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Hey weirdos, I'm Alayna. I'm Ash. And this is Morbid.
Yay. Woo. Morbid party bitches. And before we get into the Ash-centric episode today...
We have an update that I'm sure everybody is going crazy about right now.
Dude. It's on a case that we covered in episodes 197 and 198, the Oklahoma Girl Scout. uh murders one of the worst cases i've ever read through one of the worst the hardest that we've podcasted definitely Yeah, one of the worst things I've ever had to research in my entire life.
We also discussed it on an episode of The Murder Squad with Billy Jensen and Paul Holes.
That was crazy. And this case was completely unsolved.
There were three little girls that were... brutalized at camp.
Brutalized. They were 8-year-old Lori Farmer, 9-year-old Michelle Gousset, and 10-year-old Doris Milner.
It's like they were babies. The cutest little babies you ever saw.
Just going off to summer camp. They were brutally murdered at summer camp way back in.
I mean, the trial happened way back in 1979.
I believe it was, there was a suspect Jean Leroy Hart, who they really believe did it, but they could not connect him with any kind of physical evidence, any really strong physical evidence.
DNA was really not happening then. But luckily, they collected stuff.
They found semen on a pillowcase. It's terrible.
But now Mays County Sheriff Mike Reed said that they were able to use advanced like now DNA technology To completely say that Gene Leroy Hart was the murderer.
Without a doubt. Which is... horrific because he was acquitted.
That is the... I think one of the most devastating parts about this entire case is that he was acquitted.
Like, he sat there and heard that verdict be read and...
He got away with murder. He got away with three murders.
But then two years later, he died of a massive heart attack.
So... there's that like silver lining there.
Except he really never had to face anything for what he did.
That's the, that's, the shitty thing. And he's, I mean, this case, he was a true monster.
There's not even a word. There's not even a word.
It's outrageous. But Sheriff Reed said there was absolutely no room for doubt here.
That is, it's 100% definitive. He was quoted as saying, Pray that there's something that we've done that gives the family a second of something that even resembles closure or acceptance or something.
But as far as peace, there is absolutely nothing that this case has given me There is absolutely nothing about this case that has given me even one second of peace, period.
So he was, now we know, this was one of those things where when we talked about it, I remember being like, are we ever going to find out?
I don't want this to end with us going, well, I guess we'll never find out what happened to those poor children.
Well, it's so frustrating because. I feel like a good portion of people who have studied this case knew all along.
Absolutely. It was one of those things that when you read it and research it, you're like...
It's clear as day. He did it. In my mind, I was like, he did it.
When you presented it, without a doubt in my mind, I was like, Yep.
But when you don't have those definitive pieces of evidence, you're like...
I don't want to say he did it because I don't have that DNA link.
I don't have that like smoking gun. It's a big claim.
And sometimes it really does seem like somebody did it and then they didn't.
But this is one of those cases where... There was a lot of like police work that just was like nonstop.
They really went for it. They kept it open.
They kept it alive. And it's awesome. And it's great to hear.
But... I feel really bad that those families are kind of having to live through like another trauma well because they're starting a entirely different grief process right now Exactly.
And now just knowing that that's the guy and knowing that he got acquitted.
Well, I think that's the biggest thing is that he got acquitted.
Yeah. Like, that's the thing that would really bother me.
But like Sheriff Reed said, I hope it gives them something.
Yeah. anything, but he's right. There's no peace in this case.
And it's a really, really sad case, but I am happy to see that it at least has a conclusion of some sort.
And now hopefully more healing can begin.
But yeah, we had to mention that. Really crazy, but look at what DNA can do, guys.
It's crazy. It's the future. It's also super weird, as you said, look what DNA can do, guys.
I got a 23andMe. Whoa. Freaking notification.
Like literally, look, it says now. Look what it can do.
Look what it can do. It can notify you on your cell phone.
There you go. It can make your hotline bling.
Okay. Well, what's weird, honestly, is that this case that we're going to talk about today a lot of the movement that we're going to talk about in part two because yes this is going to be two parts guys so Just so you know, right off the bat.
But what we're going to talk about in part two a lot is DNA and like how it could possibly solve this.
Crazy cold case. I'm very interested in this one.
I've read a lot about this one. So I'm like, let's go.
What's... Freaking wild. I was just looking for something, like a case to cover.
I was working on something else, but I was like, eh.
I don't know, it was like a spooky case and I wasn't feeling it.
And then I was looking for something else and I found this and I had never heard of this.
You'd never heard of this? I had never heard of the Somerton Man.
Wow, that's shocking. I know. I think our Australian listeners are going to be pretty stoked.
Because if you, like me, have never heard of this, This is one of Australia's biggest unsolved mysteries.
And the story starts all the way back in 1948.
We love it. And in Australia, 1948, it was Summer's Eve, not the body wash.
I was going to say. But it was November 30th.
And in Australia, summer starts on December 1st.
For a second, I was very confused when you said that and then I realized we were in Australia.
Yeah. Isn't that wild? That was because I was like, what?
You were like, I'm literally so confused.
That's winter. Yeah. What? So yes, it is November 30th, 1948, and it couple is walking along Somerton Beach in Adelaide, which is the capital of South Australia.
Now, as they're walking down the beach, they notice this guy and he's laying up against like the wall of the beach, sort of in a weird position.
Basically only his head and shoulders were propped up against the wall and the rest of him was just kind of like sprawled out.
And he also just didn't look like a typical beachgoer at all.
He was wearing a nice suit. Like a couple pieces there.
There was a couple pieces to that suit. Few pieces.
More than one, I'd say. I was gonna say a three-piece suit, but that was not the truth.
Many suits, many pieces. He was wearing clothes.
He had super duper polished shoes, which you're on the beach, guy.
Why you got shoes on? You're going to scuff them all up.
The couple thought that this guy was just drunk because as they walked by him, They saw him kind of raise his right hand either to like wave at them or maybe to light a cigarette, they thought.
But before he could get his hand all the way up, it just slumped right back down.
All right. He was going through it. It was like it was beyond his control.
Yeah. But being 1948 and all, they just minded their business and they went about their walk.
They were like, that's not for me. So another couple actually saw the same man on the beach that same night.
And they remembered also thinking that it was weird that a man dressed so nicely would be laying on the beach in the state that he was in.
Yeah. So this couple saw the man sitting there with a bunch of mosquitoes swarming around his head at this point.
And they commented to each other that he must have been dead. dead to the world to not be swatting all those mosquitoes out of. his face oh that freaks me out now little did they know this man actually might have been dead as they muttered that to each other or he was like Right on death's doorstep.
