April 23, 2022 • 64 mins
Since his corpse was found in 1948, wearing a nice suit in summer on an Australian beach, an unidentified man has refused to fade into obscurity, gripping the imagination of sleuths around the world. Learn all about the mystery in this classic episode.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
M Hey, everybody, it's me Josh, and for this week's
Select I chose our two thousand seventeen episode about the
Man on Somerton Beach, one of the most interesting unsolved
mysteries we've ever encountered. Despite lead after lead, it remains
unsolved today and seemingly will remain that way forever. And
after listening to this one, if you liked it a lot,
(00:21):
you can go further down the rabbit hole. There's plenty
more stuff on it all over the web, and there
have even been some updates since we recorded. So prepared
to be baffled and engrossed. Welcome to Stuff you should know,
a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to
(00:47):
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant,
and today is a very special day. We have a
special guest producer, Matt been a while. It has been
a while, man, it's been since like two fourteen or something. Yeah,
and Matt is one half of the stuff they don't
want you to know. Oh yeah, that's right. There's three
of them, and we are sort of awkwardly recording two
(01:11):
of the same shows they've done. So Matt's just sitting
there with his arms crossed, shaking his head back and forth.
So we're trying not to look at him. Are you doing?
I'm good except for Matt looking at us like that.
What do you do for the eclipse? I looked at
the eclipse unwisely? Um from where from my house? I
(01:31):
didn't I didn't see a full the full schmo. I
figured you guys would be exactly the type to drive
two hours to see it. No you did, though, huh, yeah,
how was it? Well? I don't want to be one
of those dudes. But the difference between in full eclipse
is all the difference in the world. I saw it put.
(01:52):
I can't remember who put it, but they said that
the difference between seeing a partial eclipse and a full
eclipse is the difference between kissing a person and marrying
a person. Oh well, that's from the legendary eclipse article
from The Atlantic from okay, who wrote it? Oh man? Um?
I even like sent myself the link to read it
today and I haven't read it. It's probably Tina Turner,
(02:16):
the height of her career was It was written by
Annie Dillard. Okay, it's called total Eclipse, and I haven't
ready yet. But it's supposed to be just remarkable, and
that's exactly how she put it, and it was I
think so. So that would have been a year before
Bonnie Tyler came out with Totally Eclips of the Heart. Yeah,
it was two. Yeah. I cried, and like five other
(02:38):
people with this cried like spontaneously. Tears were coming out
of my face and I was like, what is happening
to my body? Did you? I mean, what have you concluded?
I don't know, man, it was just overwhelming. That's neat
to stare at the corona and we're going like too
probably Texas for the next one. Like I'm going to
every path of totality that I can get to between
(03:03):
now and the time that I died here in the
clip side. Now I'm a totalitat, totalitist to tattlest Yeah,
and it was we almost didn't go, like literally that
morning we were debating and I was like, it's two
hours away, let's just get in the car and go.
That's very cool. Um. And my daughter saw it, which
was weird for her, like she knew something was up
(03:25):
even at two years old. Yeah, the Sun's cane black, Yeah,
and stars came out and crickets chirped, and it was
just really strange. Yeah, uh yeah, it was very quick
two minutes. But I think the one in two thousand
seven is going to have a four and a half
minute totality. When is it two seven years from now? Okay,
(03:48):
and that's that great. Maybe we'll drive to Texas too, Well,
i'll drive together. Well, if you won't drive two hours,
where are you gonna go to Texas? Oh hey, if
I ever have a good reason to go to Texas,
I'll take it. Well, it's Texas. And then I mean
we may go to Akron because that's where Emily's from.
It goes through Akron, the kind of over to Maine
on that you guys should just follow it in your van. Well,
(04:11):
you know, I wondered, what how fast? Of course you
can't do this, but how fast would you have to
travel the speed of the moon? Stay in the path
of totality the speed of the moon, which is what
like a hundred million miles an hour or something like that.
I don't know. Listen to our Moon episode. It's my
new drug totality. That's neat man. Yeah, I'm glad that
happened to you. Happened on me got all get all
(04:35):
over me. Uh, how okay, you want to talk about
this the eclipse. No, you know what's funny is that
we didn't do it podcasts on eclipses. No, I thought
about that. We never have, I know, And it's just
just like us, Moon goes in front of sun, moon
goes away from Sune, it goes up, it goes there.
(04:55):
Uh yeah, that's just figures. I'm sure we'll end up
talking about like we'll do an epis so don't unlike
the effective an eclipse on plants first, and then you know,
some other tangentially related episode, and then maybe after that
we'll do how eclips work. Maybe if we're still around
in seven years there you go. How about that's a
good idea. And I jinks just before by saying we
(05:17):
won't be around, which is an opposite jinks I was
gonna say, is that a jinx? Yeah, that's to ensure
that we will be around. Smart, thank you. So we're
talking today, Chuck about a pretty unusual mystery. Are you
familiar with this one before? Yeah? We I think we
covered this in an Internet roundup or something. Oh yeah, yeah,
(05:38):
I mean we definitely talked about it. But I scoured
our archives and I didn't find an official show, So
I wonder where it came up, because yeah, I mean
we've talked about it for sure, um, and then it
was a lot of times you would do one of
your best things you've read this week, we would then
do an internet roundup piece on that. Okay, that's probably
(06:00):
where it came up. Then, did you're like, this is
so good it should be seen by dozens of people exactly?
I want to share it with the twenty Um. Yeah,
I probably guess the article that I did the best
stuff we've read this week on would have been the
Body on Somerton Beach I think is what it was called.
Is the Smithsonian article from years and years it was? Um,
(06:22):
so yeah, there's been plenty of good articles about it.
That one, uh is a good one. There's one from
California Sunday magazine called the Lost Man. Yeah, just some
good stuff out there. If this floats your boat, it does.
But let us set let us set the theme for you, okay,
because this story takes place in Adelaide, in uh, South Australia,
(06:44):
which is not just a place, it's a state as well.
Did you know that? Yeah, I wonder what they call
how they pronounced Adelaide there probably not like I just
said it, um, but in Adelaide, South Australia, Adelaides the capital.
Uh it's a from what I understand, And we haven't
been there yet, but we probably will maybe next year.
I'm not going to Adelaide though, I don't know. It
(07:07):
sounds kind of neat and creep a little weird, right,
but weird in some weird ways. So um Adelaide is
this This place is kind of known as the murder
murder capital of Australia, but it doesn't have necessarily like
the highest homicide rate in Australia. It just has a
history of kind of weird, gruesome, grizzly murders. Yeah. I
(07:30):
think if you've had more than two or three like
dismemberment type murders, that you're on the map, and they
definitely have. There was there was a very famous case
in the sixties of the um the Beaumont children who
went missing off of a beach called Glenn L Beach.
(07:53):
I think that's probably how you say it um, which
is near Adelaide, and uh, we're never heard from again,
no trace was ever found. We should do an episode
on that one too. Um there was the family yeah,
uh so dubbed by the cops in the seventies and eighties.
This one's really freaky. These were supposedly just like regular
(08:16):
professional men, presumed men who had a sort of cabal
of torture and murder of young boys, basically like season
one of True Detective, but in real life in Australia,
with a well with an equally weird ending. Right, yeah,
(08:37):
the sky just opens up. It's a total eclipse. Uh.
And that one again unsolved, right, Uh, it was never
it was I think one person was convicted, but the
people that he implicated were never charged or convicted. What
about the bodies in the barrel thing? That's all you
need to say. Okay, there's a string of group of
(08:58):
murders called the bodies in the barrels murders. Right, it's
a lot of pluralization, it is. Uh. And then, um,
so the idea that the one we're talking about, which
is the death of just one man, a non violent
death possibly um who was found on a beach almost
seventy years ago. For that to still have Australia and
(09:22):
like the world in its grips today, it must be
a pretty interesting case, agreed, And it is. Yeah, so
I guess we should go back in time, getting the
old Way back machine and travel south to Adelaide post
war Adelaide. Look how beautiful it is here. It's hot.
(09:49):
I smell shrimp cooking on the barbie, um drinking a Foster's. Yeah,
it's like a fifty five gallon drum of foster and
lots of other Australian tropes are happening all around me.
There's a crocodile dundeees over there. Why there? When we
tour there, they're going to really get because like after
the show, the first show, you can run us out
(10:11):
of town. They find New Zealand wants us. Yeah. New
Zealand say, yeah, come on over here. Uh so Adelaide
is um, Well, it's an interesting place post war Um.
Apparently there was. It was kind of a place where
you could go to sort of real if you want
to disappear and rewrite your life. That wasn't a bad
place to do it. Um. There was a lot of
(10:34):
black marketeering going on. Apparently it was really hard to
get your hands on a car. Um. So there's like
a big black market for cars of all of all
stolen nous, all levels of stolenness. Um. Yeah, there's there's
just a certain amount of post war scarcity that was
still going on, and there's a lot of espionage going
(10:55):
on to right. So the Cold War had just started
in Australia was in this weird position where there were
a lot of Soviet spies running around, there were a
lot of Brits and American spies running around, and the
British themselves were conducting secret rocket tests in the country.
So there was um, there was a lot of espionage,
a lot of black marketing um, and a lot of
(11:17):
people who were not who they claimed to be floating
around this country, running around and floating right. So that
brings us to a very important date for the story.
Tuesday November, about seven in the evening. There was a
jeweler named John Lyons and his wife. They were taking
a little stroll there on Somerton Beach, which I'm sure
(11:40):
as lovely um, and they saw something we were They
were walking towards glenn Elk so I guess they're connected beaches, yeah, yeah,
And they saw something interesting on the sea wall there.
They saw a man lying in the sand, but very
well dressed in a suit kind of propped up on
the sea wall there as if he were sort of
(12:01):
sitting up about sixty ft away. In America, that's twenty yards.
In Australia it is a certain amount of meters about
twenty Okay, really is that what works? Man? It's pretty
close to the yard in the meter are very similar. Um,
and he he was doing something interesting, so they say, uh,
(12:24):
he extended his right arm upward and then just let
it fall back down to the ground. And they thought
that looks like a passed out drunk guy, or maybe
a barely wake drunk guy, maybe trying to have a
cigarette or they I mean, it was remarkable and that
they made a mental note of it, but they just
kept walking and whatever. I think his suit being on
the beach was probably one of the big deals. Yeah,
(12:45):
he was very sharply dressed, not just wearing a suit
on the beach like the studio was wearing. Was pretty nice,
pretty nice. Um In About a half hour later, another
couple walked past, and this this time the guy wasn't
moving at all. Um and apparently he had a whole
swarm of mosquitoes around his face, and the boyfriend says
to the girlfriend that guy must be dead to the world.
(13:09):
If he's not noticing those mosquitoes, he must just be
absolutely wasted, so that they were clearly closer, I guess.
So I think it's seen mosquitoes on his face, Yeah,
for sure, because from twenty yards it's a tough thing
to see. I don't know, for a straining mosquitoes are
all right. So the next morning, um became pretty clear
(13:29):
what was going on here, that this was a dead man.
The same jeweler John Lyons. He went for a little
morning swim, as you were to do in Australian the
mornings when you're hungover, and he saw a bunch of
people crowded around where the guy was and it was
it was on. It was as a dead dude. Yeah,
the dude was in basically the same position he'd seen
(13:51):
him in the night before. That that crowd was like,
he's dead, croy key and uh yeah, so Lions is
like that was pretty surprising and that's the end of
John Lyons. Yeah, but very important here, and that they
are the only people who supposedly saw this body move right,
super important. So, um, within about a few hours, the
(14:14):
body is in the morgue at the hospital and as
being examined, and just from the initial examination there was
a lot of um, just weirdness that immediately came out. Right.
So remember the guys like sitting up against the sea wall. Um,
his legs are extended out, his feet are crossed. There
(14:36):
was a cigarette, depending on who you ask, either a
half burned cigarette, either dangling from his mouth or on
the collar of his shirt as if it had fallen
from his mouth. Um. And when he was taken into
the morgue that the doctor said that he was probably
dead by two am. Yeah, and most likely when they
(14:58):
did the full autopsy, a man named On Dwyer said
he was probably poisoned initially, even though there were no
traces of poison, which is a little odd, right, But
the reason he said that is because when they cracked
the guy opened this, this this John Doe, who's widely
become known as the Somerton Man. Um, his organs were
all kinds of messed up. He had blood and his
(15:21):
stomach along with his final meal, which was a pasty.
It's like a pocket Yeah, delicious hot pocket hand tie. Yeah.
Um that sounds dirty hand pie. Yeah. Um, there's his
spleen was enlarged and engorged with blood. Yeah, that's not
(15:41):
a good sign and firm. His liver was giant and bloody,
not unusual for Australians that fifty five gallon Joma Foster.
