The Taman Shud case is a criminal case initiated upon the discovery of the body of an unknown man on December 1, 1948 on Somerton Beach in the Australian city of Adelaide and has not been solved to date. The incident has also become known as the Somerton Mystery Man Incident.

This case considered one of the most mysterious mysteries in the history of Australia. There is much speculation about the identity of the deceased and the factors that led to his death. Public interest in this incident remains very significant due to a number of details of the case: for example, during the investigation, some facts emerged that indicate the possible involvement of special services in the incident. In addition, for more than half a century, the investigation has not been able to either establish the identity of the deceased, or accurately determine the method of his killing. The biggest resonance was caused by a piece of paper discovered during the deceased, torn from a copy of a very rare edition of Omar Khayyam, on which only two words were written - Tamam Shud (“Tamam Shud”).

Description of the deceased

According to the well-known Australian scientist John Burton Cleland, the discovered man of 40-45 years old looked like a British man. His height was 180 centimeters, he had Brown eyes and reddish hair with light gray at the temples. The man's face, which showed no distinguishing features, was clean-shaven. His toes formed a wedge shape - such a deformity of the feet is found in people who often wear shoes with pointed toes. The deceased had pronounced calf muscles, which is typical for ballet dancers and middle and long distance runners. He was quite well dressed: a white shirt, red and blue tie, brown trousers, socks and shoes, and although Adelaide had a period of fairly hot days and very warm nights, the deceased was wearing a brown knitted sweater and a fashionable European double-breasted jacket. However, he did not have a hat, which may seem relatively strange for 1948 and such a suit. Very suspicious was the fact that absolutely all the labels on the clothes were cut off.

The police officers who arrived at the place of discovery of the body established the complete absence of any signs of external physical influence on the deceased. Examination of the pockets revealed: an unused commuter train ticket from Adelaide railway station to Henley Beach station, 10 kilometers west of the city centre; a used bus ticket to a stop in Glenelg, a suburb of Adelaide, about eight and a half kilometers west of its center; half empty pack chewing gum Juicy Fruit, an Army Club cigarette pack containing Kensitas brand cigarettes and an incomplete box of matches. The bus stop where the man allegedly got off was about 1,100 meters north of where the body was found.

Eyewitnesses claimed that on the evening of November 30 they noticed a person very similar to the deceased, not far from the place where the body was found - next to a boarding school for disabled children. A couple who saw him between 7:30 pm and 8:00 pm claimed that they did not notice any of the man's movements for about half an hour, although they had the impression that his disposition had changed during that time. Despite the long inactivity and the absence of any reaction from the stranger, they considered that the man was drunk and fell asleep, and therefore saw no reason to contact the police. Another couple claimed that around 19:00 they saw the man make some movements with his hands, but did not attach any importance to this. When the body was discovered in the morning, the witnesses noted that it was in the same place where they had seen the stranger the previous evening.

Opening

An autopsy showed that the man's death occurred at approximately 2 am on December 1. The pathologist's report read:

“The heart has normal dimensions, there are no signs of a disease of the cardiovascular system ... the blood vessels of the brain are easily distinguishable, which indicates a rush of blood to them. The deceased had swelling of the tissues of the pharynx, and the mucous membrane of the esophagus was covered with a shallow whitish coating with ulcerative inflammation approximately in the middle. In the stomach, mixing of blood with food residues is observed, inflammation of the second part of the duodenum is also recorded. Both kidneys are inflamed, and in the liver there is an excess of blood in the vessels. The spleen is unnaturally large, approximately 3 times larger than normal. Tissue destruction observed under a microscope was recorded in the liver ... the signs of acute gastritis were also found in the deceased.”

The last food of the deceased was a Cornish pasta pie - the English national dish, which the man consumed 3-4 hours before his death. Tests did not reveal any signs of foreign substances in the stomach. Pathologist Dr. Dwyer concluded: “I am quite convinced that this man did not die. natural death... as a poison, compounds of the barbiturate group or soluble sleeping pills could be used.

Poisoning was considered main reason death, but the pie consumed by the man was not recognized as the source of the poison. The investigation was never able to establish either the identity of the deceased or the circumstances that led to his death, and besides, they did not find out whether the deceased was the man who was seen the night before by eyewitnesses who did not remember his face.

Soon representatives of Scotland Yard were involved in the investigation. Quite serious work was carried out to distribute the photograph of the deceased, and his fingerprints were transferred to the investigating authorities of many states, but this did not give any positive results. Due to the impossibility of identifying the deceased on December 10, 1948, his body was embalmed.

Identification of the deceased

On December 3, Mr. Johnson, who was believed to have died on Somerton Beach according to the local publication The Advertiser, appeared at the police station in order to refute reports of his own death. On the same day, The News published a photo of the deceased on the front page in order to involve the public in the procedure for identifying the deceased. On December 4, Adelaide police make a statement that the victim's fingerprints were not found in the database of the state of South Australia. On December 5, The Advertiser reports that the police involved in the search for the military registration department after the statement of one man that he allegedly had a drink at the Glenelg hotel on November 13 with a stranger who looked like the deceased. In the process of drinking alcohol, this stranger showed a military ID issued in the name of citizen Solomonson.

In early January 1949, two people recognized the deceased as 63-year-old lumberjack Robert Walsh. Another person, James Mack, after examining the body, also confirmed that the deceased was Robert Walsh. Mack claimed that Walsh had left Adelaide a few months earlier for the purpose of buying sheep in Queensland, but never returned by Christmas as originally planned. However, the police were rather skeptical about the statements of these people, believing that Walsh was too old to believe that the dead man was he. Nevertheless, the investigating authorities confirmed that the body of the deceased, according to its constitution, is very similar to the body of an average lumberjack, however, with one assumption - the condition of the hands and nails of the deceased indicated that he had not been engaged in such activities for at least a year and a half. However, all considerations on this score were swept aside after Ms. Elizabeth Thompson retracted her words in favor of the version with Robert Walsh after a secondary examination of the body, as a result of which it turned out that the deceased did not have Walsh's characteristic signs: there were no there were scars, and the size of the feet of the deceased did not match the size of the feet of the missing lumberjack.