He was on the brink. Yes. So at about 6.30 the next morning, December 1st, 1948, first day of summer in Australia.
Oh yeah. All of the above. A man named Neil Day, he was out riding horses with his friends on the beach.
They were like amateur jockeys. Now, as they were riding, Neil noticed the man that everybody else had.
But he called to his friends and he was like, maybe we should go check on this guy.
Like, he doesn't look so good. And as they got closer, it became clear that this guy was definitely not breathing.
So they called the police right away. Man.
Now pretty much as soon as investigators arrived on the scene, they knew that this man had died.
But finding out who he was and what he was doing there on that beach is a mystery that has still not been solved to this day.
So the man who became known as Somerton man over the years, he had no wallet.
He had no form of ID whatsoever. That's what's so crazy about this.
Because I've known it as like, I've heard it as like the Somerton Man and also like Tamim Shude.
Yep. We'll get into that. Or is that what it is?
Tammamshud. Tammamshud. And yeah, that's what's so wild about it, that there's no form of ID whatsoever.
None. None. And that they were... It's just crazy like this.
Yeah, this case is really like we just talked about with the Oklahoma City, the Oklahoma Girl Scout murders.
We said at the end of that, we were like, this needs to be solved, even though it's like... dozens and dozens and like decades and decades of time goes by.
It's like, come on, there's always ways.
And this is one of those that I'm like, You gotta know.
It's one that I never answer when someone asks me if you could have one case solved.
I know. But it should be one. Well, there's so many that I feel like I just blink when somebody asks me that.
I'm always, because I always want Jean Benet, right?
That's my number one, but there really is just an endless list because I want them all Exactly.
But this one is up there. This one, especially now that I like dove headfirst into this.
I'm so glad you did this one. Oh my god, it's wild.
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So no wallet, no form of ID. He was wearing boxers.
A white singlet, which is like a man's kind of like undershirt.
Just a man's? In some sources, it kind of, or not, like in some photos that I saw of it, it's almost like what they would wear wrestling.
Oh, OK, like a one piece sort of. Yeah. And then he was wearing a white shirt. a brown sweater, a brown double vested coat, and brown slacks.
Okay. A monochromatic king. Yeah. Now, the shoes that he was wearing, they were so brightly polished that the investigators were convinced there was no way that he had been walking around this beach for or like anywhere for a long period of time.
They also noted that one of the pockets on his pants was mended with an orange thread that just looked unfamiliar to them.
Yeah. Now, like, saying that now, you're like, they didn't recognize the orange thread.
Like, what? This was 1948. This was during the Cold War.
There was, like... a ton of stuff that just didn't exist to them yeah so they're like what the hell is this and like What is this orange thread?
Right. And like things were processed and made in other parts of the world that some people just had no idea about.
I know that's really wild. It's crazy. And it actually, it comes up a lot in this case.
So in trying to identify the man, they look to see if his name was printed on any of the tags in his clothing, because especially way back then that was like a thing to do.
And there were labels on clothes back then where you could like know where something was made.
Yeah. You could pinpoint it easily. But when they looked, they saw that all the tags inside of his clothing were deliberately torn out.
They had very deliberately been ripped out.
So that they could not be traced back to where they were bought.
Exactly. So the contents of his pockets turned up a fair amount of things as well.
There was a railway ticket to Henley Beach. a bus ticket to North Glenelg for 10 45 AM, which was the morning before he was found. um there was also a metal comb a packet of juicy fruit which by the way i was like that existed back then that kind of makes sense I feel like Juicy Fruit is that like old school.
Oh, you want to know how? old school Juicy Fruit is, it's been around since 1893.
What? Because I was like, what? And I googled it and I was like, Oh, my God.
Oh, my God. Like, I hope people are as shocked by that as I was.
I figured it was old, but not that old. I do.
So old. Then there was also a packet of Army Club cigarettes. but the cigarettes inside of the packet, so it said Army Club on the carton of them, But then the cigarettes inside were not that brand.
They turned out to be a different brand that was a little bit more expensive.
And they were called Cancitas. Okay. Then finally there was a handkerchief, a packet of Bryant and May brand matches, and that was that.
All right. Now on the collar of his shirt was a half smoked cigarette.
And something that struck everybody as odd was that the man wasn't wearing a hat.
Literally, pretty much every man ever during the 1940s was wearing some kind of hat.
And I never really thought about that because at first I was like, OK, you were like, I wouldn't that wouldn't be weird to me.
It was like everybody wore hats back then.
And it would have lined up with the way that he was dressed because he was dressed so nicely.
I was going to say, yeah. back then you would have topped that off with a hat definitely so in instead of wearing a hat, his hair was styled and it was pushed all the way back, which apparently was a very American style at this time.
Oh, okay. And also cue an Aaron Samuels reference.
There you go. You look sexy with your hair pushback.
Thank you. I'm looking at pictures of him right now.
He's a good looking dude. I know. And it looks like they've age progressed him.
Like they have actually filled out his face.
They did. They did. We'll get to that in part two.
I love that. I love it. I love you. We'll get there.
But let me tell you, he's a handsome man.
Sexy fella. Yeah. So the body was transported from Somerton Beach to Royal Adelaide Hospital. but it was actually never brought inside.
Wow. Yeah. John Barkley Bennett pronounced the man dead outside while he was in the ambulance and immediately had the body transported to the mortuary. where investigators hoped that Dr. John Dwyer, who would be the one doing the autopsy, would find some kind of meaningful clue. but things somehow only got more confusing when the man's body was studied.
So the first thing that Dr. Dwyer took note of was that Somerton Man's pupils were small and they were weirdly shaped.
Okay. So then he looked for signs of any defensive wounds to see if some kind of struggle had gone down.
He found none. In fact, the man's hands were said to be very neatly kept.
He had recently cut his fingernails and he had clean fingernails.
Hmm. The way that they put it, like, back then was that his hands were not used for any kind of manual labor.
Oh, so that gives you a clue. It does. Who he would be in life.
Absolutely. And another thing, another part of his body that gave a huge clue were his calves.
His calves, unlike his hands, had actually been exercised pretty regularly.
It seemed like he was using those calves.
Look at him. but they weren't in the shape that they would be from like playing most sports.
Instead, his legs looked like he was a dancer. because his calves were pretty high set, like set high up. and they stood out so prominently.
And his feet also made it look that way, that he was a dancer. because apparently he had wedged toes, which suggested that he wore some kind of pointed shoes regularly. maybe a shoe like a riding boot, or maybe pointe shoes for ballet.
