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The History of Exorcisms & The Somerton Man
24 Plays2 years ago
On this week’s episode it’s possessed bodies and bodies without identities!
First up: we’ve of course covered specific exorcism cases on the show, but on this episode, Felicia exercises the demons and explores the broad history of exorcisms, dating all the way back to written text to modern day, with roots in religion and the Catholic church.
Then Lauren covers the mysterious case of The Somerton Man - this well-dressed mystery man was found on the shores of a beach in an Australian suburb with no clear cause of death, no identification and only random objects in his pocket, including a scrap of paper with the Persian phrase “tamám shud” (“is finished”). It’s one of the most perplexing mysteries from down under that has plagued amateur sleuths and armchair detectives alike for nearly 75 years! But has the who in this whodunnit finally been solved in this year thanks to forensic genetic genealogy?!
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Transcript
Introduction to Sinister Sisters Podcast
00:00:12
Speaker
Welcome to the Sinister Sisters podcast. I'm Felicia. I'm Lauren. We're best friends. And we like spooky stuff.
Junior Bake Off: Humorous Disasters
00:00:21
Speaker
And I accidentally gave my recommendation for this week before the podcast started. But I'm happy to go into it just all over again. Just do it all again. We're diving right in. And this is acting. Yeah, this is acting. This is also not a horror recommendation, but it is horrific in certain ways.
00:00:42
Speaker
So last night, Travis, my boyfriend and I got home from a concert, we decided to start watching Junior Bake Off, which is like the kid's version of Great British Bake Off, which is one of the greatest shows of all time. And we start watching and I'm like, oh my God, British children baking in a calm tent. Like I've never wanted to see anything more. That sounds perfect. Start watching.
00:01:07
Speaker
And the first episode, we dive in and every kid is just a terrible baker. Like there's so bad, like their showstopper, their first showstopper assignment, like they're all trying to like make these cakes. It was literally like Great British Bake Off format.
00:01:28
Speaker
Same format same format their first showstopper the kids are bringing up their freaking cakes one at a time and every single one is a disaster it looked like there was like this kid that kept putting way too much salt and things and so the
00:01:43
Speaker
Sorry, the judge would take a bite and be like, oh, oh, oh, I think you might have overdone it on the salt. Like, it's like, why
Junior Bake Off vs. Junior MasterChef
00:01:50
Speaker
are you putting so much salt in your cake? And then like the decorations. Just terrible. Like, they'll like they have to explain what it is because it's so poorly executed. She's like, well, it's just um,
00:02:01
Speaker
This for me represents the galaxy that I'm really interested in. And I was like, are you kidding me? It looks like you just threw a bunch of Play-Doh on there and mixed it around. And it's horrible. They're so bad. And then at the end of the first episode, elimination comes up. There's two kids that are pretty good. I'll say that. There's two kids that are good. One of them got Star Baker, obviously. And then there was a few kids that I was like, OK, well, all these kids could go home because they're terrible at baking.
00:02:31
Speaker
It doesn't really matter which. It doesn't matter which. And at the end of the first episode, they're like, and our first baker to go home is big, big paws. Nobody! Nobody. They said, nobody home after all those terrible cakes. Nobody will have... Felicia would have sent home 10, at least. I said goodbye. I said somebody to tell these kids that they're not very good at this.
00:02:59
Speaker
I do have no I will say I am worried
13: The Musical vs. Movie Adaptation
00:03:03
Speaker
for you that that possibly you you know I'm just saying I don't think little kids are that good at many things
00:03:15
Speaker
Well, I know, but if you're gonna go on TV. You would think the best of the best, you're right. You would think the best of the best is on that baking show. Yeah, you would just think, I don't know. And especially since like, I'm a big fan of Junior, MasterChef Junior. And those kids are freaking geniuses. And they're like younger than that. And I'm like, why are those kids so good? And these kids so bad. The reality casting director really failed them.
00:03:45
Speaker
They didn't promote it enough, they didn't get the right kids. They're all the children of people who run the show, I don't know. Do they have bios? Are they like, I've been cooking since I was two.
00:04:01
Speaker
Oh, they do the kid thing where they're like, in addition to baking for his siblings, little Johnny likes to play guitar on his free time and is very passionate about music. They each have a little gimmick that's their thing. Yeah. Oh my God. If any of our listeners are British, and I'm really sorry about the British accent, I just did it for a lot of that review. I thought it was quite good. I bought it.
