Bittersweet Infamy - #56 - It Is Finished

Episode Date: October 30, 2022

Halloween special + season finale! Guest host Gerard Coletta tells Josie and Taylor about one of Australia's most infamous and enduring mysteries: the Somerton man, a.k.a. the tamám shud case. Plus: an unconventional public health intervention starring the pocong, the Javanese shrouded ghost.

Welcome to Bittersweet Infamy. I'm Josie Mitchell. I'm Taylor Basso. On this podcast, we tell the stories that live on in infamy, the shocking, the unbelievable, and the unforgettable. The truth may be bitter, but the stories are always sweet. Josie, where is this place? I don't know. The GPS said it was close, but then we keep getting rerouted. I can't believe you did this to us. I'm so sorry. And you took all that trouble to get your driver's license. And now I'm getting us lost.

Yes. So we're not going to be able to record the episode. I'm thinking we should just pull over, but it's kind of a scary looking guy out there. Oh, my gosh. Oh, look, look, his hand is out or like his thumb is up hand out. Is that the thing you're not thinking about pulling over? And I'm the driver. I should think about pulling over. Yeah, let's pull over. Let's pull over.

It's Halloween. It's an adventure. Let that scary man in the back seat. Hello, friend. Hey there. Can you give me a ride? Where you had to buddy? Where are you going? Where are you going? Infamy.

Infamy. Yeah, I've been there before. Had a had a long night in for me once. All right, let's go. Why don't you tell us your name, friend? My name is Gerard. Sick Gerard Coletta. Hi, Gerard. Is a sometime poet, writer of many talents.

Currently runs a bar trivia outfit out of Brooklyn. If Gerard, if the people want to do some fun bar trivia in Brooklyn, where can they find you? Absolutely. If you're in Crown Heights, you can find me at Franklin 820. That's at Franklin Union in Crown Heights. And if you're in Bushwick, you can find me at Brooklyn, which is on Troutman between, I forget. It's near the Jefferson L.

Just look around there on Troutman. Go to the Jefferson L, you hipster fox. Go enjoy some. Yeah. After you go to the House of Yes for your hipster concert. Or I guess before you go to your concert. But Gerard, in this context, is here to help us ring out season two of Vittersweet Infamy. This is our season finale.

Just ring it out. Just twist it, put it in your hand. Just like last bits of infamy. Meaty juices out of there. Yeah. This is the dregs. But that means this. But in the style of the dregs of a coffee pot, that means that it's the most potent.

It's the strongest shit there is. You eat. Yeah, dregs are good, actually. Yes. You will be in a tailspin of infamy after this one. You will have an infamy hangover. Your head will be spinning. You're a Boston man or thereabouts. You're a brain tree man. Tell me about those New England Halloweens,

because I think of that as a very, you know, Salem adjacent, orange leaves. Like, what was it like? It is like ultimate Halloween territory. And we would go as students, as like students like from kindergarten to high school, we would go like almost every year to Salem to see the houses and to see.

And it's like they have one play that they do in like the one was like the old church or something. And I swear to God, it's the same play that it was in like 1991 when I was in kindergarten. Like you would go every three years. It would be the same exact play. And the story is that they accused this lady of being a witch and then she like messes up the Lord's prayer.

And they're like, oh, you're clearly a witch. You like popped up the Lord's prayer. And like that is the play you would see every single time you went to Salem. Oh, that's so cool. I'll end with you as a Jewish person where you just like this is not relevant to me. Like I'd be like, damn, I'd be fucked.

Like, I don't know the Lord's prayer. I'm like, give us, give us this day or daily bread, something about deliver us from evil. Deliver us. Deliver us. Am I in there? Yeah, you're in there. Yeah, you're in there.

Yeah, how's this? Yeah, it starts. I don't know how it starts. It doesn't start with the bread. Our father, heaven, hallowed be thy name. There you go. Okay, I heard this. I know this shit.

Why don't you go off? Why don't you? Was it? Is that computer? Is that computer in there? Is that computer that will be done on earth as it is in heaven? Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses

as we forgive those who trespass against us. And temptation but deliver us from evil. Is that the part she fucked up? She said, she would say, I know exactly what she fucked up because I've seen this play like three or four times in my life. Okay, would she fuck up?

Instead of saying hallowed be thy name, she said hallowed be thy name and they're like hallowed. You want to hallow up the Lord's name? Yeah, and they're like, you're a fucking witch. Nothing has changed at all in the interceding centuries. Damn.

Damn, damn, damn. That's a tough one. Yeah. There's an old hitchhiking saying, Jared, gas, grass, or ass. It works a little different in this car. It's called Minfamy and Infamy. The rule is that if you're hitching a ride

with us, you have to listen to our infamous and then you have to give us an infamous. I love the frame narrative. Love it. Yeah, dude. This one's sweaty. This hitchhiker narrative, but we're going with it. We're going with it.

You know, I gotta say a lot of the frame narratives are pretty sweaty, but okay. Oh, I'm metaphorically the one driving this car that leaves you, I'm pretty sure that I can count on this malfunctioning GPS to guide the way for the next little while. Oh, sure. I bet.

Why don't you tell me and our new friend a little infamous? That's a good idea, because I have a very bad habit of falling asleep whenever I'm in the car. So if I tell an infamous, then it'll keep me awake. Be careful about that when you're driving. Okay, yeah, I'll heed it for driving as well.

I'm like a little baby, like the soft movement of transportation, any type, boats, trains, planes, loads of sleep. You fall asleep quick though. You fall asleep at like maybe the quickest of anyone I've met, Josie. Yeah. Oh, me?

I don't know how Gerard falls asleep. Pretty quickly. With like a clean conscience and a good heart, I hope. And like a happy thought. With Melatonin. Yeah, same. That's how. Yeah.

Well, hopefully this'll keep you awake. What do you got? We're in an urban forest. A concrete jungle? Yeah. No, it's like a proper forest just in a city. And it's in the beating heart of Jakarta, Indonesia, on the island of Jaffa.

We are kind of on an outer edge of this huge city, but it's still urban. There is still high rises in the distance, neighborhoods surrounding, except there's this one patch of thickly forested jungle that our girl, Marshaunda, has decided, you know what? I'm gonna go through this patch of jungle

because it cuts out like 45 minutes of my walk home from school. Okay, how old is our girl, Marshaunda? Oh, she's a young and she's 15 or so, high school, aged, early high school. She is newly attending this high school and there's nobody from her neighborhood who goes to this high school.

So she has to make this walk by herself. But it's getting dark early and the extra 45 minutes alone on the city streets almost seems scarier to her than just walking through the forest by herself. She has her flashlight, she's ready to go. She makes it through the forest the first night, not a problem.

She makes it through the forest her second night, not a problem. And she was so worried those first few nights, but now she's kind of gotten the hang of it. She knows her way through, she's found her path. It's obvious that a few people have moved through here and there's tunnels of paths, the overhanging foliage is there,

but she can find her way until one night. She's walking through, she has her flashlight out and she notices at the very end of the flashlight's cast of light, there's something white that's sticking out among all the green. She keeps steadying it. She's definitely stopped in her tracks because she's a little freaked out.

And all of a sudden she sees that it's coming closer towards her, like it's moving closer towards her and she's, hmm, hmm. And then all of a sudden it moves up out of the shot of her flashlight and it seems to jump meters ahead, like quite a huge jump. It jumps down back into the beam of the flashlight.

