You're listening to the mind Over Murder podcast. My name is Bill Thomas.
I'm a writer, consulting, producer, and now podcaster. I am now
trying to use my experience as the brother of a murder victim to help other
victims of violent crime. I'm working on a book on the unsolved Colonial Parkway
murders and I'm the co administrator of the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook group together with
Kristin Dilley. My name is Kristin Dilley. I'm a writer, a researcher,
a teacher, and a victim's advocate, as well as the social media
manager and co administrator for the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook page with my partner in
crime, Bill Thomas. You're listening to the mind Over Murder podcast. Hi,
welcome back to part two of our discussion of the Summrton Man case with
investigative genetic genealogist and pioneer Colleen Fitzpat. As we continue the discussion, Colleen
is walking us through how the investigative team used genetic genealogy, specifically the jet
Match and family Tree DNA databases in order to figure out who Somerton Man might
be. One of the challenges is that these databases at this point are very
US centric and this is a case from Australia. We pick up the conversation
as she walks us through that process. We hope you enjoyed this episode of
Mind over Murder and thanks as always. We're joined today by Colleen Fitzpatrick,
a pioneer in the field of forensic genetic genealogy and rocket scientists, one of
our favorite people to talk to. Colleen, Welcome back to the podcast.
Thanks for having me. Glad to be here. The whole forensic genealogy thing
is an American phenomenon, and a databases are full of American genealogists. So
normally you do okay outside of say US and even Canada, and you run
into low matches. You run into you would see normally, you'd think the
matches anybody on the list are going to be distant matches. Because he's dead
in nineteen forty eight. Maybe he connects to Americans through the UK before they
came to the United States or to Australia. You can really understand a very
deep connection. But recent who knows. We got lucky. We got lucky
because the top match was a young man who was like on his second cousin
levels. The rest of them, the rest of them were really low,
and they did connect in the UK. There were a lot of Americans that
connected to whoever he was a long time ago. This man, his name
was Jack. He was maybe thirty years old, and he didn't know who
his father was, and the connection was through his father's line to the Somerton
man. Of course, I spent a weekend and then I wrote him.
I said, we're doing this John Doe case. I really can't talk a
lot about it. You turned out that if you shared your DNA with us,
or you shared your story, or you shared your ancestry account, whatever,
it would be very helpful to us to find out who this man is.
And we didn't say anything else about it. And because I was American,
they didn't really suspect that this was an Australian case. Very clever.
See how clever we are now. The aunt, the guy's aunt, was
in correspondence with us, and she had his two aunts, his great aunts.
His mom eventually tested so I did an adoption search. I found out
who his father was, and they were all over the moon, very happy.
I'm sorry, Colleen, you've referenced an adoption search twice. Can you
explain for our listeners what an adoption search entails. A lot of people take
these tests, these ancestry tests so to speak, because they're adopted and they
would like to find their parents. And when you take the ancestry test,
I use that as an example because it's very popular. You get the answer
as you get. The results are a list of we call him DNA cousins
or matches that match you because they share certain amounts of DNA with you.
And if you stumble on somebody who shares half of your DNA with you,
then it has to be your parents, your sibling, or your child.
If it's less than that, you could be a first cousin, second cousin,
whatever. So the adoptees take these tests because there's over fifty fifty chance
that if you do, you're going to find out who your parents are or
you're going to find your biological family. So this man, this young man,
Jack was after that he knew his mom that he didn't know his dad,
so when his matches came in, naturally he could eliminate the mom because
he knew who they were and they were aunts and great aunts is he knew
all of those and the ones left over belonged to his dad, and we
could use those to It's like a Sudoku puzzle where you take these relatives,
you move them around in the right way, and they all have to connect
with each other. Finally you get it all self consistent in the missing pieces,
you're mister X. So that's what Jack had taken the ancestry test,
and he had uploaded to jed match hoping to find out his aunt had actually
put him up to it, hoping to find out who his father was.