By the beginning of February 1949, the investigation had eight statements about the identity of the deceased, among which: the statement of two residents of the city of Darwin that the deceased was their friend; identification of the deceased as a missing groom and an employee of the steamer, as well as statements that the man found was a Swede. One Victorian detective initially thought the deceased was a countryman because he saw the logo of the Melbourne Laundry Chain in the stamp on the deceased's clothing. After the publication of the photo in Victoria, 28 people said that they knew the deceased, but soon the Melbourne detective himself suggested that, according to "other data", it is very unlikely that the man was a resident of Victoria.

In November 1953, the police announced that they had recently received their 251st identity statement from a person who claimed to have known or seen the deceased, but in most cases the only clue given to the claimants was the clothes worn by the deceased. .

Brown suitcase discovery

A new twist in the investigation came on January 14, 1949, when Adelaide railway station workers discovered a suitcase with a cut tag that had been checked into the station's storage room after 11:00 am on November 30, 1948. Inside were found a red dressing gown, red size 40 slippers, four pairs of shorts, pajamas, shaving accessories, light brown trousers with traces of sand in the cuffs, an indicator screwdriver, a table knife converted into sharpening, scissors with sharply sharpened ends and a brush for screen printing.

Also in the suitcase was found a pack of waxed orange threads from Barbour, not sold in Australia and similar to those used to sew a patch in the pocket of the trousers of the found unknown man. All the labels on the clothes inside the suitcase were cut off, but the police, when examining a strange find, found the inscription “T. Keane" on a tie, "Keane" on a laundry bag, and "Kean" (minus the last "e") on a T-shirt, along with three dry-cleaning stamps: 1171/7; 4393/7 and 3053/7. The police believed that the person who cut all the tags from the clothes deliberately left the "Keane" tags, knowing that they had nothing to do with the name or any other information about this person.

From the very beginning, the local sailor Tom Keane was considered the owner of these clothes, and since the police could not find him, the investigators decided to show the body of an unknown man to Tom Keane's friends, but they categorically denied the assumption that the corpse found in Somerton could be the corpse of their friend, moreover, the clothes found on the corpse never belonged to Tom Keene. Further investigation revealed that no other English-speaking country had any T. Keene reported missing. Appeals to all dry cleaners in Australia were also unsuccessful. Thus, the only undeniable information that could be obtained from the find at the station was that the dressing gown, apparently, was made in the United States, since such technology for sewing clothes was used only in that country at that time.

Next, the police checked the details of all the trains that arrived in Adelaide, and found that the man most likely arrived on an overnight flight from Melbourne, Sydney or Port Augusta. He apparently showered and shaved at the nearest city bathhouse before returning to the train station to buy a ticket for the 10:50 AM train to Hanley Beach, but for some reason he missed the boarding. After returning from the bathhouse, he left his suitcase in the locker and boarded a bus to Glenelg. Professor Derek Abbott, who studied the case, believes that the man could have purchased a ticket before he went to the bathhouse. Service and consumer services at the station were closed that day, for this reason the man was forced to go to the city bath, which took him about 30 minutes of time and possibly caused him to miss the train.

Consequence

The investigation, led by investigator Thomas Ersklin Cleland, began a few days after the discovery of the body. Pathologist John Burton Cleland re-examined the body and made several discoveries. Cleland noted that the man's shoes were strikingly clean and looked like they had been recently polished, which clearly did not fit in with the version that the man had been wandering around Glenelg all day. He also added that these data are consistent with the version that the body could have been delivered to Somerton after death. This version appeared after the investigators who examined the place found no signs of vomiting and convulsions of the deceased, which is an indispensable condition for poisoning with poison. Thomas Cleland suggested that since none of the witnesses could confirm for sure that the deceased is the person they saw the day before, it is possible that the body was actually delivered to Somerton after death.

Professor of pharmacology and physiology at the University of Adelaide, Cedric Stanton Hicks, suggested that an unknown potent poisonous drug could have been the cause of death. He also determined the possible composition of the poisonous substance and shared his thoughts with the investigator. Information about chemical composition The alleged substance was not disclosed until the 80s, since it turned out that the manufacture of such a potent drug required components that could be freely purchased at a regular pharmacy. However, the professor noted that the only circumstance that did not fit into his version of poisoning with the alleged substance was the absence of signs of vomiting in the deceased, which did not allow him to draw a final conclusion in favor of his theory. Hicks also stated that if death occurred only 7 hours after the deceased was last seen, then this may mean that the man consumed a rather large dose of a poisonous substance, therefore, those body movements of the deceased that some witnesses noticed at about 19:00, could have been death throes.

At the very beginning of the investigation, Detective Thomas Ersklin stated: “I can assume that the cause of death could be poisoning with a toxic substance, possibly belonging to the group of glycosides. This substance is unlikely to have accidentally entered the body of the deceased, but I cannot now say for sure whether the deceased himself was poisoned or was poisoned by someone. Despite these statements, as well as the assumptions of Professor Hicks, the investigation was never able to establish the exact cause of death of an unknown man.

The impossibility of establishing the identity of the deceased, as well as the complete ambiguity with the causes of death, allowed the public to call this incident "a mystery without equal, which, most likely, will never be solved." And soon, in one of the newspapers, it was suggested that if the most professional experts could not determine the composition of the substance that led to the poisoning, then this unconditionally highly professional murder clearly could not be the result of a banal showdown.

"Rubaiyat" by Omar Khayyam

During one of the examinations of the body of the deceased, a folded piece of paper was found in the secret pocket of his trousers, containing the strange inscription "Tamam Shud" (Tamam Shud). Later, when publishing material on this topic in one of the newspapers, a typo was made: instead of “Tamam”, the word “Taman” was printed, as a result of which the erroneous name entered the story.

An official request was sent to the public library asking for a translation of this obscure phrase. Library staff identified this text as the word "finished" or "completed" from the last page of the collection "Rubaiyat" by Omar Khayyam. the main idea of the works included in this book is that a person should enjoy every moment of his life and not regret its end.

The police launched a large-scale search throughout the country to find the owner of this book, but they were unsuccessful. Later, a photo of a piece of paper was sent to the police in other countries, and also presented to the public. This helped to find the person who owned a copy of a very rare edition of Omar Khayyam translated by Edward Fitzgerald, published in New Zealand. The last page of this copy was torn out, and the examination showed that a piece of paper found on the deceased was most likely cut out either from this book or from a book of the same edition. The man claimed to have found her in the back seat of his unlocked car on the night of November 30, 1948, while in Glenelg. He claimed that he did not know anything about the book he found and its connection with the case of the corpse of an unknown man until he discovered an article in one of the newspapers. Information about this man was not disclosed by the investigation, although it is now known that he worked as a doctor.

