Miscellaneous > Non-DP Related Mysteries!

New development in the "Tamám Shud" mystery

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RMK:
The "Tamám Shud" case is one of my favorite unresolved mysteries; its Wikipedia entry is pretty thorough.  It concerns the identity, and circumstances surrounding the death, of the "Somerton man"--a deceased John Doe found on Somerton Park beach, near Adelaide, South Australia, on December 1st, 1948.  Well, the police in South Australia just got an exhumation order authorizing them to dig up the Somerton Man's body and attempt to extract DNA from it!  So, we might get at least a partial resolution of this long-standing mystery in the foreseeable future.  We'll have to wait and see if they can actually extract any usable DNA from his remains.

Personally, I've always thought the Somerton Man was a Soviet spy.  I think either he was a double agent in the Australian or British intelligence services, or he was from the USSR and was recruited to spy in Australia because he happened to be able to completely pass as ethnically Anglo-Celtic.  If the latter case is true, then his earlobe type (which is rare in Caucasian populations) might be due to Asian admixture in his family tree.

If I'm right that he was a spy in enemy territory, then at least two possibilities come to mind regarding the circumstances of his death.  One is that he found out his cover was blown, and committed suicide to evade capture.  Another is that his cover was blown, but he didn't know it, and was covertly assassinated by Australian counterespionage agents.  In either case, I suspect he was killed by some hard-to-detect poison.

Edit: a third possibility is that he was a double agent in the intelligence services of the USSR (or some other Eastern Bloc country), and his employer found out he'd been passing secrets to Western governments, and had him covertly assassinated in Australia.

marieuk:
very interesting.  it looks like the lady did know who he was, as he appears to be the father of her son!  What do you think of the coded message?  I noticed in the last line you can almost make out 'am samstag mit'  give or take the odd letter.  Could it have been a message for somebody to meet him?   Maybe it's in more than one language?  The lady's daughter says her mother spoke Russian, but refused to say how she knew it.  All very strange. Be interesting to see what happens with the DNA tests.  Oh not forgetting he has the legs of a ballet dance?

RidgeWatcher:
I have always been interested in this case as it is so unusual but there is the woman who could have possibly cracked it open. Thanks. As far as I know the only people to be found with tags and labels missing from their clothes are in the intelligence agencies.

KFinn:
I would love to see an expert analysis of the code, not to decipher but because the way the letters are formed, to me it doesn't look like someone whose native alphabet is English.  To me, it looks like a native Cyrillic writer.

marieuk:
It does sound like the plot for a spy book.  Please keep us posted if you hear any more.  I'd love to  hear some more about the code too.

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