Hardy researcher Byron Deveson has been prospecting in the Aussie archives for traces of a Norwegian by the name of Charles Mikkelsen, a name long linked (though so far not completely satisfactorily) to the Somerton Man.
As a result of Byron’s efforts, it now (I think) seems reasonably likely that Charles Mikkelsen was the Scandinavian ‘Carl Thompsen’ who Keith Mangnoson remembered working with in “Renmark” in “1939”, and who Mangnoson believed was the Somerton Man.
(Of course, whether or not Mikkelsen/Thompsen actually was the Somerton Man remains another question entirely).
But there is an elephant in the room. To be precise, a very large and very dead elephant.
A Fishy Story?
The sticking point is that Charles Mikkelsen died at sea in 1940 in an unfortunate but well-documented way, when the boat he was on (the SS Tirranna) was captured by the German raider Atlantis…
According to this page (and indeed many others), Mikkelsen died on 10th June 1940, the day that the Atlantis shot at, chased and captured the Tirranna. Later that year, the Tirranna was sent back to Europe as a prize ship full of war prisoners, but was sunk by the British submarine HMS Tuna (N94) with a large loss of life.
Hence what would seem to make the link to Charles Mikkelsen a fishy story is that our Scandinavian candidate appears to have died more than eight years too early to be the Somerton Man.
However, things are never quite that simple in the Tamam Shud research quagmire…
An Australian Paper Trail
What also piqued Byron Deveson’s interest was a claim of a direct link to Charles Mikkelsen that turned up some years later:
In 1953 an unnamed woman living in Cheltenham (a suburb of Adelaide) identified SM as Charles Mikkelsen whom she had known “about 21 years ago” (ie 1932) when he was employed at Jensen’s guest house at American River (Kangaroo Island). She stated that when she had last heard of Mikkelsen he was staying at a Somerton guest house. “Det.-Sgt. R. L. Leane and Det. L. Brown have been told Mikkelsen often quoted the last verse, which ended with the words “Tamam Shud,” from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.” (News, Adelaide, 23 April 1953 page 9). The un-named Cheltenham woman said that Mikkelsen spoke fluent English and she said Mikkelsen was aged about 30 (ie. 30 in 1932) when she met him at Kangaroo Island, and he spoke English fluently. Mikkelsen was later employed as gardener to Sir John Brookman and was last heard of while boarding at Somerton.”
As a result, Byron decided to look more closely at Charles Mikkelsen: and he recently struck on a glinty archival seam relating to his stay in Australia from 24th August 1937 (when the SS Svenor put Mikkelsen ashore on Thursday Island with appendicitis) to his departure from its shores on the 30th of May 1940 (aboard the SS Tirranna, where he died eleven days later).
In the last few days, Pete Bowes has published excerpts from many of the documents Byron dug up in a series of posts (here, here, here, here, and indeed here).
Mikkelsen claimed that he had previously stayed in Australia between 1924 and 1930 (having jumped ship in Port Adelaide from the Norwegian steamer Bessa), before travelling back to Norway for a little over a year, returning in early 1932: and then went off in a Norwegian tanker in April 1935, before returning in August 1937.
According to NAA Item barcode 5511023, Charles Mikkelsen was (when he passed through port clearance at Port Adelaide on 9th January 1932 on the Tancred) a seaman 5 feet 10 inches in height, fair hair and blue eyes, with no identifying marks. He gave his birthday as 17th July 1902 in Bassjordan, Norway: and was single.
Interestingly, the Tancred was due to arrive at Number 2 Quay at Port Pirie on 5th January 1932 “to load 2,000 tons of lead. At Port Adelaide the Tancred will discharge general cargo and timber, and will load 2,000 tons of barley before sailing for Continental ports.” So there’s also a link to lead you perhaps weren’t expecting. 🙂
(Incidentally, a Charles Mikkelsen arrived in New York from Sydney on the 13th Nov 1924 on the “Eastern Sea”: he was a 22 year old Norwegian, and was 5’8″ tall [according to Ancestry.com].)
I have to say that it’s a confused affair: there would seem to be at least three files for Charles Mikkelsen: C.38/468, C.40/2000, and C.40/2192. Though the authorities of the day eventually decided that these various Mikkelsens were one and the same person, it’s easy to see how they might possibly have been wrong.
A New Zealand Paper Trail
To extend the timeline a little further backwards, I decided to find out more about what connected Mikkelsen to New Zealand: and it didn’t take long to discover what had happened just before his arrival in Australia.
