The inquest proved a Cold War assassination.
It did not. Cleland recorded an uncertain cause and an unknown man. No foreign service appears as a finding.
Mixed status is not a licence to keep a spy novel as the official file.
Aftermath is a name under review and a medical cause that 1949 could not carry.
Still open
- Whether Carl Webb is formally adopted — The 2022 announcement leads public English. A police and coronial adoption is a separate act.
- Cause of death — A poison was suspected and not identified. Naming the man does not finish the medicine.
- Why the Rubaiyat scrap was carried — Literary gesture, personal token or something else — the inquest did not decide.
- What the pencil lines are — No court-accepted decryption exists. They may not be a cipher at all.
- What Jessica Thomson knew — Distress in a police interview is not a statement of fact about the dead man. The question remains biographical, not solved.
Myth vs record
The Rubaiyat code has been officially read.
Hobby decryptions exist. No agency published a text that a court accepted.
Jessica Thomson was convicted of a crime in the case.
She was interviewed and not charged. Jestyn is a witness name in the file, not a defendant.
The 2022 DNA result closed the whole case.
It offered a name. Cause of death, the book and Jestyn’s number remain open. Status is mixed.
Local notes
Adelaide newspaper English
The Advertiser and later ABC Radio created the local voice — a beach suburb, a coroner, a Persian phrase. That dialect still owns the case in Australia.
British and American spy English
BBC, Smithsonian and later podcast hours exported a Cold War reading. They are sources about overseas memory, not about the 1949 docket.
Post-2022 news English
Australian, British and United States papers led with Carl Webb. Responsible follow-up English still has to say that the death mechanism was not in the press release.
The Somerton Man remains a mixed file: a 2022 name that English now uses, and a 1948 death that no court has explained.
Public-record encyclopedia. Not legal advice. Not a how-to. Graphic detail is withheld. Wars belong in a separate atlas.