And she sees that it's coming closer to her and then it jumps even closer and closer. And finally she can start to make out that it's a human maybe, shaped like a human, wrapped in a white sheet around its face, its arms by its side, its feet by its side, and that's why it's jumping. It can't see the world.

It's a jumping mummy. It's a jumpy. Jumping mummy attack. And its face though is revealed and she can see that it's decomposing. It's nearly green in its color, whether it should be eyes or just deep, dark pockets. And she can see that it's jumping closer

and closer and closer. So she finally just bolts through a thick wall of the forest with braids of vines and tears her way through and finds her way out. She's on the city sidewalk and she turns and she can't see anything, can't hear anything. But she's totally freaked out. She runs the whole rest of the way home.

Her book bag is like banging up against her back. It's horrible. She gets home and she says, mom, mom, I saw the most horrible thing. It was in the forest and its face was decomposing. It had holes for eyes. It was covered in the sheet. Mom, it was the scariest thing I'd ever say.

I'm never walking there ever again. And her mom says, oh, oh, no, no, no. You saw a pochong. You saw a pochong and did you hug it? Did you hug it really, really tight? Hug pochong. And Machanda's like, hug pochong. No, I did not hug that pochong.

I will never, what? Why don't you hug a being that's obviously decomposing? That's disgusting. And her mom says, no, no. A pochong is a corpse that has been tied in its traditional Muslim burial shroud and it's tied at three places, at the feet and at the knees and around the shoulders.

And those bodies in the traditional Muslim burial practice are tied like that for 40 days. And after 40 days, they're untied so that the spirit can return to the spirit world and the body can be left to decompose. But if the body isn't unwrapped, if they're kept tied, then the spirit is trapped and it can't leave the earth. And if you hug it and bring, I don't know,

you hug it with a sense of courage and love. The power of love. And in the process, I tie, untie those knots. Then the spirit can be returned to the shadow world, to the spirit world. And the pochong will grant you wealth and prosperity for you. So there's an incentive.

So you've got to hug the pochong, sweetie. And she says, hmm, mom, no, it's gross. And then mom says, listen you little asshole. There is untold wealth on the line. So I am giving you a map and a canteen of water. I'm packing you some food and you are not coming out of that dense urban jungle until you hug that pochong.

You're gonna have that course. Yes. Except, Marshaunda doesn't need to go anywhere because. Oh my God, no. You're not at the door. Open the door and hug pochong. And Marshaunda's like, fuck this. But Marshaunda's mom.

Who grinds every day, who wakes up, has her six a.m. cold shower and thinks, how can I make money? She's making lunches for Marshaunda every day. She's working hard. She's like, girl, you don't even know how hard I work for you. We're gonna hug this pochong.

So Marshaunda's mom opens the door and there's that decomposing face. You can see the teeth through the strands of a flesh that are still there. Not teeth strands. Yes. And Marshaunda is terrified. And she hides behind a couch.

And Marshaunda's mom goes up and she hugs the pochong tight, tight, tight, tight. Take one for the team. And she helps the pochong down to the floor and her mom unties the three knots. One, two, and three. And laid out on this white shroud is the entire shriveled up body.

Nasty. Now, Marshaunda's mom is so excited for the wealth that she will be getting, the wealth that this family will be getting. For the next few days, she is celebrating. She's cooking big, big meals. She's pouring stiff, stiff cocktails until all of a sudden, she takes a sip of her martini.

She's been living large since she unwrapped the pochong and there's heavy, dirty martinis flowing. But it's a corpse martini. It's coming. That wealth, those golden coins, showering her. She takes a sip of her dirty martini, heavy on the olive juice. And she goes, this tastes funny.

No, it doesn't taste like anything at all. COVID. And she realizes she's got COVID. Brr, brr, brr. She has a bad case and within a week, she's dead. She actually had COVID? Marshaunda, this poor girl, has left all on her own. Her mom hugged the pochong,

though her mom got COVID and died. Where is this wealth coming from? How could hugging a pochong ever bring on wealth until she realizes that the family who will adopt her is noted, they're rich, they're sin. And the wealth that she gains from the pochong isn't extended to her mother, who was cursed. A lot going on with the pochong, hey?

Yeah. Yeah. A lot of different little intricacies. So the pochong is, it is a ghost, what we would kind of consider a ghost in Western culture, also called maybe like a shroud ghost, in Indonesia and Malaysia. And they're just as I described,

they're meant to be symbols of the Muslim burial practice with the three knots and the white shroud. And the bodies are meant to sit for 40 days to let the spirit, and then once, once 40 days have passed you untie and you let the spirit leave this earth. Like I said, if they aren't untied, then they become these haunted, demented beings

that can track people trying to find someone to untie. Right, and give you COVID. As their bodies are decomposing and nasty. Right, with COVID. At least in the neighborhood surrounding Jakarta, it's a pretty well-known symbol of death, of sickness, of decomposition. Why exactly there are some who believe

that you need to hug these nasty things in order to have wealth? It gives you a task, it gives you a positive, affirming rainbow-colored task, it's true. And yeah, there's a way to like engage and I don't know, I guess like disinfect in some way the Pachong, release their spirits. But there's a curse.

But. Or an irony, a monkey's paw. Yeah, a monkey's paw stitch. That is kind of depending on where you are in Indonesia or Malaysia, and how you come to the Pachong story because like any good urban cultural legend, right? It shifts from street to street, practically.

But very wisely, I think at least, maybe not. I think it's very wise. At the start of the COVID pandemic, so we're talking like April 2020, when neighborhoods in Jakarta and the surrounding countryside in Indonesia were struggling with like all of us, trying to understand what COVID was

and how to stymie the spread of COVID. There was PSAs going out, just like in the US and Canada, like please stay home, do not leave your house, six feet. I think this, at this time, there wasn't even mention of masks. Like masks came, I don't know, a month or so later? I don't even know.

I can't remember. I blocked it all out. What they started to do in a small village outside of Jakarta was they had local volunteers. Volunteer Pechongs? Dress up after Pechongs. And go out on the streets after nightfall to encourage people to stay motherfucking home.

Go home, get inside, otherwise the Pechong will come and find you. Sick, literally. Now, that's why the hugging is kind of like... Yeah, because if you're an enterprising, young Jakartan and you spot a Pechong and you're maybe a little foolhardy, you're not scared of monkeys, paw effect,

you run over full... I got up at six a.m. for a cold shower. I'm ready to hug the Pechong. Let me untie that bad boy. I've got a YouTube channel that I'm waiting to take off. Right, yeah. I don't understand the algorithm I need to monetize. I think the more general understanding of Pechong

is that like, ooh, scary, spooky, that's a ghost. You get yourself away from that as quickly as you can. And so the people in charge devised this plan to have Pechong's roam in the streets to encourage people to stay home. And at the beginning, so in the first few weeks, they became kind of a tourist attraction, like a social media attraction.

People actually left their house and were like, oh, I'm gonna go look at a Pechong. I'm gonna like do a video. Yeah, let me go find the COVID Pechong. This is a moment in time. Yeah, yeah. But after that initial, I guess, fascination wore off, they did start keeping people off the streets

because it wasn't so much like, oh, I'm scared of the Pechong, but it was a very potent visual reminder of disease, decay, and death. Like you will look like this if you get COVID and die. You will turn into a Pechong. Nobody's gonna tell you, you're gonna be stuck in the streets. Oh.

