How an Electrical Engineer Solved Australia’s Most Famous Cold Case

My one nice benefit has been my entry to college students and to scientific devices on the University of Adelaide, the place I’m a professor {of electrical} and digital engineering. In 2009, I established a working group on the college’s Center for Biomedical Engineering.

One query surrounding the Somerton Man had already been solved by sleuths of a extra literary bent. In 1949, a pathologist had discovered a little bit of paper hid in one of many useless man’s pockets, and on it had been printed the phrases Tamám Shud, the Persian for “finished.” The phrase seems on the finish of Edward FitzGerald’s translation of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, a poem that is still in style to this present day.

The police requested the general public for copies of the e-book during which the ultimate web page had been torn out. A person discovered such a e-book in his automobile, the place apparently it had been thrown in by an open window. The e-book proved a match.

The e-book was linked to the useless man by a slip of paper found in his watch pocket; the paper bore two Persian phrases.

NEWS CORP.

The again cowl of the e-book additionally included scribbled letters, which had been at first thought to represent an encrypted message. But statistical exams carried out by my workforce confirmed that it was extra doubtless a string of the preliminary letters of phrases. Through computational strategies, we eradicated all the cryptographic codes recognized within the Nineteen Forties, leaving as a remaining chance a one-time pad, during which every letter relies on a secret supply textual content. We ransacked the poem itself and different texts, together with the Bible and the Talmud, however we by no means recognized a believable supply textual content. It might have been a pedestrian aide-mémoire—to listing the names of horses in an upcoming race, for instance. Moreover, our analysis signifies that it doesn’t have the structural sophistication of a code. The Persian phrase might have been the person’s farewell to the world: his suicide word.

A replica of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám was discovered months after the loss of life of the Somerton Man. Letters scrawled on the again cowl had been at first mistaken for code.

WILLIAM R.F. KRISCHOCK

Also scribbled on the again cowl was a phone quantity that led to 1 Jo Thomson, a lady who lived merely a five-minute stroll from the place the Somerton Man had been discovered. Interviewers then and many years later reported that she had appeared evasive; after her loss of life, a few of her kin and associates mentioned they speculated that she should have recognized the useless man. I found a attainable clue: Thomson’s son was lacking his lateral incisors, the 2 enamel that usually flank the central incisors. This situation, present in a really small share of the inhabitants, is typically congenital; oddly, the Somerton Man had it, too. Were they associated?

And but the try to hyperlink Thomson to the physique petered out. Early within the investigation, she informed the police that she had given a duplicate of the Rubáiyát to a lieutenant within the Australian Army whom she had recognized throughout the struggle, and certainly, that man turned out to personal a duplicate. But Thomson hadn’t seen him since 1945, he was very a lot alive, and the final web page of his copy was nonetheless intact. A path to nowhere, considered one of many who had been to comply with.

A plaster loss of life masks was molded immediately from the cadaver 6 months after loss of life, throughout which period the facial options had turn out to be distorted.

DEREK ABBOTT

The physique was reported to have had graying hair on the sides; this grey hair [left], proven below magnification, was pulled from the masks. A lightweight brown hair was additionally discovered [right]; the person had been reported as having “mousey” coloured hair.

DEREK ABBOTT

DNA from the Death Mask

We engineers within the twenty first century had a number of different gadgets to look at. First was a plaster loss of life masks that had been made six months after the person died, throughout which period the face had flattened. We tried a number of strategies to reconstruct its unique look: In 2013 we commissioned an image by Greg O’Leary, knowledgeable portrait artist. Then, in 2020, we approached Daniel Voshart, who designs graphics for Star Trek motion pictures. He used a collection {of professional} AI instruments to create a lifelike reconstruction of the Somerton Man. Later, we obtained one other reconstruction by Michael Streed, a U.S. police sketch artist. We printed these photographs, along with many remoted information concerning the physique, the enamel, and the clothes, within the hope of garnering insights from the general public. No luck.

As the loss of life masks had been molded immediately off the Somerton Man’s head, neck, and higher physique, a number of the man’s hair was embedded within the plaster of ­Paris—a possible DNA gold mine. At the University of ­Adelaide, I had the help of a hair forensics professional, Janette Edson. In 2012, with the permission of the police, Janette used a magnifying glass to seek out the place a number of hairs got here collectively in a cluster. She was then in a position to pull out single strands with out breaking them or damaging the plaster matrix. She thus secured the comfortable, spongy hair roots in addition to a number of lengths of hair shaft. The acquired knowledge of forensic science on the time held that the hair shaft could be ineffective for DNA evaluation with out the hair root.