The main theme of the works of Omar Khayyam, included in the found collection, led the investigation to the idea that the man could have committed suicide by taking a potent poison, but no evidence in favor of this theory was ever provided.
An inscription found on the back of a book found during the investigation

On the back of the book, 5 lines of obscure words were drawn in pencil with the second line crossed out, which, in terms of writing letters, was very similar to the fourth:

Versions about the connection of the deceased with the special services

In the course of the investigation, rumors spread among the public that Lieutenant Boxall served in intelligence during World War II, and the dead man was none other than a Soviet spy poisoned by unknown people. During a television interview, Boxall was asked about a possible spy motive in this case, but he replied that this was a completely made-up claim.

The fact that the deceased was found in Adelaide, a city located next door to the Woomera test site, where top-secret missile launches were rumored to have given rise to various speculations on this topic. In addition, in April 1947, one of the intelligence units of the US Army, as part of the Venona project, became aware that classified information was leaked through the Australian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the USSR Embassy in Canberra. This led to the fact that in 1948 the United States announced a ban on the transmission of any information to Australia. In response, Australia announced its intention to create a National Security Service (now the Australian Intelligence Support Organization).

Investigation of the case after the burial of the deceased

For further investigation, a plaster copy was removed from the head and shoulders of the deceased, and the body was buried in one of the cemeteries of Adelaide. Years later, flowers began to appear on the grave. Interested in this circumstance, the police established surveillance of the grave and soon detained the woman, but she claimed that she knew nothing about this person.

For 60 years, attempts have been repeatedly made to decipher the mysterious inscription on the back of the book. Including the efforts of naval intelligence officers, mathematicians, astrologers and ordinary people. In 2004, retired detective Jerry Feltus in one of the newspapers suggested that the last line of the cipher - "ITTMTSAMSTGAB" could mean an abbreviation for the phrase "It's Time To Move To South Australia Moseley Street ..." (You need to get to South Australia on Moseley Street) . The former nurse lived on this street in the center of Glenelg.

In 1978, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation produced a television program about the case of the discovery of the body of an unknown person on Somerton Beach. Correspondent Stuart Little conducted a journalistic investigation into the case, including interviewing Boxall and Paul Wallson, the man who took the plaster print from the body of an unknown person, but the latter refused to answer the question about any positive results in establishing the identity of the deceased.

In 1994, John Harber Philips, a Victorian Supreme Court Justice and Director of the Institute of Forensic Medicine, reviewed the case to determine the cause of death. Based on their own results, they concluded that the cause of death was digoxin poisoning. In particular, Philips pointed to the fact of inflammation and swelling of many organs, which is characteristic of poisoning with this drug, as well as the absence of facts indicating any disease of the man and apparent causes of death. In addition, 3 months before the discovery of the body, on August 16, 1948, it was reported that Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Harry Dexter White was poisoned with digoxin, who was accused of spying for the USSR.

Former senior South Australian police officer Leo Brown, who worked on the case in the 1940s, said he believes dead man, who lived in one of the countries of the Eastern Bloc, and it was for this reason that the police were never able to identify the deceased.

Possible connection dealing with the incident with the Mangnosson family

On June 6, 1949, the body of two-year-old Clive Mangnosson was found in a bag in Large Bay, twenty kilometers from Somerton. Next to him lay unconscious his father Keith Waldemar Mangnosson, who was taken to the hospital in critical condition and subsequently transferred to a psychiatric hospital.

Father and son were considered missing for four days, and upon discovery, medical experts determined that Clive had already been dead for at least 24 hours. Both were discovered by a man named Neil McRae, who claimed to have had a dream that night in which he saw the location of the bodies. As with the Somerton man, the autopsy was unable to determine the cause of the child's death, but also determined that the death was not natural.

After Clive's death, the child's mother, Rome Mangnosson, reported that she was worried about an unknown masked man who, while driving a wrecked cream-colored car, almost caught up with her, stopping only at the door of her house. Ms Mangnosson said "the car stopped and a man with a khaki neckerchief on his face told her to stay away from the police." In addition, the woman claimed to have seen a similar man recently near the house.

The woman is sure that all these events are connected with the fact that her husband participated in the process of establishing the identity of the deceased on Somerton Beach. The husband allegedly claimed that the deceased was Carl Thompsen, who worked with him at Renmark in 1939.

Soon, the Port Adelaide district head received three anonymous telephone calls in which an unknown person threatened him with reprisals if he "poked his nose into the Mangnosson affair." The police suspected that such calls, as well as the case with the mother of the deceased baby, were someone's extremely cruel hoax.

Shortly after reporting to the police about being harassed by an unknown man, Ms. Mangnosson became seriously ill and ended up in a hospital bed.

Possible connection of the case to the death of Joseph Marshall

In June 1945, three years before the Somerton man, 34-year-old Singaporean Joseph Marshall, the brother of David Saul Marshall, a well-known lawyer and politician in Singapore, was found dead in the Sydney suburb of Mosman. At the same time, an open collection of Rubaiyat by Omar Khayyam lay on his chest. The cause of his death was believed to be suicide by poisoning.

Two months after Marshall's death, the aforementioned nurse ("Jestine") is known to have donated a similar book to Lieutenant Boxall in the Sydney suburb of Clifton Gardens, one kilometer south of Mosman.

On August 15, 1945, the Marshall investigation was completed. Thirteen days later, one of the witnesses, Mrs. Gwyneth Dorothy Graham, was found dead in her bathtub, face down with cuts to her wrist.

Modern attempts to solve the case

In March 2009, a group of representatives from the University of Adelaide, led by Professor Derek Abbott, attempted to unravel the case by deciphering the mysterious text on the back of the book, and also made a proposal to exhume the body of the deceased man in order to test his DNA with more modern means and methods. The results of the Abbott group's work have raised some questions that may help the investigation. So, for example, the police all this time believed that the presence of Kensitas brand cigarettes in an Army Club brand pack was associated with a very common practice in those years of specially shifting cheap cigarettes into a pack from more expensive ones. However, a check of some official periodicals of those years showed that Kensitas actually belonged to expensive brand cigarettes, but the very fact of such a discrepancy between the brand of the pack and its contents aroused suspicion among modern detectives. This gave rise to a previously unconsidered version that the unknown poison may have been in the man's cigarettes, which were simply substituted without the knowledge of the deceased.