00:04:28
Speaker
I'm a disaster today, but that's mine for the week, so. I love it. Nothing else. Go ahead. Well, I was going to say I'll try to tie mine in because I actually, we watched Thirteen, the musical. Oh, the musical. I thought you meant the movie with the bad girls. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, which I think it's hypothetically related. I think this is now. So I think Thirteen, the movie came out. They made Thirteen the musical for the stage with Ariana Grande and
00:04:57
Speaker
Our friend, I don't know that he's really our friend, but he did do an Insomnia show, Aaron Simon Gross. Do you remember him? Yes. You remember him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wait, what did he do for us? It was the Insomnia Met Chinatown, I think. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. He was in the original production of Thirteen on Broadway.
00:05:17
Speaker
Oh my God. Did I start? I don't know. I should have made it more apparent to you, but I'm terrible. I'm sorry. I hope he's not listening today. I don't think I don't know that he listens. He probably doesn't listen to our pod. I think we're safe. But this is now a Netflix movie based on the 13 musical. So it's I will say I think the kids are super talented. I'm a little partial. Both my friend Christian and Laura cast it. But
00:05:46
Speaker
Yeah, and they did like a big nationwide search and like
00:05:50
Speaker
the kid that played young Simba in the Lion King movie is like a big part of it. And he's super talented and they're all really sweet. It's just like the most Disney-ified. Like we were looking at things to watch and James is like, oh, there's a new musical on Netflix. Like maybe we should all watch that. And I was like, oh no, it's like raunchy. And then it was PG. And we were like, well, I guess we can watch it. And they just like took out any
00:06:19
Speaker
shadiness. There's like a couple. Yeah, there's like a couple brief kisses, but that's pretty much it.
00:06:27
Speaker
Well, what's funny is, honestly, I don't know the musical that well. So I don't know if I'd be able to tell the differences. Have you seen the musical on stage or just listened to the? Just listened to it. So I don't know how crazy it is. And the truth is they do call each other sluts and stuff in the musical. And I don't know that you're really doing that at 13? I mean, maybe. Maybe some 13-year-olds. But they felt like, I mean, these kids felt like real kids, like children.
00:06:56
Speaker
so interesting but they're very talented it was fun watch some i love i love being musical so i'll probably watch it but you should and they don't call each other sluts in the movie they do not call each other sluts it's real uh yeah real clean real clear took out any like there's like some light bullying
00:07:17
Speaker
Light's bullying. Okay. Okay. Okay. And does it take place like modern day or do they like put it when it came out? Modern day. Yeah. So real cell phone culture. Got it. Got it. Got it. Okay. All right. Well, interesting. Very interesting.
Exploring Exorcisms Across Cultures
00:07:32
Speaker
Yeah. And Debra Messing sings and it's quite bad, but that's it. Great. Love that for her. What a funny recommendation situation this week. I know. I was going to say I have other ones, but I'll save them for next week.
00:07:46
Speaker
Especially considering our topics. It's like, what podcast was that? Okay, we're going to a very different podcast now. We like people to watch all kinds of content, to be well-rounded listeners. Absolutely. Should I go for it?
00:08:05
Speaker
Okay. So I don't know, we're gonna title this portion of the episode, but I I'm talking about exorcisms. And I guess the process of history of a little bit, not talking about one specific exorcism, I wanted to kind of and that's kind of my topic this week and next week is just kind of these, oh, and similar with the the white light situation. Recently, I've just been interested in like,
00:08:31
Speaker
like the backgrounds of these phenomena that we're discussing versus like individual case necessarily. And I was just like exorcism is such a wild thing to me that it's it's still so still recognized in the Catholic Church. Still such a huge part of horror movies. Obviously, we've talked many times I feel like about the not thin line, but the combination of Catholicism and horror films and how those things just have gone hands in hand for
00:09:01
Speaker
many decades now. And so I just wanted to look into it a little bit. So I'll start with this, that the idea or the practice of exorcisms is not just simply a Christian thing. I thought maybe it was, but it's in many different cultures.
00:09:20
Speaker
Of course, in Catholicism, we're thinking about demons and the devil and some other religions. There's other types of spiritual entities that could be possessing a person.
