E15 The Somerton Man

What Remains

What do you do with a cold case that happened a lifetime ago when things like DNA testing and forensic genealogy didn’t exist? If you’re a professor at Adelaide University in Southern Australia, you do everything you can to solve it. In December 1948, a man was found dead on Somerton Beach in a suburb of Adelaide. Tucked inside the watch pocket in his pants was a slip of paper with Persian words printed on it which meant “finished.” Over the years, dozens of people tried to identify the man with no success, but Professor Derek Abbott, who enlisted California forensic genealogist Colleen Fitzpatrick, made it his mission in life to solve the case. In this episode, we walk you through how the mystery of the Somerton Man was finally solved. Full transcript available at https://www.whatremainspodcast.com.