So we stumbled on, we don't know who his father is, but we're
sure we'd like to find out. Jack wants to find his father. We
assured him want to find his father too. There's a reason. So I
went into Jack's matches. He let me have the aunt, let me look
at his account and see his matches on ancestry, on jed match, all
of that, and I figured out who his father was. And I turned
that over to Jack and his family and they were very happy about that,
and so they continued to allow us to work it out with them, continue
to see his matches. We got past that. Now we had to build
his tree. They were very happy to see his dad's pedigree as well,
because now Jack knows who he is. So this has benefit for both parties,
you and your search and Jack and his family in theirs. And that's
not uncommon because there's a lot of adoptees in the databases and it's not uncommon.
Like I think the next one on our list, which was more distant,
was an American who didn't know who his father was. I think out
of the top several matches, we had two or three adoptees looking for their
birth parents, and it just so happens Jack was within reach. Now the
story shifts from Justin to Robin to Rachel roma Derek, and now it shifts
to Jack. Who is Jack? And who is Jack's father? And how
is he related to the Summerton man. We built out a nice tree and
I'm tooling along. I get Jack's grandfather, great grandfather. It's out there
that aunt has helping a little bit, and you won't believe what happened next.
Tune in next time for our next episode in Frida. This episode,
Jack is the great grandson of somebody. Guess what his name is? McMahon,
Yes, no, Smith, I give up Thomas Keene. Oh the
name inside the clothes, said the cloth. Yeah, okay, and wow,
And Derek saying, oh, that's a coincidence. Come on, no
way, there are no no way it is now. I'm with Questin on
this one. There are no coincidences. And he says that Thomas Keane.
We do newspaper searches, were looking all these people and Thomas Keene was commonly
known as Gerald. Derek thinks, okay, he's Gerald. He's not.
I said, who cared? He says. Derek says, my first name
isn't Darre. I go by Derek. I write Derek. So why would
I said, Look, there's seven billion people on Earth. Why would all
the six point nine other people, million people, billion people follow the same
rules of naming themselves as you do. There's no reason. This is not
an engineering project here, Okay, I didn't. Anyway, we had a
small discussion about that. We looked all over the old newspapers in Australia and
we found out Thomas Keane died. There's a notice of his funeral, there's
a notice of the family. And as so he's not Thomas Keane because we
know where Thomas Keane is buried, so this requires more research into the family
to find somebody. We don't know what happened to him. There's no date
of death. He evaporates in history and we find his brother in law,
Carl Webb, who is the brother of Thomas's wife. Thomas marries Freedom Webb
and her brother is Carl Webb, and Carl Webb does not have a date
of death, and Carl Webb is about the right age. Everything looks out
he's in Melbourne, and so Jack is a Webb. He goes through Carl's
father. He's related to Frida and they it's like the father's side of Carl's
family. And to do it right, we need to have the mother's side
a match on the mother's side. We just can't say it's Carl, because
who knows. We need mom and dad's side, a match to mom and
dad's side. It takes a while to find one, because these people are
dead, they're gone, they're born in the nineteen hundreds. We find that
his mother, Eliza, her name was I think her Eliza Grace, and
we start studying the Grace family to see if Liza had a sister that could
come down through Carl's mother's family. We do all out a sister or brother,
whatever. And in the middle of all this, somebody rises and says,
our research alies a lot. And by the way, she's not a
Grace. She was actually adopted. She was This gets work. Actually her
mother is her mother. I think her mother's name is Amelia. But her
father died before she was born. Her father she was probably three or four
months along, and then the father died and the mother remarried really quickly to
somebody named Grace, and she went by the name Grace. But she's really
a Steven's good thing. Good thing. We found her out, so we
take it. It takes anyway, the end of it. It takes a
few weeks to find a connection to mom's side Carl's and we have him tested
and that takes through ancestry. It takes six to eight weeks to get the
results. So we're sitting there twiddling our thumbs trying to find other family members.
