Thermal
August Member
The link says that police performed the exhumation and associated autopsy jazz with a wooden spatula and all that. Are you saying they are running a Play With Corpses For Hire Racket?
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The Somerton Man Mystery
- Thread starter a_unique_person
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The link says that police performed the exhumation and associated autopsy jazz with a wooden spatula and all that. Are you saying they are running a Play With Corpses For Hire Racket?
They did exhumation (it appears - for a reason), not run investigation. And they sacrificed plenty of resources to case in the past anyway, is this so much to have it solved, after all?
[and there was, and maybe still is, possible spy aspect to it, so national security reasons may matter]
[and there was, and maybe still is, possible spy aspect to it, so national security reasons may matter]
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Thermal
August Member
Were I a taxpayer or even a financial manager within the PD, yes. It is a tabloid lever squandering of time, money and personnel that are better used towards more pressing social benefit. These cops have no open murder cases with grieving families that their resources could be better applied to, for a start?
I think the same way about ongoing police investigations to find Jimmy Hoffa. Unless you have the extreme financial luxury of running live-action Scooby-Doo Mystery Theatre, the Popo should stay focused on priorities.
Pretty sure that possible threat is long in the rear view mirror. Having personal notes in your pocket is not exactly cloak and dagger Defcon 1 National Security threat level.
Rolfe
Adult human female
If you read the article you will realise that there are still mysterious aspects to the affair. Whether anyone will bother trying to solve these I don't know.
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No it's not. Latest identyfication was private effort, not due to the exhumation. There was no ongoing investigation.
And mentioned yesteryear exhumation made sens too:
"Now, Australian police say advances in DNA technology make exhumation worthwhile."
Many cold cases were solved that way.
I understand your opinion, but beg to differ.
Jimmy Hoffa case (with probably professionaly disposed/burned body) is different story.
And the "spy" aspect of the case was implied more by removed identifying marks and labels on personal belongings (like in the Isdal Woman case), which seems a totally spy thing, than subject "having personal notes" on him.
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a_unique_person
Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning
Correct.
shemp
a flimsy character...perfidious and despised
Well, I guess I'm not exactly Sherlock Holmes, am I?
But why did he die? Suicide, murder, or accidental poisoning?
ThatGuy11200
Muse
Because, after just 70 years, there could still have been family members who were alive but didn't know what happened to him.
Thermal
August Member
Yes, I know. I said the police ponied up for the exhumation and secondary autopsy. I never once said a word about them conducting an ongoing investigation. I don't know whet the hell you guys are reading.
And what was the revelation? He was some guy who lived 144 km away, probably looking for his ex-wife. His coworkers and family in Melbourne evidently didn't read the newspapers. It was pretty much as you would expect; he was just some guy who lost his wallet and got poisoned by something.
Not trying to be overly cynical, by the way. It's just that people tend to project all kinds of crazy **** onto the mundane. This is exactly how conspiracy theorists think. You see small details that are mildly unusual, and concoct wild stories of spy networks out of them. He was just some guy who met his maker early.
The Wiki article on the case even notes that tags being removed was a common thing in second hand clothing. Some of the clothing had the name 'Keane' still on it, and this guy Webb had a brother in law named Keane. He was wearing hand-me downs. That's it.
The notes he had on him appeared to be written in code. That is the only credible evidence for being a spy, weak as it is. That he had a woman's phone number who claimed to not know him is expainable in two simple ways: he had a digit off in the number, and she genuinely had nothing to do with him, or perhaps he was into something shady with the brother and had to play dumb.
In any event, the big mystery here is how his friends and coworkers who lived a lousy 144km away missed the whole story. Doofuses.
eta: there is one interesting element in the case: looking at the casket, Somerton Man appears to be about four feet tall. Unless they fold corpses up to take up less room, or lop off their legs at the shins or something?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11049863/Somerton-Man-Professor-claims-solved-identity-man-Adelaide-beach-1948.html
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Have you presented such an 'obvious' expectation before, Captain H?
