Final Report 2012

History

On December 1st 1948, around 6.30 in the morning, a couple walking found a dead man lying propped against the wall at Somerton Beach, south of Glenelg. He had very few possessions about his person, and no form of identification. Though wearing smart clothes, he was without a hat (an uncommon sight at the time), and there were no labels in his clothing. The body carried no form of identification, his fingerprints and dental records didn’t match any international registries. The only items on the victim were some cigarettes, chewing gum, a comb, an unused train ticket and a used bus ticket.

The Somerton Man shortly after autopsy

The coroner's verdict on the body stated that he was 40-45 years old, 180 centimetres tall, and in top physical condition. His time of death was found to be at around 2 a.m. that morning, and the autopsy indicated that, though his heart was normal, several other organs were congested, primarily his stomach, his kidneys, his liver, his brain, and part of his duodenum. It also noted that his spleen was about 3 times normal size, but no cause of death was given, the coroner only expressing his suspicion that the death was not natural and possibly caused by a barbiturate. 44 years later, in 1994 during a coronial inquest, it was suggested that the death was consistent with digitalis poisoning

Of the few possessions found upon the body, one was most intriguing. Within a fob pocket of his trousers, the Somerton Man had a piece of paper torn from the pages of a book, reading "Tamam Shud" on it. These words were discovered to mean ``ended or ``finished in Persian, and linked to a book called the Rubaiyat, a book of poems by a Persian scholar called Omar Khayyam. A nation-wide search ensued for the book, and a copy was handed to police that had been found in the back seat of a car in Jetty Road, Glenelg, the night of November 30th 1948. This was duly matched to the torn sheet of paper and found to be the same copy from which it had been ripped.

In the back of the book was written a series of five lines, with the second of these struck out. Its similarity to the fourth line indicates it was likely a mistake, and points towards the lines likely being a code rather than a series of random letters.

WRGOABABD

MLIAOI

WTBIMPANETP

MLIABOAIAQC

ITTMTSAMSTGAB

Introduction

Project Breakdown

For 60 years the identity of the Somerton Man and the meaning behind the code has remained a mystery. This project is aimed at providing an engineer’s perspective on the case, to use analytical techniques to decipher the code and provide a computer generated reconstruction of the victim to assist in the identification. Ultimately the aim is to crack the code and solve the case. The project was broken down into two main aspects of focus, Cipher Analysis and Identification, and then further into subtasks to be accomplished:

The first aspect of the project focuses on the analysis of the code, through the use of cryptanalysis and mathematical techniques as well as programs designed to provide mass data analysis. The mathematical techniques looked at confirming and expanding on the statistical analysis and cipher cross off from previous years. The mass data analysis expanded on the current Web Crawler, pattern matcher and Cipher GUI to improve the layout and functionality of these applications. The second aspect focuses on creating a 3D reconstruction of the victim’s face, using the bust as the template. The 3D image is hoped to be able to be used to help with the identification of the Somerton Man. This aspect of the project is a new focus, that hasn’t previously been worked on. The techniques and programs we have been using have been designed to be general, so that they could easily be applied to other cases in used in situations beyond the aim of this project.

Motivation

For over 60 years, this case has captured the public's imagination. An unidentified victim, an unknown cause of death, a mysterious code, and conspiracy theories surrounding the story - each wilder than the last. As engineers our role is to solve problems that arise, and this project gives us the ideal opportunity to apply our problem solving skills to a real world problem, something different from the usual "use resistors, capacitors and inductors" approach in electrical \& electronic engineering. The techniques and technologies developed in the course of this project are broad enough to be applied to other areas; pattern matching, data mining, 3-D modelling and decryption are all useful in a range of fields, or even of use in other criminal investigations such as the (perhaps related) Joseph Saul Marshall case.

See Also

• Glossary
• Progress Report 2012
• Cipher Cross-off List
• CipherGUI 2011 (Download)
• Web Crawler 2011 (Download)
• 2011 Project Video (YouTube)
• 2011 Final Seminar Part 1 (YouTube)
• 2011 Final Seminar Part 2 (YouTube)
• 2011 Final Seminar Part 3 (YouTube)

References and useful resources

• Final Report 2011
• Final Report 2010
• Final report 2009: Who killed the Somerton man?
• Timeline of the Taman Shud Case
• The taman shud case

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