Why Can Nobody Solve the Mystery of the Man in the Suit?

this video is kindly sponsored by curiosity stream an online subscription streaming service find out more later in the video hey 42 here sunrise is such a wonderful time to be at the beach the cool fresh air of dawn the lonely cry of an early morning gull the gentle crush of waves on the sand the sea the sky the dead bodies at least that was the kind of sunrise that would have greeted you at summerton beach on the 1st of december 1948 because it was on this day that the quiet suburb of summerton located just south of the city of adelaide in south australia gave birth to a profound mystery that remains unsolved to this day at about 6 30 in the morning local police were contacted with the news that a dead body had been discovered on the beach sadly this was not particularly unusual at the time the second world war had just finished only a few years earlier leaving many men struggling to deal with the physical and mental trauma of the conflict deaths related to alcohol or suicide were not uncommon but the man who was found that morning in 1948 had not been washed ashore after falling off a pier he was well dressed in a shirt and tie brown trousers socks and shoes a brown knitted pullover and fashionable gray and brown double-breasted jacket his clothes were dry and his body was resting upright against the sea wall below the beachfront promenade his legs were extended and his feet were crossed there was no sign of injury or assault he looked like he died in his sleep there was an unlit cigarette lying on his shoulder and his pockets were empty except for an unused second-class rail ticket a bus ticket a comb some cigarettes some matches and a half-eaten pack of gum but there was nothing that could be used to identify him he had no wallet and no id and bizarrely all the labels had been removed from his clothes if you're enjoying learning about the mystery of the summertime man then i know you'll enjoy curiosity stream curiosity stream is netflix for nerds hulu for history 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world's top documentaries and non-fiction series if you head to curiositystream.com forward slash 42 and use my promo code 42 to get 25 half which amounts to only 14.99 for the entire year check it out at first glance there wasn't anything remarkable about him he was around six feet tall had gingery hair and gray eyes and was estimated to be in his early forties he had broad shoulders and a narrow waist and his hands and nails showed no signs of manual labor but the pathologist's report noted some unusual characteristics the unknown man's big and little toes met in a wedge shape like those of a dancer or someone who wore boots with pointed toes he was described as being in top physical shape and had pronounced high calf muscles the kind usually seen on ballet dancers or people who regularly wore shoes with high heels he also had unusual ears and teeth the upper hollows of his ears called the simba were larger than the lower hollows a rare feature found in only one or two percent of people the summerton man as he has come to be known also had hyperdontia a rare genetic disorder affecting only two percent of the population in which the lateral incisor teeth are missing and the canine teeth grow down next to the front teeth so overly developed high calf muscles unusually striking canine teeth and large hollowed ears i know what you're thinking vampire elf cabaret dancer like a mix of dracula liza minelli and legolas but police at the time didn't quite see it that way instead of asking around middle earth they followed all the conventional channels for identifying a person searching dental records trolling fingerprint databases scouring international missing persons lists nothing then in january 1949 a brown suitcase was discovered at adelaide train station it had been checked in the day before the summertime man was found and all its labels had been removed the suitcase contained an odd mix of personal effects including a knife a pair of scissors a stenciling brush like those used by offices on ships to stencil cargo an electrician's screwdriver and a few items of clothing with their labels removed except for free which were tagged with the name keane this wasn't much of a clue though in the post-war period owning second-hand clothes was fairly common practice and police were unable to find anyone by the name keane missing in any english-speaking country they concluded that whoever had cut the labels off all the other clothing had either missed these three items or more likely left the name on deliberately to mislead investigators in the suitcase was a card of orange thread made by a brand that couldn't be bought in australia exactly the same thread that had been used to repair the trouser pocket of the man on the beach for this and numerous other reasons the police believed the suitcase belonged to the summerton man piecing the evidence together investigators thought the man had arrived at adelaide train station by overnight train from melbourne sydney or port augusta then he'd bathed and shaved at facilities nearby bought a train ticket to a town called henley which he never used and then traveled by bus to glenelg the town nearest to where he was found on the beach despite all this evidence his identity remained a total mystery in june of 1949 a public inquest was launched the autopsy showed that the summertime man's heart was in perfect condition ruling out cardiac arrest as a cause of death he also hadn't suffered from any form of violence instead he had internal bleeding in his stomach and liver and a massively enlarged spleen classic signs of poisoning even though no poison was found in his blood at the inquest an expert witness in physiology and pharmacology testified that there were poisons called glucosides the smallest dose of which could have killed the man whilst being almost impossible to detect ultimately the covenant in charge of the inquest was unable to guarantee the cause of death but he suggested that the mystery man had been poisoned and not by accident that was in july 1949 and it was around that time the case started to get really interesting whilst reprocessing evidence for the inquest police found a small tightly rolled up piece of paper buried deep in a hidden pocket of the man's trousers on it was written the words to mom should taken from a famous poem called the rubiat by persian poet amar kyam the phrase means is over or is finished a clear message from whoever had killed the man whether it be another person or himself the ruby out was a popular poem at the time at the inquest one of the lead detectives explained that the poem's central message was that whilst