The Somerton Man

This bad boy has been the big kahuna of Australian mysteries for a long time, and it’s time for your girls to take a swipe at the Somerton Man, the mystery man whose body was found lying on Somerton Beach in Adelaide in 1948. The man had no identification, no money, no labels on his clothes, and a mysterious clue in his pocket – a rolled up piece of paper bearing the words tamam shud, meaning ‘the end’ or ‘finished’.

To solve the mystery of how he died, the police first had to establish who the hell he was – an answer that eludes investigators, both official and unofficial, to this day.


EPISODE NOTES:

The Somerton Man was found dead on 1 December 1948. There was nothing on his body to indicate who he was. A suitcase found at the Adelaide Train Station that was linked to the man revealed that all the labels had been taken off his clothes. He had nothing to show who he was or where he’d come from, or where the hell he bought his clothes. The only clue in his pocket came from the piece of paper in his pocket bearing the words tamam shud, that was linked to a book of 12th century Persian poetry found in the backseat of an unrelated man’s car, that contained a phone number of a woman who was lying about her identity and her marriage, and also a secret code that Australia’s best military codebreakers could not decipher. So nothing weird, then.

It sounds a little too much like an Agatha Christie to be true, but the case of the Somerton Man has endured throughout the decades and across the world, as people both online and in real life dedicate hours of time to cracking the code and trying to piece together anything that will lead to finding out this unknown man’s identity.


For a nice long read overview of the case, head herehttps://stories.californiasunday.com/2015-06-07/somerton-man/ or herehttps://www.cnet.com/news/solving-the-somerton-man-mystery-australias-most-baffling-cold-case/or herehttps://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-01/will-the-mystery-of-the-somerton-man-ever-be-solved/10420794 or honestly anywhere on the web, it’s a pretty famous case.


A transcription of the 1949 inquest can be found here, thanks Derek Abbotthttps://www.eleceng.adelaide.edu.au/personal/dabbott/wiki/index.php/The_Taman_Shud_Case_Coronial_Inquest

For a really, REALLY long read of the case with every possible theory outlined and then discredited, go herehttps://somerandomstuff1.wordpress.com/2018/11/09/the-ultimate-guide-to-the-somerton-man-mystery/

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