Gerry Feltus very helpfully included the text of Ina Harvey’s 1st December 1982 Adelaide News interview with Tom Loftus in “The Unknown Man” (pp.197-200). Harvey recalled a “strong and fit”, “professional” man with “an air of refinement” who had checked into the Strathmore Hotel close to Adelaide’s railway station for a few days before 1st December 1948.
She noted that “[He] had no baggage, except for a small black case – such as a doctor or musician who played the flute might carry”. Because she had suspicions about the man, she asked an employee to go into the man’s room (#21 or #23, she couldn’t recall) and have a look in the mysterious case – to her surprise, “the only item in the case was a needle”. Furthermore, “[from the employee’s] description I got the impression it could have been a hypodermic syringe.”
Pete Bowes now proposes that this flute case could well have been important: he suggests that it formed some kind of signal, a “covert [sign] of identification“, a chess move played out as part of a wider spy game unfolding on the streets of Adelaide in 1948.
Well… OK. But has Pete’s instinctual metal detector found the needle in a haystack we’ve all been grasping blindly for? In this instance, I don’t honestly think so. So if not a spy narrative, then what on earth was going on with the “needle” and the small black case?
And My Suggested Explanation Is…
What if… the small black case was actually a rifle case, for a takedown (easily dismantled) .22 rimfire rifle?
And what if the “needle” were a barrel cleaning rod, for (duh) cleaning the rifle barrel?
With Fred Pruszinski’s short life and indeed the whole rifle socks scenario, we have already seen how miniature (typically .22 calibre) rifles were popular in Australia in the years after WW2, mainly because of the difficulty of getting full-calibre shot.
For this reason, many WW2-era weapons (such as the Martini Cadet training rifle) were recommissioned by companies such as Sportco as sports or competition rifles, and sold (for the most part) into rifle clubs. I’m not a rifle expert at all, but I do know that some rifles did definitely come apart into pieces: for example, the very rifle that Fred Pruszinski had in a suitcase that he took from Broken Hill to dump on Somerton Beach that very weekend was a takedown rifle – but only its stock was ever found (Pruszinski, who knew rifles well, insisted that he left both the barrel and the stock in the suitcase on the beach).
What, then, are the odds that the man staying at the Strathmore had come to town with a discreet little black carrying case for a takedown .22 calibre rifle? You know, the kind of case that a professional man would use to carry his rifle to Rifle Club meetings?
And – spookily enough – what are the odds that the rifle that Fred Pruszinski dumped on Somerton Beach was the same one that was meant to go in the Strathmore Hotel visitor’s little black case, and that was meant to be cleaned by the cleaning needle in it?
Might all these pieces, all moving around Adelaide on the same weekend, be parts of the same convoluted puzzle?
It must have been a nice piece of shooting gear, he waited three days for it.
I’m guessing that to a woman, and one unused to handling arms, an item would be described as a “needle” if it had an eye and one end and a point at the other (like a sewing needle) or it would have to include a barrel and plunger, to be likened to a hypodermic.
None of the cleaning instruments for a rimfire .22 – as far as I can see – look like that. Being myself a f-u-a, I would liken many to a screwdriver, because they have a rod in a handle, and the rest as oversized pipe-cleaners.
Admittedly the pictures I’ve looked at are on a modern website (near the end of the very long article)
http://rrdvegas.com/rimfire-cleaning.html
Diane: the point of the story is that Ina Harvey never saw the “needle” herself, she had it described to her by the employee who she had asked to have a look. In that context, all bets are off. 🙂
pete: perhaps he was doing other things in town at the same time, who can tell?
The point of the post was that a small black case for a takedown .22 rifle would have been extremely close to the description given, and that perhaps these are all different sides of the same elephant around which we blindly stumble. 😉
And, perhaps the description of the ‘needle” could apply to something that appears, even today, as an 8 or 10 gauge knitting needle; some of which could be 12 to 18 inches long.
