A nice email from Byron Deveson recently prompted me to take a fresh look at the Somerton Man’s cipher page.
I used the 1802×1440 (400 dpi) scan that Professor Derek Abbott made available on his Tamam Shud Facebook page, and which Gordon Cramer kindly forwarded to me. It originally came (I believe) from the photo library at the Adelaide Advertiser: note that a version of this is on the Wikipedia page, but that looks to me to have had its contrast tweaked in the process.
Looking at this again, it seems painfully obvious (specifically from the way the marking ink failed to bleed into the paper) that what happened here was simply this:-
(1) The original page was photographed, enlarged, and fixed onto a photographic print
(2) A policeman used a marker pen to draw over the faint markings on the print
(3) The Adelaide Advertiser’s photographer photographed the annotated print
Hence I am quite sure that the long-standing belief that the SA police drew on the object itself is simply an urban myth. Conversely, the right question to ask is whether an unannotated photograph of the page still exists in the police files, because that is the one we actually need to be working from.
So… why has nobody asked this question since 1948?
The writing indicates a [ridiculous and pointless profanity]
Mate I wish but I think too much time has passed… There’s lots of evidence that’s been chucked for no sinister reason just old age 🙂 100% they didn’t ‘trace’ onto the actual book but unfortunately that copy (and the orig rubayiat) are long gone. Personally I think the code is just an anagram to remember something easily again, like how one would use short hand. I don’t think this code, found imprinted in the back of that book, has any real bearing on this mystery. Sorry.
Just some guy summarising his thoughts Nick, come on?!
I’m still a fan of suicide by needle for reasons unknown, possibly love… Was interested to see if anything with Marshall guy but unfortunately I’m not invited to his now private page ha!
And I say needle as it is explicitly said by the detective who worked on the case that they found a needle close to the body. I have casually mentioned this a few times but I think everyone wants the bigger mystery 🙂 fair enough
Quick moderation Nick! Penny for your thoughts then!?
Nicky: if you mean “acrostic” rather than “anagram”, I’m basically agreeing with you. Suicide as an explanation hasn’t really worked for me for a long while (you can tell from the lividity that the body had been ‘posed’ after death), but that doesn’t mean I’ve yet got an alternative explanation I’m hugely happy with. 🙁
Maybe the original (untraced) copy has gone, maybe it hasn’t: perhaps an untraced copy was sent to the Director of Naval Intelligence in Melbourne on 29th July 1949, who can tell?
The Marshall guy doesn’t seem to be letting anyone in, don’t know what’s going on there. Maybe he’s writing a book? ;-p
Nicky: I don’t think the needle story appears in either Coroner’s Report, but please correct me if I’m wrong!
Yep absolutely acrostic that’s the word!
Exactly, evidence could be in a police mans sons box of keep sakes or recycled trash decades ago that’s the unknown. As its an open investigation we should direct a few poignant questions to the SA police. I’m happy to, surely theres current police people who have interest in the case.
No mention of needles or needle marks in coroner’s report but I don’t find that conclusively rules it out. Contemporary examination concludes/theorises that untraceable poison was cause of death. How else could poison be delivered? (Seriously). Combined with the fact Mr sm was dressed to the nines. Classic suicide modus operandi… Even the farewell note in the pocket.
What you’re saying about the body being moved is very interesting, but again does it rule out, what I’m speculating is, the obvious?
Couldn’t some nosy kids have moved the body inadvertently thinking the guy was a drunk etc etc
Nicky: I think it rules out suicide. Would someone move a dead man’s body and pose it with a cigarette for a laugh? If so, it would have been an unusually morbid kind of laugh. 🙁
Unfortunately, even though that means the manner of his getting to the beach was, let’s say, “actively assisted” by others, it doesn’t help us judge which of accidental death, misadventure, murder, or manslaughter is more likely.
Hear what you’re saying, does that mean you don’t think poison is the only ’cause’ of death. If not then what else fits the facts?
Nicky: there’s deliberate poisoning, accidental poisoning, allergic reactions, accidental death (perhaps thanks to a compromised immune system)… the list goes on.
Apart from the ‘posing’ of the body after death, what other facts contradict suicide do you think?
Nicky: lack of any vomit near the body, lack of a hat, arguably lack of dentures, shiny shoes (seem to indicate he had been ‘tidied up’), etc.
Fair enough Nick. The clean shoes and attire could indicate suicide though. Dentures/hat possibly irrelevant. Which leaves the vomit mess as the only thing that (for me) doesn’t fit a simple suicide.
