaker 1: Is wow? I gotta see that. Oh dude, It's one
Speaker 1: of the most upsetting things I've ever had to sit through.
Speaker 1: And that's all I'm gonna say. I've been waiting for
Speaker 1: this since I finished making um Making of a Murderer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's better, I think. I like that, but what what
Speaker 1: very disturbing stuff. Wow, I gotta go. You gotta leave it.
Speaker 1: So it hats off to you amateur sluice out there
Speaker 1: for for getting in the way of real police. No,
Speaker 1: for for doing work that real police. These are cold
Speaker 1: cases that, yeah, they're hard pressed to get information anymore
Speaker 1: in most cases, It's true. 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
Speaker 1: stay um cold. But then you think, like there's you know,
Speaker 1: you can't just concentrate on a forty year old murder case,
Speaker 1: and there's so many current things you've got to be
Speaker 1: looking into. Plus it's hard, really, it's UM. All right.
Speaker 1: So back to Thompson evasive underquestioning UM later on her son, Robert,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry Robin, like we said earlier, Uh, he started
Speaker 1: looking into it, got really interested in in trying to
Speaker 1: figure this thing out. Oh he did, he did. I
Speaker 1: didn't know that. And he turned out to be a
Speaker 1: professional dancer, yes, with the calves of Lena Horn and
Speaker 1: the Australian Ballet right and hypodonta in exactly the same
Speaker 1: way that the Somerton Man had. And he had the
Speaker 1: same ears. Yeah. So a lot of people again there's
Speaker 1: something that hasn't improven, but most people take as conclusive
Speaker 1: fact that Robin Thompson, son of Jessica Thompson, who didn't
Speaker 1: know the Somerton Man, was the son of the Somerton Man. Yeah.
Speaker 1: What I saw was between the ear and the teeth. Um.
Speaker 1: They put odds for both of those things at about
Speaker 1: it's quite a range between one and ten million and
Speaker 1: one and twenty million. Okay, but let's just say it's
Speaker 1: one in ten million. That's say it's one in a trillion.
Speaker 1: At that point, it's the same thing basically, So eventually
Speaker 1: another was it the same amateur sleuth? Not Jerry Derek
Speaker 1: Abbott is a different sleuth. There are rivals. It's hilarious.
Speaker 1: They hate each other. Um. He got involved and said,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm gonna get Robin in here for
Speaker 1: a DNA test. Um, Robin's a hymn, but it says
Speaker 1: here her is it him? Right? No? Uh, Robin's daughter
Speaker 1: was the one who took the DNA test. Bobbin is
Speaker 1: long dead. Gotcha? Got you? Okay? Oh no, I think
Speaker 1: I had it backwards, and I don't think he got
Speaker 1: involved in trying to figure it out because he's dead. Okay,
Speaker 1: That's why I was like, I was kind of surprised,
Speaker 1: but gotcha. So he got her daughter to take a
Speaker 1: DNA test and then trace back the paternal lineage, which
Speaker 1: would have been um possibly the Somerton man, who by
Speaker 1: all accounts seemed like he was American, Yeah, which would
Speaker 1: have explained the tie. Um. Perhaps the thread. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: what else the fact that no one in Australia could
Speaker 1: identify him or was willing to identify him. Um, so
Speaker 1: the the only thing left then after that is okay, well,
Speaker 1: somebody just dig up the Somerton man like he buried
Speaker 1: him 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. I gotta
Speaker 1: get in there over candle light. Um gave her. He
Speaker 1: gave her a hand pie. Oh my god. So here
Speaker 1: are the theories. Um well, I'm gonna go ahead and
Speaker 1: start with my favorite theory, which sort of is in
Speaker 1: here but not really. Uh suicide. I think that perhaps,
Speaker 1: and I didn't invent this, but of the theories I've read,
Speaker 1: I liked this one, I think that he um it
Speaker 1: was an American man who had an affair with Jenny
Speaker 1: Nurse Thompson Justin and went there, traveled there, um found
Speaker 1: out she was pregnant. Uh In, was rejected and went
Speaker 1: down and killed himself by poison and was prepared to
Speaker 1: do so, and the other things I've read said that
Speaker 1: he could. You know, the things that don't add up
Speaker 1: was like the body was found with no like vomit,
Speaker 1: which a lot of times happened. If you are poisoned,
Speaker 1: even if you're not, one of the last things you
Speaker 1: do is your life is ending is throw up. Usually
Speaker 1: oh really, yeah, Oh it's pretty common. No one ever
Speaker 1: tells you that. Yeah, like the dinner party. You've never
Speaker 1: been told that. No one ever tells you two things
Speaker 1: in life that you poop when you have a baby,
Speaker 1: and you poop, and you throw up before you die,
Speaker 1: and you poop when you die, too, poop when you die.
Speaker 1: I think, so I guess that's why Elvis died on
Speaker 1: the toilet. Yeah, very affianted to go out with some dignity.
Speaker 1: Um so where was I? Oh? So he The thing
Speaker 1: I read said that perhaps he went down to the shoreline,
Speaker 1: drank the poison through that, you know, into the water,
Speaker 1: and maybe like vomited and riched there and then kind
Speaker 1: of went back up the beach and laid there to
Speaker 1: die and and maybe had one less cigarette. Very possible.
