SOMERTON MAN MYSTERY: A Catastrophic Ending To The Carl Webb Claim

 

The Diary, the The Damaged Bust and 

The DNA That Never Was...
We Have The Evidence

In A Nutshell:

You have the body of a man, the hair on his head is slicked down flat with mortuary soap, you add a little white spirit and that hardens. Then the Vaseline release agent is spread on top of that,(That prevents the body from sticking to the mould) Then the plaster mould is made which adds another layer so the hair from the body can’t get through the soap, the Vaseline and the layer of plaster. The mould hardens or 'cures' and then it's removed. Mr. Lawson prepares some wax and spreads a thick layer on the top of the head of the bust and he carefully sculpts the wax so that it looks like styled hair and then adds human hair to the wax to give it a 'realistic' appearance. The last thing he did was to prepare a 'slip' plaster mix, he spread that over the 'wig' he created and blends it in place just like he did with the ears.

As everyone who has followed this blog knows only too well, the Somerton Man mystery has been a story steeped in gossip, conspiracy theories and false claims.

The 2022 identification of Carl "Charles" Webb as the Somerton Man was based on DNA found in a  50mm rootless shaft of hair, which had no provenance, there was no mention of where or when it was

found, when it was extracted, who extracted it or where it was kept. There was nothing in the way of a chain of custody ever published for that specific hair. And the information was not published in a scholarly article as you would expect from a lofty institution like the Adelaide University, no, it was written as a magazine press article, the IEEE Spectrum Magazine, which turned out to be disappointingly short on facts but long on narrative. 

Here's the most confusing excerpt from the magazine article, here it is exactly as it appears:

"In 2022, at the suggestion of Colleen Fitzpatrick, a former NASA employee who had trained as a nuclear physicist but then became a forensic genetics expert, I sent a hair sample to Astrea Forensics, a DNA lab in the United States. This was our best hair-root sample, one that I had nervously guarded for 10 years. The result from Astrea came back—and it was a big flop.

Seemingly out of options, we tried a desperate move. We asked Astrea to analyze a 5-centimeter-long shaft of hair that had no root at all. Bang! The company retrieved 2 million SNPs. The identity of the Somerton Man was now within our reach."

Read it carefully and you will see that the two hair samples are conflated, the two sentences can easily be read as one if you see what I mean, you might easily assume that the second, rootless shaft of hair was also guarded nervously, but not so, this was a truly desperate move that is not explained.
 
You will note that this excerpt does not contain any supporting information such as where that 50 mm rootless shaft of hair came from?

The article:https://spectrum.ieee.org/somerton-man  can now be presented as leading to the final chapter of the Carl Webb claim.

Some years ago I published pages of the diary of the man who made that bust, the well respected South Australian museum taxidermist, Paul Lawson. I had the distinct privilege of spending many hours discussing the case with Paul on a one to one basis. It was more than enlightening as you will read later in this post

The contents of the diary, now supported by a wealth of historical and physical evidence, show beyond any doubt that the entire Carl Webb identification was built on a catastrophic error not made by Mr. Lawson but by those who made the Carl Webb claim.

The long-held assumption was that the bust was a direct "death mask" a standard cast made from a mold that Mr. Lawson had created and, according to the narratives over the years, any hair found within that cast must have belonged to the Somerton Man.

Mr. Lawson's meticulous diary from June 1949 proves that this assumption was false. He writes of the "Casting of ears & piecing together of mold," revealing the bust was a composite, assembled from separately created parts.

He lists a sculptor's toolkit of 'wet clay', dental wax, and "Vinnmold", an industrial hot-melt PVC compound used for studio-based fabrication, not for casting on a body. This was not a death mask; it was a complex forensic sculpture. In fact it is thought that this particular ingredient was used for modelling the ears. Mr. Lawson is on record as stating he had problems with the ears because of the poor condition of the body, that statement raised a red flag as you will read.

The Broken Mold

In the image seen here is a small, oval-shaped chip that has 'broken away' from the an area just right of centre of the bust as you face it, revealing a smooth, finished plaster surface underneath. This is irrefutable physical proof that the hair  shown on the head of the bust is part of a secondary, applied layer, a separate hair piece.

In  the photographs included in the 1959 inquest documents, a hard, distinct line is visible where the hairline meets the forehead.

The Fabricated "Hair Wig"

In the image above, I have marked the sweeping outline of the hair added, sculpted and built up. If you look closely you can see that the hair on the side of the head is not really visible, this is proof that Mr. Lawson had 'slicked down the hair on the actual bust so that it was flattened and would not get entangled with the plaster of the mould. After the initial mould had dried, the next step for Mr. Lawson was to create the wax images of the ears, in this image you can see how well he had crafted the right ear into place. Finally, he created the build up hair piece which was done after the cast was released from the mold and was thoroughly dried. So the hair you see was made after the plaster bust itself. You can actually see when in close up mode that there are some abnormally thick strands of hair and some narrower ones, they being human hair strands that formed part of the built up 'wig' and sculpted parts that resembled hair to add a touch of realism to the bust.

Mr. Lawson's Diary Entries

The clay and wax detailed in Mr. Lawson's diary were the perfect materials to build a custom hairpiece. But what was the hair itself and where did it come from? Historical practice provides the answer. 

https://tamamshud.blogspot.com/2023/01/the-somerton-man-mystery-webb-dna-games.html

The Gemini Search Terms: 

Human Hair Was Added to The Bust...

I conducted a Google Gemini search using the term, `was human hair collected from hair salons in the 1940s sometimes used in model making including embedding in plaster and wax busts to add realism?`, gave this clear response:

 "Yes, human hair, including that collected from salons, was sometimes used in model making in the 1940s, particularly to add realism to plaster and wax busts. While not a widespread practice, artists and craftspeople did utilize human hair in various ways to enhance the lifelike appearance of their creations."