So overall, he was in really good shape.
He was a well-built guy, but his inside showed some cause for concern.
For one thing, his spleen was quote unquote strikingly large and firm and about three times the normal size.
Oh, wow. So immediately something's wrong.
You never want that. You do not want that.
Anything inside your body, you never want it three times the size of its normal size.
No, I certainly don't. Yeah, it's a good general rule of thumb.
It is. addition to that his liver was super bloated so bigger than it should have been and it was filled with blood There was also blood found in his stomach and his kidneys.
Huh. Yes. So the blood within his organs pointed to signs that maybe he was poisoned.
Yeah. So then they had to do some testing to determine if there was any poison within his system.
But when they did that, they didn't detect any poison.
So weird. Now, even the last meal that he ate, which was a meat and veggie pasty, didn't turn up any traces of poison. okay so weird so what's that about i have no idea so ultimately the death was presumed to have occurred quote unquote no earlier than 2am, and the cause of death ended up being listed as heart failure due to unknown causes.
Do you know? You might not know because who knows?
Because who knows? Who knows? Did you know?
I don't know. I'll let you know if I know.
I wonder if they looked at his esophagus.
I don't know the answer to that. Or maybe back then they wouldn't.
I don't know if that would be even something they would do.
I will look into it and I will answer you in part two.
I appreciate it. Cool. Because now I'm curious.
I know. I just thought about it and I'm like, I don't know.
I'm sure they did. I don't know if I would, but...
Well, the problem is now actually, and we'll go over it a little more in part two, the original autopsy report is gone.
Oh, OK. Yeah, which is interesting. That is interesting.
Now, so I said that his death was listed no earlier than 2 AM.
They felt like he had died at 2 a.m. The tricky thing about listing the time of death, though, was that the doctor went purely off rigor mortis.
Yeah, like didn't really go off of anything else before.
There's so many other contributing factors to look at.
But he did his best. Yeah. Sort of. I mean, it's also like they didn't bring the body inside.
Yeah. Yeah. The ambient temperature around the body, like that all needs to be taken into consideration.
Exactly. Because that's going to affect everything.
That's the thing. So his thought was that the man could have ingested some kind of poison like digitalis or strophanthin. which leave the body's system rapidly once they've taken effect.
Oh, digitalis. Yes. Interesting. So the body was held at the morgue and the investigators tried to figure out who this man could be, where he was from.
Everyone was hoping that someone would walk in and claim the body, but it just wasn't happening.
People were coming in to try to see if they could identify him.
But literally anytime somebody came in and tried and they followed up on it, it was not who they thought it was yeah there was a period of time where people thought that he was like a 60 year old missing farmer But first of all, his hands were not used for manual labor.
And pair that with the fact that Somerton Man was believed to have only been about 45 years old.
Yeah. Dead end right there. Doesn't work.
Now, Somerton Mann's info was released to the public, and the official report said he was 45 years old, stood about 511 inches in height.
He had a strong build. He was clean shaven.
He had hair that was going gray at his temples, but it was kind of like gingerish overall.
Love it. And his hair was fair in texture.
He had gray eyes and he had natural teeth.
But something interesting to note about his teeth was that he was missing his back molars.
And he also seemed to have been born without his lateral incisors.
Oh, okay. Which are the two teeth next to your front teeth on either side.
Yeah. Oh, so he was missing those. He was missing those.
Like he had been born without them. Yeah.
So months went by with no break in the case.
The man had been fingerprinted by this point and his prints were sent out to local police stations to see if any match could be made, but none could be made in South Australia.
Like no match to the fingerprints. So they sent the fingerprints out to be checked basically across the world and nothing came back.
Who the hell is this guy? I literally have no idea.
I gotta know. Now J Edgar Hoover announced after some time that the U S didn't have any records of the man's fingerprints. which was definitely a letdown because there were some clues that hinted that maybe this guy was from the US.
The first being the way that his hair was styled.
And the second being the suit that he was wearing.
The suit that he was wearing seemed to come from America as well.
Now, furthering the story that Somerton Mann had at least traveled from America, was a very hopeful discovery made just about a month after the body had been discovered.
On January 14th, 1949, the Adelaide railway station called the police and they told them that they had a suitcase. that had been there unclaimed since november 30th ding ding ding look at that date the day that summertime man had arrived in adelaide So the police had been looking for some kind of break like this for like a month, so they hurried on over there. and they got to searching the contents of this case, this luggage case.
They were hopeful that they would maybe be able to find a name. but they did not end up getting a name and it only made things way more confusing.
It's like the more things you get in this case, the weirder it gets and the more confusing it gets.
Genuinely, because every time they're walking down like a new path, you're like, oh, this is going to be it.
Like, this is going to do it. And then you're like...
What? They find another piece of evidence that detours them completely another way.
Truly. So inside of the seemingly new suitcase, by the way, They found a bunch of clothes, pajamas, undershirts, ties, pants. all of the above.
And most of the labels on the clothing had been ripped out, just like the missing labels from the clothing on the body.
But the labels that weren't ripped out were labeled T Keen, but it was spelled two different ways.
It was Keen with an E and Keen without an E.
Oh, on the different like clothing. So no leads came from searching that name.
And the investigators actually came to the conclusion that it had been put there on purpose oh like this man was trying to hide his true identity wow Now, along with all the clothing, the investigators also found a match to that orange thread that they had found stitch in his pants that had repaired one of his pockets.
There was this little thread card with the orange thread wrapped around it.
Now, interestingly enough, like I was saying in the beginning, like there was certain stuff that was just produced in one part of the world and not the others.
That thread was only produced in America.
There was nowhere. outside the US where that man would have been able to even get his hands on this particular kind of thread.
That is interesting. Right? Now, another only made in the US item inside the suitcase was a jacket.
The jacket was stitched with a particular stitch that was only used by sewing machines in America.
It's up to us. Like, it very much is. Guys, it's up to us to figure out who he is.
We gotta know. This is our problem now.
And isn't that so crazy? It's our problem now, guys.
Isn't that crazy, though, too, that... there was only like in like in america that was the only place where that stitch existed get that thread yeah that stitch isn't that cool it's just crazy So in addition to the exclusive US items, there was also some kind of kit found in the suitcase.
Now, this kit included a cut down table knife like it had clearly been like cut and it had been sharpened to somewhat of a point.
There were two pairs of scissors. One of the pairs was broken.
There was a screwdriver. six pencils, some zinc, and a stenciling brush.
