After all the recent troll-comment-posting kerfuffle here, I’ve been extra careful about checking comments before letting them onto the site. So, when a very specific identification of the Somerton Man was recently posted in a comment to Cipher Mysteries, I emailed the fairly-unlikely-sounding email address to verify it (but didn’t get a reply).
Despite this caginess, I decided to have a look anyway. Our anonymous commenter claims:-
“Thomas Torrance Keane, born in Charters Towers in 1896 to Isabella Beaumont and her husband[d] Francis C Keane. Himself a part of the extended Beaumont clan and known to the Harkness family through Thomas’s marriage to Clarice Isabella Victoria Beaumont. Although he is noted as being deceased in 1949 this is probably a red herring. He was the Somerton Man.“
As names go, “Thomas Keane” has quite a lot going for it: specifically
* the “Unknown Man” / “Somerton Man” was wearing a tie marked “T. Keane”;
* his possessions included a laundry bag marked “Keane”;
* they also included a singlet marked “Kean” (omitting the final “e”)
Having said that, at the time police seemed quite sure that nobody called “T. Keane” was missing… but it’s entirely conceivable that one might have somehow evaded their net. Furthermore, the commenter names two (both very real) roads where this Thomas Keane and his [alleged] wife [allegedly] lived:-
“The family lived in Frankston, on the Cranbourne Road and before that on Davey Street“
How many of these specifics could I test?
Well… because Charters Towers is in Queensland, the obvious first stop was the Queensland Births / Deaths / Marriages (BDM) website. There I found item 1892/B50671 – the birth of Thomas Torance [note the single-‘r’] Keane, son of Francis Charles Keane and Isabella Beaumont. The Queensland BDM also has item 1949/B21184 – the death certificate for (without much doubt) the same Thomas Torance Keane (which I haven’t yet seen).
On Trove, I found Clarice Isobel (“Peg”) Beaumont’s 25th August 1942 wedding to Private Thomas Lawson Harkness, A.M.F., which is why she subsequently appears in the archives (1942-1980) as Clarice Isobel/Isabella Victoria Harkness:-
The charming auburn-haired bride looked sweet indeed in her gown of ivory moire taffeta, hand-embroidered, with beads and sequins at the neck, and falling full from a tight-fitting waistline. It was buttoned up the back and extended into a long train. The long sleeves came to a peak over the wrist. She wore an embroidered net veil flowing from a top-knot of double white violets. The veil was loaned by a Geelong friend. The bride carried a sheaf of white heather and double violets.
Also according to Trove, the couple had a baby daughter on 20th June 1943: they were then living at 32 Davey Street, Frankston where they stayed until at least March 1945. Note that this was Thomas Lawson Harkness Jr: his father (Thomas Lawson Harkness Sr) was a merchant seaman born in London in 1888, who moved to Australia, and married Ellen Lee in 1916.
As numerous Cipher Mysteries readers will doubtless already be shouting at their screens, Thomas Lawson Harkness Jr’s sister was none other than Jessie Ellen Harkness (b. 1921, Marrickville, NSW, d. 13/5/2007), known somewhat better as “Jestyn“. It was her phone number on the Somerton Man’s recovered Rubaiyat that first brought the police to her door: and it was her anonymity that was protected by Gerry Feltus (and others) for so many years, up until the Internet made all such politeness and civility seem untenably quaint.
At this point, I hope you can see the problem I’m facing: I’ve been sent these anonymous messages (from “Ayuverdica”) that seem to be confusing (the very real) Thomas Lawson Harkness Jr with (the also very real, but essentially unknown) Thomas Torance Keane. Is this just an accident, memory playing tricks on someone? Or am I being set up by a particularly sophisticated online troll trying to muddy the waters for everyone, for obscure reasons currently unknown?
Really, what did Thomas Torance Keane have to do with any of this Harkness-related family history? Maybe nothing, maybe something, maybe everything. Right now, I have no idea whatsoever, I simply can’t tell.
But perhaps you can. Perhaps if we leave the Harknesses to one side and find out more about the life (and indeed the death) of Thomas Torance Keane, we will be able to eliminate him from our enquiries… or perhaps we won’t.
I don’t personally have access to Australian genealogical databases, but I know that quite a few Cipher Mysteries readers do. So this is the point where I stop and hand my (admittedly fairly thin) portfolio over to all you nice people.
Basically, what can we find out about Thomas Torance Keane? What happened to him? As always, dot dot dot… Good luck and happy hunting!
Update: I also found the following advert in Trove, placed in the 11 Jan 1941 Sydney Morning Herald. It may or may not be related, but here it is anyway:-
Keane – Any person knowing the present or past whereabouts of Thomas Keane, the husband of the late Sarah Ann Keane (who died September 13, 1940), please communicate with The Equity Trustees Company, 472 Bourke Street, Melbourne, Victoria.
no, I’m not saying T T Keane and T L Harkness are the same person. I’m saying T T Keane was married to one Isabella Beaumont, who is a likely relation of Clarice Isabella Victoria Beaumont (a different person), who was married to T L Harkness.
sorry, T T Keane was the son of Isabella Keane nee Beaumont, not married to her. So he was the first or second cousin of Clarice Isabella Victoria Beaumont.
Ayuverdica: so… what you’re claiming is that Jestyn’s sister-in-law Peggy Beaumont had a first or second cousin called Thomas Torance Keane, who was the Somerton Man.
I would very much like to find out if this is true: but because of Keane’s (apparently) low-key life, I suspect we’re going to struggle to find evidence.
Right now, we don’t know what name he went by (Tom? Tommy?), or even what state he lived in, never mind what town. So any pointers or suggestions you can pass on to help us unlock his life will be much appreciated, thanks!
Ayuverdica, the Beaumont surname is very common and sharing a surname does not indicate that there is any degree of family relationship.
Thomas Torance Keane
Born: 20 Jun 1892
Father: Francis Charles Keane
Mother: Isabella Beaumont
Registered: 1892, Queensland
Reg. number: B050671
Page Number: 13600
For a start his name was Thomas Lawrence/Laurence Keane. The old typed indexes can be very difficult for transcribers to read. He had an older sister Ada who married Frank Charles Toten in 1915.
I cannot post links here but if you go to Trove and search for “Thomas Lawrence Keane” you will get three results; his funeral notices in 1949, a mention of him being assaulted in 1906, and his probate notice.
Thomas’ WW1 service record is digitised on the NAA website, next of kin is his sister Ada, and he also served in WW2.
As far as I can tell from electoral rolls, he never married, always lived in Queensland and was a war pensioner.
His mother Isabella was a shopkeeper at 58 Musgrave Road, South Brisbane before she died in 1909. I think she probably arrived alone into Queensland on the ‘Waroonga’ in 1887. She was born in Chelsea, Middlesex and her father and brother were also named ‘Thomas Lawrence’. She only had one brother and he lived and died in the UK, so there were none of her immediate Beaumont family in Australia.
Debra
Debra: thanks very much indeed for clearing this confusion up, that misspelling would amply explain why Thomas Keane seemed to have such a distinctive middle name while still apparently being invisible. 🙂
Thomas Lawrence Keane – Page 15 of the NAA archive; Attestation Paper of Persons Enlisted for Service Abroad: Question 5 / What is your trade or calling?
Answer: Horse breaker.
Paul Lawson, the taxidermist, supplied a statement which read, in part ‘ I am of the opinion that he was used to wearing high-heel riding boots. I form that opinion because the muscles of his legs were formed high up behind the knees, ..’ (G Feltus, page 85)
Isabella Beaumont can’t be a very common name, could it be that she gave birth to an illegitimate child who did not take the Keane surname and fathered Clarice Isabella Victoria? Would also be known to Prosper as he was from Charters Towers too?
Somerton Man-Thomas Torance Keane could then have been Clarice Beaumont’s uncle
So, if T. Keane wasn’t Thomas as mentioned above, then the question remains…who was he?
If the SM was Keane, then there must be another Keane in the records somewhere, about his age. Although possibly not from Australia.
If not, then Keane must have been the person the clothing came from who a, was probably from somewhere nearby and b, was a similar age to the SM, so maybe traceable.
The statement that Jestyn was Jessie/Jessica Ellen Harkness is repeated in many places on the Web. Has anyone said how they know the fact? Is there any documentary evidence?
To my very short experience with such complex identification matters, I’m inclined to say that newspaper articles and birth/death certificates, only give the – very much- general and distant picture of the matter in hand and thus require a great deal of assumptions, ultimately perplexing things rather than pointing one to the right path. Alas, i’m not suggesting that surfing through digitalized documents of the time isn’t – or shouldn’t be – the major part of the research, but I believe knocking some potential descendant’s doorbell (sic!) would pretty much save multiple working hours on vast databases and exclude intricate paths that seem to exponentially blossom now and then when new data or suggestions arouse.
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Thomas Lawrence Keane. NAA archives. Statement of Service Number 2033.
Venereal admission to D.B.J Hospital, Abbassia.
A victim of one of Cairos’ prostitutes, one of the many. TLK had many admissions for this condition, up to his discharge.
~
Digitalis was used, in its plant extract form, as a treatment for venereal (genital) disease by the Navajo and Hopi Indians, Van Gogh used it for his epilepsy – The native American Indian’s usage for Digitalin that may be the reason why the coronor was so coy.
Coroner Cleland did not utter its name aloud in his court, because of its ready availability to the general public – and he asked that the name of the suspected poison be written onto a piece of paper and handed to him:
He was of the coronial opinion that the unknown man was poisoned by Digitalin. Strophantin a runner-up. That’s what was written on the piece of paper.
Ayuverdica, Pete, Jesteryn: even though the claim that Thomas Lawrence Keane was related to the Beaumont / Harkness families now seems quite solidly busted, the separate claim that he was the Somerton Man is still “in play”, though at a much lower probability level than before.
Probably the next step would be to examine Keane’s 1949 death certificate, to see if the contents of that are inconsistent with his being the Somerton Man.
I can dig that Nick, this was just an exercise in connections. It helps concentrate the mind.
Quick update: just for the sake of completeness, I’ve just paid 19 AUD to the NAA to get Thomas Lawrence Keane’s WW2 records (“1939-1948”) checked, digitized and placed online. The website says that this will take up to “90 days”, so don’t hold your breath. 😉
At autopsy it was noted that SM’s pupils were smaller than normal, and of irregular shape (both pupils). One fairly common cause of this up to the penicillin age was neurosyphilis.
Regarding the prevalence of the surnames Keane and Beaumont, according to britishsurnames.co.uk the prevalence is:
Beaumont: 0.0214% in the UK (currently)
0.0296% in the UK in the 1881 census
0.0108% in Australia (currently)
Keane: 0.0110% in the UK (currently)
0.0023% in the UK in the 1881 census
0.0118% in Australia (currently)
In the notes made for the 1978 TV show concerning SM Paul Lawson is quoted as saying that Prof. J.B. Cleland was displeased that Lawson had not been able to obtain a sample of SM’s brain tissue for him. I wonder if Prof. Cleland wanted to check the brain tissue for signs of neurosyphilis to confirm the observations he made regarding SM’s pupils?
A cremation… whose body was in the coffin?
Not six months after Somerton Man was discovered but long enough for the fuss to have died down.
Can’t be Tommy Keane… we cremated him.
FUNERAL NOTICES KEANE.—The Relatives & Friends of Mr. & Mrs. F. C. Toten, Mr. & Mrs. L. Fuller (Argents Hill), Miss Doro- thy Toten, Mr. & Mrs. A Dixon, Mr. & Mrs. J. Lohfin, & Mr. E. Toten, are invited to attend the funeral of her beloved Brother, his Brother-in-law, & their Uncle, Thomas Lawrence Keane, of 110 Terrace St., New Farm, late 15th & 57th Bns., 1st A.I.F., to move from Alex. Gow’s Funeral Chapel, Petrie Bight, This (Saturday) Morning, at 11 o’clock, for the Crematorium, Mt. Thompson. Service 10.45 a.m. ALEX. GOW, Funeral Director. KEANE.—New Farm Sub-branch, R.S.S.A.I.L.A.—The Officers and Members are invited to attend the Funeral of their late Member, Mr. T. L. Keane, to move from Alex. Gow’s Funeral Chapel, as per family notice. A. L Beeston, Secretary.
Knox: the whole ‘Jestyn’ = ‘Jessica Harkness’ thing has been at the heart of nearly everything Derek Abbott and his students have been doing for the last few years.
Even though it’s been an open secret for quite some time now, I’d been delaying the day of posting it for some time: but when your site has at least ten commenters who clearly know the fact (and state it outright, repeatedly), some kind of critical mass seems to have been reached, rightly or wrongly.
Knox: I should add that, once that happens, all you can do is try to treat the unveiled subject with proper respect, all the while fighting off the horde of trolls as best you can (i.e. with Glamdring). 🙂
Jessie Harkness deserves the same respect she showed for the truth. That woman concealed evidence of a murder for personal gain, which is not worthy of any special treatment, The truth is what we should be seeking.
Minstrel Janet: generally, my position is that until proven guilty, people – whether alive or dead – have a right to innocence and a right to reasonable respect.
Although it seems – from the comments that get left here, particularly about Jestyn – that not many people now share this position. Which leaves us all somewhat worse off, I think.
See what happens when you mix a genealogist with bodice ripper.
Nick: I share your position — emphatically. While we are grasping at straws because of the mystery, we should pause to consider how we would feel about public speculation concerning our own parents and grandparents. The change from private correspondence, in which misjudgments caused little or no harm, to the World Wide let it all hang out Web requires extra effort for a moral society. We had better think about what we are doing to ourselves and to the future with our new power.
What about this theory: Jestyn gave SM a copy of the Rubaiyat after a romantic liaison in Sydney some time in 1946 (as she had done with Alf Boxall). They stay in touch after she moves to Adelaide and hooks up with PT, and SM writes down Jestyn’s phone number in the book she had given him. When the baby is born, Jestyn knows SM is the father and informs him. SM comes to visit sometime around 20 November 1948 to see his son, and perhaps rekindle his romance with Jestyn. She rejects him, and in a dramatic scene tears out the last page of the Rubaiyat she had given him and tells him “Tamam Shud – It is finished [between us].” SM is devastated, leaves Jestyn’s house and tosses the book in the chemist’s parked car in disgust, keeping the torn page with “Tamam Shud” written on it. He returns to Glenelg around 10 days later to beg Jestyn to reconsider, but she rejects him again. Dejected, he walks to the beach, takes poison and dies. OR, in the alternative, when he returns to Jestyn’s a second time, PT kills him in a fit of anger, disposes of his wallet takes the body to the beach.
Knox, these individuals have been dead for almost ten and twenty years, respectively, The ineptitude or corruption of the investigating Police protected Jestyn for sixty years – in this particular case stymying what might otherwise have been an open-and-shut case. She was able to live a long and untruthful life and is buried in a marked Jewish grave in Adelaide. Somerton Man died alone on a beach and received a pauper’s funeral. I wouldn’t be too concerned about Jessie Harkness or Prosper Thomson.
Minstrel Janet: I think the police should have had Jestyn’s neighbors view the corpse to see if it looked like the stranger who asked about her. I think they should have looked diligently for the missing sailor after his shipmates said he was not SM to see if the items found were his. I think they should not have disposed of the evidence from an unsolved case (though unfortunately that was common practice). If I remember correctly, one of the autopsies was hampered by lack of supplies. There may well be many other things that I think should have been done differently: but none of this can reasonably be called corruption. I really do not think police protected Jestyn for sixty years for some ulterior reason.
I was as curious as anyone to know who Jestyn was. I *am* concerned about Jessie Harkness, but I really think scenarios made public do more harm than good when we are reaching into personal lives.
“The ineptitude or corruption of the investigating Police protected Jestyn for sixty years”
It’s all a corrupt conspiracy, even now in 2013, after they are all long dead – !
Janet, write the book, you already have the theory ..
A nurse gave copies of the Rubayat to soldiers recovering from the effects of war.
Books were regularly sought, bought, given and distributed to soldiers in hospital, including hospitals for those traumatised or ‘shell-shocked’.
Have any of you read ithe Rubayat? Not exactly racy reading, but very appropriate for people distressed.
does anyone know why Robin Thomson is sometimes credited as Robin McMahon in parentheses? Did he have a stage name, or did he change his name later?
Minstrel Janet, I assume you have some actual proof of their involvement in the death of the Somerton man? Everyone else is happy to speculate and put forward their sometimes wildly improbable theories, but you seem to be quite venomous toward this couple. Perhaps you might like to share what you know?
The name Isabella/Isobel came down through Clarice’s maternal side of the family, not the Beaumonts.
If Thomas Lawrence Keane was the Somerton man then they did a remarkable job of repairing the damage from his gunshot wound to the face/eye and thigh.
Debra: as far as I can tell, Keane’s WW1 gunshot wounds to his face and right thigh are described in several places in his medical records as being “slight”, so whether he was scarred remains entirely unknown.
I am not venomous towards the couple, I have simply stated the facts. The Harkness family had a disproportionate share of bankruptcy and criminality, Prosper McTaggart Thomson was a small-time fraudster with a comparatively long record, and Jessie Ellen Harkness was involved in at least one, and likely two, highly suspicious deaths that resulted in Coronial inquests. She was also a proven liar. If stating these facts openly in such a way as to cause people to investigate them further is venomous, then I will accept the label. However I prefer to consider myself a seeker of the truth.
One of the problems I’ve found in the hunt for T.Keane, is that he may not have been an Australian, although he may have served alongside some. That just leaves the English, Irish, American, Canadian and New Zealand war records to go ..
Knox: the things you describe constitute ineptitude. If the ineptitude was deliberate or a result of Intelligence involvement, then they become corruption. The internet simply allows light to enter where there is darkness, and if the suspect were alive then the laws of defamation would protect her. As it is, British and Australian law has never recognised the capacity of a dead person to be defamed, and for good reason. Crooks can suppress details of their shady antics while they are alive, in order that the burden of proof always be paramount. But once they are dead? You’ve always been allowed to say what you like. The internet isn’t giving us much new here.
Minstrel Janet: The introduction of “if” into your statements is welcome. It would be helpful if you would note that your expressions are based solely on information on the Web if that is the fact. I submit that the reason for the law you mention is that it has little alternative but to recognize that only the living can be injured and have the capacity to act.
I’m a bit confused. “Jestyn”/Harkness had 60 years to set the record straight. I have been led to believe she knew who SM was. Depending on who you ask she also likely bore his child. My question is, why did she get a pass? Even in that era, murder is murder. No matter how you look at it you can’t expect to defend someone who died of old age never answering for her actions.
At worst she was involved in murder and at best she condemned a man to an unmarked grave. Even if she were still alive, there is no defamation involved.
I know in America you’d be called to court and forced to invoke the fifth amendment. What is the “by the book” procedure in Australia? In lieu of a formal process did she not also manage to avoid laws about obstructing an investigation?
Unless she actually did not know him, there is no way to offer any defense for her actions.
Looks like the cipher-bit got lost!
Although stage names can be taken from anything, the answer to Minstrel Janet’s question could be important — whether or not any of the following is true. Is Professor Abbott’s paternity test reliable? Suppose SM acquired the book, including the “code” and phone number, from the same place he acquired his clothes. Was Jestyn taken aback because she expected to see Boxall? Was Boxall the only person she had given the Rubáiyát? Was the book donated to a mission by one of Jestyn’s friends, who recorded Jestyn’s phone number for temporary reference? Is the “code” unrelated to espionage? Was Boxall really involved in intelligence work? Ignoring possibilities that haven’t occurred to us, I am reminded of a quote by a suspect in another famous mystery: “My innocence notwithstanding, the facts do fit”.