The process of deciphering the unknown text on the back of the book was started from scratch. It was found that the frequency of repetition of letters of the text is significantly different from the frequency of repetition of letters written randomly. The format of the code corresponds to the format of the quatrains of the collection "Rubaiyat", which gives rise to the assumption that the encryption system of the message corresponds to the so-called Vernam cipher. To this end, the text of the collection "Rubaiyat" is currently being analyzed with the help of modern computer programs in order to create a statistical database containing information on the frequency of mention of certain letters. True, for more accurate results, it is necessary to have the most accurate copy of exactly the book that was found with the deceased, and this is very difficult, since the book translated by Edward Fitzgerald was lost back in the 60s.

Modern research has shown that the original autopsy reports of an unknown man, conducted in 1948 and 1949, are now lost. Professor of anatomy at the University of Adelaide, Maciej Henneberg, when examining the image of the ears of a deceased man, found that their so-called. the shuttle (the upper cavity of the auricle) exceeds the size of the so-called. bowl (lower cavity of the auricle), which, according to modern estimates, is characteristic of only 1-2% of the representatives of the Caucasoid race. In May 2009, Professor Abbott, after consulting with experts in the field of dentistry, came to the conclusion that the deceased man suffered from hypodontia (congenital absence of one or more teeth) of both incisors, which is characteristic of only 2% of the world's population. In June 2010, Abbott received a photograph of his son "Jestin" (a pseudonym for the period of the investigation - "Leslie"). This photo shows that "Leslie" not only has an excess of the size of the auricle shuttle over the bowl, but also has signs of hypodontia. The probability that this is an accident is estimated to range from 1 in 10,000,000 to 1 in 20,000,000.

The media speculated that the son "Jestine", who was 16 months old in 1948 and who died in 2009, may have been her illegitimate child with Alfred Boxall or the deceased man. Detective Jerry Felthus, now retired, stated that he knew the former nurse's married name, but, wanting to protect secret life women, he did not reveal it. In 2010, the name of a woman was accidentally revealed in one of the newspapers, where her photograph was published with a caption. As a result, the woman's relatives allowed Felthus to include some information about the family's history in his book The Unknown Man, dedicated to the police investigation.

Abbott believes that the exhumation and DNA testing of an unknown man will help to recognize his involvement in the Jestin family, but in October 2011, the Attorney General of Australia, John Rau, refused permission to exhume the body, arguing that the public interest was needed to carry out such an event. , backed up not only by curiosity, but also by scientific interest.

Sailor Reynolds

After the publication of the book The Unknown Man, a woman living in Adelaide went to the media and provided an identity card, which she found among the things that belonged to her father. This document, number 58757, was issued in the United States on February 28, 1918 in the name of a certain 18-year-old sailor Reynolds, who had British citizenship. The ID was handed over to Prof. Maciej Hanneberg in October 2011 in order to compare the photo on the ID with the photo of an unidentified man found in Somerton. Using modern identification methods, Henneberg found anatomical similarities in facial features such as the nose, lips, and eyes, but noted a difference in possible age. However the greatest interest the professors called auricles, which, in addition to the rare form already mentioned above, turned out to be very similar to those that the unknown deceased had. In addition, moles of the same shape were found in both photos in the same place. Henneberg stated:

“The great similarity of the auricles of a rare form and moles allow me to make a statement about the high probability of establishing the identity of an unknown male”

However, despite the seemingly long-awaited success, a search in the US and UK National Archives, as well as in the Australian War Memorial database, did not turn up any records mentioning Sailor Reynolds.

Alleged relatives of "Jestin"

And ever since I set foot on the Australian continent white man, there was no case there more mysterious and strange than the Taman Shud case.

The Mysterious Man from Somerton
It all started early morning December 1, 1948, when the body of an unknown man was found on Somerton Beach in Adelaide. After examining the body and not noticing any signs of violent death, the police examined the pockets of the dead man. A used bus ticket, a half-empty package of chewing gum, a pack of cigarettes, matches and an unused train ticket - that's all that was in the pockets of the unknown. Except that at first they noticed one small oddity in his things - the brand of cigarettes in the pack did not match those indicated on the pack.

Somerton Beach. The cross indicates the location where the body was found.

The deceased was well dressed - a white shirt, tie, trousers, a fashionable jacket. But a more detailed examination of the clothes revealed that all the labels on the clothes were carefully cut off.

After being examined at the scene, the body was sent for an autopsy, where it was determined that this man had died at around 2:00 am on December 1. But the cause of death was not entirely clear. On the one hand, no foreign substances were found in the stomach, on the other hand, due to some signs, the pathologist expressed a firm belief that death had occurred as a result of poisoning.

No documents were found with the corpse, and the police began to make efforts to identify the deceased. Fingerprints were sent to various countries, and photographs of the unknown were published in many newspapers. After that, the police began to receive complaints from different people who allegedly knew who it was. But every time the check showed that these people were wrong. Looking ahead, I’ll say that by the end of 1953, the police had as many as two hundred and fifty-one such statements.

Photo of an unknown person.

More than six decades have passed since the discovery of the corpse, and the identity of the mysterious man from Somerton has not yet been established.

His suitcase
In January 1949, Adelaide railway station workers contacted the police about unclaimed luggage from the luggage room. This luggage turned out to be a suitcase with a cut off label, which was checked into a storage room on November 30, 1948, that is, on the day preceding the night, which was the last for the unknown person.

The police examine the contents of the suitcase.

The police arrived and opened the suitcase and found a variety of things there. Bathrobe, slippers, briefs, pajamas, shaving accessories, as well as some tools, in particular, a re-sharpened knife, sharp-edged scissors and a screen-printing brush. In addition, the suitcase contained threads rare in Australia, and they were similar to those used to sew a patch in the pocket of the mysterious man's trousers. This made it possible with a high degree of probability to assume that the suitcase belongs to him.

Well, there was something else that connected these things with the mysterious body. All the labels on the clothes that were inside the found suitcase were cut off.

The same suitcase.

However, on some things, including on a laundry bag, the inscription "Keane" was found, but the police immediately assumed that if someone who cut off all the labels left this inscription safe and sound, then she, most likely, it has nothing to do with the mysterious person. But nevertheless, the verification of this name was carried out. Missing requests have been sent to all English speaking countries. In addition, the police contacted all Australian dry cleaners to determine if the stranger was their client. All of these requests have been negative.