Exactly, because we don't know how contagious this is or what type of contagion it is. And so you will, yeah, you will turn into a Pechong. So once the like kick-she-fun part of it wore off, people were like, you know what? I might not turn into a Pechong, but fuck, this is a really good reminder that I need to stay home and I need to.

What an interesting public health move, intervention, you know? Exactly. Cool. It's not gonna happen, zombies on the streets, be like, this zombie's gonna eat your ass, stay home. Josie. Yeah.

You know who I know is specifically fucked up by zombies and decaying living corpses and shit? Gerard Coletta. I hate zombies. Had there been zombies, I would have like never, like not even once for the entire pandemic left my house, even to like get there. I would be like, this is zombie outside.

I'm like, no, fuck this. I would absolutely not have hugged with a Pechong. That's so interesting. I'd be like, I hope somebody does, so their spirit can be released, but I cannot be that person for you, I'm sorry. You know? I was she the best, I'm not low-equipped here.

I would do it if not for the possibility of a monkey's paw boomerang. Right, now that you know that that's a possibility, but here's my theory, here's my theory, she didn't hug the Pechong with a pure heart, she hugged the Pechong out of desire for material wealth, and so that's why a boomerang, she authentically wanted the Pechong to be free

and go to the afterlife, she wouldn't have got coded. I'm okay with that more, I'm okay with that. Yeah, that to me is, that to me is the lesson. But again, I grew up in like Puritan land, you know, I grew up in one of the Puritan, so like every story, it's your fault if you like get fucked up. Yeah, fuck up the Bible.

That's true, whoa. Oh man, that's a rough way to go through your day, but I hear you, I hear you. ["Pomp and Circumstance"] Gerard, what do you got for us, buddy? Thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. Thank you for holding this space with us.

Thank you. Give us something to be scared of this Halloween. Okay, well, I'm gonna give you what is ominous and described as one of Austria's most profound mysteries. Is it dingo at my baby? It's not about the dingo. Okay, I guess that was solved,

wasn't it? Yeah, I was. This, well, this is an interesting one because when Taylor asked me to join you guys, I was like, okay, what's a cool spooky thing that I'm super interested in? And I thought of this particular case. Like immediately, it just like boom in your head.

Not immediately, but when it came to me, I was like, oh yeah, I gotta do that. And then when I looked into it, I was saying this to Taylor before we started, I realized first of all, there's so many things I forgot about the case that are where I was like, oh, my twist, I remember that. And then I also learned that just months ago,

there were new developments in this case. That happened to me when I Googled it, when you told me I was like, I didn't know that. And then I instantly clicked out. I know exactly what you're talking about. Very recent developments in this case. Jeez, Louise, look at you, timing's right. Timing's so perfect.

But let's go back to the beginning rather than talk about this year. We're going back to December 1st, 1948. Josie's birthday. My birthday. I guess it looked fated. Not 1948. No, no, no.

You look fantastic for a fucking Greek. Whatever, I'm not doing the math in that, but you look fantastic for whatever age that is. The vitamin C on the skin. December 1st, 1948, in the suburb of Adelaide, Australia. It was when the Summerton man was discovered. OK, I've never heard of this. OK.

So it starts off pretty straightforward. It's around sunrise December 1st, 1948. But please get a call. There's a corpse lying on the beach at Summerton Park in the town of Glenelde, which is just outside Adelaide. It's a little suburb. That's a palindrome. It is a palindrome.

Oh, spooky palindrome. Happy Halloween, everybody. So they find this body. It's lying with its head against the seawall. Its legs are out, its feet are crossed. Only things on the body are just regular stuff, cigarettes, matches, like a comb, a pack of gum. They find a rail ticket that he did not use

and a bus ticket that he may or may not have used. So that's all he's got in his body. What's notable is that he doesn't have any identification on his body. He has no wallet. He has no passport, nothing of the sort. So they have no idea who this guy is. Yeah.

So they start asking around. A few witnesses come forward, and they're like, there's this one couple who was walking by the seawall having a nice night. And they were looking down on the beach. And they see this man lying on the beach looking kind of weird. And they saw him reach his right arm out, just like reaching it out, and then drop it

locally to the ground. And they're like, that's kind of weird. Oh. As if like, as if like, there. And then he ran out of energy. Just like, yeah. I don't think that's weird. Is he drunk?

What's going on here? He's super drunk and just like, yeah. Fuck no. Anthony, whoever that is. It's like, it's like any time you're out by the beach and you see somebody doing something weird. You're just like, yeah. Yeah, you're like, oh, should I?

Should I call somebody? This feels like not a 911 situation. Right. So when they found the body, it was clear that it hadn't been in the ocean. Yeah, yes. It was not waterlogged or bloated. It was just a body recently.

They could tell recently deceased lying there. Yeah. So this couple sees him around 7 o'clock the previous night. About half an hour, an hour later, another couple walks by. They see the same person lying there. And they say they didn't see him move at all. But then they felt like when they looked back every now and then, he viewed different positions.

So if he was lying there but maybe moving around a little bit, they couldn't really tell. And then there was one witness who said that she thought she saw an unidentified man looking down at the other man at one point. That's a pretty significant extra detail. Cool, little sneaky detail. So this is all they have so far.

They bring him to the pathologist, the little inquest or whatever. And he's a pretty unremarkable guy. Anglo descent, like 40 or 45 years old. He's well-dressed. He's in good physical condition. There's no sign that he would die of natural causes. And like I said, there's no ID.

And then when they looked at his clothes, there were no labels on his clothes. They'd all been removed. He wasn't wearing the Gucci? Oh, yeah. OK, I get what you mean. I'm sorry. He was not wearing Balenciaga or anything.

I know we're in the era where every item of clothing has a massive brand name on it. But that's not what I'm talking about. Yes, yes. At least I know. OK, OK. It's 1948 still. So they do an autopsy.

His organs are all swollen. His spleen is three times its normal size. Ooh, too big, too big. Yeah, way too big. I mean, his spleen is supposed to be like a little tiny. Like a little tiny boy, you know. And again. His blood in his digestive system.

Like his liver is full of blood. His stomach is whole and are full of blood. So they got the pathologist is like, this guy's probably been poisoned. But like it's 1948. And they're doing like whatever rudimentary talk screen situation that they have at that point. They don't find an actual poison in the body.

But like the pathologist is like, it's pretty clear. Like he didn't just randomly start like internally bleeding. Right. Yeah. So there's no contusions or bruises or cuts or whatever. He looks completely fine on the exterior. You open them up and he looks all kind of jabbed up. Right. They're like, this is weird.

They check his dental records. His dental records don't match anybody that they have on record. Anywhere. Oh. So they're like, OK, we have no idea who the hell this guy is. So finally, the police were like, I guess you should embalm this corpse since we don't know who it is.

And you may need to like need to hold on to it for a while to like figure it out. OK, OK. So they embalmed the corpse. The corpse is just sort of sitting there for a while. A month passes and at the Adelaide Railway Station over a few miles from Glen Alok where the guy was found. There's this there's this locker that's been unused for the last month.

