0:00

M Hey, everybody, it's me Josh,

0:02

and for this week's Select I chose our two

0:04

thousand seventeen episode about

0:06

the Man on Somerton Beach, one

0:09

of the most interesting unsolved mysteries

0:11

we've ever encountered. Despite

0:13

lead after lead, it remains unsolved

0:16

today and seemingly will remain

0:18

that way forever. And after listening to this

0:20

one, if you liked it a lot, you can go further

0:22

down the rabbit hole. There's plenty more stuff

0:24

on it all over the web, and there have even

0:26

been some updates since we recorded. So

0:29

prepared to be baffled and engrossed.

0:37

Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production

0:39

of I Heart Radio. Hey,

0:47

and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark

0:49

with Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and today

0:52

is a very special day. We have a

0:54

special guest producer, Matt been

0:57

a while. It has been a while, man, it's been

0:59

since like two fourteen

1:01

or something. Yeah, and Matt is one half of the

1:03

stuff they don't want you to know. Oh

1:06

yeah, that's right. There's three of them, and we

1:08

are sort of awkwardly recording

1:10

two of the same shows they've done.

1:13

So Matt's just sitting there with his arms crossed,

1:15

shaking his head back and forth. So

1:17

we're trying not to look at him. Are you doing?

1:21

I'm good except for Matt looking at us like

1:23

that. What do you do for the eclipse?

1:25

I looked at the eclipse unwisely?

1:28

Um from where from my house?

1:30

I didn't I didn't see a full

1:33

the full schmo. I figured you guys

1:35

would be exactly the type to drive

1:38

two hours to see it. No you

1:40

did, though, huh, yeah, how was it?

1:43

Well? I don't want to be one of those dudes. But

1:45

the difference between in

1:48

full eclipse is all the

1:50

difference in the world. I saw it put. I can't

1:52

remember who put it, but they said that the difference between

1:55

seeing a partial eclipse and a full eclipse

1:57

is the difference between kissing a person

2:00

and marrying a person. Oh well, that's from the

2:02

legendary eclipse article from The Atlantic

2:04

from okay,

2:07

who wrote it? Oh man? Um?

2:09

I even like sent myself the link

2:11

to read it today and I haven't

2:14

read it. It's probably Tina Turner, the

2:16

height of her career was It

2:18

was written by Annie Dillard. Okay,

2:21

it's called total Eclipse, and I haven't ready yet. But it's supposed

2:23

to be just remarkable,

2:25

and that's exactly how she put it, and it was I

2:29

think so. So that would have been a year before Bonnie

2:31

Tyler came out with Totally Eclips of the Heart. Yeah,

2:34

it was two. Yeah.

2:36

I cried, and like five

2:38

other people with this cried like spontaneously.

2:42

Tears were coming out of my face and I was like, what

2:44

is happening to my body?

2:46

Did you? I mean, what have you concluded? I

2:48

don't know, man, it was just overwhelming. That's

2:51

neat to stare at the corona and we're

2:53

going like too probably

2:55

Texas for the next one. Like I'm

2:58

going to every path

3:00

of totality that I can get to between

3:03

now and the time that I died here in the clip side. Now

3:05

I'm a totalitat,

3:08

totalitist to tattlest Yeah,

3:11

and it was we almost didn't go, like literally

3:13

that morning we were debating and I was like, it's

3:15

two hours away, let's just get in the car and go. That's

3:17

very cool. Um. And my daughter saw

3:20

it, which

3:22

was weird for her, like she knew something was

3:24

up even at two years old. Yeah,

3:27

the Sun's cane black, Yeah, and stars

3:29

came out and crickets chirped, and it was

3:31

just really strange. Yeah, uh

3:34

yeah, it was very quick two minutes. But I think the

3:36

one in two thousand seven is going to have a

3:39

four and a half minute totality.

3:42

When is it two seven years

3:44

from now?

3:47

Okay, and that's that great.

3:50

Maybe we'll drive to Texas too, Well, i'll drive together.

3:52

Well, if you won't drive two hours, where are you gonna go to Texas?

3:55

Oh hey, if I ever have a

3:57

good reason to go to Texas, I'll take it. Well,

4:00

it's Texas. And then I mean we may go

4:02

to Akron because that's where Emily's from. It

4:04

goes through Akron, the kind of over

4:06

to Maine on

4:08

that you guys should just follow it in your van. Well,

4:11

you know, I wondered, what how fast?

4:13

Of course you can't do this, but how fast would you

4:15

have to travel the speed of the moon? Stay

4:18

in the path of totality the speed of the moon,

4:20

which is what like a hundred million miles

4:22

an hour or something like that. I don't know. Listen

4:25

to our Moon episode. It's my new drug totality.

4:27

That's neat man. Yeah, I'm glad that

4:30

happened to you. Happened

4:32

on me got all get

4:34

all over me. Uh,

4:38

how okay, you want to talk about this the

4:40

eclipse. No, you know what's funny is

4:42

that we didn't do it podcasts

4:44

on eclipses. No, I thought about that. We never

4:47

have, I know, And it's just just

4:49

like us, Moon goes in front of sun, moon

4:51

goes away from Sune, it goes up,

4:53

it goes there. Uh

4:56

yeah, that's just figures. I'm sure we'll end

4:58

up talking about like we'll do an epis so don't

5:00

unlike the effective an eclipse on plants

5:02

first, and then you know, some

5:05

other tangentially related episode,

5:07

and then maybe after that we'll do how

5:09

eclips work. Maybe if we're

5:11

still around in seven years there

5:13

you go. How about that's a good idea. And I jinks

5:16

just before by saying we won't be around, which

5:18

is an opposite jinks I was gonna say,

5:20

is that a jinx? Yeah, that's to ensure that

5:22

we will be around. Smart, thank

5:25

you. So we're

5:27

talking today, Chuck about a

5:30

pretty unusual mystery. Are

5:32

you familiar with this one before? Yeah? We I

5:34

think we covered this in an Internet roundup or something.

5:37

Oh yeah, yeah, I mean we definitely talked

5:39

about it. But I scoured our

5:41

archives and I didn't find an official

5:44

show, So I wonder where it came up, because yeah,

5:46

I mean we've talked about it for sure,

5:49

um, and then it was a

5:51

lot of times you would do one of your

5:54

best things you've read this week, we

5:56

would then do an internet roundup piece on that. Okay,

5:59

that's probably where it came up. Then, did you're like, this is so

6:01

good it should be seen by dozens of people exactly?

6:05

I want to share it with the twenty

6:07

Um. Yeah, I probably

6:09

guess the article that I did the best

6:11

stuff we've read this week on would have

6:13

been the Body on Somerton

6:16

Beach I think is what it was called. Is the Smithsonian

6:19

article from years and years it was? Um,

6:22

so yeah, there's been plenty of good articles about

6:24

it. That one, uh is a good

6:26

one. There's one from California

6:29

Sunday magazine called

6:31

the Lost Man. Yeah,

6:34

just some good stuff out there. If this floats

6:36

your boat, it does. But let us set let

6:38

us set the theme for you, okay, because this story

6:40

takes place in Adelaide, in

6:42

uh, South Australia, which

6:45

is not just a place, it's a state as

6:47

well. Did you know that? Yeah, I wonder what they

6:49

call how they pronounced Adelaide there probably

6:52

not like I just said it, um,

6:55

but in Adelaide, South Australia, Adelaides the

6:57

capital. Uh it's a from

6:59

what I understand, And we haven't been there yet,

7:01

but we probably will maybe next year. I'm

7:05

not going to Adelaide though, I don't

7:07

know. It sounds kind of neat and creep a

7:09

little weird, right, but weird in some weird

7:11

ways. So um Adelaide is

7:13

this This place is kind of known as

7:16

the murder murder capital of Australia,

7:19

but it doesn't have necessarily like the highest

7:21

homicide rate in Australia.

7:24

It just has a history of kind

7:27

of weird, gruesome,

7:29

grizzly murders. Yeah. I think if you've

7:31

had more than two or

7:33

three like dismemberment

7:36

type murders, that you're on

7:38

the map, and they definitely have.

