Tall, Dead, and Handsome: Part II

I promised the story would get even more bizarre, and I'm pretty sure this won't disappoint. 

Well, the police were still poring over the dead man's effects, and they found something odd in his trouser pocket. Of course, this was probably the first place the cops had looked upon finding the corpse, but somebody had taken great pains to make sure this was never found. It was a sliver of rolled-up paper containing only two words, "tamam shud," and had been painstakingly sewn into the lining of the pocket. Literary scholars were called in to identify the phrase. Turns out, it means "ended" or "finished," and comes from the last page of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, a collection of poems about living life to the fullest.

When this information was released to the public, a man came forward with an extraordinary find. The man (who remains anonymous to this day, though it's now believed he was a doctor) had left his car unlocked in front of his house the night of 30 November 1948. The next morning he discovered a very rare book in his backseat, a first edition of Edward Fitzgerald's translation of The Rubaiyat, with the final two words cut out. 

In the back of the book, the following was written:

"WRGOABABD

 MLIAOI

 WTBIMPANETP

MLIABOAIAQC

 ITTMTSAMSTGAB"

It is almost certainly a code of some kind, but the foremost agencies in the world can make nothing of it. However, it's worth noting that The Rubaiyat is written in quatrains, as is the code in the back. The code may be solvable, but the code is so short, it would likely take an identical Fitzgerald edition (published in the 1850s) to crack. Unfortunately, the book went missing in the 1960s, and another copy has not been located.

Also in the book, someone had written down an unlisted phone number. The number was traced to a former nurse. Her identity was not recorded, at her request, but she became a major player in the case. She once owned a copy of The Rubaiyat, the same edition as the one found in the doctor's car. However, she gave it to a young army lieutenant named Alfred Boxall in 1945. After the war, she married and moved to Somerton Beach. In fact, she lived about 1300 feet away from where the body was found.

The woman, called Nurse Jestyn by the media, also reported that in November 1948 an unknown man approached her neighbor and was asking about her. Police showed her a plaster cast of the dead man, and she was unable to identify it. However, officers who were present said she was freaked out and nearly fainted when she saw the image. The police thought that the man was Alfred Boxall, but they found him alive and well in Sydney. He also produced his copy of the book, with "tamam shud" still intact. The nurse had written out one quatrain in the front and signed it by a nickname, "Jestyn," before giving it to the officer. 

Nurse Jestyn died in 2007, her true identity still unknown. It's possible that her real name is the key needed to break the code. Detectives described her years later as "evasive," and many believe that she knew the Somerton man's identity all along.

Some people believe the man was a Soviet spy. Lt. Boxall worked in military intelligence during the War, and he was pretty cagey about the spy theory when asked about it in later years. And while it's just a theory, there is some evidence to back up these claims. Adelaide (where Somerton beach is located) is the nearest major city to Woomera, a top secret missile-testing site. In April 1948, some classified information was leaked to the Soviet Union by persons unknown. 

Police interviewed the desk girl at the hotel across the street from the Adelaide Railway Station. She told officers about a strange man who had stayed in Room 21 and checked out the day the Somerton man died. She recalled seeing a black surgical bag and hypodermic syringe in his room.

A 1994 review of the case theorized that the man died of diogoxin toxicity, from a poisonous plant that also caused the August 1948 death of US Assistant Treasury Secretary Harry Dexter White, who passed state secrets to the USSR during the War.

The cigarettes were an expensive brand in the box of a cheap brand. A recent theory is that the cigarettes were poisoned and switched without the man's knowledge. Investigators are also tracking down spools of the orange thread from the period and looking a differences in the packaging, hoping to determine a point of origin.

Unfortunately, in addition to the dead man's book, the autopsy reports and many case notes have gone missing over the years.

However, there are some possible breaks in the case. From looking at photos from the man's autopsy, researchers have recently noticed two peculiar features. The hollow of the man's upper ear is larger than the hollow of his lower ear, a trait that occurs in 1-2% of Caucasians. He also had hypodontia, a genetic disorder, and was missing his lateral incisors. Hypodontia occurs in only 2% of the world's population.

Interestingly, a photograph of Jestyn's son shows that he also had these two rare disorders. The odds that this is merely a coincidence are 1 in 10-20 million. (Scandalous!)

In one final twist, a woman in Adelaide recently discovered an ID card among her father's possessions. It wasn't her father's ID, and she was intrigued. It was issued by the US in February 1918, and was to identify the bearer as a foreign sailor. The man's name is listed as HC Reynolds, his age as 18, and his nationality as British. He shares the same rare ear structure as the Somerton man, and there is a corresponding mole on both their faces. However, searches in American, British, and Australian archives have turned up no trace of the mysterious Mr. Reynolds.

This case could very possibly be solved with an exhumation and some DNA analysis. However, in October 2011 the courts blocked an exhumation, saying morbid curiosity was not a good enough reason to disturb the dead.

If the identity of the dead man is ever discovered, it will bring a lot of secrets to light, no matter who he was. Whether he was a Soviet spy, a man desperate enough to take his own life, or the victim of a soured affaire de coeur, it will expose secrets that people have spent decades trying to protect. Maybe it's time to let the dead rest in peace and acknowledge that this man will remain unidentified.

But, really now, what fun is there in that?