The Taman Shud mystery (1 Viewer)

[D.O.A.]

A man was found dead in 1948 at a place called Somerton Beach in Australia.

It started to get weird when the cops noticed all the tags on his clothes had been removed. Eventually the police were able to establish it was an American made jacket he was wearing. The coroner did the autopsy and the examination of his brain and stomach pointed at him being poisoned and also his spleen had grown 3 times larger than normal, but no trace of any poison was ever found. Other than that, the guy was once in perfect health. His fingerprints matched no one on record, either in Australia or the USA or through Interpol. The police later found a brown suitcase at a rail station they believed the dead guy owned, in it were more clothes with the tags removed and other items.

In the case were a red checked dressing gown, a size seven, red felt pair of slippers; four pairs of underpants, pyjamas, shaving items, a light brown pair of trousers with sand in the cuffs, an electrician's screwdriver, a table knife cut down into a short sharp instrument, a pair of scissors with sharpened points, and a stencilling brush, as used by third officers on merchant ships for stencilling cargo.

Also in the suitcase was a thread card of Barbour brand orange waxed thread of "an unusual type" not available in Australia—it was the same as that used to repair the lining in a pocket of the trousers the dead man was wearing. All identification marks on the clothes had been removed but police found the name "T. Keane" on a tie, "Keane" on a laundry bag and "Kean" (without the last e) on a singlet, along with three dry-cleaning marks; 1171/7, 4393/7 and 3053/7. Police believed that whoever removed the clothing tags purposefully left the Keane tags on the clothes, knowing Keane was not the dead man's name. It has since been noted that the "Kean" tags were the only ones that could not have been removed without damaging the clothing.

The police found a hidden pocket in the dead guys pants, containing a scrap of paper with the words "Tamam Shud" printed on it.

The scrap looked to be torn from a book, it turned out to be from a rare book called The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
The police searched far and wide for the torn book, a man finally came forward from the same area as the murder and told police he had the book in the back of his car around the time of the murder. Police checked the book and found the torn section that matched the scrap found in the dead guys secret pocket. Police also found a cryptic message written on the back of the book that has never been solved - if it even means anything.

The Police understood that Tamam Shud translated means "ended" or "finished".
investigation of this murder has more or less "ended" or "finished". It's unsolved to this day.

Armchair theory on this guy is everything from a spy to an escaped mental patient.

 

[hecknatude]

Man looks a little like Lucky Luciano.

 

[McM]

Looks like a Cold War related spy case. All ingredients are there. Interesting.

 

[SimmonS]

I've never even heard of it and this is very near where I grew up. There is another article about it here but it doesn't do much but confirm the already listed information with a few extra details. http://www.historicmysteries.com/taman-shud/

 

[Liver1]

Those photo's look well before 1981?. The mans attire and appearence in the first picture plus the car in the second picture, looks like the 1940's to me?

 

[Tooly]

Those photo's look well before 1981?. The mans attire and appearence in the first picture plus the car in the second picture, looks like the 1940's to me?

He was found in 1948, not 1981.

 

[Hazelnuts]

That's a really cool story.

 

[killermfkaty]

I'm leaning towered the British intelligence community.

 

[tero]

I agree second photo is Luciano?

 

[PowerDrill]

I've heard about this case many times before and man what a mystery this guy is, I'm gonna have to go with the guy being involved in espionage.

 

[qlit]

On 26 July 2022, a professor Derek Abbott with genealogist Colleen M. Fitzpatrick, claimed to have identified the man as Carl "Charles" Webb, born in 1905, based on DNA of the man's hair. It was interesting. The case is closed.

Abbott's research indicates Webb enjoyed betting on horses; thus, the coded messages could be horse names.

Derek Abbott and Colleen Fitzpatrick believe that Carl had serious mental health issues and "spiralled down" after losing four close relatives in seven years. His history and the autopsy findings suggest he committed suicide by poisoning himself.

