Casefile True Crime - Case 02: The Somerton Man

Episode Date: January 16, 2016

On the first of December 1948, a body of a man was located along the seawall of Somerton Beach, just near Adelaide in South Australia. At first, the police thought it was going to be a straightforward matter, but as the weeks and months went on, it became apparent that this case was anything but straightforward… To this day we don’t know who he is, we don’t know where he came from and we don’t know how he died. For all credits and sources please visit casefilepodcast.com/case-02-the-somerton-man

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Music On the 1st of December 1948, the body of a man was located along the seawall of Summerton Beach, just near Red Alive, in South Australia. At first the case received very little media attention and the police thought it was a pretty straightforward matter. The natural death on the beach, no big deal, just had to ID the body and it would all be over. But as the weeks and months went on it soon became apparent that this case was anything but straightforward and the further you dug into it, the deeper it went. To this day we don't know who he is, we don't know where he came from and we don't know how he died.

Welcome to the mysterious case of the Summerton Man. Music On Wednesday the 1st of December 1948, the body of an unknown man was found on Summerton Beach in Adelaide, South Australia. The unknown man would come to be known as the Summerton Man. He remains one of Australia's most baffling mysteries. He was found lying on the sand with his head propped up resting against the seawall. It's a pretty uncomfortable awkward position. To this day his identity and cause of death remain a mystery.

Like all mysterious and unsolved cases there are many theories and a lot of wild speculation. And in this case there's a lot of information to fuel these theories and wild speculation. The Summerton Man was found with no identification. In fact even the labels from the clothes he was wearing had been removed. To this day he remains unidentified. He was found with a crumbled up piece of paper in his pocket containing two words. Taman should, which is Persian meaning finished or ended. These words were later linked to a poultry book which contained what many believed to be a secret code.

Along with the code there was two phone numbers, that of a local bank and one of a local Adelaide woman who lived only about 400 metres away from where the Summerton Man was found. The Adelaide woman said she had no idea who the Summerton Man was but many believed she was lying. Like most unsolved cases there are plenty more questions than answers. But let's start with what we do know and to do that we need to go back to Adelaide, 1948. The Summerton Man arrived at Adelaide train station on the day before his body was found, Tuesday 30th November 1948. Once arriving at the station he checked his suitcase into the plug room. The suitcase was tagged and the receipt was given to the Summerton Man.

From a time stamp found on the suitcase tag is determined that he checked it in somewhere around 11am. The only train arriving to Adelaide around that time that was from a big city was a train from Melbourne. All the other trains arriving into Adelaide were from smaller country locations. So it's commonly thought he most likely came from Melbourne as a non-identified mystery man walking around with a suitcase probably would have stood out in a smaller country location. The locals out there don't miss too much. After checking in the suitcase the Summerton Man bought a train ticket to go from Adelaide station to Henley Beach. It was a second class one-way ticket although nothing could really be taken away from that as all tickets on that line were second class. There was no first class.

Within the time frame of him checking his suitcase in there were two departures to Henley Beach. One at 10.50am and the other at 11.51am. But the Summerton Man didn't get on either train as the ticket was found unused in his pocket. Instead of boarding a train he walked across the road and bought a bus ticket to Glenelg. The bus departed at 11.15am and dropped him off about a 20 minute walk away from where he was found dead on Summerton Beach. Now Henley Beach for where he had the unused train ticket was 7km away from where he was found. So that's a pretty long walk. The thought is he probably bought that train ticket as Henley Beach was the closest train station to where he had to go

not realising that there was a bus that got him a lot closer. So after talking to someone or even seeing a sign he bought the bus ticket and didn't worry about the train ticket. He jumped on board the bus would have been an old double decker back then and made the journey to Glenelg. Getting there around lunchtime. What he did after getting off the bus is anyone's guess because there's no sight of the Summerton Man again until about 7.15pm that evening. At 7.15pm a local businessman John Lyons and his wife were going for a walk along Summerton Beach. The sun was starting to set about this time. Here they saw the Summerton Man lying on the beach head propped up against the sea wall body laying out on the sand.