00:09:33
Speaker
Oh, and yeah, I guess I'll give you a quick definition. And exorcism is the religious or spiritual practice of evicting demons. This says genes or gins. Yeah, which is kind of like a like a genie, basically, and other spiritual entities from a person or an area. So, you know, when we talk about someone like exercising a house or whatever, that is believed to be possessed.
00:10:00
Speaker
So spooky, spooky. So this shows up in many different cultures and many different religions. So we see it a bit in Buddhism. We see it obviously in Catholicism, the Eastern Orthodox Church, Lutheran churches, Hinduism, Islam, and even Judaism. Oh, and Taoism or like Chinese religion. And
00:10:30
Speaker
you see it and it's kind of this thing that's old as time or old as the as like written history. Like as old of documents as we have written about the world, there is writings about exorcisms. Of course, nowadays, and even some of the things I'm going to talk about today, the Catholic Church
00:10:49
Speaker
recognizes now that a lot of what would have been considered demonic possession nowadays can be explained with mental illness. So you know, hysteria, schizophrenia, multiple personality disorder, threats, like there's I mean, like there's so many things that like, that nowadays, we're like, Oh, it's probably that and not necessarily an actual demonic possession.
00:11:19
Speaker
And yet, the Catholic Church, which is what we're focusing today, has never gotten rid of exorcisms completely. It's definitely slowed down a lot, but they've never really gotten rid of it. I will say my priest growing up, one of my friends who is a little bit more in that
00:11:40
Speaker
Like we call her the princess of the church. She was really involved in the church scene. She asked him one time if he had ever been a part of exorcisms. And he said more than once, he wasn't the main priest, like he wasn't the one actually leading it, but was like present for multiple exorcisms in his life, which, you know, he's like 50.
00:12:01
Speaker
Like he's not even like that old of a dude. Yeah. And that's just like one priest in one town in Roanoke, Virginia. Yeah, it's fascinating. So I think nowadays there are around and this is I got this stat from something from 2016. So it might be wrong. But there's around 50 exorcism priests that are like certified by the Vatican.
00:12:27
Speaker
practicing in the US. So that's not very many. And of course, it used to be a lot more. So the Catholic Church first created like, you know, their most official guidelines around exorcisms were established in 1614. And we have these documents from I love and thank you Wikipedia for saying vermoires from vermoires of the Catholic Church.
00:12:53
Speaker
And that kind of laid out how to perform an exorcism, how to recognize the signs of demonic possession, etc, etc. And then the guidelines were revised by the Vatican in 1999. When, and this is very interesting to me, there was a huge demand for exorcisms. So 99
00:13:16
Speaker
Yes, but I think this was like over a significant amount of time. I think as soon as the movie The Exorcist came out. Wow. Yes. And we have a lot of other possession demonic films coming out into our culture that are being widely seen by American audiences and audiences all over the world. It's like,
00:13:42
Speaker
You see more of what you see. That's not the phrase, but there's something like that. Right. So all these people were like, oh, God, now we have an exorcism and power suggestion. That's much better. And so they started getting like all these thousands and thousands upon thousands of requests for exorcisms. And they were like, no, something's wrong. We need to like update what's going on here because we literally can't get through all these. And of course, most of them are not actual demonic possessions in their eyes. So.
00:14:12
Speaker
Man. Yeah. So that in the 1999 version, there is a focus on differentiating between mental illness and demonic possession because that seemed to be a big issue that they were being a little willy-nilly about before, I guess.
Signs and Procedures of Exorcisms
00:14:34
Speaker
Whatever it was before, it was like, come on down. You can have an exorcism too. Yeah, come on down.
00:14:40
Speaker
So the exorcists, okay, how do you become an exorcism priest? You have to get approved by the Vatican. But there's actually a course, which I thought was interesting. The Vatican offers a course on exorcism. And in 2019, which is very recent, obviously, was opened up to members of other Christian denominations as well. And the course is called Exorcism and Prayer of Liberation.
00:15:09
Speaker
Should we take it? I mean, I don't think we're allowed because we're not priests. I think you have to be a priest. I mean, religious leader. I don't know. I should have looked into that. I'm not sure. So it's offered by the I'm going to this is a lot of words. I don't know how to say. Let's see.