So finally, the railway staff opens the locker and they find this brown suitcase. This is like a Hitchcock movie now. I like it. I know. We're deep. So the brown suitcase also doesn't have any labels on it. The labels have all been removed. There's no names on it. There's no brand names on it. And it's been checked into the station clover of the locker room area

the day before they found the Summerton man on the beach. So like, that's weird. That's weird. It was checked in November 30th. The guy died sometime overnight. And then it's been sitting there unclaimed for a month. They open it up. It's full of like a lot of clothes. There's a lot of traveling clothes, although there's no socks or something.

I don't know. I don't think that actually I think you forgot to pack socks. You just forgot socks. That's what happens to the best of us. Olive Robert Sandals. It's fine. He's really cleaning a trip. He's got pajamas. He's got underwear. He's got slippers. He's got like, you know, the shebang.

Right. He also has a few small items like scissors in like a table knife that have been sharpened into like additional points. So they're like makeshift weaponry and they're like, that's kind of weird. Prison much. OK. Mysterious suitcase full of shibs and slippers. A little weird.

A little weird. I mean, Australia is a penal colony. So Jesus, we're going to lose the Australian audience. Sorry, Australia. Sorry. Well, I'm just I'm just saying. They're going through this suitcase and they're like, OK, circumstantially, we assume this belongs to this guy, but we don't have any proof. But then they find a thread card like a used, you know,

like when a thread comes on one of those like pieces of paper, they're like wound around. Yeah, OK. Yeah. Yeah, like the cardboardy paper. Yeah. And it's a type of thread that is not available in Australia. It's a special orange waxed thread. And they realize it's the same thread that was used to repair the lining in the pocket of one of his of his pants

that he's wearing. Fabulous detective work. Yeah, great work. Wonderful. That's what you want your detective to do on that thread. Real angel of Lansbury, poor one out. You know, it's real murder. Oh, muffin, miss her. So finally, they're going through all the clothes and they finally actually find name tags on a few items.

So there was a tie, is an undershirt, is a laundry bag, and they all have a name tags that have some variation on the name T key. So like it's initial T and then the last name key, K, E, A and E. OK, T key. And they also have dry cleaning marks. So they're like, OK, cool, we have a name and we have, like potentially a dry cleaner who you could like ask about. Smile.

So they can't tell whether these have been overlooked or whether they were intentionally left there to like fuck with the police. But they go through all the records and they can't find any missing person in the entire English speaking world. Who's named T key. There's nobody missing by that name. And they can't find any dry cleaner that is like, oh, yeah, that's that came through our dry cleaners.

Oh, no, but that was such a good lead. That was such a good lead, but the lead is gone. No, we were this close. Damn it. OK, we're this close. Well, then it would be a permissive thing. Then we would be talking about it. No, true. They would be like, oh, yeah, do you remember when Thomas Keane got just fell asleep on that beach?

And died, yeah. Yeah. 1948, yeah. So all they could tell from the close after that was that there's one coat that based on its stitching had to have been manufactured in the US and couldn't have been bought in Australia. It was not, you know, a brand that was imported to Australia. So at some point, somebody they're doing a lot of really good thread. Thread specific words, those threads before the internet, too. Oh, yeah. So they're like, they're at the point.

They're their speculation is this guy arrives from one of three cities, Melbourne, Sydney, or Port Augusta, because those are where the trains were coming from that arrived that day. He cleaned up at the public baths like Shave to the shower or whatever. He bought this ticket for this train, never ended up taking the train and then checked his suitcase in Adelaide and made his way for Glenel our Palindrome town where he was found. And that's where he died at some point.

So they look they look again in this body. His shoes are recently polished and they're still very clean. And they're like, that doesn't make any sense. If he came to Glenel in the middle of the day, was wandering around all day, went to the beach and then lay there and die. Wires, shoes all perfect. Is he wearing socks? I don't think he was wearing socks.

Story checks out. Maybe he just isn't a sock guy. Maybe he's one of those, you know, a little like tipsters, you know, Galapagos affair where they were wearing the feet bags because they didn't they they they reviled the conventional shoe. This could be another one of those. A feet bag is a sock. Let's be real.

You know, yeah, maybe. Is a sock a bag is a debate to be had. You may be right. What is a sock, if not a little crowned royal bag for your foot at the end of the day? OK, sans the drawstring. Yeah, I mean, depends. Don't speak for me. Depends what socks you're wearing. So, yeah, so I'm taking a closer look.

There's a corner looks into it. The pharmacology expert looks into it. There's still no sign of poison. But the pharmacology experts like, well, there's certain drugs that are commercially available. And he to the point where like he didn't name them in the public game quest because he's like people to buy these drugs and poison each other. But one of them is digitalists, which I feel like I think Christy uses a lot

in her novels. That's like an oleander powdered glass. That is a soap opera and murder mystery poison of iconic notes. So the experts like, yeah, maybe maybe somebody getting digitalists and like if they had done it to him, he would have died. It would have like flushed out of his system. And by the time, like even by the time they found his body, it would have been impossible to find like any trace of it in his system.

So they're like, OK, it's like kind of like maybe this is a perfect prime poisoning situation. So the coroner is like, OK, well, if that's what happens, then I think he died somewhere else because if you're being poisoned, you're going to convulse, you're going to vomit. And no, no, eyewitnesses saw anybody convulsing or vomiting on the beach. And there's no vomit puddle beside the puddle of vomit. He's not like, yeah.

So the coroner is like, OK, the reason why his shoes are so clean and the reason why nobody saw him like convulsing and like making a scene is because somebody killed him somewhere else and then took him all the way to the beach and just left in there. Interesting. Was he redressed in this scenario? I think he might have just been killed in that outfit and then just brought over. That's really sad. I don't want to think about the last outfit I'm ever going to wear.

Well, they said he was well dressed. So like, you know what? If I must go down and know, let them say I was well dressed. Well, this is this is what I think about whenever I dress myself. I'm like, well, if I die, like, I want to be like, oh, that guy was a well dressed guy. Do you remember that really fly, dude? We saw get hit by that bus. Yeah, I do.

Yes, that's what they'll be remembering. Yes, three piece suit. Yeah. No socks. No socks. His shoes were clean as hell, man. I could see my reflection in them. So the coroner's the coroner's convinced, you know, this guy was poison somewhere else, brought to the beach.

But all these eyewitnesses are like, we're pretty sure that's the same dude because he was lying there in this weird position and you found this weird body in exactly the same position. Yeah. And, you know, some of the witnesses had seen him moving. So it's like, OK, so was he was he dead? Was he like, nobody really knows where he died, how he got there? Open question. Right. This is where it starts getting weird.

So they make a plaster cast of his head and shoulders just so they can use that for like identification purposes, whatever, like if any witnesses it can be like, instead of looking at this like slowly decomposing body, you can look at the plaster cast his head. Yeah. While they're doing that, they look at his clothes again. And sewn inside of one of his pockets is a smaller pocket that contains a tiny rolled up piece of paper. And on the paper are the words to mom.

To mom, to mom, shut it, not English. OK. Obviously. To mom is not a wordal word, folks. Not a wordal word. I mean, try it. I wouldn't try it. It's a double, you know, double, double. It's not a good word. That's true. Even if they accept it.

So the words to mom, shut are on this little tiny piece of paper. The police were like, I don't know what that means. They're police officers. They don't know what this is. So they make it public or like, does anybody know what this means? And these people, the library, call it librarians. The library is safe in the days ever. And they're like, that's a farsi phrase.