7:41

There was there was a very famous

7:43

case in the sixties of

7:46

the um the Beaumont children

7:49

who went missing off of a beach called

7:51

Glenn L Beach. I think

7:53

that's probably how you say it um, which

7:55

is near Adelaide, and uh, we're

7:58

never heard from again, no trace was ever found.

8:00

We should do an episode on that one too.

8:03

Um there was the family

8:07

yeah, uh so dubbed

8:09

by the cops in the seventies and eighties. This

8:11

one's really freaky. These were supposedly

8:14

just like regular professional

8:18

men, presumed men who

8:20

had a sort of cabal of

8:23

torture and murder of young boys,

8:25

basically like season one of True

8:28

Detective, but in real life in

8:30

Australia, with a well

8:32

with an equally weird ending.

8:35

Right, yeah, the sky just opens

8:38

up. It's a total eclipse. Uh.

8:40

And that one again unsolved, right, Uh,

8:43

it was never it was I think one

8:45

person was convicted, but the people

8:48

that he implicated were never charged

8:50

or convicted. What

8:53

about the bodies in the barrel thing? That's all

8:55

you need to say. Okay, there's

8:57

a string of group of murders called

8:59

the bodies in the barrels murders. Right,

9:02

it's a lot of pluralization, it is. Uh.

9:04

And then, um, so the

9:07

idea that the one we're talking about, which

9:09

is the death of just one man, a

9:12

non violent death possibly um

9:15

who was found on a beach almost

9:17

seventy years ago. For that

9:19

to still have Australia

9:21

and like the world in its grips today,

9:25

it must be a pretty interesting case, agreed,

9:27

And it is. Yeah, so I

9:29

guess we should go back in time, getting

9:32

the old Way back machine and travel

9:35

south to Adelaide post

9:38

war Adelaide.

9:46

Look how beautiful it is here. It's hot.

9:49

I smell shrimp cooking on the barbie,

9:51

um drinking a Foster's. Yeah,

9:54

it's like a fifty five gallon drum of foster

9:56

and lots of other Australian tropes are

9:58

happening all around me. There's

10:01

a crocodile dundeees over there.

10:04

Why there? When we tour there, they're going to really

10:06

get because like after the

10:08

show, the first show, you

10:10

can run us out of town. They find New Zealand

10:13

wants us. Yeah. New Zealand say,

10:15

yeah, come on over here. Uh

10:17

so Adelaide is um, Well,

10:20

it's an interesting place post war Um.

10:23

Apparently there was. It was kind

10:25

of a place where you could go to sort

10:27

of real if you want to disappear and rewrite

10:29

your life. That wasn't a bad place to

10:31

do it. Um.

10:33

There was a lot of black marketeering

10:36

going on. Apparently it was really hard to

10:38

get your hands on a car. Um.

10:40

So there's like a big black market for cars

10:42

of all of all stolen

10:45

nous, all levels of stolenness.

10:48

Um. Yeah, there's there's just a

10:50

certain amount of post war scarcity

10:52

that was still going on, and there's a lot of espionage

10:55

going on to right. So the Cold War

10:57

had just started in Australia was in this

11:00

weird position where there

11:02

were a lot of Soviet spies running

11:04

around, there were a lot of Brits

11:06

and American spies running around, and

11:08

the British themselves were conducting secret

11:11

rocket tests in the country. So there

11:13

was um, there was a lot of espionage, a lot

11:15

of black marketing um, and a lot

11:17

of people who were not who they

11:19

claimed to be floating around this

11:21

country, running around and floating right.

11:24

So that brings us to a

11:27

very important date for the story. Tuesday

11:30

November, about

11:32

seven in the evening. There was a jeweler named

11:35

John Lyons and his wife. They

11:37

were taking a little stroll there on Somerton Beach,

11:39

which I'm sure as lovely um,

11:43

and they saw something we were They were walking towards

11:45

glenn Elk so I guess they're connected beaches,

11:48

yeah, yeah, And they

11:50

saw something interesting on the sea wall there.

11:52

They saw a man lying

11:55

in the sand, but very well dressed in

11:57

a suit kind of propped up on the

11:59

sea wall there as if he were sort of sitting

12:01

up about sixty

12:03

ft away. In America, that's

12:06

twenty yards. In

12:08

Australia it is a certain amount of meters

12:11

about twenty Okay, really

12:13

is that what works? Man? It's pretty close to the

12:15

yard in the meter are very similar. Um,

12:20

and he he was doing something interesting,

12:22

so they say, uh,

12:24

he extended his right arm upward and then

12:26

just let it fall back down to the ground. And they

12:28

thought that looks like a passed

12:30

out drunk guy, or maybe a barely wake

12:33

drunk guy, maybe trying to have a cigarette

12:35

or they I mean, it was remarkable

12:38

and that they made a mental note of it, but they

12:40

just kept walking and whatever. I think his suit

12:43

being on the beach was probably one of the big deals.

12:45

Yeah, he was very sharply dressed, not just

12:47

wearing a suit on the beach like the studio

12:49

was wearing. Was pretty nice, pretty nice.

12:52

Um In About a half hour later, another

12:54

couple walked past, and this

12:56

this time the guy wasn't moving at all. Um

13:00

and apparently he had a whole

13:02

swarm of mosquitoes around his face, and

13:04

the boyfriend says to the girlfriend

13:07

that guy must be dead to the world. If

13:09

he's not noticing those mosquitoes, he must

13:11

just be absolutely wasted, so that they

13:13

were clearly closer, I guess.

13:15

So I think it's seen mosquitoes on his face, Yeah,

13:18

for sure, because from twenty yards it's

13:20

a tough thing to see. I don't know, for a

13:22

straining mosquitoes are all

13:24

right. So the next

13:26

morning, um became

13:29

pretty clear what was going on here, that this was

13:31

a dead man. The same jeweler

13:33

John Lyons. He went for a little morning swim,

13:36

as you were to do in Australian the

13:38

mornings when you're hungover, and

13:41

he saw a bunch of people crowded around where

13:43

the guy was and it was

13:46

it was on. It was as a dead dude.

13:48

Yeah, the dude was in basically the same position

13:51

he'd seen him in the night before.

13:52

That that crowd was like, he's

13:54

dead, croy key and

13:57

uh yeah, so Lions

13:59

is like that was pretty surprising

14:02

and that's the end of John Lyons. Yeah,

14:04

but very important here, and that

14:06

they are the only people who supposedly saw this

14:09

body move right, super important.

14:12

So, um, within about a few hours,

14:14

the body is in the morgue at the hospital

14:17

and as being examined, and

14:20

just from the initial examination there

14:22

was a lot of um,

14:25

just weirdness that immediately came out. Right.

14:28

So remember the guys like sitting up

14:30

against the sea wall. Um,

14:32

his legs are extended out, his feet

14:34

are crossed. There was a cigarette,

14:36

depending on who you ask, either a half

14:39

burned cigarette, either dangling from

14:41

his mouth or on the

14:43

collar of his shirt as if it had fallen from

14:45

his mouth. Um. And

14:49

when he was taken into the morgue that the doctor

14:51

said that he was probably dead

14:54

by two am. Yeah,

14:57

and most likely when they did the full autopsy,

14:59

a man named On Dwyer said he was probably

15:02

poisoned initially, even

15:04

though there were no traces of poison,

15:06

which is a little odd, right, But the reason he said

15:08

that is because when they cracked the guy opened this,

15:11

this this John Doe, who's widely become

15:13

known as the Somerton Man. Um,

15:16

his organs were all kinds of messed

15:18

up. He had blood

15:21

and his stomach along with his final

15:23

meal, which was a pasty. It's

15:25

like a pocket Yeah, delicious

15:28

hot pocket hand tie. Yeah.

15:31

Um that sounds dirty

15:33

hand pie. Yeah. Um,

15:36

there's his spleen was

15:38

enlarged and engorged with blood. Yeah,

15:41

that's not a good sign and firm.

15:43

His liver was giant and bloody,

15:46

not unusual for Australians

15:49

that fifty five gallon Joma Foster. His

15:52

pupils were smaller than normal

15:54

and just quote unusual whatever

15:57

that means. Right, uh.

