THE SOMERTON MAN REMAINS: A HYPOTHESIS PLUS... UPDATED

A HYPOTHESIS

...The image is of a body in a coffin, 50 years after being buried.

The image shown here is not of the Somerton Man, it is posted to provide you with an idea of what the remains of the Somerton Man may have looked like. In this case, the man is shown inside a relatively intact coffin, it isn't known whether these remains had been embalmed.

OVERVIEW

This is a fact and evidence-based hypothesis. 

No matter what notions and scenarios people may come up with, in the end, it's all about the evidence and, based on that evidence, what is a likely hypothesis with regards to some of the circumstances surrounding the process of the finding of the body through to its eventual burial and exhumation. The steps we will be considering are:

1. We can clearly say that there was no formal audit trail of identifying the body throughout the process.

2. The photographs of the body taken by Jimmy Durham and the fingerprints leave questions

3. Viewing of the body and a revealing moment

4. The embalming, post embalming photographs, and viewings

5. Paul Lawson, the plaster bust, and the question of the skull

6. Conclusions

1. THE AUDIT TRAIL

What does such an audit trail look like? It is a process of formal identification of the body as it moves through the whole process. Starting from the beach scene where the witness John Lyons met with Constable Moss. There is no record in the statements of either man that specifically described the identification of the body. In other words. Constable moss should have said,  'Is this the man you found earlier this morning?'. there's no record of that being said. Neither is there a record of Mr. Lyons saying, 'This is the body of the man I found here earlier this morning'. that fact was taken for granted.

There is no mention of any other police officers at the scene, the Police 'Ambulance' arrived, someone must have called for it and someone must have been driving it. Why would that be important? Because if it was Constable Moss that called for the Ambulance, did he leave the body unattended for a while? It is possible that when the call was initially placed informing the Police of the finding of the body, the despatch process would have been to automatically been to send the 'body wagon.' But there is no mention of that. The point here is that there is instantly a glaring hole in the audit trail.

The next stop was the transportation of the body to the hospital where Dr. Bennett examined the body and gave an estimated time of death. Nowhere in the evidence given to the inquest is it stated that the body shown to Dr, Bennett was confirmed as the body that was found on the beach at Somerton that morning. Pocky? Yes, but at this stage, it is not known whether this was a normal sudden death, a suicide, or a murder. Police procedures, to my knowledge, have always been to treat a sudden and unexpected death as a possible murder. Yet another hole on the audit trail.

The body was transported to the mortuary to await the post mortem examination. At this point, Constable Moss as the reporting officer would have carried out a thorough search of the man and listed his possessions. This is not clearly stated in the inquest documents. Constable Moss should also have been in attendance at the Post Mortem and he should have stated to Dr. Dwyer who carried out the PM, that this was the body of the man found on Somerton Beach on 1st December 1948. There is no record of that identification being made. Perhaps the most significant piece of evidence from the autopsy is the dental chart:

Note that a total of 18 teeth are missing and their locations are clearly identified. The importance of this chart is not to be underestimated. It is the one piece of evidence that can confirm that the remains found in the grave are indeed those of the man on whom Dr.Dwyer performed the autopsy.

Similarly, when Jimmy Durham took the photographs and fingerprints of the body there is no record of anyone identifying that body to him as being the man found on Somerton Beach.  This is critical. If the chain of evidence isn't in place to its broken, then anything after the break is not valid. Thus when Jimmy Durham had a body pointed out to him by MC Knight, there is no evidence that shows when and who identified the body to him. The identification was therefore not valid. The chain of evidence was broken right there. Ridiculous as it sounds, for all we know the morgue cleaner might have told Knight that he thought the body on the slab was the man from Somerton.

In fact, as you work through each stage, the body was not formally identified to the undertaker/embalmer, the embalmed body was not formally identified to the Police.

The body was never identified to Cleland who, I believe, did not see it until after the embalming process had taken place. And the body was never formally identified as the body of the man found on Somerton Beach to Paul Lawson, the man who created the plaster bust of the head and shoulders of the man.

2. THE POST MORTEM PHOTOGRAPHS & FINGERPRINTS

In a newspaper article, mention is made that the Police would be releasing reconstructed photographs of the body to the press on the 4th December 1948. Why would they need three full days to do that and exactly how were the photographs, 'reconstructed? 

No evidence was submitted that provides any information on that issue. 

