The body was found on the beach early that Wednesday morning, Police arrived and the 'sudden death' process began. Whilst there is a great deal of detail surrounding the event, our purpose in this post is to focus on one issue. The small scrap of paper that had been torn from a book, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, and which bore the words TAMAM SHUD, it was later to be found rolled up tightly and pushed down into a hard to find waistband fob pocket of the trousers that the man was wearing at the time:

The piece itself when unraveled was quite small, the dimensions being approximately 40 mm wide and 15 mm in height.

The image you see above is from a series taken by Adelaide University in laboratory conditions. It had been found by ex Detective Sergeant Herry Feltus, the man who wrote the definitive book about the Police investigation of the Somerton Man, 'The Unkown Man'. To my knowledge, the examination seemed to be focused on the nature of the paper itself and, by default, the wording on it. I know that the torn piece still exists although it is not in the hands of the University nor Professor Abbott.

These are some close-up images of the printed letters on the torn piece, they were taken under Infrared lighting but no other effects were used:

The Whitcomb and Tombs Courage and friendship book is entirely the wrong size/aspect ratio.

A side note, the torn piece was found in a hidden fob pocket of the trousers that the man was wearing at the time his body was discovered on the beach. As it now seems, this tiny piece of paper was highly significant, it carries what appears to be extensive code.

It is difficult to see how the man would have managed to secrete the piece, then be moved off the beach, someone removed his original trousers and replaced them with another pair he would have to have removed the hidden piece and replace it again in the other trousers which would also have to have a hidden fob pocket Unless of course he had it secreted elsewhere but given his apparent stupified state, would he have had the presence of mind to carry out such an act?

On a related issue, in the image above you can see where Gordon Strapps and Olive Neill were seated on the evening of 30th November. The sun had set at 7.13 pm, so it was dusk when Gordon saw the man lying there, I am not sure what Gordon's eyesight was like, but at a distance of 5 to 6 meters in dusk conditions, I think it unlikely that he could have made a clear identification of colour/pattern Thus, you would have to conclude that a second pair of trousers were not involved.

As a result of finding the code hidden on the torn piece, we can also conclude that the piece was not an identification method in common use at the time whereby two agents would compare two pieces of a torn page and if they were a match, then they continued their meeting. No, this piece of paper was far to valuable for such a comparatively low level of use.