It all started with the M/T Herborg (a few more details here (or here if you prefer to read Norwegian).
The Herborg had visited Auckland in May 1932, though sadly I found no passenger list for the Herborg in the NZ archives. Five years later, according to this page, the Herborg was expected from Singapore in March 1937, which is when Charles Mikkelsen got to Auckland.
Several months later, on the 31st July 1937, we catch our first archival glimpse:
NORWEGIAN DESERTER
Seaman to be deported accused intended to marry
“If you have nothing against the Scandinavian race, I would bo much obliged if you could allow me to stay in New Zealand, as I intend to get married shortly,” said Charles Mikkelsen, a Norwegian seaman, aged 34, when he appeared before Mr. F. H. Levien, S.M., in the Police Court yesterday, admitting charges of deserting from the steamer Herberg at Auckland on March 17 and landing as a prohibited immigrant. The Collector of Customs. Mr. J. Mcintosh, said accused was refused permission by the captain of the Herberg to sign off at Auckland, after which he made application to become a permanent citizen of New Zealand. He was told the formalities he would be required to comply with, but he took the law into his own hands, and left his ship. Nothing more was heard of him until he was arrested at Frankton on July 22, after having been engaged in farm work in the Waikato. A deportation order was made by the magistrate, under which accused might be held in custody for not more than six months, pending arrangements being made for him to be placed on board a suitable Norwegian ship. The magistrate told accused the only method to adopt to land in New Zealand would be to comply with the immigration regulations.
A quick trawl through Papers Past reveals plenty of references to Mikkelsens in Morrinsville (Eastern Waikato) playing golf etc , so it seems tolerably likely to me that Mikkelsen had some family out there farming. Perhaps Byron Deveson already knows this?
So… What’s Going On, Then?
If you’ve been paying a little bit of attention, you probably already know what I’m going to conclude.
In this case, I strongly suspect the authorities got it wrong: and that there were almost certainly two different people, both called Charles Mikkelsen.
The first Charles Mikkelsen had the reference “C.38/468”, because the “38” is very probably the last two digits of the year that he first applied for Australian citizenship: 1938. We can therefore probably identify this Charles Mikkelsen with the man who jumped ship in Auckland in March 1937, worked on a farm in Waikato (probably with family near Morrinsville), before being arrested in Frankton on 22nd July 1937, and being told he would be put on a ship bound for Norway within six months. My guess is that he then faked appendicitis to get set down on Thursday Island, thus starting his Australian odyssey.
The second Charles Mikkelsen had the references “C.40/2000” / “C.40/2192”, and it would seem that he was most likely the one who died on the Tirranna in 1940. But… it’s a mess, and that’s the truth.
As a result, it may very well be that one of these two Charles Mikkelsens was the Somerton Man: but it will take a fair bit more digging to properly disentangle the two men’s archival strands from the knot that they have ended up in before we are in a position to make a genuinely clear-headed assessment either way.
Luckily I have every faith that Byron Deveson is the best man for such a job. Good luck, Byron! 🙂
It’s certainly interesting, but probably raises a lot of questions too – Not least of which is the lady who apparently knew him in 1932 at KI, was aware he was (later) living in Somerton, yet appears blissfully unaware of the travels in between (or at least I find it odd that there’s no mention of “yeah, he travelled about a bit, but last I heard of him was in Somerton” – that’s naively assuming the newspaper knows and is retelling the entire story, of course – and how does a stint as a gardener locally fit in with all this gallivanting around). She also seems to have been unaware of the alleged Thompsen pseudonym…(unless the Magnusson claim triggered her memory). I also can’t help but notice “about 21 years ago” – if we add “about” then surely “20” is close enough (I don’t think it means anything, but to me it implies a fair amount of accuracy in a funny sort of a way)….
It also doesn’t sit well with the idea that SM was a stranger in town – although perhaps it could explain the Henley/Glenelg confusion – coming in off the Melbourne train he had planned to go meet someone at Henley (hence the freshening up at the baths), but for some reason (eg phoned them and had no answer) decided to head straight home to Somerton instead.
And, I think the NZ connection is problematic – on the one hand (I thought) we had a link to a post 1940’s Rubaiyat in NZ, on the other we have someone who quite clearly left there pre-1940 (and I think with pending charges would probably be unlikely to return? I suppose family might have sent him a Rubaiyat later, but it’s a little strange that there’s no record of this same family missing him after his demise?).
