SOMERTON MAN: THE 4 TIBOR KALDORS

AUSTRIAN RESEARCHER TURNS UP ANOTHER
THREE MEN CALLED TIBOR KALDOR

Clive has been in touch with an Austrian Researcher who tells us that she has found another 3 males called Tibor Kaldor all of whom are buried in the same cemetery in Wels Austria not far from Linz.

Our researcher has kindly forwarded 2 of the Death Certificates, whilst there appear to be no formal records for the 3rd man apart from a headstone which bore no date of death.

The forms below are being translated as I write this but what we can see is that both were signed by the same man a Dr. Dreseler. You can also see that the reference numbers at the head of each form are different:

3631/34.856  and 3635/34.890

The dates of death are:

22nd May 1945 and 27th May 1945 respectively

TK 1

TK 2

Perhas you could say this is posted a little prematurely but it does add more to the mystery surrounding Tibor Kaldor. If you recall we recently found that the University of Vienna had no record of his having attended there which conflicts with his claim of having a PhD from Viennna. A commenter suggested that he may have simply fudged the name of the University to impress, and that is being chased down now.

Could it be that these two men of the same name died within days of each other in the same location? Yes, that's possible of course, the sad passing of a father and son perhaps, although it does sound unlikely. But for now we have yet another question about Tibor Kaldor. More to follow once the forms have been translated.

SOMERTON MAN: TIBOR KALDOR, VIENNA UNIVERSITY UPDATED

If you recall, Clive had spent some time investigating Tibor Kaldor and his apparent time at The University of Vienna which also apparently resulted in his obtaining a Doctorate in Languages,

When first approached, regarding 'Tibor Kaldor', the University responded in the negative, there was no record of Tibor Kaldor or his having obtained a degree. Misca suggested that we look instead at Tibor Schoen, this was Tibor's original surname, Kaldor being that of his stepfather.

Yesterday Clive received an email from the University once again stating that they had no record of either Tibor Kaldor or Tibor Schoen. Thy thought it possible that Tibor was in the mistaken belief that the Universities records would have been destroyed during the numerous bombing raids but in fact they survived.

What now for TK? We have not sighted any birth documents and thus it is even possible that Tibor Kaldor is not his real name in any case. That being so, who was he?

We will update again.

SOMERTON MAN: THE BUST, THE SCAN IN COLOUR

THE DIFFERENCE THAT COLOURS MAKE:

This is the more familiar view of the image of the 3D scan of the plaster bust. When examining this it seemed to me that there were a few things that were odd. Firstly the difference between the actual plaster bust image and this view and secondly, the hairline seemed quite unusual. 

So, I had the images coloured in by an artist:

Looking closely at the profile image to the left you'll see that the main part of the hair on his head appears to be a hair piece. I must stress that this was done by an artist and he assured me that he had stayed faithful to the detail. The hair at the sides was close cropped but the centre was quite bulky, in fact, it was higher to the right of centre than it was to the left.

It seemed to me that it would be an idea to remove the 'hair piece' at least that's what it seems to be, and here are the results.

Profile image comparison, bald:

Full face comparison, bald:

Finally, here is the full face and profile image with the piece removed:

Does this mean that the man in the bust is not the man found at Somerton Beach? If you recall a few months ago we suggested that may be the case and that the man of whom the bust was made might well hav been Tibor Kaldor, the other occupant of the Adelaide City Morgue where SM also lay.

It left me with quite a question, why does the scan image when coloured bear no great resemblance to the coloured version of the plaster bust?

The mouth is wider in the bust image above and the nose is quite different as is the hair.

I believe that the reason for this is that Mr. Lawson may well have used the photographs of SM that the Police took just after the autopsy. It appears to me that the facial features of the plaster bust were modelled using those images rather than faithfully following the actual facial features of the man.

What difference does that make? The 3D scan I understand was done using IR, it would have detected the inner detail of the bust, you may have seen similar effects on Antique painting recovery and identification. They use IR and sometimes Xrays to get to the hidden detail.

SOMERTON MAN: THE TRAP: IMPORTANT UPDATE: MATCH FOR SMs TEETH? UPDATED 22nd January 15.40

THE TRAP

The photograph above came from this blog:

http://wwii-letters-to-wilma.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/17-september-1945.html

So...

We searched and found another photograph, (I have ordered a hard copy of this image):

This seems to confirm that we had a picture of Fedosimov!

But, being the fastidious types that we are, we looked at the image and thought, hmmm., That guy next to Fedosimov must be really tall. The next step was to look for another photograph this time of Novikov, and here it is below:

The photograph above is actually not Fedosimov, it is Nikolai Novikov, Soviet Ambassador to the US. Interesting looking bloke in the background?

