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As atomic fear grips the world and the Cold War ramps up,

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a well-dressed man is found dead on an Australian beach.

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There's no clear cause of death, nothing to identify him.

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Who is this guy? What was he up to?

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Could he have been a criminal or a secret agent or worse?

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Neither the FBI nor Britain's MI5 are the ones who have been killed.

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Neither the FBI nor Britain's MI5 know who he is.

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Tonight, the top theories surrounding a mystery

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that's obsessed an army of sleuths for 70 years.

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Is he a spy?

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Was it self-inflicted or was he poisoned?

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Was he part of a criminal organization?

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The whole thing reads like a movie script.

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Can new evidence solve the case?

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To finally answer, who is the Summerton man and how did he die?

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Just three years after the end of World War II,

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tensions between the Soviet Union and its former allies

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lead to a blockade of all land routes to West Berlin

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and an all-out effort to airlift supplies to its stricken citizens.

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People in the West are shocked and frightened by this.

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Communist countries like the Soviet Union in Eurasia

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and Mao Zedong in China seem scarily aggressive.

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Will there be another war, another nuclear attack?

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In response, stories about spies,

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traitors, double agents spring up everywhere.

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The small city of Adelaide, Australia is no different.

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Situated just 500 miles from the nation's top-secret atomic testing site,

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the city is quietly on alert.

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At first, nothing seems unusual.

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When 16-year-old Neil Day and a friend

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spot a man who appears to be napping by a cliff on Summerton Beach.

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Now, in Australia, it's the southern hemisphere,

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so it's summertime in the wintertime months here.

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And so this is nothing new.

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It's hot out, a lot of people will sleep on the beach,

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so they continue on their ride.

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But as the pair pass by again, they notice something alarming.

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The man isn't moving.

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He's still in the same position, so they dismount,

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they go up to check him,

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and then at that point they know he's dead.

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Another bystander comes up, Jack Lyons.

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He's a local jeweler.

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Jack takes control of the situation, and he says,

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I'll take care of this, I'll notify the police,

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and that's exactly what he does.

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And that's about 6 a.m. to 6 30 in the morning.

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So when the police arrive at the scene,

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they do a cursory inspection of the crime scene and the body.

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And they notice that this man is lying in the beach,

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but sitting up with his back leaned against the seawall.

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They see that he's well-dressed,

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there's no evidence of alcohol or drugs around,

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and there's no obvious signs of wounds or violence.

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Most often when we find a body on the beach,

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it's a victim of drowning.

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The body is washed ashore, and that's not the case.

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He was completely dry, his shoes were dry.

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It looks like he just maybe laid there to take a rest

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and didn't wake up.

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The next step would be to identify the man

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and then notify the next of kin.

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But in this case, they can't do that

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because he has absolutely no ID on him at all.

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He has no wallet of any kind.

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And moreover, and this is where this case

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initially gets very strange right from the beginning,

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all of the labels on his clothing were intentionally removed

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as if they were clipped out.

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At this point, the investigators are asking,

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who is this guy?

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They have no answers on his identity.

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With little to go on, police catalog the man's belongings.

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They find a unused train ticket.

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They find a bus ticket from Adelaide to Summerton Beach.

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They find a pack of chewing gum, a pack of matches,

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a comb, and they find a box of Army Club cigarettes.

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So all of these things are ordinary things

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that you would find on any person.

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But the pack of cigarettes are interesting

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because Army Club is a very cheap brand.

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And inside the box of cigarettes

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were seven cigarettes of a much more expensive brand

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called Conceitas.

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The body is taken to the Royal Adelaide Hospital

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for further examination.

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So a Dr. Barley Bennett

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performs a post-mortem on the body.

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It's an initial look through

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without going too deep into taking samples

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and opening the body up to find the cause of death.

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Back then, not everybody has an autopsy.

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The initial examination of his body

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reveals some things about him.

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He's about 5'11".

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He weighs about 165 to 175.

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And he's between 40 and 50 years old

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in incredibly good shape.

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Also, his hands are not calloused in any way,

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suggesting that he wasn't a manual laborer.

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One of the other things they notice right away

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is that he's got these extremely large calves

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and the muscles are high.

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Like a ballet dancer, he's got tuned legs.

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Nothing seems strange,

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and there's no obvious sign of foul play.

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So their theory is that he went to lay down,

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maybe didn't feel well,

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laid up against the rocks and passed away in his sleep.

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Preliminarily, the cause of death

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is thought to be heart failure.

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But after six weeks, authorities still can't ID the corpse,

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and that raises questions.

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Detectives suspect that there may be a lot more

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to learn about this man and the way he died.

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They start to wonder,

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is he from someplace outside Australia?

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And if so, why is he here?

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All English-speaking countries

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are given a post-mortem photo and a set of fingerprints,

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but nobody can find a match.

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There's no police records for this man,

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there are no military records for this man.

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Nothing matches.

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In fact, J. Edgar Hoover, who's the director of the FBI at the time,

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sends a memo back to Australia police

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telling them that they have no match for those fingerprints.

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Police appeal to the public

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for help identifying the body.

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At this point in the investigation,

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the locals have given this man a nickname,

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the Summerton Man, referencing the beach where he was discovered.

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An eyewitness comes forward.

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He and his wife claim that they were walking on the beach

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the night before on November 30th,

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and they observed him about 7 p.m. lying on the beach.

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The Summerton Man supposedly raised his right arm

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as if to light a cigarette or wave,

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and then it fell back to the beach.

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And then there's another couple that saw the man.

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Although they didn't really see his face,

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one thing they did notice, though,

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is that he seemed to have polished nice shoes,

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and they didn't seem like shoes

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that belonged to somebody who'd be walking along the beach.

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A timeline of the man's final hours slowly starts to form.

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Because of the tickets in his pocket,

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we know that he arrived around 11 a.m. in Adelaide.

