It is a case that captured the attention of Australia and the world, with all the hallmarks of a great mystery novel. A body on the beach. Slumped against the sea wall, the man is well dressed but no one can identify him.
A scrap of paper in a foreign tongue is found inside his pocket – the words “tamám shud”, meaning “it is finished” in Persian. The paper is traced to a copy of an ancient poem, the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, in a book containing a secret code and the phone number of a young nurse living close by where the dead man was found on 1 December 1948.
For 73 years, the unknown man has been referred to by the beach where he was found, Somerton, just south of Adelaide, allowing the tantalising threads of the “Somerton man” mystery to spin out, resulting in elaborate theories. Some believed Somerton man was a Russian spy, or a spurned lover who fathered the child of the young nurse.
This week Prof Derek Abbott of the University of Adelaide claimed to have identified Somerton man as Carl “Charles” Webb, a 43-year old engineer from Melbourne who wrote poetry and “seems to be a bit of a loner”.
Abbott’s research was undertaken with American genealogist Colleen Fitzpatrick. The pair analysed DNA evidence from hairs caught in a plaster cast made of the man’s face more than half a century ago by investigators.
Abbott tells Guardian Australia how archival records shed light on the seemingly mysterious facts of the case, revealing them to be “a sort of banal explanation”.
The records show Webb separated from his wife, Abbott says.
“And in 1947 guess where she went? She went to South Australia. So you might think, ‘well, this guy is somebody who sort of seems to be a bit of a loner [from] Victoria. What’s he doing in South Australia?
“It’s speculation, of course, but you know, you can join the dots and say, well, maybe he’s there to go and see her.”
Details about Webb were provided when the couple filed for divorce.
“One of the interesting details is that [Webb] was into writing his own poetry,” Abbott says, which connects to the evidence of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.
The other mystery that the divorce papers shed light on is the so-called “secret code” which was found scrawled inside the cover of the Rubáiyát with its last page missing. The book was handed to police by a man who said it had been thrown into his car around the time of the death.
Abbott says “at Adelaide University we’ve been analysing those for years now and we’ve always come up with a conclusion that it’s not actually a code, it’s just the first letter of some words”.
Abbott had joked several years ago they were the first letters of horse names, and the divorce papers reveal Webb was fond of horse racing and betting.
Despite many believing Somerton man was a foreigner because no one came forward to identify the body, Abbott says the fact that Webb was from Victoria correlates with what police said at the time.
Police found unused train and bus tickets in Somerton man’s pockets, as well as an unclaimed suitcase at a nearby train station, lodged the same day as one of the tickets found in his pocket.
In that luggage were some items of clothing with the name “T. Keane”.
Abbott says Webb had a brother-in-law called Thomas Keane who lived a 20-minute drive away from him in Melbourne.
“It seems logical that he got his hand-me-downs from his brother-in-law,” Abbott says.
“The most important thing” Abbott says, is that the DNA taken from the hair caught in the plaster cast of Somerton man matches with distant cousins of Carl “Charles” Webb on both maternal and paternal sides of the family.
“It’s not just that it matched but it actually triangulated, so it connected to a cousin on the father’s side and a cousin on the mother’s side.”
The process of DNA identification also ruled out that Abbott’s wife, Rachel Egan, who he met through his research was related to Somerton man.
Egan’s father was the Australian ballet dancer Robin Thomson, who was the son of the nurse whose phone number was in the Rubáiyát.
Egan told ABC’s Australian Story that members of her family raised concerns Abbott was only after her “for her DNA”.
Abbott says “one of the first things we did was check her DNA on it. And she came up with no match at all.
“But we’ve we’ve kind of adopted him as the kind of adopted grandfather anyway, because he’s the guy who is responsible for my kids being in existence.”
Abbott says when he rang the police about his identification, his contact was “delighted and he explained that one of the boxes the coroner will want to see ticked is that the DNA exhumed matches the DNA in the hair” from the plaster cast.
The statement issued by South Australian police on Wednesday said:
“SAPOL and Forensic Science SA are undertaking DNA work on the remains of Somerton man. This work is not yet complete.
“Once that work is complete a brief will be submitted to the state coroner.”
The decision to formally confirm the identity still rests in the hands of the coroner.
However, Abbott says “as a scientist” he is confident his result is accurate.