The spy explanation was plausible and reasonable, has nothing to do with conspiratorial thinking (you're preaching to the choir, brother).
The woman of the telephone number also admitted to having in the past the same, niche book, that me and you never heard of before, spoke russian, cold war was going on and espionage thriving.
Mundane "revelation" is as good as a sensational one, case (to some extent) solved is a worthy result.
These label removing common practice hint, indeed, gave me new perspective, I admit. Shortage of goods might be the reason people more commonly used second hand clothes (and personal labeling was more common).
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Thermal
August Member
Um...yes. Yes I did. Post #33. It directly precedes your first post in this thread. The one where I say everything seems explainable by being a "quirky traveling guy". I gave a couple quick examples, as I didn't see the need for a page long dissertation over a pretty mundane occurrence.
What? It was 1948. NATO wasn't even formed yet. The Cold War was in its most preliminary infancies.
She spoke Russian. So do a lot of people. If she and Webb shared an interest in obscure Persian poetry (which of course you and I would never had heard of), that would lead me to think that they knew each other and there was indeed some illicit pipe being laid. Maybe she thought he was still married, so played dumb to police? I dunno. But again, nothing to make me jump to the fantastical explanations.
And that's what I would keep returning to. If Webb had a Soviet gun or garrote or micro camera or something, I would tilt the needle towards espionage. But he was carrying bus and train tickets, and a valise with overnight toiletries and stuff. Nothing that screams James Bond.
Yeah, it was news to me too, but makes total sense at that time. Nice clothes were pricey, so you put your brand on them to show ownership. When handing down, because you outgrew them or whatever, you cut out the tags, and the new wearer doesn't look like a thief or imposter.
In terms of this thread, though, I had already mentioned it specifically, so it shouldn't have been news to you when I said it the second time.
Yes, shame on me, props for you. I didn't look through the thread before, only noticed that last post was over a year ago (Captain Shoulda here). Maybe because I tried to catch up Amanda Knox thread once, but quickly gave up (Sysyphean work), so this time didn't even try.
There were many strange coincidences in the case (i.e. yet another guy with the same book working for the military, foreign clothes combined with no reaction from friends and relatives - suggesting a foreigner) that even if spy theory was unlikely or untrue, it was far from fantastic. It is stil almost a given in the Isdal Woman case. I don't think exhumation for taking samples and DNA testing is that expensive nowadays, that worry about the use of taxpayers money were funded, it's not like a squad of agents and detectives working on the case again (that might be a bottleneck in ongoing investigations).
There were many strange coincidences in the case (i.e. yet another guy with the same book working for the military, foreign clothes combined with no reaction from friends and relatives - suggesting a foreigner) that even if spy theory was unlikely or untrue, it was far from fantastic. It is stil almost a given in the Isdal Woman case. I don't think exhumation for taking samples and DNA testing is that expensive nowadays, that worry about the use of taxpayers money were funded, it's not like a squad of agents and detectives working on the case again (that might be a bottleneck in ongoing investigations).
catsmate
No longer the 1
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Probably.
Thermal
August Member
No prob bro. It's hard to read tone in a post and I thought you were getting riled at me.
Yeah, I assumed a foreigner too, maybe a loner guy,, which would account for no one knowing who he was (in the days of newspapers, easy to miss reports of some dead guy Down Under). It really is kind of baffling that people 144km away missed the whole story or didn't recognize Webb. Although without a wallet or the internet, I could rock out 100 miles from home and no one would ID me either. It's a big world for such a small world, and easy to disappear into, back then anyway.
I hear that. This kind of story is fun to work out online. But exhuming a body is actually a real thing, with real expenses, and a forensic team to salvage DNA from a badly decomposed carcass is likely more pricey than spitting in an Ancestry.com vial. Several thousands, without question.
Really curious how Webb just vanished though. Not a single missing person report? Literally no one that close connected the dots? His estate? Even brother in law Keane didn't pick up a newspaper and see his tie on the corpse of his brother in law?
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