His pupils were smaller than normal and just quote unusual
whatever that means. Right, uh. And then they say that
he had a little spittle on the side of his
(16:02):
mouth that you know, like, you know, I thought that
was a pretty tacky thing to note. Yeah, just leave
the guy alone. He's dead, like sleepy drool is what
I thought. If I'm pretty, if I'm so pretty that
I just have a little bit of spittle coming down
my mouth when I'm dead, I'll be more than happy.
Oh you mean, if you if that's the only thing. Yeah,
I agreed. I mean, come on, give the guy a break. Well,
(16:25):
you know, they were doing forensics. Yeah, so, and indeed
they did, and they kept saying like this gotta be poisoning,
like his organs are all kinds of messed up, but
there was no trace of poisoning. They brought in this
guy named Cedric Stanton Hicks, the hand PI and there, Yeah,
nothing's wrong, right. They gave it to Eugene and he
(16:46):
was still standing afterwards. Yeah, so it's all good. Um.
So Sir Cedric Stanton Hicks comes in and says, well,
let me let me see this, and he um concluded
that it was probably one of two poisons that would
have done this kind of damage resulted in heart failure.
We didn't say that, so they concluded he probably died
(17:08):
from his heart failure. Ultimately, Um, but that wouldn't have
left a trace. And he did not feel like it
was a responsible move on his part to say these
things out loud on the record during the coroner's inquest.
So he wrote them down and the car was like, okay,
all right, picked him up and read and what he
(17:28):
read was Digitalis and Struugh Phantom and Sir Cedric said,
he said it, I didn't write. He goes, oh gosh,
did I say that out loud? That sounds like something
that you've seen the movie, just you know, added for
the drama. But apparently it really am right. So he
read those names. I don't know if you read those names,
but at least those names were recorded onto the record. Uh.
(17:51):
Sir Cedric Stanton Hicks suspected the strophanthem although later investigators
I feel sure it was probably the digit tell us.
It sounds like it doesn't matter which one it was
because they were both kind of used and I think
are maybe still used the treat heart disease. Is that true? Yeah, Um,
and then you can get them with the prescription from
(18:12):
a pharmacy. I don't know if they're still used. Maybe
they are, but they definitely were common at the time
or obtainable in in just about every major city. Um.
So they have an idea of maybe what poison it was.
But again it bears pointing out again and again that
they no one has ever found any direct evidence that
(18:34):
the man was poisoned. And to this day, two thousand,
seventeen and beyond, if you're listening to this years from now, um,
they still don't know how he died. Yeah, and you
they may still be looking because this is one of
those like the dB Cooper when we did. That's one
of those cases where amateur sluice on the Internet are
(18:55):
still trying to figure stuff like this out. And unless
we come up with some really amazing technologies in the
next ten twenty years or something like that, the time
is passing quite quickly on this case and D. B.
Cooper as well, where we may never know may remain
a mystery forever unless we invent time travel. Then somebody
(19:17):
will go back and figure those out. So the dude,
it looks a little bit like Harvey Kitel, he asked me.
He does, And you think so? I mean, look up
a picture of this guy. If you're not in your car,
you can look him up. There are two very famous
photos I guess from the autopsy scene. Um, just straight
onto his face and then sort of you know, from
the side with his eyes open. Yeah, it looks like
(19:39):
Harvey Kitell. It looks like a wasted Harvey Kitel, which
is to say, he looks like Harvey Kitel. Um, so
he's in about his mid forties. Yeah, I guess a
younger Harvey Keitel. Yeah. Uh, he's wearing this double breasted suit. Um.
I saw that he was wearing a nit pull over
with a necktie. Who And this sounds like we're being
(20:01):
um two specific by saying the stripes slanted from left
to right. But we're not. We're not. That will come
into play. Well, just hang onto that nugget. Yeah, put
that one in your pipe for later. He had no hat,
which was weird for that time. Oh, I hadn't ran
across that, but yeah, I've never seen that there was
a hat. Yeah, and they never found a hat, but
it would be unusual for a man of late forties
(20:23):
to not have a hat. Yeah, I guess so. For
doors were huge. I'll bet Panama hats were huge down
in Adelaide at the time. For doors in Australia were
literally huge. It's like the sombreros made of tortillas melted
cheese in the middle man. Is that a thing? It
was on the Simpsons too. Hat. Uh. What else? He
(20:46):
had weird feet, yeah, wedge shaped feet, they said, and
that his his shoes seemed to be molded almost to
his feet. The real weird giveaway was his calves. His
calves were remarkable. They were bulbous below the just below
the knee. And the guy who who performed the autopsy,
(21:08):
I think it was Dwyer, said, Uh, this is like
what dancers or people who wear high heels, just the
kind of calves that they have. He said, look at that,
he looks like Lena Horn the Oh my gosh, it
is hon Uh. Yeah, so that that's definitely notable. Um
(21:29):
uh The other thing they found out too was um.
A couple of physical traits that he had which will
come into play later on his ear. His simba, which
is the upper hollow portion of the ear hollow caved in. Yeah,
the rolled over part up here, No, like just the
upper you know hole than the lower part. Yeah, we've
(21:53):
ever done show on ears, have we? We should? The
simba is larger than the cave um, which is a
fairly rare thing. So I would guess the cabum is
where your eardrum leads to your ear drum. Yeah, that's
where you put your finger when you want to write.
But if you go, if you put your finger up
over that ridge does not. That's the simba. Yeah, so yeah,
(22:14):
that would be weird if this one was bigger than
that one. Yeah. It's a pretty rare genetic trait, as
were his strange teeth. Yeah, he had something called hypodontia,
which is he was missing his lateral incisors, which are
the teeth that most people have between their front teeth
and their canines. His lateral incisers never developed, so his
(22:36):
canines were adjacent to his front teeth. Yeah, and it's um.
Would you say hypodontia. That that can be as common
as like you never get your wisdom teeth, but in
this case those particular teeth, that was pretty rare. Something like, well,
I saw hypodontia in in so that would include not
getting wisdom teeth. Huh, well, in any teeth, not developing
(22:58):
his hypodone I got. Well, I don't know if hypodonta
in general or just this type of hypodonta of the population. Yeah,
it's specifically for those teeth. Was pretty rare. Yeah, two,
pretty rare. Like everyone's got those teeth, and people at
home are like, why are you saying all these weird stuff?
Who cares to just settle down? Everybody settle down because
(23:21):
it's all going to come into play. We haven't said
anything that will not come back into play. Al Right,
should we take a break? I think we should. Everybody's
getting all riled up. Let's take a break, and then
we're going to detail, uh, for about fifteen minutes what
was in his pockets? Okay, chuck, So we went over
(24:04):
the body. Yeah, it's time to go through his personal effects,
which were kind of weird in and of themselves. All
about the details. So when you're talking about murders and
disappearances and then unsolved after seventy years. Yes, you need
to pay attention to the detail. What kind of podcast
cops would we be if we were just like, Yeah,
he just sort of looked like Harvey kit Tell and
(24:25):
he's in a suit d and no good. That sounded
like Harvey kit Tell. Yeah it did, didn't it? Yeah
it was. It was my Harvey kite Tel on the piano.
Oh man, what a movie? Um? All right? So in
his pockets he had a peck of juicy fruit. The
juicy fruit, yeah, chewing gum stuff. He had some matches,
(24:48):
Bryant and May matches. He had, uh, well, he had
a lot of tickets in his pocket. He had a
an unused train ticket from Adelaide to Henley Beach, had
a bust ticket from Adelaide to Glenelg And then he
had a ticket, a used ticket that said he had
come from arrived there by by bus from the railway
(25:12):
station there. Yeah, from the Adelaide railway correct. Yeah. Uh.
He also had um a pack of cigarettes that were
weird Army Club army. The pack of cigarettes was an
Army Club pack, but inside with something called conceitas which
was a much more expensive brand. So that makes no sense, Like,
(25:34):
that's the opposite of the only thing that could make sense,
which is he just kept the expensive pack and would
put cheap cigarettes in it to look fancy, right, unless
he didn't want people bumming the expensive ones off of him,
so he kept a cheap pack or right, The likelier
story is that he bombed some a bunch of cigarettes
(25:55):
off of somebody and put them in his his own pack,
al right, Like, hey man, he got a smoke or
seven or seven interesting or perhaps they were poisoned and
put in that pack. That's another possible explanation to write.
So um his his that was like the extent of
his personal effects, aside from his clothing. Right, there was
(26:16):
no idea he had a couple of combs, okay hair combs.
More to the point, there was no idea, no idea,
no no wallet, no cash. Kind of odd for sure,
and his clothes were odd in and of themselves. Right.
So again, he was wearing a very nice suit. But
the um makers labels of all of his clothes have
(26:41):
been from what I understand, carefully snipped away. Yeah, I
saw one explanation for this that made it seem a
little less odd um, which was back then. Apparently people
oftentimes would because there were nice clothes, were not scarce,
but he wanted to keep them for yourself, so you
would write your name a lot of times on your
(27:03):
like suit jackets and things, and then if you ever
went to sell them second hand, you would flip out
those labels. So that's one explanation that's not bad. I
don't know if that's a reach or not, but at
least something could make sense out of that. But the
other thing could mean that this person was being dumped
and no one wanted them to know who they were.
(27:24):
It's a possibility to or that he didn't want anyone
to know who he was. That's another possibility as well.
That's what a lot of people think, that he was
trying to cover up his own identity as well. Um,
his his trousers I think had a little repair done
with orange thread bear with us um, and then that
(27:46):
was about it. They they they took fingerprints of the
guy and spread around to no avail. But the fingerprints, right,
they they've figured out after a little a while. I'm
not sure when, but this would have been so November
December one is when he was found. This is to
(28:07):
this is like July to us in the northern Hemisphere,
the beginning of July. So starting to get hot down there, right,
You can only keep a body for so long in
the nineteen forties in summer in Adelaide, it's already a
hot place to begin with. And um, the authorities were like,
we we can't keep this guy above ground any longer.
(28:28):
So somebody had the bright idea of making a plaster
bust of him, and they did, and they kept it
at the Morgan and they buried him in a pretty
smart way if you ask me. Yeah, they buried him,
uh with this marker. Here lies the unknown man who
was found at Somerton Beach first December, and he was
buried just in really dry ground so if they ever
(28:49):
needed to get in there they could. And they encased
him in concrete as well to realize, like, keep him
preserved as much as possible if you ever needed to
be exhumed, right correct. So, um, like I said, they
took the set of fingerprints and they're still looking for
this guy. They buried him finally, but they're like, this
is driving us insane. Who was this man? What happened?
(29:11):
To him. Um. So they spread the fingerprints all over Australia.
They started to send him around to America, the UK,
it just English speaking countries. Yeah. They also, uh like
kind of before they got rid of the real body,
they brought people in locals to see if anyone could
(29:31):
identify them. I think afterward they probably showed quite a
few people the bust and they were just trying to
do anything and nobody, nobody could recognize who this person was. No.
I mean some people saw like pictures of the bust
or the death pictures that are famous now in the newspaper,
and we're like, oh, that kind of looks like uncle Ted.
And then they go in and see him and be
(29:53):
like it's not uncle Ted. Um. And so this this
the fact that this is becoming a weird unsolved mystery already,
like just quickly after the case started to capture the
nation's attention a little bit, and the police, the the
the South Australia State Police were not shy about publicizing
(30:15):
stuff as needed, Like as they developed breaks in the case,
they would tell the newspapers about it, and the newspapers
would tell the rest of the country. So it became
a pretty big sensation in Australia so much so that
a lot of people are just basically take it for
granted that the man was not Australian. That were he Australian,
(30:36):
some more several people would have come forward because the
case had that much exposure nationally. Yeah, and I am
just guessing here, but I imagine in this part of
Australia probably wasn't there weren't like millions of people living there.
I don't know how small of the town it was,
but I don't think it was like some huge city,
was it. Well, yeah, Adelaide's the capital of South Australia,
(30:58):
but is it How was there was like at least
five people there? And I'm going to say, at the minimum,
someone's going to write in and tell us so all right,
and I'm gonna be mad that we didn't know. No,
Australians are nice about things usually, Yeah they are, aren't they?