And the big man to the left of the earlier airport image is the real PAVEL I FEDOSIMOV.

SO now you have the truth, we assumed that the first image was correctly titled as Fedosimov, that was reinforced by the image at the airport or so it seemed.

This is the tall man with the huge hands who walked on the balls of his feet, the set of the eyes is quite close to SM, the chin is about right,

This could be very significant, he also had an interesting set of teeth from what we see above. looks like some teeth are missing in the right locations, we have to wait for the hard copy print to arrive from the US which can take a couple of weeks, in the meantime here's a close up added 22/01/17

Not sure about the nose, the angle of the camera may be the problem.

The above is a comparison of SM's right ear and Fedosimov's right ear. Given that we have two very different camera angles and one was taken at a distance, I suggest that we have a very close match between the two. Some detail is simply not visible due to the angle.

The ears are not as clear as we would like but we will soon have the original hard copy image to examine more closely.


I apologise most profoundly for the initial wrong ID, but as you can see, this was a good example of how assuming that everything we find on the web is correct can lead you into deep water very quickly!

Sorry Byron! Misca! But this one is worth more following up!

SOMERTON MN: MAJOR PAVEL IVANOVICH FEDOSIMOV, CODE NAME STEPAN

MAJOR PAVEL IVANOVICH FEDOSIMOV, KGB

Misca uncovered this man's name in her follow-up research. Clive had found a name that was not dissimilar but is now thought to be a misspelling.

The image above is of the man identified by Harry Gold as the man he met at the Earl Theater on December 26th 1946. He was employed at the Russian consulate in New York as an assistant to the consul, that is apart from his other duties which decidedly included espionage.

Of note is that that Fedosimov had a code name STEPAN and that name crops up a number of times in the Venona cables, one string, in particular, discusses the whereabouts of weapons and explosives secreted in the consulate building. One of the weapons described is a pistol disguised as a fountain pen and which held two poison bullets. That same code name was once used by another agent some years earlier.

This man was a handler for the Atom Spies following Yakovlev's departure to take up another post in Europe.

The picture was taken in April 1947, according to records, Fedosimov returned to Russia in August 1948. Clive is still chasing down some other leads on this man.

According to Harry Gold, Fedosimov was:

1. About 6'2"
2. Large build,
3. Huge hands
4. Walked on the balls of his feet, this condition can lead to highly developed calf muscles and result in wedge-shaped toes

With the aid of the photograph above, we can also see the very similar ear shape, the set of the eyes and a very similar nose shape.


The spectacles tend to hide some of the features so in the image below the specs have been digitally removed:

Whilst this photograph isn't as clear as we would like when you take into account camera angle, lighting and postmortem bloating in the SM Police image below left, you have a fair resemblance. We are not certain at this stage, more research to be done.

Take into account camera angle, lighting and postmortem bloating in the SM Police image on the left and you have a fair resemblance. We are not certain at this stage, more research to be done.

More will be added to this post over the next few days.

Many thanks to Clive and to Misca for their ongoing involvement and contributions.

SOMERTON MAN: HARRY GOLD, ATOM SPY MET THE SOMERTON MAN?

THE INTRIGUING STORY OF
HOW HARRY GOLD MET THE SOMERTON MAN?

DECEMBER 1946, THE EARL THEATER, THE BRONX NEW YORK

In the last post, we discussed how a Soviet Agent met Harry Gold, an Atom Spy at the Earl Theatre in the Bronx on that cold Thursday December 26th. 1946. 

The man Harry met was quite large, around 6'2", huge hands and he walked on the balls of his feet. He was a classic toe walker and toe walking as we know can lead to extremely well-developed calf muscles apart from contributing to wedge-shaped toes. The agent was also described as having 'very sharp features'. This description is a seriously close match to that of the Somerton Man but there is more to the comparisons than just his appearance.

There was another, most unusual aspect that the man shared with SM, he knew exactly how to confirm the identification of the person he was intended to meet. He had one part of a torn piece of paper that, in the Earl Theater instance, had written instructions scrawled across it. Initially, one piece of that same paper was given to Gold by Anatoli Yakovlev, Gold's handler, whilst the other was given to the man who would, in fact, meet Gold that day, the 'toe walker'. If both pieces matched then the identification was confirmed by both parties.  Yakovlev was to become known as the Russian's most successful spymaster during the early Cold War years.

