TAMAN SHUD case, still a mystery

I was actually quite surprised that no-one had posted anything about this fascinating case that still remains unsolved today.

In 1948 the body of a man was found on Somerton beach in Adelaide, Australia. The man was never identified. Police found a suitcase which they believed was his containing clothing in which all but three items had their name tags removed. The name on the remaining items pointed them to a man who was later identified as not being the dead man. A small note in the man’s pocket said “taman shud” which is the last line of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. It had been cut from a book. A doctor seeing the note on the TV contacted police to say that the book had appeared in the backseat of his unlocked car. It was the copy that had had the note removed. In the back of the book were coded markings which have not been able to be deciphered as yet:

MRGOABABD
MTBIMPANETP
MLIABOAIAQC
ITTMTSAMSTGAB

As far as i know, this strange code remains unsolved. Perhaps some of the bright minds here at ATS can give it a try?...

some more...

A name in the front of the book led police to a woman who said she had given it to a man named Boxall during the Second World War. Upon seeing a plaster cast of the dead man she identified him as Boxall. This appeared to solve the mystery of who the man was, until Boxall was discovered alive with his copy of the book undamaged. Coincidentally the woman who identified the man lived in Glenelg – the last town visited by the dead man before he travelled by bus to his final destination. The woman asked police not to record her name as she was married and wanted to avoid scandal – they foolishly complied and her identity is now also unknown.

source

This is from wikipedia about that strange code:

In the book, it is unclear if the first two sentences begin with an 'M' or 'W', and there appears to be a deleted or underline line of text that reads 'MLIAOI'. Although the last character in this line of text looks like an 'L', it is fairly clear on closer inspection of the image that this is formed from an 'I' and the extension of the line used to delete or underline that line of text. Also, the other 'L's have a curve to the bottom part of the character. There is also an "X" above the last 'O' in the code, and it is not known if this is significant to the code or not. Initially, the letters were thought to be words in a foreign language[33] before it was realised it was a code. Code experts were called in at the time to decipher the lines but were unsuccessful.[37] When the code was analysed by the Australian Department of Defence in 1978, they made the following statements about the code:

# There are insufficient symbols to provide a pattern.

# The symbols could be a complex substitute code or the meaningless response to a disturbed mind.

# It is not possible to provide a satisfactory answer

en.wikipedia.org...

Strange indeed, 60 years have passed and still a total mystery. any thoughs?

Image of the code.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/47db064fec09.jpg[/atsimg]

List of people connected to the Taman Shud Case

[edit on 8/1/09 by makeitso]

Maybe the letters each represent a word...

Or the first word of specific pages of a book or something.

I'm not good with codes, but this is very interesting! I don't think I've ever heard of it before.

There seems to be a current attempt to solve this case by a University of Adelaide.

This is from wikipedia...

en.wikipedia.org...

Decryption of the "code" has been started from scratch. It has been determined that the letter frequency is considerably different from letters written down randomly, the frequency is to be further tested to determine if the alcohol level of the writer could alter random distribution. The format of the code also appears to follow the quatrain format of the Rubaiyat supporting the theory that the code is a One-time pad encryption algorithm. To this end copies of the Rubaiyat (also the Talmud and Bible) are being compared to the code using computers to get a statistical base for letter frequencies although the code being so short may require the exact edition of the book used. With the original copy lost in the 1960s, researchers have been looking for a Fitzgerald edition without success. Abbott is traveling overseas in August in an attempt to locate a copy.[60]

This case must be a real legend in Australia, would be nice to hear from our aussie members if they have heard any news about this lately.

Hi,

My name is Denley Bihari. I am one of the students from the University of Adelaide working on solving the case. For those still interested the final report is basically finished (a few minor tweaks to go).

Final Report
It will say invalid certificate but I assure you I am legit (you'd think the elec eng department of a uni could get a web certificate right)

There are some interesting reports on the case if you youtube "Somerton Man" too

Cheers,
Denley

[edit on 8-10-2009 by denley]

[edit on 8-10-2009 by denley]

I Don't know who the Tamin Shud man is but i have this to contribute.

back in the late 40's early 50's Australia let a large amount of migrants in from war torn Europe and they were not paticulary picky on who they were or their backround, just as long as they were willing to work......those who came to Adelaide were mainly from the Balkans and the Soviet Union. It's a known fact in the Eastern European community in Adelaide that a large amout of war criminals came here and also so did certain individuals that were sent here for spying perpouses. The war criminals were generaly shunned in the community and left alone while those sent here to spy by the Soviet Union were taken into the community and cared for and had all their needs caters for.

Lastly when these people came here the war had only just ended and there was no such thing as counciling or anything like that to help you deal with what you saw during the war. Some turned to drink to forget, some became transients and some ended up in the nut hose and some chose to commit suicide.

This leaves these possibilities for the Tamin Shud man

1. He was a war criminal that could not live with what he had done and decided to commit suicide.

2. He was a war criminal the community decided to take care of in their own special way.

3. He was a spy that commited suicide because he was recalled and did not want to return.

4. He was a soviet spy who was desposed off after he out grown his usefullness.

5. A traumatised migrant eho could no longer cope with what he saw/was made to do during the war and decided to commit suicide.


Surprisingly i don't think the case would be too hard to solve. Has anyone asked some of the older migrants of that era ??

I just heard of this via another post on Earth's Unsolved Mysteries. I looked at the code and, as someone who likes to play around with letters and make anagrams and such, I immediately saw "AIAQC" as "And I am quite certain." I saw MLIABO, and read the first letters as "My life is ... " and the O probably stood for over, but the A and B were less clear.

Then I saw a few lines up, almost the same letters are crossed out, without the B. That I immediately saw as "My life is almost over." It could be "My life is already over" or "My life is about being o-something" but that's what stood out to me. That made me wonder what the B could have been added for. Basically? My life is almost basically over? I doubt it. The B should add more to it than that. Then again maybe it's something like "My life in Australia..." something.

I thought about whether he knew he'd been poisoned, so I looked for a P. At the end of the second line, there is ... ETP. I immediately saw "eat the poison." What comes before it doesn't speak to me as loudly as the rest.

I saw on Wikipedia that my knee-jerk observances match at least one theory pretty well. I thought it interesting that they read the O and the X above it to mean "cross over nothing." I think even that may be overthinking this.

Very interesting story ... I'm going to read more about this.

Originally posted by makeitso
Image of the code.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/47db064fec09.jpg[/atsimg]

List of people connected to the Taman Shud Case

[edit on 8/1/09 by makeitso]

I have been doing some research and think it was nothing more than a suicide.

I suspect as do others that the code is simply the first letter of a word...I came up with this:


WRGOABABD = When Robyn Grows Older And B....A...B.....D
WTBIMPANETP = With The Boy In My Prayers And Now End The Pain
MLIABOAIAQC = My Life Is All But Over And I Am Quite Certain
ITTMTSAMSTGAB = Its Time To Move To Somerton Adelaide Moseley Street To Go At Beach.

Or something very close to that.

Evidence points to the strong possibility that Jessica Thompsons son Robyn was the offspring of the deceased man and they are trying to get permission to exhume the body.