They're the Canadians of the South. So they decided the
(31:21):
cops decide very smartly. Um, you know what, We're gonna
widen this investigation. We're going to see if anywhere in
town someone has found something there, any possessions that this
guy might have left behind. Since he was just found
with what was in his pockets, surely there's something, and
in fact there was. They discovered there was a suitcase,
(31:43):
brown suitcase in a cloak room that was left there
on November, which was the night before the morning that
he was found the first time he was seen on
the beach. It was no lead, it was and because
he had that ticket that showed he had taken a
bus from the Adelaide rail station, that was one of
(32:04):
the first places detectives went. Uh, and they found this suitcase, um,
that had been left there, like you said, on November. Inside, Um,
there was some stuff that linked it to the guy. Yeah,
I mean it was full of stuff. Um. It was
clearly someone who was traveling a lot. There were lots
(32:25):
of clothes, shirts and scarves and underwear and pajamas and handkerchiefs.
There were two pairs of scissors, one broken pair, one
in a sheath, Um, like a shave kit, screwdriver, Um,
lots of just normal travel things, razor, razor strap, all
the junk you would expect that multiple pairs of scissors
(32:47):
is a little weird. Thread but the thread was the
big one, orange thread. Yeah, barber not Australian brand barber
thread which perfectly matched where his trousers were stitch. So
it's got to be him, right, that's the thing that
really links him with the suitcase. Um. There was also
some stencils for stenciling cargo. Yeah, that was a little weird,
(33:11):
very weird. Um. And there was a suit jacket that
had a what's called a feather stitch. Um, while stitching
is the lightest stitch, right, And they're like, we don't
do this in Australia. We don't even have the sewing
machine that can do this in Australia. Yet A taylor said,
(33:31):
this is an American coat, Yeah, with their feathers. Well,
he's a Hamms stitch right. Uh. And then inside some
of these clothes, uh was the name keen? Because I
told you people wrote on their clothes A lot said
T keen, T dot keen, K E N E or
k A N. And the best cops could figure is
(33:55):
they someone did that to to sniff everyone off the case,
right because they've around and there was no t Keen
or any Keen that they couldn't put their their fingers on.
Who's missing? Um? And the tie years later, like the
cops at the time didn't know this. I wonder if
they noticed that it was slanting one way or another,
(34:17):
but the they probably just knew it looked weird for
some reason. They couldn't put their finger on. But at
the time in Australia, the U the ties slanted left
or right, and this guy's tie slanted right to left,
and that was the style in America. It's like everything's opposite.
Didn't this so weird? Summer's winter and winter summer flush
(34:40):
the toilet? It was in a different direction. I think
that's an urban legend. No, I think that's true, right, No,
I did a something on it. Really, Yeah, I think
it's an urban legend. It's really has to do with um,
the uh, the shape of the drain. What in That's
(35:00):
what I was so looking forward to pooping in Australia.
You can still do it. Well, you probably should. Actually,
while we're there, I'm going to, but I'm not. The
joy is is dead. Well, just don't watch it flush. Yeah,
but you might be better off actually in this way,
I've just been used to my poop turning into such
(35:22):
a direction my whole life. I was really ready for
something new, all right, I'm sorry, so the tie is opposite.
They said, this is an American tie, like you said. Uh.
And then they brought in um and actually we should
say those were internet sleuths, like within the last ten
(35:42):
fifteen years who figured that one out. Yeah, all right,
good for you Internet. Uh. Finally, in April, police brought
in a dude, an expert pathologist named John Cleveland, and
this was a big deal. Apparently the cops in South
Australia were not as thorough as you would think because
they didn't even check his little pocket watch pocket, a
(36:04):
little pocket inside your pocket, because there was a really
key piece of evidence rolled up in there. Yeah, this
one broke the case wide open. It seemed like it would.
There was a little scrap of paper rolled up very
tightly in this pocket and written on it in some
pretty fancy type setting were the words TAMUM showed T
(36:28):
A M A M S h U D. And the
cops said, what was this first orange thread? Not some
weirdo words rolled up in this guy's pocket? What is this?
And John Cleveland said, you dopes, it's called a lead.
You didn't check his pocket? In his pocket? He said no,
So they would figure out in a little while. By
(36:50):
a stroke of luck, it seems that um tamum showed
means it is finished where it is done, or in
this case, the end in Persian. It sounds very h
random and out of left field that anybody would know this,
But a reporter working the police beat there said named
(37:13):
Frank Kennedy, said, no, that I know what that's from.
That's from a twelveth century book of Persian poetry of
Omar Kayyam. And that just sounds so out of left field.
But in fact, that book had been translated by an
English poet named Edward Fitzgerald, and it was kind of
a big deal once it was translated into English. So
(37:34):
it wasn't like just so the word of looking for
obscure that nobody would know what it was. No, it
was extremely popular in the in the West after that,
I think even in America, like there's a Peanuts comic
strip that makes reference to it. Even it was a
big It was one of those things where like people
(37:55):
might not know about it, but there are plenty people
out there who did. And one of the reporters recognized there, right,
So they realized then that they needed to find the
copy of the Rubiat that this came from, and they
started looking and looking and looking, and they couldn't find it.
So the state police did what they had been doing
all along. They went to the newspapers and they said, hey,
(38:17):
we found this weird scrap of paper. It says tamam shoot.
We're told that it comes from the Rubyat and specifically
it's the last words of the Rubiat right with the
last words of the last poem, right um and go
go to it. Media and the media went wild and
let everybody know. And it turns out so this is
(38:38):
April when they found the Um the scrap of paper,
and in July they got another break based on finding
that scrap. A guy came forward and said, you know what,
I found this copy of the Rubyat in the backseat
of my car, which had been parked by sohmer Tion
Beach around the time the man who was found on
(38:59):
sommer To Beach was found. And I have no idea
whose it is. It's just been I put it in
my glove compartment. It's been sitting there until I read
this article in the newspaper. Yeah. Presumably his windows rolled
down or his car was unlocked, and whoever ripped this
thing out because they did find out that part was
ripped out from his book, just tossed it in the
back seat this guy's car, Right, not very smart if
(39:20):
you're trying to cover your tracks. No, but maybe you're
not trying to cover your tracks, right. So they now
have the copy of the Ruby Yacht that the scrap
of paper that came that was found in the sohmer
to man's trousers came from, yeah, which by all accounts
is a one of a kind printing, right, Yeah, like
(39:42):
a one off, yes, and not an addition of hundreds,
like a single printing of this one book, right, but
supposedly as part of an addition. I can't remember which
edition it was by this printer, but for years people
have been trying to track down a copy from that
edition and they can find it. Well, somebody finally found one.
They're like, this is not the exact same book that
(40:05):
the cops found with the Somerton manor associated with Somerton Man,
which is a very odd thing, totally. Um, So in
this book they get another huge break. This breaks the
case open even further, right, They're like, surely we're going
to figure it out now, Yeah, this was huge. They
found uh two local phone numbers. One was a bank
(40:26):
phone number which didn't lead to much of anything, and
another one X three to three nine uh, belong to Well,
they found a couple of things. They found the stumber
that belonged to a woman, a nurse named Jessica Thompson,
who will talk about in a minute. And then they
also found, um, you know how we did our We
(40:47):
did our episode on spies, and one of the things
sometimes spies would do would have these throwaway pads that
they would literally write things on and you could make
an impression such that, you know, it's like the kid's
trick where you rip that page off and you have
what looks like a blank page that's the impression of
what was written above it. And in this little kids
(41:07):
will use a pencil, let's see what it says. But
in this case he used a UV light to see
what by all accounts is a five line code. And
the code is pretty odd. Yeah, I mean I think
we should read it. It It will sound like gibberish. But
if you're into code breaking, you probably already know about
this one. But if not, here we go all capital letters.
(41:29):
Line one is w R G o A B A
b D. Second line m l I A O I
that was scratched out. Interestingly, third line W T b
I M P A n E t P, fourth line
M l I A again that's repeated B O A
I A q C, and finally I T T M
(41:50):
T S A M S T G A B go
break it, right the eagle has landed at midnight, which
they basically said, go break it, and no one could know. Um. Yeah,
a lot of amateur code breakers because again they went
to the media like you're saying, um, go break it,
and a lot of code breakers tried and failed, and
(42:12):
then um they contacted the Australian Naval Intelligence Service and
they tried and failed, and either the Naval Intelligence Service
or later UM sleuths concluded that it was for there's
too little information to ever break it, that you didn't
have a key that you needed to have, um. And
(42:34):
then it may have been as simple as the first
letter of a list that he was trying to remember, right,
because apparently they bear of a resemblance frequency wise the
first letters of common words in the English language. So
(42:55):
it's possible that like it's it's a to do list,
that the guy was just trying to remember, you know,
by these groceries, go see this person at this time,
that kind of thing. It is a lot of letters,
and a lot of people say, no, this is obviously
this spy codebook. Don't be naive. So the the cops
(43:15):
they there's the code breaking thing that they're doing. Then
simultaneously they're like, well, maybe we should call this local
phone number, and they did, and on the other end
a woman picked up and uh, it turned out like
you said to be Jessica Thompson, and you want to
take another breaks. We're going to take a break and
we'll get to Jessica Thompson right after this. Yeh, we
(44:03):
should say, coming back from break. We just got compliments
from Matt. This is like praise from Caesar on something
like this. Look what happened to Caesar though. Yeah, on
your birthday. Matt said, you guys really doing a great job.
And Josh said, you didn't tell us that. Go back
to sleep, all right, So we promised talk of Jessica Thompson.
(44:27):
This is a really good lead. They called her up.
She answered the phone. It's a good first step in
my movie version. Atly she answered the phone and went Uh,
she's a nurse. She was married, she had a kid
named Robin Thompson. Robin a boy though, right, Uh. And
(44:48):
her maiden name was Harkness. Um. And this has kept
private for a lot of years. Her name was she
asked him to keep it a secret. And I read
a bunch of accounts, most of which said that, you know, know,
she may have had a few boyfriends here and there affairs. Um.
The paternity of Robin Thompson was called into question more
(45:08):
than once. So um. I think that the general idea
was that she was probably just trying to keep this
quiet too, so she, you know, in the nineteen forties,
wouldn't be outed as a trollop, right, And the cops said, sure,
no problem. And actually, to this day, the state police
have never publicly identified Jessica Thompson as the mystery woman
(45:31):
whose phone number was written in the Somerton Man's copy
of the Rubiyat. But in two thousand and thirteen, her
family came forward and publicly identified her. And even though
the police haven't confirmed it, it's been known for so
many years that that was probably who it was. That again,
it's basically taken for granted as a fact. Of the
(45:52):
case that she is that woman. Yeah, her nickname was
Justin j E. S t y N. That's how she
inscribed copies. So this Ruby Yacht, um, well, and I
guess that sort of gives away what happens next. Yeah.
The cops are like, okay, okay, we've gone through a
lot to get to you. Lady. Have you given a
(46:13):
copy of this twelfth century book of Persian poetry called
The Ruby Yacht to anybody? And she goes, yes, I have.
And the cops are like, yes, we're about to figure
it out. And they said who who have you given
it to? And she said a bloke named Alfred Boxall.
They said, okay, we'll call you back, and they hung
(46:35):
up and ran around looking for Alfred Boxall. Well, yeah,
they probably figured, you know, that's Harvey Kitell uh. And
they were unfairly to Albert Alfred Boxall disappointed when they
found he was alive and well in New South Wales.
And he said, yeah, I got the book right here.
She h. She gave them to all her lovers. Uh.
(46:58):
There was speculation that perhaps, you know, she gave it
to him over drinks one night, that he perhaps had
been one of her lovers. Yeah, oh yeah, and I
think it's probably absolutely correct because she had inscribed it,
like I said, with justin and that's how the cops
referred to here on their case files. Uh. So they went,
you're alive, great, and he said, yeah, but I've got
(47:18):
the book like not all was lost and it was intact.
That's correct. So they said, oh, you gotta be kidding me.
This lead the lead of all leads. I was gonna
break this case wide open. It it's a dead end,
are you? Are you kidding me? And one of the
officers developed a permanent scarf from banging his head slowly
(47:39):
against the wall. Right. He couldn't be stopped, couldn't be consoled.
And so they said, okay, a lady, your phone number
was in this thing, so we want you to come
down to the Morrigan. Just take a look at this
bust we made of the dead guy and um and
they said, also, is there anything else, anything weird happened
to you and like the last year or so, And
(48:01):
she said, well, the only thing I can think of
is that my neighbors said to me once when I
came home one day that and some man they didn't
know it, called on my house and uh, that was it.
That's the literally the weirdest thing that's happened to me.
Knocked on her door that she didn't know, her neighbors
didn't know. It happens to me like three times a week. Um.
(48:24):
So as they bring her in to look at this bus,
Detective Sergeant Liona Lean and uh, he was one of
the two leads that was not an Australian accent. No,
and um, I don't know what kind of backs and
it was. It was mid Atlantic, but I was not
trying to do Australian. Uh. And he said that quote
she was completely taken aback to the point of giving
(48:45):
the appearance she was about to faint end quote like
she knows who this dude is. She's a nurse, first
of all. She was even looking at a body, but
she's a nurse, so she wouldn't be freaked out by
any of this. No, and again it wasn't even a body.