One end of the larger needles have a ‘cap’ on its end, so that the newly knitted garment won’t slip off the opposite end when being bunched and turned for the next row to be knitted. If I remember English history correctly, Lord Kitchener (?) Cardigan (?) taught knitting to his troops.
I keep in my ‘keepsakes” trunk, a cardigan sweater I knitted some twenty years ago: sheeps wool dyed in fermented juice of the prickly pear fruit — and plied with white angora rabbit fur. I have a full set of straight needles (different guages) as well as a “breakdown” set of needles which are mounted onto plastic cables for whatever size stitch or garment needed.
(Needled?) Honest, Nick, I’m NOT ‘needling’ you !
🙂
Bdid1dr
very off-topic, but one of my favourite facts. The only reason that English women were allowed to learn how to knit, is because after some of the fishermen-knitters presented a pair of stockings to Elizabeth I, the whole court had to follow the new fashion, and the men couldn’t keep up with the demand, and yet go fishing.
🙂
Nick, we’re not so blind here … I can produce a pic of both a flute case and flute cleaning rod, can you find one of a case for a take-down 22 and a rifle cleaning rod?
Fair challenge?
Ina was the sister of the fellow who embalmed SM. GF probably knew this. Loftus…Maybe not.
Pete: I’m already on it, catch up will ya, mate? 😉
Your place or mine? I’m ready brother.
Misca: So Ina a would know there wasn’t a needle mark on the body.
pete: I’m not asking for a showdown at the tomsbytwo corral 🙂 , I’m just saying that I’ve already started on the process of gathering more historical information that should help to test the various hypotheses. *sigh*
Nick: why would Ina Harvey open herself for ridicule when she was one of the best to know that the Somerton Man didn’t die of a self inflicted hypodermic needle full of poison?
Feltus says her account is ‘all crap.’ DA says ‘it’s best to ignore her. Her relatives thought she was a bit queer.’
I say the man who was registered into the Stratham Hotel for three days – the fellow who carried no luggage, stayed elsewhere and didn’t drink in the bar – was not waiting for someone to arrive from the country and offer him a deal on a second hand .22 calibre rabbit killer.
pete: she didn’t see the “needle”, and says that she didn’t see the needle. All she saw with her own eyes was the small black case.
She sent a guy to look, he looked, he came back and told her he saw a needle in the bag. She told Loftus he had a needle in his bag.
We’re splitting hairs with a needle here.
“Needle” can also be a hypodermic needle. Measured amounts of oil could have been drawn up into the syringe and then administered to those parts of the rifle which needed protection from the elements and could still be fired.
The small case would probably also have had ammo (.22 or thirty ought six).
Mr Pelling,
some details of the Isdalskvinnen’s case may be of interest to your blog. Sorry for offtop, but the case bears resemblance with the Tamam Shud Mystery including some kind of code. It was allegedly represented in Osland’s book.
P. S. I couldn’t submit any link because of the adorable spam filter. See the latest reddit discussion on subject.
qualis-libet: the case of the Isdal woman is fun, but – alas – I don’t recall finding any source for scans of her cryptic diary entries that the police decrypted. So… while it is kind of a cipher mystery, it’s one which I can’t show the cipher of, and where the mystery appears not to be to do with the cipher itself. 🙂
What are the chances that the sister of the embalmer shows up two decades later to provide “additional” info? It’s a bit odd to say the least. She either knew that there was a needle mark or suspected as much. Right or wrong…She’s buried with her brother (yes, the embalmer) so the family seems to have been close.
It seems unlikely that Loftus ever knew who she was. GF probably did.
Don’t know what to make of that.
Misca, on the old Uni FB pages, we investigated a mark on the upper left arm. It could have been a smallpox jab or test scratch. There are no pics of the arm to my knowledge but quite a few that relate to the smallpox jab/scratch. A good question to ask DA.
