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I hope they find his heritage. I feel like I know him, having walked by the concrete seawall he died under many times. Every time I did, I contemplated his parents and what they might have hoped for their lost son. What were their dreams and goals for him when he was a boy? Nobody deserves to be isolated in mortuity like that. He needs a home. Even after all these years.
 
Good morning.
I'm new here after being pointed to your site by my publisher. As it happens I've just completed and have had a modest book published about this mystery. It took five years of research, including many contacts with the detective in charge of the cold case, Gerry Feltus.
The book is a fiction but almost every aspect of the mystery has been covered. The code, the nurse, her sudden departure from Sydney, the army lieutenant, the Rubaiyat itself, the meetings in the Clifton Gardens Hotel, and of course the dead man himself. Where he came from, what he did, how he died and who killed him. Why he was killed, how he was transported to the beach, how the Tamam Shud slip ended up in his fob pocket, what the tools in his luggage were used for, the reason he had no spare socks in his luggage ..... and more. How he met the nurse, who introduced them, why he followed her to Adelaide.
The lot.
Every question answered.
It's on Amazon, ebook and softcover and as cheap as chips. Two reviews up already, both good.
Thanks to you good folks, more people are being drawn into this fascinating mystery, one day we might learn the truth, in the meantime we can read the fiction.
Thanks for the opportunity to put in a plug. We all love a mystery, right?
The book is titled 'The Bookmaker from Rabaul'
 
@Petebowes I've just bought your book via Amazon Kindle. My pre- Da Vinci Code / Hunt for Red October perspective would've been to reject a format which interlaces fact with fiction, but, I do see how it can work (in some respects).

All of 'real' past history and current reported media events is just a selected narrative, in any case, so I should be less pre-biased in my prejudices.

Be prepared for feedback...but that's why you called-in to the shop. Welcome, and thank-you (so far) for having ignored Homer's advice on Trying.
 
Thanks, Ermintrude, I look forward to any discussion. I hope you enjoy the trek.
 
It's certainly a thorough look at the case. I find those two a little hard going at times, but there's much to like, and their enthusiasm for their subjects seems genuine. As they concluded, the circumstances around TSM's death could have involved mystery and intriuge, or merely appear that way. The approach to the original post-mortem examinations seem a little quirky but as most of the paperwork has been mislaid I wonder if any more progresss can be expected.
 
Here's a February 2018 article that largely covers the same points as the one cited in the post immediately above ...

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/lifes...k=9e11ecfccfafcae47740dc99690eeab8-1525881612

The article cited above dates back to December 2017, and states Abbott had found the three hairs from the plaster mask and was still intending to submit them for DNA analysis.

This February 2018 article seems to indicate they were able to get some DNA results from those hairs, which implies this article originated later.
 
It was a really interesting article... I was just coming here to post that link as I catch up with my NS reading so you have saved me a bit of effort thanks. In summary - nuclear and mitochondrial DNA were found but were in fragments. They are trying to find markers that will show them where they go in the man's genome so it can be reassembled. Abbot had failed to get them exhume Somerton Man's body once but is keen to have another go as he thinks he has a better argument for it being in the public interest. I'm not so sure.
 
New article here:
https://stories.californiasunday.com/2015-06-07/somerton-man/

Of all the amateur detectives who have dedicated themselves to the mystery — including a postman in New South Wales who has claimed the Somerton Man was a Russian spy, another man who thinks he is the American big-band leader Glenn Miller, and a number of internet oddballs who specialize in magnifying the letters of the code and seeing micro-writing that isn’t really there — Abbott is the most devoted. He has become a celebrity among followers of the case — his Reddit “Ask Me Anything” last year yielded nearly 500 questions and answers — and sees his role partly as keeping wilder speculation in check. “As a scientist, you’re taught to be dispassionate,” he told me. “You’re not supposed to get crazy when your pet theory turns out to be unlikely.”

On the hunch that the Rubáiyát was being used as a book cipher, Facebook group members combed Australian newspapers for stories about other men who died unnaturally, accompanied by a Rubáiyát. Incredibly, they found one, an immigrant named George Marshall who poisoned himself with barbiturates and died with a Rubáiyát next to him in Sydney. It was not the same edition as the Somerton version. Instead, it was identified as a seventh edition published by Methuen, a London-based press. The interest would have ended there if Abbott hadn’t tried to find a Methuen seventh edition of the Rubáiyát and discovered that the company never published any edition beyond the fifth.

Her association with the Somerton Man has led some to speculate that she was a Communist spymaster posing as a housewife. One friend claimed she spoke Russian. Abbott dismisses these allegations. She was “a free spirit,” he said, “a slightly airheaded, arty type.”

Was Jo pushing her son into the Somerton Man’s line of work? To Abbott, this coincidence was irresistibly suggestive, and he now believes a theory that might propel the Somerton mystery into the realm of solvability: that the man was Jo’s secret lover, and Robin Thomson their son. Another fact that Abbott cites as support for this idea is that Robin had a rare anatomical abnormality: He never grew lateral incisors, so his canine teeth, like the Somerton Man’s, abutted his front teeth.

Abbott cautiously tested this theory by writing a letter to Roma Egan, a dancer in the Australian Ballet who was married to Robin Thomson from 1968 to 1974. Abbott enclosed a picture of the Somerton Man and asked if she knew any dancers who looked like him. Roma wrote back saying that the corpse resembled her ex-husband. She also told Abbott, darkly, that her ex-mother-in-law had been a woman with secrets, and that Jo — like the young Abbott — had an obsession with pharmacology.

ABBOTT WARNED ME not to tell Feltus, the ex–homicide detective, that I had been meeting with him. “He hates my guts,” Abbott said, accurately. They both spend vast amounts of time tracking the same clues, collecting the same Rubáiyáts, and scrutinizing the same grainy photos. But the two do not speak. Feltus regards Abbott as a grade-A pest and a bane of serious investigators.

Balint, the cultural historian, concurs. “[The Somerton Man] cuts a lonely figure, and people want to rescue him,” she says. “But we had lots of people like him: returned soldiers with shell shock, people who came back and were strangers to their own families. Some of them would just get up, disappear, and go on walkabouts.” Feltus’s hunch is that the Somerton Man was not a spy, but one of the thousands of socially isolated immigrants who drifted like tumbleweeds around Australia during those years.
 
Shall we make a bet on that?
40% that they find a match with the family of the nurse lady
60% that they find no match at all and the mystery will deepen
 
IS it that rare to have no lateral incisors? I never had any and none of my five children do, even though their father does. No dentist has ever pointed this out as being 'rare', it's unusual certainly. but looks as though it is becoming far more common. Although middle daughter has the order of her large back teeth reversed, which apparently IS rare...
 
Guided tour of the case display happening Saturday. Might have gone if I weren't working.
https://www.nationaltrust.org.au/event/82019/

Meanwhile, Re the exhumation:
While a date for the exhumation has not yet been determined, Forensic Science SA director Linzi Wilson-Wilde said it would likely be in the "short term", and that the remains would be transferred to a laboratory for analysis.
 

Somerton Man exhumation carried out in hope of solving decades-long mystery​

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-05...an-remains-at-west-terrace-cemetery/100147576

Key points:​

  • Police are exhuming the Somerton Man's remains from his grave in Adelaide's West Terrace Cemetery
  • He has lain in the grave since June 1949, months after his body was found
  • His cause of death and identity have remained unsolved mysteries for more than 70 years
  • "Tests of this nature are often highly complex and will take time, however we will be using every method at our disposal to try and bring closure to this enduring mystery," she said.



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He is on the move right now.
 
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