SOMERTON MAN: SOE/MI6 CONNECTION TO TIBOR KALDOR UNCOVERED. Updated 21/06/18

WW2 BBC RADIO CODED MESSAGES 

In an amazing piece of investigation and follow through, Clive came across what could be the most important piece of information that links an SOE/MI6 operative to Tibor Kaldor.

A great deal of work has been done over the past 18 months on Tibor and his sad ending, in the most recent posts we uncovered and shared the use of a particular number sequence that pointed to the name DANETTA. Followers will recall that this name was first uncovered using n Acrostic Decoder.

This last discovery was a major boost to our theory that Tibor was somehow involved in Espionage. The knowledge and skill required to encode his last words whilst we believe he was under extraordinary duress, could not have been anything other than the result of training. But who could have taught him?

The Referee

We'll cut to the chase here, during WW2, under the direction of the Special Operations Executive, BBC London used to send clandestine/coded messages to members of the resistance in France and other countries. These messages were created by SOE and then read out by announcers including the legendary Alvar Liddel. In the clip above you can listen to some of those messages. It goes without saying that interpreters provided by SOE were needed as many of the messages were transmitted in the appropriate language for the target region.

One such person directly involved in this work of coding and translating was a name that we first came across whilst researching documents related to Tibor Kaldor. 

That name was Miss Elizabeth Bethune Stainforth:

She was one of 3 referees who provided evidence of good character for Tibor in his application for citizenship. Here we have a clear and direct link between an SOE operative and Tibor Kaldor.

Elizabeth was an employee working under the guise of the BBC on the translation and coding of secret messages.

There is work underway to find out as much as we can about Elizabeth, we do know the following:

1. There is no record of her having traveled to Australia from the UK until March 1951.
2. There is no record that we have been able find thus far of her arriving in Australia at any time
3. It is known that she attended and worked at the first meeting of the UN in the UK in January 1946, a meeting attended by many well-known diplomats and their aides including one Pavel Fedosimov.

This is the first in a planned series of articles on this topic, it seems to Clive and myself that this is very likely the beginning of the unraveling of the whole story.

Below are the signed certificates from the 3 referees, note that Elizabeth's surname is underlined. Will be checking Tibor's writing against this signature. Given that Elizabeth supposedly wasn't in Australia at the time, one wonders how Tibor would have known her. Time to ask some FOI questions I suspect.

The name Elizabeth Bethune Stainforth is an unusual one being partially Scottish and English, we are checking to see if we can find others of that name in Australia at that time. As you will see there is no photograph in the article and we will do our best to see if we can trace one down. Final point, the headline shows that this Elizabeth Stainforth not only worked for the BBC, she also worked with displaced persons, the latter point being of particular interest.

Update, 21/06/18:

We have a Miss Elizabeth Stainforth, a teacher at Garden Vale, Melbourne, she was heading off to the UK on a teacher exchange programme around the same time that the Somerton Man was found. Could this be the lady who signed the form? A good possibility. Well, it looked promising for a while. This of course has no effect on the nature of the various codes found in Tibor's last letter, the strange Tudor Watch ad nor the findings of Milongal in Verse 70.

Plus this information from the UK, it shows that an Elizabeth Bethune Stainforth did indeed leave the UK bound for Melbourne in 1951as well as other ladies with a similar name,  Elizabeth H Stainforth being one of them who departed the UK for Melbourne.