Rik07: the problem is that there are hundreds of other plausible scenarios that could have played out. The trick is to come up with a way of looking at the evidence or the history that allows us to eliminate even one of them… but that is much harder than it sounds. 😐
Knox: Boxall was engaged in intelligence work; the NAOU was an intelligence based unit that watched for, and recorded any enemy infiltration from Timor or Papua. The ground units of the NAOU (Nackeroos) were all equipped with powerful radios and weapons. Boxall may have been the odd man out being from the city and not the bush, where most of the NAOU where recruited, however he had a bushman’s attributes in that he would not let a piece of machinery defeat him.
Boxall was also an Australian champion dirt bike rider and one of his crew mates on the Crusader told me of the time he commandeered a Harley D. in Rabaul, removed the footplates, and proceeded to show everybody how to ‘lay it over.’
He was also the ship’s diver and nearly drowned one day when he was trapped under the Crusader’s hull.
The attraction between him and the nurse may have been platonic, the Clifton Gardens Hotel was a very popular pub with servicemen in the 40’s – probably as crowded as it was in the late 50’s when it was our turn to pack the rooms.
Boxall may well have been an island of calm for her when she was there. An attractive woman, a little on the small side, but well shaped.
The Somerton man was a warning to Ben Chifley to get rid of H. V. Evatt and the nest of Russian spies.
Part of the plot to make Robert Menzies Prime Minister and establish the AISO. England needed space to devolop neclear warheads and test missles.
For the past week or so I’ve been reading the discussion on the Smithsonian site, I got to the end today and it cut off sometime in May this year.
Did anything ever become of the girl who thought it might have been her Grandad? Or are we dismissing that SM was Russian/European now?
Also, I did ask on another page but I was wondering what characteristics the Rubiyat in question had? I have a first edition copy with the same ‘Tamam Shud’ font, and can’t find one the same anywhere on the internet.
So, Nick and Friends, did anyone respond to the Equity Co. advertisement?
🙂
bdid1dr: Sarah Ann KEANE formerley BROTHERS was 75 years old when she died in 1940 and married Thomas KEANE in 1901, so seems to be of no interest.
Kbnz: The Rubaiyat of interest was published by Whitcombe and Tombs of New Zealand. The publication date seems to be unknown but it should be a first edition and the text of this particular version is Edward Fitzgerald’s 1859 translation which had 75 quatrains. The poem on the last page should NOT contain the words ‘silver’ or ‘saki’ and there should be no printing on the back of this page which also ends with the words ‘Tamam Shud’. The book should be printed on white paper, not coloured, though it is believed by some that they may have been from the same print run. There are photos of the front cover online if you have a search.
Minstrel Janet: The Harkness family did not have a disproportionate share of bankruptcy and criminality. I have researched thousands of families and their published activities are not unusual or particularly noteworthy and are actually quite tame. If you don’t find something similar in most families then you are not looking hard enough.
I wrote, indirectly, that Jestyn was “taken aback”. I would like to withdraw that. From an interview on YouTube, when she saw the bust, she either bowed her head or looked down (for the remainder of the visit).
xplor: who’s to say you’re wrong?
http://tomsbytwo.com/2013/10/10/the-conspiracy-theory-that-will-not-go-away/
ah, Debra, Prosper was in and out of court, John Moir was a bankrupt, Thomas Lawson snr was a crook, and Jestyn was involved in two major crimes.
Minstrel Janet: which “two major crimes” are you saying Jestyn was “involved in”?
the two Rubaiyat murders, of course!
Great site Nick! Long time VM interest. This case is flat out bizarre but so intriguing… After catching up on the current raft of new names and theories, I can’t help but think what if… What if the numbers and code in the back of the book had nothing to do with Somerton Man? Maybe he just grabbed it/stole it as he wanted to rip out the last words. While the version of Rubayiat is rare the book itself was not.
That being said, it’s hard to leave Jestyn out of this tale 🙂
One question please for one of the experts out there.
Was PMcTs ex wife at all involved in the identification attempt of S Man?
Thanks, Nicky
Debra: thanks very much again – the Sarah Ann Keane thing was simply a “Thomas Keane”-related missing-person loose thread from close to the time we’re looking at that I thought was worth tying up, if only to prevent someone else running with that in future. 🙂
Minstrel Janet: I think most Cipher Mysteries readers would prefer to hear a slightly less circular justification for your low opinion of Jestyn… 😐
Nicky: Queenie Elizabeth Thomson
(from Hampton, Victoria? – http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/35695166 ) has been suggested online as having put forward an identification, but I haven’t got round to checking it… unfortunately I lent out my copy of Gerry Feltus’ book a few months’ back so don’t have it here to go through. 🙁
Thank you also Nicky, but no thanks, there are enough (you name it) ridden women in the great work I’m preparing. Though I’ll stick someone named Queenie in there somewhere. It will be our little code.
Thanks Debra. That is interesting.
My copy has white pages which have discoloured over time. There is no mention of Silver or Saki, it has 75 verses and is the 1st edition by Fitzgerald.
The only problem is that it was printed by Collins, and Tamam Shud is under the last verse – which is on the backside of the the others.
Unfortunately the wrong book, and I still cannot find my version online, so it might also be a rare copy of some type.
Apologies for breaking in twice in a row, but .. I have more about T. Keane.
Professor D Abbott’s two researchers mistakenly called T Keane, Tommy Read, in their widely published honours thesis. This is not news, however when the Wikipedia people picked up the mystery they repeated this incorrect information, and with Wiki being all things beautiful – everybody who wanted to find some easy facts went there, and came away with duff info.
Shame that.
But I fixed it, however Prof. Abbott will not fix his i, despite a courteous email. He’s obstinate that way.
Obviously if Jestyn turned Jewish, a la Marshall, she was a Soviet. So was her man terminated by the British side? I’m beginning to think Somerton Man may have been a Soviet too, and was likewise terminated. She may’ve been played like a fiddle.
Hmmm, this whole topic is beginning to sound like the pages of a Goliardic publishing house. Fun, nevertheless. At least as long as there are no surviving relatives (and copyrights don’t figure). 😉
The Somerton man falls into the gap between the OSS and the CIA. Their would be no reason for the Americans to do covet operations in Australia as we had stopped giving them secret information. The pressure was on the English to develop and test A bombs. This has the hallmarks of room 39. The search for spies was more of a problem for the English speaking countries than they imagined.
bdid1dr: There are many surviving relatives, and some are very active on sites that wish to find some truth, or invent some fantasy (ahem) on the disposition of their antecedents, and given some of the more strident and unfounded claims of guilt and complicity that are aired here and there, they have my sympathy.
I can’t help being fascinated by the thought that being converted to another religion or sect will automatically change my voting preference.
If I become a Buddhist or a Jain, I suppose I might be more inclined to vote for the Green parties.
But if I became a Hindu, would it make me a conservative voter by reference to the caste system, or non-conservative voter, because India was traditionally the most hospitable and accepting of difference?
Then again, if I converted to Judaism, would suddenly feel an urge to spout Trotsky to anyone who’d listen?
Are all agnostics prone to donkey votes – surveying that properly would be against our constitution, but never knowing is probably appropriate.
My word,
Diane, the question is: why does an Australian girl of purely Scots Presbyterian heritage, alone among her family members decide to convert to Judaism, roughly at the same time as she is probably associating with the very politically radical and very Jewish brother of the Chief Minister of Singapore? Or are we to believe that she simply picked up a copy of the Torah in the same bookshops where she was buying her Rubaiyats are converted of her own accord?
That is the question, however politically incorrect it may be to ask.
Minstrel Janet: actually, my question is why someone would take *as an undeniable fact* a particular person’s close involvement in two unexplained deaths and then repeatedly leave comments on my blog saying as much without so much as a whisper of evidence to back them up, let alone proof.
Given that you’re obviously inquisitive and well-informed about many things, I just don’t understand why this is something you want to spend your time doing. Basically, what’s in it for you?
Minstrel Janet: George Marshall committed suicide by drinking barbiturates, a common enough method. He was also a poet and he attempted an earlier suicide in Western Australia where hospitalisation was recommended. There were pages of the Rubaiyat scattered about his 15 day old corpse, and he had underlined what people think we’re his favourite verses.
There are no facts, other than geographical, that connect him to the nurse, and if you have ever wandered the headlands of Sydney Harbour you might be surprised at the wilderness … Marshall died alone on a rock outcrop overlooking the water,
Aw Pete, your blog is very good too 🙂
Has everyone see the black and white picture in the news article of Jestyn? No other pictures online but wasnt expecting there to be.
Have to agree with Nick, Minstrel Janet you are a major contributor here but you seem to be obsessed with this jewish “flip flop”. What if Jestyn fancied they way they put stones on a grave and felt she had a connection with the unknown man who she didnt know either? What if she was a bit kooky in her older age and requested, in her will, to be buried in the jewish section? What if, what if what if?
– MJ: and before you attempt to connect yet another death to your imaginative theory, Gwen Graham (the hairdresser) took her own life by slitting her wrists in her bath not long after she appeared at Marshall’s inquest.
Gwen Graham, you may remember, received a loan from Marshall of about 300 pounds, and this loan may have been interpreted in such a fashion at the inquest as to cause her suicide.
She was white and Australian, Marshall was black and a Malay. The judges and lawyers were all white and Australian.
Perhaps you can use your imagination as to what may have been said, or inferred at the inquest with regard to Marshall’s relationship with Graham.
I knew the deceased through the Adelaide synagogue and there was plenty more going on there. I am trying to get someone to corroborate the stories. People know, but they won’t say or can’t join the pieces together.
Minstrel Janet,
I should think that like any other church-going Presbyterian Christian, she’d been reading and/or hearing the Jewish religious books in translation all her life.
Conversion is a matter of religious convincement, a matter between the individual and the divine.
The Australian constitution also says that a person’s religion is a private matter and until fairly recently, in the east coast anyway, it was considered not just poor form to point out that a person was Protestant, or Catholic, or Jewish but likely to see the speaker treated as a religious fanatic. One of the several improvements seen during the post-war years.
actually that was a lie
Janet – good of you to admit it so.
OK all you bush lawyers, so Jestyn isn’t guilty of any crime beyond reasonable doubt. So what? There’s no hope of convicting her anyway. On the balance of probabilities, however, it is clearly more likely than not that if she was not complicit, she was at least heavily involved in the death of the Somerton Man or knew his identity. Unless you prefer to ignore the primary sources. Keep defending this dead liar by all means, but it will bring us no closer to the truth.
Minstrel Janet: if commenters to this blog spent even 10% as much time actually trying to get to the truth as spinning yarns around their preferred explanatory narrative, perhaps we’d have all got somewhere by now.
As it is, I’m now in the situation where I’m having to moderate out all manner of lies about (and slurs on) the dead and their families, regularly posted here by all manner of anonymous Australian and New Zealander posters.
Please don’t imagine that this amounts to an enjoyable or fun activity for me. Honestly, I have ten thousand things I’d rather be doing than dealing with “Tamam trolls”.
It comes down to this: as I said before, you’re obviously an inquisitive and well-informed person, yet you continue to post what seems to many (if not most) other commenters here to be inflammatory and obstructive comments. Why? What’s in it for you?
I want to know what happened in Adelaide in 1948, quite simply. I don’t like that the major South Australian newspaper continues to publish the names Teresa Powell and Prestige Johnson as factual when they are not. I don’t appreciate the culture of political secrecy that operated in South Australia for many decades. Adelaide is a strange little city, a secretive, closeted, insular place. It needs to be blown out of the water, secrets and all. This mystery is different to, say, the Bogle-Chandler case because there is a person of interest who lived very publicly in Adelaide and whose activities may be traced and analysed. And yet, nobody is permitted to publicly name her (apart from on here) or find out anything about her without being shouted down. That’s what’s in it for me.
Also, I don’t know what other comments are coming in (although I suspect I would love to read them as some of them may be true) but they are not mine. I am sorry that you feel the need to moderate them, but there is really no legal imperative to do so if they only apply to the deceased.
I shall now find another board which I may use as a forum to discover the truth. God bless.
Minstrel Janet: if you genuinely want to find out what happened in Adelaide in 1948, without much doubt the wrong starting point is to post a long string of comments presenting what you suspect happened as fact.
Jestyn remains a person of interest for many different reasons: but there are many (genuine) facts to do with her life that we don’t have yet, any or all of which might cast a very different light on what happened.
Who’s to say that Jestyn wasn’t also a victim in some way of the series of events that led to the Somerton Man’s death? I’ve looked at all the evidence very carefully for a long time now and I can’t tell what her role in the whole affair was.
Suspicion is a weak hammer for hitting factual nails.
Jestyn was “more than likely” involved and information on her is interesting there is no doubt.
But lets not try to force that avenue by making things up.
I believe Nick’s site was initially trying to decipher the supposed code.
Very kindly, he is now letting it be used to try and unearth who the Somerton man was. Let’s focus on that!? BDMs, family trees, scraps of evidence, this is how we will find out who this person was. It could be slow but this method will get results… and once it does, character’s roles will become clear.
Thanks, Nicky
The new T Keane angle is certainly interesting but, FWIW, the research I did on this some time ago when Dr Abbott’s Facebook group was still up and running led me to believe that the label reading “Keane” on the tie had been altered, having previously read “Kernick”, but written in such a way that the ‘c’ appeared below the ‘i’. Whether SM was himself named Kernick, or the tie had previously been the property of the Kernick employment agency I could not establish, though if it was the case that SM had ‘appropriated’ the clothes he was wearing from the employment agency, it might provide a motive for removing the majority of the labels.
Also, it was my belief that SM came to Adelaide on the day of his death in response to a press advertisement placed by PMT the previous week regarding a maisonette to let and that this was the reason for the presence of the phone number in his copy of the Rubayat, he possibly having copied it from a library copy of the paper. I can’t be sure of the custom of the time, but an appointentwith a potential landlord might also explain his smart appearance on the day.
It may also have meant that he was carrying a substantial amount of cash to cover a rental deposit and/or rent in advance.
When I tried to warn everyone about attacks from ‘trolls’ and the need to protect the families of the new Reynolds lead from their intrusion, the response was to name me and my various family members, then I’m thrown in the ring to be savaged and vilified; sacrificed for readership entertainment and left to defend myself against vile accusations including links attacking those closest to me. I’d asked to remain anonymous for good reason and the News Media observed the laws and shielded my name. Myself and siblings act as witnesses to serious crimes, are presently involved in a number of cases to which you serve no role and have no understanding. We are also victims of crime. Our situations are real. It’s not some pastime interest or game for us. Claiming H.C. Reynolds I.D. under cipher mysteries wing to investigate does not extend a right to privileged information, to put lives at risk, discredit witnesses, or violate their privacy let alone undermine ongoing investigations or attempts to jeopardise future prosecutions. In any information gather exercise the first rule is to protect your source. There was no kindness extended to me !
I repeatedly see one contributor arrogantly sprouting immunity from defamation and her belief that she can say what she likes about the dead, but hides her identity non-the-less. Jestyn has living relatives that you’ve named on this site. Her grave is no longer a place of rest for her. No longer a place her family can visit in peace.
Furthermore, if you facilitate the ‘trolls’ and their cruel remarks by posting them, you are no better. Xlamb
Xlamb: from other people’s points of view, you – posting as anonymously as you can, making astounding claims about cold cases – fit exactly the same troll profile you so deride. What criteria do you think I should be using to decide whose posts count as trolls?
Nick .. from this morass you may never emerge.
Nick:
From the outset you would have checked the Adelaide newspaper report in relation to H.C. Reynolds I.D. before you set out to find him. The I.D. and Mr. Hennebergs positive findings were legitimised via that article, and not placed there by ‘trolls’. It was a journalist. It also stated that the woman that found the I.D. asked to remain anonymous. The cold case claim are that of an expert in this field of science. It’s not me making astounding claims as you say, but the scientist.
When I saw that you’d chosen to research the I.D. I emailed you with my name and gave you some background to my fathers activities spanning decades to explain why he might have such a thing, because you asked. I’d identified myself to you. You knew I wasn’t a ‘troll’. It was the one thing you could rely on as I was the person that had possession of the I.D. to begin with, and without it, there’d be nothing for you to research obviously. I found a piece of evidence that could resolve an outstanding cold case and the matter remains under Police investigation. That you made it your business to research, doesn’t make me fair game for abuse via your site. I followed up on the I.D. to serve the deceased not to serve ‘other people’ who I don’t know, some of them very nasty.. and who have no real connection to the case. Diane as I recall tried to help me out, so thanks for that. But it’s you in the end that decided how I’d be treated, and that showed how you regard me. In any other setting I’d have been punched to the ground while you cheered on. That words are used here makes no difference. Words have power. The wrong words can start wars. Xlamb
Xlamb: I didn’t say what I thought, I said what other people have been expressing here for some time – that they really sympathize with my struggle to deal with “Tamam Trolls”, those anonymous people who post outrageous-sounding allegations about the dead but without any supporting evidence.
Given that we have now – after much struggle and effort – comprehensively proved that the H. C. Reynolds named in the seaman’s ID card was alive several years after the death of the Somerton Man, what evidence should I now point to in order to separate you from such a disreputable bunch?
Nick: It was the I. D. facial comparative match to SMs morgue photo along with his plaster cast that gave conclusive evidence that they’re the same chap. I was told by those at the Police Museum that Maciej took around 40 shots of the cast as part his examination. Primarily we are searching for another photo to match the I.D…. at any age. There’s been no photo for Tasmania’s Horace Reynolds (or his parents, siblings) that’s been submitted for comparison as yet. Just find one as your proof and send it to Adelaide University/Maciej Henneberg. Our new Reynolds lead had many siblings so odds are his family’s descendants will have a good number of photos of parents, grandparents, great uncles etc. They are deserving of some courtesy and respect meanwhile. They’re not public property and they may not wish to have their personal lives trolled through and their details posted on line. You could have researched the new lead ‘off line’ and announced your findings later as I suggested, but you’d rather share everything. That was your decision, but it’s clear there’d be no filters or restraints as my own experience has shown. When I was sent Jestyns photos, exerts from her letters etc. I didn’t flash them around to others, because it was an invasion of her and her family’s privacy, their photos and her personal thoughts. There was nothing eluding to crime. It was more a study of her and intrusive. Just because you know something doesn’t automatically mean it goes ‘on line’, particularly if it causes to hurt and harm. Ciphers and codes don’t have feelings, but people do. You’re asking me for proof “in order to separate you from such a disreputable bunch” you say. This may be how you treat people. It’s not how I like to be treated. I passed the information for Reynolds to the Adelaide T.V. news reporter, and he’s since sent it off to Sydney, but even if I never heard back, I could always pay for a private researcher. If a death certificate had shown up by now, I’m sure Prof. Abbott would have informed everyone, thus time and money’s not wasted. There’s really nothing more to discuss. If things go well you’ll hear about it eventually via the Media. It’s what I did before (went to the local paper) and now maybe T.V will do the follow up . It’s my choice. Media have rules and codes of ethics to adhere to, so it’s safer for me to stick with people I can better trust. Xlamb
Xlamb: I asked you for evidence, not for proof – there’s a big difference.
Xlamb, Nick has published links to newspaper photographs of Horace Charles Reynolds’ siblings in his “Sorry, The Unknown Man is (very probably) not H. C. Reynolds” post back in March this year. An additional photograph of his brother Archibald with his second wife was published in the Hobart Mercury on 25 January 1951 (page 12).