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Then he took a bus to the Summerton area,

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where he's seen again by our witnesses at 7 p.m.

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So there's a large part of his afternoon

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and his whereabouts that are not accounted for.

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As an investigator, it's very frustrating

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to have this collection of clues and evidence

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and eyewitness accounts and really be no closer

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to any substantive answers.

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At this point, they don't even know who this man is.

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But then the investigators catch a huge break.

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On January 14, 1949,

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authorities at Adelaide Railway Station realize

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a suitcase has been there for weeks.

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The suitcase was checked in on November 30th

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and remained unclaimed.

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They give it over to the police who start looking through it,

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and that's when they find some additional clues,

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which now makes them think that maybe there's some connection

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to the Summerton man.

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What's inside the suitcase is odd and alarming.

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The labels on all the clothing inside the suitcase

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have also been removed, just like the Summerton man,

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with the exception of one yellow shirt

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that still had the tags on it, as if it had just been purchased.

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There's a quantity of orange linen thread.

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The same type of orange thread was used to sew on his buttons

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and mend a pocket inside his trousers.

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And the thread that was in the case, they believe,

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is the same one used to repair the jacket.

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This makes a direct connection to the Summerton man

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and the suitcase that was found.

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The suitcase also raises additional questions.

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This orange linen thread was not available in Australia

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at the time.

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It was available in the United States.

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So this poses the question, was the man American

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or did he at least travel through America at one point?

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Also discovered inside the suitcase

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was an electrician screwdriver, a table knife,

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a pair of scissors,

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and also charting and stenciling tools.

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That which you would find aboard a ship.

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To stencil cargo or to help with navigation.

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But the most important clue of all may be a name.

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There are a couple of items inside the suitcase

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that are inscribed T-keem.

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So this gives the police something to go on, a name at least.

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And that name is keem, K-E-A-N-E.

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Finding T-keem won't be easy.

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And perhaps that's deliberate.

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Police are starting to build a profile of this guy

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and perhaps a story why he was there.

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Who is this keem?

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Anchories find no missing persons by the name of keem.

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And so now they think that maybe this might be an alias.

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At this point, there's a name that doesn't match up.

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No one's missing.

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It could be a ruse.

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The police had a suitcase full of clues

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and they have some evidence,

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but there is nothing there that really ties to the reason

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why the Somerton man was visiting Adelaide.

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Increasingly suspicious, police call for a detailed autopsy.

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Once they started the autopsy, they do come across

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some things that are unusual and shocking for them.

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This enlarged spleen that's three times larger

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than what it should be, they find his liver is congested

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and he's got blood in his stomach.

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Because of the conditions of the organs,

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pathologist John Dwyer suspects that this man

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could be the victim of poisoning.

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They think it's poison because this man has no outside injuries.

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He's got all this internal trauma going on.

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What caused that?

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If he had been hit by something, he'd have an external bruise.

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Also in his stomach, aside from the presence of blood,

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is also a pasty, which is sort of like an Australian meat pie.

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They can tell what it was and the meat's not digested,

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which implies that he ate that and died shortly after.

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If it turns out this is a poisoning, that's a huge red flag.

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This is not your everyday manner of death.

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And what it suggests is this guy could have been up to something nefarious.

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When the lab results come back, they show no evidence of poisoning

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and no evidence of poisoning in the Australian meat pasty.

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His organs are in terrible condition, post autopsy,

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and the police know that they're going to have to do a lot more digging

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to find out what happened to this person, who is he, and how did he die?

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Investigators next take a closer look at the man's clothing.

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Deep down inside the man's watch pocket,

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they found a tiny rolled-up piece of paper.

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It had to be extracted with tweezers because it was so far down,

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which is why they didn't find it the first time.

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But when they unroll it, there are some words on it,

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and the words are,

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tamam shun.

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That's stopped the press's time.

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We got to find out what this is, what does this mean?

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They contact local librarians and researchers to just ask around

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if anybody knows what this means.

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One of the librarians mentions that, yes,

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it is the last word in a book called

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The Rubaiyat of Omar Kayal.

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The rubaiyat is a book of love poems.

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The phrase tamam shun translates into, it is finished.

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It's not normal for someone to walk around with a line of poetry

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that says it is finished in their pocket.

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This is something that was placed there.

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Now, whether it was by the Summerton man

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00:13:42,000 --> 00:13:44,000
or by someone who wanted him dead,

258
00:13:44,000 --> 00:13:46,000
that's what's worth exploring.

259
00:13:47,000 --> 00:13:49,000
But who might want him dead?

260
00:13:49,000 --> 00:13:51,000
And why?

261
00:13:51,000 --> 00:13:53,000
Looking at his belongings,

262
00:13:53,000 --> 00:13:56,000
stenciling tools, maps,

263
00:13:56,000 --> 00:13:58,000
his clothing is clearly from America,

264
00:13:58,000 --> 00:14:00,000
which they see based on the stitching.

265
00:14:00,000 --> 00:14:02,000
And an alias potentially,

266
00:14:02,000 --> 00:14:04,000
taking all of these clues together,

267
00:14:04,000 --> 00:14:07,000
it's not unreasonable to think that he may have been involved

268
00:14:07,000 --> 00:14:10,000
in the black market as a smuggler.

269
00:14:10,000 --> 00:14:13,000
And if so, did he become problematic for some other criminals

270
00:14:13,000 --> 00:14:15,000
that want to see him gone?

271
00:14:18,000 --> 00:14:20,000
Armed with new evidence,

272
00:14:20,000 --> 00:14:23,000
authorities begin an official homicide inquest

273
00:14:23,000 --> 00:14:27,000
on June 17th, 1949.

274
00:14:27,000 --> 00:14:29,000
An inquest is sort of like a trial.

275
00:14:29,000 --> 00:14:33,000
There are witnesses, experts, and doctors that will come and testify,

276
00:14:33,000 --> 00:14:37,000
and a judge or jury will determine a cause of death.