Wait, can you please do that in an Australian accent? I can. I'm not going. I cannot even attempt an Australian accent. Australian, Australian. There we go. That's a farsi phrase. There you go. So the librarians call and they're like, oh, like that's farsi.

It means it is finished. And it's a really famous phrase because it's the last two words of the rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. So this guy, Omar Khayyam, he was a Persian writer from like about a thousand years ago. And he's like one of the most illustrious, like celebrated. He's like the Shakespeare on Iran, sort of. OK. And he wrote all of these verses

that became very popular in the Western world in the 19th century when this guy Edward Fitzgerald translated them. And they're about, you know, they're all they're about life and general. They're about like life and death and going through existence and mediti. The police released a picture of the little scrap and like, does anybody have a copy of this book that is missing the last two words? That says, does anyone have a copy of this book

where specifically the last two words? And they find it, but they find it. They find it for them. So this guy comes forward and he's like, yeah, I found this book on the street and it's missing these last two words. That's all. And to this day, nobody knows. They didn't record the man's name and they didn't record the circumstances of how he brought it in. I take back that's good detective work.

I take it back. Nobody knows how the book turned up. All they know is like it's generally believed that it was like left in an unlocked car that was just sitting on the street and then somebody walked by and was like, oh, that's weird, picked it up, was holding on to it. And then finally like flipped through and said, oh, the last two last two words are missing. Kind of sketchy, kind of sketchy paper. And does anybody have the last two words? I'm like, I'm going to get that book.

I'm going to cut out the last two words and I'm going to be I'm very famous. Here's my 15 minutes. I didn't even think of that. Josie, you're so thirsty. You do that. Wow. See, my thought was I went I went completely opposite. And I guess maybe this tells us why this case has captivated so many generations because you can there's so much. It's a lot of intricate little threads

happening that you can take, which everyone is your favorite and run with it. In literal threats. Yes, in this case, orange wax threads. Yeah, orange, exclusively available orange wax threads. My my thought was it's a cop. My thought was my thought was a cop had the book because, oh, it just some mysterious man left it here and blah, no. I thought my first thought was, oh, a cop did that and just said, oh, some guy

left it there. Oh, well, we're not done with the book yet. Oh, fuck. But those are the last two words. Is there an epilogue? Oh, there's so much more about the book. But please look over the book because they're like, OK, what's going on here? And finally, they look at the very back page and they see the famous indentation of writing as if somebody wrote on a piece of paper that was on top of the book.

So this is your classic, again, an Agatha Christie staple. You got a shade over top. You got to do the little pencil look at that graphite. Yeah, the Big Lebowski that happens. The Big Lebowski is an Agatha Christie, I'm pretty sure. Yeah, that's an Agatha Christie cinematic universe. Yes, this reminds me of that Agatha Christie book, The Big Lebowski. I mean, there is like a mystery element to the Big Lebowski, if you think about it.

Oh, no, it's totally a detective story. Yeah. So the police, the police, you know, do the little graphite. I don't know if they actually did. I just got it to think I have to imagine the police officers. And they're like 1948, like, you know, garb doing a little like graphite. Great joy. When you when you actually get to do that legitimately during the course of the mystery, nothing better as a mystery fan. So they do that.

And they find five lines of text written capital letters that are just like nonsense, just like garbles letters. OK, one of the lines is crossed out, but it's very similar to another line. So they're like, OK, this person, these are intentional messages. And they're like, it's a code. And the person fucked up the code the first time they wrote it first. Yeah, so the line to they crossed out to rewrite the code. That makes sense.

But they don't have enough information. It's only it's only like really for practically four lines of of code. Cryptographers at that point at least are like, you know, that's not enough for us to like extrapolate an entire system. Yeah, it could also be shorthand. It could be like these could be like the first letters of a sentence or something. So we don't know what this means, but we know it's real fucked up and weird. Curious or curious or yeah, also in the back of the book, they found a phone number.

Call the phone number, boys. So they called the phone number and it belonged to a nurse named Jessica Thompson. You OK? Jessica Thompson lived about half a mile from where they found the Somerton Man. OK, this is promising. This is promising. And she's a nurse, you say, as in poison, poison, poison. As in get that digitalis, get that prescription.

Well, this just solved itself. We can knock off, take the rest of the podcast off. There we go. It's Jessica Thompson. She did it. Sweet. OK, let's go for for chicken strips and fries. Yeah, obviously, the police go visit her and she's like, I don't know who this guy is. I don't know why anybody would have my number.

I know like some weird guy was asking my neighbor about me recently, but that's all I've got for you. And they're like, really? She's like, yeah, don't know him. And then she said, but also please keep my name secret from the public because I don't want to get like weird phone calls and stuff. And they're like, OK. Oh, oh.

And they kept the name secret for literally decades, which really they held their word. Wow, OK. So that really sort of hampered the case because people are like, well, this woman seems like she maybe knows more than the police initially thought. We pinky swar. We can't. Bro code.

Part of the reason why they didn't is because they believe that her name might be the encryption key for the code they found. So they're like, maybe we should keep it secret for now because maybe that'll help us decode this message. And that's why the phone number is there is like a reminder or a hint or no. No, that makes no sense, because if that if her name was the encrypt, then you would be able to decrypt. We'd figure it out.

You'd be able to. I know you would. Well, they're undergoing this investigation, talking to her, the detective sergeant, his name is DS and he he shows her the cast they've made of the man's head and shoulders. And he's there in the technician who made the cast is there with him. And so the technician brings out the cast and both of them are like said later, they were like she looks like she saw a ghost when she saw the cast.

She's like she looks completely stunned. OK. And then after her first glance, she would never make eye contact with the cast. She was like, I can't look at this. Obviously, she's. Yeah, she knows something. But nevertheless, she's like, no, I don't know that guy. And they're like, are you sure if she's like, no, OK? You're technically...

And they're like, lady, lady. Ma'am, are you certain? Are you certain, ma'am? Listen, Sheila. There you go. That's all I got. But you gotta come up with something better than like, are you sure? Are you double-dog?

Sure. But they're going along with it and then she tells them, they ask her about the ruby up. And they're like, did you ever have a copy of this book? And she's like, you know what I did? I once owned a copy of the ruby up. And I was dating this guy named Elf Bobson. Such an Australian name. Sorry to Australia, but like nobody in America has been named Elf Bobson.

And her story is that she gave it to this old thing when she was like seeing him. She moved on and apparently like she said, you go in contact with her recently. And she was like, sorry, dude, I'm married now. Now there's no evidence that he was actually ever in touch with her. And apparently she wasn't actually married at the time that he supposedly got in touch with her. Yeah, but maybe she was like, you know, the old I'm married now. Yeah, leave me alone. So like fair enough.

Fair enough. I've got a big six, seven MMA husband who's fiercely protective of me actually. At this point, the police are like, well, you don't really have anything else. Maybe this guy she like dated, maybe this is the corpse. They're like, OK, Elf Bobson was the dead guy in the beach. He's the summer to him. OK. But then they find him in Sydney in July of 1949.

Classic. So they go talk to him like, we thought you were dead. And he's like, nope. No. And he goes into his house and comes out and he's got the ruby out with him. Complete with the final two words. Wait, wait, wait, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Wait, no. First of all, no. What have you just gotten you copy? There's a message from Jessica Thompson in her handwriting in the book. She copied down verse 70 of the ruby out for him in the book itself in her handwriting with her signature in her maiden name. Hot. One.

