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Selects: The Baffling Case of the Body On Somerton Beach · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: M Hey, everybody, it's me Josh, and for this week's
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Select I chose our two thousand seventeen episode about the
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Man on Somerton Beach, one of the most interesting unsolved
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: mysteries we've ever encountered. Despite lead after lead, it remains
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: unsolved today and seemingly will remain that way forever. And
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: after listening to this one, if you liked it a lot,
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: you can go further down the rabbit hole. There's plenty
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: more stuff on it all over the web, and there
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: have even been some updates since we recorded. So prepared
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: to be baffled and engrossed. Welcome to Stuff you should know,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant,
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: and today is a very special day. We have a
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: special guest producer, Matt been a while. It has been
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: a while, man, it's been since like two fourteen or something. Yeah,
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: and Matt is one half of the stuff they don't
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: want you to know. Oh yeah, that's right. There's three
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: of them, and we are sort of awkwardly recording two
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: of the same shows they've done. So Matt's just sitting
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: there with his arms crossed, shaking his head back and forth.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: So we're trying not to look at him. Are you doing?
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: I'm good except for Matt looking at us like that.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: What do you do for the eclipse? I looked at
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: the eclipse unwisely? Um from where from my house? I
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: didn't I didn't see a full the full schmo. I
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: figured you guys would be exactly the type to drive
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: two hours to see it. No you did, though, huh, yeah,
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: how was it? Well? I don't want to be one
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: of those dudes. But the difference between in full eclipse
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: is all the difference in the world. I saw it put.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: I can't remember who put it, but they said that
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: the difference between seeing a partial eclipse and a full
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: eclipse is the difference between kissing a person and marrying
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: a person. Oh well, that's from the legendary eclipse article
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: from The Atlantic from okay, who wrote it? Oh man? Um?
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: I even like sent myself the link to read it
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: today and I haven't read it. It's probably Tina Turner,
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: the height of her career was It was written by
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Annie Dillard. Okay, it's called total Eclipse, and I haven't
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: ready yet. But it's supposed to be just remarkable, and
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: that's exactly how she put it, and it was I
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: think so. So that would have been a year before
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: Bonnie Tyler came out with Totally Eclips of the Heart. Yeah,
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: it was two. Yeah. I cried, and like five other
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: people with this cried like spontaneously. Tears were coming out
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: of my face and I was like, what is happening
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: to my body? Did you? I mean, what have you concluded?
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: I don't know, man, it was just overwhelming. That's neat
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: to stare at the corona and we're going like too
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: probably Texas for the next one. Like I'm going to
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: every path of totality that I can get to between
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: now and the time that I died here in the
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: clip side. Now I'm a totalitat, totalitist to tattlest Yeah,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: and it was we almost didn't go, like literally that
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: morning we were debating and I was like, it's two
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: hours away, let's just get in the car and go.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: That's very cool. Um. And my daughter saw it, which
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: was weird for her, like she knew something was up
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: even at two years old. Yeah, the Sun's cane black, Yeah,
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: and stars came out and crickets chirped, and it was
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: just really strange. Yeah, uh yeah, it was very quick
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: two minutes. But I think the one in two thousand
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: seven is going to have a four and a half
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: minute totality. When is it two seven years from now? Okay,
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: and that's that great. Maybe we'll drive to Texas too, Well,
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: i'll drive together. Well, if you won't drive two hours,
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: where are you gonna go to Texas? Oh hey, if
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: I ever have a good reason to go to Texas,
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: I'll take it. Well, it's Texas. And then I mean
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: we may go to Akron because that's where Emily's from.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: It goes through Akron, the kind of over to Maine
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: on that you guys should just follow it in your van. Well,
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: you know, I wondered, what how fast? Of course you
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: can't do this, but how fast would you have to
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: travel the speed of the moon? Stay in the path
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: of totality the speed of the moon, which is what
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: like a hundred million miles an hour or something like that.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Listen to our Moon episode. It's my
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: new drug totality. That's neat man. Yeah, I'm glad that
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: happened to you. Happened on me got all get all
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: over me. Uh, how okay, you want to talk about
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: this the eclipse. No, you know what's funny is that
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: we didn't do it podcasts on eclipses. No, I thought
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: about that. We never have, I know, And it's just
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: just like us, Moon goes in front of sun, moon
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: goes away from Sune, it goes up, it goes there.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: Uh yeah, that's just figures. I'm sure we'll end up
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: talking about like we'll do an epis so don't unlike
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: the effective an eclipse on plants first, and then you know,
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: some other tangentially related episode, and then maybe after that
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: we'll do how eclips work. Maybe if we're still around
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: in seven years there you go. How about that's a
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: good idea. And I jinks just before by saying we
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: won't be around, which is an opposite jinks I was
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: gonna say, is that a jinx? Yeah, that's to ensure
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: that we will be around. Smart, thank you. So we're
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: talking today, Chuck about a pretty unusual mystery. Are you
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: familiar with this one before? Yeah? We I think we
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: covered this in an Internet roundup or something. Oh yeah, yeah,
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: I mean we definitely talked about it. But I scoured
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: our archives and I didn't find an official show, So
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: I wonder where it came up, because yeah, I mean
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: we've talked about it for sure, um, and then it
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: was a lot of times you would do one of
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: your best things you've read this week, we would then
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: do an internet roundup piece on that. Okay, that's probably
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: where it came up. Then, did you're like, this is
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: so good it should be seen by dozens of people exactly?
