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Support for this podcast comes from

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the new Prime Video series, Citadel.

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Welcome to the new era of espionage.

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Prime Video's action-packed, thrilling new

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spy series, Citadel, follows two

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elite agents trying to pick up the pieces eight

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years after everything they knew was destroyed.

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From executive producers, the Russo brothers,

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and starring Richard Madden, Priyanka Chopra

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Jonas, and Stanley Tucci, Citadel

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asks the question, where would you turn

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if everything you knew was a lie? Watch

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Citadel, a new series only

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on Prime Video, on April 28th.

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I'm Beth Schwartzapfel, reporter for

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The Marshall Project and host of WBUR's

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new podcast, Violation. It's

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about a famous writer, an unthinkable

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crime, and who pulls the levers

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of power in America's weird and mysterious

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parole system.

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I will continue to say, until

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I'm not able to say it anymore, that

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I did not violate any of the conditions

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of my parole.

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Find Violation wherever

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you get your podcasts.

1:12

There was a body on the beach. There

1:17

were a couple of jockeys training their

1:19

horses on the beach, as they did

1:22

in those days. The stables were

1:24

not far from the beach. So

1:27

they took out the horses

1:30

for a morning gallop to get

1:32

them warmed up for the day. And

1:34

as they were going down the beach, they passed

1:37

what they thought was just, like,

1:40

a drifter sleeping

1:44

on the sand. But what

1:46

was strange is that on the way back,

1:49

they saw the same guy there in exactly

1:51

the same position. And

1:53

they thought that was suspicious. He hadn't

1:55

even moved or anything, and it was now around

1:58

about six o'clock in the morning.

3:47

of

4:00

shoes. There

4:02

was some sand on his shoes, but

4:04

not much. So it

4:06

seems like he had hardly walked on

4:08

the beach. He had just come

4:11

to the beach just to lay down.

4:14

The man's body was brought to the city morgue.

4:17

The pathologist noted that the man was

4:19

in good shape. They

4:21

noticed something unusual about his teeth.

4:25

He didn't have lateral incisors, so

4:27

his upper canine teeth were right next

4:30

to his two front teeth.

4:32

He also had notably strong calf muscles,

4:35

and all of the tags had been cut out

4:37

of his clothing.

4:40

An autopsy showed that his spleen

4:42

was enlarged and his liver was in bad

4:45

condition.

4:46

The pathologist guessed that

4:48

the cause of death was heart failure, but

4:52

also said that the man's heart looked

4:54

completely normal.

4:56

He suspected poison, but couldn't

4:59

find any trace of poison in the man's system.

5:03

And there was no sign of physical

5:05

violence on his body. He

5:08

had no disturbance in the sand around

5:10

him and not a scratch on him, so there were no

5:12

signs of any struggle.

5:15

And, you know, if it was some kind of poison

5:17

that had finished off, they were expecting

5:20

to see things like

5:23

maybe an empty bottle in the sand,

5:26

nothing like that, or signs of some

5:29

vomit, because you usually

5:32

see that sort of thing, but nothing

5:34

like that at all.

5:36

The other mystery was the man's identity.

5:40

A few things had been found in his pockets, including

5:43

a train ticket, a bus ticket, and

5:45

a pack of chewing gum, but

5:47

no wallet.

5:48

So that's another strange thing, you know, did

5:51

he have a wallet that had got

5:53

stolen from him while he was on the beach

5:56

over the night, or had

5:58

he lost it, or had he delivered it? deliberately

6:00

de-identified himself. Who

6:02

knows?

6:04

A newspaper reported on the man found

6:06

on Summerton Beach and said

6:09

the dead man was someone named E.C.

6:11

Johnson.

6:13

But then E.C. Johnson walked into

6:15

the police headquarters to correct the error.

6:19

The dead man's fingerprints were taken, but

6:22

the police couldn't find a match. They

6:25

distributed a photograph of the man and

6:27

dozens of people called in saying they knew

6:29

him. Lots of people

6:31

claimed he was a missing relative.

6:33

Multiple women thought he could be their missing

6:35

husband.

