Mystery of 'spy' found dead over 70 years ago is solved by DNA researchers

dailystar.co.uk:

Adelaide, South Australia on December 1948.He was well-dressed, in a shirt and tie with an “American-style” double-breasted jacket, but all of the identifying tags had been removed from his clothing.READ MORE: JonBenet Ramsey's family launch new DNA-test bid to finally solve six-year-old's murderA search of the dead man's pockets revealed an unused train ticket, an aluminium comb that had been manufactured in the USA, a half-empty packet of Juicy Fruit chewing gum, some cigarettes and some matches.An unlit cigarette was found on the man’s chest but most mysteriously a scrap of paper printed with the Persian phrase tamám shud, meaning "is over” was found in one of his pockets.The book of poems from which the page was torn was later found.

On the inside back cover, detectives read through indentations left from previous handwriting – a telephone number, another unidentified number and text that appeared to be a coded message.

The code has never been deciphered.The telephone number belonged to a local woman named Jesica Thomson, who told police she had never met the dead man and had no idea why he would have had her telephone number.The man’s cause of death was presumed to be poisoning, although no poison was ever definitively identified.To stay up to date with all the latest news, make sure you sign up to one of our newsletters here.After a post-mortem the pathologist stated: "I am quite convinced the death could not have been natural...

the poison I suggested was a barbiturate or a soluble hypnotic".In those years, shortly after the end of the Second World War, paranoia about the Soviet threat was running high and there was widespread speculation that “Somerton Man” was involved in espionage.The Woomera rocket base and a.