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: I want to share it with the twenty Um. Yeah,
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: I probably guess the article that I did the best
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: stuff we've read this week on would have been the
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: Body on Somerton Beach I think is what it was called.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: Is the Smithsonian article from years and years it was? Um,
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: so yeah, there's been plenty of good articles about it.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: That one, uh is a good one. There's one from
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: California Sunday magazine called the Lost Man. Yeah, just some
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: good stuff out there. If this floats your boat, it does.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: But let us set let us set the theme for you, okay,
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: because this story takes place in Adelaide, in uh, South Australia,
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: which is not just a place, it's a state as well.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: Did you know that? Yeah, I wonder what they call
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: how they pronounced Adelaide there probably not like I just
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: said it, um, but in Adelaide, South Australia, Adelaides the capital.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: Uh it's a from what I understand, And we haven't
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: been there yet, but we probably will maybe next year.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to Adelaide though, I don't know. It
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: sounds kind of neat and creep a little weird, right,
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: but weird in some weird ways. So um Adelaide is
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: this This place is kind of known as the murder
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: murder capital of Australia, but it doesn't have necessarily like
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: the highest homicide rate in Australia. It just has a
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: history of kind of weird, gruesome, grizzly murders. Yeah. I
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: think if you've had more than two or three like
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: dismemberment type murders, that you're on the map, and they
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: definitely have. There was there was a very famous case
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: in the sixties of the um the Beaumont children who
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: went missing off of a beach called Glenn L Beach.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: I think that's probably how you say it um, which
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: is near Adelaide, and uh, we're never heard from again,
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: no trace was ever found. We should do an episode
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: on that one too. Um there was the family yeah,
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: uh so dubbed by the cops in the seventies and eighties.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: This one's really freaky. These were supposedly just like regular
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: professional men, presumed men who had a sort of cabal
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: of torture and murder of young boys, basically like season
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: one of True Detective, but in real life in Australia,
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: with a well with an equally weird ending. Right, yeah,
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: the sky just opens up. It's a total eclipse. Uh.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: And that one again unsolved, right, Uh, it was never
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: it was I think one person was convicted, but the
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: people that he implicated were never charged or convicted. What
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: about the bodies in the barrel thing? That's all you
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: need to say. Okay, there's a string of group of
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: murders called the bodies in the barrels murders. Right, it's
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: a lot of pluralization, it is. Uh. And then, um,
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: so the idea that the one we're talking about, which
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: is the death of just one man, a non violent
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: death possibly um who was found on a beach almost
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: seventy years ago. For that to still have Australia and
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: like the world in its grips today, it must be
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: a pretty interesting case, agreed, And it is. Yeah, so
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: I guess we should go back in time, getting the
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: old Way back machine and travel south to Adelaide post
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: war Adelaide. Look how beautiful it is here. It's hot.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: I smell shrimp cooking on the barbie, um drinking a Foster's. Yeah,
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: it's like a fifty five gallon drum of foster and
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: lots of other Australian tropes are happening all around me.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: There's a crocodile dundeees over there. Why there? When we
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: tour there, they're going to really get because like after
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: the show, the first show, you can run us out
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: of town. They find New Zealand wants us. Yeah. New
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: Zealand say, yeah, come on over here. Uh so Adelaide
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: is um, Well, it's an interesting place post war Um.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: Apparently there was. It was kind of a place where
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: you could go to sort of real if you want
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: to disappear and rewrite your life. That wasn't a bad
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: place to do it. Um. There was a lot of
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: black marketeering going on. Apparently it was really hard to
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: get your hands on a car. Um. So there's like
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: a big black market for cars of all of all
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: stolen nous, all levels of stolenness. Um. Yeah, there's there's
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: just a certain amount of post war scarcity that was
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: still going on, and there's a lot of espionage going
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: on to right. So the Cold War had just started
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: in Australia was in this weird position where there were
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: a lot of Soviet spies running around, there were a
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: lot of Brits and American spies running around, and the
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: British themselves were conducting secret rocket tests in the country.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: So there was um, there was a lot of espionage,
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: a lot of black marketing um, and a lot of
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: people who were not who they claimed to be floating
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: around this country, running around and floating right. So that
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: brings us to a very important date for the story.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: Tuesday November, about seven in the evening. There was a
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: jeweler named John Lyons and his wife. They were taking
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: a little stroll there on Somerton Beach, which I'm sure
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: as lovely um, and they saw something we were They
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: were walking towards glenn Elk so I guess they're connected beaches, yeah, yeah,
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: And they saw something interesting on the sea wall there.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: They saw a man lying in the sand, but very
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: well dressed in a suit kind of propped up on
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: the sea wall there as if he were sort of
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: sitting up about sixty ft away. In America, that's twenty yards.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: In Australia it is a certain amount of meters about
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: twenty Okay, really is that what works? Man? It's pretty
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: close to the yard in the meter are very similar. Um,
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: and he he was doing something interesting, so they say, uh,
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: he extended his right arm upward and then just let
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: it fall back down to the ground. And they thought
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: that looks like a passed out drunk guy, or maybe
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: a barely wake drunk guy, maybe trying to have a
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: cigarette or they I mean, it was remarkable and that
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: they made a mental note of it, but they just
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: kept walking and whatever. I think his suit being on
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: the beach was probably one of the big deals. Yeah,
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: he was very sharply dressed, not just wearing a suit
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: on the beach like the studio was wearing. Was pretty nice,
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: pretty nice. Um In About a half hour later, another
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: couple walked past, and this this time the guy wasn't
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: moving at all. Um and apparently he had a whole
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: swarm of mosquitoes around his face, and the boyfriend says
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: to the girlfriend that guy must be dead to the world.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: If he's not noticing those mosquitoes, he must just be
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: absolutely wasted, so that they were clearly closer, I guess.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: So I think it's seen mosquitoes on his face, Yeah,
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: for sure, because from twenty yards it's a tough thing
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: to see. I don't know, for a straining mosquitoes are
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: all right. So the next morning, um became pretty clear
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: what was going on here, that this was a dead man.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: The same jeweler John Lyons. He went for a little
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: morning swim, as you were to do in Australian the
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: mornings when you're hungover, and he saw a bunch of
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: people crowded around where the guy was and it was
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: it was on. It was as a dead dude. Yeah,
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: the dude was in basically the same position he'd seen
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: him in the night before. That that crowd was like,
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: he's dead, croy key and uh yeah, so Lions is
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: like that was pretty surprising and that's the end of
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: John Lyons. Yeah, but very important here, and that they
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: are the only people who supposedly saw this body move right,
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: super important. So, um, within about a few hours, the
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: body is in the morgue at the hospital and as
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: being examined, and just from the initial examination there was
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: a lot of um, just weirdness that immediately came out. Right.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: So remember the guys like sitting up against the sea wall. Um,
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: his legs are extended out, his feet are crossed. There
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: was a cigarette, depending on who you ask, either a
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: half burned cigarette, either dangling from his mouth or on
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: the collar of his shirt as if it had fallen
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: from his mouth. Um. And when he was taken into
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: the morgue that the doctor said that he was probably