277
00:14:37,000 --> 00:14:41,000
So they're revisiting the possibility of him being poisoned.

278
00:14:41,000 --> 00:14:44,000
One of the experts that testifies in this inquest

279
00:14:44,000 --> 00:14:46,000
is Sir Cedric Hicks.

280
00:14:46,000 --> 00:14:48,000
He's a professor of pharmacology and human physiology,

281
00:14:48,000 --> 00:14:52,000
and to his knowledge, whatever toxin was there,

282
00:14:52,000 --> 00:14:54,000
it evaporated quickly.

283
00:14:54,000 --> 00:14:56,000
It left no trace.

284
00:14:56,000 --> 00:14:59,000
But he has an idea of two untraceable toxins

285
00:14:59,000 --> 00:15:02,000
that may be the cause here.

286
00:15:02,000 --> 00:15:06,000
He's so afraid to say these poisons out loud during the inquest

287
00:15:06,000 --> 00:15:10,000
because they're so dangerous that he writes them down on a piece of paper

288
00:15:10,000 --> 00:15:12,000
and delivers it to the judge.

289
00:15:12,000 --> 00:15:15,000
Later on, these two toxins become known,

290
00:15:15,000 --> 00:15:19,000
and they are digitalis and strophanthin.

291
00:15:19,000 --> 00:15:21,000
Hicks believes it's strophanthin.

292
00:15:21,000 --> 00:15:23,000
It's derived from an African plant

293
00:15:23,000 --> 00:15:26,000
so Mali tribes would use it to poison their arrows with.

294
00:15:26,000 --> 00:15:29,000
Despite Hicks' testimony,

295
00:15:29,000 --> 00:15:32,000
on June 21st, the inquest concludes

296
00:15:32,000 --> 00:15:35,000
without determining a cause of death.

297
00:15:35,000 --> 00:15:37,000
They just don't have enough evidence to say

298
00:15:37,000 --> 00:15:40,000
if he was poisoned by himself or someone else.

299
00:15:40,000 --> 00:15:42,000
They don't know who this man is.

300
00:15:42,000 --> 00:15:45,000
They can't determine if he was a smuggler or not,

301
00:15:45,000 --> 00:15:48,000
or if he's tied to some other greater mystery.

302
00:15:48,000 --> 00:15:50,000
And so they're stuck in a quandary.

303
00:15:50,000 --> 00:15:52,000
Back at square one,

304
00:15:52,000 --> 00:15:55,000
police revisit the cryptic piece of paper

305
00:15:55,000 --> 00:15:57,000
found in the man's pocket.

306
00:15:57,000 --> 00:16:00,000
The most mysterious clue is the phrase,

307
00:16:00,000 --> 00:16:01,000
Ta-mam should.

308
00:16:01,000 --> 00:16:04,000
It's torn from a book that was very popular at the time.

309
00:16:04,000 --> 00:16:07,000
If investigators can find the man's original book,

310
00:16:07,000 --> 00:16:09,000
they may find more clues.

311
00:16:09,000 --> 00:16:11,000
We know it's not in his possession.

312
00:16:11,000 --> 00:16:13,000
We know it wasn't at the crime scene.

313
00:16:13,000 --> 00:16:15,000
We know that it's not in his suitcase

314
00:16:15,000 --> 00:16:17,000
that was discovered at the Adelaide railway station.

315
00:16:17,000 --> 00:16:21,000
Investigators search every library and bookstore in the area.

316
00:16:23,000 --> 00:16:25,000
They begin looking at publishing companies.

317
00:16:25,000 --> 00:16:27,000
They begin searching internationally

318
00:16:27,000 --> 00:16:30,000
anywhere that they can think to find this copy

319
00:16:30,000 --> 00:16:33,000
in this edition of The Rubaiat.

320
00:16:33,000 --> 00:16:36,000
In a last-ditch effort, they'd call upon the public

321
00:16:36,000 --> 00:16:39,000
to see if anybody has seen this copy of the book.

322
00:16:39,000 --> 00:16:42,000
There are hundreds of thousands of copies of the book

323
00:16:42,000 --> 00:16:44,000
floating around the world.

324
00:16:44,000 --> 00:16:47,000
Trying to find the copy that was used in this case

325
00:16:47,000 --> 00:16:50,000
is like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

326
00:16:50,000 --> 00:16:54,000
That is until July 22nd, 1949.

327
00:16:56,000 --> 00:17:00,000
An unidentified man walks into the police station.

328
00:17:00,000 --> 00:17:04,000
This man lives very nearby to Summerton Beach.

329
00:17:07,000 --> 00:17:11,000
He remembers that somebody had thrown a copy of a book

330
00:17:11,000 --> 00:17:14,000
in the backseat of his car on November 30th.

331
00:17:16,000 --> 00:17:19,000
He puts two and two together, he retrieves the copy of the book,

332
00:17:19,000 --> 00:17:22,000
and he brings it into the police station.

333
00:17:22,000 --> 00:17:25,000
Police attempt to match the torn scrap of paper

334
00:17:25,000 --> 00:17:28,000
to the book's damaged back page.

335
00:17:30,000 --> 00:17:32,000
When the police examine the book,

336
00:17:32,000 --> 00:17:35,000
they can tell that the tear from the book

337
00:17:35,000 --> 00:17:37,000
matches exactly with the rolled-up piece of paper

338
00:17:37,000 --> 00:17:39,000
in the Summerton man's pocket.

339
00:17:39,000 --> 00:17:42,000
They can tell microscopically by the fibers

340
00:17:42,000 --> 00:17:44,000
it's the copy that the Summerton man had.

341
00:17:44,000 --> 00:17:47,000
It's a very easy match, that they know for sure now.

342
00:17:48,000 --> 00:17:50,000
And just as investigators had hoped,

343
00:17:50,000 --> 00:17:53,000
the book is about to provide an incredible new clue

344
00:17:53,000 --> 00:17:56,000
to the Summerton man's identity.