Do you have any idea what the fuck that kit could be for?
And a stenciling brush. A stenciling brush.
It's so funny. When I first read this, I was like, that's what for me.
Yeah, for some reason. The zinc and the stencil.
Me too. I was about to say like zinc in a stenciling brush.
I don't know. All right. So investigators believed that the kit was one that would have been used on merchant ships by the third officer on board. who would have been in charge of stenciling the cargo.
Oh, shit. So we'd like cut out stencils and shit, use the pencils.
I don't know what the zinc was for. I probably should have looked on the lot.
Maybe the zinc was like, some kind of something to seal it a little bit.
Something to seal it. Boom. There it is.
I literally pulled that out of my ass. That could be 100% wrong.
Yeah. Just guessing. It was to seal it, to make it shiny, I don't know.
Now, there were also some letters within the suitcase.
And they weren't really letters. They were like stationary and letters hadn't been written yet on them.
And then there was envelopes with stamps.
Okay. And another thing that some people note as odd, no socks in the suitcase.
He was found wearing a pair of socks. So was he only going to wear those socks?
I don't know. And so some people are like, well, it was the war, like there were rations, there were shortages.
Yeah. But when I was looking into it, a ton of people... like we're like no there was no shortage on socks back then ah so it That's one of the things in this case that people kind of like stick to, but there's really no explanation as to why he wouldn't.
Yeah, like it's just another confusing thing that there's really no answer to.
And it really goes... could just be one of those things where he's just that kind of guy who doesn't wash his socks a lot and just uses the same socks.
Maybe he's like me and he doesn't wear socks often.
Maybe his socks had a hole in them. Those are his lucky socks, maybe.
Yeah. Also, I just looked it up. You make stencils out of zinc.
Boom. Like you make the actual stencil. That's cool.
So that adds up like that whole thing together.
I feel like that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, that definitely makes sense.
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ShipStation. Make ship happen. So the staff at the railway station, they were asked if they remembered anything about this guy, but it's a fucking railway station.
They were like, I have no idea. Oh, a guy in a suit?
Yeah, you were like, oh, everyone that walked through here?
I saw him. Like I saw hundreds of him. Literally.
So nobody held that against them because they were like, yeah, this is busy.
And it really didn't matter too much because the police were pretty positive that this suitcase belonged to their guy anyway.
Yeah. because the underwear packed away inside matched the brand that had been found on the body.
And then there were also a bunch of handkerchiefs packed that matched the one that was tucked into Somerton Mann's pocket.
Put that with the thread and shit. That's him.
Exactly. And also all the clothing matched the size of the clothing that he was found wearing.
Yeah, that's him. It's him. So based on what they had found, they thought that it might be a good idea to check the different ship records and immigration records too, since this man really didn't seem to be like he was from Australia.
But checking all the records turned up with nothing.
They got nothing. No tea keen, nothing like that.
It was literally like every avenue they went down in this case just led to a dead end.
He's a phantom. He is he I don't even know what he is.
He's so mysterious. Yeah. So by June now, remember he was found in December, June, there had been tons of leads followed up on.
Lots of times where investigators thought that they finally had the identity of this guy, only for the person in question to show up at the police station alive.
And at this point, they were going to have to bury the body soon.
Yeah, they can't just hang on to that forever.
They cannot. It had been embalmed within days of arriving in the mortuary, but it was starting to decompose and they were like we can't keep this yeah and it's just like honestly it sounds like you know like cold but it's like You don't have room for that.
You can't just hang onto a body in a morgue forever.
It's got to be claimed or something needs to happen.
Right, exactly. So in order to get the man buried but still have access to him when they needed it, they decided to have a taxidermist come in to do a plaster casting of the man.
So Paul Francis Lawman arrived at the morgue for the first time on June 2nd to see the body.
And then by June 10th, the plaster mold of the man was made from the shoulders up just like a bust, basically.
Yeah. Now just days later, a man named Sir John Cleland arrived to examine the body one final time. before he was going to be buried because the original coroner had actually written to Sir Cleland back in April to see if he could help.
He had a great reputation. He was a professor of pathology at the University of Adelaide, which is going to come up a ton in this.
And he was called in for cases like these where everybody was just stumped.
He had performed more than 7,000 autopsies during his time.
So he was a good dude to have in your corner.
He knew some stuff. He had seen some shit, but he hadn't seen this.
So he looked over the body again. He was actually the one to note how shiny the man's shoes were and say like he couldn't have walked along the beach very far this day.
Yeah. And he was just as convinced as the original coroner that there had to have been some kind of poison used here based on the evidence from the organs. but at the same time he was surprised to hear that there was no vomit on the area on the beach where he had been found. and no reports of anyone seeing him go into convulsions.
Yeah. Usually those are two things that will happen if you've been poisoned.
Yeah. And of course, he was very surprised at the lack of poison detected within the body.
So he's looking it over. Once he finishes looking over the body itself, he moved on to the clothes that the body had been dressed in that day.
And it was then that he made one of the biggest discoveries in the case's entire history.
Although... it wouldn't actually seem to be that big of a clue right away. of a hidden pocket or more realistically a fob pocket which is where men could hold their pocket watch oh okay yeah Sir John Cleland found a rolled up piece of paper.
It was like rolled up tightly. I'm shocked that they hadn't found this.
It's crazy. The pocket was very like it was like, quote unquote, hidden.
Like it was kind of you wouldn't be looking for it still.
I mean, you should be looking for it as an investigator.
I was going to say when it's your sole job to be looking for it.
I feel like you should have found this one.
I'm going to call him to the carpet right now.
You should have found it. You should. Yeah.
John Cleland had to have his moment though.
I'm glad he did. He's like, I'm a bad bitch.
He deserved it. So of course I'm going to find something huge in this case.
Absolutely. Now, the paper had very clearly been ripped from a larger paper.
And the words, Tamam should, were typed in decorative font on the paper.
So no one in the room was quite sure what those two words meant or where they even originated from.
But they thought enough to put the discovery in the local paper, basically saying that the words looked like they had been ripped out of a book. and to come forward with any information that someone might have.
In the meantime, they had a body to bury.
So, Somerton Mann was buried on June 14th, 1949 in West Terrace Cemetery. the secretary of the South Australia Grandstand Bookmakers Association, a man named Mr. Alan Saunders, and the rest of his team, they felt like this man shouldn't be buried in an unmarked grave just to be like forgotten. yeah so they banded together and they purchased the plot where he was buried and the headstone that marks his grave That's really nice.