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: dead by two am. Yeah, and most likely when they
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: did the full autopsy, a man named On Dwyer said
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: he was probably poisoned initially, even though there were no
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: traces of poison, which is a little odd, right, But
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: the reason he said that is because when they cracked
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: the guy opened this, this this John Doe, who's widely
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: become known as the Somerton Man. Um, his organs were
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: all kinds of messed up. He had blood and his
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: stomach along with his final meal, which was a pasty.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: It's like a pocket Yeah, delicious hot pocket hand tie. Yeah.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: Um that sounds dirty hand pie. Yeah. Um, there's his
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: spleen was enlarged and engorged with blood. Yeah, that's not
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: a good sign and firm. His liver was giant and bloody,
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: not unusual for Australians that fifty five gallon Joma Foster.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: His pupils were smaller than normal and just quote unusual
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: whatever that means. Right, uh. And then they say that
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: he had a little spittle on the side of his
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: mouth that you know, like, you know, I thought that
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: was a pretty tacky thing to note. Yeah, just leave
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: the guy alone. He's dead, like sleepy drool is what
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: I thought. If I'm pretty, if I'm so pretty that
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: I just have a little bit of spittle coming down
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: my mouth when I'm dead, I'll be more than happy.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: Oh you mean, if you if that's the only thing. Yeah,
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: I agreed. I mean, come on, give the guy a break. Well,
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: you know, they were doing forensics. Yeah, so, and indeed
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: they did, and they kept saying like this gotta be poisoning,
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: like his organs are all kinds of messed up, but
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: there was no trace of poisoning. They brought in this
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: guy named Cedric Stanton Hicks, the hand PI and there, Yeah,
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: nothing's wrong, right. They gave it to Eugene and he
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: was still standing afterwards. Yeah, so it's all good. Um.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: So Sir Cedric Stanton Hicks comes in and says, well,
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: let me let me see this, and he um concluded
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: that it was probably one of two poisons that would
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: have done this kind of damage resulted in heart failure.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: We didn't say that, so they concluded he probably died
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: from his heart failure. Ultimately, Um, but that wouldn't have
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: left a trace. And he did not feel like it
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: was a responsible move on his part to say these
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: things out loud on the record during the coroner's inquest.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: So he wrote them down and the car was like, okay,
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: all right, picked him up and read and what he
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: read was Digitalis and Struugh Phantom and Sir Cedric said,
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: he said it, I didn't write. He goes, oh gosh,
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: did I say that out loud? That sounds like something
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: that you've seen the movie, just you know, added for
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: the drama. But apparently it really am right. So he
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: read those names. I don't know if you read those names,
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: but at least those names were recorded onto the record. Uh.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: Sir Cedric Stanton Hicks suspected the strophanthem although later investigators
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: I feel sure it was probably the digit tell us.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: It sounds like it doesn't matter which one it was
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: because they were both kind of used and I think
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: are maybe still used the treat heart disease. Is that true? Yeah, Um,
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: and then you can get them with the prescription from
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: a pharmacy. I don't know if they're still used. Maybe
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: they are, but they definitely were common at the time
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: or obtainable in in just about every major city. Um.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: So they have an idea of maybe what poison it was.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: But again it bears pointing out again and again that
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: they no one has ever found any direct evidence that
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: the man was poisoned. And to this day, two thousand,
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: seventeen and beyond, if you're listening to this years from now, um,
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: they still don't know how he died. Yeah, and you
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: they may still be looking because this is one of
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: those like the dB Cooper when we did. That's one
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: of those cases where amateur sluice on the Internet are
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: still trying to figure stuff like this out. And unless
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: we come up with some really amazing technologies in the
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: next ten twenty years or something like that, the time
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: is passing quite quickly on this case and D. B.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: Cooper as well, where we may never know may remain
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: a mystery forever unless we invent time travel. Then somebody
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: will go back and figure those out. So the dude,
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: it looks a little bit like Harvey Kitel, he asked me.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: He does, And you think so? I mean, look up
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: a picture of this guy. If you're not in your car,
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: you can look him up. There are two very famous
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: photos I guess from the autopsy scene. Um, just straight
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: onto his face and then sort of you know, from
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: the side with his eyes open. Yeah, it looks like
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: Harvey Kitell. It looks like a wasted Harvey Kitel, which
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: is to say, he looks like Harvey Kitel. Um, so
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: he's in about his mid forties. Yeah, I guess a
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: younger Harvey Keitel. Yeah. Uh, he's wearing this double breasted suit. Um.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: I saw that he was wearing a nit pull over
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: with a necktie. Who And this sounds like we're being
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: um two specific by saying the stripes slanted from left
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: to right. But we're not. We're not. That will come
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: into play. Well, just hang onto that nugget. Yeah, put
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: that one in your pipe for later. He had no hat,
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: which was weird for that time. Oh, I hadn't ran
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: across that, but yeah, I've never seen that there was
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: a hat. Yeah, and they never found a hat, but
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: it would be unusual for a man of late forties
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: to not have a hat. Yeah, I guess so. For
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: doors were huge. I'll bet Panama hats were huge down
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: in Adelaide at the time. For doors in Australia were
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: literally huge. It's like the sombreros made of tortillas melted
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: cheese in the middle man. Is that a thing? It
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: was on the Simpsons too. Hat. Uh. What else? He
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: had weird feet, yeah, wedge shaped feet, they said, and
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: that his his shoes seemed to be molded almost to
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: his feet. The real weird giveaway was his calves. His
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: calves were remarkable. They were bulbous below the just below
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: the knee. And the guy who who performed the autopsy,
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: I think it was Dwyer, said, Uh, this is like
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: what dancers or people who wear high heels, just the
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: kind of calves that they have. He said, look at that,
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: he looks like Lena Horn the Oh my gosh, it
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: is hon Uh. Yeah, so that that's definitely notable. Um
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: uh The other thing they found out too was um.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: A couple of physical traits that he had which will
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: come into play later on his ear. His simba, which
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: is the upper hollow portion of the ear hollow caved in. Yeah,
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: the rolled over part up here, No, like just the
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: upper you know hole than the lower part. Yeah, we've
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: ever done show on ears, have we? We should? The
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: simba is larger than the cave um, which is a
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: fairly rare thing. So I would guess the cabum is
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: where your eardrum leads to your ear drum. Yeah, that's
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: where you put your finger when you want to write.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: But if you go, if you put your finger up
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: over that ridge does not. That's the simba. Yeah, so yeah,
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: that would be weird if this one was bigger than
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: that one. Yeah. It's a pretty rare genetic trait, as
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: were his strange teeth. Yeah, he had something called hypodontia,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: which is he was missing his lateral incisors, which are
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: the teeth that most people have between their front teeth
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: and their canines. His lateral incisers never developed, so his
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: canines were adjacent to his front teeth. Yeah, and it's um.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: Would you say hypodontia. That that can be as common
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: as like you never get your wisdom teeth, but in
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: this case those particular teeth, that was pretty rare. Something like, well,
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: I saw hypodontia in in so that would include not
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: getting wisdom teeth. Huh, well, in any teeth, not developing
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: his hypodone I got. Well, I don't know if hypodonta
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: in general or just this type of hypodonta of the population. Yeah,
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: it's specifically for those teeth. Was pretty rare. Yeah, two,
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: pretty rare. Like everyone's got those teeth, and people at
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: home are like, why are you saying all these weird stuff?
