The Somerton Man

Australia’s Somerton Man case jigsaw puzzle and mystery has gripped global attention for seven decades. The dead man’s body was found on Dec. 1, 1948, on the Somerton beach in Adelaide, South Australia. New findings reported in 2022, yet to be officially evaluated (as of September 2025), identify the Somerton man as Carl Webb. This revelation has led to new studies and speculations about his life and death. However, the investigations that followed ironically added two new major puzzles to the case.

1) What happened to Carl Webb’s ex-wife, Dorothy Jean Robertson Webb, following her divorce from Geoffrey Arthur Lockyer in 1955? This coincided with her appendectomy and related complications requiring hospitalization from which she had been reportedly released. 2) Why has SAPOL and the Coroner’s office in South Australia not offered any new information or evaluations since the highly publicized official exhumation of the Somerton man’s body in 2021?

The following is a conversation conducted by OKCIR sociologist Mohammad H. Tamdgidi with the Google AI on the Somerton Man mystery case on Sept. 7, 2025. This conversation specifically addresses the mysterious disappearance of Dorothy Jean Robertson post-1955. It sheds new light on the possibility that her case and the reluctance of South Australian officials to provide new information about the Somerton man puzzle may be connected.

These two are the last jigsaw puzzle pieces requiring further explanation and amplification, even though the broader story has been presumably solved with the interpretation that the Somerton man was Carl (Charles) Webb.