Janette carried out our first DNA evaluation in 2015 and, from the hair root, was in a position to place the pattern inside a maternal genetic lineage, or haplotype, often known as “H,” which is extensively unfold round Europe. (Such maternally inherited DNA comes not from the nucleus of a cell however from the mitochondria.) The check due to this fact informed us little we hadn’t already recognized. The focus of DNA was far too low for the know-how of the time to piece collectively the sequencing we would have liked.

Fortunately, sequencing instruments continued to enhance. In 2018, Guanchen Li and Jeremy Austin, additionally on the University of Adelaide, obtained the whole mitochondrial genome from hair-root materials and narrowed down the maternal haplotype to H4a1a1a.

However, to establish Somerton Man utilizing DNA databases, we would have liked to go to autosomal DNA—the sort that’s inherited from each dad and mom. There are greater than 20 such databases, 23andMe and Ancestry being the most important. These databases require sequences of from 500,000 to 2,000,000 single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs (pronounced “snips”). The focus ranges of autosomes within the human cell are usually a lot decrease than these of the mitochondria, and so Li and Austin had been in a position to receive solely 50,000 SNPs, of which 16,000 had been usable. This was a breakthrough, nevertheless it nonetheless wasn’t ok to work on a database.

Trying a Desperate Move

In 2022, on the suggestion of Colleen Fitzpatrick, a former NASA worker who had educated as a nuclear physicist however then turned a forensic genetics professional, I despatched a hair pattern to Astrea Forensics, a DNA lab within the United States. This was our greatest hair-root pattern, one which I had nervously guarded for 10 years. The outcome from Astrea got here again—and it was an enormous flop.

Seemingly out of choices, we tried a determined transfer. We requested Astrea to investigate a 5-centimeter-long shaft of hair that had no root in any respect. Bang! The firm retrieved 2 million SNPs. The identification of the Somerton Man was now inside our attain.

So why did the rootless shaft work in our case?

The DNA evaluation that police use for traditional crime-solving depends on solely 20 to 25 quick tandem repeats (STRs) of DNA. That’s fantastic for police, who largely do one-to-one matches to find out whether or not the DNA recovered at a criminal offense scene matches a suspect’s DNA.

But discovering distant cousins of the Somerton Man on genealogical databases constitutes a one-to-many search, and for that you just sometimes want round 500,000 markers. For these genealogical searches, SNPs are used as a result of they include info on ethnicity and ancestry typically. Note that SNPs have round 50 to 150 base pairs of nucleotides, whereas typical STRs are usually longer, containing 80 to 450 base pairs. The hair shaft comprises DNA that’s largely fragmented, so it’s of little use whenever you’re in search of longer STR segments nevertheless it’s an excellent supply of SNPs. So for this reason crime forensics historically targeted on the basis and ignored the shaft, though this apply is now altering very slowly.

Another purpose the shaft was such a trove of DNA is that keratin, its principal element, is a really powerful protein, and it had protected the DNA fragments lodged inside it. The 74-year-old comfortable spongy hair root, then again, had not protected the DNA to the identical extent. We set a world report for acquiring a human identification, utilizing forensic family tree, from the oldest piece of hair shaft. Several police departments within the United States now use hair shafts to retrieve DNA, as I’m positive many will begin to do in different nations, following our instance.

Libraries of SNPs can be utilized to untangle the branching strains of descent in a household tree. We uploaded our 2 million SNPs to GEDmatch Pro, an internet genealogical database positioned in Lake Worth, Fla. (and not too long ago acquired by Qiagen, a biotech firm based mostly within the Netherlands). The closest match was a reasonably distant relative based mostly in Victoria, Australia. Together with Colleen Fitzpatrick, I constructed out a household tree containing greater than 4,000 individuals. On that tree we discovered a Charles Webb, son of a baker, born in 1905 in Melbourne, with no date of loss of life recorded.

Charles by no means had youngsters of his personal, however he had 5 siblings, and I used to be in a position to find a few of their dwelling descendants. Their DNA was a useless match. I additionally discovered a descendant of considered one of his maternal aunts, who agreed to bear a check. When a constructive outcome got here by on 22 July 2022, we had all of the proof we would have liked. This was our champagne second.

Reconstructing Somerton Man’s Life

In late 2021, police in South Australia ordered an exhumation of the Somerton Man’s physique for an intensive evaluation of its DNA. At the time we ready this text, that they had not but confirmed our outcome, however they did announce that they had been “cautiously optimistic” about it.