Its crazy how many ways this couldve all happened, I guess thats one of the appeals ha
If you look at the A and the N in the picture shown above you can see a finer line of dark ink inside the downstrokes. Unless it is the line of the pencil marks underneath the ink. Do you have any thoughts on the cause of this much narrower line, Nick?
a friend: tip of the marker pen (held by a right-handed writer) seems most likely to me. By way of comparison, if you look at the right edge of the vertical stroke of the ‘T’, I suspect you can see the faint mark on the paper itself, peeping from underneath the marker pen layer.
Can see that with regard to the T. Thanks. Used to think the middle cross stroke of the E could be seen under, but it seems it is a crease in the paper which runs across the page. (White line.) Still may be able to see something darker though around the E. There is an original Q in the line above, one letter over from the P in PANET. It shows the pencil writing. This was discussed on another site a while back.
Let’s agree that the code is just one block of many blocks of code written on a much larger cipher page, what about the corrections and other untidiness? Surely code-makers are a lot tidier than this, they wouldn’t want anybody wasting time trying to sort out the errors from the message would they.
I have tried everything I know to try and reproduce the features that can be seen in the images of the
cipher, but without success. I note that the first “M” or is it “W” includes thin lines that have not been inked over. These look like faint pencil lines, but why write something in pencil if it is barely legible?? These lines are far too thin to be made with any ink, secret or not.
I tried many combinations of pen and ink, and combinations of clear overlay, drafting linen, drafting film, various clear plastics, and different types of photographic print. I then tried with a fine paint brush using various inks. The only thing that seems to be settled is that the enhancement was done with a fine paint brush, not with a pen nib, probably with a modern etching type black drafting ink. I could reproduce some of the characters of the overlaid black enhancement by using a fine paint brush with ordinary black india ink.
If you look at the first “P” on the second line you can see how the ink has “stuttered”. To me, from a physical chemistry viewpoint, this indicates that the ink is probably what is known as an etching ink. ie. a drafting ink made to stick to a plastic drafting film (which are hydrophobic, whereas aqueous based inks are hydrophilic. Ordinary india ink tends to break up on drafting film unless you lay it on with a trowel.) I doubt that etching inks were available in 1948, but I haven’t fully checked the patent literature.
I now have a question. When did the image of the cipher emerge? I now suspect that the overlaid black enhancement is relatively modern, possibly made at the time of the 1978 TV report. If this is the case, then the original photo of the cipher, without the enhancement, might be available somewhere. Possibly in the newspaper archives?
Just a thought. On the third line of the Code/Cipher the first 5 letters are uniform in size, The last 6 letters on the same line are larger-I wonder if there was suppose to be a gap at the 5th & 6th letters?
If I can re-post something I posted on Pete’s site, is it just me or do the somewhat ambiguous initial character/s on the first line (and possibly second and third) also look something like “/N/”? (Rather than “W” or “M”.)
I have read somewhere that slashes (or obliques as they used to be known) were sometimes used in place of brackets, e.g. “(N)”. /N/ or /n/ is also the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbol for the “alveolar nasal” sound, e.g. “n-” in English words like “name” or “number”.
My point is that if one or more of those characters was N (either in parentheses, or merely emphasised) it may have signified, to an de-encrypter with the key either that the line following was a _number_ (e.g. a bank account) or a _name_ as in an addressee (e.g. ultimate recipient).
BD: The image of the cipher appeared in the Adelaide Advertiser on 29 August 1949 with an article titled “This Beat The Navy”. It looks to me to be the same ‘marked’ copy as we have today. I think it more likely that the newspaper was responsible for marking the image rather than the police. I also think that the Navy would ask for a copy of the original photograph to work with, if not the book itself. If a copy of the original was still in police files it would have surfaced by now, so maybe the newspaper archives is the place to be looking.
Debra: indeed, it is the photograph taken at the Adelaide Advertiser for that article that is the one we now work with (though I have been told that its photo archives appear to have nothing else related to the code). However, a copy was also sent to the Director of Naval Intelligence in Melbourne a month before on 29th July 1949 (which is the copy that “Beat the Navy”, as the Tizer’s story put it), and so the Naval Intelligence archives seemed to me reasonably likely to have something useful.
However, when I looked through National Archives of Australia catalogue entries relating to Naval Intelligence, nothing really jumped out at me:-
* NAA: A4311, 643
* NAA: A518, GV16/2/1
* NAA: B3476, 159
* NAA: A461, X337/1/5
I suspect the best way forward might therefore be to write a letter to the Naval Historical Section, Department of Defence, Canberra, asking the archivists if this rings a bell for 1949 – it’s worth a try, you never know.
Alternatively, there’s also a Navy Photographic Unit at Garden Island, Sydney NSW 2000, telephone (02) 9359 3039 or fax (02) 9359 3041: goodness knows the range of things that might be in their photographic archive, so this is also probably well worth at least a phone call: at least we have a good date as to when the photograph(s) would have been sent. Hope this is a help!