You can purchase high quality digital copies via TROVE.
Considering these recent press comments about Professor Henneberg’s expertise, I would be asking for a second opinion.
“This month, the case…..was thrown out of court after Henneberg’s identification was described as ”highly compromised”, ”wrong” and ”completely discredited.” ”
“Late last year, the Court of Appeal threw out his identification of CCTV images in the case of an alleged robber…..finding his methodology ”simplistic” and highlighting the lack of research into its reliability.”
“It has also just emerged that evidence he gave last year…..had ”not established that he had any particular skill, experience, training, capacity or technological assistance that he brought to bear on the task.” ”
“…Henneberg’s evidence was ”completely discredited” because he had identified the wrong people. Even the prosecutor said his evidence could not be relied on.”
Kbnz: I think that editions such as yours are probably rare because they were cheaply mass produced at the height of the book’s popularity and simply haven’t stood the test of time. It may be that the Whitcombe and Tombs edition has suffered the same fate. An 1859 Quarich first edition is selling online for US$45,000.
Thomas Lawrence Keane is mentioned in Gerry Feltus’ book. Two people in Queensland contacted police in response to an article in the Brisbane Courier Mail which gave the name Kean/Keane and a description of the deceased. The Queensland Police advised that he had died in the Brisbane General Hospital on 24 March 1949.
I recall reading somewhere that when it was thought that the unknown man might have a military background, all WW2 service records under the name Keane/Kean were checked and followed up. Even if it wasn’t done then, I am sure that it would have been done in more recent times.
‘Nick and the Tamam Trolls’ has quite a ring to it.
“There’s a big difference” you say!…Then you must use a different dictionary than me. In my book proof and evidence mean the same thing. It’s not like someone born in Australia claiming to be British. It’s not that different is it !
And does it really matter. The article penned by Emily Watkins 20/11/11 clearly stated I’d asked not to be identified. This was done in order to protect my father’s identity. There was a Police investigation in progress (also stated in article). There are laws that govern such things / name suppressions. I’ve printed everything off and will submit this when I appear before the Aust. National Royal Commission. There has to be some laws put in place to protect victims of crime, and those they accuse while the legal process runs it’s course, that can be applied to bloggers. News and television media observe the rules and guidelines, maybe you should also. We have similar matters presently running in our Courts where people have been named and slandered on the Internet and are now suing those responsible. Laws evolve according to need. I’ll see what Police and these Commissioners think. Xlamb
Xlamb: in an argument, you have three separate things:-
(1) the evidence – i.e. data, observations, facts, etc. “Five people saw him enter the bar. He had the victim’s blood on his shirt. He was holding his own kitchen knife.”
(2) the assertion – i.e. the claim. “It was he who stabbed the victim”.
(3) the proof – the logical reasoning that connects the set of the evidence to the assertion beyond all doubt / beyond all reasonable doubt / on balance of probabilities (depending on how strong a proof you need in context).
As far as H. C. Reynolds goes, all I can see right now is your assertion but no evidence whatsoever, and no chain of reasoning whatsoever.
When you have some evidence (which, in my dictionary, remains the necessary precursor to proof), please come back and tell me, and I shall – once again – do my best to test it.
Oh, and if you do genuinely think I have broken some law, please point me to the posts or comments where this happened (and what law you think I’ve broken), and I’ll take suitable advice on it. Again, don’t just throw me the assertion, show me the evidence.
Debra: thanks very much for that. Right now, I’m just wondering whether there is any way we can comprehensively disprove the Thomas Lawrence Keane suggestion – sadly, we’re in the midst of conspiracy theorists who look for anything they can make use of to “keep the ball in the air”. As it stands, I suspect we’re pretty close to that point… so hopefully we’ll find a way of closing this (small) chapter properly soon.
Errrm… and I rather wish it was “[someone else] and the Tamam Trolls”. 🙁
Dear Nick,
I have been reading the many comments on you website for some time now. I really think it is great that members of the public are making an effort to identify the unknown man. I myself have my own story that I would like to tell you and possibly Diane. (really like her honest no-nonsense approach). I am a relative of Jessica’s and Robin as well. I might as well include them in my message as so many people have identified them. I find it really hurtful reading the things about Gran and Dad because I loved them so much. I know that Gran was an incredible person in the times I met her. I grew up away from them but I did have contact with them a few time during my childhood. One time when I was very ill and Gran sat with me in hospital and I got to know her a little deeper than other family members. I think she was under the impression that I was very sick and things from her early life surfaced in our conversations. I believe she spoke about the Unknown Man to me and told me numerous stories about her life in the 1940s. I especially dont like to create divisions within my family but sometimes things just need to be said and let out into the open. I think it would be better to clear things up as there are new generations to our family that I wouldnt want this saga to be inflicted on. I am under the impression that I have recently become an Uncle ( I dont have a relationship with some members of my family) If that is the case and you are both reading this I congratulate you on the birth of your daughter.
There is one thing that I can do for everyone and it would be very beneficial to perhaps solving this case. I am prepared to undertake a Y – Test to determine my origin. It is only available to Males only and it would help me discover my deep ancestral origin of my direct paternal line (my father, his father’s father, etc). This can be performed as well as having the Unknown Man exhumed. I can just speed up the process by having it done myself as well as the Unknown man in the future?.
You can contact me on my email Nick at any time to discuss the matter further. I am based in the United Kingdom like yourself but I am currently travelling around Europe. I will be back in the UK permanently from next year.
Best Wishes
Callum
Hi Nick,
My email address should not be bouncing at all. I did have problems when I commented on your page. A system kicked in and I had trouble commenting.
Cheers
Callum
Nick,
I have just emailed you to [email protected] and flicked you a message on facebook.
Cheers
Debra: When Gerry Feltus told me (1/4/13) that Nick had contacted him to say that H.C. Reynolds was definitely Horace from Tasmania, Gerry presumed this to mean that a photo of Horace had been found and matched the I.D..
Primarily this is about the photograph on the I.D. matching the deceased.
You can’t just leave out a piece of evidence, in order to win a case. In this instance we need a photo of Horace. It’s hard to believe there’s not one family photo of the siblings with their parents, at any age, in order a comparison can be done. You can amass reams of data about Horace, his family etc., and all true. The result is a study of Horace Charles Reynolds, without a face. So it still might not be the chap we are looking for.
Your next avenue seems to be to discredit Mr. Henneberg’s expertise by raising one case as example where he’s said to have ‘got it wrong’, and furthermore means he must also be wrong about the I.D. matching SM. You leave out any example where he’s had past success. These are very different scenarios and biased to suit your argument. If you can find a photo of Horace anywhere, just send it to the papers and if you’ve such a poor opinion of Mr. Henneberg, I’m sure they’ll organise examination using someone else. Xlamb
I like your suggestion Callum. I like it loads!. You do what you need to matey. You could have a set of names back if not a name that stands out from a simple test. Carol X
Xlamb, I was simply answering this statement of yours:
“There’s been no photo for Tasmania’s Horace Reynolds (or his parents, siblings) that’s been submitted for comparison as yet….”
I think his family prefer not to become involved in the identification process.
The press statements about Henneberg are from three separate cases and I have no personal opinion of him.
Debra: Thanks for that! My understanding has always been that there was no photo of Horace that existed, not that his family didn’t wish to be involved in the identification process. If that’s true I find it extraordinary, considering they’ve the power to easily settle any confusion. Under the circumstances, if you consider that SMs case still remains open, the I.D.s being investigated by Police and my fathers been interviewed in connection, I can’t see that the family has any choice but to co-operate. And why wouldn’t they want to identify Horace as the man pictured on the I.D…If he or other family members have done nothing wrong, what’s the problem! They only need to say “it’s him” or “not him”. That’s not ‘getting involved’. It wouldn’t cause them any trouble to say so…unless there’s something they’d rather were kept quiet. I’ve made no secret of my father’s past criminal activities. It’s the very reason I questioned the ownership of the I.D.. It could have belonged to any of the other men I witnessed as a child, but the details and what our father told myself and my sister seemed to point to SM…so I had it checked just in case. It also makes no sense that my father originally hid the I.D. under floor boards or that he told us that Reynolds was ‘the key to everything’ and I guess he’d know why he had the I.D. and why he thought it was so terribly important. There’s always the possibility that the I.D. belonged to Horace of course, but his photo’s been removed and replaced with another. The family could resolve it very quickly. I’m still waiting to hear back about the new lead. There was a Passport Number for this other chap. I’m hoping that might be enough to sort things out. Obviously I’d like to know how my father would have Horace’s I.D. in the first place, regardless to the importance he placed on it.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Horace die in a car crash. Was he by chance, incinerated? It’s only that an embalmed body doesn’t deteriorate quickly, thus could turn up later, be cremated and no-one (but close family) would know any different. That of course would make Prof. Abbotts exhumation futile if there’s nothing in the box. It’s odd that our Attorney General refuses Abbotts request, when it would do no harm to take a look. Exhumation has been granted for lesser historical matters, those questioning paternity, and SM dilemma has to be much more important.
History has shown that Banks have been involved in some pretty shady business in the past, particularly during and after the War. Horace’s brother held a high position in Banking. Is it possible his younger brother came unstuck in some trading deal gone wrong and his family had to stay quiet due to an unsavoury transaction and the perceived ramifications. Thus it’s Horace that’s found on the beach in 1948, and it’s him in the photo, but he’s never claimed by his family….just quietly returned and later farewelled/cremated.
Just throwing another theory out there while I wait on the results from the new lead. It’s no worse than the others. It’s something Horace’s family could resolve by just handing over a photo…Surely you could at least agree with me on that ! Xlamb
Xlamb: again, when you have some actual evidence in your hand, please feel free to pass it on and we shall all look at it. In my opinion, comments like these that plainly attempt to spray doubt in every direction weaken your cause, not strengthen it.
Nick: What are you talking about “my cause”. You live on the other side of the World. You don’t know what’s going on where I live, what’s happening ‘on the ground’ or in my life…and you know nothing about these other cases. I’m dealing with ‘real people’ each day and this I.D. is at the small end of other matters.You picked something up about an I.D. I brought forward to Police and it’s you that decided to research it further. You got a result you’re happy with and that’s great. Police have the last word on the I.D. so why don’t you take all of your information to them and let them know you’ve got it sorted. They can extract a photo of Horace from his family if they see fit.
And as you’ve our fathers details, you can now easily ‘buddy up’ and ask him to fill in the missing gaps for Horace or whoever; or you can send round one of your Aussie contacts to let him know he’s off the hook. In a choice of loyalties clearly yours don’t lie with me. The Media here have demonstrated they can be trusted, and I’ll leave the rest to them. Xlamb
Xlamb: the world is full of bad stuff – but if you genuinely want to make a positive difference to that, the answer lies not with anger but with evidence.
Nick: There’s no point wasting time in continual debate. The Courts will never accept a blog into evidence. Police might take what you’ve gathered up under review, but they’d still need a photo of Horace. Maybe that’s already happened, but why would Police tell you. Do you really think they’d be interviewing our father, if they had doubts about the authenticity of the I.D. and Mr. Hennebergs findings. What I outlined before was a scenario in much the same spirit as others have done. If Horace matches the chap on the I.D. it must be conclusively explained how he can die at separate locations on different dates. It’s impossible unless it’s another man that’s pictured on the I.D. . It’s usual here for Media to take their findings to Police (if results warrant Police attention) and you can do likewise. Xlamb
Xlamb: the way the world actually works is that the courts will happily accept a blog’s (or indeed anyone’s) reasoning, as long as it is supported by evidence. In this instance, my reasoning and conclusion (that this particular Horace Charles Reynolds died several years later in Tasmania) is supported by extensive archival evidence. Photo similarities aside, what evidence are you basing your reasoning and conclusion upon? As before, please come back when you have some evidence – I side with the evidence.
Is Callum suggesting that he is Robins son?
Two sons (twins) from a previous relationship. One daughter from his first marriage (given up for adoption) and a daughter from his second marriage.
Nick: Sometimes evidence of wrongdoing and relevant links pop up later in other matters. There’s a much bigger picture.
My Mother Margaret died 30/12/66. In the lead up I told her our father had 3 dead children in his car boot (he’d left our Mother and the family home they shared in Edwardstown the same night he had these kids, and he took our older sister (also a witness) with him).
Margaret’s autopsy records, much like SMs, showed no poisonous substances present, and was left explained as ‘Natural Causes’ aged 34. Unlike SM, her death was never investigated further. She was interred at Centennial Park Cemetery 3/1/67. Our father didn’t allow us to attend her funeral. Immediately after he moved his secret 21 year old girlfriend and their 2 month old son into the Edwardstown house. Two girls are later born, June ’68’ and Sep. ’73’. Meanwhile Margaret was given no Headstone and lay in an unmarked grave. Our father, deemed ‘next of kin’ also had authority over her grave. Once we become adults we pleaded with our father for permission to place a Headstone and we’d pay for it, but he refused to allow it, nor would he sign over authority despite having ‘moved on’ and being married twice since. When our older sister Clare dies (found hanging) 18/8/09, our father pops her body on top of our Mother (under his authority over the site). He advises days later via the papers, that the Funeral has already been conducted. We believe he did it this way to prevent us attending (again). Finally he places a Headstone now for both, but leaves our names out, and states our Mothers’ date of death as 30/12/1996… not 1966. The evidence of ones eyes may not always be the truth. A record can be altered when there’s something to hide or to discredit anyone that says otherwise. According to the Headstone (as a record) my brother and I don’t even exist and our Mother Margaret died 30 years later than her death certificate asserts.
Any researcher can confirm this by viewing obituary records etc.(Formally Margaret Clare Horan D.O.B. 13/2/32 married 18/10/51) and then by checking the grave site located at Centennial Park Cemetery… Catholic Section Row D.I. 326 . Due to the circumstances surrounding their deaths I’m sure they won’t mind. Sometimes you need to broaden the subject matter in order to build your evidence, unscramble puzzles and get to the truth. Xlamb
Are you sure about that Carol. I have a list of all Jessica’s children , grand children and great grand children and no Callum mentioned.
I know that one of them drowned in a swimming pool accident in the 80s.
Have you got a list of Prosper ‘George’ Thomson children as well? He had a daughter with his first wife Queenie called Elizabeth but she sadly died. But he was really busy with his long term mistress out at Coorong National Park where he owned a hunting lodge. He had 4 children with his mistress and the family are still out there presently.
Jessica Thomson also had a lover too! But that was much much later on in her life. She met someone really special when she went to University as a mature student.
I’m curious as to what evidence anyone can adduce for these wild assertions. I can see nothing which would indicate any of these facts in the records.
The information obtained on Prosper ‘George’ Thomson were obtained from the Land Services Group and Lands Titles Office in South Australia.
The details of the additional property he owned in Coorong National Park are all on record. Also the property that he co-owned with his Mistress is on file as well. Every document from the purchases and transfers are recorded
After carrying out the searches at Land Services group I was able to obtain the name of his Mistress. I then conducted and Electoral Roll search and was able to obtain her address and two of her children’s names. I then went on Facebook and looked them up and deep within their photos albums were pictures of them and Prosper Thomson to which they referred to him as Dad and they ‘Miss him so much’. Their number is also listed in the phone directory as they run a business, I rang up and asked for Prosper ‘George’ Thomson and his daughter said that he had died along time ago.
Note: “The Dude”‘s Hotmail email address bounced – “5.1.0 – Unknown address error 550-‘Requested action not taken: mailbox unavailable’.
“Morag Bellingham (née Stewart) QC is a fictional character from the Australian Channel Seven soap opera Home and Away, played by Cornelia Frances. She debuted on-screen during the episode airing on 7 June 1988. She appeared until 1989 and briefly appeared in 1993. She returned yearly from 2001 until 2009 and again from 2011 to 2013. Frances has expressed her desire to once again become a permanent cast member. Morag has been described as an antagonistic, independent and cold character. Morag is portrayed as a tough lawyer. She has been involved in storylines such as adopting out her illegitimate daughter Bobby Simpson, being widowed, helping her brother Alf Stewart through his many legal battles and a friendship with troubled teen Aden Jefferies. She has been well received by certain critics for her feisty persona, whilst others have criticised her professional skills.”
That is very unethical, Maria! It has little bearing on the case. Email me their names 🙂
I think it has full bearing on the case Morag. There are rumours circulating that Robin Thomson is the son of the Somerton Man. Prosper Thomson’s second family will be able to assist in determining this. DNA them against the children of Robin Thomson to see if there is a link.
Xlamb you stated the following on October 22nd, 2013 at 2:53 am
“Finally he places a Headstone now for both, but leaves our names out, and states our Mothers’ date of death as 30/12/1996… not 1966. The evidence of ones eyes may not always be the truth.”
I contacted the administration office of Centennial Park as the site is open to members of the public and spoke with them regarding your mother and sisters headstone. As a public cemetery they need to keep all records on file pertaining to all burials and cremations that they have at their site.
When the headstone was commissioned for your mother and sisters plot the gravestone was ordered by your niece Leanne Stewart not your father as you are ‘claiming’. There is a note on file left by your niece Leanne acknowledging that the stone mason which had created the headstone has made and error and put 1996 instead of 1966. The original form that your niece Leanne submitted to the cemetery and in turn the Stone mason clearly states 1966. This form is signed by your niece Leanne as well. Your father had nothing to do with the creation of the headstone.
You stated the following also:
“I’m sure they won’t mind. Sometimes you need to broaden the subject matter in order to build your evidence, unscramble puzzles and get to the truth”
I have done exactly what you have suggested and there is no evidence whatsoever to implicate your father in the creation of your mothers and sisters headstone at Centennial Park.
Definition of evidence:
noun
[mass noun]
the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid:the study finds little evidence of overt discrimination
• Law information drawn from personal testimony, a document, or a material object, used to establish facts in a legal investigation or admissible as testimony in a law court:without evidence, they can’t bring a charge
•signs or indications of something:there was no obvious evidence of a break-in
verb
[with object]
be or show evidence of:the quality of the bracelet, as evidenced by the workmanship, is exceptional
Good work VJS!
Maria,
This is interesting not leasg because it omits the definition I’d have expected to head the list, viz
evidence: the a body of facts or information from which any verifiable belief or proposition is derived.
Just about every theory has SM coming to Adelaide to see Jessica and as a possible ex lover. The theory’s have Jessica giving her lover a copy of the rubyant with her number written in the jacket. I suggest that it is extremely rare that a woman or a a man for that matter who is having a clandestine affair to give their lover their home phone number where there spouse is likely to answer the phone. I’m not saying it’s not possible but if we are pointing fingers why is it not possible that SM was given the book and the number by Prosper and it was PRosper that he was coming to see. Yes there is the Rubyant link with Jess but it was a popular book. Pros would have been familiar with it thru Jess. What’s more Pros had form for re badging cars and selling them in Perth and a later case in Adelaide with sly deals and buying cars in Melbourne, doing a deal with a backer then going back on his words. The woman who took him to court over one such deal told the cops that he threatened her that she’d be “a sorry woman” if she went to the cops to try and get her money back. See records in trove.
The tools SM was carrying would be well suited to rebadging cars including stenciling tools to alter a cars number plate and drive said car back to Melbourne.
Was he a small time crim who came over on the overnight train to do a dodgy car deal? He was clearly packed for a short business trip , one or two nights max with a change of clothes , toiletries and some tools of his trade. Perhaps things went sour when he met up with Pros to do the busines and things escalated. Perhaps such a guy could dissapear without too many questions being asked.
Just a theory but interested in anyone’s thoughts.
