The Body on Somerton Beach

August 17, 2011 7:53 AM

The coldest of cases . . . though not yet dead. New theories about Australia's case of "The Unknown Man" (previous and previouser).
posted by yerfatma (29 comments total)

I'm pretty sure that's Harvey Keitel.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 8:14 AM on August 17, 2011 [4 favorites]

I love this one, because it helps my belief that Australians are basically a tolerant lot. Bloke in a suit dying on a beach, using his last strength to reach out to passers-by, and they all think "Oh, he's just a bit pissed, we'll let him be.."
posted by Ahab at 8:19 AM on August 17, 2011 [2 favorites]

"He was lolling about 20 yards from them..."

In this age of teh intertubes, surely the author could have picked a word that didn't evoke something completely uncharacteristic...
posted by Xoebe at 8:58 AM on August 17, 2011

Somebody in Russia knows (or knew).
posted by Meatbomb at 9:05 AM on August 17, 2011

Still fascinating. Did they ever exhume the guy? What about DNA testing, comparing his to the "son" who is presumably still alive?
posted by Gator at 9:05 AM on August 17, 2011

Oh, I see on Wikipedia that the son died too, a couple of years ago. Still...
posted by Gator at 9:13 AM on August 17, 2011

I am fascinated by the idea of spy code books disguised as real books of unlikely editions. That is incredibly cool. Why the Rubaiyat? It poses all sorts of question: a book common enough to not be suspicious, but not too common or someone might notice the differences. I wonder what the perfect book would be for that purpose these days?
posted by lydhre at 9:13 AM on August 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

I wonder what the perfect book would be for that purpose these days?

The Bible. Nobody actually reads it.
posted by Malor at 9:28 AM on August 17, 2011

Great post!

Abbott has discovered that at least one other man died in Australia after the war with a copy of Khayyam’s poems close by him. This man’s name was George Marshall, he was a Jewish immigrant, and his copy of the Rubaiyat was published in London by Methuen— a seventh edition.

Man, this is so frustrating. A Jewish immigrant from where? I see this quite a bit: "a Jewish immigrant," and I'll never understand it. It's as though the described people are immigrants from the Land of Jew. Oh, hey, journalist: it seems like you are trying to convey at least some rudimentary information, yet you overlook the most fundamental basic context? Where is your brain? gah.

Anyway, this particular dead guy looks like my maternal grandfather – enough to have been him* (or, say, his brother-who-looks-very-very-much-like-him), and my grandfather was the child of German immigrants to the U.S.

It certainly seems extremely likely that the war and spycraft had something to do with this: exotic poisons, cyphers, snipped labels, apparent multiple copies of a particular book that doesn't exist, WWII nurse who apparently had a habit of passing out such books. A real-life potboiler!

* If someone had told me it was an old photo of my grandfather sick or passed out, I wouldn't have argued – but my grandfather died in the '80s
posted by taz at 9:43 AM on August 17, 2011 [5 favorites]

Fascinating case.

I'm disappointed that the release of the Mitrokhin Archive didn't wrap this up for us. Assuming Vasili Mitrokhin is legit, this surely should have merited a mention if there was any involvement on the part of the Soviets.

For those of who don't have FaceBook accounts, what are the "intriguing similarities" with Jestyn's child?
posted by BigSky at 9:56 AM on August 17, 2011

Haven't we all seen enough movies to see that this clearly was some kind of spy thing?

What a surprise it is unsolved...
posted by Windopaene at 10:09 AM on August 17, 2011

The timeline leading up to the Somerton Man incident is fascinating:


1945 June 3rd, "George" Joseph Saul Haim Marshall (aged 34) was found dead of poisoning in Mosman, Sydney. It was believed to be a suicide. A copy of Omar Khayyam was found open next to his body. Mosman is between St. Leonard's where Jestyn lived and Clifton Gardens where she later met Boxall. The estimated date of death was May 21st, 1945.
1945 August, Jestyn gives Alf Boxall an inscribed copy of the Rubaiyat over drinks at the Clifton Gardens Hotel, Sydney.
1945 September, Alf Boxall sent to military service (Cairns, Port Moresby, Bougainville)
1945 November 11th, Jestyn completes nurse training course at the Royal North Shore Hospital, NSW
1946 October 18th, Alf Boxall returns to Australia from military service.
1946 December 31st, Alf Boxall is detached to the Services Training Centre in NSW.
1947 February, Alf Boxall is discharged from military service.
1947 April, Under Operation Venona, American cryptanalysts, at the US Army’s Signal Intelligence Service, crack messages transmitted from the Russian Embassy in Canberra to Moscow. They detected leaked intelligence information, and this results in a ban of US classified information in Australia during 1948.
1947 July, Jestyn's son is born.
1948 May, Sir Percy Sillitoe, Director General of MI5 flys to Australia and prime minister Ben Chifley is informed of the security breach.
1948 August 16th, US Assistant Treasury Secretary Harry Dexter White, died suddenly of a reported digitalis overdose. He had been identified as a spy under Operation Venona.
1948 November 30th, the Somerton Man presumably arrives in Adelaide by train sometime between 8:30am and 10:54am.