Another search, using the term `how to add sculpted hair to a plaster cast`, further detailed the process:

"To add sculpted hair to a plaster cast, you can use various methods... One approach involves using a mold to create a separate hair piece from materials like wax or clay, which is then attached to the cast."

A Further Search revealed this highly relevant response from Gemini search:

"Yes, a detailed plaster rendition of a subject's hair on a death mask is typically added after the plaster cast is made, often during the process of creating a final bust or portrait. The initial cast captures the shape of the face and head, including any hair that is present. However, the fine details of the hair, such as individual strands or specific styles, are usually sculpted or added in a subsequent stage. 

Here's a more detailed explanation:

Initial Cast:

The first step in creating a death mask involves creating a mould of the deceased person's face, often using plaster bandages applied directly to the face. This mold captures the overall shape and features, including the hair. 

Positive Cast:

Once the mold is hardened, a positive cast is made by pouring plaster or another material into the mold. This positive cast is the actual death mask. 

Sculpting the Details:

The initial cast provides a basic form, but the fine details of the hair are often added later. This can involve sculpting the hair from plaster, wax, or other materials, or adding individual strands or sections of hair. 

Final Bust or Portrait:

The death mask serves as a reference for creating a more finished bust or portrait, where the hair is sculpted and detailed to match the deceased's likeness. 

Therefore, while the initial cast may capture the general shape of the hair, the more detailed rendition of the hair is typically added after the initial cast is made, often as part of the sculpting process for a final representation. "

Finally here's a search term you can use to access companies that are heavily engaged in the human hair trade, much of it goes to wig makers and craftspeople including of course those who make hyper realistic models of people.

What is clear from these search results is that human hair was added to a bust and sculpted in to a separate 'hair piece' in the 1940s era, this is evident when you examine the photographs of the Somerton Man plaster bust.

This is exactly what Mr. Lawson did. He used a commercial art supply product, not a pristine biological sample. The poor quality of some hairs recovered from the bust, described as having **"soft and spongy" roots**, is also consistent with either a heterogeneous commercial bundle from multiple donors or severe chemical degradation from the subsequent cleaning processes. Either way, the hair extracted from the bust for analysis is not a viable forensic sample based on what has been discovered here.

A Trail of Contamination: Trace Metals and a Forgotten Haplogroup

This commercial origin also provides the first logical explanation for two of the case's most bizarre scientific anomalies. Firstly, the mass spectrometry results reported by the University of Adelaide, which detected unusual trace metals in the hair. The industrial processing of commercial hair in the 1940s would have involved washing in metal vats and sometimes dyeing with chemical mordants (like tin or chromium salts). Critically, 'lead acetate' was a common ingredient in popular hair dyes of the era, providing a direct pathway for lead contamination of the hair samples.

Secondly, and most importantly, it addresses the haplogroup mystery. In 2018, the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA (ACAD) successfully extracted a rare maternal haplogroup, **H4a1a1a**, from a hair purportedly from the bust. This unique genetic marker should have been the "gold standard" for verifying any other samples. Incredibly, this marker was never used to cross-check the single rootless shaft of hair that produced the Webb identification nor any other known samples. A proper scientific protocol would have demanded that any new sample be tested against this established baseline. The failure to do so is a significant scientific omission. What it would mean is that the opportunity to verify that the hairs taken from the bust were all from the same source as in the body within the plaster bust.

The Chemical Annihilation of Evidence- The Embalming Process..

Even if, by some impossible chance, a real strand of the Somerton Man's hair had survived the moulding process, the body itself was rendered forensically sterile. That body was subjected to an unprecedented three-month embalming process, requiring 50 separate visits for 'topping up' the fluids from undertaker Laurie Elliot. This was so unusual that, as a contemporary newspaper article attests, he was granted a special fuel allowance for his car due to post-war petrol rationing.

A range of chemicals are used in the embalming process including: formaldehyde, methanol, ethanol, glutaraldehyde, and phenol. The primary chemical used, **formaldehyde**, is scientifically known to annihilate DNA. Over three months of saturation, it would have cross-linked and shredded any genetic material in and on the body into unusable fragments, a fact confirmed by numerous scientific sources.

Conclusion: A Case of Wrong Assumptions...

The evidence is overwhelming. The hair on the bust is not a pristine biological sample.

* **The Physical Evidence:** (The "breakaway" chip, the visible hairline) proves it was part of a fabricated hairpiece/wig layered onto the bust and sculpted.

* **The Primary Source Evidence:** (Lawson's Diary) proves the bust was a composite made with industrial and artistic materials.

* **The Historical Evidence:** (Craft Manuals, Gemini searches, Newspaper Archives) confirms the use of commercial hair and the techniques used.

* **The Genetic Evidence:** (The ignored 2018 haplogroup) reveals a flawed scientific process.

* **The Chemical Evidence:** (The 3-month embalming) proves any real DNA would have been destroyed anyway.

In Summary

The DNA that  wrongly identified Carl Webb  in my view and in the light of the evidence surrounding the plaster bust and its making, did not come from the Somerton Man. It may have come from an unknown person whose hair ended up in an artist's supply bundle in the 1940s or even from an innocent mix up of hair samples anywhere along the chain of events, sadly that chain or timeline of events which form part of DNA protocols, was never recorded or made publicly available or in a scholarly article in the Carl Webb claim. 

The identification was made using the primary source of the plaster bust and is therefore based on an assumption and constitutes a fundamental, catastrophic error. The real mystery of the Somerton Man continues, even though we may never know who he was, we can find out and confirm what he was.