345
00:17:59,000 --> 00:18:03,000
Finding the actual book that belonged to the Summerton man

346
00:18:03,000 --> 00:18:07,000
is a miraculous twist of fate in this case,

347
00:18:07,000 --> 00:18:10,000
because they're able to begin piecing some new clues together

348
00:18:10,000 --> 00:18:13,000
that they had no idea even existed before.

349
00:18:13,000 --> 00:18:16,000
There are notes written in the book,

350
00:18:16,000 --> 00:18:18,000
and then most interestingly, perhaps,

351
00:18:18,000 --> 00:18:21,000
there is a series of letters in the back of the book,

352
00:18:21,000 --> 00:18:24,000
capital letters that seem to be some sort of code.

353
00:18:24,000 --> 00:18:27,000
When you look at the coded message in the book

354
00:18:27,000 --> 00:18:31,000
and all other factors surrounding the Summerton man's case,

355
00:18:31,000 --> 00:18:33,000
it then leads to the big question,

356
00:18:33,000 --> 00:18:35,000
is he a spy?

357
00:18:37,000 --> 00:18:39,000
At the time, Australia is wrapping up

358
00:18:39,000 --> 00:18:41,000
their own nuclear testing,

359
00:18:41,000 --> 00:18:43,000
so the idea is entirely plausible.

360
00:18:43,000 --> 00:18:46,000
Using books to deliver hidden codes

361
00:18:46,000 --> 00:18:49,000
seems like it's next level spying.

362
00:18:49,000 --> 00:18:52,000
But the truth is, this was quite common,

363
00:18:52,000 --> 00:18:53,000
especially in 1948.

364
00:18:53,000 --> 00:18:56,000
The CIA did it to KGB, Israeli intelligence.

365
00:18:57,000 --> 00:18:59,000
So what happens is that the sender,

366
00:18:59,000 --> 00:19:02,000
they'll take the words out of the book on certain pages,

367
00:19:02,000 --> 00:19:06,000
and they use that to compose the message they want to send.

368
00:19:07,000 --> 00:19:12,000
The receiver will have a card that will have holes cut out,

369
00:19:13,000 --> 00:19:15,000
basically acting as a template

370
00:19:15,000 --> 00:19:17,000
that they can put over the desired page,

371
00:19:17,000 --> 00:19:19,000
and that will reveal the message underneath

372
00:19:19,000 --> 00:19:22,000
in the words and the order that they're supposed to be received.

373
00:19:23,000 --> 00:19:26,000
Authorities send the code to various intelligence agencies

374
00:19:26,000 --> 00:19:31,000
around the world, hoping someone will recognize it.

375
00:19:31,000 --> 00:19:33,000
They send it to the U.S. Naval Intelligence.

376
00:19:33,000 --> 00:19:35,000
They send it to British Intelligence.

377
00:19:35,000 --> 00:19:37,000
They publish it in newspapers,

378
00:19:37,000 --> 00:19:40,000
hoping that an amateur sleuth might be able to solve this.

379
00:19:40,000 --> 00:19:42,000
The code is only four lines,

380
00:19:42,000 --> 00:19:46,000
but the best code breakers in the world can't figure this out.

381
00:19:46,000 --> 00:19:49,000
You don't even need to really figure out the code

382
00:19:49,000 --> 00:19:53,000
to indicate that there is some sort of larger espionage going on.

383
00:19:53,000 --> 00:19:55,000
If we are to believe that he's a spy,

384
00:19:55,000 --> 00:19:58,000
that very well could be what caused his death.

385
00:20:02,000 --> 00:20:04,000
He was clearly a careful guy,

386
00:20:04,000 --> 00:20:07,000
which is evidenced by the fact of the removal of his clothing labels,

387
00:20:07,000 --> 00:20:09,000
the fact that he uses an alias.

388
00:20:09,000 --> 00:20:13,000
But according to experts, the most important proof is

389
00:20:13,000 --> 00:20:16,000
where and how the man died.

390
00:20:17,000 --> 00:20:20,000
So there's two really important locations in Australia

391
00:20:20,000 --> 00:20:22,000
which make this even more interesting.

392
00:20:22,000 --> 00:20:27,000
One is Rumara, which is home of an advanced rocketry program

393
00:20:27,000 --> 00:20:31,000
involving the United States as well as Australian military authorities.

394
00:20:32,000 --> 00:20:37,000
The other is Radium Hill, which is home to a uranium processing facility.

395
00:20:38,000 --> 00:20:42,000
The location of the Summerton man's body close to these facilities in Australia

396
00:20:42,000 --> 00:20:44,000
isn't coincidental, in my view.

397
00:20:45,000 --> 00:20:49,000
The UK is also preparing to start atomic testing in Australia,

398
00:20:49,000 --> 00:20:51,000
800 kilometers from Adelaide.

399
00:20:51,000 --> 00:20:56,000
And there's some evidence that secrets are already being leaked from Australia to the USSR.

400
00:20:56,000 --> 00:20:59,000
There's a top secret intelligence program called a VENONO.

401
00:20:59,000 --> 00:21:02,000
It's a joint American British operation,

402
00:21:02,000 --> 00:21:04,000
and it's designed to do counterintelligence.

403
00:21:05,000 --> 00:21:10,000
In 1947, the VENONO project was able to pick up evidence

404
00:21:10,000 --> 00:21:14,000
that Russian intelligence operations were taking place in Australia

405
00:21:14,000 --> 00:21:16,000
through its embassy in Canberra.

406
00:21:16,000 --> 00:21:20,000
So we have a code that suggests the man may have been a spy.

407
00:21:20,000 --> 00:21:24,000
We have the location, which certainly suggests that the man may have been a spy.

