"For more than 70 years, people have speculated who this man was and how he died," South Australia Attorney General Vickie Chapman said. The text has not been deciphered or interpreted in a way that satisfies authorities on the case. MLIAOI Australia's Greatest Mystery The Somerton Man - Medium There was congestion of the pharynx, and the gullet was covered with whitening of superficial layers of the mucosa with a patch of ulceration in the middle of it. [11] They speculated he had showered and shaved at the adjacent City Baths (although there was no Baths ticket on his body) before returning to the railway station to purchase a ticket for the 10:50a.m. train to Henley Beach, which, for whatever reason, he did not board. "We have evidence that he had separated from his wife, and that she had moved to South Australia. [11][12] Witnesses said the body was in the same position when the police viewed it. DNA Researchers Name the Somerton Man, Australia's 73-Year-Old Cold Case. A photograph of the scrap of paper was released to the press.[36]. To view this content choose accept and continue. "There's lots of. I may have solved the Somerton code, completely by accident! WRGOABABD "We can't say for sure, but we can speculate," he said. [34], Early in the inquiry, Cleland stated, "I would be prepared to find that he died from poison, that the poison was probably a glucoside and that it was not accidentally administered; but I cannot say whether it was administered by the deceased himself or by some other person. He had no wallet, no cash, and no ID. [2] An editorial called the case "one of Australia's most profound mysteries"[2] and noted that if he died by poison so rare and obscure it could not be identified by toxicology experts, then surely the culprit's advanced knowledge of toxic substances pointed to something more serious than a mere domestic poisoning. However, a bus conductor named Leslie Francis Wytkin (or Wytkins) handed in a copy of the. VideoThe secret mine that hid the Nazis' stolen treasure, LGBT troops take love for Eurovision to front line, Why an Indian comedian is challenging fake news rules. [66] Any thoughts that a positive identification had been made were quashed, however, when Elizabeth Thompson, one of the people who had earlier positively identified the body as Walsh, retracted her statement after a second viewing of the body, where the absence of a particular scar on the body, as well as the size of the dead man's legs, led her to realise the body was not Walsh. The man's body was found propped up against the seawall at Somerton Beach in Adelaide on December 1, 1948. Derek Abbott, a physicist and electronic engineer at the University of Adelaide, and Colleen Fitzpatrick, a forensic genealogist who specializes in using DNA to solve cold cases, identified the Somerton Man using hairs caught in his death mask. Titled "Body found on Beach", it read: A body, believed to be of E.C. And he was not a Russian agent, but rather a Melbourne-born electrical engineer. All rights reserved. [6] He was lying back with his head resting against the seawall, with his legs extended and his feet crossed. [44], In 1994, John Harber Phillips, Chief Justice of Victoria and Chairman of the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, reviewed the case to determine the cause of death and concluded that, "There seems little doubt it was digitalis. The scrap had been torn from the final page of a copy of Rubaiyat of Omar Khayym, authored by 12th-century poet Omar Khayym. You may want to read Twitters cookie policy, external and privacy policy, external before accepting. Video, The secret mine that hid the Nazis' stolen treasure, Body exhumed in hope of solving Australia mystery, Explosion derails train in Russian border region, Banana artwork in Seoul museum eaten by visitor, Donald Trump arrives in Scotland on golf visit, NFL player's daughter, aged two, drowns in pool, Indian 'killer' elephant relocated to tiger reserve, Ding becomes China's first male world chess champion. A potential granddaughter's DNA is planned to be compared to the unknown man's to see if it is a match. The autopsy also showed that the man's last meal was a pasty eaten about three to four hours before death,[8] but tests failed to reveal any foreign substance in the body. [59][60] That same day, The News published a photograph of the dead man on its front page,[61] leading to additional calls from members of the public about his possible identity. With the original copy lost in the 1950s, researchers have been looking for a FitzGerald edition. It was believed the man had died while sleeping. 'Somerton man' mystery is 'SOLVED': Extraordinary twist in Australia's most baffling death 70 years after he was found dead on a beach with a coded note in his pocket. In trying to solve the Somerton Man case, Abbott became part of it. [2], A number of possible identifications have been proposed over the years. [38] The book was missing the words "Tamm Shud" on the last page, which had a blank reverse, and microscopic tests indicated that the piece of paper was from the page torn from the book. Somerton Man's death: Unearthed records a step closer to solving Did he die by suicide? Abbott and Rachel married in 2010 and they have three children. As to why the Melbourne man was in Adelaide, Abbott said: We have evidence that he had separated from his wife, and that she had moved to South Australia, so possibly he had come to track her down., Fitzpatrick said: This is an amazing mystery to solve.