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: Who cares to just settle down? Everybody settle down because
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: it's all going to come into play. We haven't said
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: anything that will not come back into play. Al Right,
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: should we take a break? I think we should. Everybody's
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: getting all riled up. Let's take a break, and then
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: we're going to detail, uh, for about fifteen minutes what
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: was in his pockets? Okay, chuck, So we went over
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: the body. Yeah, it's time to go through his personal effects,
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: which were kind of weird in and of themselves. All
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: about the details. So when you're talking about murders and
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: disappearances and then unsolved after seventy years. Yes, you need
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: to pay attention to the detail. What kind of podcast
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: cops would we be if we were just like, Yeah,
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: he just sort of looked like Harvey kit Tell and
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: he's in a suit d and no good. That sounded
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: like Harvey kit Tell. Yeah it did, didn't it? Yeah
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: it was. It was my Harvey kite Tel on the piano.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: Oh man, what a movie? Um? All right? So in
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: his pockets he had a peck of juicy fruit. The
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: juicy fruit, yeah, chewing gum stuff. He had some matches,
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: Bryant and May matches. He had, uh, well, he had
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: a lot of tickets in his pocket. He had a
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: an unused train ticket from Adelaide to Henley Beach, had
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: a bust ticket from Adelaide to Glenelg And then he
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: had a ticket, a used ticket that said he had
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: come from arrived there by by bus from the railway
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: station there. Yeah, from the Adelaide railway correct. Yeah. Uh.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: He also had um a pack of cigarettes that were
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: weird Army Club army. The pack of cigarettes was an
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: Army Club pack, but inside with something called conceitas which
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: was a much more expensive brand. So that makes no sense, Like,
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: that's the opposite of the only thing that could make sense,
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: which is he just kept the expensive pack and would
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: put cheap cigarettes in it to look fancy, right, unless
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: he didn't want people bumming the expensive ones off of him,
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: so he kept a cheap pack or right, The likelier
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: story is that he bombed some a bunch of cigarettes
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: off of somebody and put them in his his own pack,
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: al right, Like, hey man, he got a smoke or
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: seven or seven interesting or perhaps they were poisoned and
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: put in that pack. That's another possible explanation to write.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: So um his his that was like the extent of
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: his personal effects, aside from his clothing. Right, there was
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: no idea he had a couple of combs, okay hair combs.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: More to the point, there was no idea, no idea,
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: no no wallet, no cash. Kind of odd for sure,
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: and his clothes were odd in and of themselves. Right.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: So again, he was wearing a very nice suit. But
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: the um makers labels of all of his clothes have
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: been from what I understand, carefully snipped away. Yeah, I
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: saw one explanation for this that made it seem a
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: little less odd um, which was back then. Apparently people
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: oftentimes would because there were nice clothes, were not scarce,
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: but he wanted to keep them for yourself, so you
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: would write your name a lot of times on your
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: like suit jackets and things, and then if you ever
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: went to sell them second hand, you would flip out
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: those labels. So that's one explanation that's not bad. I
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: don't know if that's a reach or not, but at
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: least something could make sense out of that. But the
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: other thing could mean that this person was being dumped
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: and no one wanted them to know who they were.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: It's a possibility to or that he didn't want anyone
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: to know who he was. That's another possibility as well.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: That's what a lot of people think, that he was
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: trying to cover up his own identity as well. Um,
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: his his trousers I think had a little repair done
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: with orange thread bear with us um, and then that
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: was about it. They they they took fingerprints of the
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: guy and spread around to no avail. But the fingerprints, right,
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: they they've figured out after a little a while. I'm
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: not sure when, but this would have been so November
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: December one is when he was found. This is to
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: this is like July to us in the northern Hemisphere,
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: the beginning of July. So starting to get hot down there, right,
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: You can only keep a body for so long in
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: the nineteen forties in summer in Adelaide, it's already a
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: hot place to begin with. And um, the authorities were like,
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: we we can't keep this guy above ground any longer.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: So somebody had the bright idea of making a plaster
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: bust of him, and they did, and they kept it
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: at the Morgan and they buried him in a pretty
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: smart way if you ask me. Yeah, they buried him,
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: uh with this marker. Here lies the unknown man who
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: was found at Somerton Beach first December, and he was
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: buried just in really dry ground so if they ever
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: needed to get in there they could. And they encased
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: him in concrete as well to realize, like, keep him
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: preserved as much as possible if you ever needed to
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: be exhumed, right correct. So, um, like I said, they
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: took the set of fingerprints and they're still looking for
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: this guy. They buried him finally, but they're like, this
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: is driving us insane. Who was this man? What happened?
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: To him. Um. So they spread the fingerprints all over Australia.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: They started to send him around to America, the UK,
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: it just English speaking countries. Yeah. They also, uh like
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: kind of before they got rid of the real body,
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: they brought people in locals to see if anyone could
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: identify them. I think afterward they probably showed quite a
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: few people the bust and they were just trying to
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: do anything and nobody, nobody could recognize who this person was. No.
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: I mean some people saw like pictures of the bust
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: or the death pictures that are famous now in the newspaper,
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: and we're like, oh, that kind of looks like uncle Ted.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: And then they go in and see him and be
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: like it's not uncle Ted. Um. And so this this
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: the fact that this is becoming a weird unsolved mystery already,
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: like just quickly after the case started to capture the
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: nation's attention a little bit, and the police, the the
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: the South Australia State Police were not shy about publicizing
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: stuff as needed, Like as they developed breaks in the case,
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: they would tell the newspapers about it, and the newspapers
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: would tell the rest of the country. So it became
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: a pretty big sensation in Australia so much so that
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: a lot of people are just basically take it for
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: granted that the man was not Australian. That were he Australian,
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: some more several people would have come forward because the
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: case had that much exposure nationally. Yeah, and I am
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: just guessing here, but I imagine in this part of
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: Australia probably wasn't there weren't like millions of people living there.
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: I don't know how small of the town it was,
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: but I don't think it was like some huge city,
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: was it. Well, yeah, Adelaide's the capital of South Australia,
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: but is it How was there was like at least
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: five people there? And I'm going to say, at the minimum,
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: someone's going to write in and tell us so all right,
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: and I'm gonna be mad that we didn't know. No,
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: Australians are nice about things usually, Yeah they are, aren't they?
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: They're the Canadians of the South. So they decided the
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: cops decide very smartly. Um, you know what, We're gonna
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: widen this investigation. We're going to see if anywhere in
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: town someone has found something there, any possessions that this
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: guy might have left behind. Since he was just found
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: with what was in his pockets, surely there's something, and
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: in fact there was. They discovered there was a suitcase,
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: brown suitcase in a cloak room that was left there
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: on November, which was the night before the morning that
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: he was found the first time he was seen on
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: the beach. It was no lead, it was and because
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: he had that ticket that showed he had taken a
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: bus from the Adelaide rail station, that was one of
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: the first places detectives went. Uh, and they found this suitcase, um,
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: that had been left there, like you said, on November. Inside, Um,
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: there was some stuff that linked it to the guy. Yeah,
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: I mean it was full of stuff. Um. It was
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: clearly someone who was traveling a lot. There were lots
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: of clothes, shirts and scarves and underwear and pajamas and handkerchiefs.
