Taman Shud Case

The Taman Shud or Tamam Shud Case, on Somerton beach, Glenelg, just south of Adelaide, South Australia. It is named after a phrase, tamám shud, meaning "ended" or "finished" in Persian, printed on a scrap of paper found in the fob pocket of the man's trousers. This turned out to have been torn from the final page of a particular copy of Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, which is a collection of poems attributed to 12th century poet Omar Khayyám. Following a police appeal, the actual book was handed in six months after the body was found; a businessman (given the name Mr Francis) said his brother found it in the back footwell of his car at about the time the body was found. The book was handed to Detective Sergeant Lionel Leane, who decided to keep the finder's real name out of the papers. Imprinted on the back cover of the book was something resembling a secret code as well as a telephone number and another unidentified number. Considered "one of Australia's most profound mysteries" at the time, the case has been the subject of intense speculation over the years regarding the identity of the victim, the events leading up to his death, and the cause of death. Public interest in the case remains significant because of a number of factors: the death occurring at a time of heightened tensions during the Cold War, the plans to reform the Commonwealth Investigation Service (CIS) into a more secure organisation (ASIO), what appeared to be a secret code, the possible use of an undetectable poison, his lack of identification, and the possibility of unrequited love. It was about this time the MI5 visited Australia to brief the Federal Government about security leaks in the Department of External Affairs. The Venona Project was also discussed at the meeting. The MI5 participants were Percy Sillitoe, Roger Hollis and Robert Hemblys-Scales. The Australians present were PM Ben Chifley, External Affairs Minister H. V. Evatt and Defense Minister John Dedman. Roger Hollis has long been suspected of being a Russian double agent and Hemblys-Scales was transferred to Ismailia not long after the incident, where he worked under the supervision of Kim Philby, a known Russian double agent. While the case has received the most scrutiny in Australia, it also gained international coverage, as the police widely distributed materials in an effort to identify the body, and consulted with other governments in tracking down leads. The FBI were unable to find a fingerprint match in their domestic criminal files. Victim: On 1 December 1948 at 6:30 am, the police were contacted after the body of a man was discovered on Somerton beach near Glenelg, about 11 kilometers (6.8 mi) southwest of Adelaide, South Australia. The man was found lying in the sand across from the Crippled Children's Home, which was on the corner of The Esplanade and Bickford Terrace. He was lying back with his head resting against the seawall, with his legs extended and his feet crossed. It was believed he had died while sleeping. An unlit cigarette was on the right collar of his coat. A search of his pockets revealed an unused second-class rail ticket from Adelaide to Henley Beach, a bus ticket from the city that could not be proved to have been used, a narrow aluminium American comb, a half-empty packet of Juicy Fruit chewing gum, an Army Club cigarette packet containing 7 Kensitas cigarettes, and a quarter-full box of Bryant & May matches. Witnesses who came forward said that on the evening of 30 November, they had seen an individual resembling the dead man lying on his back in the same spot and position near the Crippled Children's Home where the corpse was later found. A couple who saw him around 7 p.m. noted that they saw him extend his right arm to its fullest extent and then drop it limply. Another couple who saw him from 7:30 p.m. to 8 pm, during which time the street lights had come on, recounted that they did not see him move during the half an hour in which he was in view, although they did have the impression that his position had changed. Although they commented between themselves that he must be dead because he was not reacting to the mosquitoes, they had thought it more likely that he was drunk or asleep, and thus did not investigate further. One of the witnesses told the police she observed a man looking down at the sleeping man from the top of the steps that lead to the beach. Witnesses said the body was in the same position when the police viewed it. Another witness came forward in 1959 and reported to the police that he and three others had seen a well-dressed man carrying another man on his shoulders along Somerton Beach the night before the body was found. A police report was made by Detective Don O'Doherty. According to the pathologist, John Burton Cleland, emeritus professor at the University of Adelaide, the man was of "Britisher" appearance and thought to be aged about 40–45; he was in "top physical condition". He was "180 centimetres (5 ft 11 in) tall, with hazel eyes, fair to ginger-coloured hair, slightly grey around the temples, with broad shoulders and a narrow waist, hands and nails that showed no signs of manual labour, big and little toes that met in a wedge shape, like those of a dancer or someone who wore boots with pointed toes; and pronounced high calf muscles like those of a ballet dancer. These can be dominant genetic traits (dystonia of the toes), and they are also a characteristic of many middle and