Nick, why did your man not stay at the hotel he was registered at? Where was his luggage? How did he know the rifle he was buying didn’t have a case of its own? Have you found an image of a .22 cleaning rod? Have you found an image of a specifically built rifle case for a broken down rifle?
Am I asking too much?
I have to say, old fellow, when it comes to theories you do better on ciphers. Maybe you would be better off concentrating on what you are good at, and leave the thought balloons alone.
Pete: as yet, I have no idea what “my man” was doing, but at least I have the good grace and honesty to admit that.
Maybe you would be better off writing your books rather than trolling other people’s blogs.
So much for a discussion on a very loose hypothesis, you’re sensitivity is astounding Nick Pelling, and such names to call a fellow traveller.
Keep up the bad work.
pete
pete: for heaven’s sake, get over yourself.
Pete seems to be gone away. Pity I wanted to ask if he knew whether the law in South Australia back defined vagrant as someone without any registered address in town. Also, whether it was still usual to pay the bill when you were leaving, so even if a person was broke and luggage-less, they could still register. If I found a gun abandoned on the beach, I’d pick it up too – wouldn’t want kids getting hold of it. Maybe if I’d just arrived and was likely to be suspected of something, I wouldn’t do the sensible thing and take it to police. Maybe if I was broke, I’d see if I could sell it. Maybe finding a gun made staying where I was the better option. I think smallpox injections back then weren’t one jab, but eight or ten – often left a huge scar.
Ok, I’ll ask again – why won’t you answer common sense questions about your gunman hypothesis? It is full of gaps, impossible to maintain, but you will not discuss it … this is exasperating.
Are there some rules of discussion here that I’m not aware of? Are participants in this place not allowed to pose relevant questions of a hypothesis put forward?
Pete: do I have any answers yet? No. The point of the post was simply that I didn’t really believe that the little black case was a doctor’s case or a flautist’s flute case, and that actually I thought it far more probable that it was a case for a takedown .22 rifle, where the “needle” was for cleaning the inside of the barrel.
If this is right – and I don’t know if it is, I just think it’s more probable than the alternatives that have been suggested to date – then that gives us a number of separate incidents all happening in Adelaide / Somerton Beach in parallel over the same weekend, that may or may not be connected.
Questions are always ok, but please try to keep off the snipey dismissive asides, they really don’t show you at your best.
Probability is made more certain by providing supporting proof. How is that being ‘snipey?’
First I’m a troll, now I’m a snipe … and I’m the one you say is being busy with dismissive asides.
This is a ridiculous conversation. Absurd.
Pete: as I hope I made clear above, my judgment is that it seems more probable to me that the small black case with a needle-like thing in was a case for a takedown .22 rifle than a case for a flute, or some kind of (unspecified and unknown) doctor’s bag.
Unless Tom Loftus is still alive and still has his Ina Harvey interview notes in a box in his garage, I suspect that this is as far as anyone can sensibly get with this (for now).
If you don’t want to be called a troll, don’t do troll-like things on people’s sites.
Tricia, That’s correct but the test mark was a series of small scratches. Take a look at some images to confirm.
Australia was still completely Irish Catholic/ Anglo-Protestant in its urban attitudes, including the sort of things people bought. Australian manufacturing standards were mostly those of the north, and for birthdays etc. it was done to buy waterford crystal, or perhaps a mohair plaid rug from Scotland… that sort of thing.
A doctor’s bag, being the sort of gift given at graduation, could be expected to follow the style of English doctor’s bags, even in made in Aus.
I don’t see any from that time which look anything like a flute case – can you?
But before you assume that a nurse must have given him the bag, in my opinion, a man with little money would first go to an op.shop (e.g. red cross stall), and only reluctantly if they didnt’ have anything useful, to a pawn shop. And as for ‘cadging’ from a friend – I suppose it depends on whether the chap was Australian. If he was, then he’d probably not do it unless pressed. IMO
GC – On the old Uni FB pages…Were there pictures? Why was that FB page taken down? There must have been a lot of information exchanged there.
