Somerton Man: Has one of our most puzzling cold cases been solved?

The infamous Somerton Man was found on Somerton Park beach in South Australia in 1948, an autopsy suggested he was poisoned.

The unidentified body was wearing American clothes with the name ‘Keane’ on the labels. He had a scrap of paper in his pocket reading ‘tamám shud’: ‘it is over’ in Persian.

The paper was torn from the last page of a Persian poetry book. Police found the rest of the book, and on the inside cover were some phone numbers and what appeared to be a coded message.

Professor Dennis McNevin unpacks how genealogy helped identify the Somerton Man on this episode of the Crime Insiders podcast:

The phone number belonged to Jessica Thomson. Thomson said she had no idea who the mysterious man was, but detectives believed she knew his identity.

When shown a plaster cast of the body, she appeared visibly shocked and faint.

Jessica’s daughter Kate claimed her mother and the Somerton Man were Soviet spies. She also claim the Somerton Man was the father of her half-brother, Robin.

Whilst the Somerton Man and Robin had the same rare genetic disorder, DNA testing links Robin’s family line with matches with Jessica’s husband.

In 2022, genealogists determined that the Somerton man was Carl “Charles” Webb, an electrical engineer born in Melbourne.

Using hair strands from the body, they were able to find matches with descendants of two distant cousins of Webb.

Webb’s nephew, John Keane, was a resident of the United States, so Webb’s puzzling clothing could have been hand-me-downs.

Webb also enjoyed having a punt on the races, so the coded message could be the names of horses.

He also had a history of depression and had previously attempted to take his own life. The poison that killed the Somerton Man could have been self-administered.

Forensic Science South Australia and South Australia Police are yet to confirm or deny this theory.

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