He Was Found Dead On A Beach With A Mysterious Message Sewn Into A Secret Pocket Of His Suit: What Happened To The Somerton Man?
On the evening of November 30, 1948, a jeweler and his wife were out for a stroll on Somerton Beach, a seaside resort near Adelaide, the capital of South Australia, when they noticed someone lying on the sand about 60 feet away.
The man was dressed in nice clothes with his head propped against a sea wall. His legs were stretched out, and his feet were crossed. He appeared to be drunk as he extended his right arm upward, then let it fall back down, perhaps in an attempt to smoke a cigarette.
Soon, another couple saw the same man lying in the same position. They noted that he was wearing a suit and freshly shined shoes. He didn’t move at all, leading the couple to assume he was just asleep.
The next morning, it became obvious that the man was dead. Investigators couldn’t figure out how the Somerton Man died. They found no identification on his person.
Throughout the years, several theories arose, with observers suggesting that he was a ballet dancer due to his muscular calves, a Soviet spy, or a spurned lover who consumed poison to end his own life.
The autopsy revealed signs that he had been poisoned, but experts were unable to detect the faintest trace of poison.
The only logical explanation was that a very rare poison had been used—one that decomposed shortly after death. Strophanthin, a rare glycoside derived from the seeds of African plants, was the number one suspect.
Four months after the body’s discovery, a reexamination produced a piece of evidence that had been missed. A small, secret pocket had been sewn into the waistband of the dead man’s pants.
It contained a scrap of paper with a mysterious message: “tamam shud.” The words were determined to be Persian, meaning “finished” or “it is ended.”
Sign up for Chip Chick’s newsletter and get stories like this delivered to your inbox.
The body had begun to decompose by then, so arrangements were made for a burial. Over the next several decades, flowers were placed on the grave, but no one knew who had put them there or why.
As the investigation continued, the police thought they noticed a secret code in a book of Persian poems and chased the lead, but nothing came of it.
Then, in 2022, researchers announced that they had finally identified the Somerton Man as Carl “Charles” Webb, a 43-year-old electrical engineer from Melbourne. His remains were exhumed the previous year to analyze his DNA once more.
Using hairs from a plaster bust of the man, a family tree of more than 4,000 people was built. Webb, who was born in 1905, emerged as the most likely match. Webb was the sixth child of a German immigrant who ran a bakery in Victoria.
When Webb was 35 years old and working as an instrument maker, he married a 21-year-old podiatrist named Dorothy Jean Robertson in 1941.
They did not have a happy marriage. In 1946, Robertson found Webb overdosed on ether. After she nursed him back to health, he became violent.
She fled their home and moved to Bute, located 89 miles northwest of Adelaide. In 1951, she filed for divorce. It is possible that Webb came to South Australia to try to find her.
Robertson’s divorce papers shed some light on the case. She described Webb as a violent, moody man with few friends. He liked horse racing and writing poems about death.
Although Webb’s identity was announced, the South Australia police are still investigating the Somerton Man’s case. Further DNA work is needed to confirm the identification.
More About:Freaky