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: There were two pairs of scissors, one broken pair, one
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: in a sheath, Um, like a shave kit, screwdriver, Um,
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: lots of just normal travel things, razor, razor strap, all
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: the junk you would expect that multiple pairs of scissors
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: is a little weird. Thread but the thread was the
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: big one, orange thread. Yeah, barber not Australian brand barber
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: thread which perfectly matched where his trousers were stitch. So
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: it's got to be him, right, that's the thing that
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: really links him with the suitcase. Um. There was also
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: some stencils for stenciling cargo. Yeah, that was a little weird,
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: very weird. Um. And there was a suit jacket that
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: had a what's called a feather stitch. Um, while stitching
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: is the lightest stitch, right, And they're like, we don't
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: do this in Australia. We don't even have the sewing
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: machine that can do this in Australia. Yet A taylor said,
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: this is an American coat, Yeah, with their feathers. Well,
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: he's a Hamms stitch right. Uh. And then inside some
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: of these clothes, uh was the name keen? Because I
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: told you people wrote on their clothes A lot said
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: T keen, T dot keen, K E N E or
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: k A N. And the best cops could figure is
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: they someone did that to to sniff everyone off the case,
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: right because they've around and there was no t Keen
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: or any Keen that they couldn't put their their fingers on.
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: Who's missing? Um? And the tie years later, like the
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: cops at the time didn't know this. I wonder if
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: they noticed that it was slanting one way or another,
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: but the they probably just knew it looked weird for
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: some reason. They couldn't put their finger on. But at
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: the time in Australia, the U the ties slanted left
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: or right, and this guy's tie slanted right to left,
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: and that was the style in America. It's like everything's opposite.
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: Didn't this so weird? Summer's winter and winter summer flush
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: the toilet? It was in a different direction. I think
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: that's an urban legend. No, I think that's true, right, No,
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: I did a something on it. Really, Yeah, I think
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: it's an urban legend. It's really has to do with um,
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: the uh, the shape of the drain. What in That's
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: what I was so looking forward to pooping in Australia.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: You can still do it. Well, you probably should. Actually,
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: while we're there, I'm going to, but I'm not. The
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: joy is is dead. Well, just don't watch it flush. Yeah,
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: but you might be better off actually in this way,
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: I've just been used to my poop turning into such
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: a direction my whole life. I was really ready for
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: something new, all right, I'm sorry, so the tie is opposite.
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: They said, this is an American tie, like you said. Uh.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: And then they brought in um and actually we should
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: say those were internet sleuths, like within the last ten
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: fifteen years who figured that one out. Yeah, all right,
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: good for you Internet. Uh. Finally, in April, police brought
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: in a dude, an expert pathologist named John Cleveland, and
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: this was a big deal. Apparently the cops in South
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: Australia were not as thorough as you would think because
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: they didn't even check his little pocket watch pocket, a
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: little pocket inside your pocket, because there was a really
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: key piece of evidence rolled up in there. Yeah, this
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: one broke the case wide open. It seemed like it would.
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: There was a little scrap of paper rolled up very
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: tightly in this pocket and written on it in some
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: pretty fancy type setting were the words TAMUM showed T
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: A M A M S h U D. And the
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: cops said, what was this first orange thread? Not some
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: weirdo words rolled up in this guy's pocket? What is this?
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: And John Cleveland said, you dopes, it's called a lead.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: You didn't check his pocket? In his pocket? He said no,
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: So they would figure out in a little while. By
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: a stroke of luck, it seems that um tamum showed
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: means it is finished where it is done, or in
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: this case, the end in Persian. It sounds very h
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: random and out of left field that anybody would know this,
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: But a reporter working the police beat there said named
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: Frank Kennedy, said, no, that I know what that's from.
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: That's from a twelveth century book of Persian poetry of
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: Omar Kayyam. And that just sounds so out of left field.
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: But in fact, that book had been translated by an
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: English poet named Edward Fitzgerald, and it was kind of
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: a big deal once it was translated into English. So
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: it wasn't like just so the word of looking for
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: obscure that nobody would know what it was. No, it
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: was extremely popular in the in the West after that,
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: I think even in America, like there's a Peanuts comic
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: strip that makes reference to it. Even it was a
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: big It was one of those things where like people
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: might not know about it, but there are plenty people
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: out there who did. And one of the reporters recognized there, right,
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: So they realized then that they needed to find the
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: copy of the Rubiat that this came from, and they
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: started looking and looking and looking, and they couldn't find it.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: So the state police did what they had been doing
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: all along. They went to the newspapers and they said, hey,
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: we found this weird scrap of paper. It says tamam shoot.