Speaker 1: So that's one. Another theory is that he died by poison,
Speaker 1: but that it was murder. Sure. As this case is
Speaker 1: being coming more and more publicized, the public came to
Speaker 1: widely believed that he was a spy. And then as
Speaker 1: more details of the case spread out more and more
Speaker 1: over the decades um this this vision of aspyring emerged
Speaker 1: with Jessica Thompson as this communist spy master who was
Speaker 1: posing as a housewife, and Somerton Man was a spy
Speaker 1: who worked for her or arrival spy, and Alfred box
Speaker 1: All was a spy who worked for which would explain
Speaker 1: why she gave both of them copies of the Rubiyat
Speaker 1: and that actually the copies of the roof Biyat were
Speaker 1: one time pads themselves, which we're actually the keys to
Speaker 1: crack the code. Right. Unfortunately, the cops uh in adelaide
Speaker 1: through the ruby At. That was the sommer to Man's
Speaker 1: away in the fifties. Yeah, they got rid of the
Speaker 1: suitcase in the eighties. He could 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 Boxhall murdered the man,
Speaker 1: or she had him murder him and then they took
Speaker 1: his body to the seaside. Alfred Boxhall 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 to World War Two. It turns
Speaker 1: out 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 they right. So,
Speaker 1: the the idea that the sommer to Man's copy of
Speaker 1: the Rubiat was basically a one of a kind. It
Speaker 1: seems definitely lends credence to the idea that it's possible
Speaker 1: 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 share
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 how people are. They just
Speaker 1: make something up to get on the news. And then
Speaker 1: I thought the same thing with the hand raising up,
Speaker 1: like maybe that didn't even happen, Well, yeah, that was
Speaker 1: That's another thing. Like what I realized from researching this,
Speaker 1: Chuck was that this this case has been so muddied
Speaker 1: with conjecture and fall truths um that have just spread
Speaker 1: across the internet that like, did the Lions ever recant
Speaker 1: their version of seeing him move? If so, then then
Speaker 1: maybe he was dead when he was taken out to
Speaker 1: the beach. Who knows, like you really have to dive in.
Speaker 1: But if you if you want to dive in, this mystery,
Speaker 1: maybe even more than any others, is just uh, just
Speaker 1: a just an enormously deep rabbit hole to get sucked into,
Speaker 1: because I mean, even if they dug up so Merton 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 him.
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 showed, okay stuff,
Speaker 1: I just said something in person. If you want to
Speaker 1: know more about so Merton Man, you should go listen
Speaker 1: to the stuff they don't want you to know episode
Speaker 1: on it or sure or watch it. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if it's video or audio maybe both, uh. And you
Speaker 1: can also check out The Lost Man on California Sunday
Speaker 1: Magazine and The Body on so Merton Beach on Smithsonian,
Speaker 1: among many many other great articles, and since I said many,
Speaker 1: it's time for listener mail. Uh, I'm gonna call this
Speaker 1: on accents and I gotta say, we got more email
Speaker 1: on stuttering and accents that I've seen in a long
Speaker 1: long time for real. Um, I don't know. I think
Speaker 1: a new Accents would be big. Stuttering really hit home
Speaker 1: with a lot of people, I think. And the well
Speaker 1: there's that there's a stuttering email too. It's either going
Speaker 1: to be on the next one or the one that
Speaker 1: was just released. Okay, I didn't know any her right,
Speaker 1: he 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. I have 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, 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. And why did I leave? I
Speaker 1: left because they came back. It'd be weird if I
Speaker 1: was still living there. Uh. Anyway, he might be able
Speaker 1: to confirm my suspicions. People from New Jersey don't have
Speaker 1: an accent, but if they do, it's slight New York
Speaker 1: New York accent. At any um, now you definitely have accents.
Speaker 1: You're insane. In my opinion, many older adults have moved
Speaker 1: from New York to New Jersey for the suburbs. Seeing
Speaker 1: many older people meet and talk about the street they
Speaker 1: grew up on in Brooklyn, or like I would like
Speaker 1: to make like it made clear that no one from
Speaker 1: New Jersey says New Joysey. That's true, if anything that
Speaker 1: is in New York accent, Chuck, can you confirm. I
Speaker 1: can confirm I never heard anyone say New Joysey, but
Speaker 1: I cannot confirm that there's no accent because I definitely
Speaker 1: have an accent to New Jersey. Um. In fact, one
Speaker 1: of the things that I noticed. There's not so much
Speaker 1: an accent, but people in New Jersey would say button
Speaker 1: instead of button or like you know, words that are
Speaker 1: split in half like that, they would stop like a
Speaker 1: hard stop button. You don't talking about very New Jersey.
Speaker 1: And they call everyone kid. Yeah, I knew that a kid,
Speaker 1: even if they're older than you. I didn't appreciate that anyway.
Speaker 1: I hope Chuck agrees also, so uh, I hope he's
Speaker 1: a fan of pork roll and not Taylor Ham. I'm
Speaker 1: a fan of Taylor pork Roll. I love the accounts.
Speaker 1: I thought that was the only pork Roll. Thanks for
Speaker 1: the endless amount of entertainment. Be seeing you guys in
Speaker 1: Brooklyn on the upcoming tour. So Chris Ortado from Highland Park,
Speaker 1: New Jersey. Nice. I can't wait to see at the Bellhouse.
Speaker 1: Thanks Chris. If you want to get in touchure with
Speaker 1: like Chris did, you can send us an email of
Speaker 1: Stuff podcast at how Stuff Works dot com and has
Speaker 1: always joint our home on the web, Stuff you Should
Speaker 1: Know dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows,