TAMAMSHUD, THE SOMERTON MAN's DNA. A CASE OF CONTAMINATION AND DESTRUCTION?....VIDEOS, UPDATED

 

INTRODUCTION:

As is well known, in July 2022, Professor Abbot of Adelaide University made the claim that he had been able to identify the Somerton Man as a Carl 'Charlie' Webb  We were informed that had retrieved and sent a single hair shaft some 50 mm in length from the plaster bust (made by the late Mr' Paul Lawson) to a specialist laboratory, ASTREA,  a company which was leading the field in the analysis of rootless hair shafts from which they extracted useable mtDNA.

Mr. Lawson was a well-known, well-liked, and greatly respected Taxidermist at the South Australian Museum and it was he who was called upon by SA Police to create a plaster bust of the Man found on Somerton Beach on December 1st, 1948. I had the privilege of having numerous conversations with Mr. Lawson at his request and many of the issues raised in this post stem from those discussions.

THE BODY & THE AUTOPSY, THE DENTAL CHART

The body of a man was found on Somerton Beach on the morning of December 1st, 1948, the body was pronounced dead at Royal Adelaide Hospital and transported to the Adelaide City morgue. There is a chain of evidence that links the finding of the body and its subsequent removal to the morgue.

An autopsy was confirmed on the following day at 7.30 am, Dr Dwyer a Government Pathologist, performed an autopsy on the body of the man. Importantly, in that process, Dr.Dwyer made a notated sketch of the man's dental chart, it showed that the man had 18 missing teeth. The condition is known as OLOGODONTIA and not Anodontia as has been mistakenly claimed.

With regards to the exhumed remains, firstly the teeth must match the chart below and secondly, the DNA from those teeth might be a good indication of who the Somerton Man might be. But it is not a certainty, we may never know the true identity of the Somerton Man.

Here is the image of the Dental Chart registered as Exhibit C 8 in the Inquest Files 1948:

The image below is a copy of part of the statement made by Dr.Dwyer in his evidence to the Coroner ion July 1948 and it refers specifically to the teeth and the dental chart:

You will read that Dr.Dwyer describes the missing teeth and the fact that he handed the chart which was in his handwriting and the same chart that he had handed to Constable Sutherland. Note in particular that Dr Dwyer specifically states that '..anyone looking at him in the ordinary way, if he were to laugh, would notice the teeth were missing..'  

It was this part of Dr Dwyer's statement that Professor Abbott totally ignored in one of his earlier claims, replacing it with his view that the man had anodontia, the same condition that Robin, Jestyn's son had, this was therefore a complete fabrication. by the Professor to support his 'Love Child' theory.

We now have yet another fabrication published on the Tomsbytwo blog by a regular commenter there who denies the authenticity of the document and therefore Dr. Dwyer's statement. Peter Bowes, the author of that blog, should know better than to publish deliberately false and misleading information. It remains to be seen how long it will stay there. Or perhaps we will get another round of wordy, incomprehensible obfuscation as per the master of such, John Sanders.

Personally, I have had more than enough of dealing with trolls, backstabbers, and ne'er do wells since starting this blog 11 years ago so I will leave this discussion at that.

THE EMBALMING PROCESS

On December 10th, 1948, another well-known and well-respected man, a local undertaker, Mr. Laurie Elliot was given the task of embalming a body believed to be the body found on the beach at Somerton. There is no chain of evidence that includes the identification of that body to Mr Elliot. As part of the embalming process, Mr. Elliot was contracted to subsequently visit the morgue where the body was kept to make sure that the body was kept in good condition and to top up the various chemicals. Formaldehyde was among the chemicals used in the embalming process. The video below shows in some detail the process and more recently used to embalma a deceased person.

A warning, this video may contain content that would be distressing to some.:

E

THE BUST & THE HAIR

As part of the process of making the bust, Mr'Lawson smothered the hair on the man's head and eyebrows with mortuary soap. This technique was designed to prevent any hair from getting entangled and torn from its roots in the head of the subject man. in the plaster mix which could lead to damage of the plaster.

You will notice that, in the eyebrows in particular, you can see the way that the plaster has formed itself around the soap-covered hair.

Mortuary soap is hospital grade and to this day, such soap contains Sodium Hypochlorite better known as bleach. This chemical is known to destroy DNA and in fact, is used in Forensic Labs to wash down surfaces specifically to destroy any possible cross contamination including from DNA samples.

We can conclude with reasonable certainty that the DNA in the hair of the man who was subjected to the mortuary soap treatment would have been destroyed

Human Hair in Plaster Busts

The use of human hair in the making of plaster busts was common practice in those days, there are many examples of companies advertising human hair for sale in South Australia during the 1940s. Hair was routinely collected from hairdressing establishments, processed, and sorted before its sale either for wigs or for use by modelers. This hair was treated and then used to strengthen the structure of a plaster bust and it was also said that it gave a smoother finish to the object.

This raises another question regarding the source of the hair found by Professor Abbot.

3D LINE LASER

 In 2011, Professor Abbot and his students organized the creation of a 3D image of the Somerton Man bust. This task involved the purchase of a kit known as DAVID which was a 3 mW 'line laser'. This camera and kit took many images of the bust from numerous angles around the bust itself.

It is true to say that a 3mW laser is not particularly powerful but much depends on the way that the 'line laser' was configured including its pulse rate and focus. It is regarded as very possible that we see used in the above video could have destroyed any DNA on the surface of the bust or on any protruding hairs as seen in the close-up image below. It appears to me that the hairs are thinner where they enter the plaster and wider towards the visible ends. You can also see that they are of varying lengths

THE HAIR SAMPLE

The image above is of a human hair from a follicle to a tapered or rounded tip which is visible.

This image shows a close-up of hair found on the Somerton Man bust. Whilst you can see 3 complete hairs two do not appear to be rounded or tipped. They have been cut.

Below you can see an image of the same hair alongside a marked-up image

The image on the left shows the original photo, on the right you can see that 3 of the hairs have been numbered as follows:

1. This hair is neither rounded or tapered, it appears to have been cut

2. Difficult to be certain but hair number 2 may be tipped

3. Hair number 3 also does not appear to be tapered or rounded, it appears to have been cut

THE ISSUE WITH THE HAIR IMAGES

There is a major issue with these hairs and the way they are set into and from the plaster.

Firstly, the outer surface of the bust was in close contact with the inner surface of the mold made by Mr.Lawson.

Next, the inner surface of the mold was pressed tightly against the man's head and in particular the hair on his head. 

It is that hair that protruded from the man's head, tip first, which, if we correctly understand the claim, was caught up in the plaster as the bust was made and, consequently as the plaster bust dried, those protruding hairs when the mold was broken away, were torn from the man's scalp

The hair that was torn from his scalp was torn tip first, and as a consequence, when the plaster bust was cast it would have grabbed those protruding hairs' root or thicker end first. The thicker root ends would have been buried in the plaster bust, and the hairs that we should see would have their thinner, tapered ends showing. Look closely at the image above, they do not show tapered tips, we see the thicker root ends in the image above.

We can reasonably assume that the hairs that we see in the image did not come from the head of the man of whom the bust was made. It is possible that they came from human hair used to strengthen the plaster bust.

On the question of DNA and the hair sample, the source link below clearly states that the requirement for DNA analysis is 5 individual hairs. Only one hair shaft was used and that no longer exists.

The same source makes it clear that you cannot identify an individual from mtDNA yet that is what Professor Abbot has apparently done.

CONCLUSION:
In conclusion, in this post, we see that there is evidence that the hair originally on the head of the man of whom the bust was made, could not have contained any DNA due to{

1. The mortuary soap and its sodium hypochlorite are known to destroy DN
2. Formaldehyde was applied repeatedly over 3 months also known to destroy DNA
3. The use of a line laser, albeit low-powered, could potentially have damaged or destroyed any DNA on the surface of the bust or in the protruding hairs.

REFERENCES:

PRIMARY SOURCE: 
Hair DNA - Testing, Forensic Analysis and Tools - Laboratoryinfo.com

1. https://www.legalgenealogist.com/2012/06/03/dna-and-the-locks-of-hair/
2. https://easydna.ph/dna-tests/discreet-dna-test/
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hair_analysis
4. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0069588
5. https://www.health-street.net/product/hair-dna-test/
6. https://qz.com/776079/hair-could-be-used-to-identify-criminals-instead-of-dna-evidence/
7. https://www.homednadirect.com/knowledge-base/hair-paternity-testing/
8. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150716092021.htm
9. https://californiainnocenceproject.org/issues-we-face/dna-forensic-analysis/
10. https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-hair-protein-identification-20160907-snap-story.html