6:37

A few men recognized him as the

6:39

man who stood guard for them outside their illegal

6:42

card games.

6:43

Someone else said he looked like a man they knew

6:46

who worked at the military weapons testing facility

6:48

north of Adelaide. A

6:51

local paper reported that, quote, police

6:54

are maintaining an almost continuous taxi

6:57

service to and from the morgue, taking

6:59

people to see the man's body.

7:02

People who thought they knew the man changed their

7:04

minds once they saw him. He

7:08

was called the Summerton Man.

7:10

Investigators would spend decades trying

7:12

to figure out who he was and what happened

7:15

to him. People would come up with many

7:17

theories that he was a Cold War

7:19

spy, a former ballet dancer,

7:22

a victim of a relationship gone bad.

7:25

It would come to be called one of Australia's

7:27

strangest and most famous cold

7:30

cases.

7:32

I'm Phoebe Judge, this is Criminal. By

7:47

January 1949, the

7:49

Summerton Man had been in the city morgue for

7:51

over a month and his body still

7:54

hadn't been claimed. Derek

7:56

says the police wondered if the man could have been from

7:58

out of town.

7:59

So they're thinking, well, this guy

8:02

must have come from another state. He

8:05

sees, he's a stranger here. So

8:08

how would he come? He would come by train. So

8:12

they inspected the

8:14

luggage room in the station

8:17

and asked the guy behind

8:19

the luggage counter, you know, have

8:22

any suitcases been

8:25

checked in on this date and citing

8:27

the date before he had died.

8:29

This is like the 30th

8:32

of November 1948.

8:34

And lo and behold, there was actually

8:36

a suitcase checked in exactly

8:39

on that day that

8:41

no one had claimed since then.

8:44

So all this time had passed and no one had

8:46

claimed the suitcase. So the police thought,

8:48

aha, this is likely

8:51

to be this guy's suitcase. So

8:53

they took it back to the police station, opened

8:55

it up.

8:56

There were clothes in the suitcase, including

8:59

a sports coat and a pair of red slippers.

9:02

There's also a shaving kit, a container

9:04

of boot polish, and a butter knife

9:07

that had been filed down to a sharp point. And

9:10

there were items in

9:13

that suitcase that had the name

9:16

Keene on it, spelled K-E-A-N-E.

9:21

The name T. Keene had been written on

9:23

a tie.

9:24

And Keene was printed on a canvas

9:26

laundry bag.

9:28

So a canvas laundry bag with a stencil

9:30

surname gives the

9:33

impression of some kind of institution, like

9:35

this is like, you know,

9:37

an army issue bag

9:40

with the GI's name stenciled

9:42

on. This is the sort of thing you would

9:44

do in an army.

9:46

The police looked into the name T. Keene,

9:50

but they couldn't find any reports of anyone

9:52

with that name missing. Eventually,

9:56

a well-known pathologist named John

9:58

Burton Cleland was asked to call the police. to take a look

10:00

at the body. Derek

10:03

Abbott says John Burton Cleland

10:05

thought of a few things the original investigators

10:08

hadn't considered. One

10:11

thing he did was check that the clothes from

10:13

the suitcase would actually fit the

10:15

Somerton man. And the way he

10:17

did that is really clever, because

10:20

if you think about it, how do you get a dead

10:22

body, you know, with all its weight,

10:25

and when you're like put on a shirt and check it's

10:27

the right size, it's

10:30

pretty tricky. So

10:33

what

10:34

he did was he found

10:36

somebody who was about the same

10:38

size as the Somerton man, and

10:42

he said, can you put on these

10:44

clothes please? And these were the clothes the

10:46

dead man was actually found dressed in. So he

10:49

actually made him wear the dead man's

10:51

clothes, and they fit perfectly. And

10:54

then he made the guy wear

10:56

the clothes that were in the suitcase. And so

10:58

that's how they checked that they correlated. So

11:01

I thought that was very clever. Another correlation

11:04

he found is that there

11:07

was some thread in the suitcase,

11:09

a card of thread, that

11:12

had a strange sepia color that

11:14

was a bit unusual, and

11:18

noted that the same color of thread

11:20

had been used to stitch on some buttons

11:23

on the man's clothing. So there

11:26

was a correlation there. So they

11:28

were pretty convinced this was the man's suitcase.