15:59

And then they say that he had a little

16:01

spittle on the side of his mouth that

16:04

you know, like, you know, I

16:06

thought that was a pretty tacky thing to note. Yeah,

16:09

just leave the guy alone. He's dead, like sleepy drool

16:12

is what I thought. If I'm pretty, if I'm so pretty

16:14

that I just have a little bit of spittle coming down

16:16

my mouth when I'm dead, I'll be more

16:18

than happy. Oh you mean, if you if that's

16:20

the only thing. Yeah, I agreed. I

16:23

mean, come on, give the guy a break. Well,

16:25

you know, they were doing forensics. Yeah,

16:29

so, and indeed they did, and they

16:31

kept saying like this gotta be poisoning,

16:33

like his organs are all kinds of messed up,

16:35

but there was no trace of

16:38

poisoning. They brought in this guy named Cedric

16:40

Stanton Hicks, the

16:42

hand PI and there, Yeah, nothing's wrong, right.

16:44

They gave it to Eugene and he was

16:47

still standing afterwards. Yeah, so it's

16:49

all good. Um. So Sir

16:51

Cedric Stanton Hicks comes in and says,

16:53

well, let me let me see this, and he

16:56

um concluded that it was

16:58

probably one of two poisons

17:01

that would have done this kind of damage

17:03

resulted in heart failure. We didn't say that,

17:05

so they concluded he probably died

17:08

from his heart failure. Ultimately, Um,

17:11

but that wouldn't have left a trace. And

17:13

he did not feel like it

17:15

was a responsible move on his part

17:17

to say these things out loud on

17:19

the record during the coroner's inquest.

17:22

So he wrote them down

17:25

and the car was like, okay, all right, picked

17:27

him up and read and what he read was Digitalis

17:31

and Struugh Phantom and Sir Cedric

17:33

said, he said it, I didn't write. He

17:36

goes, oh gosh, did I say that out loud? That

17:38

sounds like something that you've seen the movie, just

17:41

you know, added for the drama. But apparently

17:43

it really am right. So he read

17:45

those names. I don't know if you read those names, but at least

17:47

those names were recorded onto the record.

17:50

Uh. Sir Cedric Stanton Hicks

17:53

suspected the strophanthem although

17:55

later investigators

17:58

I feel sure it was probably the digit tell us. It

18:01

sounds like it doesn't matter which one it was because they

18:03

were both kind of used and

18:05

I think are maybe still used the

18:07

treat heart disease. Is that true? Yeah, Um,

18:10

and then you can get them with the prescription

18:12

from a pharmacy. I don't know if they're still

18:14

used. Maybe they are, but they definitely were

18:17

common at the time or obtainable

18:20

in in just about every major city.

18:22

Um. So they have an idea

18:24

of maybe what poison it was. But again it

18:27

bears pointing out again

18:29

and again that they

18:31

no one has ever found any direct

18:33

evidence that the man was poisoned. And

18:36

to this day, two thousand, seventeen

18:38

and beyond, if you're listening to this years

18:40

from now, um, they

18:43

still don't know how he died. Yeah,

18:45

and you they may still be looking

18:48

because this is one of those like the dB

18:50

Cooper when we did. That's one of those cases where

18:53

amateur sluice on the Internet are still trying

18:56

to figure stuff like this out. And unless we

18:58

come up with some really amazing

19:01

technologies in the

19:03

next ten twenty years or something

19:05

like that, the time is passing

19:08

quite quickly on this case and D. B. Cooper

19:10

as well, where we may never know may

19:12

remain a mystery forever unless

19:15

we invent time travel. Then

19:17

somebody will go back and figure those out. So

19:20

the dude, it looks a little

19:22

bit like Harvey Kitel, he asked me. He does, And

19:24

you think so? I mean, look up a picture

19:26

of this guy. If you're not in your car, you can look him up.

19:29

There are two very famous photos I

19:31

guess from the autopsy scene. Um,

19:34

just straight onto his face and then sort of you

19:36

know, from the side with his eyes open. Yeah,

19:38

it looks like Harvey Kitell. It

19:41

looks like a wasted Harvey Kitel, which

19:43

is to say, he looks like Harvey Kitel. Um,

19:47

so he's in about his mid forties. Yeah,

19:49

I guess a younger Harvey Keitel. Yeah. Uh,

19:52

he's wearing this double breasted suit. Um.

19:54

I saw that he was wearing a nit pull over with

19:57

a necktie. Who And

19:59

this sounds like we're being um

20:02

two specific by saying the stripes slanted

20:05

from left to right. But we're not. We're

20:07

not. That will come into play. Well, just

20:09

hang onto that nugget. Yeah, put

20:11

that one in your pipe for later. He had no

20:13

hat, which was weird for that time. Oh,

20:16

I hadn't ran across that, but yeah, I've never

20:18

seen that there was a hat. Yeah, and they never found

20:20

a hat, but it would be unusual for a man

20:22

of late forties to not have a hat. Yeah, I

20:24

guess so. For doors were huge. I'll

20:26

bet Panama hats were huge down in Adelaide

20:29

at the time. For doors in Australia were literally

20:31

huge. It's like the sombreros made

20:35

of tortillas melted

20:37

cheese in the middle man.

20:40

Is that a thing? It was on the Simpsons too.

20:43

Hat. Uh.

20:45

What else? He had weird feet, yeah, wedge

20:48

shaped feet, they said, and that his

20:50

his shoes seemed to be molded almost

20:52

to his feet. The real

20:54

weird giveaway was his

20:57

calves. His calves were

20:59

remarkable. They were bulbous

21:03

below the just below the knee. And

21:05

the guy who who performed

21:08

the autopsy, I think it was Dwyer, said, Uh,

21:11

this is like what dancers or

21:14

people who wear high heels, just the kind

21:16

of calves that they have. He said, look at that, he looks

21:18

like Lena Horn the Oh my

21:20

gosh, it is hon Uh.

21:23

Yeah, so that that's definitely notable. Um

21:29

uh The other thing they found out too was um.

21:31

A couple of physical traits

21:34

that he had which will come into play later on his

21:36

ear. His simba, which is the

21:38

upper hollow

21:40

portion of the ear hollow caved

21:43

in. Yeah, the

21:45

rolled over part up here, No, like

21:47

just the upper you know hole

21:50

than the lower part. Yeah,

21:53

we've ever done show on ears, have we?

21:55

We should? The simba is larger

21:57

than the cave um, which is a

22:00

fairly rare thing. So I

22:02

would guess the cabum is where your eardrum

22:04

leads to your ear drum. Yeah, that's where you put

22:07

your finger when you want to write. But

22:09

if you go, if you put your finger up over that

22:11

ridge does not. That's the simba. Yeah,

22:14

so yeah, that would be weird if this one was

22:16

bigger than that one. Yeah. It's a pretty rare

22:18

genetic trait, as were his

22:21

strange teeth. Yeah, he had something called hypodontia,

22:24

which is he was missing his lateral

22:26

incisors, which are the teeth

22:29

that most people have between their front teeth

22:31

and their canines. His lateral

22:34

incisers never developed, so his canines

22:36

were adjacent to his front teeth.

22:39

Yeah, and it's um. Would

22:41

you say hypodontia. That that can

22:43

be as common as like you never get your wisdom

22:46

teeth, but in this case those

22:48

particular teeth, that was pretty rare. Something

22:50

like, well, I saw hypodontia in in

22:54

so that would include not getting wisdom teeth.

22:56

Huh, well, in any teeth, not developing

22:58

his hypodone I got. Well, I don't

23:01

know if hypodonta in general or just

23:03

this type of hypodonta

23:06

of the population. Yeah, it's specifically

23:08

for those teeth. Was pretty rare. Yeah, two,

23:10

pretty rare. Like everyone's got

23:12

those teeth, and people at home are like, why

23:15

are you saying all these weird

23:17

stuff? Who cares to just settle

23:19

down? Everybody settle down because it's

23:21

all going to come into play. We haven't said anything

23:24

that will not come back into play. Al

23:26

Right, should we take a break? I think we should. Everybody's

23:28

getting all riled up. Let's take a break, and then

23:31

we're going to detail, uh,

23:33

for about fifteen minutes what was in his pockets? Okay,

24:02

chuck, So we went over the body.

