THE INTERVIEW:
Detective Superintendent Brown
This document is one of 177 pages of notes made by interviewer Stuart Littlemore in preparation for the 1978 TV Documentary about the Somerton Man.
The particular page that you can see above deals with part of his interview with Detective Superintendent Brown who, at that time was a 'sprightly' 60-year-old man and sharp minded.
The discussion in point was about the phone numbers, plural, there were two numbers with Jestyn's apparent number being X3239.
The other number according to Det Sup Brown was that of a local business and they had been contacted with a negative response, no one recalled the man had called them at that number.
What can we deduce from that statement?
We are left with two main options, firstly the statement could be read as is and the lead becomes a dead end. Secondly and equal in likelihood is that the number may not have been a South Australian number but instead it may have been a Victorian or another State number as pointed out in our previous post on this matter. If you recall, we were able to readily find that the number X3239 existed in Victoria, Canberra and Brisbane at the time.
If we focus on Victoria being the most likely State home for the X3239 number then the same could also be said of the second yet unpublished number, it was not a South Australian business number but could well have been a Victorian number.
THE ASSUMPTIONS
Stay with me on this for just a little while longer. An assumption was made in 1948 that the Somerton Man had probably arrived by train from either Broken Hill or Melbourne, there is no published basis for that assumption apart from the suitcase that was recovered at the railway station in January 1949.Doubts have understandably been raised about the origin of the suitcase and its content as indeed they have similarly been raised about the discovery of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam book.
THE LINK TO JESTYN
It is the book and more precisely the X3239 telephone number that provides us with one of the only known facts that positively links Jestyn to the book and its owner. I say 'owner' because we do not know just who owned that book and I say 'one' as there is arguably other information that could provide that link. But, for now let's keep the focus on these telephone numbers.WHO WROTE DOWN THE NUMBERS?
Again we are operating in the field of assumptions. It has long been assumed that it was the Somerton Man who owned the book and it was he who had written down the numbers, although the only evidence we have to support that is that the book was found in Glenelg by a Chemist from the area on an undetermined date and it was months later that it was rediscovered.True to say that the torn piece bearing the words 'TAMAM SHUD' had earlier been found n a hard to find waistband fob pocket of the trousers that the Somerton Man was wearing at the time his body was discovered.
The torn piece was matched, though not by its shape, to the last page in the newly found book, the match was based on it being of a similar type of paper stock to that of that book. What we can say with a degree of certainty is that the torn piece found on the man came from the book. We cannot say that the man had removed it from the last page because there is simply no evidence to support it.
The book and the torn piece are separate pieces of evidence and we should address them that way until fresh evidence is forthcoming.
It is quite possible that the person who ditched the book into the Chemists car at 'around the time of the Parafield Air Show' was not the Somerton Man. In fact, we do not know for sure that the book was ditched at the time of his death, it could have been sometime after that occurrence.
To the point, whilst the assumption about the journey made by the Somerton Man has him boarding a train in Victoria, no assumption was made that the telephone numbers on the back of the book were also from Victoria. We can find no records of the Victorian lead being followed up. It begs the question, 'Why not?'
If we accept the strong possibility that the numbers were of an origin other than South Australia, does that reinforce the case for SM also coming from Victoria or is there another possibility? Could it be that the book belonged to another man from that time who we know came from Victoria and had connections there? Tibor Kaldor perhaps?
There'll be another post on this subject in the next week.
Do you find the conversation about the numbers interesting?
ReplyDeleteBrown dismisses the business number as "probably just noted down....in a general way that any ordinary person would..."
It hints at the numbers being recorded differently. Perhaps, for example, one was written with a name neatly while the other was scrawled haphazardly across the page or something? Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it sounds like there was good reason why they thought Jestyn's number was more significant than the business number.
Brown telling a story 30 years after the event might account for some of it, I suppose.
Oh yes, most interesting. Mr. Brown's comments would raise little comment from non ex Police but from an ex officers perspective that would raise a bigger than normal smile.
ReplyDeleteThere is a slim chance that amongst some papers recently found we may find an earlier version of the code page. The belief is that the two numbers were found in the top right quartile of the page, that is open to interpretation as in was it in the top right hand area of the book when viewed normally or hen viewed from the orientation in which the code was written? Hope that makes sense. Anyway, if it is the orientation of the code page, then the 'stained' area to the top right may hod the answer. I agree with you, the number itself wouldn't be sufficient and I hold a growing feeling in the bones that the numbers were Victorian in origin and not South Australian. Thanks for the comment.
Gordon, I remember you wrote that Brown referred to tiny writing on the back of the ROK, and you inferred that it was the phone number(s) ..... yet DS Leane was able to read one phone number without the need of a magnifying glass.
ReplyDeleteHi Pete, Yes that's correct, the original source for the information regarding Det. Brown's mention of the telephone numbers in tiny writing was Professor Abbott. He had interviewed Det. Brown and that was the comment he recorded.
DeleteYou wouldn't need a magnifying glass to see tiny writing, remember that brown was about 30 years old at the time and his eyesight would have been quite reasonable. The recent post showing a map and tiny writing was from a Belgian based resistance group sent to MI 14 via carrier pigeon in 1942 I think, it's a good example of the skill. In that case the writing was around 1mm in height with some being closer to .5mm The threshold for the human eye is approximately .1mm so .5 is relatively large when you look at it in those terms. It pales in comparison to the work of James W. Zaharee who once famously wrote the entire content of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address on a 3 inch strand of human hair, a magnifying glass was required to read that :)
Brown was the newspaper source ... he told them the TS slip was found in the trousers SM was wearing, another furphy.
ReplyDeleteAnd the trousers in the suitcase had sand in the turnups. Clive
ReplyDeleteBallet dancers who get changed at the beach have that problem ..
ReplyDeleteWell, the post is about the burning question and that question relates to the telephone numbers, so whilst I am sure Pete has some good things to say, if we keep to the topic we may make some progress :)
ReplyDeleteHow important are the telephone numbers and exactly where were they on the code page? Here's an extract from the Adelaide University Wiki that deals with Detective Superintendent Len Brown his history and some of the comments he made:
ReplyDelete'The phone number was in very tiny lettering. Len stated that the phone number was written under the code'
The telephone number was written in very tiny lettering and it was found UNDER the code.
Do you hear that strange rumbling? Pelling has just had the floor disappear under him.
ReplyDeletepeterbowes17 September 2018 at 10:27
ReplyDeleteDo you hear that strange rumbling? Pelling has just had the floor disappear under him.
ReplyDelete