Just like when he was found dead. Although he wasn't dead because he raised his right arm up and then flopped it down. They didn't think too much of it they just put it down to another drunk who had won too many and was now sleeping it off and they continued on their walk. Now should be noted this is not a quiet isolated spot. There were plenty of people who used the beach and walked along the Esplanade. It was a popular location. He was laying right next to a set of stairs which led up to the Esplanade and these stairs were used regularly. About 8pm that night a young couple were going for a walk along the Esplanade.

It was just on dusk. They sat down on a bench right next to the staircase where the Summerton Man was laying down below on the sand. Here they saw an unknown man in a hat standing at the top of the steps. He appeared to be looking down at the Summerton Man. This man was never identified and was never seen or heard from again. No one knows if he's related to the case or not. The young couple looked down and they could see the legs of the Summerton Man but their view of the top half of his body was blocked by the staircase. They didn't see him move but they did report that by the time they'd left the bench they thought his position had changed.

They commented that they thought it was strange that he wasn't moving because the mosquitoes were bad. But they didn't go in for a closer look and as they thought his position had changed they thought everything was okay. They got up and left and they didn't see anyone else before leaving. About 6am the next morning, Wednesday the 1st of December, two jockies were each riding a horse down on the beach. They rode past the Summerton Man but like John Lyons and his wife their initial thoughts were that it was just a drunk sleeping off a bender. However when they rode back up the beach they realised that he hadn't moved. He was in the exact same spot his head propped up against the seawall. It's a pretty awkward, unnatural looking position.

They went in to see if he was alright but he wasn't. The Summerton Man was dead. Now at this time John Lyons was actually back at the beach. He was going for a morning swim with a friend. The jockies and the bit of commotion caught his eye and he immediately recognised the Summerton Man as the same person he and his wife had seen the night before. He rushed over and called the police. Police officer John Moss was the first to arrive at the scene. He got there at about 6.45.

He examined the scene and he found a half smoke cigarette that had fallen between the Summerton Man's cheek and his collar but there were no burn or blister marks on his face or clothing. The sands surrounding him wasn't disturbed, his clothing wasn't ruffled or dishevelled, there was no debris or personal items scattered around the beach. Basically he determined there were no signs of violence at all. A check of the Summerton Man's pockets found the unused train ticket, the bus ticket, two combs, one aluminium and one plastic. The aluminium came as thought to be from America as they were pretty rare in Australia at the time or they weren't actually available at all I don't think. A packet of juicy fruit chewing gum and a packet of Army Club cigarettes. But the cigarettes inside the packet of Army Clubs weren't Army Club, they were a different brand, Considus. There was also a box of Bryant and May's matches.

It was common at the time for people to buy an expensive brand of cigarettes, keep that box and then fill it up with cheaper cigarettes. It was just an image thing. But the funny thing about the Summerton Man is that the Considus cigarettes were the more expensive brand. Far more expensive than the Army Club box that he had. So this could have been a sign of someone who was trying to keep a low profile. An ambulance was called and they took the body to Royal Adelaide Hospital where a doctor came out and pronounced the Summerton Man dead. The time of death was estimated to be no earlier than 2am. But that is now considered to be a very rough estimate as the methods used to estimate the time of death back then not quite as good as what they do today.

The post-mortem was performed the next day. Now what immediately stuck out about the Summerton Man was that he was a physical specimen in incredible shape, well-built, classic V-shaped body of an athlete. Someone physically strong yet he had very smooth hands with no calluses indicating that he didn't work in any job involving manual labour or heavy use of the hands. His hands were also described as being enormous. His fingernails and toenails were well cared for. And along with his impressive upper body physique he also had unusually well-developed calf muscles with a bulge near the knee. The coroner thought this was a sign that he may have been a professional dancer or a ballet performer or something similar. He was described or estimated to be about 45 years old, about 80 kilos. He was a Caucasian male. He was missing about 16 teeth overall but that wasn't at all uncommon at the time. In fact there's probably more common than not.

