Editing Progress Report 2010 (section)

===The Case===
The project is based upon attempts to revealthe identity of a middle aged man discovered dead on a metropolitan beach in South Australia in 1948.  With little solid evidence of his death apart from the body itself, the man’s passing has remained a mystery covered in controversy for decades.  He was found resting against a rock wall on Somerton Beach opposite a home for crippled children shortly before 6:45 am on the 1st of December in 1948. A post-mortem of the body revealed that there was no possibility that the death was natural due to severe congestion in his organs. The most likely cause of death was decided to be from poison, which in 1994 was uncovered by forensic science to be digitalis<ref name="Taman Shud Wiki">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taman_Shud_Case</ref>.

Among the man’s possessions were cigarettes, matches, a metal comb, chewing gum, a railway ticket to Henley Beach, a bus ticket and a tram ticket. A brown suitcase belonging to the man was later discovered at the Adelaide Railway Station. In it contained various articles of clothing, a screwdriver, a stencilling brush, a table knife, scissors and other such utensils. Authorities found the name “T. Keane” on some of the items, but they were unable to find a missing person with that name.. The Somerton man has since been incorrectly identified as a missing stable hand, a worker on a steamship, and a Swedish man<ref name="Taman Shud Wiki"/>.

A spy theory also began circulating due to the circumstances of the Somerton man’s death. In 1947, The US Army’s Signal Intelligence Service, as part of Operation Venona, discovered that there had been top secret material leaked from Australia’s Department of External Affairs to the Soviet embassy in Canberra. Three months prior to the death of the Somerton man, on the 16th of August 1948, an overdose of digitalis was reported as the cause of death for US Assistant Treasury Secretary Harry Dexter White, who had been accused of Soviet espionage under Operation Venona. Due to the similar causes of their death, the rumours of the unknown man being a Soviet spy began to spread.

By far the most intriguing piece of evidence related to the case was a small piece of paper bearing the words “Tamam Shud”, which translated to “ended” or “finished”.  This paper was soon identified as being from the last page of a book of poems called The Rubiayat by Omar Khayyam, a famous Persian poet<ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubaiyat_of_Omar_Khayyam</ref>.  After a police announcement was made in search of the missing copy of The Rubiayat a local Glenelg resident came forth baring a copy that he had found in the back seat of his car.  It was in the back of this copy of The Rubiayat that the Mystery Code was discovered.