Somerton Man · Hannibal Lecter · Auster and Alig
And Rachel Monroe, AND Janet Malcolm, AND Baby M
the true crime that's worth your time
Thanks to Twitter tipster Jane for letting me know about this Somerton Man/Tamam Shud case update! A researcher on the case thinks he’s nailed down an exact identity — Carl Webb, an electrical engineer for whom no death date could be found in the course of genealogical research.
From ABC.au’s write-up of the announcement:
University of Adelaide researcher Derek Abbott believes the unknown man found slumped and lifeless at Adelaide's Somerton Beach on December 1, 1948, was Carl "Charles" Webb, a 43-year-old engineer and instrument maker.
…
While the mystery man's remains were exhumed last year by SA Police, Professor Abbott has in the meantime persisted with his own independent efforts to crack the case.
He said after using hairs from a plaster bust of the man to gather DNA evidence, researchers in Australia and America had further narrowed the search "to build out a family tree containing over 4,000 people".
In tandem with a stateside prof, Abbott painstakingly built a forensic family tree that led him to Webb:
Professor Abbott said that, in March this year, suspicions fell on Webb, who was born in 1905 but later identified "as a person with no death record".
Professor Abbott, who last week spoke to the ABC about his work, added "the final pieces of DNA proof came into place" on Saturday, "triangulating to Charles Webb".
That last bit gives me familiar pause, because it’s not quite specific enough to take it out of that “wow! …wait, hold on” territory that’s also occupied by grand, but ultimately subjunctive, assertions about DB Cooper’s parachute’s straps or whatever. A bit more detail on the nature of that proof is warranted, I think, given that South Australia Police have not confirmed Abbott’s findings, although authorities have followed up with a “fingers crossed” statement and both sides say they’re prepared to coordinate findings.
"South Australia Police are still actively investigating the 'Somerton man' coronial matter," a police spokesperson said.
"We are heartened of the recent development in that case, and are cautiously optimistic that this may provide a breakthrough.
"We look forward to the outcome of further DNA work to confirm the identification which will ultimately be determined by the coroner."
If the Webb ID holds, it would seem to slenderize somewhat the case’s true-crime qualifications (many of the theories as to Somerton Man’s journey to that beach involved a “permanent decommission” as a spy), although the mystery of the coded writing Somerton Man was found with remains, as well as a possible poison-related cause of death that coroners couldn’t confirm via testing.
All the pieces linked have more information about Webb’s estranged wife; his parents and other associates whose names might ring a bell among the living; and other information that might aid the global hive-mind in finally closing a legendarily cold case. My take: while it’s still a mystery, it’s the “…even to oneself” sort of mystery, involving obscure proportions of heartbreak and mental illness. That alchemy can combine for foul play, but I doubt it did here. Whoever he is, I hope he’s resting. — SDB
I have readers to thank for a couple other stories in today’s round-up — starting with a deep dive from fellow Substack editorialist Anne Helen Petersen into the stolen antiquities task force. Please thank @radishcake on Twitter as you read/enjoy!
And in the course of chatting about something else, reader Kate M. mentioned a video on Vanity Fair’s YouTube channel in which a criminologist “reviews” serial killers of film and TV. The list includes Dexter, Silence of the Lambs, and Zodiac, and it’s conversational and process-y; you can watch that below:
I didn’t have time to check out the channel’s similar video on fictional/scripted cults of the screen, but it’s on my watchlist for sure. — SDB
I too thought I’d had my fill of “takes” on The Journalist and the Murder, but here’s a novel one (so to speak) from Cannonball Read. Cannonball Read is “an online, memorial book challenge to read and review 52 books in a year (or 26 or 13) with a mission to donate profits to the American Cancer Society” (v. cool idea), and auntadadoom wrote up Janet Malcolm’s legendary takedown of Joe McGinniss/reporting a month ago. A snip:
In what I think is a fascinating and absolutely correct choice, she purposely does not closely examine MacDonald’s guilt or innocence of murder, and instead zeroes in on the ethics of the relationships that form between journalists and their subjects. In writing this book, she herself is the journalist, and she personally grapples with the same fundamental issues as McGinniss faced in working with MacDonald … how to get information out of a source without lying to them. Or is lying okay, after all?