Two. I don't. That doesn't mean that, OK, maybe that particular copy of the ruby out was too precious to this guy to disfigure. He buys a new one, cuts out the two words, rolls that bad boy up, smokes that bad boy and puts it in this guy's pocket. Bada bing, bada boom. We've got an obsessive boyfriend killer.

But I'm sure somebody's put that out there and it's been debunked. But wait, if he's an obsessive boyfriend, then why is he killing this other guy and not her or her? Well, I hadn't actually thought that through, Josie. I'm kind of making it up on the fly. OK, then. Cool. Good thing.

I'm going to turn this fucking car around. So this is where the case stands basically like six months, seven months after the guy died. They've exhausted all the leads. There's one lady who is clearly probably being sketchy at best and maybe just outright lying her ass off to them. Yes. But they have absolutely nothing to go on to prove that she's connected to this guy because there's no records of basically his existence.

This is when this becomes a press phenomenon in Australia. They start broadcasting this information and they're like, do you know anything about this case? Does anybody know anything? This has everything. This has a lot of loose ends. Yeah, this has codes. This has like nameless.

Mysteries, romance, a femme fatale potentially. We have a lot going on here. Poetry. Yeah. This is good. So this is when we start going through time because it's now a cold case. They complete dead ends. All they have now, they have the embalmed body, but they bury that soon after.

The Salvation Army has to pay for the burial because nobody knows who this guy is. They bury the body. This poor soul. John Doe. And all they have now is the photograph of his body and the cast of his body. Okay. As you know, they don't know about DNA evidence yet, so they're not holding on to tissues, whatever, samples.

They're like, okay, who is this guy? The first person who was identified as the Summerton man is this guy, E.C. Johnson, the local newspaper in Adelaide. It's like, oh, this guy, E.C. Johnson was kind of in the beach dead. The next day he goes to the newspaper and he's like, I'm alive actually. Excuse me. Yeah. He's like, I'm actually alive.

Can you retract that? Because people are asking me about it. People are asking me if I'm dead and it's uncomfortable. So then two more people come forward and they're like, oh, that's our friend, Robert Walsh, who is a 63-year-old woodcutter who had gone missing recently. Okay. And they're like, this is super promising. Like 63 seemed a little old.

They're like, this guy looks relatively young, really good shape. And they're like, well, he was like, you know, he looked young for his age. He was a woodcutter. He was cutting wood. He was cutting wood every day. You know, he was like jacked, you know. There's a dick joke in there. But you shouldn't make it because somebody's died, Josie.

Yeah, I'm sorry. Somebody just died. You're laughing about this. Somebody died in 1948. I can't make a dick joke. Okay. Sorry, Australia. God.

Jesus Christ. I'm going to move on. Before we get banned permanently from Australia, I would like to visit one day. So they're like, oh, it's Robert Walsh. And then one of the people who knew him gets to see the body before it's buried. And she's like, oh, no, it's missing a scar. Like there's a really distinctive scar that Robert had. And this body does not have that scar.

Like Harry Potter? Like I wouldn't know. Like Harry Potter level scar. Interesting. Like this is his signature scar. Everybody knows Robert's scar. Everybody knows Robert's scar. Wow.

Okay. It's not Robert Walsh either. So they don't know what's going on. The years passed by November 1953. It's like seven years later. The police, five years later rather, sorry. Okay. The police are like, we have now received over 250 different solutions to the case to

the general public. And none of them, none of them make any sense. The Reddit detectives wrote course in the fifties. Yeah. This is like, this is like pre like true crime Reddit, you know, like try to figure out cases on their own. So this has been happening throughout human history. You know, this case becomes internationally famous.

The FBI looks into it. Scotland Yard looks into it. They don't have any information on this guy. They can't even find any dental records. Like I said, they can't find fingerprints that matches fingerprints. They find nothing. There's like no evidence whatsoever that matches this person to anybody known to have existed throughout the world.

And this is sort of like a side note. This doesn't really, this isn't the lead. I'm going to just preface that, but it is my favorite part, but because in any mystery, the best part of the mystery is obviously when somebody starts leaving flowers at the grave. Oh, the lipstick marks. Yes. Years after the burial of the Summerton man, flowers start appearing on his grave and the

police like are staking out his grave and they find a woman and they're like, she's like, I don't know what you're talking about. Yes. And they're like, okay. Nobody knows anything. Nobody knows. Taylor does this like every quarter he goes to a graveyard and leaves flowers on a grave and then when people ask him about him, he's like, I don't know anything.

I mean, I don't know why I haven't done that yet. I want to be doing that. So like somebody's mystery grave. I think that my honest to God, if I had to guess, somebody who noticed that this grave was going unmoored and felt some sort of kinship with this person whose entire identity is that nobody knows who they are and they are dead. So I think that's probably just a nice person who was leaving flowers at the grave and then when confronted on it, didn't want to get, didn't want to get, you think it's buddy.

I'm just saying there are options available. That's true. You know what? That's why we work well as a detective team because you're the brains and I'm the heart. We do. We solve Brittany Murphy. We solve them all. As time goes forward, the predominant theory becomes this guy was a fucking spy.

I was thinking that just now. I was like, when you were talking about, I was no, when he was talking about no fingerprints, no dental records, no identity. I was like, in my head, I bet. So here's why. Here's why this guy's a spy in theory. If you believe the spy theory. So first of all, there's at least like two, there were at least during the Cold War, there

were at least two sites really close to Adelaide that were involved in like military intelligence. There was a uranium mine and there's a test range that were like in very close proximity to the city of Adelaide. World War II, I guess. Yeah. This is right after, this is right when the Cold War was beginning. And not long, in fact, not long after the man died, there was an Australian investigation of the Soviet spies who infiltrated Australia.

And according to this theory, the reason why they can't find any sort of forensic evidence of this man's existence is because he, you know, they can't find anything in the English speaking world. It's because he's not from the English speaking world. He's from behind the Iron Curt. And the Soviets and, you know, Eastern European governments, they're not sharing that information with the FBI. We're not doing the collab on this one.

They're not doing the collabs at this point. Things are real tense. Interesting. And our friend Alf Bobsel, who was dating Jessica Thompson back in the day, was widely rumored to have worked in intelligence. He was in the military in Australia and he rose through the ranks so rapidly in like over the course of months that people were like, that's weird. Like, why are you getting promoted so quickly?

You're so successful that it's weird. And whenever he was asked about it, he would be like super cagey. Like, they're like, oh, is your intelligence like no? And people are like, oh, well, your friend Jessica Thompson, like, did she think he worked in intelligence? He was like, well, if people told her that, it wasn't me. So they're like, you're being weird, dude. What are you doing?

I love that everybody who gets interviewed to go on the record for this case is basically like, fuck you, cop. I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah. Just stonewalls them immediately. What'd you say? I can't hear you. So this is where it gets good because I think it's 2009.

Our friend Jessica Thompson dies of old age. Right. She and her husband, RIP, have died and three of her relatives are like, now that she's dead, we're willing to speak to the press about what we've heard or what we think is going on in this case. Those vultures have been plotting that for years. They're like, now that my overbearing mother is dead, I can tell all her secrets. They were waiting for that Pachong to hop in the door.