11:31

And the fact that it was checked in on the correct

11:33

day, and no one had claimed it, was

11:36

a good sign too.

11:37

So he did all that.

11:40

And then when checking the

11:42

man's trousers that

11:44

the man had worn,

11:46

he found what's called a little

11:48

fob pocket, and noticed that there

11:51

was a tiny little piece of rolled

11:53

up paper jammed down

11:55

in the pocket that hadn't been noticed.

11:58

And he found it quite difficult to see. It

12:01

was kind of stuck in there and he actually needed tweezers

12:03

to pull it out. So he pulled it out

12:06

and unrolled it and

12:08

it had the word

12:10

tamam should on it. And

12:13

that was very strange because he had no idea what

12:15

that meant. And it wasn't

12:17

handwritten, it was actually printed. It

12:21

looked like it had been torn out of a book. So

12:23

this was published the next day in the local newspapers

12:27

to see if anyone could

12:29

come forward and

12:31

say what this meant. And

12:33

it was actually a journalist at

12:35

the time who knew what it meant and he

12:38

came forward and said, oh yeah, I've seen that before.

12:41

This is the last

12:43

words in a book

12:45

of poetry called the Rubayatava

12:47

Maqayam which

12:49

I've done some historical research on this

12:52

and it was actually a very popular

12:55

book of poetry back in the war years,

12:57

back in World

12:58

War II. The

13:00

poetry in the Rubayatava Maqayam

13:03

dates back to the 12th century. It's

13:06

attributed to Maqayam, sometimes

13:08

known as the astronomer poet of Persia.

13:12

In 1859 it was translated

13:14

into English and became so popular

13:17

among English speakers that an Omar-Kaim

13:20

club was formed.

13:21

Oscar Wilde

13:23

called the book a masterpiece of art.

13:28

In 1909 two English bookbinders were

13:30

commissioned to rebind a copy of

13:32

the Rubayat and cover it with

13:35

over a thousand precious and semi-precious

13:37

stones. They

13:39

incorporated gold leaf, silver,

13:42

and ivory.

13:44

The book was sold to an American buyer

13:47

for what would be around $70,000 today.

13:52

The book sank on the Titanic while

13:54

being shipped to America. It's

13:56

never been found.

14:00

Poetry in the book is about life and death,

14:03

and the very last two words are, tamam

14:05

shud, a Persian phrase

14:08

that means, it is ended. The

14:12

police realized the piece of paper

14:14

in the Somerton man's pocket must

14:16

have been ripped from a copy of the Rubaiyat

14:19

of Omar Khayyam.

14:20

So they published this in the

14:22

paper saying, oh it's the Rubaiyat of Omar

14:25

Khayyam, has anyone got a copy

14:27

with a back page torn out?

14:29

And to their surprise, they

14:31

got a response.

14:38

We'll be right back.

14:52

Here's the scene. You walk into a courtroom,

14:54

but instead of meeting your human lawyer, you

14:57

slip on a headset and you meet your

14:59

AI lawyer. It would listen

15:01

to what's being said in the courtroom, process

15:03

it with the AI, and then whisper back

15:06

to the person what to say. This is Joshua

15:08

Browder, and he tried to get an AI

15:10

lawyer into a real courtroom. It

15:13

didn't go well.

15:14

He got sued. And all these lawsuits,

15:17

it's just the dinosaurs suing to stop the ISH.

15:21

Browder believes AI is the future, that it's

15:23

real world magic, and there are a lot

15:25

of people like it. There's also a lot of

15:27

people who think this is all BS. I'm

15:29

Peter Kafka, I'm the host of Recode Media, and

15:32

I'm doing a special three-part series breaking

15:35

down the hype around AI. You

15:37

can find it in the Recode Media feed right

15:39

now. This is something the biggest

15:41

companies in the world are spending tons of money

15:44

on, something that's consuming Silicon Valley.