And the family is very mom's side is very dilute. They've gone to
different places. They've had a divorce where half the family wasn't talking to the
other half, and all the family pictures went with the other half, and
they were lost and nobody talks to each other anymore. So it took a
while and we finally found a connection to mom's side, had tested on ancestry,
and then sixty eight weeks later, bingo, there it is. He's
exactly he connects to Carl's mom. Okay, so we've identified We really have
identified Carl. He has no date of death. He's from the right play.
All right, May I continue with the next however, yes, number
four. Now we got to find out who Carl is and why he's dead
on the beach. Carl was married to a lady named Dorothy. They married
in nineteen forty one. They separated in forty seven. Dorothy left I think
in Carl left their residence in South Yarra around the Melbourne area. He leaves
in I think April forty seven, and she leaves in September forty seven.
So they leave, they separate, and they finally move away. Now Carl
dies on the beach. We now know it's Carl on the beach. What
happens to Dorothy divorces Carl in nineteen fifty one, she starts a divorce decree.
It's finalizing fifty two, almost exactly five years after he left, which
is some kind of law you have to wait five years and get a divorce.
She divorces him because of abandonment. She doesn't hasn't heard from him.
He abandoned her, and she puts the notices in the newspaper. Carl Webb,
if you don't come to the court and so we're gonna, I'm gonna
divorce your button, You're gonna have to pay all these fines. He might
as well come down and show your faith something like that. If you read
a divorce decree she's She outlines that Carl is a very moody He has severe
mood swings. He can be very charming at times, but he's very depressed.
You go to bed at seven o'clock at night, not come out.
He's gambler and that then we find ads he's placed in the paper selling his
fancy car, his fancy tennis racket, his fancy other things. So he's
not a good gambler. Heat Yeah, he asks for all her money when
she earns it, it's she yells at her, and there's several calls for
domestic abuse over time. But she also says that he writes poetry about death
and that his fondest desire is to be dead. Interesting. Oh my god.
She comes home one day and she finds the house smells like ether.
In fact, the neighbors are complaining it smells like ether. She finds him
soaking wet in bed and he has swallowed fifty feet of arbital tablets. Oh
my gosh, how did he not die? So she gets him, uh,
and she saves him somehow, and he's screaming at her. If you
save me and I get better, I'm going to kill you. When it's
just her father comes to rescue her in the middle of the night. One
time. One time she stays in a hotel, comes back. She's locked
out. She uses a match to see to try and get in the house,
and he says she's burning down the house. She locks herself in a
room. It's very kind of bad scene there. So you read to all
this what's interesting and what Dorothy does for a living? It's a talk.
She says, I am Dorothy, and she introduces herself, identifies herself,
and you know what she does for a living? Can you guess guessing?
Not a ballet dancer, No, a nurse. All he's a pharmacist.
She's a pharmacist. So interesting though, Oh I guess that would explain where
he got all the funeral barbatal from. That could be so. Not only
that in nineteen fifty one, when she writes this and files it, she
lives She didn't live in Melbourne. She lives in South Australia. She lives
in a town called boot Bute, and it's on the rail line between Melbourne
and Perth. So you go through Adelaide, then you go through boot and
then you wind up later on in Perth. So now you have to ask
yourself exactly now you don't know, dude, you don't know. Was it
murder or was it suicide? Was assisted suicide? Was it? How do
you go about this? Now? The mystery is not Carl, it's Dorothy.
What happened to Dorothy? We can't find Dorothy. And it's seventy years
later we don't know. We've been looking for Dorothy. She has a nephew
who was alive, who didn't really know her. She had a sister,
Phillis, and Phillis their father, mister Robertson died and I don't know,
eighties nineties. He left all the money to Phillis. The obituary mentions both
daughters, but he just left everything to Phillis and the nephew. Phillis's son
said he never really knew Dorothy, but that she died. He remembered vaguely
she died in the nineteen nineties in New South Wales, and she lived in
a colony of people. I don't know LGBTQ people or hippies or something.