Right? So they actually had the wherewithal, too, to bury him in a spot where they uh thought that it would be easier if the body needed to be exhumed someday yeah so they did that on purpose which i was like that's pretty cool that is Now his headstone read, Here lies the unknown man who was found at Somerton Beach, 1st December 1948.
Ooh, that's... Chilling. So creepy. Even more creepy is that apparently, flowers would be specifically left on the grave site during springtime.
And it seemed to be at like certain kind of intervals. as the years went on, even up until the late 70s.
I was just going to say, set up a camera.
And then I was like, 40s it's the 40s yeah i don't think they just have like a tiny little tiny little video camera they could have staked it out They should have staked it out very much because my first instinct was camera, but I quickly realized where we were.
But you got ice. But like, that's where I was going.
Exactly. Yeah, you were getting there. Stake it out.
They should have. See who it is. They didn't.
Oh, come on, guys. Yeah. So there was a lot of great work, I have to say.
For sure. A lot of great work. A lot of not so great work.
Yeah, there's just a couple of things that you're like, come on.
As we get through, there's going to be a couple more things that you're like...
I don't understand that choice. Not like crazy major, but just like things.
Guys, what? So soon after Somerton Mann was laid to rest, the police were contacted by a man who worked as a reporter.
He had seen the information about what was found inside the man's fob pocket, and he wanted to offer a bit of a tip.
Ooh. Yeah. So that's creepy. Ooh, that's really chilling.
He also told them about a book called The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
Kayyam, I believe is how you say it. The book was a collection of poems, which is why it was entitled Rubiat in the first place.
In Persian, a rubaiyat are verses of poetry that consist of four lines.
Okay. Now he wasn't like, oh, by the way, here's a random book recommendation.
Like, I think you should read this. The reason he was telling them about this book was because the book ends with the words, It now seemed like the random paper in this guy's pocket actually had a hell of a lot more impact on the case.
So the author of the original Rubaiyat was Omar Khayyam, I believe is how you say it.
I looked it up and I think I'm saying it right.
It sounds good. I hope so. Now, he was from what is now known as Iran, and he lived there during the 11th century.
So he had a lot going on. He was not only a mathematician, but he was also a philosopher, an astronomer, a physician, and a poet. poet, hence the poetry book.
He's busy. He's booked and busy. Now, when he wrote the book initially, it actually was not incredibly popular because it was one of those works that was just way ahead of its time.
Omar was actually an agnostic man living in an 11th century world.
Hmm. Not as catchy as Xenon, but whatever.
His poems covered really intense subjects like love, death, whether or not an afterlife exists and whether or not God exists.
So imagine like visiting those ideas in the 11th century.
I was just going to say that's risky. it is but it actually became really popular in the 1800s when an englishman edward fitzgerald translated the poems and and he republished them.
It's like a hot debate among readers of both works, whether Edward Fritz Gerald's book took too much of its own liberty in translation or not. kind of seems like he did change a lot of it.
Interesting. But around the time that the Somerton man had died, it turns out that the book was actually starting to regain popularity.
People were dealing with the war and the hard and sad times that came along with it, They probably got some kind of sense of comfort reading this book.
For sure. You know, that's very philosophical.
A lot of questions to be answered. Exactly.
So by 1950 though, there had been multiple different publications.
So if the Somerton man's piece of paper belonged to the end of someone's copy of the book, law enforcement wanted to know who was in possession of this book. but it was gonna be really hard to figure it out because there was tons and tons of different copies.
Yeah, of course. Now, first, they had to deal with a coronial inquest regarding Somerton Man's death. just days after he was buried.
The inquest started on June 17th, And the witnesses who had seen him on November 30th laying against the wall on the beach, they were called to recount their stories, which were exactly the same as they were at the beginning.
The coroner and the different pathologists testified about their belief that the man had died of heart failure, but they weren't sure what caused it, and then the hidden note came into question.
When asked what he thought the poem meant and if he believed it had anything to do with why the man had died, the detective who had been on the case responded...
The poem itself simply means that we know what this world has in store for us. but we do not know what the other world has in store.
And while we are on this earth, we should enjoy life to the fullest.
And when it is time for us to pass on, pass on without any regrets.
So Sir Cleland, who was the one to find the note, he now had an opinion on the overall case.
He was definitely still leaning toward the Somerton man ingesting some kind of poison.
But because of the note now, he didn't think that the poison had been administered to him.
I was just going to say. But rather that he took the poison himself as a means to kill himself intentionally.
Okay. So Cleland explained to the court, or excuse me, Sir Cleland explained to the court.
Give him that, sir. I mean, he earned it.
He did. He said. I think the words were put there deliberately and indicated that he was fed up with things.
Yeah, I get that. I could see it. I mean, it literally means the end or is over.
Yeah. finish he's like i'm done here yeah and then finally a man named cedric stanton hicks got on the stand to testify Cedric, who was a professor of human physiology and pharmacology at The University of Adelaide.
There you go. He testified that there are two poisons he knew of that could kill a man and not leave a trace. but he was worried about saying their names aloud in the courtroom, so instead he wrote them down on a piece of paper and handed them over.
Because he was like, I am not letting you all know what these wild points are.
Poisons are. That you can get away with it if you use them.
Yeah, exactly. Because they were kind of like... accessible during this time.
Not like super, but a little bit. You can find them.
He named the poisons as digitalis... and strophanthin, like we had said earlier.
So at this point I was like, cool, cool, cool.
What are those poisons, though, and where do they come from?
So I'm sure you know this. And looking into Digitalis, I learned that it comes from the plant foxglove.
Yes. And I got all the information on Digitalis from the American Association for the Advancement of Science website.
Woo! Or excuse me, the Advancement of Sciences website.
There you go. So digitalis, as you might know it as foxglove, was one of the poisons reference that could have killed Somerton Man and left no trace.
Now, the use of digitalis in medicine actually dates back to the 1700s. a British doctor named William Withering.
You got it. He discovered that he could make a powder from the dried leaves and he could use it to treat various things like a edema, epilepsy, fluid in the lungs, irregular heartbeat.
And he had said that he didn't prescribe the medication often though, because in larger doses, it can be toxic.
And it can cause a whole host of problems like vomiting, impaired vision, which makes things either yellow or green. interestingly enough, and secretion of urine and ultimately death.
No, actually, just like a very random fun fact.
Van Gogh's yellow period is said to have come from a time when he was prescribed to for treatment of his epilepsy.
That's interesting. Yeah, and I guess he also did a lot of paintings of his. like doctor at the time who was prescribing his medication.