00:15:27
Speaker
Sacredos Institute at the Regina Apostatolum Pontifical Athenium. What? But it's a course that basically talks about that exorcism is a confrontation, not just a simple prayer. And it is a process that once started, you have to finish. And now I think let's go through kind of
00:15:55
Speaker
the steps that I mean, not that I've taken the course, but these are the different things that that would be explored in it. So we see a whips out or syllabus. Yes, here's my syllabus. OK, so some of the signs of demonic invasion, which I like that wording, of course, very depending on the demon. But a lot of these we heard before we've seen in movies, but I'll go through some of them now. So.
00:16:21
Speaker
Cutting, scratching on the skin, biting of skin, a cold feeling in the room, unnatural bodily postures, changes in a person's face or body. That's all like the little contortion-y stuff we see in a lot of our horror movies. The possessed losing control of their personality and entering into some sort of rage, a change in a person's voice, supernatural physical strength,
00:16:50
Speaker
Speaking in tongues, a person could not have learned before. Knowledge of past events. A person could not have known about knowledge of present events. The person has not actually witnessed levitation, which is of course the big one for the spooky scary's expelling of objects, things, certain animals, like what? Like, I guess that's like throwing things up. Gross.
00:17:17
Speaker
A tense hatred aversion to religious objects. And what does anti-pathy mean? I'm googling it. Anti-pathy, the deep sealed feeling of dislike. OK, so basically the hatred of a church entering a church, speaking Jesus' name or hearing scripture.
00:17:43
Speaker
There's some others that aren't on this list that I found that I've heard of before, like the smell of like brimstone or like a rotten egg smell, like a rotting flesh is another one that. Yeah, so do you remember? So one of the COVID symptoms that people were like smelling a foul smell. Oh, did you hear that one?
00:18:06
Speaker
I know there's weird smell and taste things, of course. Yeah. And so it was like, uh-oh, maybe COVID is like actually just a demon. A demon? No. And that's why I was able to expel it so quickly because I am strong with the Lord. Just kidding. And can't smell. You can't smell? You can't smell the demon. Oh, yeah.
00:18:32
Speaker
And so once you've a priest has established that someone is under the possession of some sort of evil force and the Vatican has approved it, the ritual book, the updated book that I talked about from 1999 that they use to teach about exorcisms is called Of Exorcisms and Certain Supplications. It's an 84 page document from the Catholic Church.
00:19:01
Speaker
that basically is the current version of the rite of exorcism. So it's two chapters with two appendices. And the first chapter is the rite of major exorcism. And it's the text that you use in a formal ceremony for exorcisms.
00:19:22
Speaker
and which you're not allowed to perform without the permission of a bishop, which is who approves the exorcism. That's the craziest part to me. Do they get into that and the conjuring and all that? I forget that step. The fact that the Vatican has to approve it, what is the Vatican even seeing? Isn't this person somewhere across the world? Right. That's in the conjuring film. That's why they're recording all that stuff because they have to provide proof
00:19:52
Speaker
that there is a possession. So that's why they're taking the recordings and sending them off to the church so that they can get approved to actually perform something there. I thought that came up, yeah. Yeah. I can't remember if like, I mean, because I can't remember if all that is on the actual story of it or if that's just the movie. It's always hard to say because I can't remember anything I've ever researched after I've done it. Yeah.
00:20:19
Speaker
Okay, so and then chapter two is like other texts that can be used.
00:20:26
Speaker
as part of the ritual if needed. So there's a section of nine Psalms. Is that how you say that? Psalms, sorry. I haven't been in church since I was like 12. All right, a collection of nine Psalms with a concluding prayer, a collection of five gospel readings, and then two pairs of precative and imperative formula of exorcism.
00:20:55
Speaker
What does that mean? I'll tell you right now. Different religious pieces of text. Yeah. So then the appendix is we have the first one is titled prayers and exorcism to use in particular circumstances for the church. It says here, the introduction says the devil and other demons cannot only afflict persons by temptation and vexation.
