Taman Shud Case

Sofia Hjermind
Mrs Lowell
Legal Studies
3 December 2014
Uncertainty
Cases with no resolution have always sparked my interest. This being the very reason I picked the Taman Shud case. Not only does this case remain a mystery 60 years since the initial discovery of the dead body in which opened this complex case, but detectives from now and back then have little certainty about what exactly happened. There are only a few details known for sure. How he died, how he lived and who he was remains an unsolved riddle Tuesday November 30, 1948: A couple known as Mr. and Mrs. Lyons were strolling down Somerton beach- shortly south of Adelaide. While walking down the shore they noticed and man lying against a cement seawall. The man was slouching
The described the man to bb extremely well dressed and to be wearing “smart new shoes polished to a mirror shine”(source 1). Unlike the couple before, they noted the man to be motionless when they discovered him. The two assumed the man must have just been asleep. The next morning Mr. Lyons the husband of the first couple went down to the beach for a morning swim. He came to find a group of people gathered in the same area he had seen the man the night before. As he walked toward the crowed he saw the man in the position as he was the evening before. Only this time the body was motionless, cold and lifeless. The body was taken to Royal Adelaide Hospital. There Dr. John Barkley observed the body. The time of death was noted to be around 2am and the cause of death was marked as most likely heart failure, and suspected poison as well. There were no marks of violence or struggle on the
The man had the copy of the Rubaiyat and explained how him and his brother-in-law had found it on the floor of their car one day while near Somerton beach but never questioned where it had come from. Detective Sergeant Lionel Leane examined the book and almost immediately found a clue. In the back of the book he found a faint penciling in of a phone number. The phone number turned out to belong to a nurse who lived close the Somerton. Her name was never publicly given due to her embarrassment to be linked to the case. Instead, she was given the nickname Jestyn. Jestyn was questioned and admitted she had given the copy of the book to a man during the war by the name of Alfred Boxall. Police immediately assumed the had finally solved their mystery. Only to their dismay, Boxall was discovered to still be alive and also also still possessed his copy of the Rubaiyat. Detectives then went to question Jestyn again. Nothing the young nurse told them helped much except for a story of a time her neighbors had informed her about a young man who had called looking for her. Presented with this story the police decided to show Jestyn the casting of the face of the dead man in hopes she would recognize him. When presented with the cast, the nurse seemed “completely taken aback, to the point of giving the appearance she was about to faint”(source 1) said the detectives