It was a plaster bush, right. But she's like, and
they go did you know him? And she goes, no, no,
(49:06):
I didn't cut some heartburn, and uh, I have nothing
more to say about this, so don't ever ask me,
and she clammed up. Not weird at all. No, not
at all. So immediately the cops are like, you know
way more than you're letting on. But apparently they didn't,
you know, beat up people that they had in custody
to get information out of them. So they let her
(49:27):
go and just said, oh, well, I guess we'll never
know the answer to this mystery. Yeah, there's a retired
detective named Gary felt Us. Is it Gary? I thought
Jerry G E R R Y Probably Jerry. Yeah, I'm
you've convinced me that's funny. We we just crossed over
to one another side again. Uh. So he took up
(49:49):
this case later in life, and um, he actually interviewed
her in two thousand seven. He said she was evasive
under questioning and like this lady knew something. Yeah, and
again this guy him, he's a hobbyist, amateur sleuth on
this case. I love those guys. But he had forty
years experience as a detective in Adelaide, so he knows
(50:11):
questioning people. Have you seen the Netflix documentary series The Keepers? No,
I haven't even heard of it. It is about a
cold case murder of a nun um in the nineteen
if these no nineteen sixties, I think, and uh, they're
there are these amateur detectives that have been working on
(50:34):
this all these years, these two women in particular that
were students of this nun at school that are just amazing,
and like, is this really get an appreciation for these
people who like become obsessed with the solving these cases
that aren't even like family members or anything, you know,
Is it a like jama or documentary ten part documentary series?
Is wow? I gotta see that. Oh dude, It's one
(50:56):
of the most upsetting things I've ever had to sit through.
And that's all I'm gonna say. I've been waiting for
this since I finished making um Making of a Murderer. Yeah,
it's better, I think. I like that, but what what
very disturbing stuff. Wow, I gotta go. You gotta leave it.
So it hats off to you amateur sluice out there
(51:19):
for for getting in the way of real police. No,
for for doing work that real police. These are cold
cases that, yeah, they're hard pressed to get information anymore
in most cases, It's true. So I was just kidding
sniffing people off the case after the cops say right,
And I was kind of mad not to get too
(51:41):
derailed by this that these cold cases just sort of
stay um cold. But then you think, like there's you know,
you can't just concentrate on a forty year old murder case,
and there's so many current things you've got to be
looking into. Plus it's hard, really, it's UM. All right.
(52:01):
So back to Thompson evasive underquestioning UM later on her son, Robert,
I'm sorry Robin, like we said earlier, Uh, he started
looking into it, got really interested in in trying to
figure this thing out. Oh he did, he did. I
didn't know that. And he turned out to be a
professional dancer, yes, with the calves of Lena Horn and
(52:24):
the Australian Ballet right and hypodonta in exactly the same
way that the Somerton Man had. And he had the
same ears. Yeah. So a lot of people again there's
something that hasn't improven, but most people take as conclusive
fact that Robin Thompson, son of Jessica Thompson, who didn't
(52:47):
know the Somerton Man, was the son of the Somerton Man. Yeah.
What I saw was between the ear and the teeth. Um.
They put odds for both of those things at about
it's quite a range between one and ten million and
one and twenty million. Okay, but let's just say it's
one in ten million. That's say it's one in a trillion.
(53:10):
At that point, it's the same thing basically, So eventually
another was it the same amateur sleuth? Not Jerry Derek
Abbott is a different sleuth. There are rivals. It's hilarious.
They hate each other. Um. He got involved and said,
you know what, I'm gonna get Robin in here for
a DNA test. Um, Robin's a hymn, but it says
(53:33):
here her is it him? Right? No? Uh, Robin's daughter
was the one who took the DNA test. Bobbin is
long dead. Gotcha? Got you? Okay? Oh no, I think
I had it backwards, and I don't think he got
involved in trying to figure it out because he's dead. Okay,
That's why I was like, I was kind of surprised,
but gotcha. So he got her daughter to take a
(53:54):
DNA test and then trace back the paternal lineage, which
would have been um possibly the Somerton man, who by
all accounts seemed like he was American, Yeah, which would
have explained the tie. Um. Perhaps the thread. Yeah, and
what else the fact that no one in Australia could
(54:15):
identify him or was willing to identify him. Um, so
the the only thing left then after that is okay, well,
somebody just dig up the Somerton man like he buried
him in such a way so we could do this. Well,
it turns out in Australia, from what I saw, there
are two reasons that a judge will let you exhume
(54:36):
a body. One is to contest a will. There's no
will or a state really in question here. And then
the other one is to identify a lost soldier, a
soldier lost at war. Other than that, you're gonna it's
it's an up. It's an uphill battle getting a body exhumed.
And two different times Derek Abbott, who actually um as
(54:59):
an aside, married Robin Thompson's daughter who took the DNA
test At his behest um. He petitioned twice to have
Somerton Man exhumed, and twice he was turned down because
um obsessive curiosity was not a good enough reason to
dig up a body. So he swabbed the inside of
(55:19):
her cheek, and that was true love exactly. I gotta
get in there over candle light. Um gave her. He
gave her a hand pie. Oh my god. So here
are the theories. Um well, I'm gonna go ahead and
start with my favorite theory, which sort of is in
here but not really. Uh suicide. I think that perhaps,
(55:45):
and I didn't invent this, but of the theories I've read,
I liked this one, I think that he um it
was an American man who had an affair with Jenny
Nurse Thompson Justin and went there, traveled there, um found
out she was pregnant. Uh In, was rejected and went
(56:08):
down and killed himself by poison and was prepared to
do so, and the other things I've read said that
he could. You know, the things that don't add up
was like the body was found with no like vomit,
which a lot of times happened. If you are poisoned,
even if you're not, one of the last things you
do is your life is ending is throw up. Usually
(56:29):
oh really, yeah, Oh it's pretty common. No one ever
tells you that. Yeah, like the dinner party. You've never
been told that. No one ever tells you two things
in life that you poop when you have a baby,
and you poop, and you throw up before you die,
and you poop when you die, too, poop when you die.
I think, so I guess that's why Elvis died on
the toilet. Yeah, very affianted to go out with some dignity.
(56:54):
Um so where was I? Oh? So he The thing
I read said that perhaps he went down to the shoreline,
drank the poison through that, you know, into the water,
and maybe like vomited and riched there and then kind
of went back up the beach and laid there to
die and and maybe had one less cigarette. Very possible.
(57:14):
So that's one. Another theory is that he died by poison,
but that it was murder. Sure. As this case is
being coming more and more publicized, the public came to
widely believed that he was a spy. And then as
more details of the case spread out more and more
over the decades um this this vision of aspyring emerged
(57:38):
with Jessica Thompson as this communist spy master who was
posing as a housewife, and Somerton Man was a spy
who worked for her or arrival spy, and Alfred box
All was a spy who worked for which would explain
why she gave both of them copies of the Rubiyat
and that actually the copies of the roof Biyat were
(58:01):
one time pads themselves, which we're actually the keys to
crack the code. Right. Unfortunately, the cops uh in adelaide
through the ruby At. That was the sommer to Man's
away in the fifties. Yeah, they got rid of the
suitcase in the eighties. He could maybe it was both.
Maybe he was a spy who loved her, could have been.
(58:23):
But the murder theory is that Alfred Boxhall murdered the man,
or she had him murder him and then they took
his body to the seaside. Alfred Boxhall was actually confronted
with that in the seventies on TV and he's like,
that's pretty ridiculous everybody. Some people are like, we know
you were in intelligence to World War Two. It turns
(58:44):
out he was like an army engineer or something like that.
He wasn't an intelligence and everyone said, that's just what
a murderer would say. That's ridiculous on TV, so they right. So,
the the idea that the sommer to Man's copy of
the Rubiat was basically a one of a kind. It
seems definitely lends credence to the idea that it's possible
he was a spy in that code for sure. Um,
(59:08):
so that's another big, strong possibility. Here's the thing I
saw too. In nine a third witness came forward share
never before revealed story that he was on the beach
in the wee hours of the morning and saw a
man carrying an unconscious man over shoulder towards that spot,
but was dark, could not identify anything, and nothing ever
came of that. Stuff like that, give me my money
(59:32):
for the movie, right, stuff like that. I think it
could be either it wasn't him or just you know,
I don't know, you know how people are. They just
make something up to get on the news. And then
I thought the same thing with the hand raising up,
like maybe that didn't even happen, Well, yeah, that was
That's another thing. Like what I realized from researching this,
(59:52):
Chuck was that this this case has been so muddied
with conjecture and fall truths um that have just spread
across the internet that like, did the Lions ever recant
their version of seeing him move? If so, then then
maybe he was dead when he was taken out to
(01:00:13):
the beach. Who knows, like you really have to dive in.
But if you if you want to dive in, this mystery,
maybe even more than any others, is just uh, just
a just an enormously deep rabbit hole to get sucked into,
because I mean, even if they dug up so Merton Man,
it's found conclusively that he was Robin Thompson's father, that
(01:00:36):
still doesn't say who he actually was. It doesn't idea him.
And it's just like how this mystery unfolded as the
police were investigating it. You can, you can crack the
case in one major way and it'll probably lead to
a dead end. There's still always this tantalizing mystery that
we may never know so Merton Man. Tamim showed, okay stuff,
(01:01:01):
I just said something in person. If you want to
know more about so Merton Man, you should go listen
to the stuff they don't want you to know episode
on it or sure or watch it. I'm not sure
if it's video or audio maybe both, uh. And you
can also check out The Lost Man on California Sunday
Magazine and The Body on so Merton Beach on Smithsonian,
(01:01:23):
among many many other great articles, and since I said many,
it's time for listener mail. Uh, I'm gonna call this
on accents and I gotta say, we got more email
on stuttering and accents that I've seen in a long
(01:01:43):
long time for real. Um, I don't know. I think
a new Accents would be big. Stuttering really hit home
with a lot of people, I think. And the well
there's that there's a stuttering email too. It's either going
to be on the next one or the one that
was just released. Okay, I didn't know any her right,
he may have heard it here. It's upcoming. Hey, guys,
(01:02:04):
listen to Accents. And I wanted to hopefully set up
I set the record straight with Chuck's help. My name
is Chris and I'm from New Jersey. I have heard
Chuck mentioned a few times. He lived in New Jersey
for a bit. First off, where did you live? What
brought you here? And why did you leave? Um? I
lived in Bernardsville next to Basking Ridge. Um, sort of
near Morristown is the biggest town that you might have
(01:02:25):
heard of. Uh, what brought me there? I lived there
after college because it was a free place to live
because of a roommates parents who were out of the
country in Australia. Actually, it's all coming together. They didn't
want to sell their house, so they said, you guys
are done with college. You want to live here for free,
hang out New York. And why did I leave? I
left because they came back. It'd be weird if I
(01:02:48):
was still living there. Uh. Anyway, he might be able
to confirm my suspicions. People from New Jersey don't have
an accent, but if they do, it's slight New York
New York accent. At any um, now you definitely have accents.
You're insane. In my opinion, many older adults have moved
from New York to New Jersey for the suburbs. Seeing
(01:03:08):
many older people meet and talk about the street they
grew up on in Brooklyn, or like I would like
to make like it made clear that no one from
New Jersey says New Joysey. That's true, if anything that
is in New York accent, Chuck, can you confirm. I
can confirm I never heard anyone say New Joysey, but
I cannot confirm that there's no accent because I definitely
have an accent to New Jersey. Um. In fact, one
(01:03:31):
of the things that I noticed. There's not so much
an accent, but people in New Jersey would say button
instead of button or like you know, words that are
split in half like that, they would stop like a
hard stop button. You don't talking about very New Jersey.
And they call everyone kid. Yeah, I knew that a kid,
(01:03:54):
even if they're older than you. I didn't appreciate that anyway.
I hope Chuck agrees also, so uh, I hope he's
a fan of pork roll and not Taylor Ham. I'm
a fan of Taylor pork Roll. I love the accounts.
I thought that was the only pork Roll. Thanks for
the endless amount of entertainment. Be seeing you guys in
Brooklyn on the upcoming tour. So Chris Ortado from Highland Park,
(01:04:16):
New Jersey. Nice. I can't wait to see at the Bellhouse.