It turned out that the suitcase of the deceased and its contents could not advance the investigation on the way to unraveling the mystery of his personality.

Taman Shud
The police once again, with special care, inspect the clothes in which the unknown was wearing. And, as it turns out, not in vain. In the trousers that were on the deceased, a secret pocket is found.

This pocket was not empty. It contained, neatly cut around a small printed inscription, a piece of paper. The inscription, which was not initially clear to the police, read "Tamam Shud".

A little later, when the contents of this paper become known to the press, one of the newspapers will make a mistake in the last letter of the first word and this case will go down in history under the name “Taman Shud”.

It will soon be established that these are lines from the last page of Omar Khayyam's book "Rubyat" and they mean in Persian - "the end" or "it is over."

It was noted that the theme of Khayyam's poems could well correspond to the spiritual mood of a person who decided to commit suicide with the help of poison.

So, a new lead has appeared in the case and the police begin to look for the owner of this book. Inquiries were sent to the police of other countries, and photographs of a piece of paper with an inscription were placed in newspapers.

A piece of paper found in a secret pocket of an unknown person.

These searches brought results only in July, when a man came to the police with a rare copy of Khayyam's book in his hands. It was indeed a rare edition in Fitzgerald's translation that saw the light of day in New Zealand. The mysterious phrase was cut out of it, which was evident from the font and texture of the paper. But whether the fragment of interest to the police was cut from this particular copy remained unclear, since the last page of this book was torn out.

The man who brought the book explained that he found it on November 30, 1948 in his unlocked car on the floor near the back seat, and since then it has been lying in his glove box.

Having examined the book, the investigators noticed a mysterious inscription on its back, which could be read like this:

WRGOABABD
MLIAOI
WTBIMPANETP
MLIABOAIAQC
ITTMTSAMSTGAB

However, some letters are ambiguous (for example, the first one) and can be read differently. You can judge this for yourself by looking at the photo of this inscription.

Mysterious entry in the book.

From the very beginning, it was assumed that a certain cipher was hidden here. Until now, many experts and just amateurs are struggling to unravel this cipher, but so far it has not been solved, although it has been established that the code format corresponds to the format of Khayyam's quatrains.

But besides this cipher, something else, somewhat more understandable, was also recorded in the book. That something was a phone number.

Nurse Jestin
Real last name this woman was not made public by the investigation and she went down in history under the pseudonym (in some sources her maiden name) Jestin. It was her phone number that was recorded in the book of Omar Khayyam next to the mysterious cipher. Having established her identity, the investigation was surprised to find that she lives only four hundred meters from the place where the corpse was found.

Nurse "Jestine".

Jestin is immediately interrogated and reveals that a rare edition of the Rubaiyat once belonged to her. But in 1945, before her marriage, while working in a Sydney hospital, she gave it to a certain Lieutenant Alfred Boxall, whom she had not seen or known anything about since then.

It seemed to be getting warmer. Not even that, it seemed already hot.

Bust made from an unknown person.

Since, by that time, the body of the unknown had already been buried, the woman is presented for identification, made before burial, with a plaster bust of a mysterious stranger. However, she refuses to identify him as Boxall.

But the detectives have little doubt - it's him. It's just that it had been years since the nurse had seen Boxall, and she might not have recognized him by the bust.

Establishing Boxall's place of residence was a matter of technique, but... the former lieutenant turned out to be alive and well. In addition, he showed the detectives his copy of the book, given to him by a nurse. Opening it with excitement on the last page, the detectives saw two words that had not disappeared from it anywhere - “Tamam Shud”.

Dead end
Since Nurse Jesteen would not further acknowledge any connection with the deceased, the case came to a standstill, where it remains to this day. The last time she was questioned was in 2002, and the detective felt that she was avoiding a frank conversation. But such doubts cannot be sewn into the case, and in 2007 the woman died.

Various versions of this case were built. It was even assumed that the deceased was a Soviet spy who was killed by special services. It was also rumored that it could not have done without Boxall - rumor attributed to him a service in intelligence.

The grave of the unknown and the tablet on it.

This case is connected with another incident. In 1949, an unconscious man was found lying next to the corpse of his two-year-old son, who was in a sack. Like the unknown, the child was killed in an incomprehensible way. When the man was brought to his senses, it turned out that he had lost his mind and could not explain anything to the investigation. However, his wife said it could all be related to her husband's attempt to assist the police in identifying the mysterious Somerton man. According to her, after these testimonies, she, like her husband before, began to receive threats. And soon she suffered a serious illness.

By the way, remember such a case. One well-known person in Australia was found poisoned in 1945. It was thought to be suicide. But here is an interesting detail, on his chest lay an open collection of poems by Omar Khayyam "Rubaiyat". Exactly the same one that Nurse Jestin would give Lieutenant Boxall two months later.

But many of the people involved in this case are sure that Jestin did not say everything. There is even such a version that her son, who at the time of the beginning of the whole story was only 16 months old, is illegitimate. And his father is that mysterious man from Somerton.

But all this is just versions and conjectures. No one knows for sure the truth and the investigation continues. This case is being investigated not only by professional policemen, but also by amateur detectives from all over the world. After all, ever since the foot of a white man set foot on the Australian continent, there has not been a case more mysterious and strange than the Taman Shud case.

This murder is one of the most mysterious mysteries of Australia and causes a lot of speculation, speculation and conjecture. Resonance among society was also caused by the discovery of a piece of a page from a dead man from a very rare copy of Omar Khayam's book, on which only 2 words were printed - "Taman Shud".

Description of the body found in the Taman Shud case

The corpse of a man 40-45 years old, 180 cm tall was found on the beach. appearance looked like a Brit. The man had brown eyes, reddish hair with a little gray. It is noteworthy that the man was perfectly shaved, and all the tags were cut off from the clothes.

Taman Shud case. Photo of the victim

The man was dressed in good expensive clothes: a snow-white shirt, a red-blue tie, trousers, socks and shoes. Also, even though it was a hot season in Australia in this area, the man was found wearing a knitted sweater Brown color and a jacket.

When the experts arrived at the scene, they could not find any signs of physical impact on the deceased. During a search, an expired train ticket from Adelaide to Hanley Beach station was found in the pocket, a ticket for a bus fare that went to a stop in Glenelg. It is noteworthy that the corpse was found 1500 m further from this stop.