I always thought the final word was “assasinations”. But unfortunately, if it’s letter to letter, that doesn’t quite work out. I couldn’t make it fit in with the rest of it, either. Unless each line has its own code, in which case, it will be nearly impossible to figure it out. Anyway, it was a fun few hours I spent on it to come up with a word that doesn’t quite fit, anyway.
I think most of us now concede that the cipher is not likely to be any form of phonetic code in the sense that, it does not in itself relate to fifth column incursion or similar clandestine activity per se. To my way of thinking, it is simply a personal account of something that has recently transpired, as opposed to a list of something to be done or the words of some well loved poem or dirty ditty. Being in the form of jottings by a surveillance operative taking part in a larger target following excercise makes sense to me; the letter notations could therefore simply relate to street names, places or landmarks which are not likely to include details of other aspects of the operation eg. The last line could be ‘Intercept Tram Terminus – Moberley – Tarlton – Ferris (South) – Alvington Mansion – Foreshore – Towards – Glenelg – Abrogated – Broadway’. Obviously that may or may not be correct and note that I have given lower case ‘f’ values in place of the two more favoured ‘S’ characters, though it makes no difference in the end. Also it can be assumed that our man handed over to another operative eventually and the ‘B’ with the flourish would confirm his having stood-down. NB: This form of surveillance may not have been directed towards our SM and in fact, it might not have occurred at all; though its mode does describe accurately, the manner in which a member of the Special Branch ‘dog squad’ might record such a job, details of which would later be logged into his official daily worksheets and notebook. PS: It might be suggested that the ‘O’ with the offset ‘T’ or perhaps ‘X’ above translates to ‘Off Target’ or in other words having the Quarry not in sight…
As for Nicky’s reference to Marshall; I have a fair idea of what it was all about if anyone might still be interested. I think that it may relate to young James and his attempts to ascertain bloodlines of the Thomson family, for possible connections to an old world order and Somerton Man thereby. I believe that the Marshall Files may involve one element of an universal fraternal movement headed up by a James Habsberg with Sth West African and Monaco interests; aim being to evaluate the validity of certain claims to hereditary rites, if that makes any sense at all….
As for Nicky’s reference to Marshall; I have a fair idea of what it was all about if anyone might still be interested. I think that it may relate to young James and his attempts to ascertain bloodlines of the Thomson family, for possible connections to an old world order, which may or may not include Somerton Man thereby. I believe that the Marshall Files could possibly involve one element of an universal fraternal movement headed up by a James Habsberg with Sth. West African and Monaco interests; aim being to evaluate the validity of certain claims to hereditary rites, if that makes any sense at all….
Now the Marshall Plan is probably nothing more than a calculated hunch, based on a rumour that a certain unspecified Habsberg had arranged flight out of Europe pre WW2, to avoid internment or worse. I think Australia was the most likely intended destination; then after the lapse of what was considered as being a decent interval at war’s end, folks started to conduct inquires. I’d say that the Marshall people considered many possibilities, though the most interesting could well have been the Somerton Man connection, and why not?. We’re not to know what else they knew ie. a definate travel plan, name or description of their quarry; all we can say for sure is that their knowledge of possible SM relatives was followed up with a deal of enthusiasm by James Carl Thomson, according to Ruth Collins; and no expense spared during his six month insertion period. Whether we are inclined towards such an outlandish theory or not; it’s certainly a caution worth considering, bearing in mind that the Habsberg family, historically and statistically, have been inclined not to reach respectable old age, more often than most of us.
So according to Gordon Cramers latest BS/TS even dated revelation, the nurse’s phone number X3239 is to be found in the top right hand corner of the code page. Although obscured within a careless photo developer’s smudge mark it is outlined within a handy orange guide mark…Step back to 5th November 2016, same code page, same smudge mark, difference being that back then GC had positioned the same phone number way down at the bottom left hand side of said smudge in a fjord like protrusion. The earlier X3239 number horizontal alignment whereas the more recent listing numerals being somewhat uneven. Good on you Gordon.
Letters on the code page were said to average about five milimeters in length with the dark smudge mark in the top right hand corner seen to be roughly the same dimensions of a single letter. Now looking at both GC’s 2016 post and his latest in which he has kindly put orange guide rails around the X3239 number to help locate it, It is fact that had the phone number been present in 1948, than in it’s entirety, one letter and four numerals, it could be no larger than one milimeter long. Cramer insists that Det. Brown told Derek Abbott that the number was tiny when located and barely legible. Not to Len’s eyes of course for he admitted in 1978 on national prime time TV that he was not himself working on the case when the nurse’s number was discovered and did not see the Freeman? ROK until much later. Needless to say the smudge mark itself would almost certainly have been a photo image of the original code page, the suggestion being that it was used to cover the in phone number. My question being how the hell was it spotted, by whom and whence the connection.