They had a three-way plan. Oh, yeah. One of them was going to pin her down. One of them was going to do they had and they were going to go to the and sell that story. That's then they were going to have their windfall. So the most notable situation is Kate, her daughter talks to the press. I think she was talking to the Australian 60 minutes. So they talked to Jessica's daughter, Kate.

And Kate's like, my mother's been lying to the police for years. She says, my mother told me, she said, I lied to the police. I know who the summertime is. And people at a level higher than the police force in her words know who that is. Okay. Spy. That's such a spy. And then she's like, I think my mom and the summertime van were spies because my mom A

was an English teacher, B was super interested in communism and three could speak Russian even though she would never explain how or why she had come to speak Russian to her daughter. Oh. You did an AB3 there, by the way. Yeah. I love that. I do an AB3.

You do a little AB3. We support the AB3 here. It's the alphabet hierarchy, baby. Exactly. Next time, dude in Russian. So wait, no, but I don't I know a lot of English teachers who are interested in communism, maybe not to the level of speak in Russian. Oh, yeah.

I mean, there's no, there's still no proof. It's just a disgruntled daughter. That's true. Fair enough. I mean, I don't know. I don't know the level of gruntledness to be fair. She maybe is not disgruntled about her mother. I don't know.

So this is where we get to the part that's recent news. Yeah. This is news to me. This starts to tie some of the threads together. Threads. Orange. Waxing. Or threads.

Hashtag threads. Hashtag threads. Here we go. So this guy at the University of Adelaide is named Derrick Abbott and he's fixated on this case. I think he works in forensics. And he creates a team, I think around 2009, around the time of Jessica Thompson's death. And they start really boring down in the case.

So they look at the code again and they're like, this is definitely a code because compared to random distributions of letters, it couldn't possibly be just random letters that are scrolled up. Like there's a meaning behind the letters. But they still can't figure it out. They look for a copy of the various copies of the rubaiyat and they realize that they need the actual addition that the guy had to figure out the code. And they cannot find the original copy.

And they keep looking into it. They look for the autopsy reports. The autopsy reports gone missing. Nobody knows where they are. Excuse me? What? Yeah, you know, things just disappear, right? People at a level of high clearance probably went in there just as janitors and slipped

them under the old mop bucket and scrubbed the floor out. They're desperate for like anything they can find. Finally, they start looking at like the photograph and the cast again. And there's a professor of anatomy on the team. And he looks at the ears and he knows that the upper ear hollow of the summertime man is larger than the lower ear hollow. Apparently it's a condition that only 2% or less of Caucasian men have. Huh.

Oh, nobody had interrogated the ear lobes all this time. Interesting. Actually, they did, but they were being cagey. I don't know what you're talking about. That's a word to ears. I never, I don't have them. Ears? I don't have ears.

I've never seen any in my life. And then they also looked at his teeth and consulted these dental experts and they're like, the guy had this weird condition where his incisors, his lateral incisors, I don't know which one are the lateral incisors. I'm just pointing at my teeth right now. Yeah. Point at your own teeth at home, folks. Yeah.

Just try feeling your ears and teeth right now. Yeah. And then maybe wash your hands after. Or in between as well because you're in some ear wax situations happening. Anyway, look at his teeth and here's a weird condition. It's like, it's not something notable that you'd like to look at his teeth and be like, oh, his teeth are jacked up. Yeah.

But if you're, if you're in the know, you know, dentally, well, this guy did have a rare condition that was called a hypodontia. Okay. And again, this is something that only occurs in 2% of the population. So they're like, he's got these two different conditions that are both like 2% likelihood, which together, like that's very, very rare. Our friend Derek Abbott gets a photograph of Jessica Thompson's son. And Jessica Thompson's son has the same ear condition and the same tooth condition that

the Summerton had. And the chance of this being a coincidence, they estimated somewhere between one and 10 million and one of 20 million. Wow. So Derek Abbott's like, Bob and Thompson, the son of Jessica Thompson was 16 months old when the Summerton died. And he's like, this guy was the son. Maybe they were spies who fell in love at the Jersey Shore.

Oh my God. The Glen Elk Shore. Yeah. As such as it is. The Palindrome Shore. Wow. That's, it was the power of the Palindrome. It brought them together.

Like the two ends of the words joined. Like two ends of a Palindrome, they joined in the middle, folks. Sweaty. But I see it. Labored. In December 2017, our friend Derek Abbott, who's investigating the Summerton, found three, this word, excellent hairs, which is very forensic. I love him.

He was probably talking about those hairs for weeks to anybody who would listen. Oh my God. Three hairs. Perfect for harvesting DNA. Yummy. So they, yeah, they looked at the plaster cast and they realized there were three hairs that found, or at least three hairs that have good quality that were still embedded in the plaster cast that they were able to remove and compare to DNA,

database or databases. So literally this past July. So just a few months ago, Derek Abbott, Professor Abbott, goes to the press. He's like, I know who the Summerton is. It's Carl Webb. Who? Carl Webb.

Oh yeah. Of course. He's Carl Webb. If you weren't playing along at home and thinking it was Carl Webb this whole time, you're an idiot. Yeah. This is like one of those laid-back at the Christie's where it's like, guess what? A person you never heard of?

Yeah. That's a murderer. Who the fuck is Carl Webb? And then you look and you read the back of the book and it's like 1963 and you're like, ah, I see. Carl Webb, he was an electrical engineer and an instrument maker. And he lived in the Australian state of Victoria, which is nearby. It's not Adelaide's in South Australia.

So it's a different state, but it's like nearby in Australia in terms. I think. I think it's maybe kind of hard. Anyway, Australians write in. Or one Australian can write it. They already are. Don't worry. They will be.

But he lived in Victoria and he had a brother-in-law. You know what his brother-in-law's name was? His brother-in-law's name was Thomas King. Go! Sorry. I'm sorry. I don't mean to yell into the mic, folks. I just get excited.

Oh my. Tom, his brother-in-law, his brother-in-law, Thomas King, T. King lived a 20-minute drive away from them. And so they were like, well, he borrowed some clothes from his brother-in-law. They're the same size. Interesting. So then where did Thomas King live? He's also in Victoria, the state of Victoria.

Okay. And so their search just didn't expand that far. The FBI, the fucking Scotland Yard didn't think. Well, they didn't find it. They never caught a missing person yet. They were only looking for missing people. They weren't looking for the living Thomas Kees. There's probably too many Thomas Kees and T. Kees everywhere.

Nobody in six years came up with, maybe he borrowed those clothes while we were thinking about, oh, is he a spy? Oh, is he... We found the exact copy of the book, but no one came up with fucking... What if his clothes weren't his clothes? Hey, police be policing, you know. That's your one. You can't, you're not wrong.

Okay. Reddit hadn't been invented yet. That, fuck me, you're right. God, I'm getting schooled here. Please, I'm talking out of line. So there's this, like, hollow web electrical engineer, brother-in-law named Thomas King, last known record of him, April, 1947, about a year and a half before the death of the Somersons man.

Okay. At which point he had left his wife and was basically never seen again. Who's the wife? Do we know? Her name was Dorothy, and she filed for an divorce agreement. She was like, I want nothing to do with this guy. He left me. Dorothy.

