The Somerton Man

The Somerton Man

Secret pocket

In June 1949 the pathologist re-examined the body and brought another puzzling fact into the light - the man’s shoes were remarkably clean and appeared to have been recently polished, which contradicted the theory that Somerton Man was wandering around the beach and surrounding streets. Police had to review the theory that Somerton Man was brought to the beach after his death, but this on the other hand contradicted the eyewitnesses testimonies that saw a man lying in the exact spot the day before. Of course the question was if they saw the same man as Somerton Man...

- Secret pocket

But this finding was deemed by what was found in the lining of Somerton Man trousers - a secret pocket containing rolled piece of paper with two words: "Tamam Shud" (thus sometimes the case is referred as the Tamam Shud Case). The investigators found the translation of those words to be "ended" or "finished" found on the last page of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. After releasing this information to the public a man from Glenelg informed the police that about a week before the body of Somerton Man was found he discovered copy of that book in the back seat of his unlocked car. Until the article was published in newspaper he didn’t put much attention to that fact.

The theme of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is that one should live life to the full and have no regrets when it ends. The poem’s subject led police to theorise that the man had committed suicide by poison, although there was no other evidence to back the theory. The book was missing the words "Tamam Shud" on the last page and microscopic tests indicated that the piece of paper was from the page torn from the book. In the back of the book were faint pencil markings of five lines of capital letters with the second line struck out. The strike out is now considered significant with its similarity to the fourth line possibly indicating a mistake and thus, possible proof the letters are code:
WRGOABABD
MLIAOI
WTBIMPANETP
MLIABOAIAQC
ITTMTSAMSTGAB

So far all the attempts to read the coded message behind the letters proved to be fruitless since the number of symbols is insufficient for in-depth analysis.