00:21:23
Speaker
but also places and objects and can cause various forms of opposition and persecution of the church. If the deacon bishop, I think that's how you say that, in the particular circumstances, judges it opportune to announce meetings for the faithful to pray under the guidance and direction of the priest, selected prayers
00:21:44
Speaker
and directives can be taken from the following pages. And then there's basically like a list of each thing. So first you have your liturgical greeting, then you have the liturgy of the word, then a collect address to the Holy Spirit, statement of purpose, a section of Psalm 68,
00:22:08
Speaker
And then the actual exorcism, which is what's covered in the first chapter, the rites of exorcism. And then another prayer that's, it's like a prayer to St. Michael. And then the last part is a sprinkling with holy water, blessing and dismissal. But once again, it's so different than a mass. It's very different than a mass. And once again, like there's these,
00:22:37
Speaker
extra prayers because you can't end an exorcism once it's begun until the demon or whatever is gone. So once you start, you cannot end. I feel like movies really hit on that. Yeah, exactly. Movies are like, we cannot stop. Yeah. And then this part, which I thought was very interesting in The Second Appendix, are all these different prayers that can be used privately in the struggle against the powers of darkness.
00:23:07
Speaker
And it's all in Latin, so there's five different prayers to God. There is a section for the Holy Trinity, a section for Jesus, Signs of the Cross, Blessed Virgin Mary, just all these different prayers. St. Michael again, all these saints to kind of... I'm not sure if this is for the priest to use privately after they've done this.
00:23:36
Speaker
Or if it's also can be given to like a family might help them through the process. It's not super clear on here, but it's, it's something like that. But yeah, so there's a, I watched a vice video that was like day in the life of a modern day exorcist. Thrilling stuff. Yeah. I feel like I want to check out. That's the recommendation.
00:24:00
Speaker
Yeah, truly. It wasn't as like, they end the life as I as I wanted, but it did get some interesting information. So the video starts out. And he says something that I don't know exactly how I meant it. But it sparked a thought for me. But he basically says like, the Catholic Church can't
00:24:23
Speaker
get rid of exorcisms because if they do, they're saying that there are no demons. And if they say there's no demons, that means there is no devil. And if there is no devil, does that mean there is no God?
00:24:38
Speaker
So we had to keep up these exorcisms.
Exorcisms: Mental Illness or Possession?
00:24:41
Speaker
Yeah. And that was so fascinating to me. I was like, oh, so like even if all of this is a hoax, like the Catholic Church literally could not afford to stop doing this like ancient practice because of like what it would mean ultimately for like the the faith belief system of like all Christianity. It's so crazy. Boom. Like I never even thought about that.
00:25:09
Speaker
That is really crazy. Yeah. So in that video, he also talks about how the manifestations of evil, which is all the the signs of a possessed person that I talked about are, and especially those that happen during an exorcism are actually meant to like distract the priest and distract from
00:25:34
Speaker
like the levitating, the throwing the objects, the speaking in tongues, like all of that is used to kind of like confuse and throw off the person performing the exorcism so that they can't get the demon out, which I thought was like an interesting thought about that. I mean, makes sense. I've always I mean, that pea soup moment really feels like the exorcist. It's like a distraction.
00:25:58
Speaker
There's also, oh, and he also said that he gets about 5,000 cases a year and he said, I think he said a year. They said usually only one of those is an actual true possession. The rest are typically mental illness or people that just need someone to talk to or having a bad time in their life or something. It's very rare that there is actual possession. Which I guess should probably.
00:26:27
Speaker
Yeah, that is good. I mean, it feels like they should probably start adding Kate Bushes running up that hill to the place of things in an exorcism. Yeah. How you deal with it. Yes. And then last kind of tidbit. There is a international association of exorcists that meet every other year in Rome. Wow. And I for some sort of
00:26:56
Speaker
Maybe there's workshops. I don't know. A little pasta, a little bonding. But in the video, the vice video that I think was from 2016, he said that they that that organization has actually been approved by the or supported by approved by whatever the Vatican just a couple of years ago.
00:27:18
Speaker
but I think there's about 200 members currently from all around the world. So yeah. Are demons real? Is it just mental illness? Or what another person mentioned in another video that I forgot about, is it psychodrama?
00:27:41
Speaker
which is this idea that what we see in these movies, we can have these like instincts to imitate or to roleplay. And through confirmation bias, like the people around you are like, Oh, I know what that is, because I saw it somewhere once. So my brain is making a connection to demonic possession. And then once someone thinks they're demonically possessed, are they acting more and more in a way of
00:28:11
Speaker
demonic possession that they've seen in the movies? Is it someone's like mental state spiraling out of control because of what
00:28:20
Speaker
content they've actually taken in over time? Or is it demonic possession? Hard to say. So I will say, I feel like I've seen pretty convincing, I don't know, some like pretty convincing videos of like, especially the like speaking different languages always freaks me out. I don't know how to explain it.