24:05

Yeah, it's time to go through his personal

24:07

effects, which were kind

24:09

of weird in and of themselves. All about the

24:11

details. So when you're talking about murders and disappearances

24:14

and then unsolved after

24:16

seventy years. Yes, you need to pay attention to

24:18

the detail. What kind of podcast cops

24:21

would we be if we were just like, Yeah,

24:23

he just sort of looked like Harvey kit Tell and he's in a

24:25

suit d and no good.

24:28

That sounded like Harvey kit Tell. Yeah it

24:30

did, didn't it? Yeah

24:33

it was. It was my Harvey kite Tel on the piano.

24:37

Oh man, what a movie? Um?

24:39

All right? So in his pockets he had a peck of juicy

24:41

fruit. The

24:44

juicy fruit, yeah, chewing

24:46

gum stuff. He had some matches,

24:48

Bryant and May matches. He

24:50

had, uh, well, he had a lot

24:52

of tickets in his pocket. He had a

24:55

an unused train ticket from Adelaide

24:57

to Henley Beach, had a

24:59

bust ticket from Adelaide to Glenelg

25:02

And then he had a ticket, a used ticket that

25:05

said he had come from

25:09

arrived there by by bus from

25:11

the railway station there. Yeah, from the Adelaide

25:14

railway correct. Yeah. Uh.

25:16

He also had um

25:19

a pack of cigarettes that were weird

25:21

Army Club army. The

25:24

pack of cigarettes was an Army Club pack,

25:26

but inside with something called conceitas

25:29

which was a much more expensive

25:31

brand. So that makes no sense,

25:34

Like, that's the opposite of the only thing

25:36

that could make sense, which is he

25:39

just kept the expensive pack and would put cheap cigarettes

25:41

in it to look fancy, right, unless

25:44

he didn't want people bumming the expensive ones

25:46

off of him, so he kept a cheap pack or

25:51

right, The likelier story is that he

25:53

bombed some a bunch of cigarettes off of

25:56

somebody and put them in his

25:58

his own pack, al right, Like, hey man, he got

26:00

a smoke or seven or seven interesting

26:04

or perhaps they were poisoned

26:06

and put in that pack. That's another possible

26:08

explanation to write. So um

26:11

his his that was like the extent of his

26:13

personal effects, aside from his

26:15

clothing. Right, there was no idea he had a couple

26:17

of combs, okay hair combs.

26:20

More to the point, there was no idea,

26:23

no idea, no no

26:25

wallet, no cash.

26:27

Kind of odd for sure,

26:30

and his clothes were odd in and

26:32

of themselves. Right. So again, he was wearing a very

26:34

nice suit. But the um

26:37

makers labels of all

26:40

of his clothes have been from what I understand,

26:42

carefully snipped away. Yeah, I

26:45

saw one explanation for this that made it seem

26:47

a little less odd um,

26:50

which was back then. Apparently people

26:53

oftentimes would because there were nice

26:56

clothes, were not scarce, but

26:58

he wanted to keep them for yourself, so

27:00

you would write your name a lot of times

27:02

on your like suit jackets and things, and

27:05

then if you ever went to sell them second hand,

27:07

you would flip out those labels.

27:11

So that's one explanation that's not bad.

27:13

I don't know if that's a reach or not, but at least something

27:15

could make sense out of that. But

27:18

the other thing could mean that this person was

27:21

being dumped and no one wanted them

27:23

to know who they were. It's a possibility

27:26

to or that he didn't want anyone to know who

27:28

he was. That's another possibility as well.

27:30

That's what a lot of people think, that he was trying

27:32

to cover up his own identity as well. Um,

27:36

his his trousers

27:38

I think had a little repair done

27:40

with orange thread bear

27:42

with us um,

27:45

and then that was about it. They

27:48

they they took

27:50

fingerprints of the guy and spread around to

27:53

no avail. But the fingerprints, right,

27:56

they they've

27:58

figured out after a little a while. I'm

28:00

not sure when, but this would have been so November

28:03

December one is when he was found. This

28:06

is to this is like July

28:08

to us in the northern Hemisphere, the beginning of

28:10

July. So starting to get

28:13

hot down there, right, You can only

28:15

keep a body for so long in the nineteen forties

28:18

in summer in

28:20

Adelaide, it's already a hot place

28:22

to begin with. And um, the

28:24

authorities were like, we we can't keep this guy

28:27

above ground any longer. So somebody had the bright

28:29

idea of making a plaster bust

28:31

of him, and they did, and they

28:33

kept it at the Morgan and they buried him

28:36

in a pretty smart way if you ask me.

28:38

Yeah, they buried him, uh with this

28:40

marker. Here lies the unknown man who was found

28:42

at Somerton Beach first December, and

28:45

he was buried just in really

28:48

dry ground so if they ever needed to get in

28:50

there they could. And they

28:52

encased him in concrete as well to

28:54

realize, like, keep him preserved

28:57

as much as possible if you ever needed to be exhumed,

28:59

right correct. So, um,

29:01

like I said, they took the set of fingerprints

29:04

and they're still looking for this guy. They buried him

29:06

finally, but they're like, this is driving

29:08

us insane. Who was this man?

29:10

What happened? To him. Um.

29:12

So they spread the fingerprints

29:14

all over Australia. They started

29:17

to send him around to America,

29:19

the UK, it just English

29:22

speaking countries. Yeah. They also,

29:25

uh like kind of before they got

29:27

rid of the real body, they brought people in locals

29:30

to see if anyone could identify them.

29:33

I think afterward they probably showed quite

29:35

a few people the bust and they were

29:37

just trying to do anything and nobody, nobody

29:40

could recognize who this person was. No. I mean

29:42

some people saw like pictures of

29:44

the bust or the death pictures

29:46

that are famous now in the newspaper,

29:49

and we're like, oh, that kind of looks like uncle Ted. And

29:51

then they go in and see him and be like it's not uncle

29:54

Ted. Um.

29:56

And so this this the fact that

29:58

this is becoming a weird unsolved

30:01

mystery already, like just quickly

30:03

after the case started to capture

30:06

the nation's attention a little bit, and the

30:08

police, the the the South Australia

30:11

State Police were not shy

30:13

about publicizing stuff as

30:16

needed, Like as they developed

30:18

breaks in the case, they would tell the newspapers

30:20

about it, and the newspapers would tell the

30:23

rest of the country. So it became a pretty

30:25

big sensation in Australia

30:27

so much so that a lot of

30:29

people are just basically

30:32

take it for granted that the man was not Australian.

30:35

That were he Australian, some more

30:37

several people would have come forward because

30:40

the case had that much exposure nationally.

30:42

Yeah, and I am just guessing

30:45

here, but I imagine in this

30:47

part of Australia probably wasn't there

30:49

weren't like millions of people living there. I

30:52

don't know how small of the town it was, but I don't

30:54

think it was like some huge city, was it. Well, yeah, Adelaide's

30:56

the capital of South Australia,

30:58

but is it How was there

31:01

was like at least five

31:04

people there? And I'm going

31:06

to say, at the minimum, someone's going

31:08

to write in and tell us so all right, and I'm gonna be mad

31:10

that we didn't know. No, Australians

31:12

are nice about things usually, Yeah they are, aren't

31:14

they? They're the Canadians

31:16

of the South. So

31:20

they decided the cops decide very

31:22

smartly. Um, you know what, We're gonna widen

31:25

this investigation. We're going to see if

31:27

anywhere in town someone

31:29

has found something there, any possessions

31:31

that this guy might have left behind. Since

31:34

he was just found with what was in his pockets, surely

31:37

there's something, and in fact there was.

31:39

They discovered there was a

31:42

suitcase, brown suitcase in

31:44

a cloak room that was left there

31:46

on November, which was

31:49

the night before the morning that

31:51

he was found the first time he was

31:53

seen on the beach. It was no lead,

31:57

it was and because he had that ticket

32:00

that showed he had taken a bus from the Adelaide

32:02

rail station, that was one of the first places

32:04

detectives went. Uh, and

32:07

they found this suitcase, um,

32:09

that had been left there, like you said, on November. Inside,

32:13

Um, there was some stuff

32:15

that linked it to the guy. Yeah,

32:17

I mean it was full of stuff. Um.