Another unusual thing about the Summerton Man is that his spleen was three times the size of a normal spleen. Now this indicates a pre-existing illness that would not have happened quickly overnight at the time of his death. So I thought that he'd been carrying it for a while. It's evidence that he might have already been in a weakened state when he died. In large spleens can be a result of many illnesses including viral and bacterial infections, inflammatory diseases, even some cancers can cause that. He also had yellow stained hands indicating that he was a heavy smoker. His actual cause of death that was not immediately obvious but there were no signs of foul play so it was thought to be a natural death. His heart stopping although his heart was healthy so they couldn't put their finger on it straight away.

The police certainly weren't treating it as a suspicious death in the early stages. They were convinced it wouldn't be too long before a relative or friend came forward and identified the body and the case would be finalised. A lot of people did come forward to try and identify the body as a missing relative or friend but no positive idea was made. After a few days it started to become a bit of a concern and on the 10th of December a decision was made between banning the body to preserve it in the hopes that in the coming days or weeks somebody would eventually show up and identify the body and the case could be finalised. But no one ever did. It didn't take long before the investigators, the medical people actually started to deviate off the natural death path and onto an unnatural death path. As I already said he had a healthy heart, there was no sign of heart disease or anything like that so there's nothing to suggest that his heart would just stop due to a heart attack or something.

Something had to have caused his heart to stop beating. And what the medical staff worked out is that they thought this something was poison. Samples were sent away for testing, the doctor in charge became convinced he was almost certain that they would return positive for poison. And he was of this belief because the some of the main stomach kidneys and liver were congested with a large amount of congealed blood, which is what happens when you're poisoned. Those organs don't just fill up with congealed blood for no reason, it certainly doesn't happen when you die a natural death. But certain as they had become now that poison was the cause of death, they could not find any sign of it. All the tests came back negative for poison, they couldn't detect a trace. There was one other problem too with the poison theory and that is there was no sign of vomiting as is usually the case with poisoning deaths.

Dr Robert Cowan is the chemist who tested for the presence of poisons and he stated, I found no common poison present and I do not think any common poison caused death. If he did die from poison I think it would be a very rare poison, I mean something rarely used for suicidal or homicidal purposes. There are poisons that excrete from the body quickly, which would leave no trace and it's possible that the somatomere could have vomited elsewhere, even nearby, before eventually making his way down onto the beach where he died. To this day it's never been able to be proven that poison was the cause of death, although it can't be disproved either. But regardless, the coroner, the medical examiners and the police had now become certain that death was not caused by natural causes. They now just had to work out if it was suicide or murder.

Once they started to work out that death was no longer natural, they assigned detectives to the case. And while there are no signs of foul play when the somatomere was found, there was something pretty unusual discovered. All of the identifying tags on his clothing had been removed. All gone, couldn't see whether clothes were made at all, no identifying marks, nothing. They had been deliberately removed. But had they been removed by the somatomere or by somebody else? The detectives immediately checked out Adelaide train station to see if there was any unclaimed luggage and they were in luck. This is where they found the somatomere suitcase.

Inside the suitcase there was nothing extraordinary, just the usual run-of-the-mill stuff. We had a dressing gown, a laundry bag, a pair of scissors, a knife, a stencil brush, a few singlets, some underpants, two tyres, a pair of slippers, a pair of trousers, a sports coat, a shirt, some handkerchiefs, envelopes, coat hangers, cigarette lighter, razor, shaving brush, towel, pencils, a scarf, a toothbrush. You know, nothing significant or unusual. But what did stand out is that even though the train ticket and bus ticket and other items were found on the somatomere, his luggage receipt was missing. That wasn't located on his body at all.

The detectives were just working on a hunch that maybe there was some unclaimed luggage at the train station. That's how it was found. So where was the receipt that he would have been issued when he checked the luggage in to the cloakroom? Did he lose it? Or did somebody take it? Just like on the somatomere, there was no ID in the suitcase. But how they were able to match it to him was that there was a piece of thread in the suitcase that they matched to the clothing that the somatomere was wearing, where his clothing had been repaired with this thread. The clothing sizes were also a match.