00:28:42
Speaker
That is the one that always gets me for sure. Right? I don't know. It's like even if you're a contortionist, even if you like, you know, can throw up on command, even if you can, you know, scratch your skin. How are you speaking Latin? I don't know. I don't know. I don't like it. I don't know. Well, thank you for that. That's it. Yeah.
00:29:06
Speaker
Thank you for doing such a, I like a little overview of our topics. This is so nice. Yeah, it's interesting. It's interesting stuff.
Unraveling the Mystery of the Somerton Man
00:29:28
Speaker
Amazing. All right, so I am doing The Somerton Man. So the reason I'm covering this is because a couple weeks ago, they actually have officially identified him. And James's cousin Bailey, who listens to the podcast, recommended I do it because she said there's new findings. So this topic is from her.
00:29:52
Speaker
So the Somerton man who has been known or the case has been known as Tamam should as well, which I'll get into why it's called that is basically just this unidentified man who was found dead on December 1st, 1948. That was a long time ago. So it is kind of crazy that people are still researching.
00:30:15
Speaker
He was found on the Somerton Park beach just south of Adelaide in South Australia. So this couple had seen the man the night before, saw him kind of laying on the sand, but thought he was just like drunk or sleeping. So they didn't approach him. And it was on December 1st in the morning that the police started to receive multiple reports and they went to go get the body. So for
00:30:43
Speaker
Whatever that math is, I guess 73, 74-ish years, no one knew who this man was. There were many theories that people have had over time. Of course, the internet loves coming up with theories, but no one came forward to claim his body. So the authorities just kind of had to go off of clues.
00:31:08
Speaker
They placed his time of death at 2 a.m. And he was a 5'11", 40-50 year old, well-dressed man in a suit and tie. Interestingly, like the tags of his suit and tie and everything he was wearing were all deliberately cut off. So kind of first weird thing. He had matches, a pack of juicy fruit gum, a used bus ticket, an unused train ticket.
00:31:38
Speaker
and two hair combs on his person. He also had a half smoked cigarette on his collar, but the most famous clue and you know what I hinted at earlier why they call it Timam should is because he had a scrap of paper
00:31:55
Speaker
with the printed words Tim Mom should on his body as well. And that is basically it's Persian, and it means finished or it is ended. So super freaky. He had no wallet, no cash, no ID, nothing to reveal his identity. Yeah, the tag thing was actually weirdly smart, right? It's like I guess even trace where he bought his clothes. I don't know.
00:32:24
Speaker
Right. It's crazy and like very deliberate. Yeah. To cut out the tags of your underwear. I don't know. Yeah. So about two weeks later on January 14th. Oh wait, that's a lie. So about a month later, I guess a little over a month later on January 14th, 1949, the staff at the Adelaide railway station found his suitcase or what they assume to be this man's suitcase.
00:32:53
Speaker
It was a brown suitcase, had no label. It had been checked into the station's cloakroom around 11 a.m. on November 30th, which was the day before he was found dead. And it contained a red checked dressing gown.
00:33:12
Speaker
A red pair of slippers, four pairs of underwear, pajamas, shaving items, pretty normal things. A light brown pair of trousers, an electrician screwdriver, a table knife, a pair of scissors, and then just like some other random things. But the most specific thing that they found that they thought linked him to it was that there was a thread
00:33:39
Speaker
That was the same thread used to repair the lining in a pocket on the trousers of the dead man. So they felt pretty clear that it was him. There was the name T. Keene on a tie. Keene was also on a laundry bag. He was on an undershirt.
00:33:58
Speaker
So the clothes were found out to have been made in the US, which is super weird, and added to the mystery of who this man was, how he got to Australia if he was wearing clothes from the US. They eventually did an autopsy of the body, and the doctor believed that he had died from heart failure due to poisoning.
00:34:22
Speaker
I know, plot thickens. So the coroner believed that the poison wasn't like an accidental, you know, he didn't accidentally take it or it was accidentally administered, but he, you know, couldn't figure out if it was put in his body by the man himself or if someone else had.