15:46

And it's something that has a lot of people really, really

15:49

worried. I talked to all of them. So

15:51

come tour the AI boom with me. The first episode

15:54

is out now. It's in the Recode Media

15:56

feed.

17:58

who

18:00

said he'd found it in the backseat of his car

18:03

on November 30 of the previous year, after

18:06

parking near Summerton Beach.

18:09

He said that he thought someone had thrown it through his

18:11

open car window. And

18:13

in those days no one locked their cars, they

18:15

parked the cars with their windows open and stuff,

18:18

so it's plausible it just got chucked in

18:20

for some reason.

18:22

Inside the back cover of the book, there

18:24

were four lines of handwritten capital

18:26

letters. One row

18:28

read MTBIMPANETP.

18:33

The other three rows were just as random. There

18:36

was a fifth line, but it was crossed out. The

18:40

police had no idea what the letters meant, but

18:42

guessed that it could be some sort of code. Code-breaking

18:46

experts with the Australian Navy worked

18:48

on it for weeks and couldn't figure

18:50

it out.

18:53

The four lines of letters were published in newspapers,

18:56

and soon everyone was trying to crack

18:58

the code. One man

19:01

thought it concealed the name of a ship, and

19:03

one woman thought it was a message that the man

19:05

was tired of life. Another

19:08

man told reporters that he drank

19:10

ten pots of tea so he could stay

19:12

up all night and work on the code.

19:15

He thought it could be directions to a postal

19:17

box.

19:19

No one could come up with anything very convincing.

19:24

The police found something else in the book,

19:27

a few handwritten phone numbers.

19:29

And one of the phone numbers

19:32

turned out to be a local bank, and

19:36

another number, the second phone number down belonged

19:38

to a young lady who was about 27 years old.

19:43

And turns out she lived

19:45

just five minutes' walk from where the

19:47

man was found dead.

19:50

So you

19:52

can see what the cops were thinking as soon as they

19:54

figured that out. They were thinking, hmm, she

19:57

must know something.

19:59

they knocked on her door and

20:02

they said to her, have you seen

20:04

this book? So they

20:08

actually had the summited man's copy

20:10

of the Rubaiyata of Omar Khayyam. And

20:12

she actually said, yes, I've seen

20:15

that. And they said, ah, so

20:17

you know about this man dead on the beach?

20:20

And she said, no, no, I didn't say

20:22

that. I didn't say that. What I meant

20:24

was I've seen a Rubaiyata of Omar

20:26

Khayyam before. I didn't mean that I've

20:28

seen your copy you've got. So

20:31

that she kind of backpedaled a bit there.

20:35

And so the

20:37

police said to her, well, have you

20:39

given a Rubaiyata

20:41

of Omar Khayyam to any man? And

20:44

she says, well, actually, I did. Back

20:46

in 1945, I gave a copy

20:48

to a guy called Alf Boxl.

20:51

And so the police thought, hmm,

20:54

this could be our man if she's given a

20:56

copy. And he's

20:58

found it on the beach. Maybe this is Alf Boxl.

21:01

So they went

21:03

off. And unfortunately,

21:06

well, I should say, fortunately, not unfortunately, Alf

21:09

Boxl was alive. And well, with

21:11

his copy that she had originally

21:13

given him. And

21:15

so that was a complete dead end in the end.

21:19

But the police had also shown the woman

21:21

a plaster cast that

21:23

had been made of the dead man's face. And

21:27

she had a strange reaction. I

21:30

interviewed the guy who

21:32

actually made the plaster bust because

21:34

it was actually sitting in his office when

21:36

the police brought her in to see it. And

21:39

he has clear memories of that day when

21:42

she came into his office and the

21:44

police interviewed her there. And

21:46

he basically says that she

21:49

just stared at the ground,

21:51

refused to look at the bust. And

21:55

every question the police asked her, she

21:57

would either just mumble no or don't

21:59

know.

21:59

And

22:00

he said

22:03

that he was standing right behind her,

22:05

and at one point it looked like she was about to

22:07

fall over and faint, and he actually

22:10

held his hand out to

22:12

catch her. And he pulled

22:14

his hand back when he realized she was going to stand

22:18

without falling over. So he didn't need

22:20

to catch her in the end. But he said that that was

22:22

very strange that day, and it did

22:24

seem that she knew something.