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: We're told that it comes from the Rubyat and specifically
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: it's the last words of the Rubiat right with the
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: last words of the last poem, right um and go
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: go to it. Media and the media went wild and
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: let everybody know. And it turns out so this is
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: April when they found the Um the scrap of paper,
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: and in July they got another break based on finding
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: that scrap. A guy came forward and said, you know what,
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: I found this copy of the Rubyat in the backseat
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: of my car, which had been parked by sohmer Tion
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: Beach around the time the man who was found on
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: sommer To Beach was found. And I have no idea
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: whose it is. It's just been I put it in
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: my glove compartment. It's been sitting there until I read
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: this article in the newspaper. Yeah. Presumably his windows rolled
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: down or his car was unlocked, and whoever ripped this
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: thing out because they did find out that part was
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: ripped out from his book, just tossed it in the
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: back seat this guy's car, Right, not very smart if
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: you're trying to cover your tracks. No, but maybe you're
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: not trying to cover your tracks, right. So they now
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: have the copy of the Ruby Yacht that the scrap
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: of paper that came that was found in the sohmer
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: to man's trousers came from, yeah, which by all accounts
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: is a one of a kind printing, right, Yeah, like
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: a one off, yes, and not an addition of hundreds,
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: like a single printing of this one book, right, but
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: supposedly as part of an addition. I can't remember which
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: edition it was by this printer, but for years people
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: have been trying to track down a copy from that
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: edition and they can find it. Well, somebody finally found one.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: They're like, this is not the exact same book that
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: the cops found with the Somerton manor associated with Somerton Man,
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: which is a very odd thing, totally. Um, So in
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: this book they get another huge break. This breaks the
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: case open even further, right, They're like, surely we're going
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: to figure it out now, Yeah, this was huge. They
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: found uh two local phone numbers. One was a bank
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: phone number which didn't lead to much of anything, and
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: another one X three to three nine uh, belong to Well,
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: they found a couple of things. They found the stumber
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: that belonged to a woman, a nurse named Jessica Thompson,
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: who will talk about in a minute. And then they
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: also found, um, you know how we did our We
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: did our episode on spies, and one of the things
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: sometimes spies would do would have these throwaway pads that
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: they would literally write things on and you could make
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: an impression such that, you know, it's like the kid's
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: trick where you rip that page off and you have
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: what looks like a blank page that's the impression of
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: what was written above it. And in this little kids
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: will use a pencil, let's see what it says. But
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: in this case he used a UV light to see
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: what by all accounts is a five line code. And
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: the code is pretty odd. Yeah, I mean I think
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: we should read it. It It will sound like gibberish. But
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: if you're into code breaking, you probably already know about
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: this one. But if not, here we go all capital letters.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: Line one is w R G o A B A
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: b D. Second line m l I A O I
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: that was scratched out. Interestingly, third line W T b
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: I M P A n E t P, fourth line
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: M l I A again that's repeated B O A
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: I A q C, and finally I T T M
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: T S A M S T G A B go
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: break it, right the eagle has landed at midnight, which
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: they basically said, go break it, and no one could know. Um. Yeah,
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: a lot of amateur code breakers because again they went
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: to the media like you're saying, um, go break it,
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: and a lot of code breakers tried and failed, and
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: then um they contacted the Australian Naval Intelligence Service and
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: they tried and failed, and either the Naval Intelligence Service
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: or later UM sleuths concluded that it was for there's
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: too little information to ever break it, that you didn't
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: have a key that you needed to have, um. And
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: then it may have been as simple as the first
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: letter of a list that he was trying to remember, right,
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: because apparently they bear of a resemblance frequency wise the
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: first letters of common words in the English language. So
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: it's possible that like it's it's a to do list,
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: that the guy was just trying to remember, you know,
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: by these groceries, go see this person at this time,
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: that kind of thing. It is a lot of letters,
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: and a lot of people say, no, this is obviously
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: this spy codebook. Don't be naive. So the the cops
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: they there's the code breaking thing that they're doing. Then
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: simultaneously they're like, well, maybe we should call this local
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: phone number, and they did, and on the other end
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: a woman picked up and uh, it turned out like
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: you said to be Jessica Thompson, and you want to
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: take another breaks. We're going to take a break and
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: we'll get to Jessica Thompson right after this. Yeh, we
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: should say, coming back from break. We just got compliments
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: from Matt. This is like praise from Caesar on something
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: like this. Look what happened to Caesar though. Yeah, on
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: your birthday. Matt said, you guys really doing a great job.
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: And Josh said, you didn't tell us that. Go back
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: to sleep, all right, So we promised talk of Jessica Thompson.
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: This is a really good lead. They called her up.
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: She answered the phone. It's a good first step in
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: my movie version. Atly she answered the phone and went Uh,
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: she's a nurse. She was married, she had a kid
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: named Robin Thompson. Robin a boy though, right, Uh. And
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: her maiden name was Harkness. Um. And this has kept
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: private for a lot of years. Her name was she
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: asked him to keep it a secret. And I read
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: a bunch of accounts, most of which said that, you know, know,
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: she may have had a few boyfriends here and there affairs. Um.
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: The paternity of Robin Thompson was called into question more
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: than once. So um. I think that the general idea
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: was that she was probably just trying to keep this
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: quiet too, so she, you know, in the nineteen forties,
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: wouldn't be outed as a trollop, right, And the cops said, sure,
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: no problem. And actually, to this day, the state police
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: have never publicly identified Jessica Thompson as the mystery woman
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: whose phone number was written in the Somerton Man's copy
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: of the Rubiyat. But in two thousand and thirteen, her
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: family came forward and publicly identified her. And even though
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: the police haven't confirmed it, it's been known for so
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: many years that that was probably who it was. That again,
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: it's basically taken for granted as a fact. Of the
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: case that she is that woman. Yeah, her nickname was
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: Justin j E. S t y N. That's how she
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: inscribed copies. So this Ruby Yacht, um, well, and I
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: guess that sort of gives away what happens next. Yeah.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: The cops are like, okay, okay, we've gone through a
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: lot to get to you. Lady. Have you given a
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: copy of this twelfth century book of Persian poetry called
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: The Ruby Yacht to anybody? And she goes, yes, I have.
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: And the cops are like, yes, we're about to figure
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: it out. And they said who who have you given
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: it to? And she said a bloke named Alfred Boxall.
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: They said, okay, we'll call you back, and they hung
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: up and ran around looking for Alfred Boxall. Well, yeah,
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: they probably figured, you know, that's Harvey Kitell uh. And
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: they were unfairly to Albert Alfred Boxall disappointed when they
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: found he was alive and well in New South Wales.
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: And he said, yeah, I got the book right here.
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: She h. She gave them to all her lovers. Uh.
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: There was speculation that perhaps, you know, she gave it
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: to him over drinks one night, that he perhaps had
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: been one of her lovers. Yeah, oh yeah, and I
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: think it's probably absolutely correct because she had inscribed it,
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: like I said, with justin and that's how the cops
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: referred to here on their case files. Uh. So they went,
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: you're alive, great, and he said, yeah, but I've got
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: the book like not all was lost and it was intact.
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: That's correct. So they said, oh, you gotta be kidding me.
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: This lead the lead of all leads. I was gonna
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: break this case wide open. It it's a dead end,
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: are you? Are you kidding me? And one of the
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: officers developed a permanent scarf from banging his head slowly
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: against the wall. Right. He couldn't be stopped, couldn't be consoled.
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: And so they said, okay, a lady, your phone number
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: was in this thing, so we want you to come
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: down to the Morrigan. Just take a look at this
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: bust we made of the dead guy and um and
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: they said, also, is there anything else, anything weird happened
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: to you and like the last year or so, And
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: she said, well, the only thing I can think of
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: is that my neighbors said to me once when I
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: came home one day that and some man they didn't
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: know it, called on my house and uh, that was it.
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: That's the literally the weirdest thing that's happened to me.
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: Knocked on her door that she didn't know, her neighbors
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: didn't know. It happens to me like three times a week. Um.
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: So as they bring her in to look at this bus,
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: Detective Sergeant Liona Lean and uh, he was one of
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: the two leads that was not an Australian accent. No,
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: and um, I don't know what kind of backs and
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: it was. It was mid Atlantic, but I was not
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: trying to do Australian. Uh. And he said that quote
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: she was completely taken aback to the point of giving
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: the appearance she was about to faint end quote like
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: she knows who this dude is. She's a nurse, first
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: of all. She was even looking at a body, but
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: she's a nurse, so she wouldn't be freaked out by
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: any of this. No, and again it wasn't even a body.