And a lot of times in the photos that are in the paintings that he would do, the doctor was holding foxglove oh look at that isn't that interesting oh that's really interesting yeah So then Charles Edmund Cullen, that doctor who may have killed hundreds of patients.
Whoops. You know that guy? Yeah. Yeah. He used digoxin, or I need to look that up.
This is what... This was in the Dorothea Aponte.
Yes. Yes. Did I say that? Digoxin? I think you did, yeah, because I think I said it wrong.
Okay. So I think, yeah, this is all very similar.
Isn't that crazy? That's what he used to kill his patients.
Now, digoxin, if I'm saying it correctly, is the cardiac glyglochyside that is found in the leaves of digitalis and it can be used to lead to more calcium being stored within the heart cells, which in turn leads to the heart to work better,
But in large amounts, it can make the heart work too much and go into cardiac arrest.
Could this have been the reason why Somerton Man's heart failed?
Yeah, absolutely. Maybe. Or it could have been that other reason. one that Cedric Stanton Hicks mentioned, strophanthin, that other poison.
Strophanthin is actually an herb that was most famously used in Africa. and in those times they used to use it for poison arrows. that would be shot into the enemy.
Oh, damn. But in the late 1800s, it actually became a replacement for digitalis because it does pretty much the same thing.
Same thing to your heart and everything. but in large doses, it can cause nausea, vomiting, changes in color of one's vision, and heart problems.
It could be digitalis. It could be strophanthin.
It could not be poison. We literally have no fucking idea.
It all makes sense. But that was a fun aside.
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So the inquest wrapped up pretty quickly.
It ended on June 21st, 1949. And the court's findings were inconclusive.
Because they were like, we don't have any information.
We got tons of stuff. Well, that's the thing.
We have so much information, we don't even know how to link it all together.
So things were quiet until about a month after the inquest, and they picked back up again when a businessman walked into the police station on July 23rd, and he told the police working there that he had a copy of the Rubaiyat I said that like super weird, the Rubaiyat.
And the ending page of his copy had been ripped.
The part that had been ripped out was where the words Tom-Om-Should should have been printed.
So he had a pretty strange story, but this entire case was a strange story at this point.
So they were probably like, Yep, it just makes sense that this makes no sense.
They're like, you know what? We'll take anything at this point.
We'll go with it. What do you got? So this guy told them that back in November, he and his brother-in-law, who by the way, was there with him as he explained this story.
They had gone together for a drive and they were going to the beach.
They had parked only about 100 yards away from the beach and then gone off and walked around the area. going about their day together while the car sat parked with the windows open.
Now, when they got back to the car later that day, there was this copy of the book that Both of them noticed it, but they just thought that it belonged to the other man.
Neither of them said a thing. Neither of them said anything.
Just such a dude way of going about that.
Truly. Like a random ass book just manifests its way into your vehicle and you're like, yeah, man, I don't know.
I thought that was yours, man. I guess that just belongs to you.
Like what? No, no. This dude was like a well-respected businessman, so I'm sure he didn't sound like that, but... that's how i like to picture the conversation going down so when the police compared the ripped out portion from the man's jacket to the book it lined up perfectly.
They did like all kinds of testing and everything and it was perfect.
Yeah. They asked him if he remembered this day at all, and he told them he did because it was the day before the first day of summer. november 30th whoa now what's weird is that they never put this guy's name in any files associated with the case because he asked that they didn't.
Okay, guys, what the fuck? Like, that is a huge... Like, why would you not... What?
Wouldn't you... Did anyone go... Why? Yeah.
All of us today went, why? Because like, did you stick that piece of paper in his pocket? after you murdered him?
Like, what is... Right, exactly. I gotta know.
I guess this guy was, like, a very well-respected business man, so...
They just respected his wishes. So was John Wayne Gacy at one point.
Truth. I just can't believe that they weren't like...
Can we put your name down? Yeah, I don't know.
Just gather a little bit more about that guy.
And to me also, like, first of all, it's fucking weird that you're coming in here with this copy after all these months.
Yeah. And then it's fucking weird that you don't want your name put in the papers.
All of that is weird. You guys didn't think that was weird?
Yeah, I'd be questioning. Thank you. But now that they had their copy of the book, they had to start going through it, hoping for any note in the margin or a name scribbled in the front cover, they needed some kind of path to go down here.
So They really, really should have known how this one was gonna go, though, based on how everything else had gone.
The discovery of the book. crazy, wild, only led to more questions in the Severton Man case that still remain unanswered.
So, the first thing they found inside of the book was some kind of code written in pencil on the back cover.
There were letters written in a row and there were five rows of letters, but no one could figure out what the letter stood for or what kind of translation they possibly could have had this random ass number or letters excuse me it's a zodiac thing It kind of is.
So over the years, the code has literally been sent across the world in the hopes that someone will crack it, but no one ever has.
No. Oh come on. It was sent to naval intelligence and they could not crack it.
And it's like, is it just a random? Maybe it means nothing.
It's not a cipher. at all maybe it's literally just to like fuck with people maybe this entire fucking case is just to fuck with people yeah So they were like, we'll keep this.
We'll figure it out someday, hopefully. And also written on the cover of the book, though, they found two series of numbers that were definitely two separate phone numbers.
One really led nowhere. It was like the phone number of a bank, but the other one led to a young woman named Jessica Ellen Thompson. or Thompson, excuse me, also known as Joe, or in some cases, Justin.
Not Justin. Justin. Okay. So when investigators tracked down her address... they realized that she only lived a five-minute walk from where Somerton Man was discovered.
And so they said, knock, knock, knock. Can we ask you a couple questions?
Excuse me, Justin. Hello, Justin, Joe, Jessica.
Why do you have so many names? What's going on here?
Why do you live here so close to the beach where a dead guy was?
So It was clear from the moment that the police met her that she wanted absolutely nothing to do with them. which is never good.
No, no. She was a 27 year old married mother at the time.
She was also a nurse and, And immediately she gave them the impression that she knew something, but it wasn't going to be easy to get it out of her.
And she was a nurse. She was a nurse. She has access to stuff.
Certainly does. Love it. Look at you. There you go.
Not getting there today, but we're going to get there.
We're going to get there. Going to get there someday.
So when they asked her about the book and what her fucking phone number would be doing in a copy of the one that was now associated with a dead man that she lived with, five minutes away from where he was discovered, she just said, oh yeah, I gave a copy of the book to an old friend that I had known about like four or five years ago.
Go. So they were like, is Somerton Man your friend?