Witnesses in the case said that in the evening that day they saw a man lying on the floor, who did not move for half an hour. They thought he was drunk and ignored it. Other eyewitnesses saw a man on the floor in the same place, waving his arms, but also did not attach any importance to this. All eyewitnesses clearly indicated the place where they saw it - exactly where the corpse was found in the morning.

Autopsy of the Somerton Man

During the autopsy, it was determined that the man's death occurred around 2:00 am. During the autopsy, swelling of the tissues of the pharynx was found, the esophagus was covered with plaque. white color and ulcerative inflammation in the middle. In the stomach, the men found blood mixed with the remnants of food, and the kidneys were also inflamed.

The man took food for the last time 4 hours before his death. No foreign substances were found in the stomach. Dr. Dwyer, who performed the autopsy, said he was convinced that the man did not die of natural causes. He suggested that this person could have been poisoned with barbiturates or sleeping pills. But even suspecting that he could have been poisoned, the experts did not find any traces of poison in the food he ate before his death.

After some time, Scotland Yard detectives joined the investigation. The results of their work were also disappointing, even though a photograph of the dead man and samples of his fingerprints were sent to law enforcement agencies in many states. After the investigation was convinced that attempts to identify the deceased did not work, it was decided to embalm him.

Local media reaction to Somerton man's death

The media reacted sluggishly to the event. The Advertiser and The News magazines told the story in different ways. One of them in the morning issue reported the event in a small article on the 3rd page. Much more detailed events were presented by The News magazine, which posted an article about the found corpse on the main page and told about many details of what happened.

Location: Adelaide

Attempts to identify the corpse found in the Taman Shud case

The Advertiser magazine posted an article stating that the identity of the deceased has already been established - this is a certain Mr. Johnson. Already on December 3, he personally came to the police station and declared that he was alive and well. On the same day, The News publishes a photo of the found man in order to attract as many people as possible to identify the identity of the deceased.

A day later, the Adelaide police publicly admit that the fingerprints taken from the deceased were not found when searching the South Australian database. After another 2 days, The Advertiser after the statement of the witness publishes information that he saw a man who looked like a dead man in the bar of the Glenelg hotel and he showed a military ID with the name of Solomonson.

Later, another statement was received that this person was recognized. A couple of people recognized him as a lumberjack, 63-year-old R. Walsh. After examining the body, another person identified him as a lumberjack, but later recanted his testimony.

After 3 months, the location of the investigation was already 8 statements from various citizens who recognized this person in the photograph. Over the next few years, more than 250 applications accumulated. In most cases, people recognized the man by the elements of clothing.

Investigators find Somerton man's brown suitcase

New horizons for investigation were opened when, in January 1949, employees of the Adelaide station found a brown suitcase with a cut tag in one of the storage rooms. The suitcase contained a red robe, slippers, underwear, shaving accessories, trousers with some sand in their pockets, a refurbished knife, a screen-printing brush, and sharp scissors.

In addition, inside the suitcase are our spools of orange thread from Barbour, similar to those used to sew up the pants belonging to the deceased. It was found that such threads are not sold in Australia. All the tags on the clothes were also cut off.

After the discovery of the suitcase, the investigation team considered the owner of this clothing to be the sailor T. Keene. Since it was not possible to find him, the detectives decided to show the corpse of the man to T. Keane's comrades and colleagues. After the examination, they all confirmed that this was not their friend and that the clothes on the found corpse of a man from Somerton did not belong to T. Keane. In connection with the discovery of the suitcase, all Adelaide dry cleaners were also checked, but they turned out to be inconclusive. The only thing that was 100% established was that the robe found in the suitcase was made in the USA, since the manufacturing techniques for this robe were then used only in America.

After that, the investigation began to study information about all departures and arrivals of trains to Adelaide, and found out that the deceased arrived from Melbourne, Sydney or Port August on a night flight. A search of the suitcase suggested that the man had taken a shower in public bath not far from the station, then returned and bought a ticket to Hanley Beach, but for some reason he missed the train. When he returned from the bath, he left his luggage in the luggage room at the station, after which he boarded a bus to Glenelg.

Investigation of the Taman Shud case

Investigator T. Cleland began his investigation a couple of days after the discovery of the corpse. Pathologist D. Cleland once again examined the corpse and noted several strange facts. The shoes in which the deceased was shod were perfectly cleaned, which confirmed that the man could not walk around Glenelg all day - he suggested that the man's body was taken to Somerton after his death. This version of what happened was also confirmed by the fact that the investigators did not find traces of vomiting near the corpse, which accompanies any poisoning with poisons.

Professor S. Hicks proposed a version about the murder of a man with a potent poison. Hicks spoke about his assumptions to the investigation and even determined the composition of the alleged poison. But, according to the professor himself, the version of poisoning did not agree on only one thing - the deceased did not show any signs of vomiting, and in case of poisoning this is impossible.

The Society of Australia called this incident a mystery that has no analogues and which, apparently, will never be revealed. The newspapers logically stated that it was a professional murder that the most highly qualified specialists could not solve, and it, apparently, was more significant than a domestic showdown or an accident.

A sheet from a book and the inscription "Tamam Shud" (Tamam Shud)

During a search of the deceased, a piece of paper was found in one of the pockets of his pants, on which the phrase "Tamam Shud" was printed ( Tamam Shud). When the press began to publish information about the incident, the journalists made a mistake and instead of the word "Tamam" the articles contained the wrong version of "Taman". After that, the name Taman came into use, and people began to mistakenly call the unsolved crime "Taman Shud".

The piece of paper was immediately sent for examination to the public library and the experts issued a conclusion that the inscription translates as “finished”, “completed”. This piece is an excerpt from a page of Omar Khayyam's book (collection "Rubaiyat"), a very rare edition. Almost all the works in it call for a person to enjoy life and not pay attention to anything.

The detectives began looking for the owner of this book throughout Australia, but could not find it. After some time, photographs of this excerpt from the book were sent to law enforcement agencies around the world, and this helped to find the owner of the book, Hayam E. Fitzgerald. In his sample, the last page was torn out, the experts studied the book and concluded that the piece of paper was either from this book or from the same edition.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Taman Shud case is a criminal case initiated upon the discovery of the body of an unknown man on December 1, 1948 on Somerton Beach in the Australian city of Adelaide and has not been solved to date. The incident has also become known as the Somerton Mystery Man Incident.

