The Secret of the Somerton Man- The Somerton Man

·58 min·3 clips

A dead man in a dry, neatly pressed suit had no tags, no ID, and no fingerprints in any database.

1. Cold Case Chase covers the Somerton Man case tied to Somerton Beach in Adelaide, Australia, on December 1, 1948. 2. The episode features host Good Universe VA and guest writer John, who helps guide the case analysis and theories. 3. The episode asks what happened to the unidentified man found dead on the beach and whether he was a suicide, murder victim, or something else. 4. Neil Day, a 16-year-old apprentice horse jockey, first noticed a man lying in the sand while riding with a friend. 5. The man was later described as wearing a brown suit, lying face-up, and appearing to be asleep before the riders returned. 6. When the pair came back, they found that the man had died, and the body had no obvious identification on it. 7. The coroner reported an enlarged spleen and internal bleeding in the stomach and liver, but no clear poison signs. 8. The man’s clothing had all tags removed, and later checks found no fingerprints in any database. 9. A suitcase turned up in January 1949 at Adelaide railway station with clothing that also had labels removed. 10. The suitcase contained wax thread used to repair trousers found on the man’s body, plus items suggesting recent travel in the United States. 11. A piece of paper found in a hidden pocket carried the Persian words 'Tamam Shud,' taken from the Rubaiyat. 12. The hosts explain that 'Tamam Shud' roughly translates to 'the end' or 'finished,' which made the note look ominous. 13. The back cover of a Rubaiyat copy later produced five lines of letters and a possible phone number that police could not decode. 14. The phone number led investigators to Jo Thompson, a 27-year-old nurse who lived only hundreds of meters from the beach. 15. Thompson said she had owned a copy of the Rubaiyat and had given it to Alfred Boxall, who was still alive and had his own intact copy. 16. Later theories centered on Jo Thompson, her daughter Kate Thompson, and claims that Jo spoke Russian and knew who the man was. 17. The episode also presents the idea that a rare poison such as strychnine or digitalis could have left no clear trace. 18. The hosts describe the style as conversational and speculative, with humor, interruptions, and repeated back-and-forth between two speakers. 19. Listeners interested in unsolved deaths, Australian history, and coded clues would likely enjoy this episode. 20. Listeners seeking a tightly proved conclusion or a short, linear case summary may skip it.

As heard by us

A steady cold-case listen that keeps the mystery moving without losing the eerie edge.

Cold Case Chase keeps the Somerton Man mystery moving instead of letting it go stale. John steps in as the season's writer, and the episode moves from setup to reaction to fallout with a light touch.

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Why you'd press play

You want a Somerton Man breakdown that keeps circling the case's weird little details.

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