Maybe it was just a syringe. Before they were disposable, syringes were often carried in cases similar to a flute case, with insets to cushion the pieces (putting in image links triggered the spam filter, but you can find many on google).
Perhaps the Somerton man was a narcotics addict, which might explain a lot about his behavior: the anonymity and attempts to be inconspicuous, the moving around and waiting at new places as if to meet a stranger to acquire something or to escape detection by authorities and/or nefarious people out to get him, the seemingly clandestine communications and hush-mouthed associates. It would even provide a handy delivery system for the cause of death – he could have been given a tainted supply by someone looking to eliminate him (for ratting or failure to pay). The “tamam shud” could even have been a communique between such an assassin and their superiors.
My first thought was a needle to inject poison with. 😉
Diana’s comment about Ina’s needle needing to look like a ‘barrel & plunger’ to fit the required hypodermic element has rung a bell. Forget about the cleaning rod scenario as it would need to be 30″ or more in length and too long for a doctors valise or flute case. The Winchester 03/63 rifle had a unique magazine charger rod that fills Diane’s description to a tee being about 14″ long and having a thumb/forefinger grip to remove it from the stock. Without this needle/rod in place the gun is virtually unshootable and SM would have been more at ease with the method of delivery….By the way wasn’t the young lad dealt with rather leniently stealing a bike transporting it interstate then flogging a car for good measure. Last time I did something similar and at the same age it cost me six years and a life time of remorse. At least I’m still around to talk about it but would still like to know the deal re the young fellows drowning. Those country kids swim like fish and I doubt that Morton Boolka Ck. is a suitable venue for a case of accidental drowning.
John sanders: thank you very much! This is what seems to be more generally called the Winchester 03/63’s “inner magazine tube”. A very interesting observation indeed!
I’ve been looking at Ina Harvey’s account again and it occurred to me that she and her brother Laurie must have had a few in-depth conversations about the similarities between her hotel guest an the Somerton Man, not only that, her description of the manner in which her guest spoke struck me as odd, unless he was not a born English speaker.
And both Feltus and Abbott sounded like a couple of chauvinistic throwbacks in their dismissive remarks about her ..
See Thomson advert, dated 18 June 1949 Page 17 “The Advertiser”
Although she hung onto her married monicker til her passing in 2001 aged 97, she had been divorced from husband Frank around ’51 on grounds of habitual cruelty. They having lived at Henley Beach, he a WW1 veteran and an absolute failure as a soldier of any note. He was RTA’d on alleged medical grounds in 1918 which she must have been aware of yet put up with for years, a real jerk by any accounts was Frank Harvey. There is no record of their marriage or separation in S.A. and no kids came from the union, she eventually been inturred alongside brother Laurie Elliott who pre deceased her by many years. If that helps getting a feeling for the lady’s integrity or recall of events from 1948 or not, I’ll let others be judge and jury, though I never had problems with Ina’s account of the man she met at Strathmore hotel decades before her disclosures.
I have no idea why you are still writing about it.
It has not only been discussed, (the needle) it has also been filmed.
You write to have written without thinking.
For you, a topic would be “Pippi Langschtumpf” and are these forces extraterrestrial.
Genetic mixing according to the theory xxl and other ppll.
Nostradamas: what hasn’t been discussed on this threadline to any great extent, concerns the seemingly innocuous little tin of scented powder gifted to Ina by her room guest when he checked out with “You won’t be seeing me again.” Did you know that during the war just won, ‘Lily of the Valley’ dusting powder was in such short supply that it was deemed an essential commodity and thereby taken off the cosmetic market. It’s main ingredients namely talc and the accompanying plant components were used in military manufacture, talc for munitions &c, then Lilly of the Valley for it’s poison glycoside extract, essential in military field hospitals for the treatment of cardiac arrest. As you’ll be aware, Somerton man was thought to have succumbed to a poison of that same genre called digitalis so maybe it is of itself a portend to his very own death from asytolic heart stoppage. In the end it’s not such a bad idea to cover old ground as you never know what might come up with a little intuitive offering by punters like Peteb and me.