We can't find Dorothy. He vaguely remembered a couple of names floating through the
whole door that may have known Dorothy. But we don't know what happened to
Dorothy. We can't find her, and we don't know if she just divorced
Carl and went on with life, or whether she divorced Carl and kept getting
married in Black widow or whatever. I don't want to accuse her or anything
about knowing who she was, But Dorothy has vanished. We're trying to find
out what happened and Dorothy interesting. You're listening to Mind over Murder. We'll
be right back after this word from our sponsors. We're back here at Mind
over Murder. So now what comes next? You've identified? I guess it's
not fair to call him Somerton Man anymore, because now we know his name.
You've identified Charles Webb. What happens next, There's a couple of things.
First, to South Australian Police are confirming they have there that we gave
them the data and they have the exhumed remains to work with, and so
they're working with us to confirm where. Also, we asked, I hope
they do toxicology tests on the body. It turns out organics like orbituous disappeared
really quickly in the body. So after seventy five years, you ain't gonna
really see any any of the organic poisonings. Heavy metals might be around,
not to organics, they're gone. How much of the body would be left
after seventy five years, Yeah, in your opinion understanding, it was just
there wasn't a whole lot of soft tissue left that you can find bones at
one hundreds of years old. That's not right, that's not a problem.
That's the hard part of our body, not the soft part. And this
unlike situations where Kristen and I have been talking with people about murder victims or
missing persons that have been out in the environment, he was actually buried in
a traditional cemetery and then the body and the casket were then exhumed. You
are working with the law enforcement agencies in Australia to assist in this confirmation of
the identification that you've created. Yeah, Derek's in touch with them all the
time. In the meantime, we're researching if we can find Dorothy. One
thing that has come up is that Derek has a group of I call him
minions, people of who are really very good researchers and discovered about the Keene
family that Thomas Keene and Derek would have more information. But Thomas Keene was
like a construction person for the theater and he would help. He even traveled
with the Russian Ballet for a while internal Australia, so he probably was in
contact with a lot of Americans. His son, John Keene was killed in
World War Two, like forty two forty three, so that the stuff in
the suitcase the laundry bag could have said Jay not Tee. It could have
been because apparently when his belongings were returned to the Keene family, had a
lot of American stuff in it. Although mister Keane himself was Australian am I
correct, yeah, and his son was killed while serving with the Australian Armed
Forces in World War Two, so it could have been his son's hand me
down said they gave to Carl. I believe, my guest is that just
to tie up the loose ends, is that Carl may have met Justin at
one point. He may have known her. And I think Carl they had
thought that whoever the man was, had come in from Melbourne on the night
train. Over night train, it's like a d eight to twelve hour train
ride, and he got off he was going to spend the day catch the
train. I think he was going after Dorothy and he was going to go
and try and find her somewhere in South Australia, either in Adelaida boot And
he had to day in the city and he went to the beach and he
knew Justin. Maybe he looked her up and he knew her from somewhere.
It wasn't a love affair anything, He just knew her and it was to
kill time, my guests, and he was on his way to find Dorothy
somewhere. Oh and in the meantime, after he left their home in Melbourne,
in April or forty seven. I think he may have gone to live
with the Kings for a while. He may have gone to stay with his
sister who was maybe twenty minutes half an hour away. So he may have
gone to stay with them because he was broke. He was broke, He
was a gambler and he was broke, and he may have stayed with them
and either they asked him to leave or he decided to leave and go after
Dorothy. And he may have gotten some of the son's hand me downs,
like the tie and the clothing bag, a few things that he happened maybe
just to pick up around the house. I think that's what happened. And
the sheet of paper with the codes on it, yeah, they think might
have been related to he gambling habits. Yeah. Derek and his student engineering
students have actually won awards for not breaking the code because they tried all kinds
of codes and it didn't work. So the end is that the best fit
that they found was the first letters of I have to go to the store,
or a series a phrase or as a reminder. And we think even
it's been brought up that could have been the names of horses at various races
or some kind of ga or some kind of gambling mnemonic for him to remember
what to do at certain times. Very interesting while he was losing his fortune
at yeah, various racetracks or whatever. There's stories Dorothy tells stories about a
card game and he lost in the card game, and he got up and
he took a knife and he was threatening to win it with a knife.
