
The Body on Somerton Beach (2011) - boca
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-body-on-somerton-beach-50795611/?no-ist
======
olalonde
There have been interesting developments since the article was written. From
Wikipedia:

In November 2013, the family of "Jestyn" gave an interview to the Australian
TV program 60 Minutes which was aired on 24 November. On the program, Kate
Thomson, daughter of Jessica and Prosper Thomson, claims that her mother had
told her that she had lied to police and that she did know the identity of the
"Somerton Man" and that his identity was also "known to a level higher than
the police force." She also stated that she believed her mother and the
"Somerton Man" may have both been Russian spies, noting that her mother was a
communist sympathizer and could speak Russian although she would not disclose
to her daughter where she had learned it or why.

~~~
gregschlom
Link to article:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taman_Shud_Case](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taman_Shud_Case)

Many interesting facts there.

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ZoF
Can't help but see, MLIABO, AIAQC as an initial-ism of My Life Is All But
Over, And I Am Quite Content, or some permutation therein.

Likely false.

Also interesting how that sideways '<' shape with an X through it appears to
be the first character of the last line(rotated ninety degrees, much smaller
and without the x).

Actually there is decided inconsistency with how he writes his "M's", "W's",
and "I's".... And they all happen to be the first character... In the second
to last line, there's a clearly written W, but the 'W' and 'M' from the first
and second line respectively both appear to have the same symbol overlain as
the final line starts with, albiet, once again, rotated...

If I were a wagering man, I would say that the X on the symbol (which is
directly above an 'O') marks a ROT-value somehow, and that the first letter of
each line references that symbol(or doesn't in the case of the second to last
line) and the orientation of the symbol shifts the ROT value in some pre-
determined manner.

If the X in that symbol is indeed referencing the "O" of the line below, it
could make sense that that is the only line which isn't character rotated and
therefore doesn't have the symbol appear at the beginning of the line in some
manner.

>WRGOABABD

>MLIAOI(striked-through)

>WTBIMPANETP

>MLIABOAIAQC

>ITTMTSAMSTGAB

^That "I" is the rotated shape I'm talking about.

[0]-[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taman_Shud_Case#mediaviewer/Fil...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taman_Shud_Case#mediaviewer/File:SomertonManCode.jpg)

------
barking
I wonder have they thought of using strontium isotopes to determine areas he
lived in/hailed from. [http://www.kuleuven.be/english/news/strontium-in-bones-
revea...](http://www.kuleuven.be/english/news/strontium-in-bones-reveals-
geographical-origin-of-human-remains202c)

Also no mention of looking at his DNA?

------
keithpeter
Interesting and the HN angle must be the cryptography. Wondering if anyone has
checked the actual _texts_ of the poems in the made up 7th edition and the
bespoke edition. If significant departures from accepted text, could be
significant. Should be identical to each other if we assume used for
messaging.

OA mentions witnesses walking past assuming the victim was drunk and sleeping
it off, and again seeing a man carried on another's shoulder and assuming it
was a friend carrying a drunk colleague home.

Tells you a lot about the times (I grew up in UK near Liverpool 1970s/1980s
and public drunkenness was basically not commented on then).

I think those activities in _broad daylight_ would attract more attention now,
despite our problems with binge drinking in early hours of morning. I've seen
local police checking out walking drunks to make sure they are ok and have a
plan to get home.

------
hawkharris
I'm interested to see if any of the cryptographers on HN can take a stab at
the strange code he was carrying (featured in the picture near the bottom of
the story), which no one has cracked, or at least share some thoughts about
how it could be analyzed.

~~~
greendestiny
I took a stab at using google's n-grams library to look at potential sentences
if the code was an initialism. It generated too many nonsense values at the
value of 'n' that I picked (driven purely by download size concerns really)
and any kind of names or codes or abbreviated language wouldn't have worked
well with that approach.

I think at some students of the mentioned Prof. Abbot looked at the letter
distributions and found the highest correlation with an english language
initialism.

~~~
kbart
If the top comment - stating that he might have been a Russian spy - is true,
it might be worth checking correlation with Cyrillic (or it's Latin
transliteration) instead of English.

------
ForHackernews
Is this the Talman Shud case? Has anyone made a movie about this yet?

~~~
junto
If you read the article:

    
    
      Previous examiners had missed it, and several accounts of the case have
      referred to it as a “secret pocket,” but it seems to have been intended
      to hold a fob watch. Inside, tightly rolled, was a minute scrap of paper,
      which, opened up, proved to contain two words, typeset in an elaborate
      printed script. The phrase read “Tamám Shud.”

------
kovrik
Bad article.

I like wikipedia's more (btw it is also known as Taman Shud case).

First 4 paragraphs:

>Most murders aren’t that difficult to solve.

>Of course, there are always a handful of cases that don’t fit the template

>They certainly were baffled, though, in Adelaide

>a story that began simply

>has bec0me ever more mysterious.

>In fact, this case (which remains, theoretically at least, an active
investigation) is so opaque

>add up to one of the world’s most perplexing cold cases.

>It may be the most mysterious of them all.

Why do you need those four paragraphs full of buzzwords?

Just tell us the story!

~~~
herbig
The only interesting part of this comment was learning that the article has a
0 for an o in it.