And also, they worked out that the suitcase was checked in to the cloakroom on the 30th, the day that he arrived in to Adelaide, which matches up with the tickets that he had. So that was enough to convince the detectives that this was definitely the somatomere suitcase. But it gets weirder, because just like on the somatomere, where all his identifying labels from the clothing had been removed, all the identifying labels from the items of clothing within the suitcase had also been removed. Well, most of them anyway. There were three things that they found a name the tag was still attached. On the laundry bag, they found a name printed on the label Keen, K-E-A-N-E.

On one of the singlets was also the name Keen, this time spelled K-E-A-N. And on one of the ties, there was the name T-Keen, K-E-A-N-E again. The fact that there's yet no identification had been made was really starting to concern detectives. Now, the somatomere's photo and fingerprints were sent all across Australia and overseas to try and help our team, but that didn't bring in any results. His identity remained a mystery. They went to work on the name Keen. Extensive checks were conducted, but they couldn't find any matches.

There was no missing person reports, no other unaccounted full people, no unmatching that name Keen, who they could link to the somatomere. It was also very common at the time for people to buy secondhand clothing, and clothing had even been rationed out during the war, which had only just ended. So it's more than possible that the name Keen isn't the name of the somatomere at all. In fact, most believe it's not. Especially when you consider all the other tags had been removed from his clothing and from the suitcase itself. But those three items with the name Keen remained.

If he was trying to conceal his identity or somebody else was trying to conceal his identity after his death, the obvious thing to do would be to leave those tags on with the name Keen if that wasn't his name. This would provide a false lead and provide police with a bit of work to try and chase up down a dead end path. And when they found the suitcase, it was found unlocked. So the somatomere missing his luggage receipt, it's quite possible that after his death, someone took that receipt, went in, got the suitcase and tampered with it, rummaged to do it, removed the tags or removed other items that could either be him. If the tags weren't removed by the somatomere, we don't know.

But it's definitely possible. This is the days before CCTV or anything like that, so you could quite easily slip in, go through the suitcase, put it back in for police to find. Police started doing checks on the clothing itself, and they found that the coat the somatomere was wearing was made in the United States. Also, the tie he was wearing had the stripes printed in a certain direction, indicating that it was also made in the United States. This doesn't mean the somatomere was from the United States, but certainly some of his clothing was.

Just try and put yourself in the shoes of the detectives here. They've pretty much got no idea what's going on. They don't know who this guy is, where he came from, how he died, if it was suicide or murder. If it wasn't hard enough already, it was made harder because they started on the back foot from the get-go. Remember, they initially thought it was a natural death, then it was treated accordingly. Crucial evidence could have been lost. Not only was it 1948 and crime scene investigation techniques are now a year-level today. They forget about the same ballpark, it's not even the same game.

And DNA evidence is still unheard of for another 40 years. But, I mean, they never gave themselves a chance. They were chasing their tail from the very start. As the investigation continued, the body of the somatomere was starting to deteriorate. The embalming was starting to wear off. So, a decision was made to have a plaster cast mould made of his head and upper torso area. And that still actually exists today. After this cast was made, the Somatomere man was buried.

He was buried on the 14th of June and a headstone was placed on his gravesite reading. Here lies the unknown man who was found at Somatomere Beach 1st December 1948. By now, another pretty important clue had been discovered. Just before the coronial inquest, a piece of paper was found crumbled up in the pants of the somatomere. It had originally been missed by investigators. And on that crumbled-up piece of paper read two words, tamanshur, that's Persian, meaning finished or ended. They immediately got to work trying to find out where these words could have came from.

It looked like they'd been ripped out of a book. And they did find the book. Turns out, these two words were printed on the last page of a poetry book. The book was titled The Rubiant of Omar Koyam. Omar Koyam was a Persian poet, astronomer, philosopher and mathematician who lived from 1048 to 1131. The Rubiant of Omar Koyam is an English translation of a selection of his poems done by Edward Fitzgerald in the 1800s. The translations are pretty subjective and others have different interpretations of what the poems actually mean, but Fitzgerald is the most well-known.

