The Somerton Man

December 1, 1948

He was found at half past six in the morning, propped against the sea wall on the beach at Somerton Park just south of Glenelg, in a suit and polished shoes, unmarked. People passing the evening before had seen him in the same position and assumed he was drunk or asleep.

There was no wallet and no identification. Every maker's label had been cut out of his clothing. The autopsy found his organs congested and his spleen roughly three times normal size, which is consistent with poisoning, and no poison was ever identified.

The scrap in the fob pocket

Months later a pathologist found a tightly rolled piece of paper sewn into a fob pocket in the waistband of the trousers. Printed on it were two Persian words, "Tamam shud", meaning it is ended. They are the last words of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

Police appealed publicly, and a man came forward with a copy of the Rubaiyat he said had been thrown into his unlocked car in Glenelg. The torn page matched. Inside the back cover were an unlisted telephone number and five lines of block capitals nobody has decoded, though whether they are a cipher at all is disputed, since the letter frequencies look more like the initials of remembered words than an encryption.

The telephone number belonged to a nurse living a short walk from where the body was found.

Named in 2022, unconfirmed in 2026

South Australia Police exhumed the body on May 19, 2021. In 2022 Derek Abbott at the University of Adelaide and the American genealogist Colleen Fitzpatrick built a family tree out of the DNA and identified him as Carl Webb, an electrical engineer and instrument maker born in Melbourne in 1905, separated from his wife, with no obvious reason to be in Adelaide.

Abbott puts his confidence at 99.99 percent. As of July 2026 the police report to the coroner was still being described as close to finished, and no formal determination has been issued.

The headstone at West Terrace Cemetery still says he is unknown.

The grave is in West Terrace Cemetery, a short walk from the city center. The cemetery is open daily, free to enter, and the Adelaide Cemeteries Authority publishes a self-guided trail that includes the grave as well as running guided walks. The headstone is plain and carries the original wording.

Somerton Park itself is an ordinary suburban beach, reached by tram to Glenelg and a walk south along the sand. There is no marker at the spot and nothing to see there, which is worth knowing before making a trip for it specifically.

The case material, including the Rubaiyat, is held by South Australia Police and is not on permanent public display, though pieces have appeared in occasional exhibitions.