long-distance runners." He was dressed in a white shirt, red and blue tie, brown trousers, socks and shoes and a brown knitted pullover and fashionable grey and brown double-breasted jacket. All labels on his clothes had been removed, and he had no hat (unusual for 1948) or wallet. The body was clean-shaven and carried no identification, which led police to believe he had committed suicide. His teeth did not match the dental records of any known living person. Coroner Cleland remarked that if the body had been carried to its final resting place then "all the difficulties would disappear". Autopsy: An autopsy was conducted, and the pathologist estimated the time of death at around 2 a.m. on 1 December. "The heart was of normal size, and normal in every way ...small vessels not commonly observed in the brain were easily discernible with congestion. There was congestion of the pharynx, and the gullet was covered with whitening of superficial layers of the mucosa with a patch of ulceration in the middle of it. The stomach was deeply congested... There was congestion in the second half of the duodenum. There was blood mixed with the food in the stomach. Both kidneys were congested, and the liver contained a great excess of blood in its vessels. ...The spleen was strikingly large ... about 3 times normal size ... there was destruction of the centre of the liver lobules revealed under the microscope. ... acute gastritis hemorrhage, extensive congestion of the liver and spleen, and the congestion to the brain." The autopsy showed that the man's last meal was a pasty eaten three to four hours before death, but tests failed to reveal any foreign substance in the body. The pathologist Dr. Dwyer concluded: "I am quite convinced the death could not have been natural ... the poison I suggested was a barbiturate or a soluble hypnotic". Although poisoning remained a prime suspicion, the pasty was not believed to be the source of the poison. Other than that, the coroner was unable to reach a conclusion as to the man's identity, cause of death, or whether the man seen alive at Somerton Beach on the evening of 30 November was the same man, as nobody had seen his face at that time. Scotland Yard was called in to assist with the case but with little result. Wide circulation in the world of a photograph of the man and details of his fingerprints yielded no positive identification. The body was embalmed on 10 December 1948 after the police were unable to get a positive identification. The police said this was the first time they knew that such action was needed. Identification: Adelaide newspaper The Advertiser was the first to report a possible identification of the body in a short article on page three of its 2 December 1948 edition. Titled "Body found on Beach", it read: "A body, believed to be of E.C. Johnson, about 45, of Arthur St, Payneham, was found on Somerton Beach, opposite the Crippled Children's Home yesterday morning. The discovery was made by Mr J. Lyons, of Whyte Rd, Somerton. Detective H. Strangway and Constable J. Moss are enquiring." On 3 December 1948, E.C. Johnson walked into a police station to identify himself as living and was eliminated as a possibility for the dead man's identity. That same day, The News published a photograph of the dead man on its front page, leading to additional calls from members of the public about the possible identity of the dead man. By 4 December, police had announced that the man's fingerprints were not on South Australian police records, forcing them to look further afield. On 5 December, The Advertiser reported that police were searching through military records after a man claimed to have had a drink with a man resembling the dead man at a hotel in Glenelg on 13 November. During their drinking session, the mystery man supposedly produced a military pension card bearing the name "Solomonson". A number of possible identifications of the body were made, including one in early January 1949 when two people identified the body as that of 63-year-old former wood cutter Robert Walsh. A third person, James Mack, also viewed the body, initially could not identify it, but an hour later he contacted police to claim it was Walsh. Mack stated that the reason he did not confirm this at the viewing was a difference in the colour of the hair. Walsh had left Adelaide several months earlier to buy sheep in Queensland but had failed to return at Christmas as planned. Police were skeptical, believing Walsh to be too old to be the dead man. However, the police did state that the body was consistent with that of a man who had been a wood cutter, although the state of the man's hands indicated he had not cut wood for at least 18 months. Any thoughts that a positive identification had been made were quashed, however, when Elizabeth Thompson, one of the people who had earlier positively identified the body as Walsh, retracted her statement after a second viewing of the body, where the absence of a particular scar on the body, as well as the size of the dead man's legs, led her to realise the body was not Walsh. By early February 1949, there had been eight different "positive" identifications of the body, including two Darwin men who thought the body was of a friend of theirs, and others who thought it was a missing station worker, a worker on a steamship or a Swedish man. Detectives from the state of Victoria initially believed the man was from there because of the similarity of the laundry marks to those