Like, excuse me, who's your friend? And she said, my friend's name is Alfred Boxall.
She didn't know whether or not he was still alive because he had been in the war and they really hadn't stayed in contact.
But realizing that there was a possibility that they could ID the Somerton man, the police asked Joe... if she would be willing to take a look at that plaster mold bust thing that they made of him.
Yeah. So, she agreed to go, but it really seemed like she would rather not have.
And as soon as they got to the Adelaide Museum where the bust was being held and Joe saw the bust of Somerton Man...
It was like she had seen a fucking ghost.
She took one look at the bust and then looked away from it for the rest of the time that she was with One of the detectives on the case, Lionel Lean, said it seemed like she was quote, quote, completely taken aback to the point of giving the appearance that she was about to faint.
Oh, come on. And one of them went and stood behind her because they were so convinced that she was going to faint.
And that's just a bust. That is literally just a bust.
You're not identifying the actual body here.
No, she knew him for... Sure. She very clearly recognized this man.
But when they asked if she knew who... If...
If she knew who he was, she told them she didn't.
She had no idea who this was. What the? fuck when they asked her if it was alfred they said could this be alfred she said i don't know I don't know.
I'm like, that's like a friend that you gave a book to.
It's a book of love poems. You know what that is?
That's a yes. i don't know is always i guess yes nine out of ten times Any other follow-up questions that they asked, she either said, I don't know or no.
She gave him a hard no or... I don't know.
Whoa. She also asked... that her name not be written down in any files or associated with any files on the case.
And the police said to her, they said, okay, cool.
Oh my God. Why would you not? What the fuck?
Why would you not write her fucking name down?
I am confusion. I am confused. And guys, this is where it gets fucking crazy.
This is the point where... If you're driving, take the foot off the gas a little bit.
Slow down. You don't want to get to work too soon today.
Oh man. So later on, she ended up telling them that an unknown man had come knocking on her door toward the end of 1948. like november maybe that's at the end it is at the end she never specified but she wasn't home And when the man realized that she wasn't home, he kept talking to the neighbors and asking her a couple of questions about her.
And when he asked the questions about her, he knew her by name.
Hmm. So that was weird. And she never found out who this was.
Apparently he never came back again, so she just completely forgot about the entire incident. until this whole thing stirred up the memory.
Which is like, you just let that go. That's the other thing.
Like weren't worried about it at all. I would be so freaked out if somebody like was asking my neighbors questions. around my house like what and they described him and i was like i don't know who that is yeah that's weird So, would that the police realize that their next step would be tracking down Alfred Boxall, to see whether or not he was still living and whether or not he had the copy of the Somerton Manor.
He did not have a copy of that. a copy of that if he had a copy of the ruby that joe said she'd given to him because they're like is he somerton man yeah who that is No.
No. They were able to track him down in Sydney.
He was alive. He was well. Did he look like the bust at all?
Because the fact that she was like, I don't know.
I'm like, you don't know what your friend looks like?
He really does. Like, if you Google a picture of Al Boxall, he doesn't.
It's B-O-X-A-L-L. Like... I don't really think he does.
I'm also kind of bad at that. But... I'm gonna look.
They were just like, okay. So they go, they go find him.
He's alive. He's well. And he was happy to show them his copy of the Rubio that Joe had given him all those years ago.
She had actually given it to him right before he was going off to war. and as they were sitting there, he was like, do you guys want to hear the story?
You guys want to know about this? Yeah, of course I do.
Or they were just like asking him a lot of questions, but he told them the story.
He said the two of them had met up at the Clifton Gardens Hotel in Sydney, and they were going to have some drinky drinks before he was shipped off to war.
Now, this was summertime in 1945, and Joe had brought along the book as a little send-off keepsake present. and she wrote in the front cover for him a quote from inside of the book, and she signed her name, Justin.
Hmm. At this point, the police knew that Joe had a couple of different nicknames.
But they did start to scratch their head, their heads, when Al said... Their collective head.
They only had one. Well... No, you never know.
But Al said that was how Jo introduced herself to him.
And that was the only thing he had ever heard her called was Justin.
He never heard her get called Jessica or Joe.
And he was like, oh, yeah, that's Justin.
That's interesting. And we were like, OK, weird.
Another thing that came up in conversation later down the road with him was his line of work.
It was later found out that he worked in intelligence while he was in the war.
Okay. And when they asked if that was something that Joe Justin knew about...
He gave a very vague, weird reply and said that she would only know that detail about him if someone had told her.
Huh, okay. Why are you guys being so secretive?
Yeah, like this is weird. The two of them?
I'm like, you guys are weird. But like working in intelligence and stuff, it's like, is that where that cipher code came from?
Girl, you're asking all the right questions.
We're not there right now, but part two is where we're going to get into all that.
I'm setting it up. You really are. I'm setting it up.
So we're, we're nearing the end, but before we end this, I do have to leave you with another pretty significant event. that happened during the summer of 1945 that Jessica Jo Justin Mysterious Mademoiselle was also connected to.
So a man named Joseph George Saul Haim Marshall.
He was found dead on a beach called Ashton Park in Mosman.
He was laying on the beach on a rock ledge and he had a vantage point where he would have had a great view of the water.
Kind of similar to how Somerton Man was found.
Yeah. his body was found june 3rd 1945 and it was determined that he had ingested some kind of poison The official ruling of his case was that he had killed himself intentionally.
He did have a history of attempts at suicide, and he also had been institutionalized at one point during his life.
Apparently when he was younger, I think it was when he was like seven is what it said.
He had suffered a head injury that kind of caused a lot of problems like that for the rest of his life.
And he had a lot of depression and mental illness.
Yeah. but weird weird stuff going on yeah there was a bottle of lemonade next to him.
It was like pretty much empty, but it had some kind of powdery substance inside.
Hmm. There was a glass tumbler and his head was lying on a newspaper dated May 20th. he had also been doing some light whimsical reading at the end of his life oh yes because on his chest laid an open copy of a poetry book.
Which one? A poetry book. I don't know if you've heard of it.
Do I know it? I think you might. It's called The Rubaiyat.
Come on. He had an open copy of the Rubio laying on top of his chest.
I feel like this has to be a rare occurrence.
Like this is a weird coincidence. So fucking weird.
That's not just a book that's floating around everywhere.
I mean, it was like, but like that, but like people aren't like, why are people dying?
That's the thing. It's like they're just the significance of it.
That's the thing. It's weird. It is. And it's all in the same area.
Yeah. Now, when his copy was looked through, there was a pencil mark around the lines.
