The Tamam Shud mystery, aka the Somerton Man
On December 1, 1948, a man thought to be in his 40 was found dead on the Somerton beach in Adelaide, Australia. The man had nothing on him to identify him. Even the labels on his clothes have been removed. Though toxicology reports revealed he had been poisoned, the type of poison was unknown. Efforts to identify him were unsuccessful, and the clues kept piling up which only made matters worse, including a suitcase found with the body and a piece of paper with the words “Tamam Shud” written on it found in his trousers. It led the police to a book of poems called The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, which they did find in the man’s car near the crime scene. The book also contained a phone number and some jumbled letters which may have been a code. The code was never deciphered, and the phone number was owned by a woman who swore she didn’t know the man. She had since been crossed off the list of possible suspects. Decades went by and the mysterious case of the Somerton Man remains an enigma.
