Original subtitles

[dramatic music]

- As atomic fear grips the world

and the Cold War ramps up,

a well-dressed man is found dead on an Australian beach.

♪ ♪

- There’s no clear cause of death,

nothing to identify him.

Who is this guy? And what was he up to?

Could he have been a criminal or a secret agent or worse?

- Neither the FBI nor Britain’s MI5 know who he is.

Tonight, the top theories surrounding a mystery

that’s obsessed an army of sleuths for 70 years.

- Is he a spy?

- Was it self-inflicted or was he poisoned?

- Was he part of a criminal organization?

- The whole thing reads like--like a movie script.

- Can new evidence solve the case

to finally answer who is the Somerton man

and how did he die?

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

Just three years after the end of World War II,

tensions between the Soviet Union

and its former allies

lead to a blockade of all land routes to West Berlin

and an all-out effort to airlift supplies

to its stricken citizens.

- People in the west

are shocked and frightened by this.

Communist countries like the Soviet Union in Eurasia

and Mao Zedong in China seem scarily impressive.

Will there be another war?

Another nuclear attack?

In response,

stories about spies, traders, double agents

spring up everywhere.

Fishburne: The small city of Adelaide, Australia

is no different.

Situated just 500 miles

from the nation’s top secret atomic testing site,

the city is quietly on alert.

♪ ♪

At first, nothing seems unusual

when 16-year-old Neil Day and a friend

spot a man who appears to be napping

by a cliff on Somerton Beach.

- Now, in Australia, it’s the southern hemisphere,

so it’s summertime in the wintertime months here.

And so, this is nothing new. It’s hot out.

A lot of people will sleep on the beach.

So they continue on their ride.

Fishburne: But as the pair pass by again,

they notice something alarming.

The man isn’t moving.

- He’s still in the same position,

so they dismount, they go up to check him.

And then, at that point, they know he’s dead.

Another bystander comes up: Jack Lyons.

He’s a local jeweler.

Jack takes control of the situation and he says,

"I’ll take care of this. I’ll notify the police."

And that’s exactly what he does.

And that’s about 6:00 a.m. to 6:30 in the morning.

- So when the police arrive at the scene,

they do a cursory inspection of the crime scene and the body.

And they notice that this man is lying in the beach

but sitting up with his back lean against the seawall.

They see that he’s well-dressed.

There’s no evidence of alcohol or drugs around,

and there’s no obvious signs of wounds or violence.

- Most often, when we find a body on the beach,

it’s a victim of drowning.

The body is washed ashore, and that’s not the case.

He was completely dry. His shoes were dry.

Looks like he just maybe lay there to take a rest

and didn’t wake up.

- The next step would be to identify the man

and then notify the next of kin,

but in this case, they can’t do that

because he has absolutely no ID on him at all.

He has no wallet of any kind.

And moreover-- and this is where this case

initially gets very strange right from the beginning--

all of the labels on his clothing

were intentionally removed, as is they were clipped out.

♪ ♪

At this point, the investigators are asking,

"Who is this guy?"

They have no answers on his identity.

Fishburne: With little to go on,

police catalog the man’s belongings.

- They find a unused train ticket.

They find a bus ticket from Adelaide to Somerton Beach.

They find a pack of chewing gum, a pack of matches,

a comb,

and they find a box of Army Club cigarettes.

So all of these things are ordinary things

that you would find on any person,

but the pack of cigarettes are interesting

because Army Club is a very cheap brand.

And inside the box of cigarettes

were seven cigarettes

of a much more expensive brand called Kensitas.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: The body is taken to the Royal Adelaide Hospital

for further examination.

- So a Dr. Barkley Bennett

performs a post-mortem on the body.

It’s an initial look-through

without going too deep into taking samples

and opening the body up to find the cause of death.

Back then, not everybody has an autopsy.

- The initial examination of his body

reveals some things about him.

He’s about 5’11".

He weighs about 165 to 175.

And he’s between 40 and 50 years old

in incredibly good shape.

Also, his hands are not calloused in any way,

suggesting that he wasn’t a manual laborer of any sort.

- One of the other things they notice right away

is that he’s got these extremely large calves,

and the muscles are high.

Like a ballet dancer, he’s got tuned legs.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: Nothing seems strange

and there’s no obvious sign of foul play.

- So their theory is, is that he went to lay down,

maybe didn’t feel well,

laid up against the rocks and passed away in his sleep.