32:20

It was clearly someone who was traveling a

32:23

lot. There were lots of clothes,

32:26

shirts and scarves

32:28

and underwear and pajamas

32:30

and handkerchiefs. There were two pairs

32:32

of scissors, one broken

32:34

pair, one in a sheath, Um,

32:36

like a shave kit, screwdriver,

32:40

Um, lots of just normal travel

32:42

things, razor, razor strap, all the

32:44

junk you would expect that multiple pairs

32:46

of scissors is a little weird. Thread

32:49

but the thread was the big one, orange thread.

32:51

Yeah, barber not Australian

32:53

brand barber thread which

32:57

perfectly matched where his trousers were stitch.

33:00

So it's got to be him, right, that's the thing that

33:02

really links him with the suitcase.

33:05

Um. There was also some stencils

33:08

for stenciling cargo. Yeah,

33:10

that was a little weird, very weird. Um.

33:12

And there was a suit jacket that had

33:15

a what's called a feather

33:17

stitch. Um, while

33:20

stitching is the lightest stitch,

33:23

right, And they're like,

33:25

we don't do this in Australia. We don't even have

33:27

the sewing machine that can do this in

33:29

Australia. Yet A taylor said,

33:31

this is an American coat, Yeah,

33:33

with their feathers. Well, he's a Hamms

33:36

stitch right. Uh.

33:38

And then inside some of these clothes,

33:41

uh was the name keen?

33:44

Because I told you people wrote on their clothes A lot said

33:46

T keen, T dot

33:49

keen, K E N E or k

33:51

A N. And the

33:54

best cops could figure is they someone

33:56

did that to to sniff everyone off the case,

33:58

right because they've around and there was

34:00

no t Keen or any Keen

34:03

that they couldn't put their their fingers

34:05

on. Who's missing? Um?

34:08

And the tie years later,

34:10

like the cops at the time didn't know this. I

34:13

wonder if they noticed that it was slanting one

34:15

way or another, but the

34:18

they probably just knew it looked weird for some reason.

34:20

They couldn't put their finger on. But

34:23

at the time in Australia, the

34:25

U the ties slanted

34:28

left or right, and this guy's tie

34:30

slanted right to left, and

34:32

that was the style in America. It's like

34:34

everything's opposite. Didn't this so weird? Summer's

34:38

winter and winter summer flush the

34:40

toilet? It was in a different direction. I

34:43

think that's an urban legend. No,

34:46

I think that's true, right, No, I did a

34:49

something on it. Really, Yeah, I think it's an

34:51

urban legend. It's really has to do with

34:53

um, the uh, the shape

34:55

of the drain. What in

35:00

That's what I was so looking

35:02

forward to pooping in Australia.

35:06

You can still do it. Well, you probably

35:08

should. Actually, while we're there, I'm going to, but

35:10

I'm not. The joy is

35:12

is dead. Well, just don't

35:14

watch it flush. Yeah, but you

35:16

might be better off actually in this

35:19

way, I've just been used to my poop turning

35:21

into such a direction my whole life. I was really ready

35:23

for something new, all

35:26

right, I'm sorry, so

35:30

the tie is opposite. They said, this

35:32

is an American tie, like you said. Uh.

35:35

And then they brought in um

35:37

and actually we should say those were internet sleuths,

35:40

like within the last ten

35:42

fifteen years who figured that one out. Yeah,

35:45

all right, good for you Internet. Uh.

35:48

Finally, in April, police brought

35:50

in a dude, an expert pathologist named

35:52

John Cleveland, and this

35:54

was a big deal. Apparently the

35:56

cops in South Australia were

36:00

not as thorough as you would think because

36:02

they didn't even check his little pocket watch

36:04

pocket, a little pocket inside your

36:06

pocket, because there was

36:08

a really key piece of evidence rolled

36:10

up in there. Yeah, this one broke

36:13

the case wide open. It seemed like

36:15

it would. There was a little scrap

36:18

of paper rolled up very tightly in this

36:20

pocket and written on it in some pretty

36:22

fancy type setting were the

36:24

words TAMUM showed

36:27

T A M A M S h

36:30

U D. And the cops said,

36:32

what was this first orange

36:34

thread? Not some weirdo words

36:37

rolled up in this guy's pocket? What is this? And

36:39

John Cleveland said, you dopes, it's

36:41

called a lead. You

36:43

didn't check his pocket? In his pocket? He

36:46

said no, So they would figure out

36:49

in a little while. By a stroke

36:51

of luck, it seems that um

36:54

tamum showed means

36:56

it is finished where it is done,

36:59

or in this case, the end in Persian.

37:03

It sounds very h

37:06

random and out of left field

37:08

that anybody would know this, But a reporter

37:11

working the police beat there said named

37:13

Frank Kennedy, said, no, that I know

37:16

what that's from. That's from a twelveth century

37:18

book of Persian poetry

37:21

of Omar Kayyam. And

37:24

that just sounds so out of left field. But in fact, that

37:26

book had been translated by an English poet

37:28

named Edward Fitzgerald, and it

37:30

was kind of a big deal once it was translated

37:33

into English. So it wasn't like just

37:35

so the word of looking

37:38

for obscure that nobody

37:40

would know what it was. No, it was extremely

37:42

popular in the in the West after

37:44

that, I think even in America, like there's

37:47

a Peanuts comic strip that makes

37:49

reference to it. Even it was a

37:51

big It was one of those things where

37:53

like people might not know

37:55

about it, but there are plenty people out there who did.

37:57

And one of the reporters recognized there,

37:59

right, So they

38:02

realized then that they needed to find

38:04

the copy of the Rubiat that this came

38:06

from, and they started looking

38:08

and looking and looking, and they couldn't find

38:10

it. So the state police did what they had

38:13

been doing all along. They went to the newspapers

38:15

and they said, hey, we found

38:17

this weird scrap of paper. It says tamam

38:19

shoot. We're told that it comes

38:22

from the Rubyat and specifically

38:24

it's the last words of the Rubiat right

38:27

with the last words of the last poem, right um

38:30

and go go to

38:32

it. Media and the media went

38:34

wild and let everybody know. And

38:37

it turns out so this is April when they

38:39

found the Um the

38:41

scrap of paper, and in July

38:44

they got another break based on finding

38:47

that scrap. A guy came forward

38:49

and said, you know what, I found this

38:51

copy of the Rubyat in the backseat

38:53

of my car, which had been parked

38:55

by sohmer Tion Beach around

38:58

the time the man who was found on sommer To Beach

39:00

was found. And I have no idea

39:02

whose it is. It's just been I put it in my glove

39:05

compartment. It's been sitting there until I read this

39:07

article in the newspaper. Yeah. Presumably

39:10

his windows rolled down or his car was unlocked,

39:12

and whoever ripped this thing

39:14

out because they did find out that part was ripped

39:16

out from his book, just tossed it in the back seat

39:18

this guy's car, Right, not very smart

39:20

if you're trying to cover your tracks. No, but

39:22

maybe you're not trying to cover your tracks,

39:25

right. So they now have the

39:27

copy of the Ruby Yacht that

39:29

the scrap of paper

39:32

that came that was found in the sohmer to man's

39:34

trousers came from, yeah,

39:36

which by all accounts is

39:38

a one of a kind printing, right, Yeah,

39:42

like a one off, yes, and not an

39:44

addition of hundreds, like a single

39:47

printing of this one book, right, but supposedly

39:49

as part of an addition. I can't remember which edition

39:51

it was by this printer, but

39:55

for years people have been trying to track

39:57

down a copy from that edition and

39:59

they can find it. Well, somebody finally found

40:01

one. They're like, this is not the exact same

40:04

book that the cops

40:06

found with the Somerton manor

40:08

associated with Somerton Man, which is a very

40:10

odd thing, totally. Um,

40:13

So in this book they get another huge

40:16

break. This breaks the case open even further,

40:18

right, They're like, surely we're going to figure

40:20

it out now, Yeah, this was huge.

40:22

They found uh two local phone numbers.

