The Somerton Man’s Identity Has Finally Been Revealed

An Adelaide-based researcher believes he has solved one of the state’s most infamous cold cases, claiming to have identified the Somerton Man as Melbourne-born electrical engineer Carl “Charles” Webb.

Derek Abbott, a researcher at Adelaide University, believes he has identified the man using DNA evidence from hairs found on a plaster bust of the man, whose body was found on Adelaide’s Somerton Beach in 1948 and never identified.

According to Abbott, Webb was a 43-year-old engineer and instrument maker from Melbourne who was born in 1905 but was identified as a “person with no death record.” Webb was reportedly born in Footscray on November 16 to parents Richard August Webb and Eliza Amelia Morris Grace.

As for the elusive “T Keane” name that was printed on the Somerton Man’s tie, Abbott explained that this is likely a tie he would’ve borrowed from his brother-in-law, Thomas Keane.

“It turns out that Carl Webb has a brother-in-law called Thomas Keane, who lived just 20 minutes drive away from him in Victoria,” Abbott told the ABC. “So it’s not out of the question that these items of clothing he had with T Keane on them were just hand-me-downs from his brother-in-law.”

Abbott also has a theory as to why Webb would’ve been in Adelaide, blaming it on an attempt to track down his estranged wife — who had moved to the city. “We can’t say for sure, but we can speculate,” said Abbott. “We have evidence that he had separated from his wife, and that she had moved to South Australia, so possibly, he had come to track her down.”

The body was identified as Charles Webb after DNA evidence was narrowed down to a family tree of more than 4,000 people. But ultimately, over the weekend, Abbott found enough evidence to make the claim he had identified the man.

“It’s like a sudoku puzzle with 4000 elements. It was huge,” Abbott told The Age, mentioning how minor details found at the scene made perfect sense with what we know about Webb. “Basically, there were just two people in there with no dates of death.”

In addition to having no death date, Carl seemingly also went AWOL in 1947 — a year before the body was found. “The last time he’s ever mentioned in any kind of document that we’re able to find is 1947. So it’s like he just fell off the radar,” he told The Age.

Abbott, who has spent more than a decade on this specific case, likened the experience of potentially finding his identity to climbing Mount Everest. “It kind of feels like climbing Mount Everest, and having that mixture of elation that you’re at the top, but also tiredness and exhaustion,” he told the ABC.

Now that he has identified Webb, he will continue to piece together aspects of his life to explain how he ended up dead on a beach in Somerton in 1948. He has urged anyone with photos or information about Carl Webb to come forward. The news comes after professional detectives and amateur sleuths alike have spent decades trying to identify the man. South Australia Police exhumed the Somerton Man’s body from Adelaide’s West Terrace Cemetery last year with the hope of finally identifying him.

His cause of death remains unsolved.