posted by vacapinta at 10:09 AM on August 17, 2011 [2 favorites]

It's such an interesting but ultimately frustrating case with the lack of investigation into Jestyn, when everything appears to center around her.
posted by 6550 at 10:44 AM on August 17, 2011

For those of who don't have FaceBook accounts, what are the "intriguing similarities" with Jestyn's child?

It's really worth reading the Wikipedia page as the account is quite good (and much fuller than just a couple of years ago). Jestyn's child appears to share not one but two rare physical abnormalities with Somerton Man: a malformation of the ear and the lack of certain teeth.
posted by Jehan at 10:58 AM on August 17, 2011 [2 favorites]

paging Tim Powers!
posted by Wavelet at 12:21 PM on August 17, 2011 [2 favorites]

I find it very puzzling that Jestyn's name has never been released. Given that her apparent surname is out there, and that at least some investigators have photos of her son, it should be trivial for someone to be able to track her down given all the info (approx address, phone number, date of marriage, etc.) that is out there.
posted by anastasiav at 12:54 PM on August 17, 2011

There is something really weird with what I just read. (Yeah, you're probably saying: "No shit, Sherlock!")

Let's take a look at the chain of events:

A guy has his car parked by the beach.

Mystery man dies on the beach.

Guy takes his car from the beach for a drive. Book is found in the back of the car.

"Tamam Shud" is found in the fob pocket of the Mystery man's pants.

Guy notices the book in the back of the car. It has the words "Tamam Shud" missing from the end.

Cop finds number and code (or maybe Arabic writing or something) in the book.

Woman whose phone number it is says she gave book to a guy who is still alive and has the book intact.

Woman claims to not know the dead Mystery man but she almost faints at seeing a cast of his face.

BUT

The book that was found in the car did have the nurse's number on it. So there's the weird thing about it. I don't know. Seems relevant somehow.
posted by I-baLL at 2:36 PM on August 17, 2011

This was a great read. True mystery seems rare these days.
posted by UseyurBrain at 3:35 PM on August 17, 2011

anastasiav, Jestyn's real name is possible to find out (although not easy) and most of the more obsessive dedicated sleuthers on the case know it. Not making it public is a courtesy to her surviving relatives, who are apparently going through some very rough times and don't need a camera crew turning up on their doorstep.

Gator, the author of the book on the case has some info on his website stating that the Attorney General has refused an application from another party to exhume the unknown man. I suspect at this stage it would only be granted to the potential relatives or other people who can prove a need to know.
posted by andraste at 4:33 PM on August 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

The story of the Somerton Man is what inspired me to leave a piece of paper with a bunch of Zodiac-style characters on it in my wallet. That way if I happen to die on the side of a road somewhere, people will think, "poor sumbitch, got drunk and wandered into the street," but they'll discover the paper and say, "ZOMG, he's a spy, IT MUST BE MURDER CALL ANDERSON COOPER" and a fuss will be made about me for decades.
posted by Golfhaus at 5:22 PM on August 17, 2011 [10 favorites]

You, sir, are a genius.
posted by Gator at 5:39 PM on August 17, 2011

This blog and beachcombing have added a bit of classy mystery and intrigue to my otherwise (these days at least( depressing rss reader.
posted by the christopher hundreds at 6:06 PM on August 17, 2011

I am fascinated by the idea of spy code books disguised as real books of unlikely editions. That is incredibly cool. Why the Rubaiyat? It poses all sorts of question: a book common enough to not be suspicious, but not too common or someone might notice the differences. I wonder what the perfect book would be for that purpose these days?