408
00:21:24,000 --> 00:21:30,000
And most interesting to me is the fact that he appears to have died from an exotic poison,

409
00:21:30,000 --> 00:21:32,000
which is absolutely spycraft.

410
00:21:33,000 --> 00:21:38,000
And certainly suggests the possibility of this being what's referred to as a wet op.

411
00:21:38,000 --> 00:21:43,000
Mokradel in Russian, which is a kind of time-honored tradition by Russian intelligence

412
00:21:43,000 --> 00:21:46,000
to get rid of people by means of assassination

413
00:21:46,000 --> 00:21:49,000
without leaving any kind of obvious hallmarks.

414
00:21:49,000 --> 00:21:56,000
Could a seemingly insignificant piece of evidence be the key to cracking this case?

415
00:21:56,000 --> 00:21:58,000
The cigarette clue is a fascinating one,

416
00:21:58,000 --> 00:22:02,000
where they discover in his possessions, his cigarettes,

417
00:22:02,000 --> 00:22:06,000
there's a different kind of cigarette brand in the box of his cigarettes,

418
00:22:06,000 --> 00:22:09,000
which seem to indicate that someone had replaced them.

419
00:22:09,000 --> 00:22:14,000
This is a cheap box of cigarettes, and inside the box are an expensive brand.

420
00:22:14,000 --> 00:22:16,000
So why would anyone want to do that?

421
00:22:16,000 --> 00:22:18,000
Is it possible that the man was poisoned

422
00:22:18,000 --> 00:22:22,000
and that the delivery system for the poison was the cigarettes?

423
00:22:23,000 --> 00:22:29,000
Unfortunately, the Australian police discard the cigarettes before they can be analyzed.

424
00:22:29,000 --> 00:22:33,000
And that's a real shame, because the cigarettes could have provided the quintessential detail

425
00:22:33,000 --> 00:22:35,000
that may have solved this case.

426
00:22:35,000 --> 00:22:40,000
If the cigarettes were tested, and we could prove that there was poison in the cigarettes,

427
00:22:40,000 --> 00:22:44,000
explaining why there were different cigarettes in the box,

428
00:22:44,000 --> 00:22:48,000
it would certainly support a theory that he was involved in spycraft,

429
00:22:48,000 --> 00:22:50,000
and he was murdered for that.

430
00:22:51,000 --> 00:22:56,000
But if the Summerton man is a spy, who was he working for?

431
00:22:56,000 --> 00:23:00,000
There is some speculation out there that he was not just anybody,

432
00:23:00,000 --> 00:23:04,000
but that he was a particular agent named Pavel Fidesimov.

433
00:23:04,000 --> 00:23:07,000
Fidesimov was known as Stepan, that's his code name.

434
00:23:07,000 --> 00:23:09,000
He was known to British and American intelligence.

435
00:23:09,000 --> 00:23:15,000
Fedosimov was identified as a KGB spy during Operation Venona.

436
00:23:15,000 --> 00:23:19,000
Fidesimov was stationed at the Russian Embassy in the United States.

437
00:23:19,000 --> 00:23:24,000
And we know for sure that the Summerton man had at least traveled in the United States.

438
00:23:24,000 --> 00:23:28,000
The US was tracking Fidesimov, and they followed him,

439
00:23:28,000 --> 00:23:31,000
and they know that he theoretically leaves the country on a ship

440
00:23:31,000 --> 00:23:34,000
bound for Odessa and Ukraine in 1948.

441
00:23:35,000 --> 00:23:41,000
And some people have placed Fidesimov in Australia, although the evidence is very scant.

442
00:23:42,000 --> 00:23:46,000
After the Summerton man's body is found on December 1, 1948,

443
00:23:46,000 --> 00:23:49,000
Fidesimov is never seen again.

444
00:23:51,000 --> 00:23:55,000
Can you say that Fidesimov and the Summerton man are one and the same?

445
00:23:55,000 --> 00:23:57,000
You can't rule it out, that's absolutely true,

446
00:23:57,000 --> 00:24:01,000
but I don't think there's enough evidence to say that conclusively.

447
00:24:01,000 --> 00:24:05,000
But there may be another way to identify the Summerton man.

448
00:24:05,000 --> 00:24:09,000
There's one more clue in that book that might be even more important.

449
00:24:09,000 --> 00:24:13,000
And it could lead police straight to his killer.

450
00:24:17,000 --> 00:24:23,000
A dead body, a book of poetry, an unsolvable code.

451
00:24:23,000 --> 00:24:30,000
After eight months of investigation into the Summerton man, police have little else to go on.

452
00:24:30,000 --> 00:24:38,000
But in his copy of the Rubaiyat, there is one more clue, a pair of handwritten phone numbers.

453
00:24:38,000 --> 00:24:43,000
Can this finally lead investigators to answers?

454
00:24:44,000 --> 00:24:51,000
The other clue is what appears to be two phone numbers written inside the book.

455
00:24:51,000 --> 00:24:54,000
The police decide to call these two phone numbers.

456
00:24:54,000 --> 00:24:56,000
The first is to a bank, which is a dead end.

457
00:24:56,000 --> 00:25:00,000
The second number belongs to a woman who lives nearby, in fact,

458
00:25:00,000 --> 00:25:05,000
only 400 yards from where the Summerton man was found on the beach.

459
00:25:07,000 --> 00:25:11,000
Police visit the woman and try to find out what she knows.

460
00:25:13,000 --> 00:25:17,000
And she agrees to cooperate, but she wants to remain anonymous.

461
00:25:17,000 --> 00:25:20,000
She tells the police that she does not know the Summerton man,

462
00:25:20,000 --> 00:25:23,000
but she does admit that she owned a copy of the Rubaiyat

463
00:25:23,000 --> 00:25:26,000
that she gave to a male acquaintance some years earlier.

464
00:25:26,000 --> 00:25:32,000
She was training as a nurse in 1945 in Sydney when she met someone named Al Boxhall.

