A dead man on an Adelaide beach. No wallet. No identification. Labels cut from his clothes. A mysterious scrap of Persian poetry hidden in his pocket. And a coded message that has baffled investigators for decades. In this episode of The DownUnder Mystery Club, authors AJ Blythe and Ava Ness unravel the extraordinary mystery of the Somerton Man.
Listen in as we follow the trail of strange clues—from the abandoned suitcase at Adelaide railway station and the words “Tamam Shud” hidden in a secret pocket, to The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, a mysterious sequence of letters, and a phone number that led police to nurse Jessica Thompson. Then we explore the modern DNA investigation that may finally have put a name to the unidentified man: Carl Charles Webb. But if Webb really was the Somerton Man, does that solve the mystery—or simply give us another name to add to one of Australia’s most enduring cold cases? Finally, we head into our Mystery Book Club segment to chat about the fascinating mystery novels this extraordinary real-life case brings to mind.
Do you think having a name solves the case of Somerton Man or are there still pieces of this mystery waiting to be uncovered? Leave a review and tell us your theories on Somerton Man or share your current mystery reading list!
[Transcript in post below]
Cypher:
WRGOABABD
MLIAOI
WTBIMPANETP
MLIABOAIAQC
ITTMTSAMSTGAB
Book Links:
The Colorado Kid by Stephen King
Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers
The Guest List by Lucy Foley
Pictures of You by Emma Grey
The Woman in the Veil by Laura Joh Roland
Tamam Shud: The Somerton Man Mystery by Kerry Greenwood
Leave a review or drop your thoughts in the comments wherever you’re listening.
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References:
Abbott, D., 2022. The Genetic Identification of Carl Webb. Adelaide: University of Adelaide Research Repository.
Cleland, T.E., 1949. Inquest into the Death of an Unidentified Man Found at Somerton Beach on December 1, 1948. Adelaide: Coroner’s Court of South Australia.
Dewar, P., 2022. ‘The Famous True-Crime Mystery and Its Unlikely Links to Our Inner West’, The Westsider, 13 October. Available at: https://thewestsider.com.au/the-famous-true-crime-mystery-and-its-unlikely-links-to-our-inner-west/.
Fitzpatrick, C. and Abbott, D., 2022. ‘Forensic Genetic Genealogy and the Resolution of the Somerton Man Case’, Journal of Forensic Sciences, 67(5), pp. 1823-1831.
Foley, L., 2020. The Guest List. London: HarperCollins.
Gizmodo Australia, 2017. ‘The Tamam Shud Case’, in Australia’s Most Intriguing Unexplained Phenomena, 14 January.
Greenwood, K., 2012. Tamam Shud: The Somerton Man Mystery. Sydney: NewSouth Publishing.
Grey, E., 2024. Pictures of You. Melbourne: Penguin Books Australia. [1]
Historic Mysteries, 2023. The Somerton Man: Australia’s Unsolved Postwar Mystery.
King, S., 2005. The Colorado Kid. New York: Hard Case Crime.
Meldrum-Hanna, C. and Worthington, E., 2022. ‘Somerton Man mystery solved as DNA points to identity of Melbourne man Carl Webb’, ABC News, 26 July.
Pelling, N., 2022. The Somerton Man Cipher and the Rubaiyat Shorthand Analysis. London: Cipher Mysteries Press.
Roland, L.J., 2020. The Woman in the Veil. New York: Crooked Lane Books.
Sayers, D.L., 1923. Whose Body?. London: George Allen & Unwin.
Tamdgidi, M.H., 2021. Tamám Shud: How the Somerton Man’s Last Dance for a Lasting Life Was Decoded. Belmont: Okcir Press. Watson, J., 2022. ‘The Banal Truth of the Somerton Man: Why the Spy Theories Failed’, The Guardian Australia, 31 July.