In a deep fob pocket of the man’s trousers was found a little snippet of paper that read ‘tamam shud’, it turned out to be from a rare New Zealand copy of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam a translation of old Persian poems. Tamam shud means ‘ended’ or ‘finished’.
The book that this had been torn from was found in the back of an unlocked car in Glenelg. In the back of the book was written what looked like code. Cryptographers absolutely love breaking codes, and despite a hectic flurry of attempted code breaking the message remains a mystery. There was also a telephone number in the back of the book for a nurse that lived 400m from the corpse’s position. She had owned the very same book and in 1945 had given it to a lieutenant called Alfred Boxall.
The woman (who would not allow her name to be divulged) said that she had moved to Melbourne and some time later received a letter from Boxall making advances but had advised him that she was a married woman now and had heard nothing more from him since. Maybe Boxall was the man?
☛ More Murder: Graham Frederick Young: The 14 Year Old Serial Killer