465
00:25:32,000 --> 00:25:35,000
They became friendly. She gave him a copy of the Rubaiyat.

466
00:25:35,000 --> 00:25:38,000
She inscribed it with her nickname, Justin.

467
00:25:38,000 --> 00:25:40,000
But she hasn't spoken with him in years.

468
00:25:41,000 --> 00:25:44,000
Could Boxhall be the Summerton man?

469
00:25:46,000 --> 00:25:48,000
So, of course, the authorities think,

470
00:25:48,000 --> 00:25:51,000
perhaps this acquaintance of hers who received the Rubaiyat,

471
00:25:51,000 --> 00:25:53,000
maybe that's the Summerton man.

472
00:25:53,000 --> 00:25:56,000
However, a few days later, they follow up on the lead

473
00:25:56,000 --> 00:25:58,000
and they find that he's alive and well.

474
00:26:00,000 --> 00:26:04,000
The plot really thickens when one looks at Boxhall's background.

475
00:26:04,000 --> 00:26:08,000
During World War II and afterwards, from 1945 to 1948,

476
00:26:08,000 --> 00:26:11,000
Boxhall is involved in Australian intelligence.

477
00:26:13,000 --> 00:26:18,000
I think the intrigue is even greater when the two stories of Justin and Boxhall

478
00:26:18,000 --> 00:26:19,000
are put side by side.

479
00:26:19,000 --> 00:26:22,000
Justin says that they met one another in the Army Hospital

480
00:26:22,000 --> 00:26:25,000
and, according to Boxhall, the exchange of the book happens

481
00:26:25,000 --> 00:26:28,000
at the Clifton Gardens Hotel over drinks.

482
00:26:30,000 --> 00:26:33,000
To investigators, that location sounds familiar.

483
00:26:34,000 --> 00:26:38,000
What's interesting is that if we're to believe Boxhall's version of the story,

484
00:26:38,000 --> 00:26:43,000
where the book is exchanged at the Clifton Garden Hotel in August of 1945,

485
00:26:43,000 --> 00:26:46,000
just two months earlier in June of 1945,

486
00:26:46,000 --> 00:26:50,000
the body of George Marshall is found with a copy of the Rubaiyat,

487
00:26:50,000 --> 00:26:53,000
a short walk from that very hotel.

488
00:26:55,000 --> 00:26:57,000
Not only is the copy of the Rubaiyat there,

489
00:26:57,000 --> 00:27:02,000
but he's also found near a bottle of lemonade and some mysterious powder.

490
00:27:02,000 --> 00:27:06,000
Which leads some people to think that it may have also been a poisoning.

491
00:27:06,000 --> 00:27:11,000
And that's too similar for a coincidence between the Summerton Man and Marshall's death.

492
00:27:12,000 --> 00:27:15,000
Two bodies found dead on Australian beaches,

493
00:27:15,000 --> 00:27:20,000
both tied to the same book and, possibly, the same woman.

494
00:27:20,000 --> 00:27:25,000
Police decide to question the mysterious Justin once again.

495
00:27:26,000 --> 00:27:30,000
This woman really was a quintessential part of the investigation.

496
00:27:30,000 --> 00:27:34,000
And what's particularly interesting about all the great work they did in the case

497
00:27:34,000 --> 00:27:36,000
is that before the Summerton Man is buried,

498
00:27:36,000 --> 00:27:40,000
they make a plaster cast of him to preserve the way he looks before decomposition.

499
00:27:41,000 --> 00:27:45,000
They bring in Justin to view the cast.

500
00:27:45,000 --> 00:27:49,000
Initially, when she looks at it, she claims that she doesn't recognize the cast,

501
00:27:49,000 --> 00:27:52,000
when all of her body language suggests otherwise.

502
00:27:52,000 --> 00:27:56,000
When Detective Sergeant Lean showed the woman the plaster bust,

503
00:27:56,000 --> 00:28:00,000
his reaction was that she looked like she was completely taken aback.

504
00:28:00,000 --> 00:28:03,000
Like she appeared to be about to faint.

505
00:28:03,000 --> 00:28:09,000
In fact, some reports say that he was standing behind her, ready to catch her if she did.

506
00:28:09,000 --> 00:28:14,000
So then this begs the question, did she have any involvement in his death?

507
00:28:16,000 --> 00:28:21,000
Justin convinces police not to release her name publicly.

508
00:28:21,000 --> 00:28:24,000
So why didn't she want her name out in the open?

509
00:28:24,000 --> 00:28:30,000
It's very possible that she didn't want her relationship with Boxwell to be known by her husband.

510
00:28:30,000 --> 00:28:34,000
But I think there's another factor at play here, which is pretty basic.

511
00:28:34,000 --> 00:28:39,000
In 1949, many people didn't imagine that women could be involved in espionage.

512
00:28:40,000 --> 00:28:43,000
So they honor her request for animinity in the process,

513
00:28:43,000 --> 00:28:49,000
kind of passed by the whole possibility that she's involved in more ways than one.

514
00:28:49,000 --> 00:28:53,000
It isn't until years later that the woman's identity is revealed.

515
00:28:54,000 --> 00:28:59,000
For decades, people have referred to her as Justin, which is the nickname used in the police records.

516
00:28:59,000 --> 00:29:05,000
It took decades worth of sleuthing, both by police who were involved in the case and by some amateurs,

517
00:29:05,000 --> 00:29:09,000
to put two and two together and to figure out the real identity.

518
00:29:10,000 --> 00:29:14,000
After her death in 2007, we learned that upon her initial interview,

519
00:29:14,000 --> 00:29:19,000
she gave her name as Jessica Thompson, but even that wasn't her real name.

520
00:29:20,000 --> 00:29:24,000
She was born Jesse Harkness in Sydney and she goes by the name Joe.

521
00:29:26,000 --> 00:29:32,000
When she passes away in 2007, she's gone her entire life insisting that she knows nothing about this case.

