‘IT ALL FITS’

Aussie Prof Claims to Have Identified Mysterious ‘Somerton Man’ Using DNA

Coming up with an answer to the 73-year-old cold case was like working on “a Sudoku puzzle with 4000 elements,” he said.

An Australian professor said this week that he’d made a breakthrough in the haunting cold case of the so-called Somerton Man, found washed up on an Adelaide beach 73 years ago. Using forensic genealogy, University of Adelaide electronic engineering professor Derek Abbott, who has studied the case of the unidentified man for more than a decade, named him as Melbourne native Carl “Charles” Webb, an electrical engineer and instrument maker. Working with American genealogist Colleen Fitzpatrick, Abbott told The Age that probing the case was like piecing together “a sudoku puzzle with 4000 elements.” But, he added, Webb was the only candidate whose maternal and paternal lines could be matched to the corpse. “It turns out he’s our man because it all fits,” Abbott added. Australian authorities, who exhumed the corpse last year, have not verified Abbott’s declaration, with a spokesperson telling The New York Times they would comment on the matter after completing further forensic testing.