It was a very popular book. The general theme throughout the book is one of seizing the day, living life to the fullest and dying without regret. They would eventually track down the actual book the somatomere ripped these words from, but unfortunately this book wasn't found until after the inquest. The coronial inquest was held over two days on the 17th of June and then again on the 21st of June, 1949. The coroner concluded, the identity of the deceased was quite unknown. His death was not natural and that it was almost certainly not accidental.

It was noticed at the inquest how remarkably clean the somatomere and shoes were. That, along with the rest of his appearance, well kept fingernails, general clean and tidy appearance led the coroner to believe he wasn't a vagrant or a drifter. The inquest was adjourned to no fixed date, meaning the case would remain open and continue to be investigated and it could sit again if further information turned up. It was still thought that poison was the cause of death and two poisons in particular were mentioned that could have caused the death and remain undetectable. The names of those poisons weren't released to the public for many, many years after,

as they were easy to obtain at the time and the last thing they wanted to do was give the public an easy undetectable way to kill someone. By now, the media had well and truly started to take a massive interest in the case. At first, the media had barely a passing interest, a man dying of what was initially thought to be natural causes on the beach, not exactly headlong grabbing stuff. But as time went on, the mystery surrounding the identity and the exact cause of the somatomere's death was starting to capture the public and media interest. Once detectives had linked the words Tamar and Shudd to the poetry book,

they made a public appeal if anyone had a copy of the book with a page or piece of page missing. Incredibly, on the 22nd of July 1949, a man came forward with a copy of the book with a piece missing from the exact spot where those words would have been printed. He said he found it on the back seat of his car and he has no idea how he got there. Never seen it before, thought it was unusual at the time but didn't think too much more of it till he saw a media release calling for a copy of the book. And of course, his car was parked at Summiton Beach right at the time the Summiton man died. He recalls his window was left unopened, pretty common at the time.

Police had that copy of the book that was handed in analysed and compared to the page that was found on the Summiton man that had a paper expert analyse it, and it was a 100% match. A piece of paper with the words Tamar and Shudd found on the Summiton man came from this book that had been handed in, that had been tossed into the back seat of a car. So the Summiton man had thrown the book into a random car that had its windows down at Summiton Beach. Why throw it into a car and not into a bin? Did he want someone to find it? Was he being followed and had to get rid of the book quickly?

And was that his best option at the time? No one really knows. The identity of the man who came forward with the book is unknown. He requested to remain anonymous and police respected those wishes. The book itself is very popular and many copies exist, but this particular copy that was handed in is extremely rare. To this day, another exact copy hasn't been found. And it gets better. In the back of this particular copy of the Rubianne of Omar Kayan that this unknown person found in the back seat of his car,

there were four lines of letters handwritten at the back, some sort of code. To this day, it hasn't been broken. There's a link in the podcast description to the code as seeing it for yourself will be better than me trying to describe it, but there's four lines of letters. The code was published in the paper and amateur code breakers from all over the country got the work on the mystery. Many thought it may have been a code referencing back to the book of Omar Kayan itself. Top military code breakers have been consulted, but no one has been able to crack it for this day. Many have gone mad trying that.

What is significant about the code is that the second line is crossed out, and that crossed out line is very similar to the start of the fourth line, indicating whatever was being written was very deliberate and obviously a mistake had been made. But what if it's not a code itself? So maybe it's just an aid memoir, maybe reminding the writer of a certain poem or poems in the book, or maybe it doesn't even reference the book at all. Maybe whoever wrote it was just using a letter to represent a word, a sort of shorthand if you will. Whatever it is, it certainly adds a great deal of mystery to the case.

And this code certainly bamboozled police if they weren't already bamboozled enough. It's also what leads many people to believe that the Summoner Man case is related to spies, secret agents, Cespionage. They believe the Summoner Man may have been a communist spy. Jason Bourne, James Bourne type stuff. When you put the code together with the missing labels, the lack of ID, and a few other things in the case that'll come up shortly, it actually doesn't sound too crazy. But we'll get into all that in a bit.