used by several dry-cleaning firms in Melbourne. Following publication of the man's photograph in Victoria, 28 people claimed to know his identity. Victorian detectives disproved all the claims and said that "other investigations" indicated it was unlikely that he was a Victorian. A seaman by the name of Tommy Reade from the SS Cycle, in port at the time, was thought to be the dead man, but after some of his shipmates viewed the body at the morgue, they stated categorically that the corpse was not that of Tommy Reade. By November 1953, police announced they had recently received the 251st "solution" to the identity of the body from members of the public who claimed to have met or known him. But, they said that the "only clue of any value" remained the clothing the man wore. H. C. Reynolds: In 2011, an Adelaide woman contacted biological anthropologist Maciej Henneberg about an identification card of an H. C. Reynolds that she had found in her father's possessions. The card, a document issued in the United States to foreign seamen during WWI, was given to Henneberg in October 2011 for comparison of the ID photograph to that of the Somerton man. While Henneberg found anatomical similarities in features such as the nose, lips and eyes, he believed they were not as reliable as the close similarity of the ear. The ear shapes shared by both men were a "very good" match, although Henneberg also found what he called a "unique identifier;" a mole on the cheek that was the same shape and in the same position in both photographs. "Together with the similarity of the ear characteristics, this mole, in a forensic case, would allow me to make a rare statement positively identifying the Somerton man." The ID card, numbered 58757, was issued in the United States on 28 February 1918 to H.C. Reynolds, giving his nationality as "British" and age as 18. Searches conducted by the US National Archives, the UK National Archives and the Australian War Memorial Research Centre have failed to find any records relating to H.C. Reynolds. The South Australia Police Major Crime Branch, who still have the case listed as open, will investigate the new information. Brown suitcase: On 14 January 1949, staff at the Adelaide railway station discovered a brown suitcase with its label removed, which had been checked into the station cloakroom after 11:00 a.m. on 30 November 1948; It was believed that the suitcase was owned by the man found on the beach. In the case were a red checked dressing gown; a size seven, red felt pair of slippers; four pairs of underpants; pyjamas; shaving items; a light brown pair of trousers with sand in the cuffs; an electrician's screwdriver; a table knife cut down into a short sharp instrument; a pair of scissors with sharpened points; a small square of zinc thought to have been used as a protective sheath for the knife and scissors and a stencilling brush, as used by third officers on merchant ships for stencilling cargo. Also in the suitcase was a thread card of Barbour brand orange waxed thread of "an unusual type" not available in Australia—it was the same as that used to repair the lining in a pocket of the trousers the dead man was wearing. All identification marks on the clothes had been removed but police found the name "T. Keane" on a tie, "Keane" on a laundry bag and "Kean" (without the last e) on a singlet, along with three dry-cleaning marks; 1171/7, 4393/7 and 3053/7. Police believed that whoever removed the clothing tags purposely left the "Keane" tags on the clothes, knowing Keane was not the dead man's name. It has since been noted that the "Keane" tags were the only ones that could not have been removed without damaging the clothing. What was unusual was that there were no spare socks found in the case, and no correspondence, despite that the police found pencils and unused letterforms. A search concluded that there was no T. Keane missing in any English-speaking country and a nationwide circulation of the dry-cleaning marks also proved fruitless. In fact, all that could be garnered from the suitcase was that since a coat in the suitcase had a front gusset and featherstitching, it could have been made only in the United States, as this was the only country that possessed the machinery for that stitch. Although mass-produced, the body work is done when the owner is fitted before it is completed. The coat had not been imported, indicating the man had been in the United States or bought the coat from someone of similar size who had been. Police checked incoming train records and believed the man had arrived by overnight train from either Melbourne, Sydney or Port Augusta. They speculated he had either showered and shaved at the adjacent City Baths (there was no baths ticket on his body) before returning to the train station to purchase a ticket for the 10:50 a.m. train to Henley Beach, which, for whatever reason, he missed or did not catch. He immediately checked his suitcase at the station cloak room before leaving the station and catching a city bus to Glenelg. Although named the City Baths, the centre was not a public bathing facility but a public swimming pool. The railway station bathing facilities were adjacent to the station cloak room, which itself was adjacent to the station's southern exit onto North Terrace. The City Baths on King William St. were accessed from the station's northern exit via a lane way. There is no record of the station's bathroom facilities being unavailable on the day he arrived.