What if the man in the hotel was GC’s mate Kaldor (yes, I know he was in a different hotel later?
– Foreigner with good command of English
– Vaguely resembles SM (enough that someone recalling 35 years after the fact might have convinced themselves it’s the same)
– Was probably already planning “last time I’ll see you”
(TBH Kaldor bother me a little bit, because he’s actively chasing Naturalisation and it appears is granted it in November (and appears to be aware of it), and then tops himself in December. )
But something else here bugs me. Somebody gifts you a box with some powder in it….wouldn’t you ask “what’s that?”. Maybe you’re too surprised (and/or polite) – but you never try to find out what this powder might be? Presumably you’re aware of the SM mystery, and presumably you know people are talking poisons – and you have this suspicious powder in a box that you think was his – but you don’t think to mention it? Has anyone (other than Ina) ever seen the box and/or the powder?
Clive: If this means anything, you might like to follow it up. Ina and Laurie Elliott were sibs who happen to share the same plot at Hindmarsh cemetery, their joint plaque supplied by Elliott family funeral directors. Both were living at Esplinade Henley Beach in 1948 and during the sixties/seventies they were still in the area according to their overseas travel documents. When she petitionrd for divorce from Frank Harvey, newspapers of the day have them being from the same Henley Beach of Somerton Man’s intended destination on the fateful day. Take it another step and we find charitable Laurie Elliott and his fine grandstand bookie mates offering free burial service for SM, with big sister Ina staying as receptionist at the Strathmore and keeping mum on any connected thoughts of her own involvement. Now there is a missing link in that Ina’s ex hubby Frank cannot be traced beyond 1948 so when her divorce petition was finalised in 1951 the bastard may well have been deceased. You can see what I’m driving at which on the surface suggests alignment of the players being probably no more than mere coincidence….then again stranger things have happened.
….so Laurie Elliott was said to have returned from Blighty in January ’48 where he had gone to learn the fine art of body preservation technique and, as luck would have it, was just in time to prep SM’s mortals in King Tut style, if we’re to believe in coincidence. Therein lies a small problem in that there are no entry records for our mmm (master mummy maker) in1949, although five noted for other years, two in company with big sister Ina. There be quirks aplenty concerning Laurie’s stranger than fiction connection to this case and I can’t believe that people like Feltus and Abbott didn’t think to check into the validity of such crucial evidence before they wrote it up for our inexpert opinion…second thoughts yeah I can.
A bloke books a room for a couple of days but has no luggage .. that probably means he didn’t mean to use the room, so he sits around in the lobby not drinking in the bar but chatting away with Ina. So what’s the empty flute case for, maybe just to carry around while he’s in the hotel lobby?
A flute case was a mere suggestion from Ina along with doctors satchel, neither of which look even vaguely similar, so lets not get too confident as to what she meant by that loose descriptive comment in passing many years later. An Assassin’s blow pipe bag was offered up as a possibility on a once authorative site from memory.
Milongal: According to an informed source Kaldor didn’t hit town until a week or more after SM’s departure which doesn’t leave much scope for him connecting with Ina in late November if you get my drift. Besides poor Tibor had two suitcases with him, one for his clobber, the other with trade merchandise from memory.
Harvey’s words … ‘ flute case ‘ …. Not only that, but flutes need needles for the cleaning of.
Peteb just can’t seem to pick a winner these days…” (He) had no baggage, except for a small bag – such as a doctor or musician who played the flute might carry …….the only item in the case was a needle”, these are Ina’s quoted words from her press release statement in 1982 which is repeated verbatum in the Feltus farce at pages 197/200…The flute case yarn was one concocted by Peteb to advance his flute cleaning rod theory as posted in ‘Ina Harvey, the case and the needle…’ CM. (Pelling).