Thanks Chris. If you want to get in touchure with
like Chris did, you can send us an email of
Stuff podcast at how Stuff Works dot com and has
always joint our home on the web, Stuff you Should
Know dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my Heart Radio,
(01:04:37):
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows,
M Hey, everybody, it's me Josh, and for this week's
Select I chose our two thousand seventeen episode about the
Man on Somerton Beach, one of the most interesting unsolved
mysteries we've ever encountered. Despite lead after lead, it remains
unsolved today and seemingly will remain that way forever. And
after listening to this one, if you liked it a lot,
(00:21):
you can go further down the rabbit hole. There's plenty
more stuff on it all over the web, and there
have even been some updates since we recorded. So prepared
to be baffled and engrossed. Welcome to Stuff you should know,
a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to
(00:47):
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant,
and today is a very special day. We have a
special guest producer, Matt been a while. It has been
a while, man, it's been since like two fourteen or something. Yeah,
and Matt is one half of the stuff they don't
want you to know. Oh yeah, that's right. There's three
of them, and we are sort of awkwardly recording two
(01:11):
of the same shows they've done. So Matt's just sitting
there with his arms crossed, shaking his head back and forth.
So we're trying not to look at him. Are you doing?
I'm good except for Matt looking at us like that.
What do you do for the eclipse? I looked at
the eclipse unwisely? Um from where from my house? I
(01:31):
didn't I didn't see a full the full schmo. I
figured you guys would be exactly the type to drive
two hours to see it. No you did, though, huh, yeah,
how was it? Well? I don't want to be one
of those dudes. But the difference between in full eclipse
is all the difference in the world. I saw it put.
(01:52):
I can't remember who put it, but they said that
the difference between seeing a partial eclipse and a full
eclipse is the difference between kissing a person and marrying
a person. Oh well, that's from the legendary eclipse article
from The Atlantic from okay, who wrote it? Oh man? Um?
I even like sent myself the link to read it
today and I haven't read it. It's probably Tina Turner,
(02:16):
the height of her career was It was written by
Annie Dillard. Okay, it's called total Eclipse, and I haven't
ready yet. But it's supposed to be just remarkable, and
that's exactly how she put it, and it was I
think so. So that would have been a year before
Bonnie Tyler came out with Totally Eclips of the Heart. Yeah,
it was two. Yeah. I cried, and like five other
(02:38):
people with this cried like spontaneously. Tears were coming out
of my face and I was like, what is happening
to my body? Did you? I mean, what have you concluded?
I don't know, man, it was just overwhelming. That's neat
to stare at the corona and we're going like too
probably Texas for the next one. Like I'm going to
every path of totality that I can get to between
(03:03):
now and the time that I died here in the
clip side. Now I'm a totalitat, totalitist to tattlest Yeah,
and it was we almost didn't go, like literally that
morning we were debating and I was like, it's two
hours away, let's just get in the car and go.
That's very cool. Um. And my daughter saw it, which
was weird for her, like she knew something was up
(03:25):
even at two years old. Yeah, the Sun's cane black, Yeah,
and stars came out and crickets chirped, and it was
just really strange. Yeah, uh yeah, it was very quick
two minutes. But I think the one in two thousand
seven is going to have a four and a half
minute totality. When is it two seven years from now? Okay,
(03:48):
and that's that great. Maybe we'll drive to Texas too, Well,
i'll drive together. Well, if you won't drive two hours,
where are you gonna go to Texas? Oh hey, if
I ever have a good reason to go to Texas,
I'll take it. Well, it's Texas. And then I mean
we may go to Akron because that's where Emily's from.
It goes through Akron, the kind of over to Maine
on that you guys should just follow it in your van. Well,
(04:11):
you know, I wondered, what how fast? Of course you
can't do this, but how fast would you have to
travel the speed of the moon? Stay in the path
of totality the speed of the moon, which is what
like a hundred million miles an hour or something like that.
I don't know. Listen to our Moon episode. It's my
new drug totality. That's neat man. Yeah, I'm glad that
happened to you. Happened on me got all get all
(04:35):
over me. Uh, how okay, you want to talk about
this the eclipse. No, you know what's funny is that
we didn't do it podcasts on eclipses. No, I thought
about that. We never have, I know, And it's just
just like us, Moon goes in front of sun, moon
goes away from Sune, it goes up, it goes there.
(04:55):
Uh yeah, that's just figures. I'm sure we'll end up
talking about like we'll do an epis so don't unlike
the effective an eclipse on plants first, and then you know,
some other tangentially related episode, and then maybe after that
we'll do how eclips work. Maybe if we're still around
in seven years there you go. How about that's a
good idea. And I jinks just before by saying we
(05:17):
won't be around, which is an opposite jinks I was
gonna say, is that a jinx? Yeah, that's to ensure
that we will be around. Smart, thank you. So we're
talking today, Chuck about a pretty unusual mystery. Are you
familiar with this one before? Yeah? We I think we
covered this in an Internet roundup or something. Oh yeah, yeah,
(05:38):
I mean we definitely talked about it. But I scoured
our archives and I didn't find an official show, So
I wonder where it came up, because yeah, I mean
we've talked about it for sure, um, and then it
was a lot of times you would do one of
your best things you've read this week, we would then
do an internet roundup piece on that. Okay, that's probably
(06:00):
where it came up. Then, did you're like, this is
so good it should be seen by dozens of people exactly?
I want to share it with the twenty Um. Yeah,
I probably guess the article that I did the best
stuff we've read this week on would have been the
Body on Somerton Beach I think is what it was called.
Is the Smithsonian article from years and years it was? Um,
(06:22):
so yeah, there's been plenty of good articles about it.
That one, uh is a good one. There's one from
California Sunday magazine called the Lost Man. Yeah, just some
good stuff out there. If this floats your boat, it does.
But let us set let us set the theme for you, okay,
because this story takes place in Adelaide, in uh, South Australia,
(06:44):
which is not just a place, it's a state as well.
Did you know that? Yeah, I wonder what they call
how they pronounced Adelaide there probably not like I just
said it, um, but in Adelaide, South Australia, Adelaides the capital.
Uh it's a from what I understand, And we haven't
been there yet, but we probably will maybe next year.
I'm not going to Adelaide though, I don't know. It
(07:07):
sounds kind of neat and creep a little weird, right,
but weird in some weird ways. So um Adelaide is
this This place is kind of known as the murder
murder capital of Australia, but it doesn't have necessarily like
the highest homicide rate in Australia. It just has a
history of kind of weird, gruesome, grizzly murders. Yeah. I
(07:30):
think if you've had more than two or three like
dismemberment type murders, that you're on the map, and they
definitely have. There was there was a very famous case
in the sixties of the um the Beaumont children who
went missing off of a beach called Glenn L Beach.
(07:53):
I think that's probably how you say it um, which
is near Adelaide, and uh, we're never heard from again,
no trace was ever found. We should do an episode
on that one too. Um there was the family yeah,
uh so dubbed by the cops in the seventies and eighties.
This one's really freaky. These were supposedly just like regular
(08:16):
professional men, presumed men who had a sort of cabal
of torture and murder of young boys, basically like season
one of True Detective, but in real life in Australia,
with a well with an equally weird ending. Right, yeah,
(08:37):
the sky just opens up. It's a total eclipse. Uh.
And that one again unsolved, right, Uh, it was never
it was I think one person was convicted, but the
people that he implicated were never charged or convicted. What
about the bodies in the barrel thing? That's all you
need to say. Okay, there's a string of group of
(08:58):
murders called the bodies in the barrels murders. Right, it's
a lot of pluralization, it is. Uh. And then, um,
so the idea that the one we're talking about, which
is the death of just one man, a non violent
death possibly um who was found on a beach almost
seventy years ago. For that to still have Australia and
(09:22):
like the world in its grips today, it must be
a pretty interesting case, agreed, And it is. Yeah, so
I guess we should go back in time, getting the
old Way back machine and travel south to Adelaide post
war Adelaide. Look how beautiful it is here. It's hot.
(09:49):
I smell shrimp cooking on the barbie, um drinking a Foster's. Yeah,
it's like a fifty five gallon drum of foster and
lots of other Australian tropes are happening all around me.
There's a crocodile dundeees over there. Why there? When we
tour there, they're going to really get because like after
the show, the first show, you can run us out
(10:11):
of town. They find New Zealand wants us. Yeah. New
Zealand say, yeah, come on over here. Uh so Adelaide
is um, Well, it's an interesting place post war Um.
Apparently there was. It was kind of a place where
you could go to sort of real if you want
to disappear and rewrite your life. That wasn't a bad
place to do it. Um. There was a lot of
(10:34):
black marketeering going on. Apparently it was really hard to
get your hands on a car. Um. So there's like
a big black market for cars of all of all
stolen nous, all levels of stolenness. Um. Yeah, there's there's
just a certain amount of post war scarcity that was
still going on, and there's a lot of espionage going
(10:55):
on to right. So the Cold War had just started
in Australia was in this weird position where there were
a lot of Soviet spies running around, there were a
lot of Brits and American spies running around, and the
British themselves were conducting secret rocket tests in the country.
So there was um, there was a lot of espionage,
a lot of black marketing um, and a lot of
(11:17):
people who were not who they claimed to be floating
around this country, running around and floating right. So that
brings us to a very important date for the story.
Tuesday November, about seven in the evening. There was a
jeweler named John Lyons and his wife. They were taking
a little stroll there on Somerton Beach, which I'm sure
(11:40):
as lovely um, and they saw something we were They
were walking towards glenn Elk so I guess they're connected beaches, yeah, yeah,
And they saw something interesting on the sea wall there.
They saw a man lying in the sand, but very
well dressed in a suit kind of propped up on
the sea wall there as if he were sort of
(12:01):
sitting up about sixty ft away. In America, that's twenty yards.
In Australia it is a certain amount of meters about
twenty Okay, really is that what works? Man? It's pretty
close to the yard in the meter are very similar. Um,
and he he was doing something interesting, so they say, uh,
(12:24):
he extended his right arm upward and then just let
it fall back down to the ground. And they thought
that looks like a passed out drunk guy, or maybe
a barely wake drunk guy, maybe trying to have a
cigarette or they I mean, it was remarkable and that
they made a mental note of it, but they just
kept walking and whatever. I think his suit being on
the beach was probably one of the big deals. Yeah,
(12:45):
he was very sharply dressed, not just wearing a suit
on the beach like the studio was wearing. Was pretty nice,
pretty nice. Um In About a half hour later, another
couple walked past, and this this time the guy wasn't
moving at all. Um and apparently he had a whole
swarm of mosquitoes around his face, and the boyfriend says
to the girlfriend that guy must be dead to the world.
(13:09):
If he's not noticing those mosquitoes, he must just be
absolutely wasted, so that they were clearly closer, I guess.
So I think it's seen mosquitoes on his face, Yeah,
for sure, because from twenty yards it's a tough thing
to see. I don't know, for a straining mosquitoes are
all right. So the next morning, um became pretty clear
(13:29):
what was going on here, that this was a dead man.
The same jeweler John Lyons. He went for a little
morning swim, as you were to do in Australian the
mornings when you're hungover, and he saw a bunch of
people crowded around where the guy was and it was
it was on. It was as a dead dude. Yeah,
the dude was in basically the same position he'd seen
(13:51):
him in the night before. That that crowd was like,
he's dead, croy key and uh yeah, so Lions is
like that was pretty surprising and that's the end of
John Lyons. Yeah, but very important here, and that they
are the only people who supposedly saw this body move right,
super important. So, um, within about a few hours, the
(14:14):
body is in the morgue at the hospital and as
being examined, and just from the initial examination there was
a lot of um, just weirdness that immediately came out. Right.
So remember the guys like sitting up against the sea wall. Um,
his legs are extended out, his feet are crossed. There
(14:36):
was a cigarette, depending on who you ask, either a
half burned cigarette, either dangling from his mouth or on
the collar of his shirt as if it had fallen
from his mouth. Um. And when he was taken into
the morgue that the doctor said that he was probably
dead by two am. Yeah, and most likely when they
(14:58):
did the full autopsy, a man named On Dwyer said
he was probably poisoned initially, even though there were no
traces of poison, which is a little odd, right, But
the reason he said that is because when they cracked
the guy opened this, this this John Doe, who's widely
become known as the Somerton Man. Um, his organs were
all kinds of messed up. He had blood and his
(15:21):
stomach along with his final meal, which was a pasty.
It's like a pocket Yeah, delicious hot pocket hand tie. Yeah.
Um that sounds dirty hand pie. Yeah. Um, there's his
spleen was enlarged and engorged with blood. Yeah, that's not
(15:41):
a good sign and firm. His liver was giant and bloody,
not unusual for Australians that fifty five gallon Joma Foster.
