The Somerton Man
On December 1, 1948, a well-dressed man was found dead on an Australian beach with all identification removed. In his pocket was a scrap of paper reading 'Tamam Shud' - 'finished' in Persian. His identity remained unknown for 73 years, and the mystery deepened with coded messages and Cold War intrigue.
The Somerton Man is one of the greatest mysteries in criminal history - a well-dressed corpse found on an Australian beach with no identification, a mysterious code, a secret romance, and potential Cold War espionage. For over seven decades, his identity remained unknown, and even now, with DNA identification achieved, questions remain about who he was and why he died.
The Discovery
On the morning of December 1, 1948, the body of a man was discovered on Somerton Beach in Adelaide, South Australia. He was lying against a seawall, his head resting against it, his legs crossed. To passers-by, he appeared to be sleeping.
The man was well-dressed in a suit and tie, his clothing expensive but all labels removed. He appeared to be in his 40s, athletic build, with ginger hair. He carried no wallet, no identification, and no clue to who he was.
In his pocket was an unlit cigarette of a brand not sold in Australia. His other pockets contained a rail ticket, a bus ticket, and a comb. Nothing that could identify him.
The Investigation
Investigators found numerous anomalies:
No Identification: Not only had identification been removed, but labels had been cut from all his clothing. Someone had deliberately made him unidentifiable.
The Suitcase: A brown suitcase at the Adelaide railway station was eventually linked to the man. It contained clothing (also with labels removed), a stenciling kit of the type used by military or maritime workers, and other personal items. Nothing definitively identified the owner.
Cause of Death: The autopsy found no natural cause of death. The coroner suspected poisoning but couldn’t identify the substance. The enlarged organs suggested a rapid-acting poison, but none was detected - possibly a sophisticated compound unavailable to the forensic technology of 1948.
Tamam Shud
In January 1949, a coroner discovered a tiny rolled-up scrap of paper hidden in a previously overlooked fob pocket in the man’s trousers. On it were printed two words: “Tamam Shud” (sometimes transliterated as “Taman Shud”).
The phrase means “finished” or “ended” in Persian. It was identified as being torn from the final page of a copy of “Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam,” a collection of Persian poetry popular in the early 20th century.
A public appeal located the book: a rare edition had been thrown into a man’s car several months earlier. The man had kept it without thinking much about it.
The Code
On the back cover of the book was something extraordinary: a faint impression of five lines of capital letters, apparently a coded message. The letters read:
WRGOABABD MLIAOI WTBIMPANETP MLIABOAIAQC ITTMTSAMSTGAB
Despite efforts by military cryptographers, amateur codebreakers, and computer analysis over subsequent decades, the code has never been definitively cracked. Some researchers believe it may not be a code at all, but initials of some kind - perhaps a mnemonic or personal message.
Also written in the book was a phone number.
The Nurse
The phone number belonged to Jessica Thomson (a pseudonym used to protect her privacy), a nurse who lived near Somerton Beach. When police questioned her, she denied knowing the dead man, but witnesses reported that she turned pale and appeared faint at the mention of his description.
Thomson had connections to intelligence work and had given a copy of the Rubaiyat to a former boyfriend - an Australian soldier named Alfred Boxall. Initially, investigators thought Boxall was the dead man, but Boxall was found alive with his copy of the book intact.
Thomson took secrets to her grave in 2007, never revealing the full nature of her connection to the case.
Cold War Theories
Several factors have led researchers to suspect espionage involvement:
- The deliberate removal of all identification
- The possible use of an undetectable poison
- The coded message
- The connection to a woman with intelligence links
- The timing (early Cold War, with Soviet spies known to be operating in Australia)
Some theorize the Somerton Man was a Soviet agent, a defector, or a courier who was eliminated when he became a liability.
Resolution - Sort Of
In July 2022, a team using advanced DNA analysis identified the Somerton Man as Carl “Charles” Webb, an electrical engineer and instrument maker born in Melbourne in 1905. Webb had largely disappeared from records after the 1940s, and his connection to the code, the nurse, and the circumstances of his death remain unexplained.
His identification answered the question of who he was but not why he died on that beach with a scrap of Persian poetry in his pocket and a coded message in a discarded book.