522
00:29:33,000 --> 00:29:37,000
But Thompson's secrets don't end with her death.

523
00:29:39,000 --> 00:29:44,000
In 2013, Joe's daughter Kay Thompson gives an interview for Australian 60 Minutes,

524
00:29:44,000 --> 00:29:47,000
where she makes two very important claims that may relate to this case.

525
00:29:47,000 --> 00:29:51,000
One, that her mother did admit to her that she knew the Summerton man.

526
00:29:51,000 --> 00:29:57,000
And two, that she spoke Russian and she taught it to Russian immigrants in Australia.

527
00:29:59,000 --> 00:30:06,000
And that fueled the fire that the Summerton man may in fact be a KGB operative or KGB associate of some sort.

528
00:30:06,000 --> 00:30:12,000
And that's led to, since 2013, a whole bunch of questions again about the identity of the Summerton man.

529
00:30:12,000 --> 00:30:22,000
There are a number of theories about who the Summerton man was, the spy theory, the black market trader theory.

530
00:30:22,000 --> 00:30:27,000
But I think there are clues that take us away from those theories.

531
00:30:29,000 --> 00:30:31,000
Abbott's theory begins in his classroom.

532
00:30:33,000 --> 00:30:40,000
My students are well-versed in coding theory and so I gave it as a cool exercise to them to look at this code,

533
00:30:41,000 --> 00:30:46,000
check out what were the codes in World War II that were known at the time,

534
00:30:46,000 --> 00:30:51,000
and eliminate one by one which codes it couldn't be.

535
00:30:51,000 --> 00:30:56,000
And statistically it shows that it's really not a code.

536
00:30:57,000 --> 00:31:01,000
It's just the first letters of words in the English language.

537
00:31:02,000 --> 00:31:03,000
So what could that be?

538
00:31:03,000 --> 00:31:09,000
It could just be a dim memoir, somebody just jotting down the first letters of words to remember something.

539
00:31:10,000 --> 00:31:18,000
But the interesting thing is there's four lines of them and it's in a book of love poetry where every verse was in four lines.

540
00:31:18,000 --> 00:31:23,000
So it makes you wonder whether he was just trying to pen his own verse.

541
00:31:23,000 --> 00:31:32,000
Was he being romantic towards a young lady who lived five minutes walk from where the man was found dead and he had her phone number.

542
00:31:32,000 --> 00:31:37,000
Joining the dots there, there perhaps was a connection between the two.

543
00:31:37,000 --> 00:31:39,000
Perhaps this is a love story.

544
00:31:41,000 --> 00:31:44,000
Or something entirely different.

545
00:31:48,000 --> 00:31:53,000
In the case of the Summerton man, it could very well be that they had a relationship.

546
00:31:53,000 --> 00:32:03,000
She gave him this book which has very romantic poems and it poems about seizing the day, about being together while the world is so difficult and they're in love.

547
00:32:03,000 --> 00:32:05,000
But their relationship ends.

548
00:32:06,000 --> 00:32:13,000
And then many years later the man shows up in 1948 looking to rekindle or somehow address his relationship with her.

549
00:32:13,000 --> 00:32:21,000
She doesn't want anything to do with it and heartbroken decides to end his life by poisoning himself on the beach.

550
00:32:21,000 --> 00:32:28,000
But if the Summerton man committed suicide by self poisoning, the question is why?

551
00:32:29,000 --> 00:32:38,000
Back in 1948, Joe Thompson was involved in a relationship with a man named Prosper Thompson, her soon to be husband.

552
00:32:38,000 --> 00:32:42,000
And they had a 16 month old child named Robin Thompson.

553
00:32:42,000 --> 00:32:44,000
But here's the interesting part.

554
00:32:44,000 --> 00:32:53,000
Joe Thompson becomes pregnant in 1946 and a true timeline can not be established as to when Joe and Prosper Thompson met.

555
00:32:53,000 --> 00:33:04,000
It appears that in 1946 when she became pregnant in Sydney, she was in nursing quarters training as a nurse in a hospital.

556
00:33:05,000 --> 00:33:09,000
Prosper Thompson was living a few hundred miles away from the Sun.

557
00:33:10,000 --> 00:33:16,000
So this timeline raises questions about the lineage of Robin Thompson.

558
00:33:17,000 --> 00:33:20,000
Some would suggest that it was a twisted triangular relationship.

559
00:33:20,000 --> 00:33:23,000
The whole thing reads like a movie script, frankly.

560
00:33:24,000 --> 00:33:32,000
Abbott believes that Robin could be the key to proving the Summerton man's identity and providing a motive for his death.

561
00:33:33,000 --> 00:33:37,000
The interesting thing about Robin Thompson is he was a professional ballet dancer.

562
00:33:37,000 --> 00:33:53,000
I recalled that one of the people that had examined the Summerton man's body in the mortuary had noted that the Summerton man had extremely strong calf muscles that were high up the leg, like that of a ballet dancer.

563
00:33:53,000 --> 00:33:56,000
And the similarities don't end there.

564
00:33:58,000 --> 00:34:06,000
So only about two percent of the population have what they call hyperdonsia, where they're missing teeth because of genetics.

565
00:34:06,000 --> 00:34:10,000
Well, the Summerton man is missing two incisor teeth.

566
00:34:10,000 --> 00:34:14,000
And we know that they're missing naturally because the other teeth filled in.

567
00:34:15,000 --> 00:34:18,000
Also, I noticed something strange about his ears.

568
00:34:18,000 --> 00:34:24,000
The upper hollow of your ear is called the Simba and the lower hollow is called the caven.

569
00:34:24,000 --> 00:34:30,000
And your Simba is usually very narrow and small and the caven is big.

570
00:34:30,000 --> 00:34:35,000
But with the Summerton man, it's the other way around. His ears are inverted.

