Taman Shud Case - The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Around the same time as the Inquest, a tiny piece of rolled-up paper with the words "Tamam Shud" printed on it was found deep in a fob pocket sewn within the dead man's trouser pocket. Public library officials called in to translate the text identified it as a phrase meaning "ended" or "finished" found on the last page of the The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. The theme of these poems is that one should live life to the full and have no regrets when it ended. The paper's verso side was blank; police conducted an Australia-wide search to find a copy of the book that had a similarly blank verso but were unsuccessful. A photograph of the scrap of paper was sent to interstate police and released to the public, leading a man to reveal he had found a very rare first edition copy of Edward FitzGerald's translation of The Rubaiyat, published in 1859 by Whitcombe and Tombs in New Zealand, in the back seat of his unlocked car that had been parked in Jetty Road Glenelg about a week or two before the body was found. He had known nothing of the book's connection to the case until he saw an article in the previous day's newspaper. This man's identity and profession were withheld by the police, as he wished to remain anonymous.

The poem's subject led police to theorise that the man had committed suicide by poison, although there was no other evidence to back the theory. The book was missing the words "Tamam Shud" on the last page, which had a blank reverse, and microscopic tests indicated that the piece of paper was from the page torn from the book. "Tamam Shud" (meaning "the end") comprises the last line of text in the book.

In the back of the book were faint pencil markings of five lines of capital letters with the second line struck out. The strike out is now considered significant with its similarity to the fourth line possibly indicating a mistake and thus, possible proof the letters are code:

WRGOABABD

MLIAOI

WTBIMPANETP

MLIABOAIAQC

ITTMTSAMSTGAB

In the book it is unclear if the first two lines begin with an "M" or "W", but they are widely believed to be the letter W, due to the distinctive difference when compared to the stricken letter M. There appears to be a deleted or underlined 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 "Ls" 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 before it was realised it was a code. Code experts were called in at the time to decipher the lines but were unsuccessful. 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.

Also found in the back of the book was an unlisted telephone number belonging to a former nurse who lived in Moseley St, Glenelg, around 400 metres (1,300 ft) north of the location where the body was found. The woman said that while she was working at Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney during World War II she owned a copy of The Rubaiyat but in 1945, at the Clifton Gardens Hotel in Sydney, had given it to an army lieutenant named Alfred Boxall who was serving in the Water Transport Section of the Australian Army.

According to media reports the woman stated that after the war she had moved to Melbourne and married. Later she had received a letter from Boxall, but had told him she was now married. She added that in late 1948 a mystery man had asked her next door neighbour about her. There is no evidence that Boxall, who did not know the woman's married name, had any contact with her after 1945. Shown the plaster cast bust of the dead man by Detective sergeant Leane, the woman could not identify it. According to Leane, he described her reaction upon seeing the cast as "completely taken aback, to the point of giving the appearance that she was about to faint."

Police believed that Boxall was the dead man until they found Boxall alive with his copy of The Rubaiyat (a 1924 Sydney edition), complete with "Tamam Shud" on the last page. Boxall was now working in the maintenance section at the Randwick Bus Depot (where he had worked before the war) and was unaware of any link between the dead man and him. In the front of the copy of the Rubaiyat that was given to Boxall, the woman had written out verse 70:

Indeed, indeed, Repentance oft before

I swore—but was I sober when I swore?

And then and then came Spring, and Rose-in-hand

My thread-bare Penitence a-pieces tore.

The woman now lived in Glenelg but denied all knowledge of the dead man or why he would choose to visit her suburb on the night of his death. She also asked that as she was now married she would prefer not to have her name recorded to save her from potential embarrassment of being linked to the dead man and Boxall. The police agreed, leaving subsequent investigations without the benefit of the case's best lead. In a TV programme on the case, in the section where Boxall was interviewed, her name was given in a voice-over as Jestyn, apparently obtained from the signature Jestyn that followed the verse written in the front of the book, but this was covered over when the book was displayed in the programme. This was possibly a "pet" nickname and was the name she used when introduced to Boxall. In his 2002 video interview, Paul Lawson (who made the body cast) refers to her as 'Mrs Thompson.' Retired detective Gerald Feltus, who had handled the cold case, interviewed Jestyn in 2002 and found her to be either "evasive" or "just did not wish to talk about it," she also stated that her family did not know of her connection with the case and he agreed not to disclose her identity or anything that might reveal it. Feltus believes that Jestyn knew the Somerton man's identity. Jestyn had told police that she was married, but they did not record Jestyn's name on the police file, and there is no evidence that police at the time knew that she was in fact not married. Researchers re-investigating the case attempted to track down Jestyn and found she had died in 2007. Her real name was considered important as the possibility exists that it may be the decryption key for the code. Feltus was later given permission by her husband's family to disclose the names in his 2010 book on the case.