An unidentified male body was found on Somerton Beach in Adelaide, Australia at ~6:30AM, December 1, 1948. The victim was wearing a sweater and coat despite the hot day, and all identification marks on his wardrobe had been removed. There were no clues as to his identity, and the victim's dental records and fingerprints matched no known person. An autopsy discovered bizarre congestion, blood in the stomach, and enlarged organs, but no foreign substances (aside from the benign remnants of a recently eaten pastry).
Eight different "positive" matches had been disproved by early 1949, when a suitcase - very likely to have belonged to the still unidentified man - was found at a nearby train station. It contained a pair of trousers with a secret hidden pocket, which itself held a piece of paper torn from a book imprinted with the words “Taman Shud" (translated as "ended" or "finished"). The paper was matched to an extremely rare copy of Omar Khayyam’s ‘The Rubaiyat’ that had been found in the backseat of a random man's unlocked car. In New Zealand. Earlier in 1948. On the back of that book, five lines of capital letters were scrawled in a manner that suggested some kind of code. The Australian Department of Defense analyzed the text in 1978, but were unable to identify it as anything beyond "a complex substitute code" or "the meaningless response to a disturbed mind." Subsequent attempts at cracking the code by countless mathematicians, astrologers, amateurs, and foreign military and naval intelligence bodies have proved just as fruitless.
The case is still considered "open" at the South Australian Major Crime Task Force. Any further attempts to correctly identify the body have been hampered by the fact that the formaldehyde used to embalm the body has destroyed much of the DNA. Additionally, other key evidence no longer exists, such as the brown suitcase, which was destroyed in 1986, and many statements, which have somehow disappeared from the police file over the years.
Ah buh...
Again, check out the Wikipedia entry linked above for even more frustrating details, including possible connections to known espionage cases, investigative dead ends, mystery visitors to the man's grave, and suspects that turned up dead.