First we need to talk about the phone numbers that were also written down at the back of the book. There were two phone numbers written in the book along with the code. The first belonged to a local bank. The second was tracked to a local woman by the name of Jessica Thompson. Now for many, many years in this case her real identity was unknown. She was only ever known by a nickname of sorts, which was Justin. So if you do any reading on the case, you'll often hear mention of a mystery woman or Justin. Well, her real name is Jessica Thompson.

And her phone number was in the book along with the code that the Summoner Man had torn the words Tumlin should from. Not only was Jessica Thompson a local, she lived at Summoner Beach only about 400 metres away from where the Summoner Man was found. So it was starting to look like the Summoner Man didn't choose Summoner Beach randomly. He had a purpose to be there. On the 26th of July, 1949, nearly over seven months after the Summoner Man was found, police knocked on Jessica's door. They started asking her questions about the Summoner Man and she denied any knowledge. They also started asking questions about the Ruben Arnt of Omar Koyan poetry book. And she surprises them. She says, yes, that's my favourite book in poetry.

So the police were like, okay, do you own a copy? Jessica says, yes, I did, but I gave it away. Turns out she gave it away to a member of the military that she met in Sydney about four years earlier in 1945. His name was Alf Boxel. The police thought New Beauty case solved that Summoner Man is obviously Alf Boxel. And Jessica had given away a copy of the book with her phone number in it and for whatever reason, he's made his way to Summoner Beach and he's died. That was the thought anyway.

Police took Jessica down to see the plaster cast that had been made of the Summoner Man and her behaviour was described as being quite odd. She couldn't really look at the plaster cast. After her first look at it, she stared at the floor. She only gave brief, simple answers to police questions. She looked like she was about to faint, basically showing all the signs that she knew exactly who the Summoner Man was. Jessica was married by now and she had two children, a son, Robin and a daughter, Kate. Robin was born first and Jessica's husband was not the father. A son known who the father of Robin actually is.

Jessica requested her name not be released so she didn't want any embarrassment to come to her family with her being linked to the Summoner Man. Police agreed. That's why for many years she was only known as the Mystery Woman or Gestant. Police got to work on the Althboxel theory and it wasn't long before their bubble was burst. They found him alive and well, living in Sydney. And he still had the copy of the Roubaillant of Omar Kion that Jessica had given him. She had inscribed a short passage in the book when she gave it to Alth and signed it to Gestant. That's how she came to be known by that particular nickname.

So not only was Althboxel alive, he still had his copy of the Roubaillant, meaning that the Summoner Man had a different copy of the Roubaillant with Jessica's phone number in it. As if this case wasn't strange enough, now this happens. The poor-eyed police at the time mustn't have known what had hit them. So how did Jessica and Althboxel come to meet? In 1945, Jessica was living in Sydney. She was training to be a nurse at the Royal North Shore Hospital. She spent a few evenings at the Clifton Gardens Hotel in Sydney, which was frequented by many military servicemen at the time.

It was here Jessica met Alth, a girlfriend of one of Alth's friends introduced him. They got together only for a few nights, shared a few drinks, and Alth was being put back on active duty for the war. So as a parting gift, Jessica gave him a copy of her favourite book, the Roubaillant of Omar Kion. Jessica left Sydney soon after she didn't complete her nursing exams. She moved to Melbourne for a brief period before settling in Adelaide. Jessica would have fallen pregnant with Robin around this time,

and who the father is we don't know. Some suspect it could have been Althboxel, but there's others that suspect it could have been the Summerton Man. And remember, when the Summerton Man arrived in Adelaide, the only train from a major city that day was from Melbourne. So it was always assumed the Summerton Man came from Melbourne. Did the Summerton Man meet Jessica in Sydney, where she gave him a copy of the Roubaillant as well as she had given Alth?

Did he then try and track her down in Melbourne, only to find out she was now in Adelaide, and that's why he arrived there? To track down a former lover. Whatever the case, it was clear that Jessica was lying to police. She knew who the Summerton Man was. The daughter Kate would go on later, or many years later, was only recently in a 60-minute interview,

that she described Jessica as her mother as a woman with a very strong dark side. She even went on to say she thought she was probably a Russian spy. She found out one day that Jessica spoke Russian, but she wouldn't say where or why she learned it. This gives further weight to those that have always believed the spy angle. You have the code, the removed tags, the mystery identity, the mystery cause of death, which many believe to be undetectable poison, the behaviour of Jessica being deceptive to police.