40:25

One was a bank phone number which

40:27

didn't lead to much of anything, and

40:29

another one X three to three nine

40:32

uh, belong to Well, they found a

40:34

couple of things. They found the stumber that belonged to a woman, a

40:37

nurse named Jessica Thompson,

40:39

who will talk about in a minute. And then they

40:41

also found, um,

40:44

you know how we did our We

40:47

did our episode on spies,

40:50

and one of the things sometimes spies would do would

40:52

have these throwaway pads that they would

40:54

literally write things on and you could

40:56

make an impression such that, you

40:58

know, it's like the kid's trick where you rip

41:00

that page off and you have what looks like a blank

41:03

page that's the impression of what was written above

41:05

it. And in this little kids will

41:07

use a pencil, let's see what it says. But

41:09

in this case he used a UV light to

41:12

see what by all accounts is

41:14

a five line code.

41:18

And the code is pretty odd. Yeah,

41:20

I mean I think we should read it. It It will sound like gibberish.

41:22

But if you're into code breaking,

41:25

you probably already know about this one. But if

41:27

not, here we go all capital letters.

41:29

Line one is w R G o A B A

41:31

b D. Second line m

41:34

l I A O I that was

41:36

scratched out. Interestingly, third

41:38

line W T b I M P A n

41:41

E t P, fourth

41:43

line M l I A again that's

41:45

repeated B O

41:47

A I A q C, and finally

41:49

I T T M T S A M

41:52

S T G A B go

41:55

break it, right the eagle has

41:57

landed at midnight, which they basically

41:59

said, go break it, and no one could

42:02

know. Um. Yeah, a lot of

42:04

amateur code breakers because again they went

42:06

to the media like you're saying, um,

42:08

go break it, and a lot of code breakers

42:10

tried and failed, and then um

42:13

they contacted the Australian Naval

42:15

Intelligence Service and they tried and

42:17

failed, and either the Naval

42:20

Intelligence Service or later

42:23

UM sleuths concluded

42:26

that it was for

42:28

there's too little information to ever break it,

42:30

that you didn't have a key that you needed to have,

42:33

um. And then it

42:35

may have been as simple as the

42:38

first letter of a

42:41

list that he was trying to remember,

42:43

right, because apparently

42:46

they bear of a resemblance

42:48

frequency wise the first letters

42:51

of common words in the

42:53

English language. So it's possible

42:55

that like it's it's a to do list,

42:58

that the guy was just trying to remember, you

43:01

know, by these groceries, go see

43:03

this person at this time, that kind of thing.

43:06

It is a lot of letters, and a lot of people say,

43:09

no, this is obviously this spy codebook.

43:11

Don't be naive. So

43:14

the the cops they there's

43:16

the code breaking thing that they're doing. Then simultaneously

43:19

they're like, well, maybe we should call this local

43:21

phone number, and they did, and

43:23

on the other end a woman picked up

43:26

and uh, it turned out like you said to be Jessica

43:29

Thompson, and you want to take another

43:31

breaks. We're going to take

43:33

a break and we'll get to Jessica Thompson

43:35

right after this. Yeh,

44:03

we should say, coming back from break. We just got

44:05

compliments from Matt.

44:08

This is like praise from Caesar on

44:10

something like this. Look what happened to Caesar

44:13

though. Yeah, on your

44:15

birthday. Matt said, you guys

44:17

really doing a great job. And Josh said, you

44:19

didn't tell us that. Go

44:22

back to sleep, all

44:25

right, So we promised talk of Jessica Thompson. This

44:27

is a really good lead. They called her up.

44:29

She answered the phone. It's a good

44:31

first step in my movie version. Atly she answered

44:33

the phone and went Uh,

44:39

she's a nurse. She was married, she had a kid

44:41

named Robin Thompson. Robin

44:44

a boy though, right, Uh.

44:48

And her maiden name was Harkness. Um.

44:51

And this has kept private for a lot of years. Her

44:53

name was she asked him to keep it a secret. And

44:55

I read a bunch of accounts, most

44:58

of which said that, you know, know,

45:00

she may have had a few boyfriends here and there

45:03

affairs. Um. The

45:06

paternity of Robin Thompson was called into

45:08

question more than once. So um.

45:11

I think that the general idea was that she

45:13

was probably just trying to keep this quiet too, so

45:16

she, you know, in the nineteen forties, wouldn't

45:18

be outed as a trollop, right,

45:20

And the cops said, sure, no problem. And

45:23

actually, to this day, the state

45:25

police have never publicly identified

45:28

Jessica Thompson as the

45:30

mystery woman whose phone number was written

45:32

in the Somerton Man's copy of the

45:34

Rubiyat. But in

45:37

two thousand and thirteen, her family

45:39

came forward and publicly identified

45:41

her. And even though the police haven't confirmed

45:43

it, it's been known for so many

45:45

years that that was probably who it

45:48

was. That again, it's basically

45:50

taken for granted as a fact. Of the case

45:52

that she is that woman. Yeah,

45:54

her nickname was Justin j E. S t y

45:57

N. That's how she inscribed copies.

46:00

So this Ruby Yacht, um,

46:02

well, and I guess that sort of gives away what happens

46:04

next. Yeah. The cops are like, okay,

46:08

okay, we've gone through

46:10

a lot to get to you. Lady. Have

46:12

you given a copy of

46:14

this twelfth century book

46:17

of Persian poetry called The Ruby Yacht

46:19

to anybody? And she goes, yes,

46:22

I have. And the cops are like, yes,

46:25

we're about to figure it out. And

46:27

they said who who have you given it to? And

46:29

she said a bloke named Alfred

46:31

Boxall. They said, okay, we'll call

46:33

you back, and they hung up and ran

46:36

around looking for Alfred Boxall. Well,

46:38

yeah, they probably figured, you know, that's

46:40

Harvey Kitell uh.

46:43

And they were unfairly to

46:45

Albert Alfred Boxall disappointed

46:47

when they found he was alive and well in

46:50

New South Wales. And he

46:52

said, yeah, I got the book right here. She

46:54

h. She gave them to all her lovers. Uh.

46:58

There was speculation that perhaps, you know,

47:00

she gave it to him over drinks one night, that he

47:02

perhaps had been one of her lovers. Yeah, oh yeah,

47:05

and I think it's probably absolutely correct

47:07

because she had inscribed it, like I said, with justin

47:10

and that's how the cops referred to here on their case files.

47:13

Uh. So they went, you're alive,

47:16

great, and he said, yeah, but I've got the book

47:19

like not all was lost and it was intact.

47:22

That's correct. So they

47:25

said, oh, you gotta be kidding me. This

47:28

lead the lead of all leads. I was gonna

47:30

break this case wide open. It it's

47:32

a dead end, are you? Are you kidding

47:34

me? And one of the officers developed

47:36

a permanent scarf from banging his head

47:38

slowly against the wall. Right. He couldn't

47:40

be stopped, couldn't be consoled. And

47:43

so they said, okay, a lady,

47:45

your phone number was in this thing, so

47:50

we want you to come down to the Morrigan. Just take a

47:52

look at this bust we made of the dead guy

47:54

and um and they said, also, is there anything

47:57

else, anything weird happened to you and

47:59

like the last year or so, And

48:01

she said, well, the only thing I can think

48:04

of is that my neighbors said

48:06

to me once when I came home one day that and

48:09

some man they didn't know it, called on

48:11

my house and uh, that

48:13

was it. That's the literally the weirdest

48:16

thing that's happened to me. Knocked

48:18

on her door that she didn't know, her neighbors

48:20

didn't know. It happens to me like three times a week.

48:23

Um. So as they bring her in to look at this bus,

48:26

Detective Sergeant Liona Lean and

48:29

uh, he was one of the two leads that was

48:31

not an Australian accent. No, and

48:35

um, I don't know what kind of backs and it was.

48:37

It was mid Atlantic, but I was not trying to do

48:39

Australian. Uh. And he

48:42

said that quote she was completely taken aback

48:44

to the point of giving the appearance she was about to faint

48:47

end quote like she

48:49

knows who this dude is. She's

48:51

a nurse, first of all. She was even looking at a body,

48:54

but she's a nurse, so she wouldn't be freaked out by

48:56

any of this. No, and again it wasn't even

48:58

a body. It was a plaster bush, right.