The Dude: I agree that Tamam theorists tend to make a lot of assumptions and speculate a lot. But how does speculating in a different direction balance the books any better?
Lovely post ‘The Dude’ there are lots of assumptions out there. But when there is EVIDENCE to back up statements that is what is more important.
Question for Xlamb.
Why do you repeatedly come on the forums using the name Xlamb. Right from the beginning everyone knows your name. You repeatedly go ‘off topic’ all the time and its really frustrating. Most of the stuff that you post has no relevance to the forum topic in hand. I regard you as a troll. And people are getting really sick and tired of it. If I had experienced half of the things that you are ‘claiming’ which you cant provide a shred of evidence for I wouldn’t be posting it all over the internet. I would go to the police and let them do their job.
Why the media first then Police second?
Maria: I was aware that authority over the grave had since been transferred to the youngest daughter Leanne. She lives in Queensland. The stone didn’t go up immediately. Authority was transferred later. When Leanne was alerted to the error, I was told her response was, that her Grandfather had sent the details up to Queensland for her to check and ‘sign off’, and she didn’t notice any error then. We were denied the opportunity to farewell our sister, she non-the- less asked me via a text message if I’d pay 1/2. Not knowing how to respond…I didn’t! In the end I was told her Grandfather paid. The point was that our names have been omitted and the date remains 30 years out some 4 years on, and it could stay that way. I also spoke with a woman in administration a few years ago and was told that the date can easily be corrected. Leanne never met her Grandmother as she was born in1976. It’s important to us that the information about our Mother is correct, because we are her children and likely the only ones left that care. The fact still remains that what sits in plain view is incorrect. As a record it tells a very different story. It’s not the truth and no-one would know any different unless they went to the office to check. Do you really expect me to cover every little flipping detail. The date’s 30 years out and can’t be believed… just in case anyone thought I’d lied about our Mother’s year of death owing to what’s on the gravestone (since a bunch of strangers have begun to intrude our lives).
Are you aware that poking around into peoples private affairs, snooping at their Facebook pages uninvited…is considered stalking. You’ve also admitted to making a nuisance call to this family. If these people wish to make a complaint they only need to view this site for their evidence. You might have looked up the meaning, but you haven’t really given the word or your actions and disclosure much thought. Xlamb
Maria: Identifying myself could also identify our father whom we have accused of serious crimes. I followed the legal advise I was given. There were also people that came to my blog threatening to abduct and torture our father to get a confession. That’s a good reason for him not to be named also. That threat was one of the reasons I took the blog down. I named myself privately to Nick long ago. Others have named me since. How then can I also be a ‘troll’. Why don’t you name yourself. I get the feel you go under a few names and you’ve told me to buzz off before.
The original topic was the Somerton Man’s identity. Nick’s now scrapped the Reynolds I.D. and looking for other contenders…Keane was in a process of being eliminated as a possibly SM as I recall, but discussion turned to Jestyn.
When people have asked me questions, I’ve answered them as best I could Maria, but I’ve often asked that comments be directed to others instead.
Police are informed and matters remain under investigation. If you knew anything at all, you’d know that ! Xlamb
Maria: I removed Xlamb’s real name from your comment while moderating it. Right now, it’s the anonymous Tamam Trolls posting here who are disrupting the site far more – at least with Xlamb we know exactly who she is and what she’s trying to do/prove…
Dude: I actually think what you’ve said has merit. When it comes to the phone number on the book, I also thought she’d risk her husband answering. For a secret affair, it lacked any logic. Also things like phones, bills, debts etc. were put in the husband’s name back then, because the assumption was that men were the breadwinners and paid the bills. So it’s not like she had her own private line. I also thought that naming Boxal as someone she’d given a book to in the past seemed an open and honest response. If she were hiding anything she’d not have mentioned knowing him or giving him a book in order that some ‘same book’ spy theory / ex-lover connection be made by others later down the track. If she’d never named him, no-one would know any different and the name ‘Boxal’ would never have appeared in this saga.
The stencilling tools used in the way you’ve suggested does make sense. It never occurred to me before. They also use to hang horse thieves in the past. Maybe car theft is not much different to some.
I’ve seen similar tools used with the ‘old masters’ for reproductions as well. They’d trace the outline of a finished work / painting by using a sharpened knife tip to perforate the paper. Then use a brush dipped in ash to make a new copy (the ash would permeate through the holes and leave an outline). If a potential buyer saw something he liked, it was the only way to make a copy and sell more paintings. It doesn’t quite fit the situation you’ve outlined as well though. Xlamb
Nick I wasn’t attempting to balance the books with my post. I wasn’t after a value judgment from you either just an informed opinion as you appear to know the subject It just occurs to me that everyone from the detectives to professors and amateur sleuths have speculated down the same spy/jilted lover path for 65 years and haven’t turned up squat.
I can see why people are attracted to this romantic slant on the story but the truth may be more simple and less dramatic that international espionage and un requited love.
It occurs to me that if the Rubiyant could be a red herring and that this could be the reason that the case has stalled for such a long time. There could be 100 reasons why SM had a copy of a popular book like the Rubiyant and the code could simply be the tracings of a crossword puzzle SM did on the bus using the book on his lap as a base like I see people do with magazines every day.
I do know that Prosper T was in court around the same time accused of dodgy car deals, trips to Melbourne to purchase cars and double crossing a lady backer out of a small fortune then threatening said lady against going to the authorities.
He was also in court in WA for falsifying car ownership documents in an attempt to re sell said car and prone to over reacting/panicking when cornered. (he threatened suicide when arrested in Perth) all this is documented fact.
I’m saying that given the guys form he should have been , or should be looked at more closely.
Stealing cars , re badging them and shipping them interstate has been going on between Adelaide and Melbourne for a century. I said in my earlier post SM for my money was on a short business trip based on the contents of his suit case being similar to what I carry for a 2 night trip. He likely came to Adelaide by train from Melbourne or Pt Augusta. The tools were there for a reason and would be suitable for the job of altering a number plate and ownership documents (like PT did in WA) ,re badging a car and driving it back to Melbourne for sale. Easily done in the days before computers , national data bases etc. Such a person would be carrying cash to do the deal. All manner of things could have happened/went wrong when he arrived to do the deal. The torn out piece of the Rubiyant could simply be a contact key.
If SM was such a guy (an underworld type) he is a more likely candidiate to go missing with less or no questions asked than a mainstream citizen who would have a regular job , family spouse etc.
I may be totally wrong but the guy was carrying the tools, just enough luggage for a few nights and travelling incognito.
Or maybe hes an international spy with links to the CIA , Russia, nuclear testing and a long lost lover. Who knows, anyone?
I may be way of base hence I asked for comment and by all means show me where this theory falls down but I don’t see any concrete evidence of the other theorys out there either
Nick why did you remove my post?
Any word from Callum Thomson?
Xlamb my name is Maria. I read your fathers blog last night. Have you read it yet? 22 pages worth! Perhaps the Polites family could help you? 😉
Xlamb it was an interesting read about Jessie, You and Andrew! 🙂
The Dude: I’ve only removed two comments recently, one by Debra F and one by myself, and both to do with an IP address I had described.
The Dude: I thought you said that there was no such person?
The Dude: regarding “balancing the books”, there are a whole load of prosaic options to consider:
(1) the Rubaiyat owner copied in the phone number (perhaps from a small ad) but never actually used it
(2) the Rubaiyat owner knew both Prosper and Jessie openly
(3) the Rubaiyat owner knew only Prosper but not Jessie
(4) the Rubaiyat owner knew Prosper but was kept secret from Jessie
(5) the Rubaiyat owner knew only Jessie but not Prosper
(6) the Rubaiyat owner know Jessie but was kept secret from Prosper
(7) after the Rubaiyat owner lost it, the number was added in accidentally
(8) after the Rubaiyat owner lost it, the number was added in deliberately to link the book to Jessie
(9) after the Rubaiyat owner lost it, the number was added in deliberately to link the book to Prosper
(10) after the Rubaiyat owner lost it, the number was added in deliberately to link the book to Jessie and Prosper
…and so forth.
It seems to me that (2) is the simplest and likeliest of all of these, but there’s no evidence whatsoever to help us judge. 🙁
Jannette Stevens: thanks for trying to leave your comment here, but it’s not really the right forum for it, sorry. 🙁
What is this pertaining to?
” I thought you said there was no such person”
Didn’t say anything of the sort Nick . I said ” are you sure Carol” because all Jessicas children , grand children and great grand children are named in her obituary and no mention of a Callum assuming he was born befor 2007 which the person presenting as Callum claims to have been. If this is genuine he comes out of left field hence my question ” are you sure Carol” and I followed up with “any word from Callum Thomson”
If your going to shoot everyone down who contributes NIck have your facts right mate and lighten up while your at it.
Secondly there are a million prosaic options . I am asking your opinion on the particular prosaic option I put forward. If its totally wrong fine but please tell me why because I haven’t heard one decent theory that explains why he was carrying those particular tools. This was a business trip. I live in Adelaide and know the car industry well and can assure you that people have been making that trip over here pinching cars, re badging them and spiriting spiriting them back over to Melbourne overnight for 100 years and it was rife in SM s day.
No data base or national register, easy money.
Does SM fit the profile of an underworld type of that era ? Yes, he was vain,dapper and well groomed , he had the cash to splash out on a manicure a huge indulgence in the day yet showed no physical signs of manual labour , physically imposing and muscular with scars between his knuckles.
Could a guy like that disappear without too many question ?
Yes . Guys like that do have friends but not generally the types to come forward to report their mate missing to the cops.
Do the tools fit for that job? Yes each and every tool right down to the little screw driver to remove the number plate.
The Dude: I’m trying to stay light, mate, but trolls and conspiracy theorists are sending me all kinds of mad stuff now, and it’s all a bit wearing. 🙁
As far as your car-pinching bloke notion goes, I’d say that this is as good a Somerton Man theory as I’ve heard. How you’d dig up dirt on inter-state Australian car-thieves circa 1948 I don’t know: but perhaps there were only ever a small number of them active in and about the area, and they would have appeared in court (and in Trove) a fair few times. Were other people named in Prosper’s car-related court appearances? Perhaps you could even try to reconstruct the ring, though that seems a little tricky.
As an aside, you might also ask Gerry Feltus if Prosper was ever really considered as being involved, and his own police files linked to the case. It seems that the Rubaiyat link with Jestyn may have closed people’s eyes to some of the other possibilities / permutations in the list, I don’t know…
I also think that the car rebadging theory is one of the most plausible so far.
“There could be 100 reasons why SM had a copy of a popular book like the Rubiyant” – there is actually no proof that he was ever in possession of that particular copy of the Rubaiyat. There was never any statement made by the police to confirm that the piece of the page fitted the book that was handed in, only that the paper was ‘similar’.
That same phone number was also in use in Melbourne, the X prefix being Brighton.
Much is made of the man being unknown, however given the size of the country there may have been many people who would have recognised him had they seen a photograph. The death was not reported at all in the Sydney Morning Herald, and the Sunday Herald only carried a small piece. Unless they had read an interstate newspaper or one of the regionals, that leaves a large number of the Sydney population who most likely didn’t even know about the death. No wonder Alf Boxall had no idea what was going on when the police turned up on his doorstep. Many people in regional areas did not read newspapers regularly and many would have had difficulty with even pointing to Adelaide on a map, much less caring about someone who died on a beach there.
Maria, I really wish you would take your nonsense elsewere.
Ayuverdica: how nice to see you here again. Any more red-hot research leads to share?
Hi NIck
I understand how wearing all that would be. Thanks for your suggestions. In fact a co- offender was mentioned in a Perth newspaper as being involved when PT was arrested trying to Sell a car he didn’t own by altering the certificate of ownership in WA. Good suggestion , I will follow it up.
I agree Debra, if an un identified guy turned up dead on a beach now he would be on TV and color pictures in major papers etc. as you say Debra Alf Boxal wasn’t even aware until the cops showed up. We’re also talking about a couple of years after the war when so many people were up rooted , mis placed and a guys like SM would have come and gone in and out of boarding houses for all kinds of reasons with few questions asked. Just another guy with a funny accent who skipped of without paying his bill.
There is evidence that PT had shady contacts in several states mainly MElbourne in the car industry. I can see a quite plausible scenario where PT s Melbourne contact organizes a guy to come across to pick up a vehicle from PT with a wad of cash and the tools to make it look legit. No one trusts anyone in the criminal world so If PT hadn’t met the middle man ( SM) he would insist on SM carrying something which identifys him. Perhaps a copy of a book with PTs contact number to call the when he arrives in Adelaide. PT neatly tears a piece out of the book which he keeps as this identifys him to SM when he meets him and proves to SM that they are working for the same guy as the items fit together like a key. The book and the tear out piece are the secret handshake. Just happens to be the Rubiyant PT is carrying that his wife gave him.
There’s a long time between when SM arrives in the GLenelg area and when he turns up on the beach so what happened in that afternoon is anyone’s guess. Did he meet up with. PT and exchange the book for the tear out slip. At some point in the afternoon things turn pear shaped . Once again PT was known to panick when cornered as it is clearly mentioned in reports of two court cases where he threatened suicide and threatened a witness.
Good idea Ayuverdica.
I really wish you wouldn’t even type Debra. As you going to be dragged into a Court case very shortly.
Nick: I think ‘the Dude’ has a valid point re- Callum Thomson.
Regardless to whether Callum’s on the ‘family list’ my understanding is that Prof. Abbott had already sought out and tested offspring relevant to Robin. It also makes no sense that Callum would come to you offering D.N.A. to assist with SMs identity and not go straight to Abbott. In any case you’d be better to refer him on to the University in order correct procedures are followed. I’m sure they’d direct him to a suitable facility where ever his travels might take him, and they’d also pick up the bill. Xlamb
I met Con Polites a few times during the 77/78 timeframe, only because I knew his son George, and due to my cousin and George ‘dating’ (not quite divorced from his first wife then).
I’m sure both Polites ‘father and son’ knew about our father’s activities.
I also dated Noel O’Conner, a Channel 10 news reader in ’78’ and he knew about my father as well. Problem was, I hadn’t any past recall at the time and I couldn’t help out with what others wanted from me…information. I was often questioned but had no understanding. Some things you have no control over, and memory is one of them, particularly traumatic events like these. You also have to trust people’s motives first I guess.
No-one thought to protect me in the process and consequently I came off badly. They might have thought they were helping, but whatever their plan was, it backfired. These chaps can now take what they know to Police, and perhaps finish the job Con (since deceased) had sought to resolve. Mostly everyone served themselves back then though, and perhaps that’s still the case. I’ve done my part. I’m told Noel lives in Queensland these days. Police would know how to contact George. All very ‘off topic’ questions from Maria and it needs to stop.
I’ve sent Nick a link to something my father wrote re- HMAS Sydney, Operation Code Magic etc. as it has some remote significance to codes, mysteries etc. It was pointed out to me earlier this year (penned in 2008). I’ve not read the blog Maria has referred to and most likely won’t. I’ll inform Police or others can. I don’t really care! XLamb
you’re drowning here Nick .. these guys never turn the tide.
Dude, man .. that’s a red-hot scenario you have there, just a couple of more ifs and maybes to go and it’s in the bag. And he’s a Russian, right?
People, people: I’ve woken up this morning to a cataract of crazy comments, half of which I’ve already deleted (and I’m more than tempted to delete the other half as well).
It isn’t something I’ve wanted to do, but you Tamam Trolls have given me no choice.
Just so you all know, my policy going forward now is simply to delete any off-topic nonsense from anybody. Where spam filtering fails, I trust in the.+10 Delete Key of Doom.
Hi Nick,
Do you mind me re-blogging a few of your articles on HC Reynolds on my site. I will put full credit to you.
Thanks
Mar
Sorry to hear about your troubles Xlamb. Hope everything gets sorted out soon. 🙂
Mar: where’s your site?
Love your site Mar. Could I ask where you got the pictures of the suitcase from?
Carol
Marshall…. Thanks ! Things seem to be moving forward at long last… I think. Xlamb
Can any one here find the death of helmut Hendon?thank you
” cataract of crazy comments”. That’s funny. Keep at it Nick.
The Dude: next time I’ll write “a torrent of t***” or “a waterfall of w***”, that should get the point across clearer. 🙂
I think Aubrey Cecil Moulder born in 1894 looks like the Unknown man.
All cool options mate.
Redgy: …because?
I knew Jestyn well .She was one of the most well spoken, intelligent ,vibrant , compassionate, loving, noble and honourable people I ever had the pleasure of knowing.
Courage+friendship: may I ask how long you knew her for? Did you attend her funeral?
Jestyn was a [swearword] [swearword] and a [insult]
[Swearword] [insult] [swearword]
[swearword] this [insult] [insult] [swearword]
Minstrel Janet: blimey, the spam filter appears to be developing some kind of sentience.
[lie], [lie] [lie] [lie]. The reason I get so upset is that Jestyn [lie] [lie] [lie] [lie] [lie] [lie] [lie] [lie] [lie] [lie] [lie] [lie] [lie] [lie]. The lit candles [lie] [lie] [lie] [lie] [lie] [lie] [lie] [lie] [lie] [lie] [lie]. [lie] [lie] [lie] [lie] [lie] [lie] [lie] [lie] [lie] [lie].
Well you can censor me all you like but this terrible [swear] of a woman and her [insult] husband are [slander] [swearword].
I [lie] [lie] [lie] while [lie] [lie] [lie] [lie] [lie] [lie] [lie] [lie] [lie] [lie] [lie] [lie] [lie] [lie] on her blog.
Minstrel Janet: historically, many sublime and subtle things have been born of anger and rage, but criminal proof is rarely one of them. If you have no more evidence to work with than anyone else here, what makes you so certain such terrible stuff happened?
By the way I have already printed about five thousand leaflets describing Jestyn’s role in this case and will distribute them throughout the eastern suburbs of Adelaide starting this weekend
Listen nick, I hate secrecy. It’s poison. So I create a stir to blast things open. Then people start to talk. That’s how it works. I’m being silly now but we have the same goal in mind, the truth. Ill stop now
Ayuverdica: truth is a dangerous goal for the impatient to have, and it’s hard not to infer from your comments that you’re getting more impatient by the minute. 🙁
Redgy,
unfortunately Aubrey had several scars. See:
wxww.collectionscanada.gc.ca/databases/cef/001042-119.02-e.php?image_url=http://data2.archives.ca/cef/gpc011/508362b.gif&id_nbr=178775
www (dot) themarshallfiles (dot) wordpress (dot) com
Cant wait to get that leaflet!!
Ayuverdica And Menstruating Janet. I am related to Jestyn. I’m disgusted with your posts about jestyn. You didn’t even know her personally you backyard private investigators. Get a grip on reality . And stick to the facts. Thank you.
Courage, I make no inferences about any of Jestyn’s relatives or any living person. However you are wrong, she was a criminal. Sorry
Howdy again. I’d just like to take the time to say that you can speculate all you like , that’s your right . The profanity and vulture like behaviour doesn’t bother me or my family. At the end of the day they are only words. Insulting dead people doesn’t reflect very well on what type of character you are portrayed as. That’s all I’m saying. Jestyns remaining family doesn’t know who the Unknown man is . Whether the Unknown man was good or bad he still deserves the respect that jestyn and all the other people relating to this story should be given . Innocent till proven guilty is not a bad idea . Our family are peaceful loving people with normal lives with a few stories to tell like most of you. Hate is not very enriching for ones soul. So love and let’s be peaceful . Xoxo
And I am a minstrel, I am not menstrual
Nick followed your advice and turned up more than I expected .
