The fascinating case of the Somerton Man has puzzled researchers for decades. The man’s body was found propped up against the sea wall at Somerton Beach in Adelaide on 1 December 1948. Inside his pocket were the printed words “Tamam Shud,” which means “it’s over” in Persian. He had an unsmoked cigarette resting on his chest, his hair was perfectly in place and his double jacket was pressed and in perfect condition. All sorts of theories have been floated over the years, including that the Somerton man was a spy. The body was exhumed last year in a new attempt to solve the case. And now, 74 years after Somerton man was found, Professor Derek Abbott from the University of Adelaide says he knows who he was. He claims to have identified the man as Carl “Charles” Webb, from Melbourne. Prof. Abbott that Webb was born on November 16, 1905, making him 43 when he died. He was said to have worked as an electrical engineer, the Advertiser reported. The mystery of Somertown Man has finally been solved after decades of baffling experts.MARK BRAKE/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock He married Dorothy Robertson, who became known as Doff Webb. He left her in April 1947. “He disappeared and she appeared in court, saying she had disappeared and wanted a divorce,” said Colleen Fitzpatrick of Identifiers International. By 1951, she had moved to Bute in South Australia, raising the possibility that Webb had come to find her. Forensic experts used hairs from a plaster “death mask” to analyze his DNA. They used this DNA to build an extended family tree and were finally able to identify the Somerton Man as Webb on Saturday. Webb has no death record. “By completing this tree, we were able to find a first cousin three times removed on his mother’s side,” Professor Abbott told CNN. “I felt like I had climbed up and was on top of Mount Everest.” Ms Fitzpatrick added: “It’s like one of those folklore mysteries that everyone wants to solve and we did.” South Australian police said there were no updates on the case. Inside the man’s pocket were printed the words “Tamam Shud,” which means “it’s over” in Persian. Newspix via Getty Images In many ways, the potential discovery of the Somerton man’s identity raises more questions than answers. Police discovered a number of unusual items on his person in 1948. A half-eaten pack of Juicy Fruit was of no interest, but an aluminum comb, a product not available in Australia, suggested it had recently been to America. His clothes were also of an American brand, police later discovered. A pack of Army Club cigarettes in his pocket contained a number of cigarettes of another brand. This in itself was not unusual: at the time it was fashionable to carry the case of an expensive brand of cigarettes while refilling it with a cheaper brand. Police noted, however, that the Somerton Man did the opposite, filling the cheap pack with expensive cigarettes. This struck them as oddly deliberate, as if he was trying to pass himself off as lower class. An unused train ticket from Adelaide to nearby Henley Beach and a bus ticket from the city led police to the train station, where they discovered a suitcase believed to be his. The case contained a number of items, including clothing that had all tags and identification removed. Three shirts had the name ‘Keane’ written on them: police believed they were either overlooked by whoever cut out the names or left intact as a red herring. Either way, they quickly determined that Keane was not the man’s name, as no missing persons were reported by that name. He carried no wallet, his shoes were unusually clean considering he was walking on a beach, and his hands and fingernails “showed no signs of manual labor.” His autopsy revealed a number of abnormalities suggesting he had been poisoned. The findings read in part: “There was blood mixed with the food in the stomach. Both kidneys were congested and the liver contained a great excess of blood in its vessels… The spleen was remarkably large… about three times the normal size… there was destruction of the center of the liver lobes revealed under the microscope… acute hemorrhage of gastritis, extensive congestion of the liver and of the spleen and the congestion in the brain’. Despite these findings, no poison was found in the man’s body and the usual reactions to such a thing – vomiting and convulsions – were not evident. If poisoned, it was a fast-acting type, undetectable to medical science at the time. A small rolled-up piece of paper was found in his pocket, which read “Tamam Shud”, Farsi for “finished” or “finished”. The serrated paper was soon discovered to have been removed from the last page of Omar Khayyam’s The Rubaiyat, specifically a 1941 edition. The book was a translation of verses by an 11th-century Persian poet popular in the Western world during the 1940s. Police launched a national appeal for information about the book with the missing page and, surprisingly, a man came forward claiming to have found the book in the back seat of his vehicle, which was parked on Somerton Beach around the time of the man’s death . He often left his car windows open and thought little of it until he read about the search in the paper. The book itself revealed a surprising clue on the back page: a coded message, five lines, each with silly strings of letters. The second line came off, adding to the mystery. Codebreakers from the FBI and Scotland Yard were tasked with decoding the message, but to no avail. Given the man’s “high physical condition” as described by the coroner, the secret code, the undetectable poisoning, the fact that no one could identify him and the “Tamam Shud” note, theories arose that the Somerton Man was Russian spy.