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: It was a plaster bush, right. But she's like, and
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: they go did you know him? And she goes, no, no,
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: I didn't cut some heartburn, and uh, I have nothing
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: more to say about this, so don't ever ask me,
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: and she clammed up. Not weird at all. No, not
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: at all. So immediately the cops are like, you know
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: way more than you're letting on. But apparently they didn't,
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: you know, beat up people that they had in custody
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: to get information out of them. So they let her
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: go and just said, oh, well, I guess we'll never
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: know the answer to this mystery. Yeah, there's a retired
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: detective named Gary felt Us. Is it Gary? I thought
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: Jerry G E R R Y Probably Jerry. Yeah, I'm
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: you've convinced me that's funny. We we just crossed over
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: to one another side again. Uh. So he took up
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: this case later in life, and um, he actually interviewed
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: her in two thousand seven. He said she was evasive
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: under questioning and like this lady knew something. Yeah, and
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: again this guy him, he's a hobbyist, amateur sleuth on
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: this case. I love those guys. But he had forty
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: years experience as a detective in Adelaide, so he knows
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: questioning people. Have you seen the Netflix documentary series The Keepers? No,
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: I haven't even heard of it. It is about a
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: cold case murder of a nun um in the nineteen
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: if these no nineteen sixties, I think, and uh, they're
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: there are these amateur detectives that have been working on
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: this all these years, these two women in particular that
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: were students of this nun at school that are just amazing,
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: and like, is this really get an appreciation for these
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: people who like become obsessed with the solving these cases
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: that aren't even like family members or anything, you know,
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: Is it a like jama or documentary ten part documentary series?
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: Is wow? I gotta see that. Oh dude, It's one
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: of the most upsetting things I've ever had to sit through.
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: And that's all I'm gonna say. I've been waiting for
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: this since I finished making um Making of a Murderer. Yeah,
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: it's better, I think. I like that, but what what
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: very disturbing stuff. Wow, I gotta go. You gotta leave it.
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: So it hats off to you amateur sluice out there
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: for for getting in the way of real police. No,
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: for for doing work that real police. These are cold
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: cases that, yeah, they're hard pressed to get information anymore
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: in most cases, It's true. So I was just kidding
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: sniffing people off the case after the cops say right,
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: And I was kind of mad not to get too
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: derailed by this that these cold cases just sort of
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: stay um cold. But then you think, like there's you know,
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: you can't just concentrate on a forty year old murder case,
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: and there's so many current things you've got to be
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: looking into. Plus it's hard, really, it's UM. All right.
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: So back to Thompson evasive underquestioning UM later on her son, Robert,
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry Robin, like we said earlier, Uh, he started
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: looking into it, got really interested in in trying to
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: figure this thing out. Oh he did, he did. I
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: didn't know that. And he turned out to be a
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: professional dancer, yes, with the calves of Lena Horn and
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: the Australian Ballet right and hypodonta in exactly the same
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: way that the Somerton Man had. And he had the
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: same ears. Yeah. So a lot of people again there's
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: something that hasn't improven, but most people take as conclusive
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: fact that Robin Thompson, son of Jessica Thompson, who didn't
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: know the Somerton Man, was the son of the Somerton Man. Yeah.
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: What I saw was between the ear and the teeth. Um.
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: They put odds for both of those things at about
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: it's quite a range between one and ten million and
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: one and twenty million. Okay, but let's just say it's
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: one in ten million. That's say it's one in a trillion.
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: At that point, it's the same thing basically, So eventually
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: another was it the same amateur sleuth? Not Jerry Derek
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: Abbott is a different sleuth. There are rivals. It's hilarious.
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: They hate each other. Um. He got involved and said,
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: you know what, I'm gonna get Robin in here for
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: a DNA test. Um, Robin's a hymn, but it says
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: here her is it him? Right? No? Uh, Robin's daughter
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: was the one who took the DNA test. Bobbin is
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: long dead. Gotcha? Got you? Okay? Oh no, I think
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: I had it backwards, and I don't think he got
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: involved in trying to figure it out because he's dead. Okay,
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: That's why I was like, I was kind of surprised,
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: but gotcha. So he got her daughter to take a
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: DNA test and then trace back the paternal lineage, which
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: would have been um possibly the Somerton man, who by
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: all accounts seemed like he was American, Yeah, which would
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: have explained the tie. Um. Perhaps the thread. Yeah, and
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: what else the fact that no one in Australia could
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: identify him or was willing to identify him. Um, so
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: the the only thing left then after that is okay, well,
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: somebody just dig up the Somerton man like he buried
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: him in such a way so we could do this. Well,
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: it turns out in Australia, from what I saw, there
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: are two reasons that a judge will let you exhume
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: a body. One is to contest a will. There's no
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: will or a state really in question here. And then
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: the other one is to identify a lost soldier, a
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: soldier lost at war. Other than that, you're gonna it's
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: it's an up. It's an uphill battle getting a body exhumed.
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: And two different times Derek Abbott, who actually um as
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: an aside, married Robin Thompson's daughter who took the DNA
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: test At his behest um. He petitioned twice to have
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: Somerton Man exhumed, and twice he was turned down because
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: um obsessive curiosity was not a good enough reason to
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: dig up a body. So he swabbed the inside of
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: her cheek, and that was true love exactly. I gotta
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: get in there over candle light. Um gave her. He
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: gave her a hand pie. Oh my god. So here
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: are the theories. Um well, I'm gonna go ahead and
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: start with my favorite theory, which sort of is in
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: here but not really. Uh suicide. I think that perhaps,
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: and I didn't invent this, but of the theories I've read,
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: I liked this one, I think that he um it
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: was an American man who had an affair with Jenny
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: Nurse Thompson Justin and went there, traveled there, um found
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: out she was pregnant. Uh In, was rejected and went
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: down and killed himself by poison and was prepared to
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: do so, and the other things I've read said that
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: he could. You know, the things that don't add up
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: was like the body was found with no like vomit,
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: which a lot of times happened. If you are poisoned,
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: even if you're not, one of the last things you
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: do is your life is ending is throw up. Usually
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: oh really, yeah, Oh it's pretty common. No one ever
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: tells you that. Yeah, like the dinner party. You've never
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: been told that. No one ever tells you two things
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: in life that you poop when you have a baby,
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: and you poop, and you throw up before you die,
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: and you poop when you die, too, poop when you die.
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: I think, so I guess that's why Elvis died on
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: the toilet. Yeah, very affianted to go out with some dignity.
