THREE FACES...
....In date order
1. Image 1 on the left shows the face of the man as photographed by Jimmy Durham on Thursday, 2nd December 1948
2. Image 2 in the centre is the same full face view taken from a similar angle, unknown photographer and an unconfirmed date. It has been said that this was the pre burial image of the man but, as the image shows below, his appearance is quite different from the first image and the bust.. Possibly this was taken around the middle of December 1948 and after the body was embalmed. This photograph, to my knowledge, was never published in the press at the time. This would explain to an extent the statements made by some of those who viewed the body, that he did not look like the photograph in the press.
3. Image 3 is of course the, by now, very familiar full face view of the plaster bust created by Paul Lawson in June 1949.
In this comparison, the plaster bust bears little resemblance to image 2. This is in line with Paul Lawson's comment when I interviewed him that he in fact used the post autopsy photographs to model the face of the bust. Image 2 is of the body from whom the bust was made, that is also the body from which the sample hairs used in the DNA examination carried out by Professor Abbot, were taken.
PROFILE COMPARISON
AUTOPSY/PRE BURIAL COMPARISON:
PRE BURIAL SIDE PROFILE/FULL FACE
COMPARISON:
The man in picture 2 looks nothing like the one in Number 1? Got to get a photo of Carl Webb.
ReplyDeleteLooks to me like the middle photo is probably the oldest, and before a mortician touched him up for the first picture.
DeleteWell, if pic number 2 is from the body that Lawson made the bust from, then the hair they used for the dna stuff came from that body. Wasn't there something about the Police disposing of the original body?
ReplyDeleteWhat it means is that everyone really should wait for the Police DNA results which have to include the dental chart showing the 18 missing teeth. It's the teeth that complete the picture by directly tying the body found in the grave with the body on which Dr.Dwyer performed the autopsy. I'll include more in part 2 of this post.
ReplyDeleteRe: model aircraft and purely in the interests of accuracy, the newspaper concerned was the Argus. That's a Melbourne paper and there is a Somerton in Victoria 3062, about 20ks North Of Melbourne.
ReplyDeleteDENNY, STEVE H and PAT, re the Autopsy photographs etc. Dr Dwyer performed the autopsy on Thursday 2nd August at 7.30 am. Later that day the Police Photographer, Patrick James Durham in company with a Constable Knight, went to the mortuary and photographed and fingerprinted the body. You can find the full details in the Inquest Documents, here's a link to the Inquest documents:
ReplyDeletehttps://drive.google.com/file/d/1JRD55YLqV9LtwFxMengIbDtfP6G0IPBU/view?usp=sharing
Just to clarify a point, part of the autopsy procedure is normally to remove the eyes along with the brain and other organs. If you look closely at the post autopsy pics his eyes are closed. They may well have popped a sitich oin or even glued them shut as they did with the mouth.
Please let me know if there's anything more I can assist you with. If I have the information I will gladly share it with you otherwise I might be able to point you in the right direction. Hope this helps.
The discrepancy between different photos is explained in the YouTube video Somerton Man Panel Discussion (UniAdel - Jun 1, 2015), by Tony Elliott whose uncle embalmed the body. In the video at around the 11.45 minute mark he shows three photos, the one on the left from a day or two after the body was found, the one in the middle ten days after, after initial embalming, and the one on the right six months after. He explains the different look of the face after six months as due to embalming fluids "bloating out" the tissue.
ReplyDeleteDo you mean December, not August, in your comment? Best wishes Steve H
Thanks for that Steve, appreciate your comment and Yes, it was meant to be December. I was wondering if someone would spot it :)
ReplyDeleteI had a look at the video, it's interesting and informative as you might expect. However, it doesn't address the image numbered 2 in the above post and that one is quite different in appearance and not easily explained. Although when I interviewed Paul Lawson, he gave me some information which would explain it. I will post that shortly. It also leaves a question as to why the two side profiles have different outlines especially the nose and forehead, which I don't see relating to a bloating if tissue, this is more about the structure of the skull.
The pre burial side profile, on examination, has been heavily modified a task which, in those days, required a high level of skill. This modification goes some way towards explaining the issue of the differences in the profiles.
The full face photo numbered 2 above along with the later profile photograph appear on page 153 of The Unknown Man book by Gerry Feltus. He describes them as having been taken shortly before the bust was made. I would imagine Gerry would have read of that and produced the images from Police files which I would regard as a reliable source.
Thanks again Steve, a good discussion to be had.
Sounds like Sanders
ReplyDeleteS'mai Dai. Couldn't tell you, lost count of the number of alter egos he uses. Troll, stalker and the odd genuine person, you'd never know who you were talking with on that blog.
ReplyDeleteA few posts related to Strontium 90, a Kangaroo Island connection and a man named Karl
ReplyDelete1. https://tamamshud.blogspot.com/2019/10/somerton-man-another-interview-with.html
2. https://tamamshud.blogspot.com/2020/09/somerton-man-hair-samples-kept.html
3. https://tamamshud.blogspot.com/2020/09/arzamas-16.html