Taman Shud Case - Post-inquest

Post-inquest

Following the inquest, a plaster cast was made of the man's head and shoulders, and he was then buried at Adelaide's West Terrace Cemetery. The Salvation Army conducted the service and The South Australian Grandstand Bookmakers Association paid for the service to save the man from a pauper's burial.

Years after the burial, flowers began appearing on the grave. Police questioned a woman seen leaving the cemetery but she claimed she knew nothing of the man. About the same time, the receptionist from the Strathmore Hotel, opposite Adelaide Railway Station, revealed that a strange man had stayed in Room 21 around the time of the death, checking out on 30 November 1948. She recalled that cleaners found a black medical case and a hypodermic syringe in the room.

On 22 November 1959 it was reported that an E.B. Collins, an inmate of New Zealand's Wanganui Prison, claimed to know the identity of the dead man.

There have been numerous unsuccessful attempts in the 60 years since its discovery to crack the code found at the rear of the book, including efforts by military and naval intelligence, mathematicians, astrologers and amateur code crackers. While no answer has been accepted as correct, a leading theory is that the code indicates the initial letters of words. In 2004, retired detective Gerry Feltus suggested in a Sunday Mail article that the final line "ITTMTSAMSTGAB" could start "It's Time To Move To South Australia Moseley Street..." (the former nurse lived in Moseley Street which is the main road through Glenelg).

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, in its documentary series Inside Story, in 1978 produced a programme on the Taman Shud case, entitled The Somerton Beach Mystery, where reporter Stuart Littlemore investigated the case, including interviewing Boxall, who could add no new information on the case, and Paul Lawson, who made the plaster cast of the body, and who refused to answer a question about whether anyone had positively identified the body.

In 1994 John Harber Phillips, Chief Justice of Victoria and Chairman of the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, reviewed the case to determine the cause of death and concluded that "There seems little doubt it was digitalis." Phillips supported his conclusion by pointing out that the organs were engorged, consistent with digitalis, the lack of evidence of natural disease and "the absence of anything seen macroscopically which could account for the death". Three months prior to the death of the man, on 16 August 1948, an overdose of digitalis was reported as the cause of death for United States Assistant Treasury Secretary Harry Dexter White. He had been accused of Soviet espionage under Operation Venona.

Former South Australian Chief Superintendent Len Brown, who worked on the case in the 1940s, stated that he believed that the man was from a country in the East European Communist Bloc, which led to the police's inability to confirm the man's identity.

The case is still considered "open" at the South Australian Major Crime Task Force. The South Australian Police Historical Society holds the bust, which contains strands of the man's hair. Any further attempts to identify the body have been hampered by the embalming formaldehyde having destroyed much of the man's DNA. Other key evidence no longer exists, such as the brown suitcase, which was destroyed in 1986. In addition, witness statements have disappeared from the police file over the years.