His pupils were smaller than normal and just quote unusual
whatever that means. Right, uh. And then they say that
he had a little spittle on the side of his
(16:02):
mouth that you know, like, you know, I thought that
was a pretty tacky thing to note. Yeah, just leave
the guy alone. He's dead, like sleepy drool is what
I thought. If I'm pretty, if I'm so pretty that
I just have a little bit of spittle coming down
my mouth when I'm dead, I'll be more than happy.
Oh you mean, if you if that's the only thing. Yeah,
I agreed. I mean, come on, give the guy a break. Well,
(16:25):
you know, they were doing forensics. Yeah, so, and indeed
they did, and they kept saying like this gotta be poisoning,
like his organs are all kinds of messed up, but
there was no trace of poisoning. They brought in this
guy named Cedric Stanton Hicks, the hand PI and there, Yeah,
nothing's wrong, right. They gave it to Eugene and he
(16:46):
was still standing afterwards. Yeah, so it's all good. Um.
So Sir Cedric Stanton Hicks comes in and says, well,
let me let me see this, and he um concluded
that it was probably one of two poisons that would
have done this kind of damage resulted in heart failure.
We didn't say that, so they concluded he probably died
(17:08):
from his heart failure. Ultimately, Um, but that wouldn't have
left a trace. And he did not feel like it
was a responsible move on his part to say these
things out loud on the record during the coroner's inquest.
So he wrote them down and the car was like, okay,
all right, picked him up and read and what he
(17:28):
read was Digitalis and Struugh Phantom and Sir Cedric said,
he said it, I didn't write. He goes, oh gosh,
did I say that out loud? That sounds like something
that you've seen the movie, just you know, added for
the drama. But apparently it really am right. So he
read those names. I don't know if you read those names,
but at least those names were recorded onto the record. Uh.
(17:51):
Sir Cedric Stanton Hicks suspected the strophanthem although later investigators
I feel sure it was probably the digit tell us.
It sounds like it doesn't matter which one it was
because they were both kind of used and I think
are maybe still used the treat heart disease. Is that true? Yeah, Um,
and then you can get them with the prescription from
(18:12):
a pharmacy. I don't know if they're still used. Maybe
they are, but they definitely were common at the time
or obtainable in in just about every major city. Um.
So they have an idea of maybe what poison it was.
But again it bears pointing out again and again that
they no one has ever found any direct evidence that
(18:34):
the man was poisoned. And to this day, two thousand,
seventeen and beyond, if you're listening to this years from now, um,
they still don't know how he died. Yeah, and you
they may still be looking because this is one of
those like the dB Cooper when we did. That's one
of those cases where amateur sluice on the Internet are
(18:55):
still trying to figure stuff like this out. And unless
we come up with some really amazing technologies in the
next ten twenty years or something like that, the time
is passing quite quickly on this case and D. B.
Cooper as well, where we may never know may remain
a mystery forever unless we invent time travel. Then somebody
(19:17):
will go back and figure those out. So the dude,
it looks a little bit like Harvey Kitel, he asked me.
He does, And you think so? I mean, look up
a picture of this guy. If you're not in your car,
you can look him up. There are two very famous
photos I guess from the autopsy scene. Um, just straight
onto his face and then sort of you know, from
the side with his eyes open. Yeah, it looks like
(19:39):
Harvey Kitell. It looks like a wasted Harvey Kitel, which
is to say, he looks like Harvey Kitel. Um, so
he's in about his mid forties. Yeah, I guess a
younger Harvey Keitel. Yeah. Uh, he's wearing this double breasted suit. Um.
I saw that he was wearing a nit pull over
with a necktie. Who And this sounds like we're being
(20:01):
um two specific by saying the stripes slanted from left
to right. But we're not. We're not. That will come
into play. Well, just hang onto that nugget. Yeah, put
that one in your pipe for later. He had no hat,
which was weird for that time. Oh, I hadn't ran
across that, but yeah, I've never seen that there was
a hat. Yeah, and they never found a hat, but
it would be unusual for a man of late forties
(20:23):
to not have a hat. Yeah, I guess so. For
doors were huge. I'll bet Panama hats were huge down
in Adelaide at the time. For doors in Australia were
literally huge. It's like the sombreros made of tortillas melted
cheese in the middle man. Is that a thing? It
was on the Simpsons too. Hat. Uh. What else? He
(20:46):
had weird feet, yeah, wedge shaped feet, they said, and
that his his shoes seemed to be molded almost to
his feet. The real weird giveaway was his calves. His
calves were remarkable. They were bulbous below the just below
the knee. And the guy who who performed the autopsy,
(21:08):
I think it was Dwyer, said, Uh, this is like
what dancers or people who wear high heels, just the
kind of calves that they have. He said, look at that,
he looks like Lena Horn the Oh my gosh, it
is hon Uh. Yeah, so that that's definitely notable. Um
(21:29):
uh The other thing they found out too was um.
A couple of physical traits that he had which will
come into play later on his ear. His simba, which
is the upper hollow portion of the ear hollow caved in. Yeah,
the rolled over part up here, No, like just the
upper you know hole than the lower part. Yeah, we've
(21:53):
ever done show on ears, have we? We should? The
simba is larger than the cave um, which is a
fairly rare thing. So I would guess the cabum is
where your eardrum leads to your ear drum. Yeah, that's
where you put your finger when you want to write.
But if you go, if you put your finger up
over that ridge does not. That's the simba. Yeah, so yeah,
(22:14):
that would be weird if this one was bigger than
that one. Yeah. It's a pretty rare genetic trait, as
were his strange teeth. Yeah, he had something called hypodontia,
which is he was missing his lateral incisors, which are
the teeth that most people have between their front teeth
and their canines. His lateral incisers never developed, so his
(22:36):
canines were adjacent to his front teeth. Yeah, and it's um.
Would you say hypodontia. That that can be as common
as like you never get your wisdom teeth, but in
this case those particular teeth, that was pretty rare. Something like, well,
I saw hypodontia in in so that would include not
getting wisdom teeth. Huh, well, in any teeth, not developing
(22:58):
his hypodone I got. Well, I don't know if hypodonta
in general or just this type of hypodonta of the population. Yeah,
it's specifically for those teeth. Was pretty rare. Yeah, two,
pretty rare. Like everyone's got those teeth, and people at
home are like, why are you saying all these weird stuff?
Who cares to just settle down? Everybody settle down because
(23:21):
it's all going to come into play. We haven't said
anything that will not come back into play. Al Right,
should we take a break? I think we should. Everybody's
getting all riled up. Let's take a break, and then
we're going to detail, uh, for about fifteen minutes what
was in his pockets? Okay, chuck, So we went over
(24:04):
the body. Yeah, it's time to go through his personal effects,
which were kind of weird in and of themselves. All
about the details. So when you're talking about murders and
disappearances and then unsolved after seventy years. Yes, you need
to pay attention to the detail. What kind of podcast
cops would we be if we were just like, Yeah,
he just sort of looked like Harvey kit Tell and
(24:25):
he's in a suit d and no good. That sounded
like Harvey kit Tell. Yeah it did, didn't it? Yeah
it was. It was my Harvey kite Tel on the piano.
Oh man, what a movie? Um? All right? So in
his pockets he had a peck of juicy fruit. The
juicy fruit, yeah, chewing gum stuff. He had some matches,
(24:48):
Bryant and May matches. He had, uh, well, he had
a lot of tickets in his pocket. He had a
an unused train ticket from Adelaide to Henley Beach, had
a bust ticket from Adelaide to Glenelg And then he
had a ticket, a used ticket that said he had
come from arrived there by by bus from the railway
(25:12):
station there. Yeah, from the Adelaide railway correct. Yeah. Uh.
He also had um a pack of cigarettes that were
weird Army Club army. The pack of cigarettes was an
Army Club pack, but inside with something called conceitas which
was a much more expensive brand. So that makes no sense, Like,
(25:34):
that's the opposite of the only thing that could make sense,
which is he just kept the expensive pack and would
put cheap cigarettes in it to look fancy, right, unless
he didn't want people bumming the expensive ones off of him,
so he kept a cheap pack or right, The likelier
story is that he bombed some a bunch of cigarettes
(25:55):
off of somebody and put them in his his own pack,
al right, Like, hey man, he got a smoke or
seven or seven interesting or perhaps they were poisoned and
put in that pack. That's another possible explanation to write.
So um his his that was like the extent of
his personal effects, aside from his clothing. Right, there was
(26:16):
no idea he had a couple of combs, okay hair combs.
More to the point, there was no idea, no idea,
no no wallet, no cash. Kind of odd for sure,
and his clothes were odd in and of themselves. Right.
So again, he was wearing a very nice suit. But
the um makers labels of all of his clothes have
(26:41):
been from what I understand, carefully snipped away. Yeah, I
saw one explanation for this that made it seem a
little less odd um, which was back then. Apparently people
oftentimes would because there were nice clothes, were not scarce,
but he wanted to keep them for yourself, so you
would write your name a lot of times on your
(27:03):
like suit jackets and things, and then if you ever
went to sell them second hand, you would flip out
those labels. So that's one explanation that's not bad. I
don't know if that's a reach or not, but at
least something could make sense out of that. But the
other thing could mean that this person was being dumped
and no one wanted them to know who they were.
(27:24):
It's a possibility to or that he didn't want anyone
to know who he was. That's another possibility as well.
That's what a lot of people think, that he was
trying to cover up his own identity as well. Um,
his his trousers I think had a little repair done
with orange thread bear with us um, and then that
(27:46):
was about it. They they they took fingerprints of the
guy and spread around to no avail. But the fingerprints, right,
they they've figured out after a little a while. I'm
not sure when, but this would have been so November
December one is when he was found. This is to
(28:07):
this is like July to us in the northern Hemisphere,
the beginning of July. So starting to get hot down there, right,
You can only keep a body for so long in
the nineteen forties in summer in Adelaide, it's already a
hot place to begin with. And um, the authorities were like,
we we can't keep this guy above ground any longer.
(28:28):
So somebody had the bright idea of making a plaster
bust of him, and they did, and they kept it
at the Morgan and they buried him in a pretty
smart way if you ask me. Yeah, they buried him,
uh with this marker. Here lies the unknown man who
was found at Somerton Beach first December, and he was
buried just in really dry ground so if they ever
(28:49):
needed to get in there they could. And they encased
him in concrete as well to realize, like, keep him
preserved as much as possible if you ever needed to
be exhumed, right correct. So, um, like I said, they
took the set of fingerprints and they're still looking for
this guy. They buried him finally, but they're like, this
is driving us insane. Who was this man? What happened?
(29:11):
To him. Um. So they spread the fingerprints all over Australia.
They started to send him around to America, the UK,
it just English speaking countries. Yeah. They also, uh like
kind of before they got rid of the real body,
they brought people in locals to see if anyone could
(29:31):
identify them. I think afterward they probably showed quite a
few people the bust and they were just trying to
do anything and nobody, nobody could recognize who this person was. No.
I mean some people saw like pictures of the bust
or the death pictures that are famous now in the newspaper,
and we're like, oh, that kind of looks like uncle Ted.
And then they go in and see him and be
(29:53):
like it's not uncle Ted. Um. And so this this
the fact that this is becoming a weird unsolved mystery already,
like just quickly after the case started to capture the
nation's attention a little bit, and the police, the the
the South Australia State Police were not shy about publicizing
(30:15):
stuff as needed, Like as they developed breaks in the case,
they would tell the newspapers about it, and the newspapers
would tell the rest of the country. So it became
a pretty big sensation in Australia so much so that
a lot of people are just basically take it for
granted that the man was not Australian. That were he Australian,
(30:36):
some more several people would have come forward because the
case had that much exposure nationally. Yeah, and I am
just guessing here, but I imagine in this part of
Australia probably wasn't there weren't like millions of people living there.
I don't know how small of the town it was,
but I don't think it was like some huge city,
was it. Well, yeah, Adelaide's the capital of South Australia,
(30:58):
but is it How was there was like at least
five people there? And I'm going to say, at the minimum,
someone's going to write in and tell us so all right,
and I'm gonna be mad that we didn't know. No,
Australians are nice about things usually, Yeah they are, aren't they?
They're the Canadians of the South. So they decided the
(31:21):
cops decide very smartly. Um, you know what, We're gonna
widen this investigation. We're going to see if anywhere in
town someone has found something there, any possessions that this
guy might have left behind. Since he was just found
with what was in his pockets, surely there's something, and
in fact there was. They discovered there was a suitcase,
(31:43):
brown suitcase in a cloak room that was left there
on November, which was the night before the morning that
he was found the first time he was seen on
the beach. It was no lead, it was and because
he had that ticket that showed he had taken a
bus from the Adelaide rail station, that was one of
(32:04):
the first places detectives went. Uh, and they found this suitcase, um,
that had been left there, like you said, on November. Inside, Um,
there was some stuff that linked it to the guy. Yeah,
I mean it was full of stuff. Um. It was
clearly someone who was traveling a lot. There were lots
(32:25):
of clothes, shirts and scarves and underwear and pajamas and handkerchiefs.
