Tamam Shud case

Tamam Shud case

1948 unsolved death of an unidentified man in Somerton, South Australia.

The Tamam Shud case, also known as the Mystery of the Somerton Man, is an unsolved case of an unidentified man found dead at 6:30 am, 1 December 1948, on Somerton beach, Glenelg, just south of Adelaide, South Australia.

It is named after the Persian phrase tamám shud, meaning “ended” or “finished”, printed on a scrap of paper found months later in the fob pocket of the man’s trousers.

The scrap had been torn from the final page of a copy of Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, authored by 12th-century poet Omar Khayyám. Tamam was misspelt as Taman in many early reports and this error.

Jessica Thomson living in nearby Glenelg was questioned in connection with the case, her phone number was found in the book. Shortly afterwards, she gave birth to a boy with the same rare ear trait as the unidentified man.

On 26 July 2022, a professor Derek Abbott with genealogist Colleen M. Fitzpatrick, claimed to have identified the man as Carl “Charles” Webb, born in 1905, based on DNA of the man’s hair. South Australia Police and Forensic Science South Australia have not verified the result, but said they were “cautiously optimistic” about it.