I’m not sure I like the idea of a Scandinavian choosing “Thompsen” as an alias (“Thomsen” would be more believable). I know the idea of masking your name is NOT being identified, but I think most of us instinctively lean toward our origins and would pick spellings we’re more familiar with. (There is a largish assumption on my part that the ‘P’ in Thompsen (and certainly Thompson) is more Anglo than Scandinavian).
There’s (tenuous) links there that I really like, and there’s little details that just niggle inconsistent with me….
But we’ll sit patiently and see how things turn out.
milongal: I guess the point of the post was to focus attention on the problem – i.e. that there does seem to be good reason to think that, to my surprise, there could very easily have been two overlapping Charles Mikkelsens whose files ended up mixed together – that we arguably need to sort out before we stand a good chance of drawing useful inferences from one or the other of the two putative Mikkelsens.
I also pointed out to Byron Deveson that there were at least two Karl Mikkelsons born in 1902 who also appear in passenger / crew lists:
* 5′ 11″ tall Karl Kristoffer Mikkelsen (born in Fjell, Norway on 20 Nov 1902) was naturalised in New York on 22 September 1933 and married Sophie Mikkelson, and was still alive (and indeed still travelling on the “Stavangerfjord”) in 1951. 🙂
* Karl August Mikkelsen was born in Denmark on 8 Sep 1902, died 8 May 1979 in Portland, Maine, USA.
Just to make things difficult!
Nick. Have a feeling that our foray into the Mikkelsen aventure must be pursued with a deal of caution as I sense something slightly rancid in Scandinavia or perhaps even closer to home. Just one comment that I would make and I know that you feel inclined to think otherwise is that I feel it most likely that when No. 1 suspect was put off on Thursday Island on 24/8/37 with appendicitis it was most likely genuine and that he was operated on to have the offending organ removed. Of course we will all remember the huge scar that was’nt noted in Dr. Dwyer’s autopsy notes and I guess thats where you assume fairly that the complaint may have been concocted. If so why keep him hospitalised initially for 17 days and subsequently in Sydney for another 3 months. I Wouldn’t mind betting that he contracted a post operative infection having regards to the primitive conditions that would have been available (and still are) on Thursday Island. I’m possibly talking about something the amigos and lackies have brought up already and if so my apologies for coming in on something that is somewhat out of my league. I’m quite content with my life in la la land and I thank cfn. Nowak for that friendly reminder as to my standing.
Whoops…first word 4th from bottom line should have been ‘the likes’ It’s that danged ghost in my machine-gun.
The reason why I am certain that the man in the passport photo is SM is because of the facial scars.
The autopsy photograph (frontal face) of SM’s face shows a deep furrow between his eyes at the top of the bridge of his nose that does not appear to be an autopsy incision. This furrow appears to connect to a scar running under his left eye. There also appears to be a scar down the left side of his nose. A high resolution scan of Charles Mikkelsen’s 1930 passport photograph shows that he had scars in the same position as appear in the SM autopsy photographs.
Image enhancement clearly shows that the autopsy photograph of the full face has been re-touched in the area of the furrow at the top left hand side of the nose, but the re-touching did not remove all of this scar and it is still visible.
There is an indication that SM did have a scar and this fact was not made public. On one occasion it was reported that a witness was asked if he could remember a scar “on the neck” of the person whom the witness had identified as being SM. It is generally SOP for police to hold back information that can allow them to cross-check witness statements. The police probably mentioned a scar (but in a different position) to try to jog the memory of the witness.
Charles Mikkelsen’s 1930 passport photograph appears to show signs of amateurish re-touching to reduce or eliminate the scars on the face. We know that SM was fastidious (general appearance, clothes, hands, feet and shoes) so re-touching his passport photo can be explained. Yes, reducing or eliminating facial scars on a passport photo could create problems, but these can be got around.
Byron: unfortunately, with cipher mysteries of all varieties it is all too easy to become convinced by visual similarities. To me, that would be the icing on a cake we haven’t yet baked: I’m still trying to work out the sequence of what happened and how it fits in with the New Zealand evidence etc. I still haven’t proved to my own satisfaction either (a) there were two Charles Mikkelsens, or (b) there was only one Charles Mikkelsen but he didn’t actually die on the Tirranna.
Have you any idea who Mikkelsen’s fiancée in New Zealand was? He claimed to have sent her £50 and at one point was expecting her to come over to Australia very shortly.