Wow. Not the most stable guy in the world, you wouldn't think.
So it is the idea that he would be looking for Dorothy. Do you
have anything to base that on or is that just more kind of logic combined
with a bit of a romantic notion what you're thinking there? I think it's
just logic. Because she was living. She left, we don't know where
she went. And the man has always been thought to have come in on
the overnight train for Melbourne. And why would he leave Melbourne. He had
no relatives, he had no connections anywhere else. He was an instrument maker,
he was a gambler. And a person like that gets local work.
He may have gotten, say a job, who's going somewhere else for a
job, But in those days, why would you need to do that?
His family, he's getting separated from his wife. He has family in the
area of Melbourne. I think he was going after her because we do know
at some point in fifty two fifty one she was living in South Australia along
the rail line, so that's a strong possibility. But it's just a very
small train style. At the time, it wasn't. It was a small
town that grew around the train stop. Now it's just as it. We
consulted with the boot hisstorical society and all that, and they don't have any
reference to Dorothy Webb, but Dorothy Robertson, No Dorothy's It's got to feel
extremely good to put the missing pieces of a puzzle into place like this.
If you could come up with one adjective to describe it, what would you
say that the feeling is? After that? How? Maybe? While would
be closed? It's interesting. I liked the story, liked where how what
happened to Dorothy? That's the next chapter? Happen Dorothy? And do you
think you'll be able to figure that out? No idea. We're looking,
we're getting in the old Dorothy garden, looking for the roots and the berries
and the seeds. But I guess death indexes or the newspapers haven't really revealed
anything. She just died. They didn't put a no bit or anything.
She didn't have really anybody, so you know she was broke too, because
the sister gave a bunch some money for the funeral. And one of the
questions was always was he a dancer because of these very powerful legs that he
had, And from the research that Kristen and I were doing to prepare for
this conversation, it sounds like the thinking now is that him standing up in
machine shops and using tools and that sort of thing would have resulted in these
sort of powerful, stocky legs that were one of his physical features. I
think though, he was also somewhat of an athlete, because when you see
what he's selling off, one of them is a very expensive tennis racket one
item. I think there may have been a couple of other things, but
the tennis racket tells you he's into tennis. So there's so many really interesting
theories about this. There's the Russian spy theory, the jilted lover theory,
the ballet dancer theory. Did actually learning the truth about him ever feel like
a bit of a letdown? Compared to the wild stories. Is that actually
better reality? Sometimes it's stranger than truth. Reality is fiction stranger than fiction.
I like the new way we're going trying to find Dorothy. And another
thing occurred to me is that this man came into the marriage with a fancy
car, tennis racket, that kind of income, that kind of level of
life. And you can see he gets married, he starts selling stuff off
and about forty one forty two, this is happening, and then in forty
later forty seven, that's when trouble is evolving. I'm wondering if Dorothy started
out with him but trying to get him, what would you say, black
widow? Where you marry someone who's affluent and then you work on him,
and you work on him, and over time you get rid of him something
I'm just wondering. So I'm wondering if she's sitting there thinking, oh,
rats, he left, I can't isn't going to work? Oh, Because
I've always assumed that the poisonous self administered. But I guess what you're saying,
there's a possibility there could be a murder mystery mixed in here. Wow,
Yeah, we don't know. It could have been assisted suicide here,
Carl, how about this? Let me give you Let me give you some
food for the trip, So if you get hungry, just have a bite
of this apple and everything will be fine. You don't know. That's why
we've got to find out what happened to Dorothy, because somebody might have poison
her. Maybe one of the husband's caught on and gave her the poison apple.
First, we don't know how. Oh, when you said assisted suicide,
I thought to myself, Carl, you seem really depressed and you're out
of money, so let me just help you step off the edge here.
