The Mysterious Death Of The Somerton Man

**"The Mysterious Death Of The Somerton Man"** is a video made by Ryan Bergara and Brent Bennett, uploaded onto YouTube on February 4, 2016. It was the first episode of the first season of BuzzFeed Unsolved: True Crime, and the first episode overall. You can find it here.

## Description

Just a friendly reminder to lock your doors.

## Notable Events

This episode was the first ever *BuzzFeed: Unsolved* episode and one of the only episodes where Brent Bennett co-hosted.

## Background

On December 1, 1948, in Australia, an unidentified man was found dead on Somerton Beach. All identifying labels on his clothing were torn off, and there was no apparent cause of death. His fingerprints were not found in any database. The case also attracted international attention in an effort to identify him, but circulation of a photograph of the man and fingerprints did not yield positive identification.

Four months after the initial discovery, a scrap of paper was found in a secret pocket in the man's trousers, reading "Tamåm shud," which translates to "it is ended." It had been torn from a page of a copy of the *Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyåm.*

Eight months later, a man claimed to the police that he had found the book from which the paper had been torn. After the book was located, detectives were able to read a local telephone number, another unidentified number, and a code inside the book.

The telephone number led to a local woman named Jessica Thomson, who reportedly was "very evasive" when the police called and "was going to faint" upon seeing the bust of the Somerton Man's body. However, she denied knowing him, and instead said she gave a copy of the *Rubaiyat* to a man named Alfred Boxall, who was found to have a different copy.

It was later found that Jessica had had a son, Robin or Rob, with an unknown father. This son apparently had very similar ear and dental similarities to the Somerton man, making him the most likely father.

Due to the lack of further leads, the inquest ended and the Somerton Man was buried in West Terrace Cemetery, Adelaide, Australia. Jessica Thomson died in 2007 and was buried in Centennial Park Cemetery, Pasadena, Australia.

## Theories

* The Somerton Man committed suicide.
* The Somerton Man was murdered.
* The Somerton Man was a spy who was murdered.

## Quotes

* Ryan: "The last thing [the Somerton man] had eaten was a pasty, which I'm assuming is Australian speak for pastry."
	+ Brent: "You mean he didn't eat the little thing that comes on, like, women's nipples?"
	+ Ryan: "What the fuck are you...?"
	+ Brent: "That's what a pasty is."
* Brent: "Well, I mean, are *your* fingerprints in a database?"
	+ Ryan: "Don't they do it when you're born?"
	+ Brent: "No!"
	+ Ryan: "Are you sure?"
	+ Brent: "They do not fingerprint you when you are born."
* Brent: "How many is lots of people? People are taking selfies with the body?"
	+ Ryan: "Yeah, this is 1948, so uh..."
	+ Brent: "Oh! You didn't—you left out that part!"
	+ Ryan: "l said that at the very beginning!"
	+ Brent: "Does it get weirder? Because it doesn't seem *that* weird."
* Brent: "Then we're do—you know, we're done!"
	+ (over Ryan's laughter) "We're done. Great for making me mad. You basically just told me a story with no ending. A really good story and then—"
	+ Ryan: "Well, I mean, it has an ending. It's just not the one you wanted to hear."

## Trivia

* This is one of the few episodes where Brent is the co-host rather than Shane.
* This is one of the few episodes that was part of the BuzzFeed IRL series instead of having its own show separate from BuzzFeed Multiplayer.
* This episode was redone by Ryan and Shane as a season finale ("The Mysterious Death Of The Somerton Man Revisited").