Seems Pros was in court just 4 months prior to SM turning up dead a few hundred meters from his front door over an interstate car deal. Pros talked adelaide woman (Daphne Page) into lending him 400 pounds (average male managers annual wage at the time was 430 pounds) to buy a car in Melbourne.
Pros returned from Melbourne sans car and sans Daphne’s 400 pounds. Pros claimed he got ripped of by his Melbourne contact but warned her not to follow up indicating the guy in Melbourne was not the type you report to police. He refuses to return her money.
Also interstate car theft circa 1948 was rife and at its peak over the 18 month period when SM turned up a dead. Why? because in NSW you could register a car at the time without providing an engine number. Provided you could provide a credible looking certificate of ownership you could register a car of dubious background and you had a clear title.
Sydney cops were trying to break interstate car thieves who were pinching Prestige cars ( pros had a business called prestige motors) in the southern states , taking them to NSW and giving them a new identity. The only risk was getting caught on the was back to NSW if pulled over hence you needed to look credible and have papers and change the number plate in case local cops got a report in.
What was Pros convicted of in WA ? doctoring car ownership papers.
All the facts listed here are available through newspaper records.
You may have known Jestyn but have you investigated her? How does knowing her and not having investigated her activities qualify you to comment on what they were?
Maria: I have often been criticised about my typing skills but I didn’t realise that it was an actual offence. At least most of my words are longer than four letters.
Redgy: Mr Hendon was born in 1909 so most likely died outside the easily searchable timeframe. He is not buried with his wife so you may need to do a systematic search of cemeteries. He was still living in 1963.
Ayuverdica: Lies are far more poisonous than secrecy. I can’t help thinking that your time and energy would be better utilised by becoming involved with something ‘real’ like Amnesty International for example.
Hi Nick, Thanks for a great site-you must be thick skinned to put up with all the crap being e-mailed to you. Pete Bowes is carrying the torch for all of us who want an outcome of this saga and, like yourself carries on regardless.. The Dude’s comments are quite interesting about the SM’s reason for being in Adelaide at that particular time. (The Adelaide telephone book for 1951 shows Sister J.E. Thomson’s name as the occupier at Moseley St, Glenelg on X3239-no mention of Prosper). I wonder if the SM wanted more money for his work & Prosper decided to terminate the “business” once and for all?
Daphne Page was unable to provide any evidence to prove that her version of events was true.
Three court appearances in 10 years does not indicate to me that he was a hardened or habitual criminal.
SM was dressed warmly on what locals considered to be a warm day/night so it is probable that he had not been in the southern States long enough to become aclimatised. “Sunburn markings were present up to the level of the crotch, and they were probably from the previous season”, which may also indicate that he had spent some time in a place that was considerably warmer.
That’s true Debra, Daphne Page was unable to prove her case as it seems she trusted PT and didn’t get anything in writing. You would have to wonder why a wealthy and prominent woman ( her address indicates she was of means) would such a story and take it as far as she did.
Three court appearances in ten years may not be habitual if they were the only times he ever stepped over the line which I seriously doubt. Most of us us have never been to court or convicted of crimes so to me his record does indicate to me that old Pros was a little on the dodgy side, it’s just a question of to what extent.
Clive it may also indicate why he was travelling incognito and had name tags etc removed. He may have unwittingly assisted in covering the tracks for his killer by rendering himself un traceable.
I have always thought the Carl Thomsen angle worth pursuing, and I am convinced that Elizabeth Thomson, Prosper’s wife, did identify the body. The recurrence of that surname, as well as the McIntyre surname, through this case is too frequent to be coincidental.
Dude: How untraceable was he when he left his clothes, with his name tags, in his luggage?
.. but, and if I may continue Dude (howabout I call dudley) – imagining all sorts of scenarios is a good thing, the secret I’ll never give away is that the more you find out, the better the imagining becomes.
So stick with it Dud ..
Hi “The Dude”, If the SM was involved in dodgy car dealings, then travelling without much i.d. clothes etc may have been a way of life for him. As you surmise, arriving in Adelaide to do another job, travelling light as usual but, this time it all went wrong for him. The killer(s) probably knew whoever his friends were would never admit knowing him and report him missing to the police. I can’t help thinking that he looks, from the autopsy photo, East European possibly Bulgarian, Ukraine area etc. Possibly emigrated to Australia arriving in 1946/47 and fell in with local (Melbourne?) crooks, dealing with contrabrand goods then rising to dodgy car rackets? Perhaps the first line of the Code reads: Will Ring Garage/George Once Amended Badge And Before Delivery. Unlikely, but you never know!
I agree Clive, I have always thought that he has an eastern European look about him.
Its interesting that you touched on the way of life aspect that such a person may have lived. Much like Frank Abagnale Jnr the famous fraudster.
I found an article in the Sydney morning herald from 1951 where the cops finally caught up with a guy that had made himself wealthy operating as I have suggested SM may have. The article describes the guy as having no fixed address. He lived out of a suitcase and would fly into a city, steal a car , re badge it and drive it to the next city, sell it then fly out same day. Racketeering was a way of life for many during the war years. Everything from silk stockings to ration vouchers were being sold on the sly and much of this continued after the war.
Anyhow,
I guess its just refreshing to consider the case from a different angle as the Soviet spy/ long lost love / love child bit has been pulled apart for over 60 years and we still dont know who the poor fella is. Either way i am surprised that given PTs record that the cops never took a serious look at him given his record.
The guy was in court just 4 months prior for allegedly conning Daphne Page out of a small fortune. You would think that the cops may have considered some sort of connection or at least taken the time to lean on him a little. Did Jessica either knowingly or un knowingly throw the cops off the scent so effectively they never even bothered to look at the husband. she was by all accounts a most charming and attractive lady.
Too all the negative contributors , cheer up guys !!! at least your not dead on a beach without your wallet.
The Dude: remember the overall timeline of discovery – the police only got to Jestyn in 26th July 1949, more than a month after the coronial inquest (Alf Boxall and his Rubaiyat turned up the next day). So perhaps Prosper only briefly flickered onto their radar.
Katie-Dee: “The identification was made by Mrs. Elizabeth Thompson, widow of Morgan, and Stanley Peter Salotti, driver, of Nile Street, Port Adelaide.” http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/43798696
The Advertiser (Adelaide, SA : 1931 – 1954) Friday 7 January 1949. They both identified the body as that of “Robert Walsh, woodcutter, formerly of Morgan”, despite police reservations that Walsh would have been much older than the Somerton Man.
I just want to thanks all the people that commented on this page making reference to families and invading people personal lives. Due to the stress of the comments a relative of mine was so stressed and traumatised by comments she read, that she rang her brother for support. As he would do he jumped in his car to rush over to her to offer support. On his way to her he has a heart attack and the wheel and died. I only have one question.. WHY?. You know who you are. YOU HAVE BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS. I hope you sleep at night. You are a disgrace to the human race. We have lost someone that we loved so much. And we cant get him back. A truly decent kind human being has died because of the actions of pathetic low life TROLLS.
Anonymous: show me the news report.
That is clearly untrue or it would have been all over the news with a Taman Trolls byline. No living person has been named on this website and everyone’s conduct has therefore been completely lawful.
You will be getting a letter in the post. And a visit from Scotland Yard.
Anonymous (who has the same NZ ISP host as someone else who has posted here a number of times, and so can easily be traced): show me the news report.
A visit from Scotland Yard, will he? And for what? Posting known facts in the public domain? Go away.
Thats true Nick. I notice old Pros used to advertise his spare car seats on his Melbourne trips to cover his costs and a little extra I assume. He was looking for some punters a couple of weeks after our boy turned up on the beach for a Melbourne run. He would have met a lot of Randoms that way not to mention the various characters who resounded to the many adds he used to place flogging all sorts of gear.
Does anyone know how he made a living in the 60s-70s?
In the 60s-70s Prosper was on what we now call a disability pension, supplementing his income with the odd car deal here and there. Jestyn worked first at Parkside and then at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in the mental ward. She retired and became quite the active traveller, and went to Europe biannually.
Thanks Katie-Dee.
You have to say Pros and Jess seem a very odd match and I am struggling to comprehend what Jess saw in PT. When you consider that for starters they never shared the same religious beliefs.
By all accounts Jess was attractive , engaging , intelligent , caring enough to work with the mentally ill, educated yet she marries and spends 50 years with a guy who if we go only on what we know as fact (ignoring the very negative but un substantiated claimed about PTs habits) was a divorcee , had a criminal record all of which were offences involving dishonesty, had a very average service record in the war, had threatened suicide ,at least once on record to the police, and if Katie Dee is correct he spent the last 25 to 30 years of his working life as an invalid pensioner doing sly car deals on the side as it would belie his invalid status to be working.
The home they shared for the majority of their married life in Hazelwood Park was very modest so he wasn’t the great provider and if you are correct Katie-Dee Jess was in fact the main bread winner. Katie-Dee or anyone who claims to have known the couple,
What gives here?
Most of what is written is rubbish. Callum is not a member of our family but a narcasistic liar who has tried to infiltrate Jestyn’s family. Last entry Katie-Dee is completley incorrect along with most of what’s on this website. Comments are ridiculous
Als Katie-Dee are you aware of the nature of PTs disability?
He had lung troubles, a consumptive, probably from having TB during the war but it was never entirely clear.
She wasn’t really an engaging person, she was burned by the Somerton Man affair and she lived her life accordingly, in her imagination, pretending she was a real life Mata Hari, doing the boulevards of Paris but always having to return home to her useless bounder of a husband and his wheezing indolence.
Hi Katie-Dee, To Europe and quite often, mmm, Wonder if Scotland and possibly an East Europe country were on the itinerary?
Oh, Daughter of Jestyn, if you are really who you claim to be, can you please set the record straight for us? Did your mother ever tell you about the time the South Australian Police hauled her in to answer questions about a dead body on the beach, or why the coppers thought she knew who it was? Just asking, not saying. Perhaps I’m wrong.
I worked with Jessica at the Daw Park Hospice. She was a vain, narcissistic person with very little empathy. At the time she had retired but was forced to temp to pay the bills. She was also ostentatiously religious, which I found queer for someone so unpleasant.
Pros owned several successful companies you shmucks. How about you go join the army and see how you sleep afterward. Even if you don’t go to war. I’m sure you will sleep differently . I knew the nurse, beautiful charismatic lady. The problem is that you base your theories on floored research and bad judgment when it comes to credible details. Pros was a loving father and grandparent . The nurse was never charged with anything. And if any of you think that having a baby out of wedlock deserves her to be treated like a criminal Then your old fashioned knobs. She saved the life of a child in her younger days and I’m sure she helped a lot more who were in her care at hospital. They were both decent hard working people. The rube that describes pros a car theif. Get a grip home girl. He was one of the most prominent gentlemen in the collectible and vintage car scenes in south Australia. I don’t really know any of there children or family that are left but is like to wish all well. And stand strong. Lots more of us are behind you . P.s the nurse didn’t work at QEH. See later leeches.
That’s untrue as Jessica advised me her husband was at home and unable to work.
Does anyone know about the rumours that are circulating about Derek Abbott and Jessica Thomson’s granddaughter Rachel Egan being in a relationship? – They have just had a daughter together.
Go on facebook and check out the pictures.
Facebook username: rachelre1
They have been doing a 60 Minutes Story recently and half of the ‘troll’ comments on this forum are coming from journalists and researchers who are connected to them.
Seems that destroying people lives and getting cash is far up on their Agenda.
Sorry Nick it had to be said.
THE END
Fruitshopownerthatknewjestyn: the problem we face when trying to understand Prosper and Jessie is that we have only three classes of evidence to work from
(1) reports from old newspapers (which are either to do with the Somerton Man or with Prosper getting caught up with [or instigating] dodgy car deals)
(2) hearsay from people who claim to have known her who say she was basically a saint
(3) hearsay from people who claim to have known her who say she was basically a demon
Category #1 actually happened – it’s fact, not speculation or interpretation. But categories #2 and #3 (and we have a lot of both, contrary to what you seem to think) fail to advance our knowledge of what was going on in 1948-9. People’s lives are far more nuanced and subtle than #2 or #3 likes to admit.
So, if you want to be part of the solution, please tell me this: who should we talk to to get a more balanced view of Prosper and Jestyn as they were 60 years ago?
And please every give Prosper Thomson a rest. Really sick and tired reading all the stupid theories about him. For the record he was a decent bloke and a great father.
Its always hard to sort the wheat from the chat and not give the drones any oxygen but if Pros matured like a fine wine into a vintage car enthusiast and had a successful career then Im happy for him but it doesn’t change the fact that,
1. He WAS convicted of fraud in WA over falsifying car ownership documents. He WAS attempting to shaft a potential buyer and a bank in the one crime not to mention several other dishonesty offences and Im sorry if anyone is hurt by this but its a matter of public record.
2 As an Adelaide local I can tell you he is unheard of in the Vintage car or business worlds.
If anyone has evidence to the contrary and wishes to clear his name this forum is the perfect opportunity for you to put us in the picture. I don’t care either way and am only interested in getting to the truth of the matter.
Alice Fortune Hawkes: as I commented to “Fruitshopownerthatknewjestyn”, the problem is that the only actual evidence we have to work with is comprised of summaries of Prosper’s various court appearances when he was young – everything else, as far as I can tell, is either outright lies or people taking their genuine post-2000 knowledge of Jessie and unreliably projecting it back onto how they believe she must have been half a century earlier. Please let me know if I’ve overlooked anything important!
Overall, what’s missing is credible empathic journalism, with the skills and patience to build up a realistic and balanced picture of the people involved as they were circa 1948/9. You’ll have to tell me whether a 60 Minutes story is likely to come even close to such an ideal. 😉
As far as my own involvement in all this goes: by allowing the whole spectrum of comments here – from the trolls to the co-workers – I’ve tried to open up a space for such a picture of the real people to emerge through all the cracks, but I have to admit that this hasn’t exactly been a success as yet. What should I do to move the debate (about how Prosper and Jessie actually were) beyond artificially polarized agenda-stuffed bickering? How should I fix this?
Helen Foxtongue , your full of [profanity]. He owned and ran several business throughout the eastern suburbs.
What businesses? Let me guess, ‘import/export’?
A good way forward NIckstyn P would be to not publish incorrect facts,defermation and character assassination related gossip. Hypothesising is a natural and healthy investigation tool if used right. Put yourself in my shoes for ten minutes to try and feel where I am coming from as a family member. I have no problem what so all with people investigating my family. Just try and do it with some dignity and humanity. J and p were the best grandparents to me I could of ever had asked for. And if you speculate that they were not in love. , why would you spend your whole life with some one if you were not in serious love? Good luck with your research 🙂 keep it kosher .Peace
Just to save anyone the trouble Jess and Prosper did and do not have a grand daughter by the name of Rachel.
I think “fruitshops “paper thin response sums up how much he actually knows. No doubt fruitshop , Alice fortune etc are one in the same. A jealous little wannabe author who has too much time on his hands because of the lack of interest in his schtick.
Go for a surf mate.
Fruitshopownerthatknewjestyn: please understand that the immediate problem I have is that I have no way of knowing whether you (along with every other commenter here) are genuine, fake, delusional, rose-tinted, lying, imaginary, or virtual. All of these spring forward to fill the void opened up by lack of evidence.
I try my best to do what I do “with humanity and dignity” as you put it: but, really, it is the lack of evidence that causes these other things to flourish. And – contrary-wise – the only actual evidence we have is of Prosper’s court appearances, which you don’t seem to like the sound of much. So what is the answer? What do we need to do to develop a proper, nuanced, genuine picture of Prosper and Jessie?
Nick P: The court appearances with G do not bother me at all. They were petty crimes . I can’t really help you with the genuine picture you want me to paint of them because most of you have made up your mind about his criminal activities .Thus rendering his character defamed .I guess I’m just trying to stand up for family .For those that can’t defend themselves in this world. The only link there is still to this day with j and g and this case is the “phone number” in the rubaiyat which is still not proven in my eyes to have ever been in his possession with 100% certainty and the close proximity to their house to where the Unknown mans body was discovered .Very thin evidence indeed. J would have preferred to be called Jessica rather than jessie . She did change her name , thank you.
Fruitshopownerthatknewjestyn: actually, that’s the complete opposite of what I said, which was that as far as solid evidence of Prosper’s character goes, we currently only have his various reported court appearances to rely upon and nothing else. Now, I happen to think that that’s a biased sample: but where am I – not anyone else – to find the other evidence that will help build up a broader and more reliable picture of him, one not reliant on people reconstructing what they believe he was probably like long after the fact? For example, are any of his close friends from the 1950s – the ones that doubtless appear on the edges of old family photos – still alive? Personally, I’d trust their recollections far more: is that somehow wrong of me?
As far as the phone number goes, it is indeed thin evidence – but at the same time it is real, tangible, factual, physical evidence, and was enough to convince the police at the time to make contact with Jessica. It is the speculations and so-called “deductions” that elaborate upon and around that highly probable link that are at fault, not the evidence itself. Even if there is only a (say) 95% chance the book was in the Unknown Man’s possession, would that be enough to convince you that this was a line of inquiry worth pursuing?
Interesting that at 9.28 am fruitshop didn’t know any members of the family yet by 11.02 he’s is a member of the family!
Wether its as Alice Fortune Hawkes or all the other names this particular person doesn’t care less about the reputations of these people , he’s taking the p…s
The Dude: just so you know, “Fruitshopownerthatknewjestyn” was posting from the same IP address as “Courage&friendship” and “Redgy”, so that’s three trolls probably whittled down to one. 🙂
The Dude: also, “Alice Fortune Hawkes” was posting from the same IP address as “The Jackal”, who laughed at people who weren’t using online anonymizers. Might be a coincidence but… two more trolls for your list, probably. 😉
Nick,
Not that it necessarily applies to those people, but one IP address doesn’t necessarily mean one person. Last year to protect students’ personal ids, several were allowed to access a mail list only if they used one portable, through email addresses set up for that purpose. The portable was mine, and the students were subjected to gratutious unpleasantness, possibly because of the one-person-one-IP assumption. Certainly nothing they said could have caused the flaming; all their posts were checked.
Diane: entirely true. But in all probability they’re still trolls. 🙂
G’day. Yes I’m courage and friendship , redgy and the fruit shop owner all rolled into one. Nick P: if I was a police officer in 1948 investigating the mystery , I to would have done the same thing. Visiting the nurse does seem logical. In due time my mother will give you the best insite into j and G that anybody still alive could give. Having known them since the early1950s I think she is the right one for this. She does not know who the Unknown man is though,none of us do yet. The only reason I hide my identity is so my children in 10-15 years don’t have to put up with the same horse pooh. I’d gladly love to meet you all and have a friendly chat in person .But that’s not the way the world works is it ? I’m not the most cryptic person to ever walk the earth. Working out who I am shouldn’t be that hard for you all . Challenge I think not. I’m the 3rd child on js Daughters Side. Im an artist, addict to israeli hand to hand combat training and I’m the proudest father you will ever meet. I’m as curious as some of you are to find out the identity of The unknown man .
I just keep my research a little more discrete than most of you. So have a good day . Do an act of goodness or charity today. Could make the world perfect 🙂 peace
Im interested to hear any more info that Helen or Katie-Dee may share re J and P as there is a ring of authenticity about their posts.
Jestyn never worked at Daw Park Helen. You are a disgusting
To Alice Fortune Hawkes.It’s poor form to use Prosper’s mother’s maiden name as an identity. If this is u James/Callum go and find another family to belong to because u are an imposter
Feel free to message me on the email provided Nick P if you would like to chat. Cheers
Well, why was your grandmother Jewish, and are you Jewish?