All directly, we had been in a position to fill in a variety of clean areas. Webb was born on 16 November 1905, in Footscray, a suburb of Melbourne, and educated at a technical faculty, now Swinburne University of Technology. He later labored as {an electrical} technician at a manufacturing unit that made electrical hand drills. Our DNA exams confirmed he was not associated to Thomson’s son, regardless of the coincidence of their lacking lateral incisors.

We found that Webb had married a lady named Dorothy Robinson in 1941 and had separated from her in 1947. She filed for divorce on grounds of desertion, and the divorce attorneys visited his former place of business, confirming that he had stop round 1947 or 1948. But they might not decide what occurred to him after that. The divorce lastly got here by in 1952; in these days, divorces in Australia had been granted solely 5 years after separation.

At the time of Webb’s loss of life his household had turn out to be fairly fragmented. His dad and mom had been useless, a brother and a nephew had died within the struggle, and his eldest brother was ailing. One of his sisters died in 1955 and left him cash in her will, mistakenly pondering he was nonetheless alive and dwelling in one other state. The attorneys administering the desire had been unable to find Charles.

These two mass spectrographs examine hairs from the Somerton Man [blue] and from up to date reference hair materials [red]. The spectrograph for arsenic [left] exhibits an insignificantly elevated degree within the Somerton Man. Note that the Somerton Man’s hair pattern is 1 centimeter lengthy, which represents a few month’s progress. The spectrograph for lead [right] dropped from a excessive degree within the month earlier than loss of life, a clue that his routine modified throughout that point.

JAMES CHAPPELL & DEREK ABBOTT

We bought greater than DNA from the hair: We additionally vaporized a strand of hair by scanning a laser alongside its size, a way often known as laser ablation. By performing mass spectrometry on the vapor, we had been in a position to observe Webb’s various publicity to steer. A month earlier than Webb’s loss of life, his lead degree was excessive, maybe as a result of he had been working with the steel, perhaps soldering with it. Over the subsequent month’s price of hair progress, the lead focus declined; it reached its lowest degree at his loss of life. This is perhaps an indication that he had moved.

With a trove of images from household albums and different sources, we had been in a position to examine the face of the younger Webb with the artists’ reconstructions we had commissioned in 2013 and 2021 and the AI reconstruction we had commissioned in 2020. Interestingly, the AI reconstruction had greatest captured his likeness.

Daniel Voshart used AI-based software program to provide this reconstruction of Charles Webb’s look.

DANIEL VOSHART

A gaggle {photograph}, taken in 1921, of the Swinburne College soccer workforce, included a younger Webb. Clues present in newspapers present that he continued to take part in varied sports activities, which might clarify the athletic situation of his physique.

An Engineering Approach Paid Off

What’s attention-grabbing about fixing such a case is the way it depends on ideas that will appear counterintuitive to forensic biologists however are fairly simple to an electronics engineer. For instance, when coping with an ordinary crime scene that makes use of solely two dozen STR markers, one observes very strict protocols to make sure the integrity of the complete set of STRs. When coping with a case with 2 million SNPs, against this, issues are extra relaxed. Many of the old-school STR protocols don’t apply when you may have entry to a variety of info. Many SNPs can drop out, some may even be “noise,” the sign is probably not clear—and but you’ll be able to nonetheless crack the case!

Engineers perceive this idea effectively. It’s what we name swish degradation—when, say, a couple of flipped bits on a digital video sign are hardly observed. The identical is true for a big SNP file.

And so, when Astrea retrieved the two million SNPs, the corporate didn’t depend on the normal framework for DNA-sequencing reads. It used a very completely different mathematical framework, known as imputation. The idea of imputation will not be but totally appreciated by forensics consultants who’ve a organic background. However, for an electronics engineer, the idea is much like error correction: We infer and “impute” bits of knowledge which have dropped out of a acquired digital sign. Such an method will not be attainable with a couple of STRs, however when dealing with over 1,000,000 SNPs, it’s a special ball recreation.

Much of the work on figuring out Charles Webb from his family tree needed to be executed manually as a result of there are merely no automated instruments for the duty. As an electronics engineer, I now see attainable methods to make instruments that may pace up the method. One such device my workforce has been engaged on, along with Colleen Fitzpatrick, is software program that may enter a whole household tree and characterize all the beginning places as coloured dots on Google Earth. This helps to visualise geolocation when coping with a big and sophisticated household.

The Somerton Man case nonetheless has its mysteries. We can not but decide the place Webb lived in his ultimate weeks or what he was doing. Although the literary clue he left in his pocket was in all probability an elliptical suicide word, we can not verify the precise explanation for loss of life. There remains to be room for analysis; there’s a lot we have no idea.

This article seems within the April 2023 print situation as “Finding Somerton Man.”