This case is considered one of the most mysterious mysteries in the history of Australia. There is much speculation about the identity of the deceased and the factors that led to his death. Public interest in this incident remains very significant due to a number of details of the case: for example, during the investigation, some facts emerged that indicate the possible involvement of special services in the incident. In addition, for more than half a century, the investigation has not been able to either establish the identity of the deceased, or accurately determine the method of his killing. The biggest resonance was caused by a piece of paper discovered during the deceased, torn from a very rare copy of the book by Omar Khayyam, on which only two words were written - Tamam Shud (“Tamam Shud”).

"Rubaiyat" by Omar Khayyam

During one of the examinations of the body of the deceased, a folded piece of paper was found in the secret pocket of his trousers, containing the strange inscription "Tamam Shud" (Tamam Shud). Later, when publishing material on this topic in one of the newspapers, a typo was made: instead of “Tamam”, the word “Taman” was printed, as a result of which the erroneous name entered the story.

An official request was sent to the public library asking for a translation of this obscure phrase. Library staff identified this text as the word "finished" or "completed" from the last page of the collection "Rubaiyat" by Omar Khayyam. The main idea of ​​the works included in this book is that a person should enjoy every moment of his life and not regret its end.

The police launched a large-scale search throughout the country to find the owner of this book, but they were unsuccessful. Later, a photo of a piece of paper was sent to the police in other countries, and also presented to the public. This led to the discovery of the person who owned a very rare copy of Omar Khayyam's book, translated by Edward Fitzgerald, published in New Zealand. The last page of this copy was torn out, and the examination showed that a piece of paper found on the deceased was most likely cut out either from this book or from a book of the same edition. The man claimed to have found her in the back seat of his unlocked car on the night of November 30, 1948, while in Glenelg. He claimed that he did not know anything about the specimen he found and its connection with the case of the corpse of an unknown man until he discovered an article in one of the newspapers. Information about this man was not disclosed by the investigation, although it is now known that he worked as a doctor.

The main theme of the works of Omar Khayyam, included in the found collection, led the investigation to the idea that the man could have committed suicide by taking a potent poison, but no evidence in favor of this theory was ever provided.

On the back of the book, 5 lines of obscure words were drawn in pencil with the second line crossed out, which, in terms of writing letters, was very similar to the fourth:

WRGOABABD
MLIAOI
WTBIMPANETP
MLIABOAIAQC
ITTMTSAMSTGAB

In addition, the outlines of some letters were not entirely clear. So, for example, the first letter of the text is unclear, which in its style is similar to both the Latin "W" and "M" and even "H". The same can be said about the third line. However, most of the signs of the lettering still indicate a great similarity with the "W". Similar ambiguities exist with the second crossed-out line, in which the last letter is similar in outline to both the Latin "I" and "L". In addition, in the fourth line above the letter "O" there was a crossed-out "X", but it is not known whether this sign had any significance in the written code.

Transcription experts tried to unravel the meaning of these records, but could not understand their content. In 1978, this text was analyzed by the Australian Department of Defense and came to the following conclusions:

The set of characters in this text is not enough to create a full-fledged combination that carries any meaning;This text can be either an extremely complex cipher or an absolutely meaningless set of symbols taken “out of the blue”;Based on the results of the analysis of the cipher, it is not possible to give any satisfactory answer.In addition to the strange text on the back of the book, there was a telephone number belonging to a former nurse (maiden name or pseudonym during the investigation - "Jestine"), who lives in Glenelg, 400 meters from the place where the corpse was found. The woman stated that during her work in the Sydney clinic, she owned the book she found, but in 1945 she gave it to a lieutenant named Alfred Boxall. After World War II, "Jestine" moved to Melbourne and soon received a letter from that lieutenant, but answered him about her marriage. She also added that in 1948 she became aware that some mysterious stranger was asking her neighbor about her. To date, there is no evidence that Boxall had any contact with the Jestin after 1945. Detective Lynn showed the woman a plaster copy of the bust of the deceased in Somerton, but she could not identify him.

The police were sure that the deceased was a former lieutenant, but Boxall was soon found alive, which further confused the case, since he showed the police a book given to him by a nurse in 1945. The last page of the book with the phrase "Tamam Shud" was intact.

"Jestine" denied any connection with the deceased, and also could not explain how her phone ended up on the cover of the discovered book. She also asked that her name not be mentioned in any reports, so as not to associate her with the deceased. The police went for it, conducting further investigation without her participation.

Yandex PHOTO

Mysterious death. cryptic text. Mysterious place. There is no doubt that the deceased was an intelligence officer. The only question is what? Break your head over this, and if you can’t, then I’ll tell you a clue ....

the world is nothing - GOD HOLY everything
Allah Akbar
Om Mani Padme Hum
Perfect your Spirit to return to the Void

And ever since the white man set foot on the Australian continent, there has never been a case more mysterious and strange than the Taman Shud case.

The Mysterious Man from Somerton
It all started in the early morning of December 1, 1948, when the body of an unknown man was found on Somerton Beach in Adelaide. After examining the body and not noticing any signs of violent death, the police examined the pockets of the dead man. A used bus ticket, a half-empty package of chewing gum, a pack of cigarettes, matches and an unused train ticket - that's all that was in the pockets of the unknown. Except that at first they noticed one small oddity in his things - the brand of cigarettes in the pack did not match those indicated on the pack.

Somerton Beach. The cross indicates the location where the body was found.

The deceased was well dressed - a white shirt, tie, trousers, a fashionable jacket. But a more detailed examination of the clothes revealed that all the labels on the clothes were carefully cut off.

After being examined at the scene, the body was sent for an autopsy, where it was determined that this man had died at around 2:00 am on December 1. But the cause of death was not entirely clear. On the one hand, no foreign substances were found in the stomach, on the other hand, due to some signs, the pathologist expressed a firm belief that death had occurred as a result of poisoning.

No documents were found with the corpse, and the police began to make efforts to identify the deceased. Fingerprints were sent to various countries, and photographs of the unknown were published in many newspapers. After that, the police began to receive statements from various people who allegedly knew who it was. But every time the check showed that these people were wrong. Looking ahead, I’ll say that by the end of 1953, the police had as many as two hundred and fifty-one such statements.

Photo of an unknown person.

More than six decades have passed since the discovery of the corpse, and the identity of the mysterious man from Somerton has not yet been established.