And to top it all off, Jessica said to a daughter one day that the Summerton Man is known to people at a much higher level than the state police. That's all detailed in a 60-minute story, which was done a few years ago, and there's a link to that in the podcast. There is another pretty significant piece of information that adds further weight to the spy angle. In 1946, a few hundred kilometres out of Adelaide, Britain and Australia entered into a joint project of missile and nuclear rocket testing.

This would come to be known as the Woomera Testing Facility. So if this case does in fact involve the spy angle, there would be every reason for a Russian spy to be in Adelaide, the top secret rocket and missile testing facility that was nearby. Remember, this was the start of the Cold War, democracy versus communism. The Evil Reds, all that stuff. Certainly it is accepted that there were definitely spies in operation in Australia around this time. So now we have this top secret military testing facility.

So you add this piece of information to the code, the missing labels, the lack of identity, the unexplained cause of death, believed to be some sort of undetectable poison. You can see why this case has the attention of conspiracy theorists. One person that could have answered a lot of questions was Jessica, but she kept the cars very close to her chest. She definitely knew more about the case than what she laid on. Even towards the later years of her life, when it was still being investigated, she remained deceptive to police.

Jerry Feltas, who was a cold case detective who took on the case in the 90s and still investigates it to this day in his retirement, he interviewed Jessica. He described there as being very evasive with her answers, even, you know, 50 years after the event. Not only that, whenever the case was brought back into the spotlight or was receiving publicity for whatever reason, Jessica would either disappear on holidays or leave town.

But apart from spies and the possible love story angle which we mentioned, there is another possibility. World War II had just finished. Europe was in absolute chaos. You had the Soviet Union controlling Eastern Europe with the USA involved in Western Europe, communism versus democracy, the beginnings of the Cold War. The rule of the Soviet Union in the East was considered oppressive, and this led to a mass exodus of people looking to move and find a better life elsewhere.

Australia was a very popular destination for these people. It was considered a safe place to live, especially when nuclear war broke out between the Soviets and the USA. Australia was a little more isolated from other parts of the world. Millions of people immigrated to Australia in the years after World War II. In 1948, the immigration policy was in full swing, and that was actually the peak time for the Australian government Displaced Persons Immigration Program,

which was specifically designed to help bring people to Australia who had been displaced from their homeland when World War II broke out. Of course, checks were conducted on everyone coming in, but how stringent were these checks? It wasn't uncommon for people to use false names, create new identities, a fresh start in a new homeland. It's quite possible that some of the men was one of these millions of immigrants that was flocking to Australia at the time.

It would explain why no one was ever able to identify him. Not only were there lots of immigrants flocking to Australia, just stop and think about how many returning soldiers there were displaced and suffering. A high percentage were struggling with what we now know as PTSD and what was referred to as shell shock. And this led many soldiers to be displaced, become drifters, become estranged from their families. And that's another possibility in the case of the Summertime Man.

But of course, with so many questions and so few answers, each theory has its own pros and cons. The big glaring con for every theory is the unexplained cause of death. If Summertime Man was a displaced immigrant or a returning soldier, how could he just drop dead with a healthy heart and no other sign of healthy shoes, apart from the spleen, but, you know, no obvious cause of death, other than a lot of congealed blood pointing to poisoning. The same goes for the love angle.

If Jessica was a former lover of the Summertime Man, that explains why he was there, but it doesn't explain how he died. That's what leads many to go down the Jason Bourne James Bourne path. It's easy to explain his death if it was a common aspire. That's what spires did. Killed each other with undetectable poisons. Obviously, it was picked off by another spire who caught him out.

And that would certainly explain the code that was found in his copy of the Rubio Archery book and why all the identifying labels have been removed from his clothing. But if the Summertime Man was a spire, where does that leave Jessica Thompson in all this and why was her phone number in the copy of the Rubio Archery? The more you think about this case, the more your head starts to hurt. And while our heads are hurting, what about this?