Anyhow
I like your Thomson twins theory Nick, that is to say I like the name of the theory and it is an interesting coincidence.
I have some interesting facts that I will share later when the kids/trolls have gone to sleep and lets call this theory Prestige twins.
The Dude: beware the ring! Beware the ring! 😉
The Dude: you are obviously a patient person! 😉
Incidentally, have you seen the film “The Prestige”? That has an interesting twist on twins!
Hi Nick, Three questions to family members of J & P. (1) Who was Robin’s natural father? (2) When did J first meet P? (3) Did P ever own/wear a Tudor Swiss wristwatch?
“The Prestige” Yep big twist in that one.
The twins in this story are of the vehicular kind but more about that later.
I have posted here previously re the possibility that SM may have been an interstate car thief given a number of factors and some more digging has actually added to the possibility in my mind.. I am happy for anyone to point where this may be wrong as I only seek the truth and if one line of enquiry can be eliminated thats a good thing.
I have never been able to get past why SM had such a peculiar selection of tools packed for his short trip (2 to 3 days max)
If the popular theory is correct he was coming to claim his lost love and his natural son. Fine but are you telling me he packed a stencilling brush just incase he got the urge to call in to the warfes to mark a little cargo while he was in town?
He was in town on business in my opinion and if that business was legit someone would have missed or identified him. There was also the small screw driver , the re fashioned knife and scissors.
I did a simple google search on what tools are required to hot-wire an old car (40s-50s circa) guess what??
Word for word a small screw driver to force the ignition and a cutting device , scissors or a knife to strip the wires. Ive previously suggests that the stencilling brush could be used to alter the number plate.
There is another crucial requirement which involves the twins and a local contact which I will touch on soon.
Let me guess dude. Your going to suggest that p had two twins. And one drowned in the pool. ? From a different lady other than his wife in the 1980s. Where is your proof? I would love to see it you lost puppy.
The dude: if the IP addresses are anything to go by, Juicyfruit = Fruitshopownerthatknewjestyn = Courage&friendship = Redgy. Just so you know.
Was all that rubbish about the hunting lodge out in the Coorong true? I never heard anything about such a place, or another family. They must have kept that very quiet, but then, I never had anything to do with George beyond seeing him at the occasional Repat function.
Katie-Dee: I never checked it out, but feel free to have a look for yourself, because the poster (“Maria”) gave details of where the data allegedly came from and how to find them:-
* http://ciphermysteries.com/2013/10/01/new-somerton-man-identification-claim#comment-295346
* http://ciphermysteries.com/2013/10/01/new-somerton-man-identification-claim#comment-295368
I’m guessing this is http://maps.sa.gov.au/plb/ , though it wasn’t immediately obvious to me how you would search their database by property owner… but perhaps you’ll have better luck than me. 🙂
by the way, I heard that the gravestones of the couple have been badly vandalised at Centennial Park cemetery.
Katie-Dee: if that’s true, then I’m aghast and sad, because that runs completely counter to the respect for the dead (and indeed for people in general) I believe in, value highly, and try to practice. 🙁
Girls girls girls. Where are your brains ? To much liquor in those veins. sticks and stones and unpaid loans , living in the shadows and chased from your homes. Prescription pills are your cheap thrills .keep on going in the end it kills. P.s- IP addresses bounce and fly. But your silly cam u left uncovered doesn’t lie. You all better start watching what u say here , I’m giving some serious thought about spending some energy on you all.
Actually, I’m
Better than that.i could think of far more positive hobbies . Good bye and good luck to everyone one of you. Was fun while it lasted but I’m
Sorry, your not my type. 🙂
Thanks Nick , I assumed that was the case.
Katie I have visited the grave stones of PT , Jess and SM in the last month and I can assure you that neither PT or Jessica’s grave stone has been vandalised in the slightest. PT was cremated and his monument is adjacent to a lovely creek bed along side a little bridge and Jessica’s headstone is immaculately kept. It has had stones left on it in the Jewish tradition much like has been reported that SM had stones left years ago. No way would that type of thing happen at centennial park anyway.
SM s grave site is a little sad I have to say in that it is in a very remote and forgotten area of the west terrace cemetery with very old graves . Most of the sites are un kept and SMs monument has had a little damage I suspect from souvenir seekers with a few of the letters removed but there were flowers on the grave albeit fake ones.
Katie I am confused by Maria’s information because LTO searches go by properties not people so the story seems a little fishy. Also why would there be a hunting lodge in a National Park which inhabited by protected species?
Come one now , ……….. $$&&!($$*%#%^*** oh plop. There goes mummy. Mummy come here when I’m
Talking to you. Or I’ll cut it off. You filthy little beast. You wet your bed again. You do it again and ill chop it off , you hear me mummy? Slap. Ouch. Take that my little daughter . Fark. That isn’t nice mummy. Yes I know. Lets be vengeful and spiteful ok dear. Yes honey. Ok. Please stop. Ok. Are you finished. No. I’m only just getting started. Why are we so evil ? Not sure ask Carl. He isn’t here. Yes I know biatch but he hears everything. You naughty beast. No youra. beast. No you are. No. U are. No. I said it first. Some body needs to pass me me meds. I think I snapped a heal. No u snapped one off on my chest. Oh. Amazing and invigorating. Num mum. If only I had a UV torch handy to show you how much mess you actually splashed on the wall.even Pro hart would be shocked , yes I know. Hey ? Kinky. I know. Oopooooooh. I know who the unknown man is. He is my granddaddy. Oh no he can’t be. I have my real grandfathers nose or is that my great grandmas , hard to tell honey with that amount of work done. Funk you mummy. No. Yes. Ok. I’m calling the professors so I can confess. I have been naughty to u know. Your not the only adventurous one around this caravan. That’s true. Are we in bed or am I just heaps ripped of the valz?beats me pumpkin. What does ? The Truth. The truth always wins in the end .lies lies lies Your a shammy , excuse me ? Prima dreamer. Just jealous really. No. You are just good at hating , do you hate me ? In a way yes. James. Ring Carl. Ok. Mum. Muiiiuuiiiiuuuimy. Yes dear. Don’t worry it’s engaged anyway. Who is ? All ears and demons are engaged with us. Coz we lie. ? No. That’s a religious thing. No. Look behind me and tell me again that its ……… Just stop would you. You are beginning to sound like an Xtreme lamb. Oh I’ll shut up then. Just wake me up when the chemist opens. Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The dude: it seems that Maria probably started from the address or plot number, not from the owner info. Or perhaps Maria has access to some other database we don’t have?
That only felt like five minutes. Trust me my darling fruit cake. It was longer than you think. If your saying what I fink your saying. Don’t go there girlfriend. Go where? I’m not going anywhere. You promised. Strange how there are so many secrets about this whole thing. It’s almost like the government hushed it all up. Dogshit. Gosh you babble on. I’m building a tower. Your megaphores are powerful Mega fauna ? Just don’t even try and keep up with me. It’s not worth the hassle. Feels like I’m sinking into the mattress and I’m floating away. Sounds like you did have your shakra damaged. No. Just reconfigured. Excuse me. Mummy. Yes dear. Is this a free call ? No it’s timed. Listen to her voice the hussy. Sounds like me. What ? Yeh bro. Sounds like me ay?you sook. No. You look it. Oh thought you said. I’m a sook Not sick. Haha. You funny biatch. Yes. Crack me up. You are like my friend. Yes dear. I am. We make waves. Where ever we go. Yes we do. Wake. Snail trail ? Yes haha. He is here watching me. When will we behave ? Not to sure . To much work not enough play makes mummy a dull boy. Any word on the damaged graves ? Nah I think we graffitied the wrong one 🙁 You know just for talking about it. You have created demons that won’t leave now. I’m not spiritual mummy we have been through this more times than you have tried to get off the crack rock. Well at least I can point my feet in my chair. That’s some consultation . Did they bind your feet when you were in china to mummy like the somerton dude. ? No I lost a couple of digits from your snapping turtle ? Ok quick act normal. I think we are lost . I am a human GPS baby. Since when have these only been 100mg they use to be 200s. It’s called balance. Now u have lost me now. You know Carl tricked ruthy? Yeh he said. Bar stard. Ya. Thus uz fun. Hanging with you darling has been draining. Quick that’s one of the old students. Run. They want their DVD money back. 🙂 that’s just greedy. Leave me alone. You heartbreaker.
You write very well. Sorry you’re having so difficult a time; poets often do.
Diane: unless you’re desperate to adopt a troll…
Visited the grave today. It’s broken in two. Looks like someone took a sledge hammer to it; very sad.
Nick, Obviously Rachey jee is suffering from trollitis, of which there is no known cure.
I’m
Full off crap. Hi I’m lost. Can any of you please help me ? Mummy quick .my little Jenny. I have a whole fleet of jennies.
The reason why I get so angry is that everything I seem to do when I try and hurt the nurses family doesn’t work. I can’t get under their skin mummy. They are resilient . Mummy I just miss the revenge show so much , it’s ok darling. I have the boxset for you for Xmess 🙂
S T A Y A W A Y F R O M J E S T Y N
[profanity] [profanity]
Katie dee undesirable: I didn’t think you had emotions to feel sadness ?:)
Nobody is trying to get to Jestyn’s family, people here are only concerned with Jessica Thomson and Prosper McTaggart Thomson and the criminal acts in which they may have been implicated. Anyone drawing other inferences from that is being ridiculous.
Not trying to get JEstyns family . coz your not very scary just annoying KTD trying to get at Jestyns family is what your doing.your a sad case.
As soon as we hear the truth about Jessica and Prosper we will stop talking about them. If you’re really related to them, feel free to fill us in.
Will the real katie-Dee please stand up
go away, Joel
It would appear Katie Dee and Diane have a personal vendetta with Jessica and Prosper. I would suggest to keep your deep seated psychopathology this off this site and seek some good psychotherapy. Most of the information reported is a load of absolute rubbish. If u go to your GP I’m sure he can refer you to a good psychiatrist to work through your childhood lossess and anger issues you have to the family
I have no issues with the descendants of Jestyn or Prosper, thanks anyway.
I was pushed inside a van today by a man with a handkerchief covering his face. He told me to stay away from JEstyn and to stop poking my nose into the affairs. 🙁
muSgrave
clifTon
Alf
jestYn
gArdens
nsW
mosmAn
juicYfruit
international code oF signals
Royal north shOre
khayyaM
JEtty
Somerton
Tide
pastY
Ninteen forty 8
Beware of derelict ;dangerous to navigation.
Damaged rudder ; can not steer.
Boat is lost .
Are you in a condition to proceed ?
I will not abandon you , I will remain by you.
Abandon the vessel as fast as possible.
Boat is coming to your assistance.
Is there any danger -in-(of,or ,from)?
You are within gunshot,or , You are with in reach of guns (or,of batteries ).
Put your helm hard-a-port;ships head to go to starboard.
Stop her.
Wear instantly .
Have broken main shaft.
Have lost screw ,or,Screw disabled.
Have passed steamer with machinery disabled .
X
–
–
O
NSHPBCBCE
NUCJNQBOFUQ
X
NMJBCP BJBRD
JUUNUTBNTUHBC
Beware of derelict
Dangerous to navigation
Have telegraphed for your orders
Want police.
WRGOABABD
SHERBAKOV
MTBIMPANETP
COMPROMISED
MLIABO AIAQC
MOSLEY NURSE
ITTMTSAMSTGAB
ASSASSINATION
I just want to apologise to all the family members of Jestyn. I am currently struggling with a few mental health issues. Some times I say things I don’t really mean . I wake up most days regretting what ive normally said the previous night. Doctor Jeckle type behaviour . I can’t blame anyone except my self . The grave site is fine, and i would damage it. So I’m very sorry, so so sorry. Love and respect.
I wouldn’t damage it ever. That was a mistake. I would never touch it.
Note: this particular “Katie-Dee” = “Keane as” = “SoonerOrLater” = some kind of troll trying to discredit the actual Katie-Dee, for reasons known only to himself/herself. Either that, or Katie-Dee has a special teleport button that can flip her to the other side of Australia in an instant. *sigh*
darn, I thought “Kean as” was talking about a ladder cipher. (Is there such a thing as a ladder cipher?)
Hi all I have been keeping myself upto date with this blog and this is the first time ever commenting myself. I am interested in Xlambs history here. What is the blog of her Father, where do I find it? I have read a blog by silent lamb that claims to be sibling to Xlamb and mentions like a freemason type ceremony in one for the Adelaide parklands and a baby sacrificed. Children tied to a chair and abused. Mention of whom is obviously Louise Bell etc I assume this is linked to the Xlamb in these posts.
I would be rather interested to read more about this all and the Fathers apparent blog would be an ideal place to start. Maria could you post a link? I would like to pursue the relevance of the ID and its backround/history and feel that the Fathers blog is his side of the story so would like to hear both sides.
I also wonder if Xlamb is close with Jannette Stevens as Jannettes facebook pages are very similar to what I have read from Silent Lamb. Infact that is where I found the link to the Silent Lamb blog in the first place.
I wish no-one any disrespect in asking for the link, just wanting to be informed from all angels before I form an opinion.
Thanks
Sounds scary. 🙁
Is Xlamb related to the Mangnosons?
I don’t know Orange Datsun. But if her story has even 2% of truth to it ,it’s horrifying.
Note: “Vin Cheezle” = “Orange Datsun” = “Keane as” = “SoonerOrLater”, commenting on their own post.
Hi All, Despite the suitcase being found at the railway station & a rail ticket to Henley Beach (unused) found on the body, what evidence is there to link the SM with a train journey? If he was visiting Adelaide and wanted a place (not a hotel) to leave a piece of luggage surely the railway station would be a very convenient place?
Good point Clive. There was also mention that the other phone number found on the Rubaiyat was that of a bank in Adelaide. Was this ever followed up? Did SM deposit money on 30 November or was he waiting for a deposit to be cleared, or money to be wired to his account from an employer perhaps?
Apparently the owner of the car in which the Rubaiyat was found was a chemist. Was the car parked near his place of business? Did SM visit the chemist that day to obtain medication? Medication that may have needed to be injected by a doctor or nurse perhaps? Did the chemist refer him to a nurse he knew living nearby? Did things like that happen in 1948?
I feel that the tools found in the suitcase are more consistent with a wool bale stencilling kit. SM didn’t have rough hands, consistent with working on ships. His hands may have become smooth from handling wool and the lanolin it contains.
I KNEW this woman. She thought she was the Mata Hari. She thrived on the intrigue and would often allude to this case and what a close run thing it was. The woman was a spy, deprived of relevance and out in the cold, who harboured grand delusions that she was living in a James Bond movie and travelled to Europe on pathetic little Kontiki tours, imagining herself to be a bond girl.
1 tonne fox. You never met her.
Well she definitely wasn’t on the ‘Kon-tiki’ – I have seen the documentary – and she would have been a bit old to travel with ‘Contiki’, although a bit of KGB training would probably come in handy to survive 21 bars in 21 nights.
Note: I’m pretty sure that Miss Bogotyreva = Vin Cheezle = Orange Datsun = Keane as = Rachey jee = Courage&friendship.
Just so you know.
Jestyn looked Jewish, not Scottish. What if SM were her daddy and not her husband? Could the DNA demonstrate that in regard to Robin?
The best theory I’ve heard on here Jessie. 🙂
Jessie Mc: I’m not sure I should be taking you seriously, but…
Yes, DNA tests do reveal the _degree_ to which family ties exist (or not) between two individuals. If they obtained reasonable samples from Rachel and SM’s remains, geneticists would be able to tell if SM was Rachel’s grandfather, great uncle, great-grandfather, second cousin once removed etc, or completely unrelated. They would not need a sample from anyone else, living or dead to do that.
Stereotypes re. the “typical” appearance of nationalities/religions with millions of members are useless. And, in any case: (1) there are old Jewish communities in many, perhaps most of the world’s countries (including Scotland); (2) it seems likely that Jessie Harkness converted to Judaism as an adult; and; (3) personally I think both SM and Jessie would have passed for locals in many countries.
Hi Jessie
Watched the “60 minutes” programme last night and there was a resemblance, I think, between Robin and Rachel (granddaughter), the eyes. As for Jessica looking Jewish, I got that impression too, from the photo of her and baby Robin.
You can usefully stereotype in order to postulate a reasonable theory. I’m not proposing a definitive answer
Perhaps we should rule out the impossibilities, first. Leaving only the possible. The big problem being, everyone has an opinion, and hardly any of them can be totally ruled out, due to circumstantial evidence…or lack thereof. we may never know the truth. accept this possibility. Interesting story, nonetheless, but at the end of the day, what will come of the truth, IF we find it? what are your (everyone posting) motives for finding the truth? I am intruiged by this thread. I love all possibilities, and even IMpossibilities. Not finding any of you more right or wrong than the others.
Webb: we have a surprisingly large number of fragmentary clues – a body, a suitcase, and a nurse who knew more than she let on. For me, the frustrating beauty of the Somerton Man is that it is perpetually as though we only need a single additional clue in order to achieve some kind of critical mass of factuality, when all the forensic half-stories told by the physical evidence will start to link together into a cohesive whole. But what is the right question to be asking next that might help us reach that tipping point?
Hi Nick, no need to publish this. I’ve read some of these comments. Phew! Heard the radio program on ABC RN today. Any summary you might like to direct me to? Thanks for the site and measured discussion. You’re a great moderator.
There’s 2 Thomas Lawrence KEANE (and several moree T Keane’s) listed in the AIF database
Both are from QLD, both were 22 at embarkation and I think both have been mentioned above as the same person.
1327, Horse Breaker, Next of Kin (Sister) Ada Keane (this is presumably the one listed originally); Address C/o Mrs Burton…..No Fate listed
2033 Labourer, Next of Kin (Sister) Mrs FC Token; Fate “returned to Australia”
A number of other Keane’s might be of limited interest, but most seem to either be too old or have a known date of death listed.
There’s also 1 Thomas KEAN of passing interest
14645 Commercial Traveller; Address: North Adelaide; Commercial Traveller; Next of Kin Miss Mary Kean; Returned to Aus.
However, he’s listed as 42 at embarkation (which probably makes him too old).
There are many other T Keane’s (usually Thomas, but not always) and a number with a T initial on a second or subsequent name.
I suspect none of them (including the one’s I’ve highlighted) are of much value, but if someone loves digging you might find more information from the AIF database (it does link to some other records, I think). I can’t seem to post a link, so I’ve included the address below:
(aif adfa edu au )
@Debra: re “wasn’t acclimatised”…..not sure if you’ve seen and Adelaide summer. WHile the most extreme heat (40C+ days with some nightly minimums around and even above 30C) tends to appear from late January, the early summer already tends to be reasonably warm (getting toward 30C during the day, and nights that rarely sink below 15C). In some respects, it makes something like this on a busy beach like Glenelg all the stranger, because even in early summer the weather is already attractive for swimming, and with daylight savings kicking in, dusk would be well after 7PM I would think (1 Dec 2014 the sun rose at 5:55 and set at 20:14) – and (perhaps not quite so much in the early summer) the beaches (especially around Glenelg) are still quite active after-dark….
I would have thought for most people such a climate would more likely be too hot than too cold (in fact, I think most people would describe a 30C day as quite comfortable – irrespective of where they came from (even the Brisbaners or Darwinians would find that weather quite pleasant rather than cool). I’m not sure the clothing is an acclimitastion thing (perhaps more likely that they didn’t have summer clothes because they had not been in Australia long).