There were two pairs of scissors, one broken pair, one
in a sheath, Um, like a shave kit, screwdriver, Um,
lots of just normal travel things, razor, razor strap, all
the junk you would expect that multiple pairs of scissors
(32:47):
is a little weird. Thread but the thread was the
big one, orange thread. Yeah, barber not Australian brand barber
thread which perfectly matched where his trousers were stitch. So
it's got to be him, right, that's the thing that
really links him with the suitcase. Um. There was also
some stencils for stenciling cargo. Yeah, that was a little weird,
(33:11):
very weird. Um. And there was a suit jacket that
had a what's called a feather stitch. Um, while stitching
is the lightest stitch, right, And they're like, we don't
do this in Australia. We don't even have the sewing
machine that can do this in Australia. Yet A taylor said,
(33:31):
this is an American coat, Yeah, with their feathers. Well,
he's a Hamms stitch right. Uh. And then inside some
of these clothes, uh was the name keen? Because I
told you people wrote on their clothes A lot said
T keen, T dot keen, K E N E or
k A N. And the best cops could figure is
(33:55):
they someone did that to to sniff everyone off the case,
right because they've around and there was no t Keen
or any Keen that they couldn't put their their fingers on.
Who's missing? Um? And the tie years later, like the
cops at the time didn't know this. I wonder if
they noticed that it was slanting one way or another,
(34:17):
but the they probably just knew it looked weird for
some reason. They couldn't put their finger on. But at
the time in Australia, the U the ties slanted left
or right, and this guy's tie slanted right to left,
and that was the style in America. It's like everything's opposite.
Didn't this so weird? Summer's winter and winter summer flush
(34:40):
the toilet? It was in a different direction. I think
that's an urban legend. No, I think that's true, right, No,
I did a something on it. Really, Yeah, I think
it's an urban legend. It's really has to do with um,
the uh, the shape of the drain. What in That's
(35:00):
what I was so looking forward to pooping in Australia.
You can still do it. Well, you probably should. Actually,
while we're there, I'm going to, but I'm not. The
joy is is dead. Well, just don't watch it flush. Yeah,
but you might be better off actually in this way,
I've just been used to my poop turning into such
(35:22):
a direction my whole life. I was really ready for
something new, all right, I'm sorry, so the tie is opposite.
They said, this is an American tie, like you said. Uh.
And then they brought in um and actually we should
say those were internet sleuths, like within the last ten
(35:42):
fifteen years who figured that one out. Yeah, all right,
good for you Internet. Uh. Finally, in April, police brought
in a dude, an expert pathologist named John Cleveland, and
this was a big deal. Apparently the cops in South
Australia were not as thorough as you would think because
they didn't even check his little pocket watch pocket, a
(36:04):
little pocket inside your pocket, because there was a really
key piece of evidence rolled up in there. Yeah, this
one broke the case wide open. It seemed like it would.
There was a little scrap of paper rolled up very
tightly in this pocket and written on it in some
pretty fancy type setting were the words TAMUM showed T
(36:28):
A M A M S h U D. And the
cops said, what was this first orange thread? Not some
weirdo words rolled up in this guy's pocket? What is this?
And John Cleveland said, you dopes, it's called a lead.
You didn't check his pocket? In his pocket? He said no,
So they would figure out in a little while. By
(36:50):
a stroke of luck, it seems that um tamum showed
means it is finished where it is done, or in
this case, the end in Persian. It sounds very h
random and out of left field that anybody would know this,
But a reporter working the police beat there said named
(37:13):
Frank Kennedy, said, no, that I know what that's from.
That's from a twelveth century book of Persian poetry of
Omar Kayyam. And that just sounds so out of left field.
But in fact, that book had been translated by an
English poet named Edward Fitzgerald, and it was kind of
a big deal once it was translated into English. So
(37:34):
it wasn't like just so the word of looking for
obscure that nobody would know what it was. No, it
was extremely popular in the in the West after that,
I think even in America, like there's a Peanuts comic
strip that makes reference to it. Even it was a
big It was one of those things where like people
(37:55):
might not know about it, but there are plenty people
out there who did. And one of the reporters recognized there, right,
So they realized then that they needed to find the
copy of the Rubiat that this came from, and they
started looking and looking and looking, and they couldn't find it.
So the state police did what they had been doing
all along. They went to the newspapers and they said, hey,
(38:17):
we found this weird scrap of paper. It says tamam shoot.
We're told that it comes from the Rubyat and specifically
it's the last words of the Rubiat right with the
last words of the last poem, right um and go
go to it. Media and the media went wild and
let everybody know. And it turns out so this is
(38:38):
April when they found the Um the scrap of paper,
and in July they got another break based on finding
that scrap. A guy came forward and said, you know what,
I found this copy of the Rubyat in the backseat
of my car, which had been parked by sohmer Tion
Beach around the time the man who was found on
(38:59):
sommer To Beach was found. And I have no idea
whose it is. It's just been I put it in
my glove compartment. It's been sitting there until I read
this article in the newspaper. Yeah. Presumably his windows rolled
down or his car was unlocked, and whoever ripped this
thing out because they did find out that part was
ripped out from his book, just tossed it in the
back seat this guy's car, Right, not very smart if
(39:20):
you're trying to cover your tracks. No, but maybe you're
not trying to cover your tracks, right. So they now
have the copy of the Ruby Yacht that the scrap
of paper that came that was found in the sohmer
to man's trousers came from, yeah, which by all accounts
is a one of a kind printing, right, Yeah, like
(39:42):
a one off, yes, and not an addition of hundreds,
like a single printing of this one book, right, but
supposedly as part of an addition. I can't remember which
edition it was by this printer, but for years people
have been trying to track down a copy from that
edition and they can find it. Well, somebody finally found one.
They're like, this is not the exact same book that
(40:05):
the cops found with the Somerton manor associated with Somerton Man,
which is a very odd thing, totally. Um, So in
this book they get another huge break. This breaks the
case open even further, right, They're like, surely we're going
to figure it out now, Yeah, this was huge. They
found uh two local phone numbers. One was a bank
(40:26):
phone number which didn't lead to much of anything, and
another one X three to three nine uh, belong to Well,
they found a couple of things. They found the stumber
that belonged to a woman, a nurse named Jessica Thompson,
who will talk about in a minute. And then they
also found, um, you know how we did our We
(40:47):
did our episode on spies, and one of the things
sometimes spies would do would have these throwaway pads that
they would literally write things on and you could make
an impression such that, you know, it's like the kid's
trick where you rip that page off and you have
what looks like a blank page that's the impression of
what was written above it. And in this little kids
(41:07):
will use a pencil, let's see what it says. But
in this case he used a UV light to see
what by all accounts is a five line code. And
the code is pretty odd. Yeah, I mean I think
we should read it. It It will sound like gibberish. But
if you're into code breaking, you probably already know about
this one. But if not, here we go all capital letters.
(41:29):
Line one is w R G o A B A
b D. Second line m l I A O I
that was scratched out. Interestingly, third line W T b
I M P A n E t P, fourth line
M l I A again that's repeated B O A
I A q C, and finally I T T M
(41:50):
T S A M S T G A B go
break it, right the eagle has landed at midnight, which
they basically said, go break it, and no one could know. Um. Yeah,
a lot of amateur code breakers because again they went
to the media like you're saying, um, go break it,
and a lot of code breakers tried and failed, and
(42:12):
then um they contacted the Australian Naval Intelligence Service and
they tried and failed, and either the Naval Intelligence Service
or later UM sleuths concluded that it was for there's
too little information to ever break it, that you didn't
have a key that you needed to have, um. And
(42:34):
then it may have been as simple as the first
letter of a list that he was trying to remember, right,
because apparently they bear of a resemblance frequency wise the
first letters of common words in the English language. So
(42:55):
it's possible that like it's it's a to do list,
that the guy was just trying to remember, you know,
by these groceries, go see this person at this time,
that kind of thing. It is a lot of letters,
and a lot of people say, no, this is obviously
this spy codebook. Don't be naive. So the the cops
(43:15):
they there's the code breaking thing that they're doing. Then
simultaneously they're like, well, maybe we should call this local
phone number, and they did, and on the other end
a woman picked up and uh, it turned out like
you said to be Jessica Thompson, and you want to
take another breaks. We're going to take a break and
we'll get to Jessica Thompson right after this. Yeh, we
(44:03):
should say, coming back from break. We just got compliments
from Matt. This is like praise from Caesar on something
like this. Look what happened to Caesar though. Yeah, on
your birthday. Matt said, you guys really doing a great job.
And Josh said, you didn't tell us that. Go back
to sleep, all right, So we promised talk of Jessica Thompson.
(44:27):
This is a really good lead. They called her up.
She answered the phone. It's a good first step in
my movie version. Atly she answered the phone and went Uh,
she's a nurse. She was married, she had a kid
named Robin Thompson. Robin a boy though, right, Uh. And
(44:48):
her maiden name was Harkness. Um. And this has kept
private for a lot of years. Her name was she
asked him to keep it a secret. And I read
a bunch of accounts, most of which said that, you know, know,
she may have had a few boyfriends here and there affairs. Um.
The paternity of Robin Thompson was called into question more
(45:08):
than once. So um. I think that the general idea
was that she was probably just trying to keep this
quiet too, so she, you know, in the nineteen forties,
wouldn't be outed as a trollop, right, And the cops said, sure,
no problem. And actually, to this day, the state police
have never publicly identified Jessica Thompson as the mystery woman
(45:31):
whose phone number was written in the Somerton Man's copy
of the Rubiyat. But in two thousand and thirteen, her
family came forward and publicly identified her. And even though
the police haven't confirmed it, it's been known for so
many years that that was probably who it was. That again,
it's basically taken for granted as a fact. Of the
(45:52):
case that she is that woman. Yeah, her nickname was
Justin j E. S t y N. That's how she
inscribed copies. So this Ruby Yacht, um, well, and I
guess that sort of gives away what happens next. Yeah.
The cops are like, okay, okay, we've gone through a
lot to get to you. Lady. Have you given a
(46:13):
copy of this twelfth century book of Persian poetry called
The Ruby Yacht to anybody? And she goes, yes, I have.
And the cops are like, yes, we're about to figure
it out. And they said who who have you given
it to? And she said a bloke named Alfred Boxall.
They said, okay, we'll call you back, and they hung
(46:35):
up and ran around looking for Alfred Boxall. Well, yeah,
they probably figured, you know, that's Harvey Kitell uh. And
they were unfairly to Albert Alfred Boxall disappointed when they
found he was alive and well in New South Wales.
And he said, yeah, I got the book right here.
She h. She gave them to all her lovers. Uh.
(46:58):
There was speculation that perhaps, you know, she gave it
to him over drinks one night, that he perhaps had
been one of her lovers. Yeah, oh yeah, and I
think it's probably absolutely correct because she had inscribed it,
like I said, with justin and that's how the cops
referred to here on their case files. Uh. So they went,
you're alive, great, and he said, yeah, but I've got
(47:18):
the book like not all was lost and it was intact.
That's correct. So they said, oh, you gotta be kidding me.
This lead the lead of all leads. I was gonna
break this case wide open. It it's a dead end,
are you? Are you kidding me? And one of the
officers developed a permanent scarf from banging his head slowly
(47:39):
against the wall. Right. He couldn't be stopped, couldn't be consoled.
And so they said, okay, a lady, your phone number
was in this thing, so we want you to come
down to the Morrigan. Just take a look at this
bust we made of the dead guy and um and
they said, also, is there anything else, anything weird happened
to you and like the last year or so, And
(48:01):
she said, well, the only thing I can think of
is that my neighbors said to me once when I
came home one day that and some man they didn't
know it, called on my house and uh, that was it.
That's the literally the weirdest thing that's happened to me.
Knocked on her door that she didn't know, her neighbors
didn't know. It happens to me like three times a week. Um.
(48:24):
So as they bring her in to look at this bus,
Detective Sergeant Liona Lean and uh, he was one of
the two leads that was not an Australian accent. No,
and um, I don't know what kind of backs and
it was. It was mid Atlantic, but I was not
trying to do Australian. Uh. And he said that quote
she was completely taken aback to the point of giving
(48:45):
the appearance she was about to faint end quote like
she knows who this dude is. She's a nurse, first
of all. She was even looking at a body, but
she's a nurse, so she wouldn't be freaked out by
any of this. No, and again it wasn't even a body.