- Preliminarily, the cause of death

is thought to be heart failure.

♪ ♪

[flatlines]

Fishburne: But after six weeks,

authorities still can’t ID the corpse,

and that raises questions.

- Detective suspect that there may be a lot more to learn

about this man and the way he died.

Fishburne: They start to wonder,

is he from someplace outside Australia?

And, if so, why is he here?

- All English-speaking countries

are given a post-mortem photo and a set of fingerprints,

but nobody can find a match.

There’s no police records for this man.

There are no military records for this man.

Nothing matches.

- In fact, J. Edgar Hoover,

who was the director of the FBI at the time,

sends a memo back to Australian police,

telling them that they have no match for those fingerprints.

Fishburne: Police appeal to the public

for help identifying the body.

- At this point in the investigation,

the locals have given this man a nickname,

the Somerton Man,

referencing the beach where he was discovered.

An eye witness comes forward.

He and his wife claim that they were walking on the beach

the night before, on November 30th,

and they observed him about 7:00 p.m. lying on the beach.

The Somerton Man supposedly raised his right arm,

as if to light his cigarette or wave,

and then it fell back to the beach.

♪ ♪

- And then, there’s another couple that saw the man,

although they didn’t really see his face.

One thing they did notice, though,

is that he seemed to have polished, nice shoes,

and they didn’t seem like shoes

that belonged to somebody who’d be walking along the beach.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: A timeline of the man’s final hours

slowly starts to form.

- Because of the tickets in his pocket,

we know that he arrived around 11:00 a.m. in Adelaide.

Then, he took a bus to the Somerton area,

where he’s seen again by our witnesses at 7:00 p.m.

So there’s a large part of his afternoon

and his whereabouts that are not accounted for.

As an investigator,

it’s very frustrating to have this collection of clues

and evidence and eyewitness accounts

and really be no closer to any substantive answers.

At this point, they don’t even know who this man is.

But then, the investigators catch a huge break.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: On January 14th 1949,

authorities at Adelaide Railway Station

realize a suitcase has been there for weeks.

- The suitcase was checked in on November 30th

and remained unclaimed.

They give it over to the police,

who start looking through it,

and that’s when they find some additional clues,

which now makes them think

that maybe there’s some connection

to the Somerton Man.

Fishburne: What’s inside the suitcase is odd and alarming.

- The labels on all the clothing inside the suitcase

have also been removed, just like the Somerton Man,

with the exception of one yellow shirt

that still had the tags on it,

as if it had just been purchased.

There’s a quantity of orange linen thread,

the same type of orange thread

that was used to sew on his buttons

and mend a pocket inside his trousers.

- And the thread that was in the case,

they believe is the same one used to repair the jacket.

This makes a direct connection to the Somerton Man

and the suitcase that was found.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: The suitcase also raises additional questions.

- This orange linen thread

was not available in Australia at the time.

It was available in the United States.

So this poses the question: was the man American,

or did he at least travel through America at one point?

Also discovered inside the suitcase

was an electrician screwdriver,

a table knife, a pair of scissors,

and also charting and stenciling tools,

that which you would find aboard a ship

to stencil cargo or to help with navigation.

Fishburne: But the most important clue of all

may be a name.

- There are a couple of items inside the suitcase

that are inscribed T. Keane.

- So this gives the police something to go on,

a name at least,

and that name is Keane, K-E-A-N-E.

Fishburne: Finding T. Keane won’t be easy,

and perhaps that’s deliberate.

- Police are starting to build a profile of this guy

and perhaps a story why he was there.

Who is this Keane?

- Inquiries find no missing persons by the name of Keane.

And so, now they think that maybe this might be alias.

- But, at this point, there’s a name that doesn’t match up.

No one’s missing. It could be a ruse.

The police had a suitcase full of clues

and they have some evidence,

but there is nothing there that really ties to the reason

why the Somerton Man was visiting Adelaide.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: Increasingly suspicious,

police call for a detailed autopsy.

- Once they started the autopsy,

they do come across some things

that are unusual and shocking for them.

This enlarged spleen that’s three times larger

than what it should be.

They find his liver is congested.

And he’s got blood in his stomach.

- Because of the conditions of the organs,

pathologist John Dwyer suspects

that this man could be the victim of poisoning.

♪ ♪

- They think it’s poison because

this man has no outside injuries.

He’s got all this internal trauma going on.

What caused that?

If he had been hit by something,

he’d have an external bruise.

- Also, in his stomach,

aside from the presence of blood is also a pasty,

which is sort of like an Australian meat pie.

- They can tell what it was.

And the meat is not digested,

which implies that he ate that and died shortly after.

- If it turns out this is a poisoning,

that’s a huge red flag.

This is not your everyday manner of death.

And what it suggests is this guy

could have been up to something nefarious.

♪ ♪

- When the lab results come back,

they show no evidence of poisoning

and no evidence of poisoning in the Australian meat pasty.

His organs are in terrible condition post-autopsy,

and the police know that they’re gonna have

to do a lot more digging to find out

what happened to this person, who is he, and how did he die.

Fishburne: Investigators next take a closer look

at the man’s clothing.

- Deep down inside the man’s watch pocket,

they found a tiny, rolled-up piece of paper.

It had to be extracted with tweezers

because it was so far down,

which is why they didn’t find it the first time.

But when they unroll it, there are some words on it.

And the words are "tamám shud."

♪ ♪

- That stopped the press this time.

We got to find out what this is.

What does this mean?

- They contact local librarians and researchers

to just ask around

if anybody knows what this means.

One of the librarians mentions that,

"Yes, it is the last word in a book called

the "Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám."

♪ ♪

- The "Rubáiyát" is a book of love poems.

The phrase "tamám shud" translates into

"it is finished."

♪ ♪

- It’s not normal for someone

to walk around with a line of poetry

that says "it is finished" in their pocket.

This is something that was placed there.

Now, whether it was by the Somerton Man

or by someone who wanted him dead,

that’s what’s worth exploring.

Fishburne: But who might want him dead, and why?

- Looking at his belongings--

stenciling tools, maps,

his clothing is clearly from America

which they see based on the stitching,

and an alias, potentially--

taking all of these clues together,

it’s not unreasonable to think that he may have been involved

in the black market as a smuggler.

- And, if so, did he become problematic

for some other criminals that want to see him gone?

♪ ♪

Fishburne: Armed with new evidence,

authorities begin an official homicide inquest

on June 17th, 1949.

- An inquest is sort of like a trial.

There are witnesses, experts, and doctors

that will come and testify,

and a judge or jury will determine a cause of death.

- So they’re revisiting

the possibility of him being poisoned.

- One of the experts that testifies in this inquest

is Sir Cedric Hicks.

He’s a professor of pharmacology

and human physiology.

And, to his knowledge,

whatever toxin was there evaporated quickly.

It left no trace.

But he has an idea of two untraceable toxins

that may be the cause here.

- He’s so afraid to say these poisons out loud

during the inquest because they’re so dangerous

that he writes them down on a piece of paper

and delivers it to the judge.

Later on, these two toxins become known,

and they are digitalis and strophanthin.

- Hicks believes it’s strophanthin.

It’s derived from an African plant.

Somali tribes would use it to poison their arrows.

Fishburne: Despite Hick’s testimony,

on June 21st,

the inquest concludes without determining a cause of death.

- They just don’t have enough evidence to say

if he was poisoned by himself or someone else.

They don’t know who this man is.

They can’t determine if he was a smuggler or not,

or if he’s tied to some other greater mystery.

And so, they’re stuck in a quandary.

Fishburne: Back at square one,

police revisit the cryptic piece of paper

found in the man’s pocket.

- The most mysterious clue is the phrase "tamám shud."

It’s torn from a book that was very popular at the time.

If investigators can find the man’s original book,

they may find more clues.

- We know it’s not in his possession.

We know it wasn’t at the crime scene.

We know that it’s not in his suitcase

that was discovered at the Adelaide Railway Station.

Fishburne: Investigators search every library

and bookstore in the area.

♪ ♪

- They begin looking at publishing companies,

they begin searching internationally--

anywhere that they can think to find this copy

and this edition of the "Rubáiyát."

In a last-ditch effort, they call upon the public

to see if anybody has seen this copy of the book.

There are hundreds of thousands of copies of the book

floating around the world.

Trying to find the copy that was used in this case

is like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

Fishburne: That is until July 22nd, 1949.

♪ ♪

- An unidentified man walks into the police station.

This man lives very nearby to Somerton Beach.

♪ ♪

He remembers that somebody had thrown a copy of a book

in the backseat of his car on November 30th.

♪ ♪

He puts two and two together.

He retrieves the copy of the book

and he brings it into the police station.

Fishburne: Police attempt to match the torn scrap of paper

to the book’s damaged back page.

♪ ♪

- When the police examine the book,

they can tell that the tear from the book

matches exactly with the rolled up piece of paper

in the Somerton Man’s pocket.

They can tell microscopically, by the fibers,

it’s the copy that the Somerton Man had.

It’s a very easy mesh. That, they know for sure now.

Fishburne: And just as investigators had hoped,

the book is about to provide an incredible new clue

to the Somerton Man’s identity.

♪ ♪

- Finding the actual book that belonged to the Somerton Man

is a miraculous twist of fate in this case

because they are able to begin

piecing some new clues together

that they had no idea even existed before.

There are notes written in the book.

And then, most interestingly perhaps,

there is a series of letters in the back of the book,

capital letters that seem to be some sort of code.

- When you look at the coded message in the book

and all other factors

surrounding the Somerton Man’s case,

it then leads to the big question:

is he a spy?

♪ ♪

- At the time,

Australia is ramping up their own nuclear testing,

so the idea is entirely plausible.

- Using books to deliver hidden codes

seems like it’s next-level spying,

but the truth is, this was quite common,

especially in 1948.

The CIA did it, the KGB, Israeli intelligence.

- So what happens is that the sender,

they’ll take the words out of the book on certain pages

and they use that to compose the message they want to send.

The receiver will have a card that will have holes cut out,

basically acting as a template

that they can put over the desired page,

and that will reveal the message underneath

and the words

and the order that they’re supposed to be received.

Fishburne: Authorities send the code

to various intelligence agencies around the world,

hoping someone will recognize it.

- They send it to the U.S. Naval intelligence.

They send it to British intelligence.

They publish it in newspapers,

hoping that an amateur sleuth might be able to solve this.

The code is only four lines,

but the best codebreakers in the world

can’t figure this out.

You don’t even need to really figure out the code

to indicate that there is some sort of larger espionage

going on.

If we are to believe that he’s a spy,

that very well could be what caused his death.

♪ ♪

- He was clearly a careful guy, which is evidenced by the fact

of the removal of his clothing labels,

the fact that he uses an alias.

Fishburne: But according to experts,

the most important proof is where and how the man died.

- So there’s two really important locations

in Australia, which make this even more interesting.

One is Woomera,

which is home of an advanced rocketry program

involving the United States,

as well as Australian military authorities.

The other is Radium Hill,

which is home to a uranium processing facility.

The location of the Somerton Man’s body

close to these facilities in Australia

isn’t coincidental in my view.

- The UK is also preparing

to start atomic testing in Australia,

800 kilometers from Adelaide.

And there’s some evidence

that secrets are already being leaked from Australia

to the USSR.

- There’s a top secret intelligence program

called Venona.

It’s a joint American-British operation,

and it’s designed to do counterintelligence.

In 1947, the Venona project was able to pick up evidence

that Russian intelligence operations

were taking place in Australia

through its embassy in Canberra.

So we have a code

that suggests the man may have been a spy.

We have the location, which certainly suggests

that the man may have been a spy.

And most interesting to me is the fact

that he appears to have died from an exotic poison,

which is absolutely spycraft

and certainly suggests the possibility

of this being what’s referred to as a "wet op,"

"mokroye delo" in Russian,

which is a kind of time-honored tradition

by Russian intelligence

to get rid of people by means of assassination

without leaving any kind of obvious hallmarks.

Fishburne: Could a seemingly insignificant piece

of evidence be the key to cracking this case?

- The cigarette clue is a fascinating one

where they discover in his possession, his cigarettes,

there’s a different kind of cigarette brand

in the box of his cigarettes,

which seemed to indicate that someone had replaced them.

- This is a cheap box of cigarettes,

and inside the box are an expensive brand.

So why would anyone wanna do that?

Is it possible that the man was poisoned

and that the delivery system for the poison

was the cigarettes?

♪ ♪

Fishburne: Unfortunately, the Australian police

discard the cigarettes before they can be analyzed.

- And that’s a real shame because the cigarettes

could have provided a quintessential detail

that may have solved this case.

If the cigarettes were tested and we could prove

that there was poison in the cigarettes,

explaining why there were different cigarettes

in the box,

it would certainly support a theory

that he was involved in spycraft

and he was murdered for that.

Fishburne: But if the Somerton Man is a spy,

who was he working for?

- There is some speculation out there

that he was not just anybody

but that he was a particular agent named Pavel Fedosimov.

Fedosimov was known as Stefan. That’s his code name.

He was known to British and American intelligence.

Fishburne: Fedosimov was identified as a KGB spy

during Operation Venona.

- Fedosimov was stationed

at the Russian embassy in the United States.

And we know for sure that the Somerton Man

had at least traveled in the United States.

The U.S. was tracking Fedosimov,

and they follow him, and they know that he,

at least theoretically, leaves the country on a ship

bound for Odessa in Ukraine in 1948.

And some people have placed Fedosimov in Australia,

although the evidence is very scant.

Fishburne: After the Somerton Man’s body is found

on December 1st, 1948,

Fedosimov is never seen again.

♪ ♪

- Can you say that Fedosimov and the Somerton Man

are one and the same?

You can’t rule it out, that’s absolutely true,

but I don’t think there’s enough evidence

to say that conclusively.

Fishburne: But there may be another way

to identify the Somerton Man.

- There’s one more clue in that book

that might be even more important.

Fishburne: And it could lead police straight to his killer.

♪ ♪

- A dead body, a book of poetry,

and an unsolvable code.

After eight months of investigation

into the Somerton Man,

police have little else to go on.

But in his copy of the Rubáiyát,"

there is one more clue:

a pair of handwritten phone numbers.

Can this finally lead investigators to answers?

[dramatic music]

- The other clue is what appears to be

two phone numbers written inside the book.

- The police decided to call these two phone numbers.

The first is to a bank, which is a dead end.

The second number belongs to a woman who lives nearby,

in fact, only 400 yards

from where the Somerton Man was found on the beach.

Fishburne: Police visit the woman

and try to find out what she knows.

[dramatic music]

- And she agrees to cooperate,

but she wants to remain anonymous.

She tells the police

that she does not know the Somerton Man,

but she does admit that she owned a copy of the "Rubáiyát"

that she gave to a male acquaintance

some years earlier.

- She was training as a nurse in 1945 in Sydney

when she met someone named Al Boxall.

They became friendly.

She gave him a copy of the "Rubáiyát"

and she inscribed it with her nickname "Jestyn,"

but she hasn’t spoken with him in years.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: Could Boxall be the Somerton Man?

- So, of course, the authorities think

perhaps this acquaintance of hers

who received the "Rubáiyát," maybe that’s the Somerton Man.

However, a few days later, they follow up on a lead

and they find that he’s alive and well.

♪ ♪

- The plot really thickens

when one looks at Boxall’s background

during World War II and afterwards, from 1945 to 1948,

Boxall is involved in Australian intelligence.

♪ ♪

I think the intrigue is even greater

when the two stories of "Jestyn" and Boxall

are put side by side.

"Jestyn" says that they met one another in the army hospital,

and according to Boxall, the exchange of the book happens

at the Clifton Gardens Hotel over drinks.

Fishburne: To investigators, that location sounds familiar.

♪ ♪

- What’s interesting is that

if we’re to believe Boxall’s version of the story,

where the book is exchanged

at the Clifton Garden Hotel in August of 1945,

just two months earlier, in June of 1945,

the body of George Marshall is found

with a copy of the "Rubáiyát"

a short walk from that very hotel.

♪ ♪

- Not only is the copy of the "Rubáiyát," there,

but he’s also found near a bottle of lemonade

and some mysterious powder,

which leads some people to think

that it may have also been a poisoning.

And that’s too similar for coincidence

between the Somerton Man and Marshall’s death.

Fishburne: Two bodies found dead on Australian beaches,

both tied to the same book and possibly the same woman.

Police decide to question the mysterious "Jestyn"

once again.

- This woman really was a quintessential part

of the investigation.

And what’s particularly interesting

about all the great work they did in the case

is that before the Somerton Man is buried,

they make a plaster cast of him

to preserve the way he looks before decomposition.

They bring in "Jestyn" to view the cast.

Initially, when she looks at it,

she claims that she doesn’t recognize the cast

when all of her body language suggests otherwise.

- When Detective Sergeant Leane

showed the woman the plaster bust,

his reaction was that

she looked like she was completely taken aback,

like she appeared to be about to faint.

In fact, some reports say that he was standing behind her,

ready to catch her if she did.

So then, this begs the question:

did she have any involvement in his death?

♪ ♪

Fishburne: "Jestyn" convinces police

not to release her name publicly.

- So why didn’t she want her name out in the open?

It’s very possible that she didn’t want

her relationship with Boxall to be known by her husband.

- But I think there’s another factor at play here,

which is pretty basic.

In 1949, many people didn’t imagine

that women could be involved in espionage.

So they honor her request for an anonymity,

and in the process, kind of pass by the whole possibility

that she’s involved in more ways than one.

Fishburne: It isn’t until years later

that the woman’s identity is revealed.

- For decades, people have referred to her as "Jestyn,"

which is the nickname used in the police records.

It took decades’ worth of sleuthing,

both by police who were involved in the case

and by some amateurs, to put two and two together

and to figure out the real identity.

- After her death in 2007,

we learned that upon her initial interview,

she gave her name as Jessica Thomson,

but even that wasn’t her real name.

- She was born Jesse Harkness in Sydney,

and she goes by the name Jo.

♪ ♪

When she passes away in 2007, she’s gone her entire life

insisting that she knows nothing about this case.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: But Thomson’s secrets

don’t end with her death.

- In 2013, Jo’s daughter, Kate Thomson,

gives an interview for Australian "60 Minutes"

where she makes two very important claims

that may relate to this case:

one, that her mother did admit to her

that she knew the Somerton Man,

and two, that she spoke Russian

and she taught it to Russian immigrants in Australia.

♪ ♪

- And that fueled the fire

that Somerton Man may, in fact, be a KGB operative

or KGB associate of some sort.

And that’s led to, since 2013,

a whole bunch of questions again

about the identity of the Somerton Man.

- There are a number of theories

about who the Somerton Man was.

The spy theory, the black market trader theory.

But I think there are clues

that take us away from those theories.

[dramatic music]

- Abbott’s theory begins in his classroom.

- My students are well-versed in coding theory.

And so, I gave it as a cool exercise to them

to look at this code,

check out what were the codes in World War II

that were known at the time,

and eliminate one by one which codes it couldn’t be.

And statistically, it shows that it’s really not a code.

It’s just the first letters of words in the English language.

So what could that be?

It could just be an aide-mémoire,

somebody just jotting down the first letters of words

to remember something.

But the interesting thing is, there’s four lines of them

and it’s in a book of love poetry

where every verse was in four lines.

So it makes you wonder

whether he was just trying to pen his own verse.

Was he being romantic towards a young lady

who lived five minutes’ walk

from where the man was found dead.

And he had her phone number.

Joining the dots there,

there perhaps was a connection between the two.

Perhaps this is a love story.

Fishburne: Or something entirely different.

♪ ♪

- In the case of the Somerton Man,

it could very well be that they had a relationship.

She gave him this book,

which has very romantic poems in it--

poems about seizing the day,

about being together while the world is so difficult.

And they’re in love.

- But their relationship ends.

And then, many years later,

the man shows up, in 1948,

looking to rekindle

or somehow address his relationship with her.

She doesn’t want anything to do with it.

And, you know, heartbroken, decides to end his life

by poisoning himself on the beach.

Fishburne: But if the Somerton Man

committed suicide by self-poison,

the question is why.

♪ ♪

- Back in 1948,

Jo Thomson was involved in a relationship

with a man named Prosper Thomson,

her soon-to-be husband.

And they had a 16-month-old child

named Robin Thomson.

- But here’s the interesting part:

Jo Thomson becomes pregnant in 1946,

and a true timeline cannot be established

as to when Jo and Prosper Thomson met.

- It appears that in 1946,

when she became pregnant in Sydney,

she was in nursing quarters

training as a nurse in a hospital.

♪ ♪

- Prosper Thomson was living

a few hundred miles away at the time.

- So this timeline raises questions

about the lineage of Robin Thomson.

- Some would suggest

that it was a twisted, triangular relationship.

The whole thing reads like a movie script, frankly.

Fishburne: Abbott believes that Robin could be the key

to proving the Somerton Man’s identity

and providing a motive for his death.

- The interesting thing about Robin Thomson is

he was a professional ballet dancer.

I recalled that one of the people

that had examined the Somerton Man’s body in the mortuary

had noted that the Somerton Man

had extremely strong calf muscles

that were high up the leg like that of a ballet dancer.

Fishburne: And the similarities don’t end there.

♪ ♪

- So only about 2% of the population

have what they call "hyperdontia,"

where they’re missing teeth because of genetics.

Well, the Somerton Man is missing two incisor teeth.

And we know that they’re missing naturally

because the other teeth filled in.

- Also, I noticed something strange about his ears.

The upper hollow of your ear is called the cymba,

and the lower hollow is called the cavum.

And your cymba is usually very narrow and small,

and the cavum is big.

But, with the Somerton Man, it’s the other way around.

His ears are inverted.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: Robin Thomson shares

both rare genetic traits.

- So what are the odds of them

having the same ear shapes and sizes

and the same missing two front teeth, the lateral incisors?

What are those odds? They’re 1 in 10,000,000.

♪ ♪

- So the obvious question this all raises is:

is the Somerton Man the father of Robin Thomson?

- We just got to look at the facts.

He had a book of love poetry

with the phone number of a lady

who had a child with genetic features very similar to his.

[dramatic music]

Perhaps it’s not something sinister,

but it’s a matter of the heart.

♪ ♪

- It does seem possible, maybe even likely,

that he comes back into town to reignite an old flame.

And he visits Jo Thomson.

However, he finds out that she’s now in a relationship,

she’s got a 16-month-old son that is possibly his child.

And putting two and two together,

maybe it’s a reason

why she didn’t want him in her life anymore.

He’s rebuffed.

And, at this point, maybe he had nothing else to live for.

♪ ♪

Back when the Somerton Man was found,

they found a tiny, rolled-up piece of paper

that said "tamám shud."

Well, the English translation of it means

"it is finished" or "it is done."

And could this then be a suicide note?

♪ ♪

Fishburne: But proving this theory will be difficult.

- There’s a big question mark over his death,

but where we can find answers is through the man’s DNA.

[dramatic music]

- So, in an effort to identify the Somerton Man,

they did a casting of his head.

Dr. Abbott went to examine that casting

and sees that there’s actually some hairs.

- This got me excited because I realized

that this could be a source of DNA

that could crack this case.

Fishburne: Next, he tries to find Robin Thomson.

- But Robin Thomson died a couple months before.

And he was cremated, so there’s no remains

to get the DNA

to see if he was related to the Somerton Man.

♪ ♪

So I thought to myself,

"Well, has Robin Thomson got any descendants?"

I did some detective work

and I tracked down one of his daughters.

Fishburne: Her name is Rachel Egan,

the daughter of Robin Thomson and Roma Egan.

They toured together in a ballet company.

- And she kindly donated her DNA.

I was able to subtract her DNA and her mother’s DNA

to basically reconstruct Robin Thomson’s DNA.

I was excited that Rachel agreed to give me her DNA,

but I got a lot more than that.

Fishburne: Abbott and Rachel began dating in 2010

and married just a few months later.

- Sadly, there’s not enough DNA material on the hair shafts

to figure out if the Somerton Man is Robin Thomson’s father.

Fishburne: Without a DNA match,

the case remains unsolved.

♪ ♪

- Unfortunately, a lot of the evidence

was later thrown out or destroyed.

♪ ♪

The cigarettes, the suitcase,

and perhaps the most important thing that’s missing

is the Somerton man’s copy of the "Rubáiyát."

- If we had this copy of this book,

we might be able to run DNA testing on it.

We might be able to find new information inside the pages.

But ultimately, that evidence is gone now.

Fishburne: If Abbott and his family and the public

have any chance of closure on the Somerton Man case,

the only way forward is to exhume the body.

- The people of Australia want an answer.

Who was the Somerton Man?

So the stakes are high to get this solved.

- Now that Rachel and I are together and we have a family,

it kind of illustrates the importance

of finding the DNA of the Somerton Man.

If his DNA shows that he’s a Russian,

maybe that will bring the spy theory back alive again.

If he’s unrelated to us,

it gives some other family some closure

and connect him back to his family.

And if he is somehow related to us,

it will also give us closure.

♪ ♪

- Investigation into this mystery is continuing.

The Somerton Man’s body was exhumed in May 2021

in Australia, and DNA analysis is ongoing.

Even if Rachel Egan is the Somerton Man’s granddaughter,

it doesn’t fully answer what happened

on November 30th, 1948.

But proving the link between the man and Jo Thomson

could be a crucial step in finally closing this case.

I’m Laurence Fishburne.

Thank you for watching "History’s Greatest Mysteries."

♪ ♪