Please help me with the Facts only:
1.) the suitcase; did the police know “for sure” this was the SM’s suitcase? If so, how?
2.) JT & PT; What evidence is there that the SM knew them, or even 1 of them?
3.) the DNA of Robyn, (JT’s son) there is no proof that Robyn is SM’s son… At All. Some family members think he is (interview on 60 minutes). He had the same missing get teeth (genetic) as SM, but did JT ALSO have this same condition? I would think someone would mention this if she did, but I still want to know.
4.) DNA; the tests confirm a close relationship between ROBYN & President Thomas Jefferson, common Ancestor is Isham Randolph. (Interesting side-note, Thomas Jefferson’s female slave, Sally, rumored to have had his children, & confirmed a few years ago through DNA, named her son Eston). Sorry for this factual side-note, this made me think of JEStyn.
Now, While this interesting, we still do not know if Robyn is SM’s son… For SURE.
5.) Poison? FACT: there was never any poison found in his system.
6.) Calves: the same genes that caused SM’s missing teeth is the same disorder that causes the feet (toes) to be shaped like his, & causes the legs to have well developed calves, with narrower looking legs going down towards the ankle. It also causes lots of organ/intestinal problems.
7.) Identification by witnesses: while many people thought they could ID him, in the end, they couldn’t say for sure, is this because normally he looked different? Like wearing glasses, always wore hat?
8.) identification on tie, in suitcase, AGAIN, how do we know this suitcase belonged to the SM?
9.) Tamum Shud, book. Who did it belong to? There is no proof it “belonged” to SM. which means if it didn’t, someone else put the piece of paper with the saying on it in his pants. If it was, in fact his book, then where was that particular copy printed & sold? New York? (I believe someone recently DID find an exact match to that particular printed edition).
10.) the police tracked down the hotel where this man had stayed, WHAT was the NAME the man signed when renting the room? WAS everyone at this hotel questioned? The janitors, etc? Time clock of everyone employed & working the days he was there.
11.) tools; (in suitcase, if his) associated with LEATHER working. Leather Shoes, (like the custom made shoes he was wearing… What was the brand? Jarman shoes? Lobb shoes? Kennedy shoes? Leather saddles? BUT, I read, his hands were smooth & not like someone who worked hard with his hands.
12.) the CODE. If it was a one-time pad, we will never find out the meaning. If it is the first letter to a word found on a certain page of the book, we will soon find out. One thing I have wondered, if the last 2 letters of the code were initials to the person who wrote the code. A.B. A person with those same initials had the “other” Book, given to him by JEStyn.
where does this all lead, (besides theory crazytown)? As far as the DNA, if it is in fact, SM’s, then the family in Virginia that he’s closely related to should be notified first, & confirm any missing persons from their family, which I’m sure has already been looked into by now, maybe all the answers are to come shortly. I hope.
SB= somerton beach? TS= Tamum shud? M=meet?
Some of those code letters look like other letters when turned upside down. Weird.
The corpse on the beach had the same waxed thread in a repair on his pants as was found in the suitcase in the train station. (the thread could have been planted by a clandestine agency, however.)
ellen: my honest opinion is that any clandestine agency worth its salt would have done a significantly better clean-up job than we see here.
The Somerton Man’s life was almost certainly wildly different – and ten times more tragic and ghastly – than the romantic escapades projected onto him ever since. In all probability, the real reason his life doesn’t make sense to the people looking at it is that armchair cold case sleuthing is a middle class jolly hobby: something his life was probably anything but. 🙁
I don’t suppose you have had the opportunity to look into the name I suggested yet have you Nick?
Dan: it’s a great suggestion (thanks!), and it’s right at the top of my list of things to pursue. As always, though, the question is ‘How?’, but I have a few ideas already…
Dan: going through all the evidence a little more closely, it seems not only did the man have an existing skull injury plus cut marks to his wrists, his true identity was also established by the police against his will – so his fingerprints must surely have been matched against several previous fingerprint records he had left in SA and elsewhere. As such, it seems likely to me that the Somerton Man’s fingerprints would also have been checked against those same previous records… so I’m not getting as good a feeling about him as a candidate as I initially did. But it would be good to make sure that he had been properly eliminated. 🙂
Callum J Thomson – Did you ever get the dna test? Nick – have you ever heard back from him?
His loupe was for twitching a horse.
Siem Reap: that’s an effective way to get kicked, that is. 😮
Do you want a good story. Was told his death was a result of him wanting to confess to his involvement in a murder in SA in 1943. Was told he wanted to confess but the others did not want him to. He came back to SA after the war because he could not live with what had happen.
Chris: it’s a good story, much better than all the espionage stuff we’ve all had to endure of late… but unfortunately I’ve heard a fair few other good stories about the Somerton Man that could just as well be true. 🙁
Do you have any reason to believe that this story is genuine, rather than just (say) speculation or bar talk? As an historian, I’m typically just as interested in the source as in the story itself. 🙂
please check details. 7.10.1943 Clarence Keith Seckold found on grounds government house South Australia. Was told 3 people involved but no names. Was told one was connected to government house. Barclay-Harvey was governor at the time. For some reason he took sick and postponed his engagements 8.10.1943. Then left his position 26.4.1944. His wife had race horses and was told she organised with the horse organisation to pay for the unknown mans funeral. I have been trying to find out who was at government house on that night but they will not let me have access. Barclay-Harvey was in the USA prior to him coming to Australia. He took his daughter there after his first wife died. Believe there is a link between the governor and the unknown man
Chris: Adelaide’s “Truth” seems to have gone to town completely on this story, with rumours of homosexuals, ‘gliders’, and ‘foxers’. It’s certainly a rich, seamy side of Adelaide’s “park life” that greatly outraged the shaky-handed letter-writers of the day: poor Clarence Seckold may well have simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’ll certainly look at this in more depth: the ‘Tizer is so much less fun to read than the Truth, and doubtless there’ll be plenty of fact and fiction in the mix to sort out. *sigh*
But may I ask how you came to find out that this may have been connected to the Somerton Man?
In 1970 an Army fellow world war II told me this. I did not believe him. Then when I looked there were parts believable. He said he was in Army intelligence based in Northern Territory. Have his no but does not state which area.
Would like to know if the female in this was in Adelaide in that time and if she could have been one of the three people.
Not sure if you can trace what happened to all her race horses in Australia. Not sure if there was a register. Mrs Barclay-Harvey had several in Australia. If a funeral was paid for by the trading of a horse.
Chris: if by “the female in this” you mean the nurse ‘Jestyn’ whose Glenelg phone number was found on the Rubaiyat connected to the slip of paper in the dead man’s pocket, the answer would seem to be a no. However, the world is threaded through in very diverse and unexpected ways, and it probably wouldn’t pay to start trying to make connections until you’ve got much more of the 1943 story locked down.
Chris: thanks very much, the Army intelligence angle is certainly plausible and the document trail may well be traceable further via Freedom of Information requests.
Good luck. From my end have been road blocked.
Chris: what sources of information did you try to access?
Obviously Trove for the Adelaide Truth etc, but where else?My general experience is that most archives aren’t set up to be deliberately obstructive, but that unless you happen to know exactly what you’re looking for, the people you’re asking may not actually know what’s there either. 🙂
Nick; What does the term “government house” mean?
I always thought it odd that the South Australian Grandstand Bookmakers Association paid for the funeral. Why them of all people? Perhaps there was a connection, perhaps not.
@Bumpkin: Government House is what we Adelaideans (Australians, even?) call the place the Governor lives (if you’re familiar with Adelaide, it’s on the corner of King William St and North Tce (stretching along North Tce East to Kintore Avenue, and North from North Terrace to the Torrens Parade Ground) – Across the road from Parliament House, about 100m East of the Adelaide Railway Station (where everything seems to begin – SM, the tickets, the suitcase…).
If you google “Government House Adelaide” you get some nice pictures. It’s not a bad looking old house….
i wrote to the government department. I did go to achives thinking the book where people have to sign in would be available. Then I wrote at letter. Got a reply stating they would get a person to look. Then an email saying they could not locate it. Not sure if they did not want to look or could not locate it. I also asked if any family members where there during that time. His only daughter and husband where in Canada. The reason I have followed this 1. Death 7.10.1943 2. Barclay-Harvey cancelled appointments on that day. 3 Barclay-Harvey admitted to hospital 8.10.1943. 4 Unknown man burial paid for by Bookmakers. 5 Mrs Barclay-Harvey known as race horse owner/punter. 6 Barclay-Harvey cut short his position left 26.4.1944.
Just found the name of the person I wrote to. Official Secretary to the Governor, Government House Adelaide. I wrote to him 2 years ago.
Have another one that is of interest. My Father worked for the State Government of South Australia and he told me this. When Don Dustan’s partner died it left documents to be published so many years after the death. The State Government stopped this. When Don Dustan’s secretary was ask to lay out the body of Adele Koh she told my Father it was male and not female. The body was cremated.
Information from internet. Born 1948 but no country or parents mentioned. Came to South Australia 1975. Ceremony to Don Dustan 1976. Death 1978.
Chris: one SA conspiracy at a time, please! 🙂 I’m still reading everything in Trove about Clarence Seckold (it’s obvious why Army Intelligence were involved now), and trying to dig up copies of the Adelaide Truth (Trove only has the Sydney Truth, the Adelaide Truth now seems to exist only on microform in the State Library of SA) – http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/2414476
Chris: incidentally, there’s a survey online asking which five SA newspapers people would like digitized from microfilm and added to Trove. I filled it out and asked for the Adelaide Truth (among others): https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/D5KFCL6
Will check. Was told Federal Government cut funding. Some people who were helping were told they were not needed.
Went to the archives and looked at the file. Lots to me did not match between reports. I did the survey. Thankyou
Would there be a list of overseas persons who came into Australia because of the war October 1943 and then came to South Australia . If so then could see if a match to November 1948.
Chris: there was a register of aliens (paranoid wartime legislation etc), but you’d need some other information to be able to search that effectively.
Were would I locate it please.
Chris: the paperwork relating to the register of “enemy aliens” is stupendously large. There’s an online guide to the many linear metres of files here, few of which have been digitized: http://guides.naa.gov.au/safe-haven/chapter5/enemy-aliens.aspx
As I say, you’d need some secondary information to help give you any chance of finding what you want, or else you could be there for literally years. 🙁
Thankyou.
That is quite a distinctive tie ..i would guess it is perhaps military..but could be old school ,university ,yacht club to name a few …it will definitely be traceable .
Also the clothes he is wearing are expensive…unlikely to be from some mariner ,this kind of quality would have been many weeks wages ..
These avenues should well be worth a look…good luck …i just notice about this man on you tube
Murray, the tie in question is identical to that of the Kings Dragoon Guards. See:
http://www.oconnellsclothing.com/Robert-Talbott-Regimental-Stripe-Tie-Kings-Dragoon-Guards.html
I have tried searching for members of the regiment who were of the right age and who disappear after 1948, but it is an almost impossible task. Maybe the regimental historians might be able to provide a list of members born between 1898 and 1908.
The Old Brightonians tie is also identical. See: http://www.oconnellsclothing.com/Robert-Talbott-Regimental-Stripe-Tie-Old-Brightonians.html
Byron: looking again at this, I’m not so sure about the Royal Dragoon Guards match. While the colours match the 4th-7th Royal Dragoon Guards (which ran up to 1992):
http://www.rdgmuseum.org.uk/shop/p/99/tie-4th-7th-royal-dragoon-guards
…the example you linked to seems to be an Americanized version of that tie by Robert Talbott, i.e. with a slightly wider yellow inbetween band and the slant direction reversed. (Robert Talbott started making clothes in California in 1950.)
Is SM’s body still lying around somewhere? Surely DNA testing would be the best way to cut this Gordian knot!
Alexandra Dixon: barring any particularly rancorous espionage switcheroos, the Somerton Man’s embalmed body is indeed lying in Adelaide’s West Terrace Cemetery, until such time as Professor Derek Abbott manages to crowdfund its long-awaited exhumation.
For what it’s worth, I believe that the chances that the Somerton Man is any relation at all to Derek’s wife’s family are extraordinarily close to zero (which is why I have long said I think the exhumation is more of a fishing trip than a victory for forensic science). All the same, there’s a reasonably good chance that the man’s full DNA profile may in time yield a name (and a family tree, and a reconstructed life). We shall see (hopefully)! 🙂
Peteb: your informant Katie-Dee is a confessed nut case from CM trollfest days see 1/11/13 et.. So take heed of where she and her colleagues maybe leading you with their current SM meets Estyn Dick Jones Henley Beach contentions. S & Mc have an E.D. Jones at Goodwood Park in ’47 which if that be Estyn, puts the contention in some jeopardy.
@Minstrel Janet, if you are around and in light of all the latest developments , let’s talk.
Interesting comment on this thread from “Webb”, 24 January 2014!
It looks as though CM had some interesting & heated days in the past!
Could the meeting of Carl and Jo Harkness be somewhere backstage where he’s helping Gerald with the lighting and Jo’s there with her son performing ballet? Robin Thomson must have been using a different name until 1978.
I noticed Gregan McMahon was performing around Australia and living in Melbourne until 1941. Was Robin’s middle name McMahon linked to the actor or his son the football player or some other person?
im pretty sure Gerald might have know Jo and through that connection might have put Carl in touch with Prosper.
@Jo is the comment interesting because it’s ‘Webb’, or do you mean their point about eliminating the impossible is interesting?
There seems to be a lot of Webb coincidences (I think PB made the point 2 Webb’s in the morgue in quick succession, Webb conducting the funeral….)
Be kind to your Webb-footed friends
For a duck may be somebody’s mother,
Be kind to your friends in the swamp
Where the weather is always damp.
You may think that this is the end,
Well it is, but to prove we’re all liars,
We’re going to sing it again,
Only this time we’ll sing a little higher.
@ Milongal – my answer is both and by coincidence I think your song was originally composed by someone who shares a name with one of CMs star commenters!!
I wonder who the commenter Webb was and where they are now?
David Morgan, good idea, h’mm, maybe Carl was working with Gerald at the time …. Robin would have been still a babe in arms in 1948, but yes, there could be a link to Jo Thomson there.
These are the names of the ballet dancers I’ve been able to find . They were mostly 15/16 year olds, a lot of them from Sydney:
Betty Adams, Midge Hartwell, Elaine Crabbe, Rosemary Hain, Gloria Mack, Kathy Lamb, Laurel Goddard, Betty Stephen, Shirley Fraser, Shirley Rivette, Shirley Anders and Shirley Sunners.
Rachey jee posted in this thread on October 29, 2013 a load of nonsense but she (?) mentioned ‘Carl’ a number of times. Coincidence, yet again?
https://i.imgur.com/kcPzzPu.png
https://i.imgur.com/8zbcTbp.png
Hi (WEBB) Sleuths, anyone detect similarities between the general layout and punctuation of Webb, our CM one hit wonder’s post of 24th January, 2014 and that of another Webb of more recent contribution, both here and on Derek’s Facebook page. Now wouldn’t it be a turn up for the books, if that could be substantiated. Is it still possible to cross check the IPs
@ Johnno – I don’t think it’s Stuart if that’s who you mean. When I met with him in May for a quick tour of Prahran & South Yarra Carl Webb/SM sites Stuart didn’t know much about Ciphermysteries & wasn’t aware that PB also had a blog. He hadn’t heard of Prosper Thompson… There had been talk in the Webb family over time however, that Charlie may have been the Somerton Man & also conflation between Charlie & another missing Keane family member. This had led to the police ruling the Webb connection out. The last police contact may have been around about that time. Something that was interesting was the family connection to the Prahran Masonic temple. Stuart’s grandmother, Val, was a regular visitor & Stuart even had his 21st there! The Gaveys & Brenda Webb’s guardian, Parry, were past grand masters…
Who knows, the Webb commenter may have been a family member!
Jo: Brings to mind some mild rebuke Churchill once made to an Honourable Lady whilst allegedly in his cups, which he didn’t deny, I happen to have all the great man’s major speeches and many of his famous quips on tape.
@JS,
why not give us a clue? You searched right back to 2014 for a Webb commentator for us to compare with ?? but now you expect us to waste our time doing the same.
If you gave us both paragraphs “” we could use various software to compare. Perhaps even our own brains.
David Morgan: me thinks the “Honourable lady” clue would have been enough for your AI brain to come up with the correct answer, besides it was Jo what gave us the 2014 Webb comentater [sic] clue.
How very curious re Webb commentator from 2014, Jo and JS …. h’mm … it’s completely interesting, coincidence or someone in the know, yes indeed, that is the question. I have a strange feeling I’ve seen this kind of punctuation, sentence structure before, and yet …. I just can’t place it at this juncture.
Out of all the thousands upon thousands of posts, I can’t recall another where a commenter used only their surname for an ID and nothing more. Surprising too that whilst they were Keane to get their point accross, to which there was no response ‘Webb’ was never heard from again…so strange.
…no response apart from moderator’s well known ‘critical mass of factuality’ style dismissal to a newcomer. In hindsight that may not have been the smartest way to encourage further discussion with a new contributor. I remember getting the very same treatment here and elsewhere that obviously didn’t have the desired effect. Shit happens!
Noted that Australia’s Honourable PM Anthony Albanese visited Somerton for a ladies beach volleyball purve this morning for a last throw of the dice effort in securing votes for his long awaited referendum swan song on ‘The Voice’. In a well attended and full on politically charged ‘On the Beach’ affirmation speech he promoted the perpetual lie that S.A. was first in the world to offer women of South Australia full voting rights, and thereby denying New Zealand’s just claim to the title. Good luck Albo you’ll need it apparently.
@JS,
So your point is someone whose name was ‘Webb’ posted on the CM site and never posted again. A voice from the grave perhaps?
My theory..and it’s a bit wild is Webb was their name. As it reads somewhere whose name rhymes with Co ‘the family had always thought..’. So perhaps the family member ‘who always thought’ decided to stick their nose in to see what progress was being made towards Charlie being identified. Since in 2014 no-one had said Webb other than for the Salvation Army guy I guess they thought…maybe it’s a wild theory,
If I was to hazard a guess I would think Stuart’s sister.
When Carl Webb went on his jolly holiday he was replaced by an athletic competition-winning cyclist.
So… “Paul Lawson, the taxidermist, supplied a statement which read, in part ‘ I am of the opinion that he was used to wearing high-heel riding boots. I form that opinion because the muscles of his legs were formed high up behind the knees, ..’ (G Feltus, page 85)”
Was wrong…. he likely road bicycles a lot delivering bread. Lawson was forming his opinion on Carl Webb being found by the jockeys.
AI:
Yes, cyclists do have muscles higher up behind the knees. These are primarily the hamstring muscles, which include the biceps femoris, semitendinosus, and semimembranosus. These muscles play a crucial role in cycling, especially when the saddle is too high. This can over-stress the hamstring muscles and lead to posterior knee pain (pain behind the knee). This pain can manifest as either biceps femoris tendonitis (also known as biceps tendinosis) or popliteus tendinitis. Therefore, it’s important for cyclists to ensure their bike setup is correct to avoid overuse injuries.
Perhaps Carl’s drug problem was he had his saddle too high when he worked for his dad.
If we assume Carl Webb in the 1930s was a good cyclist delivering his bread – this could be Carl in the Fitzroy amateurs as the fastest unplaced cyclist.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/182995945?searchTerm=%22cycle%20tour%22%2C%20webb#
I have added the tag as possible as it could be a C or G Webb. I’ll try to find a G Webb in the Fitzroy amateurs.
