In 1948 a man was stumbled upon dead on an Australian beach. Detectives were – and still are – baffled as to the nature of his fate. Some of the theories behind his death, however, will blow your mind.

The body of the Somerton Man — Image: Bletchley

It’s the case that’s stranger than fiction – and one that nobody’s any closer to breaking. A body on a beach in 1948; a cryptic notebook but no identification; rumors of Soviet spies in a quiet Australian seaside town. No wonder the mystery of the Somerton Man endures to this day.

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It should have been routine – albeit grimly so – for Detective Sergeant Lionel Leane when a man’s body was found on the beach one morning. But there was nothing giving away the deceased’s identity, nor was it obvious how he died.

Image: WikimediaCommons — Image: Bletchley

The year was 1948, the place Somerton Beach – a popular vacation spot in the Adelaide suburb of Glenelg. It was at 6:30 a.m. on December 1 that police, having been alerted by the public, arrived on the scene. The officers stepped down from the esplanade onto the beach, where they found the body leaning against the seawall.

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Because there was no I.D. on the body, nor any clothing tags, the police couldn’t identify the man. The cigarettes, gum and watches that were found didn’t reveal much, but of more interest were the unused bus and train tickets, a U.S.-manufactured comb, and a piece of paper in a concealed pocket in his pants.

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What is more, the subsequent autopsy, rather than confirming how the man died, only threw up more questions. The mystery of the “Somerton Man” was getting deeper and deeper.

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Dr. Dwyer, the pathologist, concluded that the deceased man was in his 40s and in good physical shape. More specifically Dwyer found no sign of heart problems, though his report did note that “the spleen was strikingly large… [at] around 3 times normal size.”

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“I am quite convinced the death could not have been natural,” Dr. Dwyer concluded. The pathologist believed the Somerton Man had been poisoned, though he couldn’t identify what poison had been used – only that the victim’s digestive system was “deeply congested.”

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Yet if the cause of death couldn’t be ascertained, could the man at least be identified? Attention turned to that scrap of paper – on which the words “Tamám Shud” were written.

The paper had been ripped from the last page of a book, entitled Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, of 12th-century Persian poetry. As for the two-word phrase, it translates as “finished” or “ended.”

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Police wanted to find the rest of the book, so they released a photo of the paper scrap bearing the cryptic phrase. And before long a local man came forward who said he’d found the book on his car’s backseat after leaving the windows open. His vehicle had been parked beside Somerton Beach.

Written on the inside of the book’s back cover was a series of letters and inscriptions, all of them completely unintelligible – even to specially drafted-in codebreakers. Was there a hidden message, or were these nothing more than the scribblings of a man gone insane?

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As well as the indecipherable code was a series of digits. These turned out to be the phone number of Jessica Thomson, a Glenelg-based nurse. Her home, intriguingly, was just a short distance from where the man’s body was discovered.

Despite suggestions to the contrary, Thomson denied having seen the Somerton Man before he died. The police moreover reportedly found her uncooperative – to the extent that she evaded certain questions. She was never, however, considered a serious suspect.

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A final clue came in the form of a brown suitcase left at Adelaide railway station. Among the contents of the case was some Barbour-branded waxed thread, something that wasn’t readily available in Australia. Could it have belonged to the deceased man? The police certainly believed so.

Unbreakable code, a mystery poison, overseas attire; could the Somerton Man have been a foreign agent – possibly acting on behalf of the Soviet Union – who was killed in the line of duty? Many believe this to be the case. Many also reckon that Thomson, who died in 2007, was a spy who took her secrets to the grave.

It was when the nurse passed away that Kate, her daughter, contacted police. Kate had, apparently, for a long while suspected that her Russian-speaking mom was a Soviet spy. She also held that her mom had intimately known the Somerton Man.

Kate even speculated that the pair were lovers and that they had a child, Robin, together. In his youth, Robin, who died in 2009, was a ballet dancer – a career the pathologist thought the Somerton Man could have had owing to his stature and defined calf muscles.

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But even if the Somerton Man was a spy with local connections, his death still remains a mystery. Did he die on the beach, or was he killed elsewhere before his body was placed there? Moreover, why was he killed in the first place? And was he really a Soviet agent?

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The University of Adelaide’s Professor Derek Abbott is among those determined to get to the bottom of the mystery. Abbott thinks DNA analysis could provide some conclusive answers, though any tests – which will involve the Somerton Man’s body being exhumed – will require the South Australia Attorney General’s permission.

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For now the Somerton Man remains buried in an Adelaide graveyard. His epitaph simply reads, “Here lies the Unknown Man who was found at Somerton Beach 1 Dec. 1948.” After seven decades, this is about all, it seems, that anyone can say for certain about this enduring mystery.