00:34:42
Speaker
but still nothing really finalized. They also, it's really like a, this is really like a whodunit or like a mystery case I should have said at the start, but they did actually find the book from which the like scrap of paper that he had in his hand was torn out of a book and they found the actual book
00:35:03
Speaker
And it was from, I'm going to butcher this, the Rubiot of Omar Khayyam, which was a 12th century poet, basically authored this book, and it was the police kind of put out an appeal for people to find the book, they were able to locate it.
00:35:21
Speaker
And a man came forward with this book and he said it had been found tossed into the back of his car, like right around the time of this man's death. And the book contained several handwritten annotations, including a suspected code, which was just like basically like some numbers and letters that people- This feels like the plot to the Da Vinci code or something. Right? Like I feel like that's where we're going.
00:35:49
Speaker
Well, so with this code, some of the theories on the internet are like, he's definitely a Russian spy, which is pretty funny. But they did find a phone number of a nurse whose name was Jesse Joe Thompson. But basically the theme of the book, just so you have that in your head too, the theme of the book is basically just to live life to the fullest and have no regrets.
00:36:13
Speaker
So this poem, the part that he had taken out that said it has ended, led the police to believe that it was suicide. So they kind of accepted that as his cause of death. They did track the nurse down. They called that phone number. And she said she had never met him. She didn't know who he was. So they eventually just buried him in the cemetery in 1949.
00:36:41
Speaker
in Australia and the tombstone reads, here lies the unknown man who was found at Summerton Beach. So that is sort of where things were left at that time. Many, you know, conspiracy theories, as I said, people thought that, you know, all of these attempts to hide his identity were super weird. And with that possible code in the book,
00:37:05
Speaker
People thought he could be a Russian spy. Others thought he was a professional ballet dancer because weirdly, I know, weirdly in the coroner's report, it said that he had high and well-developed calf muscles and that he also had the habit of wearing high-heeled and pointed shoes.
00:37:26
Speaker
So I don't know. People really clung on to that and thought he must have been a ballet dancer. I mean, anything's possible, I guess. But the most convincing theory I thought, or the one that I think is so interesting, is that the nurse that he had the phone number for, her son, Robin, had similar ears and teeth to this unidentified man.
00:37:52
Speaker
And Robin had enjoyed a career as a dancer with the Australian Ballet Company. So Jesse Thompson, the nurse, had already started a relationship with someone who would go on to be her husband. So there's all these theories that Robin was this unidentified man's actual son, but she wanted to keep it a secret and not be found out that he wasn't this man's son that she eventually married.
00:38:19
Speaker
So possibly she just didn't come forward with this guy's identity and didn't want to mess up her marriage or mess up Robin's life by being raised by someone who wasn't his father.
00:38:33
Speaker
So my new update is a couple weeks ago, new information has been discovered and they think they finally identified this man. So Professor Derek Abbott, who is from the University of Adelaide in Australia, says that they have successfully
Carl Webb: The Identified Somerton Man
00:38:49
Speaker
identified this man to be Carl Charles Webb, who was a 43-year-old electrical engineer from Melbourne.
00:38:59
Speaker
in classic form. The South Australian police haven't confirmed anything. They're going to do their own investigation of the body. They're going to look into all of this. But this professor, I'm not really sure
00:39:15
Speaker
why they exhumed the body, if it was mostly the police pushing to do their own investigation and then also this professor got involved, or if he asked them to exhum the body. I'm not sure who led that part, but the kind of crazy part about this, so basically Professor Abbott is working on this investigation and was on the search to see if there was any merit behind this Jesse Thompson illegitimate son thing.
00:39:45
Speaker
And unfortunately, Jesse was dead by this time, and so was her son, Robin, was dead by 2009. So Rachel Egan, who was Robin's granddaughter, and Abbott, the professor, decide to get married a day after meeting each other. Why?
00:40:08
Speaker
They fell in love. Rachel Egan like gives these interviews and she said to ABC in 2019 she said like people have said that he probably married me due to my DNA and she's like I think there's some truth in that. I mean my first thought was like couldn't he just ask for her DNA like he didn't need to marry her right like to get her DNA I don't know. They're still together though like seemingly in love.
00:40:32
Speaker
That's wild. This is a very strange story. Anyone who gets married after a day, I'm like, why don't you just wait though? Yeah, that's crazy. So Professor Abbott worked with this other genealogist whose name is Colleen Fitzpatrick.