How’s about my take, human nature being what it is. Here we have two lost souls meeting per chance at a dreary mid city hotel without charm and little chance for romantic interludes as such. Both of a like age and desparately lonely, Ina the victim of marital breakdown brought upon by her husband’s habitual cruelty, and her hotel guest, a traveller running aimlessly to rid his tortured mind of something from the past…Booking out of the Stratmore at the end of his short stay, the kind gentlman gifts to the pert receptionist a small token of his appreciation. Overcome with emotion, Ina Harvey coyly slips him a card with her own secluded love nest at Henley Beach….So we can now conjure up all sorts of new angles to satisfy the whims of romantics and thread poopers like Nostradamus, all based on perceived events or non events culminating in the mystery of SM’s unused???? double star rail ticket to Henley Beach and promise of some ‘afternoon delight’….Too good not to be true; right Bozo?….
Clive A. Turner….on the other hand mate, your re introduction of the gun ad and it’s possible connection with Ina’s needle theory should nit be dismissed out of hand. Prosper Thomsin’s June ’49 ad for the ubiquetous (rare in Australua) little Winchester auto 03/63 is of itself intriguing but, if we can connect it somehow to Bozo’s improbable ‘needle in the flute case’ scenario, some real possibilities emerge for consideration…eg. Whilst the 03 and 63 models were almost identical, some parts like the magazine tubes (needle) were not interchangable due to their use of noncompatable ammunition & c.
@JS equally SM would have had a suitcase – it (supposedly) didn’t get checked at the railway station until the morning of his demise.
But the whole angle is strange. Would discretion prevent you going to the police when the face is plastered through the papers? Isn’t her original silence even stranger when surely someone with no luggage in a reasonable hotel would be so out of the ordinary it’s not funny? I struggle with the “I remember…clearly like it was yesterday….but didn’t bother doing anything at the time because….”
I can see how Feltus and Abbott would come to a “nothin to see here” conclusion. The story as presented comes across more as something like a false memory.
There’s little Fluffy going at it again …. Yap yap yap, every time I step out the back door.
Peteb: Stepping out the back door to ‘water them gerraniums’ ain’t likely to help your cause one iota but, perhaps a few specifics now and again might prove more profitable…then again I doubt it…yap yap rules OK?
Orchids mate, I ‘m a man of mature longings and romantic instincts.
Pb: I thought orchids were high maintenance and start life as parasites?
Can’t be sure about Ina’s link to malingering ‘veteran’ Frank W. Harvey due to insufficuent information in her divorce petition. There was another Frank Harvey bn. 1899, died. 1957 (West Terrace), WW1 inlistee who never got to visit Paris in the the spring either; and to top things off, there is record of an Ina Harvey hitching up with a codger named Gordon in 1938 if you wish to follow that line further.
If we can get back to Ina’s younger rudder Laurie for a tic if that doesn’t offend the status quo Feltus clique…Not saying that he wasn’t on the up and up so to speak but, several little quoinky dinks have surfaced recently to warrant some doubts.
1. His trip to England in ’48 for a course in body preservation which doesn’t wash.
2. His apparently flawed attemt to give his ‘Jerry’ a fresh outlook on life after death.
3. His life long interest in SM paraphernalia including a copy of his finger print card.
4. His fraternal bonds with high ranking government types like top cops, museum directors, pathologists, scientists, perhaps even gentleman of the bar for instance.
In trying to get a better feeling for this case and events leading up to it, no stone should be left unturned. Just because citizens like Ina Harvey and brother Laurie didn’t come under police scrutiny doesn’t mean we shouldn’t dig deeper in order to get the full facts like were there possible ulterior motives for involement by so called innocent grandstand bookies and our most obliging sister & brother team.