22:28

But

22:28

if the woman did know something, she

22:30

didn't tell the police.

22:34

So the investigation trailed

22:37

off, but it kind of came

22:40

up like a zombie every now and again. You know,

22:42

there'd be a thing in the press, and the police

22:46

would look into it and, you

22:48

know, die out again, etc., etc. So

22:50

it was one of those things.

22:52

Over the years, even when the investigation

22:55

wasn't active, people kept talking

22:57

about the case and came up with all

22:59

kinds of theories. Some

23:02

people thought the Somerton man could have been a spy,

23:05

in part because of the odd letters that look

23:07

like a code found in his book, but

23:10

also because in 1948, the year

23:12

that he was found, the Cold War

23:14

had just begun. A

23:16

high-security military base was

23:18

built in a remote area north of Adelaide,

23:22

and it was used for testing missiles, rockets,

23:24

and atomic bombs.

23:27

Someone had told the police they thought they recognized

23:29

the Somerton man as a worker from

23:32

the rocket range. Other

23:34

people thought it was possible he'd come to

23:36

spy on it. Some

23:40

thought the Somerton man must have been

23:42

involved in some kind of illegal activity,

23:45

maybe buying and selling on the black market,

23:48

and that certain people had an incentive

23:50

to keep him unidentified.

23:54

Others thought the woman whose phone number had been

23:56

found in the Somerton man's book

23:58

had known a lot more than she let on.

24:02

Derek Abbott came up with a theory of his own.

24:08

We'll be right back.

24:22

When you think about dinner, you're

24:24

not necessarily thinking about how to

24:26

save the planet. But this Earth Day, you can.

24:28

The Gastropod is here for you with stories about

24:30

why composting your food waste can help

24:32

fight climate change and what the ice cream

24:35

in your freezer has to do with the Colorado

24:37

River water crisis. We've got the story

24:39

of the fruit that might just save the world,

24:41

but also happens to be incredibly

24:44

delicious in both its chip and pudding

24:46

forms. Any guesses? It's

24:48

breadfruit and it's fabulous. Can

24:51

we bring back the legendary and super

24:53

tasty

24:53

American chestnut and our plant-based

24:56

meats all they're cracked up to be? If you're hungry

24:58

for food-focused Earth Day stories,

25:00

check out Gastropod wherever you get your podcasts.

25:06

Derek Abbott didn't really know much about

25:08

the Somerton Man until 2007, when he came

25:11

across an article about the case and

25:14

the possible code found in the back

25:16

of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khaim.

25:19

Derek is a professor in the Electrical

25:22

and Electronic Engineering Department at

25:24

the University of Adelaide.

25:27

He thought trying to figure out the code using

25:29

statistical tests

25:31

could be an interesting project for his students.

25:35

No one had any luck, but Derek couldn't

25:37

stop thinking about the case.

25:41

He decided to try and find the woman whose number

25:43

had been in the book.

25:45

The police had never published her name.

25:47

But there was enough information in the papers

25:50

that you could work it out. It was quite tricky

25:52

at the time. It was like a big crossword

25:54

puzzle. But basically, I knew

25:57

that she lived very close by and

25:59

the news... newspapers actually said which

26:02

hospitals she had trained in as a nurse.

26:04

So I was able to look up old hospital

26:07

records and electoral

26:09

records of the area where she lived and

26:11

piece it all together and figure out

26:13

who she was. And I eventually

26:16

found out her name was Jo Thompson.

26:19

But Jo Thompson had died about

26:21

two years earlier, so Derek

26:24

decided to find out if she had any children.

26:25

So I found

26:28

out that she had a son by the name of

26:30

Robin and by

26:33

the time I'd figured out his name and how

26:35

to contact him, he had died two

26:37

months before I was about to contact

26:39

him, so I just missed him. But

26:42

it turns out he was a ballet dancer.