Yeah, she's said, Now, this divorce decree is one sided. You're
reading her rendition correct, Yes, desiring to get a divorce, so she
doesn't go into the gambling, but she does go into the depression. I
evident she says, just happened. She doesn't say always managed depressed, They
didn't go there. But talking about his behavior is erratic behavior? What is
it? Anger? Lashing out the whole money, taking her money which she
earns, and locking her out. That's one sided. He doesn't have a
chance to really tell you what happened. Yeah, and so she doesn't really
she says she's a pharmacist and then goes on and never brings that up again.
Yeah, that is cool, and her my radar went off, Wait
a minute, you needed a prescription to get those barbiturates back then, And
her well dressed husband ends up dead on the beach, likely from poison of
some sort. That's interesting. Yeah, you have to think about that.
So what is the next big case on your caseload or do you can you
talk about I can't tell you that we have a big whopper we're going to
come out with, but it's taking a while to get it. We have
to confirm you got the agency to okay, yet you've got to arrange for
the big press conference. So you got to get all the guys with the
metals on their chest to all be there at one time. And one's got
this and one's got that. No, they won't stand next to that other
guy whatever. But yeah, I want to say, they're all very nice
people, but we do have a and I will be glad to come back
and tell you about that one. Yeah. In fact, I have a
couple that are of my sleeve. I can't say anything about it. Or
all get in really deep water and deep trouble and it'll be awful and we
can't have that. This Carl web story from Australia taking the name Somerton men
all the way out now to identifying him, and I know there are open
issues. This is such a fascinating story. Anyone said anything to you about
this would make an incredible movie. I know you've got a television show already
in development. This would make an incredible movie. I'd go to see this
movie. I don't not yet. I think that, yeah, they'll come
after us. I've been on numerous podcasts, it's been in various Australian newspapers
went and went wild. I had imagine I had to schedule fifteen minute slots.
It went like that. It wasn't as well publicized here because it's not
this country's case. It was in the UK as well, so I wouldn't
be surprised. And I would like to say the TV program went into pilot,
but Denny god canceled because we're so sorry it wasn't diverse enough. That's
fine, Fine, Fine, another story for another time. Fine, But
I do agree the whole Sumrton thing is and with the right people, maybe
they could help us find out what happened to Dorothy. It's going to be
the name of the TV series that they do what happened to Dorothy? What
happened to Dorothy? Not happened to Dorothy? There you go. Yeah,
what Happened to Dorothy is gonna be that serious. It's just so much it's
gonna never end. We do that. You will come back and join us
as soon as you have another break in a case that you can tell us
about, because we do love hearing about the great work that you're doing here
in the big investigative jigsaw puzzle that it's like I would lose. I would
lose all of my patients with the various ins and outs in the tray scenes
of different paths. So hats off to you for having the patients to do
this. I wouldn't have that at all. We'll tell me that. But
what do you do? You just say, oh, I can't get in
five minutes. I'll see you later. You're stuck. It's like a tar
baby that, yeah, how am I ever? You can't. It's hard
not to have patience with a tar baby because you can't get out of it.
What are you going to do but sit there and you just stay with
it and you see it all the way through. But it's fascinating and I
can't even calculate. How many thousands of hours do you think you put in
on this case of mister Webb since twenty fifteen, quite a few now on
the actual since the beginning of the year. Now, I don't know a
lot. Yeah, I've put a lot of time in. Yeah it.
Derek did too, and it was great working with him because he's such a
good sport and he has this quirky smile and he can see he's up to
something, and he said it was funny. His wife is not really the
granddaughter of the Summerton Man, so she was teasing him saying, now when
you have to get a divorce? Oh, Colleen. Thank you so much
for joining us to talk about the Summrton Man, and we will definitely have
you back to talk about your next amazing cases. Okay, they're in the
pipeline. We're getting ready. Watch this space, stay tuned for future developments.
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Mind Over Murder.
We'll see you next time. Mind Over Murder is a production of Absolute Zero
and another Dog productions. Our Executive producers are Bill Thomas and Kristin Dilley.
Our logo art is by Pamela Arnois. Our theme music is by Kevin McLeod.
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