THE FELTUS CLUE: W904 8, THE SHOES IDENTIFIED

Many of the viewers of this post will be familiar with the name Gerry Feltus. He was a

Detective Sergeant in the South Australian Police and at that time he had the Cold Case file for the Somerton Man on his desk. 

The case intrigued Gerry greatly to the extent that he went on to write the definitive book about it, THE UNKNOWN MAN. 

Those who know Gerry know him to be an Old School copper, he is a straight shooter and he is a man of principle. As a serving Police Officer, Gerry would have signed the Official Secrets Act and being the man he is, he would have stuck rigidly to the rules, he knew that once you signed that document it was forever and any sensitive information that he came across in his service must be kept secret. That's the nature of the job and of the man.

Whilst I have had numerous conversations with Gerry over the years, we did not specifically discuss the subject of this post so what you're about to see is the result of my own observations and research.

Above is the cover of the UNKNOWN MAN book written by Gerry, it has been a very successful venture for him but now, sadly it is out of print. 

The Back Cover

This next image shows the back of the book and you can see that I have circled a group of characters being W9048. I hear that Gerry had said that it was on a piece of paper in the file and that rings true.

But, I had this feeling that just maybe we were all missing something, so I took an even closer look at the numbers and found that instead of the set reading 'W9048' it actually had a space between the number 4 and the number 8.

I got onto the Trove Newspaper website and entered the new number set into the search box, I added the year 1948. It threw up a long list of articles and adverts but for one reason or another, I chose to select the options of Advertising and Melbourne as a starting point for my search. It didn't take long to produce a result.

STOCKMAN'S BOOTS W904 8

A pair of very smart boots in black, not that dissimilar to today's RM Williams brand having what appears to be a one-piece leather upper. It was an advert for a company known as WITTNERS, they had 4 outlets in Melbourne and one in Footscray, they also offered Mail Order. 

The item number is W804 and it was available in sizes 6 to 11, but, in the small print below the Boots you will see that they also  had the same style of boot in brown and it's item number was W904, it was available in sizes 8 to 11.

The size of the shoes that the Somerton Man was wearing when he was found on the beach were size 8. And there we have it, W904 space 8. Something still wasn't sitting right though.

Weblink:https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/224884603?searchTerm=W904%208&searchLimits= 

DETECTIVE BROWN, STOCKMAN'S 'SHOES'

According to Detective Brown, the Somerton Man was wearing Stockman's Shoes not boots and there was another thing, the records say that the shoes had a number inside them, 204B. 

Back to TROVE! I decided to see whether the company who had advertised the Black boots with a number that matched that on the back of THE UNKNOWN MAN book, also had another style but this time with the number W204, they did.

STOCKMAN'S SHOES 204B?

These shoes were a half ankle, slip on type shoe with a gusset much like the larger boots shown above. They offered all of the ruggedness of the earlier boots but in a more stylish look. These shoes, item number W204 were available in brown and they had a size range of 5 to 11. That is a match with a question, you can see that the number 204 could well be inside the shoe but the records stated 204B, in my view that B could have been an 8 indicating the correct size of the actual shoe and not the letter B. It's also possible that left and right shoe lasts were lettered A & B. I have contacted Wittners to clarify exactly what the numbering system was but my bones tell me that we have found the correct style of shoe. Notice the height of the heel, stockmen rode horses of course and that means they needed a good purchase on the stirrups hence raised heels. 

TODAY's SIMILAR DESIGN 

But with composite Soles

Weblink:https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/224891410?searchTerm=W204%208&searchLimits=l-category=Advertising 

WHAT ABOUT THE POLICE PHOTOGRAPHS OF SHOES?

The W204 shoes are much closer to the description given by Detective Brown as in Stockman's Shoes than the ones shown in this image to the right, these are dress shoes,  I believe that they're called half Oxford Brogues. Wittner's had a brogue shoe but quite a different design to the ones shown here, only 5 lace holes and a different pattern.

CONCLUSION?

What is the value of this new information? Firstly it ticks off another item on the list. Secondly, the substitute shoes in the Police photograph raises a serious question of the integrity of the evidence and thirdly, not mentioned as yet but many of the shoemakers in Melbourne were Bulgarian, some would have been ex internees and thus of interest to the search. In fact, one person who viewed the body had thought SM was a Bulgarian that he knew in the mid-40s.

Of note is that we now have two items of his that were known to be manufactured in Victoria, the Stamina Cloth trousers that he was wearing when found and now the Wittner shoes.

It cannot be said that Gerry directly disclosed any sensitive information. He did, however, get us to within a hair's breadth of the truth.