26:45

And that piqued my interest because

26:48

in early reports about the Somerton man,

26:50

there were reports saying that, you

26:52

know, he had very strong

26:55

calf muscles like that of a ballet dancer.

26:57

And could he have been a dancer? So

27:00

this was a hypothesis. And I was thinking,

27:02

hmm, that's interesting. So

27:04

because Robin was actually a professional

27:07

ballet dancer, he had

27:10

danced with the Australian Ballet,

27:12

with the New Zealand Ballet. And

27:14

when he was with the Australian Ballet, he

27:16

toured at the USA in the early 70s.

27:20

And Rudolf Neuref was part of that tour

27:22

as well. And so because he

27:24

was a good dancer, his photo was in newspapers.

27:28

So I was able to dig up old archival

27:30

photos of him.

27:32

And I found a couple

27:34

of interesting things. I found he

27:37

had lateral incisors missing

27:39

in his teeth. So his

27:42

canine teeth, in other words, were right next

27:44

to his middle teeth. And this is exactly

27:46

what it says about the Somerton man in

27:49

his

27:50

inquest report. And so I was

27:52

thinking, wow, this is interesting. So

27:55

I talked to specialists at the university

27:57

and I said, is this congenital? Can this be inherited?

29:49

They

30:00

embalmed him in formaldehyde and this

30:02

is going to basically destroy

30:05

the DNA. But it's

30:07

not quite true that it completely

30:09

destroys the DNA. There are now techniques

30:12

to recover DNA from formaldehyde

30:15

damage. But it's true

30:17

it would make it an extremely difficult problem.

30:20

But as it happened, the

30:22

DNA in the hair roots wasn't showing any signs

30:25

of that problem. So it looks

30:27

like the formaldehyde had missed parts

30:29

of the man's scalp. And so

30:32

we were free of it in his hair. So that

30:34

was great. My

30:36

goal was to get enough DNA

30:39

out of this hair so that we could upload

30:41

it on genealogical

30:43

websites and try

30:45

and find this guy's nearest cousins

30:49

and work out their family trees and from

30:51

their family trees work out who

30:53

this guy is.

30:54

In 2018, Derek

30:57

Abbott sent in some of the Somerton man's hair

31:00

for DNA testing at a lab

31:02

at the University of Adelaide.

31:05

Derek says the lab found about 16,000 DNA

31:07

markers. But

31:11

that wasn't enough.

31:12

Now to give you an

31:15

idea, you know, police DNA

31:17

tests use something like

31:20

around 20 of these DNA

31:23

markers to test

31:25

if a criminal

31:27

matches with DNA on a crime scene.

31:30

Whereas say something like ancestry.com

31:34

is a complete different ballgame.

31:36

It's because

31:38

when you're matching a criminal

31:41

to DNA on a crime scene, it's

31:43

like a one-to-one match. It's

31:45

a one-to-one. So he's either matching

31:47

or he isn't.

31:50

Okay? And if you're just trying to find,

31:52

not do that, but you're trying to find your nearest

31:55

cousins on a DNA website, you

31:57

know, 20 markers is not enough.

31:59

You need like

32:01

anywhere between half a million and two million

32:04

because you're trying to connect with lots

32:06

of people. It's not a one-to-one match now, it's

32:08

a one-to-many, completely

32:10

different ballgame.

32:12

Derek started working with forensic

32:15

genealogy expert Colleen Fitzpatrick,

32:18

and she suggested that he bring some of

32:20

the hairs to a lab in the US that had

32:22

newer technology. And

32:25

it was always my intention to

32:28

actually fly to America with

32:30

the hair sample in my suitcase

32:33

and personally take it to the lab. I

32:35

was not going to trust sending

32:37

this hair in the post, but because

32:40

of COVID, I was not able to,

32:42

I'm allowed to go on a plane, right? So

32:46

I bite the bullet and I actually post

32:48

it in the end. I

32:51

had this hair with my

32:53

best

32:53

hair root saved up

32:57

all these years. You know,

32:59

for like it's been about 10 years,

33:01

this hair was sitting in my drawer and

33:04

it was like the best hair root. And I thought I'm going to give

33:06

this my best shot. And

33:08

you know, the forensic wisdom is, you know, the best

33:10

DNA is in the hair root. Guess

33:13

what? It was a complete flop.