At the prescribed time, Harry met up with the Soviet agent in the upstairs foyer of the Earl Theater. A question was asked by the agent, "Do you know how to get to Paul Street?" and Harry responded with his part, "Yes I am going there myself a little later". This short exchange was to be the initial identifier without which, nothing further would have happened. But in this instance, the two parts were spoken correctly and Harry dutifully produced his torn part of the scrawled message and so did the agent. Both parts matched and the identification routine was successfully completed. A short discussion followed in which the agent told Harry that his contact "John' would be going on a trip the next day but he was to immediately go to a location where he could meet John for the final time.

The purpose of the meeting between the Soviet agent and Harry was ostensibly to organise the handover of the handlers role from "John" ( Yakovlev) to the new toe walking, huge handed agent. In a later post we will show how things did not exactly go with Yakovlev's plan but for our purposes in this post, the meeting at least went ahead.

SOMERTON PARK. ADELAIDE, TUESDAY NOVEMBER 30th. 1948

Followers will recall that the Somerton Man had with him a small torn piece of paper that was found at the autopsy hidden deep inside a hard to find waistband 'fob' pocket. The paper had been rolled up tightly and pushed down to the seam of that pocket, presumably, this was done to fool any cursory searcher into thinking that, from the outside at leat, the paper was part of the seam.

You will also know that this paper was identified as having come from a small poetry book, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam a Fitzgerald 1st edition published by Whitcome & Tombs of New Zealand around 1942. The book was described by Gerry Feltus as being a 'pocket' sized version. This book was later handed into the SA Police by a man referred to as Mr Francis. He had apparently found it in the glove box of his car where it had been placed by his brother in law who had in turn originally found it behind the front seats of the car and moved it to the glove box believing it to belong to the owner of the car. The story is that the brother in law found the book around the time of the Parafield Air Show in late November 1948. The real name of Mr Francis has never been released publicly although I understand it is known by a small number of people.

How can we explain the purpose of this torn piece of paper found on the Somerton Man and which had been rolled up so tightly as to almost have been missed at the autopsy? Given the nature of spy meeting spy and their identification procedures, what was the scenario that played out at Somerton on November 30th. 1948? A fateful day for the Somerton Man, it was a warmish day with a low of 16 degrees and a high of 26. The overnight temperature fell just a little to 20 degrees.

Quite a stark contrast to the Bronx in December 1946 when layers of warm clothes would have been needed. Interestingly the Somerton Man was dressed for much cooler weather although wearing a 'jersey' beneath your coat was considered acceptable fashion at the time.

More to follow...

SOMERTON MAN: HOW TALL WAS THE SOMERTON MAN? HAVE WE FOUND HIM? UPDATED: 0530 9/01/17

HOW TALL WAS THE SOMERTON MAN?

...AND YOU MIGHT ASK HOW DOES THAT HELP?

According to the autopsy report, SM when measured in the morgue, was 5 feet and 11 inches in height. That's fairly straightforward, they laid him out, grabbed the ever handy tape measure and arrived at a fairly conclusive result. But was that the reality of his height?

If I can explain, the measurements were of a dead person, all muscles would have been fully relaxed, he would have been shorter than when he was alive, let's say by at least 1 inch, that would make him ^ 6 foot tall.

Next, when alive he wore decent shoes, that would add say another 1 inch to his apparent height. That would make him around 6'1" tall.

Now consider what happens to us all if we make an effort to stretch to our full height, we can pick up another 1 inch approximately. This makes our man 6'2"  in height

Now let's look at the question of his wedge shaped toes, these toes occur in a few people, ballet dancers and maybe horse riders as has been often discussed. They also occur in people who have a particular condition known as 'toe walking' there is a medical term but I am not sure that it would help that much. Two things happen when people walk on their toes or more precisely, on the balls of their feet. Firstly, they have highly developed calf muscles and secondly they appear to be taller.

Following this logic, then the Somerton Man in real life could have stood at 6'2" or even 6'3" in height.

So, what does that mean in this case? One thing it means is that as Clive and I and Misca and Byron plus others carry out our searches, we come across various forms that include height measurements, very often a search on the same person can have two or even 3 different results. One benefit for those who research is that we could now extend our search to include people up to 6'3" in height.

The Soviet Agent

There is one other thing, here is an image of a clipping from a book, The Atom Spies:

This image taken in 1941

The meeting referred to in the book took place in this Movie theatre in the Bronx, NY. in December 1946.

If nothing else, this 6'3" fair haired man, a Soviet Agent, with huge hands, sharp features and who walked on his toes, needs to be followed up, let's see if we can get a name. FYI, because he was a Soviet Agent does not necessarily mean that he was Russian, it could well mean that he had previously been in Australia and just may be he returned again sometime between January 1947 and November 1948. There is a real possibility that we may have our man, let's get on with the chase.

These pics have been added following a comment from Pete Bowes, they show, in my view, a man with sharp features,