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: Um so where was I? Oh? So he The thing
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: I read said that perhaps he went down to the shoreline,
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: drank the poison through that, you know, into the water,
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: and maybe like vomited and riched there and then kind
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: of went back up the beach and laid there to
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: die and and maybe had one less cigarette. Very possible.
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: So that's one. Another theory is that he died by poison,
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: but that it was murder. Sure. As this case is
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: being coming more and more publicized, the public came to
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: widely believed that he was a spy. And then as
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: more details of the case spread out more and more
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: over the decades um this this vision of aspyring emerged
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: with Jessica Thompson as this communist spy master who was
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: posing as a housewife, and Somerton Man was a spy
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: who worked for her or arrival spy, and Alfred box
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: All was a spy who worked for which would explain
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: why she gave both of them copies of the Rubiyat
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: and that actually the copies of the roof Biyat were
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: one time pads themselves, which we're actually the keys to
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: crack the code. Right. Unfortunately, the cops uh in adelaide
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: through the ruby At. That was the sommer to Man's
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: away in the fifties. Yeah, they got rid of the
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: suitcase in the eighties. He could maybe it was both.
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: Maybe he was a spy who loved her, could have been.
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: But the murder theory is that Alfred Boxhall murdered the man,
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: or she had him murder him and then they took
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: his body to the seaside. Alfred Boxhall was actually confronted
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: with that in the seventies on TV and he's like,
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: that's pretty ridiculous everybody. Some people are like, we know
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: you were in intelligence to World War Two. It turns
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: out he was like an army engineer or something like that.
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: He wasn't an intelligence and everyone said, that's just what
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: a murderer would say. That's ridiculous on TV, so they right. So,
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: the the idea that the sommer to Man's copy of
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: the Rubiat was basically a one of a kind. It
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: seems definitely lends credence to the idea that it's possible
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: he was a spy in that code for sure. Um,
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: so that's another big, strong possibility. Here's the thing I
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: saw too. In nine a third witness came forward share
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: never before revealed story that he was on the beach
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: in the wee hours of the morning and saw a
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: man carrying an unconscious man over shoulder towards that spot,
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: but was dark, could not identify anything, and nothing ever
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: came of that. Stuff like that, give me my money
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: for the movie, right, stuff like that. I think it
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: could be either it wasn't him or just you know,
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: I don't know, you know how people are. They just
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: make something up to get on the news. And then
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: I thought the same thing with the hand raising up,
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: like maybe that didn't even happen, Well, yeah, that was
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: That's another thing. Like what I realized from researching this,
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: Chuck was that this this case has been so muddied
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: with conjecture and fall truths um that have just spread
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: across the internet that like, did the Lions ever recant
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: their version of seeing him move? If so, then then
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: maybe he was dead when he was taken out to
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: the beach. Who knows, like you really have to dive in.
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: But if you if you want to dive in, this mystery,
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: maybe even more than any others, is just uh, just
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: a just an enormously deep rabbit hole to get sucked into,
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: because I mean, even if they dug up so Merton Man,
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: it's found conclusively that he was Robin Thompson's father, that
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: still doesn't say who he actually was. It doesn't idea him.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: And it's just like how this mystery unfolded as the
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: police were investigating it. You can, you can crack the
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: case in one major way and it'll probably lead to
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: a dead end. There's still always this tantalizing mystery that
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: we may never know so Merton Man. Tamim showed, okay stuff,
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: I just said something in person. If you want to
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: know more about so Merton Man, you should go listen
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: to the stuff they don't want you to know episode
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: on it or sure or watch it. I'm not sure
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: if it's video or audio maybe both, uh. And you
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: can also check out The Lost Man on California Sunday
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: Magazine and The Body on so Merton Beach on Smithsonian,
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: among many many other great articles, and since I said many,
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: it's time for listener mail. Uh, I'm gonna call this
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: on accents and I gotta say, we got more email
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: on stuttering and accents that I've seen in a long
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: long time for real. Um, I don't know. I think
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: a new Accents would be big. Stuttering really hit home
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: with a lot of people, I think. And the well
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: there's that there's a stuttering email too. It's either going
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: to be on the next one or the one that
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: was just released. Okay, I didn't know any her right,
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: he may have heard it here. It's upcoming. Hey, guys,
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: listen to Accents. And I wanted to hopefully set up
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: I set the record straight with Chuck's help. My name
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: is Chris and I'm from New Jersey. I have heard
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: Chuck mentioned a few times. He lived in New Jersey
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: for a bit. First off, where did you live? What
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: brought you here? And why did you leave? Um? I
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: lived in Bernardsville next to Basking Ridge. Um, sort of
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: near Morristown is the biggest town that you might have
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: heard of. Uh, what brought me there? I lived there
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: after college because it was a free place to live
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: because of a roommates parents who were out of the
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: country in Australia. Actually, it's all coming together. They didn't
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: want to sell their house, so they said, you guys
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: are done with college. You want to live here for free,
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: hang out New York. And why did I leave? I
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: left because they came back. It'd be weird if I
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: was still living there. Uh. Anyway, he might be able
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: to confirm my suspicions. People from New Jersey don't have
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: an accent, but if they do, it's slight New York
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: New York accent. At any um, now you definitely have accents.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: You're insane. In my opinion, many older adults have moved
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: from New York to New Jersey for the suburbs. Seeing
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: many older people meet and talk about the street they
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: grew up on in Brooklyn, or like I would like
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: to make like it made clear that no one from
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: New Jersey says New Joysey. That's true, if anything that
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: is in New York accent, Chuck, can you confirm. I
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: can confirm I never heard anyone say New Joysey, but
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: I cannot confirm that there's no accent because I definitely
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: have an accent to New Jersey. Um. In fact, one
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: of the things that I noticed. There's not so much
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: an accent, but people in New Jersey would say button
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: instead of button or like you know, words that are
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: split in half like that, they would stop like a
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: hard stop button. You don't talking about very New Jersey.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: And they call everyone kid. Yeah, I knew that a kid,
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: even if they're older than you. I didn't appreciate that anyway.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: I hope Chuck agrees also, so uh, I hope he's
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: a fan of pork roll and not Taylor Ham. I'm
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: a fan of Taylor pork Roll. I love the accounts.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: I thought that was the only pork Roll. Thanks for
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: the endless amount of entertainment. Be seeing you guys in
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: Brooklyn on the upcoming tour. So Chris Ortado from Highland Park,
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: New Jersey. Nice. I can't wait to see at the Bellhouse.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: Thanks Chris. If you want to get in touchure with
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: like Chris did, you can send us an email of
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: Stuff podcast at how Stuff Works dot com and has
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: always joint our home on the web, Stuff you Should
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: Know dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my Heart Radio,
• 1:04:37
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• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows,