SOMERTON MAN: HOW TALL WAS THE SOMERTON MAN? HAVE WE FOUND HIM? UPDATED: 0530 9/01/17

HOW TALL WAS THE SOMERTON MAN?

...AND YOU MIGHT ASK HOW DOES THAT HELP?

According to the autopsy report, SM when measured in the morgue, was 5 feet and 11 inches in height. That's fairly straightforward, they laid him out, grabbed the ever handy tape measure and arrived at a fairly conclusive result. But was that the reality of his height?

If I can explain, the measurements were of a dead person, all muscles would have been fully relaxed, he would have been shorter than when he was alive, let's say by at least 1 inch, that would make him ^ 6 foot tall.

Next, when alive he wore decent shoes, that would add say another 1 inch to his apparent height. That would make him around 6'1" tall.

Now consider what happens to us all if we make an effort to stretch to our full height, we can pick up another 1 inch approximately. This makes our man 6'2"  in height

Now let's look at the question of his wedge shaped toes, these toes occur in a few people, ballet dancers and maybe horse riders as has been often discussed. They also occur in people who have a particular condition known as 'toe walking' there is a medical term but I am not sure that it would help that much. Two things happen when people walk on their toes or more precisely, on the balls of their feet. Firstly, they have highly developed calf muscles and secondly they appear to be taller.

Following this logic, then the Somerton Man in real life could have stood at 6'2" or even 6'3" in height.

So, what does that mean in this case? One thing it means is that as Clive and I and Misca and Byron plus others carry out our searches, we come across various forms that include height measurements, very often a search on the same person can have two or even 3 different results. One benefit for those who research is that we could now extend our search to include people up to 6'3" in height.

The Soviet Agent

There is one other thing, here is an image of a clipping from a book, The Atom Spies:

This image taken in 1941

The meeting referred to in the book took place in this Movie theatre in the Bronx, NY. in December 1946.

If nothing else, this 6'3" fair haired man, a Soviet Agent, with huge hands, sharp features and who walked on his toes, needs to be followed up, let's see if we can get a name. FYI, because he was a Soviet Agent does not necessarily mean that he was Russian, it could well mean that he had previously been in Australia and just may be he returned again sometime between January 1947 and November 1948. There is a real possibility that we may have our man, let's get on with the chase.

These pics have been added following a comment from Pete Bowes, they show, in my view, a man with sharp features,