Evening. I appreciate you taking my call. My name's Malcolm, and I've spent the better part of thirty years researching cold cases here in Australia. But there's one that I keep coming back to. One that genuinely haunts me. It happened back in December of 1948, on a beach called Somerton Park, just south of Adelaide. A man was found dead there. Slumped against a seawall, legs stretched out, feet crossed. He was wearing a nice suit, his shoes polished to a mirror shine. A half-smoked cigarette was lying on his collar, like it had just fallen from his mouth. And here's the thing, nobody knew who he was. Not then. Not for over seventy years after. They called him the Somerton Man. And everything about his death was wrong. Everything.
The night before they found the body, the evening of November 30th, a couple walking along the beach saw a man lying in that exact spot around seven in the evening. They watched him raise his right arm up, then let it fall limply back down. They figured he was drunk, sleeping it off. Another couple saw him between half seven and eight. They noticed he wasn't reacting to the mosquitoes swarming around his face. Thought that was odd, but assumed he was just passed out. The next morning, around half six, a swimmer named James Lewis found him in the same position, same spot. But now the body was cold. The police searched his pockets and found a few things. A bus ticket from Adelaide. An unused train ticket to Henley Beach. A pack of Juicy Fruit gum. An American-made aluminum comb. A packet of Army Club cigarettes, but inside were cigarettes from a different, more expensive brand called Kensitas. No wallet. No cash. No identification whatsoever. And every single label had been cut from his clothing. out every clothing label takes real dedication - Frank'
The autopsy showed something had gone very wrong inside this man. His spleen was about three times normal size. His liver was engorged with blood. There was blood in his stomach. The pathologist, a fellow named James Douglas, said he was convinced the death couldn't have been natural, that it had to be poison. But here's the thing, they tested his blood and organs repeatedly. They found nothing. No trace of any poison. A pharmacologist named Charles Hopkins testified at the inquest. He said there were only a handful of poisons so rare and dangerous that they would decompose after death and leave no trace. He wouldn't even say their names out loud in court. He wrote two possibilities on a piece of paper and passed it to the coroner. Digitalis and strophanthin. The second one, strophanthin, comes from African plant seeds. It was historically used to poison arrows. Now, who in 1948 Australia would have access to that kind of poison?
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