33:15

It didn't work. And

33:18

I'm absolutely, you know, desperate

33:21

now. So

33:23

I thought, okay, I've got nothing

33:25

to lose now. So you know what happened

33:28

next? I then sent them another hair.

33:31

Wasn't a hair root, but it was

33:33

five centimeters of hair shaft.

33:37

And guess what? It came out. We

33:40

got 2 million of the markers.

33:43

Two million. Isn't that amazing?

33:46

Derek says they compared the DNA to

33:48

his wife, Rachel, Joe Thompson's

33:50

granddaughter. It turned

33:52

out that she was not a match and

33:55

not the Somerton man's granddaughter. But

33:59

Derek and Colleen,

33:59

uploaded the DNA results to

34:02

an ancestry website,

34:03

and they were able to identify

34:06

a distant cousin of the Somerton

34:09

Man. Slowly,

34:12

they put together a family tree of the distant

34:14

cousin, identifying 4,000 people

34:18

that could either have a connection to the Somerton

34:20

Man or actually be the Somerton

34:23

Man. And

34:25

they narrowed the search

34:26

down to one name, a

34:29

Carl Webb, who went by Charles.

34:31

Charles

34:34

was born in 1905, which would

34:37

mean he would have been in his early 40s in 1948,

34:40

when the Somerton Man was found. He

34:43

was

34:43

from the Australian state of Victoria.

34:46

Derek

34:47

says he had a brother-in-law named

34:50

Thomas Keene, which could explain

34:52

why the Somerton Man had had clothes

34:54

with the name T. Keene on them.

34:58

Other things we found is we found

35:00

out where a little bit about

35:02

his life and his background. His

35:04

dad was a German immigrant

35:08

and married an Australian lady here

35:10

by the name of Eliza.

35:13

And he was a baker,

35:16

his dad, and he had a series

35:18

of bakeries. His last big

35:20

bakery was in a little town called Springvale

35:23

in the state of Victoria. And

35:26

we were able to find out that,

35:28

you know, both Charles

35:31

and his brother Roy helped out

35:33

in this bakery.

35:36

Derek says that Charles Webb's

35:38

father died in 1939. And

35:41

after the bakery was sold, Charles

35:43

Webb took a job at a company that made

35:45

electric drills.

35:48

Charles was married, but he

35:50

separated from his wife in 1947, and

35:53

she later filed for divorce.

35:56

The divorce papers were the last

35:58

documentation Charles Webb,

36:01

Derek could find. There

36:04

wasn't any record of his death, and

36:07

there wasn't anything that might explain how exactly

36:09

he died.

36:12

The police have been conducting their own investigation.

36:16

In May of 2021, they exhumed

36:18

the Somerton Man's body as part

36:20

of an effort to identify all

36:22

unidentified human remains in

36:24

South Australia. In

36:27

response to Derek Abbott and Colleen

36:29

Fitzpatrick's discovery,

36:32

in July of 2022, a police

36:34

spokesperson said in a statement,

36:37

We are heartened of the recent development in

36:39

the case and are cautiously

36:41

optimistic that this may provide a breakthrough.

36:44

We look forward to the outcome of further DNA

36:46

work to confirm the identification,

36:49

which will ultimately be determined by the coroner.

36:51

They

36:53

said their investigation was ongoing.

36:59

Everything in name is only the beginning of the story, right?

37:01

It's not the end. You

37:04

realize,

37:05

oh, this is the end of this DNA

37:08

chapter of the story, but

37:11

it's the beginning of the man's story

37:13

because we now have to look into

37:15

his life and find out his history.

37:18

And that is a whole new area

37:20

of research. In

37:23

March of last year, Derek Abbott

37:26

got in touch with Stuart Webb, a

37:28

man he believed to be the great grandson of

37:30

Charles Webb's brother.

37:33

Stuart

37:33

started talking with other family members,

37:36

trying to see if anyone remembered or knew

37:38

anything about Charles Webb or

37:40

whether or not

37:41

they looked for him.