I'm out. Yeah. Abbott was like, there's circumstantial evidence. Like he said, you know, web wasn't big better on horses. And they're like, oh, maybe the coded names are like horse names. Like the code is based on horse names. Okay. And he was also fond of poetry and loved the roubaillant.

Okay. Okay. So they're like, this is the guy. The police and the police are like, we're thinking about it. They're still, they're still brewing on it. Wait a minute. But there's no, there's no photographs of him. And there's no living relatives who have ever met, who had ever met while he was alive.

Our friend Carl Webb. I have a question. Yes. Is Jessica Thompson just handing out these copies of the roubaillant? Like they're fucking... Because she's, everyone she hangs out with has a fucking copy of and loves the roubaillant. She's, I think she's a, one of those Tinder swindlers who just like runs, maybe she's not a spy. Maybe she's just a player.

Maybe she just loves poetry. Okay. Persian poetry is her passion. And you know, like low poetry, like that's a real like player. Like, oh, I'm so deep. The same copy of the roubaillant that I give to fucking, and no, no, you got to change the book up. Otherwise it becomes a little bit of a... Well, it becomes awkward when the police are like, hey, how many people have you given this book to?

We were like, ah. So that's where we stand. 2022, Professor Abbott has declared his clue solution. He was like, it was Carl Webb on the beach. But we still don't know, was he a spy? Who poisoned him? How'd he get to the beach? How are his shoes so clean?

So the threads was shit was all bullshit in the end. The thread shit was all just like red herrings. Orange herrings. Wax and orange herrings. Classic. Wow. Or he could have been, you know, he could have been like killed and dressed in those clothing, in that clothing. That's true.

You know. What do you make of it, Jared? I think he was a spy. And I think he was involved with Jessica Thompson. And I don't know if she was a spy. She sure fucking keeps her mouth shut like one. But I think maybe somebody got her involved in a scheme to out him as a spy and like get rid of him, you know. What a terrible, no amount of money.

And she's got a kid with him? Apparently. That is only that we don't have proof. That's not proven. That's just very likely. According to. According to earlobe science and teeth science. Earlobe science and tooth science say it's very likely.

Our ear nose and throat guy has had a look. Yeah. And he's very specific. Uh huh. Where is the Summerton man? I mean, not that I encourage anybody to go, I don't know, leave mysterious flowers at his grave or anything like that. But where has the Summerton man been laid to rest? The West Harvest.

If any fans of ours in Adelaide want to go to the West Harvest Cemetery. Fans of ours? You just cozyed right up in there with us, huh? Listen, I'm a guest. Exactly. Please take care. I'm the man of the hour, right? You can pander to our fans all day long.

Look, this is not how you treat guests. What are you doing? I'm trying to start a real homeless fight. Oh, I'm happy. This is something that we can hash this over for a few episodes before we patch it up, move on, and watch some other people make asses of themselves. And marry our grandfathers. Yeah, exactly. And marry our step-grandfathers like Mary Cosby.

Yes. I co-signed the spy theory. Uh huh. I think J-Tomp, Jessica Thompson, our girl, has to be a spy. But it's like a spy who's in a spy situation. I've got them as spies who came together and made passionate romance at one point. You know what? I can't speak to the quality of the romance, but it bore them a child.

And she also, like, separately has this bizarre quirk where she gives everyone she knows copies of the rubyot. But maybe this is all part of her code. You know what I mean? Like, it's a cipher book. Yeah, it's the cipher. Did they ever try to decipher it based on the message that Jessica left in the copy of the rubyot? I don't think they did. And they know what it is.

It's a specific verse. Apply that verse to this cipher. Somebody else, do that out there and please don't take the credit for it. Thank you. Yeah, the spy thing, I have to say, is very convincing. There's still so many questions. I think that his body was dropped off via boat. By a boat?

Okay, so you're introducing a boat to this scenario. We're gonna introduce a sailboat. Not any boat. A sailboat? Yeah. I love the panache of this theory. Good, keep going. Draw me a picture, babe.

It came from Northern Africa, Morocco, around Suez Canal. We'll do it that way. Suez, yeah. Yeah. Dropped this body so that the murder happened. At sea? At sea. Yeah.

In the Suez. Actually, to be more specific, in the Suez Canal. I can't believe I didn't see it. And he was killed, because that's where they picked up the book. And it was a translation disagreement. They were translating it, and it was like, this word, no. They didn't know, one of them was saying it means it is finished. The other one was like, actually, it means something closer to blank.

Yeah. Yeah, it's like, when you translate, there is no English derivative of that word. We can't say that. The classic Farsi translation argument. Yes, in the middle of the Suez Canal. In the middle of the Suez Canal, yeah. And the passage, the most heated passage in question was the final two words that were clipped and hidden in his secret orange thread pocket.

As one last fuck you. As one last I was right. I speak better Farsi than you. Or apply it to the task of translation more meaningfully. Yes. Interesting. So, yeah, you're pretty classic translation issue there. I think you figured it out.

I think you got it, yeah. I think I better get on Reddit. Let them know. Oh, that's season two. Season two, bitches. Thank you. You can say it is finished. Tom, I'm sure on season two.

And the words of Omar Kayam. Thank you for being here. Thank you, everyone, for listening for two seasons. Please, if you have enjoyed these last two seasons, go like, rate, subscribe. If you want to kick us a couple of bucks to celebrate the end of the season, go to ko-fi.com slash bittersweeten for me. We're going to have a fancy new outro coming soon so we don't have to say it every time. Yeah.

You got anything to say to the people, Josie? Happy Halloween. Oh, yeah. Jared, will you say stay sweet for us? I'll stay sweet and I'll stay bitter. I'll stay both. Okay. That's a good resolution to get into season two.

No, I'll stay sweet. No touch it. You already decided. Get out of the car. Oh, yeah, this is my stop. I gotta go. Thanks for tuning in. If you want more infamy, go to bittersweetinfamy.com or search for us wherever you find your podcasts.

We usually release a new episode every other Sunday. And you can also find us on Instagram at bittersweetinfamy. And if you liked the show, consider subscribing, leaving a review or just tell a friend. Stay sweet. The sources that I used for this episode's mindfulness were an article from the BBC called Coronavirus. Indonesian Village uses ghosts for distancing patrols. Published April 13th, 2020.

I read an article from CNN written by Emma Reynolds called Ghosts Try to Spook People Off-Streets During Coronavirus in Indonesia. Published Monday, April 13th, 2020. As inspiration for the Pechong story, I listened and watched a short YouTube video from the channel Snod that had the kernel of the idea of the Pechong haunting a young woman in the forest and then her mother greedily hugging it. And lastly, I took a look at the Wikipedia for Pechong. The sources that Gerard used for this week's episode were The Summerton Man Died Alone

on a Beach in 1948. Now Australian scientists are close to solving the mystery by Hilary Whiteman from CNN, May 31st, 2021. He consulted two articles from Smithsonian Magazine, The Body on Summerton Beach by Mike Daff, August 12th, 2011, and Have Scholars Finally Identified the Mysterious Summerton Man by Dolly, August 8th, 2022. Lastly, he consulted the timeline of the Tamamship case from Derrick Abbott of University of Adelaide. Our interstitial music is by Mitchell Collins. The song you're currently listening to is Tea Street by Brian Steele.

Happy Halloween. Huge thanks again to Gerard. Thanks for two seasons. Hug your local Pechong. They need love too.