We first posted this article in September 2013.

VIEW THE ORIGINAL POST HERE...

The photographs of the body when examined show unusual aspects which may possibly relate to the 'reconstruction' mentioned in the press article:

When it comes to fingerprints, as you can see, the form has not been signed off by the officer taking those prints. 

We first posted on the issue of the fingerprint form in 2014. 

VIEW THE ORIGINAL POST HERE... 

The information posted at that time is detailed and reveals matters of some importance.

3. VIEWING OF THE BODY

 Yes, numerous people had viewed the body, more than 200 I think but stand to be corrected on that. Of all those who attempted to identify the body, just two were decidedly unusual.

In one instance a family from Kangaroo Island were all but positive that the body they viewed was a man who had worked on their property. In fact, they were so certain that they came back for a second viewing and they seemed convinced that this was the man. This identification was brought up when Stuart Littlemore interviewed Paul Lawson, the famous 'Tender Ground' comment came at that point.

But, the big problem here is that the Kangaroo Island identification was made AFTER the embalming process. Why is that important?

Read this post through and you will see evidence that will surprise many.

Yet another unusual aspect is that apparently, more than one viewer of the body thought that the body looked quite different to the original post autopsy photographs now that is most interesting as you will read and see further down in this post.

4. THE EMBALMING, PHOTOGRAPHS & POST EMBALMING VIEWINGS

On Friday 10th December 1948, the body of the Somerton Man was embalmed at the morgue. The fact that the process took place at the morgue may prove to be significant as you will read in the Paul Lawson section which follows this piece.

The press article above came from the Adelaide Advertiser dated 11th December 1948.

The photographs to the right, two of which were taken after the embalming process and before the bust being made by Paul Lawson, show the significant difference in the appearance of the man's face.

This being so, then any identification attempt after the embalming would have been doubtful, to say the least. I am referring specifically to the Kangaroo Island ID.

You can read more about these photographs here...

5. PAUL LAWSON, THE PLASTER BUST & THE QUESTION OF THE SKULL

As those who follow this blog will know I and the real Clive Turner spent many hours talking with Paul Lawson, the man who was engaged by the Police to create a plaster bust of the head and shoulders of the body. The question may be which body? As you can see in the images in the previous section, the pre-bust images bear little to no resemblance to the post autopsy images, to all appearances they could be of a different person although I believe that there is another explanation.

In the discussions with Paul, amongst many things, he stressed in particular that the face he created for the bust was done using the original post mortem photographs, he was unable to work with the face of the embalmed man, the face was different and difficult to work with. When you look at the earlier photographs shown in this post, you can see what he meant.

Paul also stressed that he was asked by Cleland to remove the skull of the man and to replace it with a dummy version. When Paul attempted to remove the skull, he found that it had been previously worked on, someone had taken the skull and completely removed any biological matter from it. To use his words it was pristine, as clean as can be. It was whilst Paul was looking at the skull that the Police arrived and told him to stop what he was doing as the body was going to be immediately buried. As it turns out it was some days later that the body was buried.

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6. THE CONCLUSIONS

I'll keep this brief, the lack of an identification audit trail means that there is precious little left that can be totally relied upon.

What we can say for sure is that a body was found, no one was able to identify it which could be due in no small part to the apparent vastly different appearance of the man's face.

We can also suggest that the skull might well have been removed for specialist cleaning but it is also very possible that a different skull was put in its place, (as in fact had been suggested to Mr. Lawson by Cleland), not that of the man found on the beach. This would go a long way to explaining why several people thought that the man looked different from the Police photographs. A replacement skull would not have been a good fit beneath the skin of the original head and that is the reason why the pre-bust/post embalming face appears to have too much skin.

One final comment which I have raised before and which relates to the Dental Chart. The chart is the vital link between the man on whom the autopsy was carried out by Dr. Dwyer and the remains that were exhumed. If, as seems possible, the original skull had been removed and replaced, then the dental chart of the exhumed remains is unlikely to match. It would be one thing for the remains to have fewer teeth than the Dwyer chart shows but quite another to have teeth in a place where there shouldn't be any at all.

Time will tell.

I think that what we can expect from the examination of the bones is the origin of the body, it can not solve the mystery for us as to just what he was doing in Adelaide but what it can do is point us to a place from which the man came and then hopefully to a name. It may just be able to tell us how he died.

In the end, we will be left with more and different questions.