49:00

But she's like, and

49:03

they go did you know him? And she goes, no,

49:06

no, I didn't cut some heartburn, and

49:09

uh, I have nothing more to say about this, so don't

49:11

ever ask me, and she clammed up. Not weird

49:13

at all. No, not at all. So

49:15

immediately the cops are like, you know way

49:18

more than you're letting on. But

49:20

apparently they didn't, you

49:22

know, beat up people that they had in custody

49:25

to get information out of them. So they

49:27

let her go and just said, oh, well, I guess we'll

49:29

never know the answer to this mystery. Yeah,

49:31

there's a retired detective named Gary felt

49:33

Us. Is it Gary?

49:36

I thought Jerry G E R

49:38

R Y Probably Jerry. Yeah,

49:41

I'm you've convinced me that's funny. We

49:43

we just crossed over to one

49:45

another side again. Uh.

49:49

So he took up this case later in life,

49:51

and um, he actually

49:53

interviewed her in two thousand seven. He said she was

49:55

evasive under questioning and

49:57

like this lady knew something. Yeah, and again this guy

50:00

him, he's a hobbyist,

50:02

amateur sleuth on this case. I

50:04

love those guys. But he had forty

50:07

years experience as a detective

50:09

in Adelaide, so he knows questioning

50:12

people. Have you seen the

50:14

Netflix documentary series The Keepers?

50:17

No, I haven't even heard of it.

50:19

It is about a cold case

50:22

murder of a nun um

50:25

in the nineteen if

50:27

these no nineteen sixties, I think, and

50:30

uh, they're there are these amateur

50:32

detectives that have been working on this all these years,

50:34

these two women in particular that were students

50:37

of this nun at school that are just amazing,

50:39

and like, is this really get an appreciation

50:42

for these people who like become

50:44

obsessed with the solving these cases that

50:46

aren't even like family members or anything, you know, Is

50:48

it a like jama or

50:51

documentary ten part documentary series?

50:53

Is wow? I gotta see that. Oh dude, It's

50:56

one of the most upsetting things I've ever had

50:58

to sit through. And that's all I'm gonna say.

51:01

I've been waiting for this since I finished making

51:04

um Making of a Murderer. Yeah,

51:06

it's better, I think. I like that, but what

51:09

what very disturbing stuff. Wow,

51:12

I gotta go. You

51:15

gotta leave it. So it hats

51:17

off to you amateur sluice

51:19

out there for

51:20

for getting in the way of real

51:23

police. No, for for doing work that real

51:25

police. These are cold cases that, yeah,

51:28

they're hard pressed to get information anymore in

51:30

most cases, It's true. So I was

51:32

just kidding sniffing people

51:34

off the case after

51:36

the cops say right, And

51:39

I was kind of mad not to get too derailed by this

51:41

that these cold cases just sort

51:43

of stay um

51:46

cold. But then you think, like there's

51:48

you know, you can't just

51:50

concentrate on a forty year old murder

51:53

case, and there's so many current things you've

51:55

got to be looking into. Plus it's hard,

51:58

really, it's UM.

52:01

All right. So back to Thompson

52:03

evasive underquestioning UM

52:06

later on her son, Robert, I'm sorry

52:08

Robin, like we said earlier, Uh,

52:11

he started looking into it, got really interested

52:13

in in trying to figure this thing out. Oh he

52:15

did, he did. I didn't know that.

52:17

And he turned out to be a professional

52:20

dancer, yes, with the

52:22

calves of Lena Horn and the

52:24

Australian Ballet right

52:26

and hypodonta in exactly

52:28

the same way that the Somerton Man had. And

52:31

he had the same ears. Yeah.

52:34

So a lot of people again there's something

52:36

that hasn't improven, but most people take as

52:39

conclusive fact that Robin

52:43

Thompson, son of

52:45

Jessica Thompson, who didn't know

52:47

the Somerton Man, was

52:49

the son of the Somerton

52:52

Man. Yeah. What I saw was

52:54

between the ear and the teeth. Um.

52:57

They put odds for both of those things

52:59

at about it's quite

53:01

a range between one and ten million and one and twenty

53:04

million. Okay, but let's just say it's one

53:06

in ten million. That's say it's one in a trillion.

53:10

At that point, it's the same thing basically,

53:12

So eventually another

53:15

was it the same amateur sleuth? Not

53:18

Jerry Derek Abbott is a different

53:20

sleuth. There are rivals. It's hilarious.

53:23

They hate each other. Um.

53:25

He got involved and said, you know what, I'm gonna

53:27

get Robin in here for a DNA test.

53:30

Um, Robin's a hymn,

53:32

but it says here her is

53:34

it him? Right? No? Uh,

53:37

Robin's daughter was the one who took the DNA

53:40

test. Bobbin is long dead. Gotcha?

53:42

Got you? Okay? Oh no,

53:44

I think I had it backwards, and I don't think he got involved

53:46

in trying to figure it out because he's dead. Okay,

53:49

That's why I was like, I was kind of surprised,

53:51

but gotcha. So he got her

53:53

daughter to take a DNA test and then trace

53:56

back the paternal lineage, which would have been um

53:59

possibly the Somerton man, who

54:01

by all accounts seemed like he was American,

54:04

Yeah, which would have explained the tie. Um.

54:07

Perhaps the thread. Yeah,

54:11

and what else the fact that no

54:13

one in Australia could identify

54:16

him or was willing to identify

54:18

him. Um,

54:20

so the the only thing

54:22

left then after that is okay, well,

54:25

somebody just dig up the Somerton man

54:27

like he buried him in such a way so we could do this.

54:30

Well, it turns out in Australia, from what I saw,

54:33

there are two reasons that a judge will

54:35

let you exhume a body. One

54:38

is to contest a will. There's

54:40

no will or a state really in

54:42

question here. And then the other one

54:44

is to identify a lost

54:47

soldier, a soldier lost at war. Other

54:49

than that, you're gonna it's it's an

54:52

up. It's an uphill battle getting a

54:54

body exhumed. And two different times

54:56

Derek Abbott, who actually um

54:59

as an aside, married Robin

55:01

Thompson's daughter who took

55:03

the DNA test At his behest um.

55:07

He petitioned twice to have Somerton

55:09

Man exhumed, and twice he was turned

55:11

down because um obsessive

55:14

curiosity was not a good enough

55:16

reason to dig up a body. So he swabbed

55:19

the inside of her cheek, and that was true love exactly.

55:22

I gotta get in there over candle light.

55:26

Um gave her. He gave her a hand

55:28

pie. Oh my god.

55:31

So here are the theories. Um

55:34

well, I'm gonna go ahead and start with my favorite theory,

55:37

which sort of is in here but not really. Uh

55:40

suicide. I

55:43

think that perhaps, and I

55:45

didn't invent this, but of the theories I've read,

55:47

I liked this one, I think that he um

55:50

it was an American man who had an affair

55:53

with Jenny Nurse Thompson

55:56

Justin and went there,

55:58

traveled there, um found

56:02

out she was pregnant. Uh

56:05

In, was rejected

56:07

and went down and killed himself

56:10

by poison and was prepared to do so,

56:13

and the other things I've read said that he could. You know,

56:15

the things that don't add up was like the

56:17

body was found with no like vomit, which

56:20

a lot of times happened. If you are poisoned,

56:23

even if you're not, one of the last things

56:25

you do is your life is ending

56:28

is throw up. Usually oh really, yeah, Oh

56:30

it's pretty common. No one ever tells you that.

56:34

Yeah, like the dinner party. You've never

56:36

been told that. No one ever tells you

56:38

two things in life that you poop when you have a baby,

56:40

and you poop, and you throw up before

56:43

you die, and you poop when you die, too, poop

56:45

when you die. I think, so I

56:47

guess that's why Elvis died on the toilet. Yeah,

56:49

very affianted to go out with some dignity.

56:54

Um so where

56:56

was I? Oh? So he The thing I read

56:58

said that perhaps he went down to the shoreline,

57:01

drank the poison through

57:03

that, you know, into the water, and maybe like

57:05

vomited and riched there and then kind

57:08

of went back up the beach and laid

57:10

there to die and and maybe had one less cigarette.

57:14

Very possible. So that's one. Another

57:16

theory is that he died by poison, but that it

57:18

was murder. Sure. As

57:21

this case is being coming more and more publicized,

57:24

the public came to widely

57:26

believed that he was a spy.

