on Somerton Beach?

- [Voiceover] No.

- [Voiceover] It's one of the most mysterious

and creepy cold cases of all time pretty much.

- [Voiceover] OK.

- [Voiceover] So, so the time is December, 1948

in Adelaide, Australia.

- [Voiceover] All right.

- [Voiceover] A body is found on Somerton Beach

dressed immaculately in a suit with polished shoes,

and his head leaning against a wall.

The suspected cause of death was heart failure,

but more likely poisoning.

However, the autopsy showed no trace of poison.

The last thing he had eaten was a pasty,

which I'm assuming is Australian speak for a pastry.

- [Voiceover] You mean, he didn't eat the little thing

that comes on like women's nipples?

- [Voiceover] What the fuck are you--

- [Voiceover] That's what a pasty is.

- [Voiceover] There was no wallet, no ID.

All the name tags on any of his clothes

had been snipped off--

- [Voiceover] Oh, that's weird.

So far I've been like, OK, this dude is just like

not that crazy.

- [Voiceover] Pretty much the story is

guy found dead on the beach,

and hold on, it gets fucking weird.

Oh yeah, and then the fingerprints

that they took from him, unidentifiable.

The guy was off the grid.

Nobody could identify the body.

They put an ad in the newspapers.

- [Voiceover] Well I mean, are your

fingerprints in a database?

- [Voiceover] Don't they do it when you're born?

- [Voiceover] No!

- [Voiceover] Are you sure?

- [Voiceover] They do not fingerprint you when you're born.

- [Voiceover] Either way,

his fingerprints were unidentifiable.

- [Voiceover] OK.

- [Voiceover] And the weird thing is, it was on the news

of just people saying, "Do you know who this is?"

And people came, lots of people from around the world

came to look at the body.

And they couldn't identify it.

So they just didn't know who he was.

- [Voiceover] (laughing) How many is lots of people?

People are taking selfies with the body.

- [Voiceover] Yeah, this is 1948, so uh--

- [Voiceover] Oh, you didn't, left out that part.

- [Voiceover] Oh, I said that at the very beginning.

- [Voiceover] Does it get weirder,

'cause it doesn't seem that weird.

- [Voiceover] All right, fast forward to

about four months later.

They find in his trousers a sewn in pocket

in his waistband.

It's like a secret pocket.

And inside the pocket they found a rolled up

little piece of paper that they believed to be

from a rare book called the Rubaiyat.

The piece of paper had the printed words,

"Tamam Shud" on it,

which translates to it is ended.

So, maybe they thought, OK,

this could be a suicide, but who would--

- [Voiceover] No.

- [Voiceover] Who would kill themselves

with an untraceable poison?

- [Voiceover] Most people don't put their suicide notes

in secret pockets.

You want people to find it, right?

- [Voiceover] Anyway, so now they're searching

for this book, the Rubaiyat,

to match up to the piece of paper found

on the Somerton Man,

but they can't find it,

so they just bury the guy.

His body is taken a cast of,

so they could look at it later.

He's embalmed just, you know, to preserve him.

OK, so now we're eight months later

from when the body is found.

A man walks into the police station

with a copy of the Rubaiyat.

His story, by the way, is fucking bananas.

He claims that just after the body was found,

he found a book in his car

that he kept parked by Somerton Beach,

but at the time, he thought nothing of it

until he heard about the search in a newspaper article.

The book has part of the final page torn out,

and, sure enough, it fits the piece of paper

found on the Somerton Man.

That paper came from this book.

- [Voiceover] From that specific book?

- [Voiceover] From that specific book.

- [Voiceover] Like, that doesn't check out.

- [Voiceover] He goes, "Hey, I think I have that book

"you're looking for," eight months later.

- [Voiceover] Yeah, no.

- [Voiceover] So, they look at the book,

and there's a phone number in it

and some kind of strange code.

So we'll talk about the phone number first.

So the number leads them to this woman, Jessica Thompson.

- [Voiceover] OK.

- [Voiceover] Who, by the way, is nearby this area.

And when they interview her,

she's very evasive.

And apparently she was reportedly going to faint

when shown the bust of the man.

The whole interview she's just crying,

but she denies knowing him.

She did say that she gave the book,

the Rubaiyat, to a man named Alfred Boxall.

So they thought, oh Alfred Boxall,

maybe that's the name of the Somerton Man.

And unfortunately, Alfred Boxall

is actually still alive.

And he, not only that,

but he does have a copy of the Rubaiyat.

Later it was found that Jessica had a son.

They don't know who the father is,

but this son shares very similar

dental and ear similarities to the Somerton Man.

Now going to the code,

the code that was written in the book.

The code is even less helpful.

Today is still yet to be cracked--

- [Voiceover] How do we know it's a code?

- [Voiceover] Because it looks like a fucking code.

So, I mean, and that's pretty much the fucking

end of the story.

Like, and now there's just all these questions.

Like, who was the man?

They think maybe he may have been a spy.

- [Voiceover] If he's a spy,

I don't think it could be murder.

I don't think it'd be murder anyways

because you don't kill a person,

and then just leave them there.

Like, that's just the worst murder job ever.

- [Voiceover] Or the greatest.

I mean, technically it would be the greatest

'cause we still don't know who did it,

or if he actually was murdered.

That sounds like a good murder.

A murder that's so good

that you don't even know he was murdered or not,

is to me a perfect murder.

- [Voiceover] Then we're done,

you know, we're done. - [Voiceover] (laughs)

- [Voiceover] We're done.

Great for making me mad.

You basically just told me a story with no ending,

a really good story, and then--

- [Voiceover] Well, I mean it has an ending,

it's just not the one you wanted to hear.

("Desolate")