Jessica's favourite book was called How It's End by A.M. Foster. The book is the story of a girl who has a son out of wedlock Her family tried to scare the girl's lover off, but in doing so, they accidentally killed him because he had a pre-existing, weak heart condition and the altercation caused him to die accidentally. Could that have been Jessica's way of telling us what happened to the Summertime Man without telling us what really happened?

Could be, or could just be a favourite book. Who knows, it's just another part of a mystery. In 1945, three years before the Summertime Man case, a man by the name of Joseph George Saul Arm Marshall was found dead in Ashton Park in Sydney. His death was ruled as a suicide by poison. On his chest, he had a copy of the Rubio Archery of Omar Kayam. And that copy was also very rare

and just like Summertime Case, another copy just like it was never able to be found. A lady who went on to give evidence that the inquest was found dead 13 days later in a bath face down with a wrist both slit. That could just be a bit of random information, not related to the case, but it's still pretty odd. Moving forward to today, the case is still as mysterious and weird as it was back then

and it still remains unsolved and is still open. There are two people thought to be experts in the case and links to their work have been provided in the podcast description. First is Jerry Feltas, a retired decorated detective who has investigated the case for many years. He's cracked some tough ones in his time, but even he hasn't been able to crack the Summertime Man. He's written an excellent book titled

The Unknown Man Detailing the Case, which I recommend checking out. The second person is Professor Derek Abbott from Adelaide University. He stumbled across the case several years ago and became fascinated, probably obsessed with the case. He's trying to get the body of the Summertime Man dug up for DNA testing. He's submitted two proposals so far and they've both been rejected.

Fun fact, the two experts, Jerry Feltas and Professor Derek Abbott, aren't fiends of each other. But it can't be denied, both have done excellent work. I recommend checking both out. Professor Abbott actually appeared on a Reddit Ask Me Anything forum a little while ago and there's a ton of useful info on there, so there's a link to that on the podcast description as well as his website where you can see the original police statements and coronial documents.

As far as using today's technology to crack the case, well, the only chance of that happening is if Professor Abbott is ever successful in getting the body dug up for DNA testing because the Summertime Man's suitcase and all its belongings and even a copy of the Rubayant were all destroyed many years ago when Adelaide or South Australian police were doing their clean-out. So unfortunately, there's nothing really to test. Another fun fact about Professor Derek Abbott who's obsessed with the case

is during his time investigating the case, he met the daughter of Robin Thompson, who is Jessica Thompson's granddaughter. In meeting the daughter of Robin Thompson, he also met her daughter, Jessica Thompson's great-granddaughter, and he married her. They have three children together. He has a pretty interesting theory. He's convinced that the Summertime Man was a former lover of Jessica Thompson and they had a child together, that child being Robin Thompson.

These theories, the Summertime Man is a case of a former lover, possibly a jilted lover who knows tracking down Jessica to Summertime Beach for reasons unknown, whether he's trying to rekindle the relationship or Professor Abbott even thinks that due to the enlarged spleen that the Summertime Man may have already been dying and he knew he was dying and maybe that's why he finally tracked Jessica down, maybe to try and, you know, one last goodbye or whatever and that went however, when then he made his way to the beach

and died of natural causes and just hasn't been able to explain. He's not convinced that he was poisoned. Now he's raised his conclusion just due to all the circumstances of the case and also because of a particular feature on the year of the Summertime Man which is also shared by Robin Thompson and it only appears in 1-2% of the population. So what are the chances of both of these people, you know, sort of linked in this way in the case of sharing this unusual feature of their ear? You know, you certainly look at it and you think it's quite possible,

especially when you learn that years, surprisingly enough, are actually considered to be quite good identifiers of people, not as good as fingerprints, but pretty close. So if that is the case, it still doesn't really explain his death. Natural causes was pretty much ruled out by the medical examiners at the time. So many possibilities, a spy, a former lover, a displaced immigrant, a displaced soldier or there's so many more theories on top of that. The only thing we do know is we have no idea who the Summertime Man was,

where he came from or how he died.