Home › Guides · Updated 20 October 2026
The facts of the Somerton Man case: the 1948 discovery on a beach, the 'Tamám Shud' scrap, the Rubáiyát and its code, the nurse whose number was in the book, the 2021 exhumation and the 2022 DNA identification claim.
On the morning of 1 December 1948, a man was found dead on a beach in a seaside suburb. He was well dressed, carried no identification, and the labels had been removed from his clothes. For more than 70 years, nobody could say who he was. It became one of the most famous unsolved mysteries.
The discovery
The man was lying propped against the sea wall, his legs crossed. Witnesses had seen a man in the same spot the previous evening, but thought he was asleep or drunk. In his pockets were cigarettes, matches, chewing gum, a comb and an unused train ticket and a used bus ticket. A suitcase later traced to a nearby railway station held clothes with the labels cut out.
The scrap of paper
Months later, investigators found a tiny rolled-up piece of paper in a hidden fob pocket of his trousers. It bore the printed words Tamám Shud, Persian for "it is over" or "it is finished". It had been torn from the final page of a copy of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, a popular collection of poetry.
The book and the code
After a public appeal, a man handed police a copy of the Rubáiyát he said he had found in his car near the beach around the time of the death. The final page was missing its last words, and the torn edge was reported to match the scrap. In the back were faint pencil marks: a few lines of capital letters that look like a code, and a telephone number.
The code has never been convincingly deciphered. Analysts have suggested it could be the first letters of words, perhaps of a prayer or poem, but it's too short to decode with confidence.
The nurse
The telephone number belonged to a young nurse who lived nearby. She told police she didn't know the man. Her identity was kept private for decades at her request, and her reaction to a cast of the man's head has been the subject of much speculation since. She was later named publicly as Jessica Thomson, after her death in 2007.
The cause of death
Doctors at the time suspected poisoning, perhaps by a substance that broke down quickly after death, but no poison was found. The inquest could not establish how he died or who he was. A plaster bust was made, and he was buried in a local cemetery in 1949.
Theories
Because of the Cold War timing, the missing labels and the code, theories have ranged from espionage to a broken love affair or suicide. None was proven, and some stories that grew around the case are hard to verify.
Exhumation and DNA
Police exhumed the body in May 2021 for DNA testing. In July 2022, a university professor and a genealogist announced that genetic genealogy pointed to Carl "Charles" Webb, an electrical engineer born in 1905. As far as is publicly known, the authorities have not formally confirmed the identification, so it's best described as a strong but unofficial result.
Why it still fascinates?
Even if his name is now known, much remains unexplained: why he was there, why the labels were removed, what the code means, and how he died. The case shows how new forensic techniques can reopen old mysteries, and how much remains unknown even then.
Sources and further reading
Facts checked on 20 October 2026. Spotted an error? Tell us and we will correct it.