Malcolm’s “choice” here has historically read to me as more “not wanting to involve herself with facts inconvenient to/too ugly for her grand unifying theory,” but reading the CR overview, it strikes me that it can be both things — that, in Malcolm’s oeuvre, it very often was, and you have to meet her writing where it is, which is: surgically gorgeous and smugly unrigorous. — SDB
As promised earlier this week, a Rachel Monroe reader! Okay, one of these is a listen, but it pairs well with one of the reads, so if you liked Savage Appetites — and my Blotter Presents guest Kevin Smokler and I liked it quite well when we talked about it —
— then consider bookmarking these for your weekend.
Monroe’s contrib page at The New Yorker, with a lot of columns on investigations and healing in Uvalde, TX
“The Killer Crush: The Horror Of Teen Girls, From Columbiners To Beliebers” at The Awl
Monroe’s appearance on You’re Wrong About’s 2018 Columbine episode
“The Perfect Man Who Wasn’t,” on love fraudster Derek Alldred, for The Atlantic
“The FBI of the National Park Service” — or, “Exhibit G(azillion) in the case for why we do not go on hikes with estranged partners” — for Outside
Any other Monroe longreads that belong on this list? — SDB
It’s a sure bet that no headline containing the phrase “babies at bargain prices” is going to top a feel-good story, and sure enough, Emily Baumgaertner’s investigation into the allegations against Lilly Frost is grimy and chilling. The story of Frost’s downfall has more than a couple parallels with Theranos — there’s a distinct “if I just lie/obfuscate for a little while, I can get the situation to come online and then ‘cocky overpromising’ will become ‘genius’” flavor to Frost’s machinating.
Frost told many of her clients in emails that she could provide something few others would dare: a guarantee. For a flat fee — covering in vitro fertilization, legal expenses, surrogates and their medical bills — she promised customers they would become parents, no matter how many IVF attempts or miscarriages occurred.
Sometimes there’s a reason things are done the way they are — or aren’t. Related to that idea: the Baby M case, which is one of the ones that utterly dominated headlines in the tri-state in the mid-eighties, is why gestational surrogacy was made illegal in New York State. (Which I believe it still is unless the surrogate has some genetic link to the gestat…ee? This 2014 New York Times longread goes into more depth about the landscape for surrogacy back then, and gives some Baby M-case context.) — SDB
Daniel became the rarely mentioned fourth man in the apartment, one who did not appear in the most popular retellings.
Alex Vadukul’s “The Life and Death of Daniel Auster, a Son of Literary Brooklyn” is a fantastic read on the tribulations of Paul Auster’s son Daniel, who died of an overdose earlier this year. Auster fils was facing charges in the death of his infant daughter — and it wasn’t the first time he’d found himself embroiled in a homicide investigation. As noted above, Auster the Younger was at the least a witness to the sordid murder of Andre “Angel” Melendez by Michael Alig and Robert Riggs. (The Times’s customary stringent formality — “Mr. Alig,” “Mr. Musto” — is especially amusing given that he’s often discussing cultural figures who appeared on talk shows wearing glittery diapers and tiarae made out of doll legs.)
But it’s a crisply written look back at the nightlife of the time; at the way that “mysteries” about why such-and-so wasn’t charged or how “Mr. Who’sits” might have vanished from an indictment tend to resolve to “privilege”; at the promising Brooklyn kids on the verge who never quite…verge; and — oh hey, Janet Malcolm! — at the ethics of including your family, and especially your minor children, in your work as a high-profile writer.
In 2003, [Siri] Hustvedt [, Daniel Auster’s stepmother,] published “What I Loved,” an acclaimed novel that attracted scrutiny for appearing to borrow heavily from reality. The book’s second half focuses on a boy named Mark who grows into a deceitful teenage addict and clubgoer. He torments his father, Bill, and intimidates his stepmother, Violet. He also becomes intimately involved with a nightlife figure who is arrested for the murder of a drug dealer named Rafael Hernandez.
And the last graf is an absolute leveler.
For more on Alig and that time in the city, here’s my review of Glory Daze. — SDB
…And this isn’t even the budget-doc clean-out for July! One last deck chair before I leave the steering of THAT Titanic to Eve: our esteemed contributor Elizabeth Held chatted with one of my favorite esteemed Blotter Presents guests, Alex Segura. Here’s a process-y snip from today’s Five Questions With. — SDB
A lot of time with comics, writers will write a full script that breaks it down very specifically, panel by panel. Or there’s the Marvel style, when the writer sends the artist a rough outline. You basically give the keys of the car to the artist. I like working that way because it lets the artist detail the camera angles, the perspective.
Coming up on Best Evidence: Eve 1, the iceberg that is the July story budget 0 (we hope) and I’ll have that Adrienne review for paid subscribers. “Oh dang, how can I read that?” Glad you asked…
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