I didn’t get much Latin at school but I wasn’t fooled by the ailment recently and promptly referred to elsewhere a scleroderma. Still checked my
ever present F & W and yes its made up of two words sclero meaning hard and derma, well should I say it no. SCLERODERMA is a chronic disease characterised in particular by hardening of the skin and afflicting mainly females. There is no cure and under certain circumstances involves ulceration of digital extremities and resulting gangrene which can lead to the need for amputation. In all seriousness how could such an obvious and debilitating condition be confused with a diagnosed case of appendicitis. I can imagine the scars that must have been present when good Dr Dwyer examined our friend and chose not to comment. The question to ‘los tres amigos’ is therefore which way shall we have it the non existent appendix scar or equally absent symptoms of scleroderma. I think that the doctor made note to the effect that S.M’s hands were soft and well manicured or something to that effect. In other words ‘finger lickin good’.
I note that Charles Mikkelsen played golf in New Zealand, and I expect that this would have brought him into close social contact with recent immigrant Scots and NZ’er of Scottish extraction. And the same would be the case when Charles was in Australia. Golf clubs were, and still are, a common gathering places for the ambitious in Australia. That Charles, a lowly seaman, was playing golf suggests to me that he was either ambitious (socially, economically or professionally) or he had a liking for things Scottish. Or both. And that brings me to the tartan scarf found in the suitcase. Much to my surprise it now appears that Norwegians have their own Scottish tartans!
http://www.norwegian-scottish.org.uk/component/content/article/78-right-column/80-did-you-know-4
Norwegian Scottish Association.
“Norway enjoys a long tradition of tartan. A tartan ‘mønster’ – not a euphemism for Scotland’s ‘Nessie’ – is a tartan ‘check’ or ‘skotskrutet’. Several Norwegian tartans, both traditional and contemporary, are registered in the Scottish Register of Tartans, the national repository of tartan designs maintained by the National Archives of Scotland.”
John, Scleroderma sans (or sine) scleroderma. Sans or Sine is medical latin for lacking. Which means the general disease scleroderma without the characteristic hardening of the skin. Sclero = hardening. Derma = skin. And, yes, scleroderma sans scleroderma can result in abdominal problems and appendicitis. S sans S may only cause symptoms that are not visible, and which would have evaded an examining doctor in 1938. I doubt that examinees volunteered stuff in 1938 with so much at stake.
Byron Deveson: don’t forget that there was also a Clement Thomas Mikkelsen (b. October 1914, died after 1981) of Morrinsville etc who (as I recall) was part of a golf-mad family of Mikkelsens, that had me confused for a while.
Apparently mr defective with the nealopitan police farce is holding onto a vig announcement about two bodies, one name, some feint (sic) spray tan (with microwriting)
Johnny johnny: please try not to gag on the excitement, I wouldn’t like the Somerton Man death toll to rise any higher than 1. =:-o
I disagree with Johnny Johnny’s attitude, whoever he may be. Apart from our host here, there are are not many who understand hard evidence, and focus on it, as Gordon Cramer does. I have no opinion on the microwriting issue because I don’t understand it. Until I do understand it I’ll say nothing about it but that. That aside, if you haven’t looked at his site lately, Nick, you might find it interesting. He and our mutual friend Clive – I say that because he is friendly to everyone – have done some good sleuthing. Real good. It may or may not pan out but it is intriguing. I respect them for that, even if you don’t, Johnny, old mate.
Robert: microwriting is a bust, and Gordon Cramer does his frail and fragile arguments no favours by accusing people who disagree with him of mental disorders and disabilities. As to his latest lead, everything he has put up so far seems resolutely independent of the Somerton Man, but perhaps he’ll get to the point in future posts. :-/
@Robert: I’m on the skeptical side here with Johnny and nick (and probably share Johnny’s attitude a lot) too. Aside from the micro-writing – which seemed unlikely to begin with (why put microwriting inside what appears to be a code when you can put it in far more mundane places), and only got less believable as it started to get discovered everywhere (noting of course that this microwriting is still illegible too), I find that GC dismisses all ideas but his own with claims that his are somehow backed with better research because he was once a policeman (in fact his disclaimer re the AFIO to me seems an attempt to add more credibility to himself). Now while I’m not suggesting the policemen are not good at investigative research, I think the assertion that only policemen are any good at is is silly, elitist and totally unfounded. The police have very specialised investigative skill (focused partly on the minutia of case, and partly on what evidence needed to pursue a prosecution). One of the difficulties for police (and other people with criminal investigation backgrounds) is that too often their focus is the detail to prosecute – which while necessary in a legal sense, can be somewhat different to what is needed to simply establish the most likely scenarios (and ultimately here that’s probably what we’re interested in). I also think some of his photo comparisons don’t take the obvious into account – effect of autopsy and effect of time on a face – and others appear to mislead (there’s one where he tries to demonstrate the profile is different, but to me it looks like the 2 pictures simply aren’t aligned properly) – in fact the whole “two bodies” scenario to me seems to revolve around a misinterpretation of the language that was used when the plasterer had taken his cast.