00:40:48
Speaker
And just as we're finding out with a lot of true crime cases or, you know, we're learning, they analyze DNA evidence. So there had been a plaster cast made of the man's face more than 50 years ago by investigators and they were able to take hairs from this plaster cast.
00:41:06
Speaker
And then they found a match in a DNA database and it was his cousin and they had to kind of like build out, you know, I don't really know how all of this works, but they built out the family tree. Yeah. They narrowed it down from all of these different names. And Charles Webb had no death record.
00:41:24
Speaker
He vanished from the public record and public eye in April of 1947. So I guess, you know, almost a whole year and a half before they found his body, which is kind of interesting. But was a great fit for what they were looking for, basically.
00:41:42
Speaker
And the DNA showed that there were no genetic ties between Rachel Egan and Webb. So Robin wasn't even related to him. No one was related. But I guess they found love. And so nobody was looking for Carl when he died. So we get into it a little bit.
00:42:07
Speaker
It's just a little tag on the end, but he was so Charles was Charles Charles. No, he goes by Carl. It's like Charles Carl.
00:42:20
Speaker
So Karl, I'll say Karl, was born on November 16th, 1905 in Footscray, which is just a suburb of Melbourne, and he was the youngest of six siblings of a German-born man and an Australian woman. He married Dorothy Robertson in October 1941, and he was an instrument maker as well as being an electrical engineer. That's what I said he was, right?
00:42:46
Speaker
So he seems like a cool dude, but the last mention of him in the historical record I mentioned was in April 1947 when he and his wife separated. Seemingly he left his wife, but in October of 1951, three years after he had died, Dorothy placed a notice in a newspaper stating that she had begun divorce proceedings against him on the grounds of desertion.
00:43:15
Speaker
So basically she just said, I'm getting a divorce because he disappeared and hasn't been around. So by then she had moved from Melbourne to Butte, which is a town that's 89 miles northeast of Adelaide. So the kind of new theory is that they believe that he came to the state
00:43:38
Speaker
to try to find her and win her back or something. And whether he actually made contact or not, I'm not, you know, we don't really know. But T. Keene, which was on all of the clothes that they found in the suitcase, was the name of his sister's husband. And so Thomas Keene was this guy's name, and he seemingly, you know, gave these, or like Charles bought these clothes from him secondhand.
00:44:08
Speaker
But obviously, there's still so many questions left unanswered, and it's going to be interesting to see how this story progresses now.
Speculating Theories on Webb's Death
00:44:16
Speaker
Like, you know, why did he go to Summerton Beach? Did he kill himself? Was there murder? Why did he write that nurse's name in that book if he didn't, you know, there is no genetic ties? Can I give a fan theory? Give a fan theory. I want to hear it. I'm sure this is not it, but I just think it'll be fun.
00:44:36
Speaker
fan theory, the wife finds out he's had an affair with this nurse. She poisons him because women in murder typically poison because it's more hands off, got rid of the body, couldn't get the money because they weren't actually divorced. So she had to file for desertion after she had killed him three years ago. I love that. I think that's a hot take. I'm making it up. Just making stuff. I think poison is I mean, that's what they always say, right? And also like,
00:45:06
Speaker
I don't know, the concept to me that you would just like, I don't know, it's very sad if he just went to the beach and killed himself. I think she probably made it look like a suicide. I like that idea too. She took the page from the book and put it in his hand. Yeah. I can't believe the page like survived. Right. Then they can get that out of his hand. That's what blows my mind, honestly. It reminds me of when Hermione Granger had the last words in her hand and she was petrified.
00:45:36
Speaker
They feel it open. Yes. What did it say? Answer that for us, Ron. Was it Basilisk? What did she write? Oh, pipes. It said pipes. Pipes.
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:45:47
Speaker
She's already answered that for us, Ron. It's pipes. Pipes. Anyways. OK. Dang. They even needed Hermione when she was petrified. She is pulling the weight of the whole team. Oh, yeah. The whole series. The whole series. Amazing. Yeah, that's great. What a mystery.
00:46:05
Speaker
Right? Interesting. Yeah. I love it. Thank you, Bailey, for the recommendation. And thank you for all that info on exorcisms. Now I'm going to go try not to get possessed. Try not to, everybody. That's good advice coming from us to you. And we hope you have some sweet, sweet nightmares. Bye.