The Tamam Shud Case

Beachgoers stumbled across a body of a man on Australia's Somerton beach on December 1st, 1948. He was well-dressed and had no signs of trauma, his identity as well as his cause of death were a mystery to local police. Investigators soon dubbed him the "Somerton Man."

The investigator soon deepened as well as the mystery of the death. The man's possessions offered few clues, but they also discovered a piece of paper in his pocket that said "Tamam Shud," which is Persian for "It is finished."

To this day the Somerton Man has never been officially identified. There have been several theories that suggest that the man could have been a spy or a spurned lover.

After more than 70 years some detectives have new hope that the Somerton Man might finally be identified and the case might be solved once and for all. One professor has claimed that his DNA analysis has actually identified the man.

However, even if he is identified, that leaves a slew of unanswered questions in this decades-old cold case.

The Discovery of The Somerton Man

One evening, on November 30th, 1948, a handful of people noticed a man propped up against a seawall on Somerton Beach in Adelaide Australia. His legs were outstretched and his feet were crossed.

He was wearing a full suit and polished shoes, which is an odd thing to wear to the beach on a warm evening. One couple recalls him raising his arm as if he was drunkenly lighting a cigarette, another recalls seeing mosquitos buzzing around his face and thought he was too drunk to shoo them away.

They all thought he had too much to drink, but in reality, he was dying. A pair of amateur jockeys on horseback discovered his body the next day and alerted police.

Upon an initial inspection of the man, there was no obvious cause of death. The well put together, clean shaven man, had not been stabbed, shot, or injured at all.

He wore boxer shorts and a men's singlet, a white shirt, and a thin red tie, as well as light brown trousers, a brown sweater, and a brown double-breasted coat. One of his pants pockets had been repaired with an unusual type of orange thread.

Upon searching his pockets, investigators found a railway ticket to North Glenelg, an American metal comb, a packet of Juicy Fruit gum, a packet of Army Club cigarettes that contained a different brand of cigarettes, a handkerchief, and Bryant & May matches.

The man appeared to be in his 40s or 50s, had an athletic buid, and his forearms were tanned. His toes, however, were oddly mangles, as if they were shoved into tight shoes, this suggested that maybe he was a dancer.

The tags and labels of the man's clothes had been cut off, he had no money, wallet, or identification.

Dr. John Barkley estimated that his time of death was no later than 2 AM and attending pathologist, John Matthew Dwyer, determined that the body had not been moved after his death. He also noted some irregularities, the man's pupils seemed small and unusually shaped, he also had blood in his stomach, this suggested the presence of some irritant poison.

But after testing, they found no poison in the man's blood. This led some investigators to believe that the man had either digested digitalis and strophanthin, these are two lethal poisons that do not leave a trace.

There were further attempts to identify the man, but they failed. Neither the FBI nor Scotland Yard had fingerprints on file. Coroners determined that the Somerton Man had passed from heart failure, but this was because they couldn't come up with a cause of death.

Police also found the man's abandoned suitcase at the Adelaide Railway Station. It contained the unusual orange thread that was sewn into his pants, and some clothing labeled "T. Keane" or "T. Kean." But this didn't give investigators any leads.

But, the most baffling clue of all came several months later. A renewed search of the man's possessions revealed a small pocket that was sewn into the waistband of his pants. This was where investigators found a piece of paper that read "Tamam Shud" - this is Persian for "It's finished," or "It's ended."

The words were in a distinctive script and were found to been torn from a rare New Zealand edition of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, a 12th-century work of poetry.

The Mystery of Tamam Shud

Police searched for a copy of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam that matched the font from the "Tamam Shud" paper. They couldn't find it anywhere until a man provided them with a copy.

Police discovered that the last page of the book, the part containing "Tamam Shud" was ripped out. But, the man who brought the book in claimed that he had knew nothing about the poems or the Somerton Man.

In December, of the previous year, he reported that he had taken a drive with his brother-in-law and parked a away from Somerton Beach. When they returned to the car, his brother-in-law noticed a copy of the book on the floor, both men then assumed that the book belonged to the other. But, when coverage of the Somerton Man started to circulate, the two men looked closer at the book and realized that it was the book police were searching for.

Inside the book, Detective Sergeant Lionel Leane discovered two unlisted phone numbers and faint lines of code. The first number was a dead end and the second was a number that led to a nurse named Jessica Ellen Thomson who lived on Somerton Beach.

Jessica was reluctant to speak to police, however, she eventually told police that she had gifted a copy of the book to a man named Alfred Boxall. Once the police pursued this lead, they found Alfred to be alive, and he had Jessica's copy in his possession.

Jessica claimed she didn't know the Somerton Man, and police reported that she reacted strangely to seeing a plaster case of the man's face, and in fact, she almost fainted.

With the lead seeming to be exhausted, police turned to the faint code in the book, once under the black light, they could make out a strange jumble of letters that read:

W [or perhaps M] RGOABABDWTBIMPANETP

MLIABO AIAIQC

ITTMTSAMSTGAB

But, not even the Naval Intelligence in Australia could crack this code.

They lacked leads, so police laid the man to rest on June 14th, 1949.

New Hope for Identifying the Somerton Man

In more recent years, several theories have emerged about the Somerton Man and what had happened to him on the beach.

The first theory was that the man killed himself after he was rejected by Jessica Ellen Thomson, others suggested that Jessica, who passed away in 2013, actually had a son with the Somerton Man; due to similarities in their appearance. Being rejected from their lives, maybe he decided to end his life.

This makes sense for a handful of reasons. One being that the man had no defensive wounds, and two, the "Tamam Shud" note seemed to connect him to Jessica since she gave out the book as a gift.

The more proactive theory, however, is that the man was a spy, that knew too much. His death appeared to be very unusual for many, especially if he was killed by deadly poisons that disappear.

A supporting theory is the fact that no one came to claim the body, even with as much publicity the case had. And the indecipherable code and the confounding nature of the meaning of "Tamam Shud" seems like something straight out of a spy novel.

There have been more strange clues that have been found since the man was laid to rest. Retired Australian policeman, Gerry Feltus, who wrote the only book to ever be published on the case, discovered a witness in 1950 who had seen a man carrying another man on his shoulder the night of November 30th, 1948. This raised the question of if the man could have been one drunk friend helping another, or the Somerton Man's killer finishing the job.

The investigation has also since been picked up by Jessican Thomson's own daughters. They suggested that they could be related to the man and that he and their mother could've been involved in a soviet spy ring.

For now, the mystery remians unsolved and just as chilling as it was more than 70 years ago.