I'm fascinated by this too, and I enjoyed pondering the "perfect book" question while I did dishes. The most interesting thing I could come up with was a Mad Libs book with the code disguised as the words on the filled-in blanks, written in bubbly tween-girl-at-a-slumber-party handwriting.
posted by amyms at 7:45 PM on August 17, 2011 [3 favorites]

I'd start off by assuming the cops back in 1948 weren't idiots, and had basically the same sort of skills and instincts as cops today. If that's so, the lead which screamed at them for followup, is that "Jestyn," in claiming not to know the victim, was obviously lying. That sort of a lead is red meat to today's cops. A live witness that you know is concealing information? They'd go at that woman hard, over and over. So, I think, would the cops of 1948. If they didn't, I wonder why, and the first answer that springs to my mind is that they were damn well told not to. Too bad that the people in a position to speak to that possibility are also long since dead.
posted by tyllwin at 8:11 PM on August 17, 2011 [5 favorites]

If they didn't, I wonder why, and the first answer that springs to my mind is that they were damn well told not to.
Indeed, but as this hasn't come to light in any of the regular document declassification hand outs after both 30 and 50 years have expired, it might be buried so deep we will never know.
posted by bystander at 12:24 AM on August 18, 2011

He was the spy who shagged her. She knew he was a spy, as her job was to get next to him and find that out. He sired her son, yes. But he was never expected to find her again.
posted by Goofyy at 2:30 AM on August 18, 2011

It appears that this Facebook group is actively working on the case.
posted by vacapinta at 4:27 AM on August 18, 2011

That was a really cool read. Thanks, Fatty.
posted by The Ultimate Olympian at 4:41 AM on August 18, 2011

I think the doctor (the one who found the book in his car, as reported in the Wikpedia article) killed him.

It was his brother in law who found the book in the back seat on the floor. So it goes in the glove box; "no big deal," Mr. Doctor thinks, nothing to connect it with the victim. But then police finally find the bit of text in the hidden pocket, and the brother in law is all "ooh, ooh, let's check that book we found in your car," and Mr. Doctor's all "*sigh*."

Anyway, he's a doctor (probably; I'm not sure this is confirmed) and Jestyn's a former nurse, so he knows about and presumably has access to fast-acting, untraceable poisons (like digitalis). I wonder if he was a smoker. I wonder if they checked his brand of cigarettes? Unfortunately, it seems that this is another individual connected with the case who wasn't pursued with great vigor (and whose identity, like Jestyn's, was withheld).

The Wikipedia reference note connected with the info about the doctor makes him even more suspicious in my estimation:

Intriguingly, the day after the copy of The Rubaiyat with the scrap of paper missing was handed into police, another Glenelg resident supplied a copy of The Rubaiyat to police, stating that he too had found the book in the back of his car at the time of the discovery of the body. The Advertiser, "Army Officer Sought to Help Solve Somerton Body Case", 27 July 1949, p. 1

Because he knows he's going to have to bring the book to the police (on account of his pain-in-the-ass brother in law), he or his superiors (or Jestyn's) arrange to have someone else "discover" a copy of the Rubaiyat in their backseat. Like there's some rash of Rubaiyats appearing in people's cars. Isn't that the darndest thing? And the second guy who found one in his car happens to be an army officer.

The doctor did it, in the back seat, with the digitalis. He might have done it for love, for Jestyn, or he might have been a spy. But the book in his car doesn't seem to make sense otherwise. If Somerton Man wanted the book found, he'd have kept it with him, or placed it somewhere more reliable; if he wanted it lost, he wouldn't have put it in someone's car.

(Unless he put it there planning to pick it up on his way back, but that seems a terribly risky plan; what if the owner took the car out before he returned? Or found it and removed it? Not a great place to stash something you want to retrieve.)

The very fact that he had the book with him is interesting; why not leave it in his suitcase with his other stuff? He could have transcribed the phone number. Either the book was too valuable to lose (in case he somehow couldn't get back to his suitcase, or someone stole the suitcase), or he needed it to identify himself to someone. Or the book was never his, and he only received the bit of paper... but this seems extremely unlikely since Jestyn was apparently dispensing Rubaiyats, and he seems almost certainly to have been the father of her child.

Anyway, terribly fascinating. This seems like a perfect project for the Vidocq Society.
posted by taz at 5:08 AM on August 18, 2011 [1 favorite]