Looks like it’s G Webb in the Fitzroy amateurs.
Chuck Webb July 26, 2022 at 12:41 pm (https://ciphermysteries.com/tamam-shud-somerton-man#comment-466239) (I think this is him again, reminding all again on that famous day; if so, most likely he is reading this. Then perhaps he can help all and explain if he was the one who offered the original hint re. TSM, rather than the alleged hair DNA.) Nick must have forgotten this one among all the flood of things coming his way. But it’s not his fault no engagement followed. He did try.
Charlotte Webb August 14, 2022 at 6:58 pm (https://ciphermysteries.com/2022/08/14/first-photo-of-carl-webb-the-somerton-man-probably#comment-467883) (This seems to be coincidence, as she does not imply she knew. But who knows, perhaps related to above.)
Behrooz: yes who knows?, more to the point, who knew and when. It’s undeniable that prior to the CNN breaking news on 26th July, CM informant @Chuck Webb knew. What’s more important to us is that Nick Pelling seems to have been given the Carl Webb ID in advance of Professor Abbott’s official release next day. All very interesting and made all the moreso by our moderator’s full on capitulation from a source that up until then he had made no bones about always discrediting in the past. Then as if to seal the deal he consented to an indepth supportive interview with ABC Australia, this being followed by the appearance on this forum of several Abbott Facebook devotees, bringing with them a rash of hitherto unreported Carl Webb facts and fancies that have persisted unabated until now. All rather peculiar wouldn’t you say? very peculiar ‘Indeed, indeed’ (70).
I’m guessing Charlotte Webb was just a ‘clever’ attempt at a pun
@Webb and/o @ Chuck Webb
This is just a followup to my last note re. your July 26, 2022 post and a belated reply to your 2014 post as well, which seem to be the only ones you have shared.
Your 2014 question is actually an excellent one. Why do all this searching for a seemingly odd puzzle, and spend so much time on it, by some for decades? I have asked myself that question a lot, and still am. That is THE question, and you have every right and good sense to ask it, and you expressed it eloquently, I must add. I think I have my plausible answers to the question and will share them at some point once ready, but what I wish to say is that your question also somewhat puts the horse behind the cart.
You are asking why do all this search, when it is the search itself that will provide that answer, if there is one. What appears to be the case is that someone, The Somerton Man, did something odd on Nov. 30, 1948, setting in motion a search for answers that he wished to share. In my understanding now, the search people have made will be found to be every second worth the effort, once the answer is known. But you can’t really ask folks who are searching to tell you the final destination, when that is the point of why they are searching after. I hope I am making sense about this.
Now, since it just happens that some questions have been raised, originally noticed well by Jo and followed up by John Sanders, Poppins, and others, about your comment in 2014, and now likely followed by your note on July 26, 2022, you will do the searchers great favor by simply clarifying that the suspicions that you knew TSM was Carl Webb back then and later hinted the matter to others resulting in July 26, 2022 unofficial findings is simply unfounded. If you are not a CW relative, and just a namesake, then, this should be easy to do. If you are a relative and have yourself been intrigued by the topic (as your 2014 comment shows), you can also note whether or not you provided others any hints about that possibility before July 26, 2022. That should help all also to know where they can go with this case.
I am not myself absolutely sure that you are a CW relative, or that you knew and hinted to others about the connection in advance. All this can be pure coincidence. But if you wish to help others not waste more of their times, you can just drop in a sentence and help all to move on.
Thanks in advance.
If you mean like Charlotte the harlot, then you might be on the money. I seem to recall Katie-Dee or one of them making a long timely appearance on Peteb’s site around the time of the Charlotte Webb with her Welsh Estyn of Henley Beach dud theory.
@John Sanders
Your point about Nick Pelling, offering your three examples, is that, despite his experience and otherwise admitted skepticism about the FB site leading folks, he simply went ahead and accepted in a rushed way the findings about the identification of TSM as Carl Webb. You bring this up because you feel Nick Pelling’s answer to the July 26, 2022 post by Webb, did not suggest he was challenging him and the findings, with needed skepticism. Obviously, your point was not about his response to Webb’s 2014 post, since he did not himself know of such a connection between the poster and Carl Webb.
I generally tend to give others the benefit of the doubt. I have been singing praise of this site despite many reservations I have also had about its conduct. But my giving the benefit of the doubt explains why I speculated that he must have been too flooded with posts to remember the connection between the Webb posts in light of the observations made by Jo, you and others about the curious coincidences. But perhaps I was wrong in my speculation, and he actually remembered and chose not to lead us to the other post by Webb. I am thinking that likely Nick Pelling does not consider this topic and curiosity even worth commenting on, which may explain his silence on it.
However, all that being said, your comment and questions are relevant and worthy of further discussion, and the best person to answer and address them is Nick himself. People can make a judgment they later find to have been wrong, or they may still believe in their original judgment, despite new doubts. Also, people do not always act consciously, and unconsciously one may make a judgment later to be found wrong or made in a rushed way. There are many possibilities.
But the questions you share is relevant in one important sense. Ciphermysteries is really the only site (with all due respect to others) that is widely visible and used for research on TSM case, as a more or less healthy counterweight to other unofficial or official sites or inquires made, past or present. Nick Pelling is to be commended for it but he is in a very important position to make or break contributions. He decides what becomes a thread, and what not. He chooses what is worthy or not, actively stated, or passively ignored.
A question that has always been on my mind, as well, is whether there is an unwritten “I scratch your back if you scratch mine” sort of understanding and conduct going on between him and the unofficial team in FB. Those running the other site are not bystanders of the TSM case, and actually have become a part of it for years. But, so has Nick Pelling, and his site and how he conducts it. Whether a breakthrough is made, or not, by others, is judged by him (in collusion or not with FB in behind the closed door emails perhaps) and can have significant implication about how the TSM case is defined, and solutions to it made (or not). Nick Pelling, like many others, is not an outsider to the case any more, but is a part of it, and decides who is worth giving attention to and who not.
The three examples you have cited, regarding his rushed acceptance of findings does raise questions. I would not have said this for folks not involved in TSM case. But he is an experienced researcher and site moderator, conducting research on every mystery under the sun, and has a long-term view of what the unofficial team has done over the years, and he himself has expressed reservations about how he has had to waste a lot of times questioning their findings.
I can add more grievance examples of my own to such puzzling behavior on the part of Nick Pelling’s ciphermysteries agenda setting patterns of behavior, but will not take more of all’s time here. My short answer to your post, then, is you have raised important questions again. Nick Pelling must, in my view, make it clear to all those sharing precious times and days of their lives on this site whether there are back door dealings going on with FB folks, at least on some matters and regarding some folks—since their existence can compromise his site’s independence, and lead others to waste their times sharing their contributions when they feel there are verbalized and still more subtle silent agendas here that can aid or prevent folks’ contributions to the solution, or lack thereof, to the Somerton Man case.
I agree with Julian, the only ‘genuine’ Webb (if we can call it that) was the one who posted in 2014 before Abbott’s disclosure of Carl Webb as the SM. Probably another coincidence (one of many) or maybe they are related to Captain E. J. Webb of the Salvation Army who led the funeral service.
The mystery Webb poster has misspelt the word “intrigued” as “intruiged” … could finding another “intruiged” lead to the mystery poster? They also like to make short snappy statements, sometimes starting sentence with lower case, and the use of capitalisation for emphasis and dramatic impact at other times. Interesting.
Pat: back in 2013, I posted that I thought “Miss Bogotyreva” = “Vin Cheezle” = “Orange Datsun” = “Keane as” = “Rachey jee” = “Courage&friendship”, which may or may not have been correct. Also probably “Smerdon” and “Hillman”. All from Chatswood, I think.
Similarly, “Marshall” = “Shirley Vennings” = “Bert” = “R” = “Herman [Youngleson]”, and all of them from Palmerston North.
I suspect that “Rachey Jee” may have been referring to “Carl Thomsen” (probably Charles Mikkelsen?), Keith Mangnoson’s claimed identification of the Somerton Man (rather than Carl Webb).
Behrooz: well… if I have had any contact with the Facebook site, I certainly don’t know about it. So I believe I can rule out both front door dealings and back door dealings, if that’s any help.
The Mr “Webb” posting back in 2014 was from Tennessee, and seems likely to me to have had no connection with Carl Webb’s family at all.
If you manage to work out what my agenda with all these cipher mysteries is, please can you let me know, I’d be delighted to find out. Thanks!
Thanks Nick 😊
Ah, a Tennessee Webb …. good on ya Nick, most excellent revelation and discovery. Well done. H’mm, so just another bizarre coincidence in the Somerton Man saga, it seems.
Behrooz: nobody can deny that there were strange things connected with Carl Webb’s confirmed SM Identity quite out of the blue according to Nick Pelling. It being accompanied by a great deal of renewed interest in the SM case not only with Derek Abbott’s FB supporters. Seems every Tom, Nick and Harry wanted a piece of the “My Name is Charlie” action, even some who had been his biggest detractors for a decade and more. As for our esteemed Moderator’s 2014 Webb mystery IP from Tennessee, it brings to mind the numerous Elvis spottings that cannot be dismissed out of hand.
@NP,
It is obvious your CM site is like those bridge puzzles Carl Webb solved. You have set us these CM challenges so that we can become your next Somerton beach mystery. Remind me never to eat your blowfish pasties.
@NP,
https://imgur.com/a/Y9DUEln
WEBB private prep school in Knoxville Tennessee. How’s ’bout that’n Nick? maybe Vin Cheezle, good old Jewish sounding name and Jestyn’s daughter Kate Thomson went to a school down thataways somewhere from memory.
@Pat Another genuine Webb posted before the Webb identification.
@ Nick Pelling
Thanks much for replying, finally, regarding the Webb post issue. This was started not by me, but by Jo, then joined in by JS, and then Poppins, and others, and would have attracted more, had I and you not joined in. I was just simply trying to help solve this puzzle, by joining in, and I am glad that at least in your view it has been solved, though not entirely mine yet. I think the concern about the post has a lot to with the deeper doubts folks have about a DNA based solution to the identity of the SM, and one can go in more detail about that, but not here.
Had you simply clarified, as a moderator, what you thought about the source, initially, I would not even had to come in. All the above had a legitimate question and actually an astute observation to make, whether or not the Webb is a relative or not. I am glad to have read his post and offered my take to the poster, and that is good to do anyways, as he (or she) was sincerely offering a good point for all of us to keep in mind. Just to add, in this age of IP cloaking and VPNs there is absolutely no way you can be sure he is from Tennessee or not. I am actually surprised you noted that, since you yourself often remind others that such tracings are always doubtful. With a turn of a click in a VPN, you can switch your IP from one corner of the world to another. I don’t think the Webb poster was doing any such cloaking, but to make such a claim as to knowing for sure where someone is nearly impossible now, at least for the common folks like us, than for security experts.
But the matter of the Webb post also serves as a good illustration of the larger point I was making, Nick. You have managed to establish and run a magnificent conversation hub on all matters related to mysteries, including TSM case. You are putting lots of time into it, and heart too. I acknowledge that in a heartbeat, since my record also shows how hard and time-consuming these things can be. But, with that achievement comes responsibility, and in your case, a huge responsibility, since your site is the only site around visible enough to counterweight the propaganda media machine of those who masquerade as scientists but do not behave scientifically at all, and seem to have been after this case just to add things to their CV and fame, and possibly fortune, and don’t care to demote a presidential royalty to a gambling man overnight; he is after all a physicist, unfortunately still of a Newtonian behaving kind, despite his quantum claims. You are, however, someone people can rely on to offer their differing opinions, but, unfortunately, no matter what you say about your lack of hardwired link to the FB (via email or phone or anything), you seem to be acting in a way that mirrors their act, in strange ways that deserve a mystery thread of its own on your site.
I am very happy to hear that you explicitly and on the record have stated that neither in front, nor behind, doors you are coordinating things with the FB folks. That is good to know, and actually it helps and confirms that you wish to remain and follow an independent path. But, for all practical purposes, when it comes to action rather than words, you are acting, if not talking, like the same duck when it comes into considering what is a worthy contribution to consider and what not. Nick, you cannot any more claim and complain that others’s findings have led you and us astray in solving the SM case, because you are yourself a big part of the node and network that determines what passes as problem or solution. People may have even put some good ideas in your lap, but you have simply ignored it, and acted just like the professor who still can’t rid himself, supposedly “objectively” or “scientifically,” of the fiasco of his classroom study results regarding the code. You have acted just like him. I can see why he would have ignored my 2021 report on the nature of the code. I learned from the very first emails I sent him earlier that year thinking that he was a sincere researcher, that he is not what he claims to be. So, I have not counted on him to take my findings seriously, since it would add more to his Everest mountain piles of flopped hypotheses. But, you, Nick, have acted just like the same duck, by simply ignoring a claim made by others.
You have tons of mysteries in line to be solved on your site, and have all sorts of strange ideas to consider. You have even entertained the microcoding proposals, I was surprised to find on your site. I am sorry, but with all due respect to the proposers of such ideas, what they are doing is really of a “have seen Jesus on the bread toast” variety. I can blow up any print and find images looking like the face of personalities, let alone numbers, ones that we have never learned what they actually could mean. I have even claim to have seen Lenin’s face on my wall’s tilework. Unfortunately, being beholden to such theories have kept them from pursuing other very fruitful lines of work and I still believe their study of Tibor Kaldor was very well done and deserves more attention, and also the questions they have raised about the impracticality of using mask hairs for reliable DNA reading—if only they could act responsibly and let go of efforts that only add troubles and mockery to their efforts.
Nick, I have no problem with your entertaining such theories in the past, but you did. Therefore, your silence on my 2021 report has been not only deafening, but actually quite condescending and insulting. You are so high on your cipher mysteries Everest mountain of your own that you have not even picked up a claim to criticize and demolish, let alone consider for what it may be worth. In doing so, you have acted just like the professor’s clone, whether you claim having contacts with him or not. It should not escape commonsense that you do not have to be hardwired to him to clone him. All it takes is, when confronted with an alternative point of view, is think “Oh, the professor’s classroom study settled the matter, so this one does not even merit a look.” To me, that is just as much a networking with dominant perspectives as being in touch with an email, only soft wired.
Nobody is asking you to confirm my findings, and please do not misunderstand this as trying to ask you to do so. Unfortunately, you have already taken your test and failed in it in my court, unfortunately, judging for the two years past. Actually, the first time ever I contributed to your site was a result of seeing someone (whose name is not important to mention) quoting from my report without citation. Actually, I took that as a compliment, and thought perhaps there is hope for someone on this site to even consider and reject and disprove my findings, let alone considering them for what it is worth. I would have been even happy to hear that person who posted quotes from my report had to say, but somehow the poster never came back. But you disregarded that post too, and generally my study, as a human being and contributor, simply ignoring what I have had to offer to this conversation.
I have every right to use my 2021 report as a criterion of judging your ciphermysteries solving accomplishments, Nick, since for two years now, I have been wondering why is it that this man is not even acknowledging that someone who has certainly the background and expertise to make a claim about the nature of the code, and do it openly, in published form, with all the evidence linkages for the code’s nature as a transliteration, has not bothered to even acknowledge that it exists. I have not had any such expectations from that supposed scientist to take up the challenge to refute my claim for two years, demonstrating to me how insincere he is of claiming to be acting scientifically, but of you, Nick, I have had hope, and you have failed, and that to me is a criterion of the extent you would go to solve your cipher mysteries.
A scientist, and a genuine researcher, would say, “let me see, someone has made a claim; let us see if it makes sense or not, and disprove it at least.” That is how science is supposed to work, but I guess two years of offering a theory without anyone making even a single effort to refute my explanation should go as meaning something regarding its value. I should remind you that there is a clear distinction between a finding about the technical aspect of how the code is set up as a transliteration (still open for further refinement), and its interpretation in the context of the facts know about the case. For example, in my reading the last line a reference is made to a lady. At that time Jo Thomson was the only one around to attribute the reference to, but now we have an alternative. So, even in the report I emphasized it was mainly about revealing its nature technically as a transliteration from Arabic, and everything about its interpretation depended on the contextual information known at the time. Besides, that report was published 9 months before the July 2022 unofficial findings, so nothing related to Carl Webb findings should have prevented you from taking it seriously just to refute it.
I put the Webb vs. Webb files in your site’s lap immediately even without having read it myself. That is how sincere I was in contributing to your site, and we can see, on record, how that went. All the nice and dandy comments ended up with comments (about the nature of which there is no point to remember all here) that missed the whole point of it being going after truth than making rushed judgments based on a one-sided claim made by someone about another. I do not wish to go into its details here as this has become long enough. But the point here is that you seem to appreciate things when thing add to your site’s dominant paradigms as you see it, but simply ignore other contributions, without even realizing how condescending and insulting it can be to those like me who have tried to contribute their own alternative views as well to the conversation.
Nick, you can no longer sit back and sigh about why the Somerton Man case has gone unresolved, again, after so many decades, in one respect or another. That is because you yourself may have as well contributed to the lack of new ideas, since you simply ignored them.
Behrooz: as the moderator, I have a little bit more information than you do about posts. For example, I have Mr Webb’s email address and the IP address, and was able to cross-reference the two against other sources to give me his name address, and even other members of his family. The only information I would release is his state.
As a general thing, my attitude towards cipher mystery theories has significantly hardened over the last decade. Theorists have effectively ‘weaponized’ my posts to produce ever-more plausible ChatGPT-style theories, where the effort required to even parse them is frankly crushing.
If that makes me seem unresponsive, I’m sorry: it’s where things actually are. If you can reply including a link to your page (replace the colon with a space), I’ll try to have a look.
@ Curio
Who was the other original Webb or what have they posted before the identification?
Misca may be able to help clear up our Tennessee one step WEBB mystery person. She started posting here 15/1/14, on ‘SM Thread Round-Up’ as ‘misca’ before doing a stint at Gordon’s BS/TS (see Pavel Fedosimov and Russian Katerin). ‘Bumkin’ was also present in those halcyon days of raucous Trollfest such ‘the dude’ and others named in Nick Pelling’s recent sad reminiscer, and may know something we don’t.
Nick Pelling.
Thanks. You had mentioned only the IP tracing, so I replied accordingly. Now that you added more, then, yes you had more information. However, I am still not sure if just those info can readily exclude family linkages per se. A Webb is a Webb as far as family trees go, and all it takes is someone to go abroad to study and marry and raise a family and go from there. Any ways, I think that issue has been exhausted and if we get lucky, he would himself post again. Case closed for me.
Regarding my report, actually your attitude has been worse than I thought, and, again to give the benefit of doubt, I attribute it to your being too busy with things, since I still regard you as a nice guy and trying to help out. It is one thing to know something exists and not pretend that it exists (which was my latest assessment). Now, it appears that you did not even know it existed! That may actually be the case with others on this site, perhaps. Sad.
I am not sure after two years and numerous times my site and report has been noted on this site, including in the very first paragraph of letter sent to the chief justice, there is any point of following up on your request. Your skills being so sharp as your Webb post tracing goes, should not prevent you from finding a link to my site each time I post something, or trying to find it online yourself. All that tells me is how carefully you will go about your “I’ll try to have a look”! Somehow that expression reminds me of “You are welcome to send your interpretation” by someone in FB; the second time, the same came a month later, this time without the “Dear Behrooz.” Then the third time I got lucky, since it never arrived.
Nick, please do your own cipher mystery searching and solving. “I’ll try to have a look” does not work for me. It sounds too condescending and bossy. You are not my boss. I am trying to do YOU a favor, not beg for your attention.