571
00:34:36,000 --> 00:34:40,000
Robin Thompson shares both rare genetic traits.

572
00:34:41,000 --> 00:34:49,000
So what are the odds of them having the same ear shapes and sizes and the same missing two front teeth, the lateral incisors?

573
00:34:49,000 --> 00:34:52,000
What are those odds? They're one in ten million.

574
00:34:55,000 --> 00:35:02,000
So the obvious question this all raises is, is the Summerton man the father of Robin Thompson?

575
00:35:03,000 --> 00:35:15,000
We just got to look at the facts. He had a book of love poetry with the phone number of a lady who had a child with genetic features very similar to his.

576
00:35:15,000 --> 00:35:22,000
Perhaps it's not something sinister, but it's a matter of the heart.

577
00:35:23,000 --> 00:35:30,000
It does seem possible, maybe even likely that he comes back into town to reignite an old flame.

578
00:35:31,000 --> 00:35:33,000
And he visits Joe Thompson.

579
00:35:33,000 --> 00:35:37,000
However, he finds out that she's now in a relationship.

580
00:35:37,000 --> 00:35:44,000
She's got a 16 month old son that is possibly his child and putting two and two together.

581
00:35:44,000 --> 00:35:49,000
Maybe it's a reason why she didn't want him in her life anymore. He's rebuffed.

582
00:35:49,000 --> 00:35:53,000
And at this point, maybe he had nothing else to live for.

583
00:35:54,000 --> 00:36:01,000
In fact, when the Summerton man was found, they found a tiny rolled up piece of paper that said, Tammam should.

584
00:36:01,000 --> 00:36:07,000
Well, the English translation of it means it is finished or it is done.

585
00:36:07,000 --> 00:36:10,000
And could this then be a suicide note?

586
00:36:11,000 --> 00:36:14,000
But proving this theory will be difficult.

587
00:36:14,000 --> 00:36:21,000
There's a big question mark over his death, but where we can find answers is through the man's DNA.

588
00:36:24,000 --> 00:36:29,000
So in an effort to identify the Summerton man, they did a casting of his head.

589
00:36:29,000 --> 00:36:35,000
Dr. Abbott went to examine that casting and sees that there's actually some hairs.

590
00:36:36,000 --> 00:36:43,000
This got me excited because I realized that this could be a source of DNA that could crack this case.

591
00:36:44,000 --> 00:36:47,000
Next, he tries to find Robin Thompson.

592
00:36:48,000 --> 00:36:57,000
But Robin Thompson died a couple months before and he was cremated, so there's no remains to get the DNA to see if he was related to the Summerton man.

593
00:37:00,000 --> 00:37:04,000
So I thought to myself, well, has Robin Thompson got any descendants?

594
00:37:04,000 --> 00:37:09,000
I did some detective work and I tracked down one of his daughters.

595
00:37:10,000 --> 00:37:15,000
Her name is Rachel Egan, the daughter of Robin Thompson and Roma Egan.

596
00:37:16,000 --> 00:37:19,000
They toured together in a ballet company.

597
00:37:19,000 --> 00:37:22,000
And she kindly donated her DNA.

598
00:37:22,000 --> 00:37:31,000
I was able to subtract her DNA and her mother's DNA to basically reconstruct Robin Thompson's DNA.

599
00:37:32,000 --> 00:37:38,000
I was excited that Rachel agreed to give me her DNA, but I got a lot more than that.

600
00:37:38,000 --> 00:37:44,000
Abbott and Rachel began dating in 2010 and married just a few months later.

601
00:37:45,000 --> 00:37:53,000
Sadly, there's not enough DNA material on the hair shafts to figure out if the Summerton man is Robin Thompson's father.

602
00:37:54,000 --> 00:37:58,000
Without a DNA match, the case remains unsolved.

603
00:38:00,000 --> 00:38:05,000
Unfortunately, a lot of the evidence was later thrown out or destroyed.

604
00:38:06,000 --> 00:38:14,000
The cigarettes, the suitcase, and perhaps the most important thing that's missing is the Summerton man's copy of the Rubaiat.

605
00:38:14,000 --> 00:38:19,000
If we had this copy of this book, we might be able to run DNA testing on it.

606
00:38:19,000 --> 00:38:23,000
We might be able to find new information inside the pages.

607
00:38:24,000 --> 00:38:27,000
But ultimately, that evidence is gone now.

608
00:38:28,000 --> 00:38:36,000
If Abbott and his family and the public have any chance of closure on the Summerton man case, the only way forward is to exhume the body.

609
00:38:37,000 --> 00:38:42,000
The people of Australia want an answer who was the Summerton man.

610
00:38:42,000 --> 00:38:45,000
So the stakes are high to get this solved.

611
00:38:46,000 --> 00:38:53,000
Now that Rachel and I are together and we have a family, it kind of illustrates the importance of finding the DNA of the Summerton man.

612
00:38:54,000 --> 00:38:59,000
If his DNA shows that he's a Russian, maybe that will bring the spy theory back alive again.

613
00:39:00,000 --> 00:39:06,000
If he's unrelated to us, it gives some other family some closure, then connect him back to his family.

614
00:39:07,000 --> 00:39:11,000
And if he is somehow related to us, it will also give us closure.

615
00:39:13,000 --> 00:39:17,000
Investigation into this mystery is continuing.

616
00:39:18,000 --> 00:39:25,000
The Summerton man's body was exhumed in May 2021 in Australia and DNA analysis is ongoing.

617
00:39:26,000 --> 00:39:35,000
Even if Rachel Egan is the Summerton man's granddaughter, it doesn't fully answer what happened on November 30th, 1948.

618
00:39:36,000 --> 00:39:44,000
But proving the link between the man and Joe Thompson could be a crucial step in finally closing this case.

619
00:39:45,000 --> 00:39:50,000
I'm Lawrence Fishburne. Thank you for watching History's Greatest Mysteries.