Perhaps I’ve just been put off by some of the muck that’s been thrown around – and while it primarily came from another site again, I think GC was doing more than just standing by (and you can still see some of it in the comments on his site). Recently he digressed mid post to attack everyone and anyone who disagreed with him (“conspiratorial muppets”, I think might have been the term) – and frankly while conspiracy theories abound I would have thought the microcode theories were far more conspiratorial than speculation about links to car thieves and jumping ship post war.
His current investigation is interesting to a degree, however I think most of his parallels between SM and Tibor Kaldor can be quite easily dismissed (eg):
1) Both arrived by rail from Melbourne – not overly interesting, it’s probably the most common interstate arrival into Adelaide
2) Both were investigated by the same team – when you die in the same small city at the same time, your death will likely be handled by the same people
3) Ditto for went to same morgue – how many morgues were there in Adelaide in the late 1940’s (hint: not a lot)
4) Ditto for same cemetry – when the state chooses a paupers funeral (which I ASSUME was the case for Tibor as well) you will end up in the same dirt. Even without Tibor’s being a state-funded burial I could imagine plenty of simple reasons how they end up in the same place
5) 1KM from moseley St vs “Almost Diagonally Opposite” a Thompson property – By the sound of it, the Thompsons had fingers in a lot of pies and links to many locations in Adelaide (which in 1948 was a lot smaller). This is easily explained as a simple coincidence, particularly when you take into account Hindley St is in the middle of the city (so activity revolves around there) and Glenelg is probably Adelaide’s most well-known beach (so on the cusp of summer that’s where people are). My Grandma lives in Somerton, I went to school in Henley Beach, I used to travel through the Adelaide Railway Station frequently – and probably overlap with loads of other locations mentioned in connection with this case…but I’m not connected to it.
The poison is mildly interesting, but I note it wasn’t the same type of poison (I thought SM was explicitly not barbituates). It would be interesting how many poisoning’s a month the Adelaide morgue would have handled back then (taking into account time of year may impact too – e.g. depression with the onset of a Christmas you can’t afford [ok, in this case the 10 pound suggests otherwise])
There’s also a whole bunch of totally different things between the 2 as well like a note (in fact two, by the sounds – although I can’t tell whether the newspaper is talking about a 10 pound note and a suicide note, or whether there were actually 2 separate notes), and there’s no Taman Shud. The biggest problem I have with a lot of the conspiracy theories of related events and body swaps and even cover ups is that they require us to simultaneously accept that the police force (or at least some authority) was simultaneously conniving and bumbling (if we believe the cover up scenarios, the Tamam Shud is totally unnecessary, and therefore must be mundane and of no interest and planted to distract attention – which then throws out everything that led us to the 2 body scenario in the first place). There’s also a cynical side of me that says if that if there was a government conspiracy or cover up and we are uncovering it we are basically claiming to be outsmarting them – something which, despite my bad experience of the public service, I think is simply unlikely – even if you are GC.
Other than slightly conspiratorial thoughts about “what if it was TK’s (not Keane, Kaldor) suitcase at the railway station (which I think the evidence is strong enough that on the balance of probability is not the case) I think there’s very little to tie these incidents together. If anything, the presence of another case where evidence was plentiful might explain why SM got less attention.
The Kaldor story is a vaguely interesting one (although I think he makes much of the apparent multiple careers – which I think is explained easily by the lack of recognition for foreign qualification), and I’m intrigued to see how GC will relate it back to SM. But on the whole I too think that his speculation is often as far out there as the other fiction writer….
I have just discovered that the grandfather of Charles Mikkelsen, Gulle Benjamin Eliassen (born 16th June 1836 at Storstrand, Rana, Nordland, Norway. Died 1890 at Mosjøen, Nordland, Norway) was financially involved in establishing a silver mine at Svenningdal, Norway in the 1870s. I note that the silver ore from these mines was also rich in lead and the mines were still in production in the 1950s. Silver and lead? SM’s hair contains anomalously high levels of both lead and silver.
If I am correct and Charles Mikkelsen swapped identities with a dead crew member to avoid being interned by the Germans when the Tirranna was captured in 1940 then Charles might have returned to Norway under this assumed identity and may have worked at the Svenningdal silver mines during and after the war.