57:29

And then as more details of the case

57:31

spread out more and more over the decades

57:34

um this this vision of aspyring

57:37

emerged with Jessica

57:39

Thompson as this communist

57:41

spy master who was posing

57:44

as a housewife, and Somerton

57:47

Man was a spy who worked for her

57:49

or arrival spy, and Alfred

57:52

box All was a spy who worked for which

57:54

would explain why she gave both of them copies

57:56

of the Rubiyat and that actually

57:59

the copies of the roof Biyat were one

58:01

time pads themselves, which

58:04

we're actually the keys to crack

58:06

the code. Right. Unfortunately, the

58:08

cops uh in adelaide

58:11

through the ruby At. That was

58:13

the sommer to Man's away in the fifties.

58:16

Yeah, they got rid of the suitcase in the eighties. He

58:19

could maybe it was both. Maybe he was a spy who

58:21

loved her, could have been. But

58:23

the murder theory is that Alfred

58:25

Boxhall murdered the man, or

58:28

she had him murder him

58:30

and then they took his body to the

58:32

seaside. Alfred Boxhall was actually

58:34

confronted with that in the seventies on TV

58:37

and he's like, that's pretty ridiculous

58:39

everybody. Some people are like, we know

58:41

you were in intelligence to World War Two.

58:43

It turns out he was like an army engineer or

58:45

something like that. He wasn't an intelligence and

58:48

everyone said, that's just what a murderer would

58:50

say. That's ridiculous on TV,

58:52

so they right. So, the the idea

58:55

that the sommer to Man's copy

58:57

of the Rubiat was basically a

58:59

one of a kind. It seems definitely lends

59:01

credence to the idea that it's possible he

59:03

was a spy in that code for sure.

59:06

Um,

59:08

so that's another big, strong possibility.

59:12

Here's the thing I saw too. In nine

59:14

a third witness came forward share

59:17

never before revealed story that he was on

59:19

the beach in the wee hours of the morning

59:21

and saw a man carrying an unconscious man over shoulder

59:23

towards that spot, but was

59:26

dark, could not identify anything, and nothing

59:28

ever came of that. Stuff

59:30

like that, give me my money for the movie, right, stuff

59:34

like that. I think it could be either

59:36

it wasn't him or just you know, I

59:39

don't know, you know how people are. They just make something

59:41

up to get on the news. And then I thought

59:43

the same thing with the hand raising

59:46

up, like maybe that didn't even

59:48

happen, Well, yeah, that was That's another

59:50

thing. Like what I realized from researching

59:52

this, Chuck was that this

59:55

this case has been so muddied

59:57

with conjecture and

59:59

fall truths

1:00:01

um that have just spread across

1:00:04

the internet that like, did

1:00:06

the Lions ever recant their

1:00:08

version of seeing him move? If so, then

1:00:11

then maybe he was dead when he was taken out

1:00:13

to the beach. Who knows, like you really

1:00:15

have to dive in. But if you if

1:00:17

you want to dive in, this mystery,

1:00:20

maybe even more than any others, is

1:00:23

just uh, just a just an

1:00:26

enormously deep rabbit hole to get

1:00:28

sucked into, because I mean, even if they dug

1:00:30

up so Merton Man, it's found conclusively

1:00:33

that he was Robin Thompson's

1:00:35

father, that still doesn't say who

1:00:37

he actually was. It doesn't idea

1:00:39

him. And it's just like how this

1:00:41

mystery unfolded as the police were investigating

1:00:44

it. You can, you can crack

1:00:46

the case in one major way and

1:00:49

it'll probably lead to a dead end. There's

1:00:51

still always this tantalizing

1:00:53

mystery that we may never know so

1:00:56

Merton Man. Tamim

1:00:58

showed, okay

1:01:00

stuff, I just said something in person.

1:01:03

If you want to know more about so Merton Man, you

1:01:06

should go listen to the stuff they don't want you to know

1:01:08

episode on it or sure or watch

1:01:11

it. I'm not sure if it's video or audio maybe

1:01:13

both, uh. And you can also

1:01:16

check out The Lost Man on

1:01:18

California Sunday Magazine and The

1:01:20

Body on so Merton Beach on Smithsonian,

1:01:23

among many many other great articles,

1:01:25

and since I said many, it's time for listener

1:01:27

mail. Uh,

1:01:33

I'm gonna call this on

1:01:36

accents and I gotta say,

1:01:38

we got more email

1:01:40

on stuttering and accents that

1:01:42

I've seen in a long long time for real. Um,

1:01:46

I don't know. I think a new Accents would be

1:01:48

big. Stuttering really hit home with a lot of

1:01:50

people, I think. And the

1:01:53

well there's that there's a stuttering email too. It's either

1:01:56

going to be on the next one or the one that was

1:01:58

just released. Okay, I didn't know any her right,

1:02:01

he may have heard it here. It's upcoming. Hey,

1:02:03

guys, listen to Accents. And I wanted

1:02:05

to hopefully set up I set the record straight

1:02:08

with Chuck's help. My name is Chris and I'm from New

1:02:10

Jersey. I have heard Chuck mentioned a few

1:02:12

times. He lived in New Jersey for a bit. First

1:02:14

off, where did you live? What brought you here?

1:02:16

And why did you leave? Um? I lived

1:02:18

in Bernardsville next to Basking

1:02:20

Ridge. Um,

1:02:23

sort of near Morristown is the biggest town that you might

1:02:25

have heard of. Uh, what brought

1:02:27

me there? I lived there after college because

1:02:30

it was a free place to live because of a

1:02:33

roommates parents who were out of the country in

1:02:35

Australia. Actually, it's all

1:02:37

coming together. They didn't want to sell their house, so they said,

1:02:39

you guys are done with college. You want to live here for free,

1:02:42

hang out New York. And why

1:02:44

did I leave? I left because they came back. It'd

1:02:48

be weird if I was still living there. Uh.

1:02:52

Anyway, he might be able to confirm my suspicions.

1:02:54

People from New Jersey don't have an accent, but

1:02:56

if they do, it's slight New York New York

1:02:59

accent. At any um, now you

1:03:01

definitely have accents. You're insane. In

1:03:03

my opinion, many older adults have moved

1:03:05

from New York to New Jersey for the suburbs.

1:03:08

Seeing many older people meet and talk about the

1:03:10

street they grew up on in Brooklyn, or like I

1:03:13

would like to make like it made clear

1:03:15

that no one from New Jersey says New Joysey.

1:03:18

That's true, if anything that is

1:03:20

in New York accent, Chuck, can you confirm.

1:03:22

I can confirm I never heard anyone say New Joysey,

1:03:25

but I cannot confirm that there's no accent because

1:03:27

I definitely have an accent to New Jersey. Um.

1:03:31

In fact, one of the things that I noticed.

1:03:34

There's not so much an accent, but people in New Jersey

1:03:36

would say button instead of

1:03:38

button or like you know, words

1:03:40

that are split in half like that, they

1:03:42

would stop like a hard

1:03:44

stop button. You

1:03:47

don't talking about very New Jersey.

1:03:50

And they call everyone kid. Yeah, I

1:03:52

knew that a kid, even

1:03:54

if they're older than you. I

1:03:56

didn't appreciate that anyway.

1:03:58

I hope Chuck agrees also, so uh, I hope

1:04:01

he's a fan of pork roll and not Taylor Ham.

1:04:03

I'm a fan of Taylor pork Roll. I love the

1:04:05

accounts. I thought that was the

1:04:07

only pork Roll. Thanks for the endless

1:04:09

amount of entertainment. Be seeing you guys in Brooklyn

1:04:12

on the upcoming tour. So Chris

1:04:15

Ortado from Highland Park, New Jersey. Nice.

1:04:17

I can't wait to see at the Bellhouse. Thanks Chris.

1:04:20

If you want to get in touchure with like Chris did,

1:04:22

you can send us an email of Stuff podcast

1:04:24

at how Stuff Works dot com and has always

1:04:26

joint our home on the web, Stuff you Should

1:04:28

Know dot com.

1:04:32

Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio.

1:04:35

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1:04:37

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1:04:40

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