It was a plaster bush, right. But she's like, and
they go did you know him? And she goes, no, no,
(49:06):
I didn't cut some heartburn, and uh, I have nothing
more to say about this, so don't ever ask me,
and she clammed up. Not weird at all. No, not
at all. So immediately the cops are like, you know
way more than you're letting on. But apparently they didn't,
you know, beat up people that they had in custody
to get information out of them. So they let her
(49:27):
go and just said, oh, well, I guess we'll never
know the answer to this mystery. Yeah, there's a retired
detective named Gary felt Us. Is it Gary? I thought
Jerry G E R R Y Probably Jerry. Yeah, I'm
you've convinced me that's funny. We we just crossed over
to one another side again. Uh. So he took up
(49:49):
this case later in life, and um, he actually interviewed
her in two thousand seven. He said she was evasive
under questioning and like this lady knew something. Yeah, and
again this guy him, he's a hobbyist, amateur sleuth on
this case. I love those guys. But he had forty
years experience as a detective in Adelaide, so he knows
(50:11):
questioning people. Have you seen the Netflix documentary series The Keepers? No,
I haven't even heard of it. It is about a
cold case murder of a nun um in the nineteen
if these no nineteen sixties, I think, and uh, they're
there are these amateur detectives that have been working on
(50:34):
this all these years, these two women in particular that
were students of this nun at school that are just amazing,
and like, is this really get an appreciation for these
people who like become obsessed with the solving these cases
that aren't even like family members or anything, you know,
Is it a like jama or documentary ten part documentary series?
Is wow? I gotta see that. Oh dude, It's one
(50:56):
of the most upsetting things I've ever had to sit through.
And that's all I'm gonna say. I've been waiting for
this since I finished making um Making of a Murderer. Yeah,
it's better, I think. I like that, but what what
very disturbing stuff. Wow, I gotta go. You gotta leave it.
So it hats off to you amateur sluice out there
(51:19):
for for getting in the way of real police. No,
for for doing work that real police. These are cold
cases that, yeah, they're hard pressed to get information anymore
in most cases, It's true. So I was just kidding
sniffing people off the case after the cops say right,
And I was kind of mad not to get too
(51:41):
derailed by this that these cold cases just sort of
stay um cold. But then you think, like there's you know,
you can't just concentrate on a forty year old murder case,
and there's so many current things you've got to be
looking into. Plus it's hard, really, it's UM. All right.
(52:01):
So back to Thompson evasive underquestioning UM later on her son, Robert,
I'm sorry Robin, like we said earlier, Uh, he started
looking into it, got really interested in in trying to
figure this thing out. Oh he did, he did. I
didn't know that. And he turned out to be a
professional dancer, yes, with the calves of Lena Horn and
(52:24):
the Australian Ballet right and hypodonta in exactly the same
way that the Somerton Man had. And he had the
same ears. Yeah. So a lot of people again there's
something that hasn't improven, but most people take as conclusive
fact that Robin Thompson, son of Jessica Thompson, who didn't
(52:47):
know the Somerton Man, was the son of the Somerton Man. Yeah.
What I saw was between the ear and the teeth. Um.
They put odds for both of those things at about
it's quite a range between one and ten million and
one and twenty million. Okay, but let's just say it's
one in ten million. That's say it's one in a trillion.
(53:10):
At that point, it's the same thing basically, So eventually
another was it the same amateur sleuth? Not Jerry Derek
Abbott is a different sleuth. There are rivals. It's hilarious.
They hate each other. Um. He got involved and said,
you know what, I'm gonna get Robin in here for
a DNA test. Um, Robin's a hymn, but it says
(53:33):
here her is it him? Right? No? Uh, Robin's daughter
was the one who took the DNA test. Bobbin is
long dead. Gotcha? Got you? Okay? Oh no, I think
I had it backwards, and I don't think he got
involved in trying to figure it out because he's dead. Okay,
That's why I was like, I was kind of surprised,
but gotcha. So he got her daughter to take a
(53:54):
DNA test and then trace back the paternal lineage, which
would have been um possibly the Somerton man, who by
all accounts seemed like he was American, Yeah, which would
have explained the tie. Um. Perhaps the thread. Yeah, and
what else the fact that no one in Australia could
(54:15):
identify him or was willing to identify him. Um, so
the the only thing left then after that is okay, well,
somebody just dig up the Somerton man like he buried
him in such a way so we could do this. Well,
it turns out in Australia, from what I saw, there
are two reasons that a judge will let you exhume
(54:36):
a body. One is to contest a will. There's no
will or a state really in question here. And then
the other one is to identify a lost soldier, a
soldier lost at war. Other than that, you're gonna it's
it's an up. It's an uphill battle getting a body exhumed.
And two different times Derek Abbott, who actually um as
(54:59):
an aside, married Robin Thompson's daughter who took the DNA
test At his behest um. He petitioned twice to have
Somerton Man exhumed, and twice he was turned down because
um obsessive curiosity was not a good enough reason to
dig up a body. So he swabbed the inside of
(55:19):
her cheek, and that was true love exactly. I gotta
get in there over candle light. Um gave her. He
gave her a hand pie. Oh my god. So here
are the theories. Um well, I'm gonna go ahead and
start with my favorite theory, which sort of is in
here but not really. Uh suicide. I think that perhaps,
(55:45):
and I didn't invent this, but of the theories I've read,
I liked this one, I think that he um it
was an American man who had an affair with Jenny
Nurse Thompson Justin and went there, traveled there, um found
out she was pregnant. Uh In, was rejected and went
(56:08):
down and killed himself by poison and was prepared to
do so, and the other things I've read said that
he could. You know, the things that don't add up
was like the body was found with no like vomit,
which a lot of times happened. If you are poisoned,
even if you're not, one of the last things you
do is your life is ending is throw up. Usually
(56:29):
oh really, yeah, Oh it's pretty common. No one ever
tells you that. Yeah, like the dinner party. You've never
been told that. No one ever tells you two things
in life that you poop when you have a baby,
and you poop, and you throw up before you die,
and you poop when you die, too, poop when you die.
I think, so I guess that's why Elvis died on
the toilet. Yeah, very affianted to go out with some dignity.
(56:54):
Um so where was I? Oh? So he The thing
I read said that perhaps he went down to the shoreline,
drank the poison through that, you know, into the water,
and maybe like vomited and riched there and then kind
of went back up the beach and laid there to
die and and maybe had one less cigarette. Very possible.
(57:14):
So that's one. Another theory is that he died by poison,
but that it was murder. Sure. As this case is
being coming more and more publicized, the public came to
widely believed that he was a spy. And then as
more details of the case spread out more and more
over the decades um this this vision of aspyring emerged
(57:38):
with Jessica Thompson as this communist spy master who was
posing as a housewife, and Somerton Man was a spy
who worked for her or arrival spy, and Alfred box
All was a spy who worked for which would explain
why she gave both of them copies of the Rubiyat
and that actually the copies of the roof Biyat were
(58:01):
one time pads themselves, which we're actually the keys to
crack the code. Right. Unfortunately, the cops uh in adelaide
through the ruby At. That was the sommer to Man's
away in the fifties. Yeah, they got rid of the
suitcase in the eighties. He could maybe it was both.
Maybe he was a spy who loved her, could have been.
(58:23):
But the murder theory is that Alfred Boxhall murdered the man,
or she had him murder him and then they took
his body to the seaside. Alfred Boxhall was actually confronted
with that in the seventies on TV and he's like,
that's pretty ridiculous everybody. Some people are like, we know
you were in intelligence to World War Two. It turns
(58:44):
out he was like an army engineer or something like that.
He wasn't an intelligence and everyone said, that's just what
a murderer would say. That's ridiculous on TV, so they right. So,
the the idea that the sommer to Man's copy of
the Rubiat was basically a one of a kind. It
seems definitely lends credence to the idea that it's possible
he was a spy in that code for sure. Um,
(59:08):
so that's another big, strong possibility. Here's the thing I
saw too. In nine a third witness came forward share
never before revealed story that he was on the beach
in the wee hours of the morning and saw a
man carrying an unconscious man over shoulder towards that spot,
but was dark, could not identify anything, and nothing ever
came of that. Stuff like that, give me my money
(59:32):
for the movie, right, stuff like that. I think it
could be either it wasn't him or just you know,
I don't know, you know how people are. They just
make something up to get on the news. And then
I thought the same thing with the hand raising up,
like maybe that didn't even happen, Well, yeah, that was
That's another thing. Like what I realized from researching this,
(59:52):
Chuck was that this this case has been so muddied
with conjecture and fall truths um that have just spread
across the internet that like, did the Lions ever recant
their version of seeing him move? If so, then then
maybe he was dead when he was taken out to
(01:00:13):
the beach. Who knows, like you really have to dive in.
But if you if you want to dive in, this mystery,
maybe even more than any others, is just uh, just
a just an enormously deep rabbit hole to get sucked into,
because I mean, even if they dug up so Merton Man,
it's found conclusively that he was Robin Thompson's father, that
(01:00:36):
still doesn't say who he actually was. It doesn't idea him.
And it's just like how this mystery unfolded as the
police were investigating it. You can, you can crack the
case in one major way and it'll probably lead to
a dead end. There's still always this tantalizing mystery that
we may never know so Merton Man. Tamim showed, okay stuff,
(01:01:01):
I just said something in person. If you want to
know more about so Merton Man, you should go listen
to the stuff they don't want you to know episode
on it or sure or watch it. I'm not sure
if it's video or audio maybe both, uh. And you
can also check out The Lost Man on California Sunday
Magazine and The Body on so Merton Beach on Smithsonian,
(01:01:23):
among many many other great articles, and since I said many,
it's time for listener mail. Uh, I'm gonna call this
on accents and I gotta say, we got more email
on stuttering and accents that I've seen in a long
(01:01:43):
long time for real. Um, I don't know. I think
a new Accents would be big. Stuttering really hit home
with a lot of people, I think. And the well
there's that there's a stuttering email too. It's either going
to be on the next one or the one that
was just released. Okay, I didn't know any her right,
he may have heard it here. It's upcoming. Hey, guys,
(01:02:04):
listen to Accents. And I wanted to hopefully set up
I set the record straight with Chuck's help. My name
is Chris and I'm from New Jersey. I have heard
Chuck mentioned a few times. He lived in New Jersey
for a bit. First off, where did you live? What
brought you here? And why did you leave? Um? I
lived in Bernardsville next to Basking Ridge. Um, sort of
near Morristown is the biggest town that you might have
(01:02:25):
heard of. Uh, what brought me there? I lived there
after college because it was a free place to live
because of a roommates parents who were out of the
country in Australia. Actually, it's all coming together. They didn't
want to sell their house, so they said, you guys
are done with college. You want to live here for free,
hang out New York. And why did I leave? I
left because they came back. It'd be weird if I
(01:02:48):
was still living there. Uh. Anyway, he might be able
to confirm my suspicions. People from New Jersey don't have
an accent, but if they do, it's slight New York
New York accent. At any um, now you definitely have accents.
You're insane. In my opinion, many older adults have moved
from New York to New Jersey for the suburbs. Seeing
(01:03:08):
many older people meet and talk about the street they
grew up on in Brooklyn, or like I would like
to make like it made clear that no one from
New Jersey says New Joysey. That's true, if anything that
is in New York accent, Chuck, can you confirm. I
can confirm I never heard anyone say New Joysey, but
I cannot confirm that there's no accent because I definitely
have an accent to New Jersey. Um. In fact, one
(01:03:31):
of the things that I noticed. There's not so much
an accent, but people in New Jersey would say button
instead of button or like you know, words that are
split in half like that, they would stop like a
hard stop button. You don't talking about very New Jersey.
And they call everyone kid. Yeah, I knew that a kid,
(01:03:54):
even if they're older than you. I didn't appreciate that anyway.
I hope Chuck agrees also, so uh, I hope he's
a fan of pork roll and not Taylor Ham. I'm
a fan of Taylor pork Roll. I love the accounts.
I thought that was the only pork Roll. Thanks for
the endless amount of entertainment. Be seeing you guys in
Brooklyn on the upcoming tour. So Chris Ortado from Highland Park,
(01:04:16):
New Jersey. Nice. I can't wait to see at the Bellhouse.
Thanks Chris. If you want to get in touchure with
like Chris did, you can send us an email of
Stuff podcast at how Stuff Works dot com and has
always joint our home on the web, Stuff you Should
Know dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my Heart Radio,
(01:04:37):
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows,
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Josh Clark
Chuck Bryant
Show Links
Order Our BookRSSStoreSYSK ArmyAboutPopular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Death, Sex & Money
Anna Sale explores the big questions and hard choices that are often left out of polite conversation.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.