I further note that the lead isotope signature of the Svenningdal ore is known and this could be checked against the lead isotope signature in SM’s hair. In other words the hypothesis that SM is Charles Mikkelsen is testable.
Byron: Thought I mentioned somewhere that Charles might well have jumped ship at Cocos-Keeling when Tirranna (sic) made a fleeting stop enroute to Mombassa. He may well have spent some time with administrator George Thompson helping to set up the new soviet linked radio gear, then later jumped a Hudson milkrun sorte (no japs then) back to the Australian mainland..By the way, it looks fairly certain that one of my own new SM suspects, Jim Keane etc. not only competes well with both Chuck Mikkelsen and your other candidate Jock Armstrong (Glenelg RSL) in general age & phys. stats. I’d say with a degree of confidence that his plumbing was most likely to have also been prestine, ala SM which you’ll twig to it when you read your old mail……
Byron Deveson: interesting idea, well spotted. 🙂
Were Mikkelsen’s family’s silver mines still active in the 1940s? And how long would it take someone to travel from Norway to Adelaide in 1948?
Back to Charles Mikkelson and a bone to pick with Dr. Deveson on a possible conflict twixt his disclosure of distinctive scar tissue noted to the left side of SM’s nose, as per the PM photo (see above) and, contrary assertion of there now being a plaster where the scar used to be…..Brings to mind Byron’s other spurious claims of having identified two death defying maladies to stand with nine spotted by sick minded Peteb; These being scleroderma (see above) and neuro Syphilis (see all over) which many a light horse trooper of WW1 brought home from Cairo instead of the prefered Spanish flu. So that brings up an even dozen ailments if we include Bozo’s new ‘apotheosis’ which is spread by crows from memory.
Now that the DNA- identity of the SM has been revealed as that of Melbourne Carl Webb, there still remain several peculiarities and similarities with the Mangnosen case and the Charles Mikkelsen case in relation to Carl Webb’s case:
– The SM Rubaiyat version supposedly was determined to be a New Zealand version.
– Charles Mikkelsen was a Norwegian sailor who had been to New Zealand and tried to get the New Zealand citizenship and possibly also the Australian citizenship.
– There is probably another Norwegian sailor mentioned in the Rubaiyat note, according to the Tremiti meeting interpretation: Liabø. Along with 3 other foreign names, and 2 probable port codes, these names are likely to be those of seamen.
– Charles Mikkelsen was well aquainted with The Rubaiyat and the phrase Tamam Shud.
– Charles Mikkelsen was confused with Carl Webb, so to some they looked similar.
– Carl Webb was robbed of his identity for almost 75 years.
– The surname Mangnosen also seems Norwegian. Mangnosen went missing and was a nervous wreck several times, as if the devil was near, around the same time each time when meeting Carl Thompson or Carl Webb was around or after he spoke of the SM’s identity. In 1939 he went missing and was a total mental wreck a few months after having worked with Carl Thompson. Another time he went missing, was a nervous wreck, and lost the plans of his new house around 11 November 1948, just three weeks before Carl Webb would arrive in Adelaide. The third time he went missing, was a nervous wreck and his son was murdered, after he attempted to reveal the SM’s identity.
Was the Rubaiyat owned by Carl Webb? Or by Charles Mikkelsen?
“samstgab”, as an abbreviation of “samstagabend”, suggests CW wrote the note.
Searches of the 4 surnames mentioned in the Rubaiyat note in ship crew lists of ships present around November and December 1948 in Adelaide may clarify one and another.
What I was trying to sketch in the above post, is that there seems to be a series of peculiarities that form some sort of pattern. A pattern that points to identity theft. It may all be totally unrelated, but here it is:
Possibly the Rubaiyat version was owned by Norwegian sailor Charles Mikkelsen (aka Carl Thompson?) and taken from New Zealand to Australia. The cryptic note could have been written by Mikkelsen and the 4 surnames contained in it could have been his fellow sailors.
Charles Mikkelsen for some reason desperately wanted NZ or Australian citizenship. Mikkelsen may have somehow escaped death on 10th June 1940.
Mangnoson seems to have been badly intimidated and threatened several times, possibly by Mikkelsen.
Charles Webb was robbed of his identity, possibly by Mikkelsen with the aid of pressured Mangnosen. The cryptic note could instead have been written by Webb and the 4 surnames contained in it could have been the people he had an appointment with at 31 December 1948.