Make the most of what we... Excuse me. Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend before we too into the dust descend, dust into dust and under dust to lie. sans wine sans song sans singer and sans end Also, can I note that this book seems like very pretty?
I was just going to say that's like beautiful.
Part of me like really wants a copy of this book and part of me was like super close to buying one while I was doing this and then I was like, but is this book like a curse i know i'm like i don't know about that i don't know like i don't want to sounds beautiful though it sounds gorge So why am I telling you this?
Why? What connection does this have to Joe?
Give it to me. The area where this man, George Marshall, was found was walking distance to the Clifton Gardens Hotel, where Joe and Al would later get drinks that summer.
Ooh. It's believed that they were at the Clifton Garden Hotel in August.
So that would have been like three months after George had died.
Okay. Or two months actually. weird yeah that's a weird little connection it's weird that they were there afterwards and it was like But it's like she lives so close to where Somerton Man was found.
And then we know that she was at this place where...
It's like a five minute walk as well from where another guy died with a copy of the Rubia on his chest.
This is a lot of weird coincidence. It really is.
So over the years, it's been debated actually whether or not George Marshall's copy of the Rubaiyat was a false copy or not.
Because there was only supposed to be a certain number of printed editions of his particular copy.
And his... his being in existence basically meant that more copies had to have been printed.
Oh, OK. So according to Professor Derek Abbott, who we are going to talk about a ton in part two, Around the time of the war, like while this was all going on, there was a lot of what he called backyard publishers, and they would print ripoff editions of books to make extra money.
Oh, OK. Yeah. I could see that. So that seems to be the case with George's copy.
But either way, it was still a copy of the Rubaiyat.
Now, another connection that possibly links Joe, Al, George, and possibly even Somerton Man is... is a bohemian club called... It's either Pocky's or...
Packies. Okay. The only one with a confirmed link to the club is Al.
He had a friend, a famous Australian author, Xavier Herbert, who was a known attendant of this club.
He used to go all the time. Now, throughout the years, it's been said that Joe and George also went to the club And it made sense that they would have because they were like super progressive people and Packy's was a place for people like that.
There was like talks and lectures. about culture, politics, art, like what modern art was doing to the world.
Sometimes there was like different plays put on.
I love that. Seems like a really cool place.
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Now, most of the people who went to Paki's were bohemian people ready to accept this new modern world.
And Jo herself was said to be like a very... bohemian woman like that's a word used to describe her bohemian so who knows But Professor Derek Abbott had spent a lot of time looking through the book of guests where people would sign in at Packy's.
But in doing so, he found out that they only used it during special events.
Ah, la vie boheme. So until... Oh, I love it.
I love it. So until we get a solid picture or some kind of evidence like that, we'll just have to stick to some casual speculation.
Yeah, of course. But just like a random note.
Yeah. So in part two, I will officially introduce you to Professor Derek Abbott. i'm ready we're going to talk a ton about his role in the case because it's crazy and he's done a lot of work into this case We're going to dive into some possible family connections to Somerton Man.
His potential descendants and all that. And then we're going to get into some theories about who Somerton Man was and what the hell happened. to him yes because hopefully we you know dna hopefully we'll get an answer here so So that's the thing.
When we get into part two, we're going to talk a lot more about DNA.
I think we're like there's been a lot of headway made in this case in the past year or two.
I think and a lot of other like really professional, well like people who have studied this case so well, they think it's gonna be solved soon.
You know what, if I've learned one thing from Sarah Turney, and I've learned a lot of things from Sarah Turney, it's that a case can always be solved.
It's very true. And we should never say that it can't be solved.
Yeah, you can't give up on it. You can never give up.
And I'm not going to give up. I wouldn't give up on this.
No, I'm not going to. I'm not going to. I'm not.
You're like, damn it, I will not. No, I feel like everything you have presented, and I'm really excited for part two because like... part two i'm in part two gets crazy and i go into like punnett squares we go into fucking i I love a Punnett Square.
Bitch, I used to love a good Punnett Square.
We go into how the ear is constructed. You know the ear is the one thing that used to... fuck me right up in biology and anatomy because the ear is very complex.
It is. And do you know that I was thinking of you the entire time that I wrote the section?
You knew. I used to. Bitch and moan about the year.
Those little bones. I remember your flashcards with all the year fucking.
Yes, the tiny little bones of the ear, all those little parts.
We're going to talk about the cavum and the simba.
Oh, there we go. And bringing me back. I have a fun little way where, and I wish that I had known this back then.
And it's so funny. I came up with it so I could retroact.
Oh, you know what? I love that. You're welcome.
It's a way to remember which one is which.
I love that. I'm going to save it for part two.
I'm going to save it. I'm stoked for part two.
Probably going to record it tomorrow. And I mean it.
Yeah, I mean, this is definitely, I'm itching to know the end of him.
Even though we're not going to have like an answer answer, it's nice to be able to get more stuff to be like, What the fuck is going on here?
It's like a fun prequel to later on this year when we find out what happened.
Yeah, and then do another episode. Yeah.
Whoa, cool. I want to have Professor Derek Abbott on.
Oh, that'd be sick. I'm going to reach out to him.
Hello, sir. I'm going to give it a go. Give it a go.
He's a very busy man, so I expect nothing, but... We'll shoot our shot.
We'll shoot it. Always shoot your shot. Yeah.
You know, the worst people can say is no.
You only got one shot. You do. One opportunity.
Don't miss your chance. Yeah. To blow or go?
I think it's to blow. To not miss your chance to go.
I think this opportunity comes once in a lifetime.
I almost lost that. All right. Well, we got it.
We hope that you keep listening for part two.
We hope you keep it weird. But it's weird that you don't know the lyrics to the Slim Shady song.
Yeah. Like, who even am I? We know. We're just tired.
Thank you. If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
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The town of Agde in France is famous for sun, sand, sea and sex.
But lately, life on the coast has taken a strange turn.
The town's mayor, a respected pillar of the community, has been arrested for corruption.
His wife claims he's been bewitched by a beautiful clairvoyant.
Then there's the mysterious phone calls that local people have been getting.
I am the Archangel Michael. The whole town has been thrown into chaos.
Mr Mayor. As the mayor is unable to carry out his duties, I would like to address you all.
Legal proceedings have been initiated. Join me, Anna Richardson, and journalist Leo Schick for The Mystic and the Mayor as we investigate a story of power, corruption, Binge all episodes of The Mystic and the Mare exclusively and ad-free right now on Wondery Plus.
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