37:43

And there were stories in the family about

37:45

people that reached out to the police saying, we still

37:48

don't know where this person is. Can

37:50

you, can you interrogate it? And it was even

37:53

as recently as 20 years ago.

37:56

So this, this wasn't a, a,

37:58

a, a mystery. person

38:01

who no one had talked about, this is someone who everyone

38:04

in the family thought had just disappeared and up

38:07

to a number of years ago have been still trying to

38:09

find.

38:10

Yes, yeah, correct. Stuart

38:13

Webb says apparently people in his family

38:16

even told the police years ago that

38:18

they thought one of their relatives could be the

38:20

Somerton man.

38:22

And so they mentioned three different uncles that could potentially

38:25

be. It

38:27

looks like the police and the correspondence had wrongly

38:29

assumed it was one of the uncles, not

38:31

the other. And they said, no, it can't possibly

38:33

be that guy because he was bored effectively.

38:36

So it was kind of a miscommunication.

38:40

There were three missing uncles in your family? Yeah,

38:44

in this case there were three missing uncles on

38:46

the other side. I mean

38:48

wartime, there was a lot of people in

38:50

that time just kind of went

38:53

missing effectively. So yeah,

38:55

it was a miscommunication. What

38:58

do you think happened to him at the end? It's

39:03

so hard to tell, like anything

39:05

could have happened. I've heard all sorts of theories

39:08

from

39:10

Russian ballet dancers and Russian

39:12

spies to time travel was

39:14

one of the theories I've heard. But I think the

39:17

most likely outcome

39:19

may be that he took his own life. But

39:24

I think it's going to be quite hard to prove

39:27

that in fact.

39:29

Last year Stewart Webb began

39:31

going through family photos trying

39:34

to find Charles. At

39:36

one point his aunt gave him a photo

39:38

album that she'd found in his grandfather's

39:40

house. And I opened it

39:43

up and pretty much on the first page I see this

39:45

family photo. I'm like, oh my God,

39:48

he's probably in this photo was exactly

39:50

the right time. It

39:52

looked like a family photo of my

39:55

entire family. I could see my great-great

39:58

grandma in the photo. I was

40:00

like, this has to be a clue.

40:04

And I looked through the rest of the photo album, I couldn't see anything

40:06

conclusive. And so I started doing

40:09

a bit more research and my dad came

40:11

over the next weekend. And we

40:14

flicked through the photo album again, it's

40:16

an old photo album, the photos are in all

40:18

sorts of order, like they're not in

40:21

chronological, they're all over the place. And

40:24

two pages were stuck together and we kind of pried them apart.

40:27

And the pages

40:29

that were pried apart is a photo of

40:31

Charles Webb, the Somerton man, and it's actually

40:33

labeled Charlie

40:35

Webb alongside other members

40:38

of the family. What

40:41

does he look like in that photo? Could you describe

40:43

him? He looks like

40:46

a really

40:48

sprightly, fun-loving,

40:51

kind of 20-something year old.

40:54

He's got, he's staying at

40:56

the back of the photo with his

40:58

three closest brothers. So my

41:02

great-grandpa Russell

41:04

is right next to him, his other brother Roy

41:06

is beside him. They're all smiling, the whole family

41:08

is smiling and having a wonderful time, but I'll look for

41:10

it. He's got his

41:12

head, his hand on his uncle,

41:16

he's got his hand on his head, kind of playing

41:18

a bit of a trick on him in this big family photo

41:21

and laughing away. So it looks like he's

41:23

having a wonderful time. Criminal

41:46

is created by Lauren Spore and

41:48

me. Nadia Wilson is our senior

41:50

producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising

41:53

producer. Our producers are

41:55

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41:58

Foster, Lily Clark, Lena Cillis.

41:59

and Megan Knane, our

42:02

technical directors, Rob Byers, engineering

42:04

by Russ Henry. Julian

42:07

Alexander makes original illustrations for

42:09

each episode of Criminal. You can see

42:11

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42:15

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42:28

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42:29

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42:35

Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com.

42:40

I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.