• 30 November 1948. 8:30 a.m. to 10:50 am: The Somerton Man is presumed to have arrived in Adelaide by train. He buys a ticket for the 10:50 a.m. train to Henley Beach but does not use it. This ticket is the first sold of only three issued between 6:15 a.m. and 2 p.m. by the particular ticket clerk for the Henley Beach train.
• Between 8:30 a.m. to 10:50 am: There is no satisfactory explanation for what The Somerton Man does during these hours. There is no record of the Adelaide railway station's bathroom facilities being unavailable and no ticket in his pocket to suggest he visited the Public Baths, outside of the station.
• Between 11:00 a.m. and 11:15 a.m: Checks a brown suitcase into the railway station cloak room.
• after 11:15 am: Buys a 7d bus ticket on a bus that departed at 11:15 a.m. from the south side of North Terrace (in front of the Strathmore Hotel) opposite the railway station. He may have boarded at a later time elsewhere in the city as his ticket was the sixth of nine sold between the railway station and South Terrace; however, he only had a fifteen-minute window from the earliest time he could have checked his suitcase (the luggage room was around sixty metres from the bus stop). It is not known which stop he alights at; the bus terminates at Somerton Park at 11:44 am and enquiries indicate that he "must have" alighted at Glenelg, a short distance from the St. Leonard's hotel. This stop is less than 1 kilometre (3,300 ft) north of the Moseley St address of Jessica Thomson, which was itself 400 metres from where the body was found.
• 7 p.m.–8 p.m.: Various witness sightings.
• 10 p.m.–11 p.m.: Estimated time he had eaten a pasty based on time of death.
• 1 December 2 a.m.: Estimated time of death. The time is estimated by a "quick opinion" on the state of rigor mortis while the ambulance is in transit. As a suspected suicide, no attempt to determine the correct time is made. As poisons affect the progression of rigor, 2 a.m. is probably inaccurate.
• 6:30 am: Found dead by John Lyons and two men with a horse.
• 14 January 1949: Adelaide railway station finds the brown suitcase belonging to the man.
• 6–14 June: The piece of paper bearing the inscription "Tamám Shud" is found in a concealed fob pocket.
• 17 and 21 June: Coroner's inquest.
• 22 July: A man hands in the copy of Rubaiyat he had found on 30 November (or perhaps a week or two earlier) containing an unlisted phone number and mysterious inscription. Police later match the "Tamám Shud" paper to the book.
• 26 July: The unlisted phone number discovered in the book is traced to a woman living in Glenelg (Jessica Thomson, previously Harkness). Shown the plaster cast by Paul Lawson, she does not identify the man as Alf Boxall, or any other person. Lawson's diary entry for that day names her as "Mrs Thompson" and states that she had a "nice figure" and was "very acceptable" (referring to the level of attractiveness) which allows the possibility of an affair with the Somerton man. She was 27 years old in 1948. In a later interview Lawson describes her behaviour as being very odd that day. She appeared as if she was about to faint. Jessica Harkness requests that her real name be withheld because she doesn't want her husband to know she knew Alf Boxall. Although she is in fact not married at this time, the name she gives police is Jessica Thomson, with her real name not being discovered until 2002.
• 27 July: Sydney detectives locate and interview Boxall.
• Early 1950: Prosper Thomson's divorce is finalised.
• May 1950: Jessica and Prosper Thomson are married.
• 1951: Dorothy Webb reported to be living in Bute, South Australia.
• 1950s: The original Rubaiyat is lost.
• 18 May 1953: death of Horace Charles Reynolds, Tasmanian man born in 1900 and regarded by some investigators as the owner of the "H. C. Reynolds" ID card.
• 14 March 1958: The coroner's inquest is continued. The Thomsons and Alf Boxall are not mentioned. No new findings are recorded and the inquest is ended with an adjournment sine die.
• 1986: The Somerton Man's brown suitcase and contents are destroyed as "no longer required".
• 1994: The Chief Justice of Victoria, John Harber Phillips, studies the evidence and concludes that poisoning was due to digitalis.
• 26 April 1995: Prosper Thomson dies.
• 17 August 1995: Boxall dies.
• 13 May 2007: Jessica Thomson dies.
• 18 March 2009: Robin Thomson dies.
• 14 October 2019: Attorney-General of South Australia grants conditional approval for The Somerton Man to be exhumed in order for a DNA sample to be obtained.
• 19 May 2021: Exhumation takes place.
• 26 July 2022: Derek Abbott announces that his DNA analysis has identified the man as Carl "Charles" Webb, an electrical engineer and instrument maker born in Melbourne in 1905.