we're on the earth we should enjoy life to the fullest and when it's time for us to pass on pass on without regrets in case you're wondering no i don't know if poetry is a subject at police school authorities began a public search for the missing copy of the ruby hat and eventually it was handed in to the police around the time of the unknown man's death the book had been thrown through the open window of a car parked nearby to summerton beach on the last page there was a gap where the words to man should had been torn out but the most plot-thickening revelation of all was when the police also discovered what appeared to be four lines of mysterious code and another number that looked like a phone number the case took a radical new direction this was the beginning of the cold war and not far away from adelaide scientists were building a rocket range for nuclear missiles suddenly the unidentified man with persian poetry in his pocket and a book with secret codes looked less like a random fatality and more like a character in a spy drama after the code was published by a local newspaper professional and amateur code breakers alike tried their hands at cracking it but to this day nobody has been successful the phone number on the other hand yielded more solid results police traced a number to a local nurse who lived about 400 metres from where the summertime man's body was found she claimed to know nothing about the man but police asked her to come down to the station regardless and take a look at the plastic cast that had been taken of his head and chest when she saw the cast she almost fainted and she was very distressed but still insisted that she didn't recognize the man she then refused to answer any more questions the police had run out of leads and despite the face of the unknown man being shown in newspapers across australia nobody came forward to identify him the cause of his death was also still a mystery the medical examiner believes he'd been poisoned but could neither prove nor disprove this theory claiming that her reputation would be ruined if she was connected to a case like this the nurse asked that her name be scratched from the investigation file with no case for murder on the cards the police had no choice but to agree to her wish eventually the taman shud case as it was called back then turned cold and faded from public interest then in 2002 a seasoned detective by the name of jerry feltes picked up on the case feltus was nearing retirement and had been moved to a different department where he began working on cold cases as a younger man he followed the case of the summertime man closely and decided to retrace the original investigation by then 50 years had passed and much of the original evidence had been lost but with the help of derrick abbott an academic from adelaide university felters started to piece the case back together he managed to establish the identity of the nurse and tracked her to a new address her name was joe thompson and in the decades since the original investigation she'd moved more than 10 times according to felthus every time the case started attracting attention again she'd go off on a trip or she'd move house when the detective asked her about details of the case thompson was evasive and kept changing the subject when he pressed further she started to get so agitated that he decided it wasn't worth causing an old woman so much stress and he left her in peace by now amateur sleuth derrick abbott was getting a little obsessive about the case and totally weirding jerry felters out abbott kept pestering feltus to tell him the name of the nurse but he refused eventually feltus who by now had retired told abbott that he was tired of what he called the spanish inquisition and that he was on his own he cut ties and the men haven't spoken since this didn't slow abbott down though and he eventually discovered joe thompson's identity for himself he was two years too late though joe thompson died in 2007. to make matters worse in a 2013 interview with the investigative tv show 60 minutes thompson's daughter katie said her mother had told her she knew the identity of the unknown man but would take it to the grave with her thanks for nothing joe never want to be deterred by minor hurdles like death abbott persevered he knew that at the time of the summertime man's discovery joe thompson had a one-year-old boy named robin by the time abbott was doing his research robin had also passed away but abbott managed to find numerous images of him which he then compared to photos of the summerton man and noticed something quite striking robin had the same incredibly rare ears and teeth which convinced abbott that robin was the summerton man's biological son the chance of the summerton man and robin sharing these physical anomalies by coincidence was between one in ten thousand and one in twenty thousand unable to raise robin from the dead abbott did the next best thing and tracked down robin's daughter who he believed held the key to confirming his theory he took her out for a fancy meal where he kept asking her if he could take a look at her ears and teeth before casually suggesting he'd like to get his hands on some of her dna who says scientists aren't smooth talkers perhaps more bizarre than abbott's pickup lines though is the fact that 24 hours later they were engaged by now abbott had spent more than 20 years trying to crack the summertime case and it looks like he might have finally made a major breakthrough after years of campaigning he's finally managed to convince the south australia attorney general to approve the exhumation of the body or at least what's left of it so on the 19th of may 2021 the summertime man was dug up and the process began to extract dna from his remains the forensic analysis could take years and may not yield results at all but this is the closest anyone has been to closing one of the most mysterious cold cases around one possible answer is that the summertime man was a british man by the name of hc reynolds in 2011 a sea man's identification card from 1918 was found which looks like it could be the younger version of the unknown man on the beach a facial recognition specialist maintains that they are one and the same but there is as yet nothing conclusive linking the two men perhaps dna testing will finally reveal all but only time will tell thanks for watching check out my new podcast random interesting facts available on youtube spotify apple podcast and anywhere else you get your podcasts link in the description below thanks

Channel: Thoughty2

Views: 1,910,914

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Length: 17min 6sec (1026 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 23 2021