His suitcase
In January 1949, Adelaide railway station workers contacted the police about unclaimed luggage from the luggage room. This luggage turned out to be a suitcase with a cut off label, which was checked into a storage room on November 30, 1948, that is, on the day preceding the night, which was the last for the unknown person.

The police examine the contents of the suitcase.

The police arrived and opened the suitcase and found a variety of things there. Bathrobe, slippers, briefs, pajamas, shaving accessories, as well as some tools, in particular, a re-sharpened knife, sharp-edged scissors and a screen-printing brush. In addition, the suitcase contained threads rare in Australia, and they were similar to those used to sew a patch in the pocket of the mysterious man's trousers. This made it possible with a high degree of probability to assume that the suitcase belongs to him.

Well, there was something else that connected these things with the mysterious body. All the labels on the clothes that were inside the found suitcase were cut off.

The same suitcase.

However, on some things, including on a laundry bag, the inscription "Keane" was found, but the police immediately assumed that if someone who cut off all the labels left this inscription safe and sound, then she, most likely, it has nothing to do with the mysterious person. But nevertheless, the verification of this name was carried out. Missing requests have been sent to all English speaking countries. In addition, the police contacted all Australian dry cleaners to determine if the stranger was their client. All of these requests have been negative.

It turned out that the suitcase of the deceased and its contents could not advance the investigation on the way to unraveling the mystery of his personality.

Taman Shud
The police once again, with special care, inspect the clothes in which the unknown was wearing. And, as it turns out, not in vain. In the trousers that were on the deceased, a secret pocket is found.

This pocket was not empty. It contained, neatly cut around a small printed inscription, a piece of paper. The inscription, which was not initially clear to the police, read "Tamam Shud".

A little later, when the contents of this paper become known to the press, one of the newspapers will make a mistake in the last letter of the first word and this case will go down in history under the name “Taman Shud”.

It will soon be established that these are lines from the last page of Omar Khayyam's book "Rubyat" and they mean in Persian - "the end" or "it is over."

It was noted that the theme of Khayyam's poems could well correspond to the spiritual mood of a person who decided to commit suicide with the help of poison.

So, a new lead has appeared in the case and the police begin to look for the owner of this book. Inquiries were sent to the police of other countries, and photographs of a piece of paper with an inscription were placed in newspapers.

A piece of paper found in a secret pocket of an unknown person.

These searches brought results only in July, when a man came to the police with a rare copy of Khayyam's book in his hands. It was indeed a rare edition in Fitzgerald's translation that saw the light of day in New Zealand. The mysterious phrase was cut out of it, which was evident from the font and texture of the paper. But whether the fragment of interest to the police was cut from this particular copy remained unclear, since the last page of this book was torn out.

The man who brought the book explained that he found it on November 30, 1948 in his unlocked car on the floor near the back seat, and since then it has been lying in his glove box.

Having examined the book, the investigators noticed a mysterious inscription on its back, which could be read like this:

WRGOABABD
MLIAOI
WTBIMPANETP
MLIABOAIAQC
ITTMTSAMSTGAB

However, some letters are ambiguous (for example, the first one) and can be read differently. You can judge this for yourself by looking at the photo of this inscription.

Mysterious entry in the book.

From the very beginning, it was assumed that a certain cipher was hidden here. Until now, many experts and just amateurs are struggling to unravel this cipher, but so far it has not been solved, although it has been established that the code format corresponds to the format of Khayyam's quatrains.

But besides this cipher, something else, somewhat more understandable, was also recorded in the book. That something was a phone number.

Nurse Jestin
The investigation did not publish the real name of this woman and she went down in history under the pseudonym (in some sources her maiden name) Jestin. It was her phone number that was recorded in the book of Omar Khayyam next to the mysterious cipher. Having established her identity, the investigation was surprised to find that she lives only four hundred meters from the place where the corpse was found.

Nurse "Jestine".

Jestin is immediately interrogated and reveals that a rare edition of the Rubaiyat once belonged to her. But in 1945, before her marriage, while working in a Sydney hospital, she gave it to a certain Lieutenant Alfred Boxall, whom she had not seen or known anything about since then.

It seemed to be getting warmer. Not even that, it seemed already hot.

Bust made from an unknown person.

Since, by that time, the body of the unknown had already been buried, the woman is presented for identification, made before burial, with a plaster bust of a mysterious stranger. However, she refuses to identify him as Boxall.

But the detectives have little doubt - it's him. It's just that it had been years since the nurse had seen Boxall, and she might not have recognized him by the bust.

Establishing Boxall's place of residence was a matter of technique, but... the former lieutenant turned out to be alive and well. In addition, he showed the detectives his copy of the book, given to him by a nurse. Opening it with excitement on the last page, the detectives saw two words that had not disappeared from it anywhere - “Tamam Shud”.

Dead end
Since Nurse Jesteen would not further acknowledge any connection with the deceased, the case came to a standstill, where it remains to this day. The last time she was questioned was in 2002, and the detective felt that she was avoiding a frank conversation. But such doubts cannot be sewn into the case, and in 2007 the woman died.

Various versions of this case were built. It was even assumed that the deceased was a Soviet spy who was killed by special services. It was also rumored that it could not have done without Boxall - rumor attributed to him a service in intelligence.

The grave of the unknown and the tablet on it.

This case is connected with another incident. In 1949, an unconscious man was found lying next to the corpse of his two-year-old son, who was in a sack. Like the unknown, the child was killed in an incomprehensible way. When the man was brought to his senses, it turned out that he had lost his mind and could not explain anything to the investigation. However, his wife said it could all be related to her husband's attempt to assist the police in identifying the mysterious Somerton man. According to her, after these testimonies, she, like her husband before, began to receive threats. And soon she suffered a serious illness.

By the way, remember such a case. One well-known person in Australia was found poisoned in 1945. It was thought to be suicide. But here is an interesting detail, on his chest lay an open collection of poems by Omar Khayyam "Rubaiyat". Exactly the same one that Nurse Jestin would give Lieutenant Boxall two months later.

But many of the people involved in this case are sure that Jestin did not say everything. There is even such a version that her son, who at the time of the beginning of the whole story was only 16 months old, is illegitimate. And his father is that mysterious man from Somerton.

But all this is just versions and conjectures. No one knows for sure the truth and the investigation continues. This case is being investigated not only by professional policemen, but also by amateur detectives from all over the world. After all, ever since the foot of a white man set foot on the Australian continent, there has not been a case more mysterious and strange than the Taman Shud case.