Dead Pool 31st July 2022

A busy week for deaths with quite a few of you scoring 😀 With the passing of James  Lovelock, Millie scores 147 points as she listed him as her Cert. With Bernard Cribbins departing us, 57 points go to Rachel, Paul C, Liz, Paul G, Chris, Nickie, and Iwan. Well done all of you. 

Look Who You Could Have Had:

In Other News

A third set of human remains has been found at Lake Mead, as an ongoing drought continues to lower water levels at the huge reservoir. The torso was discovered at a Nevada swimming beach on Monday evening. Shots taken of the body appear to show a person’s trunk with its arms, leg and head missing.  It marks the third grisly discovery made at the lake, which is at its lowest level in 84 years, since May. The National Park Service did not say in a statement how long officials think the corpse was submerged in the Boulder Beach area of the lake before it was found Monday around 4:30 p.m. by people who summoned park rangers. Clark County Coroner Melanie Rouse said Tuesday it was partially encased in mud at the water line of the swimming area along the shore. Little is known about the new discovery with the gender, time, cause or manner of death all still a mystery. Rouse said that investigators are scouring through local missing person reports in an attempt to identify the corpse. Human remains, as well as sunken boats, including a World War II landing craft, and other items have been discovered at lake over the summer as the water level declines. The coroner said her office was continuing work to identify a man whose body was found May 1 in a rusted barrel in the Hemenway Harbor area. Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Homicide Lt. Ray Spencer said in May: ‘The lake has drained dramatically over the last 15 years. It’s likely that we will find additional bodies that have been dumped in Lake Mead.’ He was correct, six days after that discovery, another set of human bones were found on a newly surfaced sand bar near Callville Bay, more than nine miles from the marina. Daniel fell from a speedboat that flipped when it struck by a wake during a fishing trip with a friend 64 years ago. His father was a Las Vegas mobster and casino magnate named Ruby Kolod, although there is no suggestion that Daniel’s death was a result of foul play. His remains were never recovered despite searches by a helicopter and divers. On July 6, the body of a 22-year-old Boulder City woman was found in the water near where she disappeared while riding a personal watercraft. Rouse said it may take several weeks to determine her cause of death. The case of the body in the barrel was being investigated as a homicide after police said the man had been shot and his clothing dated to the mid-1970s to early 1980s. Around 300 people have drowned in Lake Mead since the 1930s but that does not include those whose bodies were never recovered, including Daniel Kolod. About 40 million people rely on the Colorado River as their water supply, with Lake Mead and Lake Powell serving as the area’s primary reservoirs. Yum!    

Kate Garraway is reportedly in ‘survival mode’ after her husband Derek Draper took a ‘serious turn for the worse’ this month.The former political advisor, 54, was readmitted to hospital two months ago, more than two years since he contracted Covid, with the virus causing major health complications and long-lasting damage to his organs.Kate recently had to pull out of her presenting duties on Good Morning Britain to support her family. And now, a source close to the family claimed that she’s trying to stay positive despite the sudden change in his health.”Kate’s been incredibly strong throughout Derek’s illness and has remained a pillar of strength for the family despite their entire lives being turned around, but right now she’s in pure survival mode and is having to now face the possibility of her worst nightmare coming true if Derek doesn’t make it out of this,” they revealed. “She’s hell-bent on staying positive, not only for Derek but for herself and the children too.” They added: “Derek is back in hospital in a very serious condition but the family knows he is in the best hands. Kate is doing everything she can for her husband. He comes first and so work will have to take a back seat this week.” 

Scots comedian Janey Godley has reflected on her cancer journey and revealed that she is finally starting to feel like herself again. Janey was  diagnosed with ovarian cancer last year and has been battling the disease and updating her fans throughout as she went through operations and courses of treatment. Following gruelling chemotherapy sessions, last month the funny woman announced that her latest scan came back clear. At the time, a tearful Janey said: “I have just had a phone call from the cancer specialist and the scan has came back clear. There is no evidence of the disease, so after the hysterectomy and six rounds of chemo and a blood transfusion it seems like the NHS has definitely saved my life. “I want to thank everyone at the Beatson Cancer Care and every one at the NHS who looked after me. I also want to thank my wee pal Shirley who looked after me when I came out after the hysterectomy.” Janey faces having to take pills for the rest of her life to stop the cancer returning but couldn’t contain her joy. And now she has taken to Twitter to look back on her journey, with a series of selfies taken throughout. Janey went on to say that she is finally starting to feel herself again after getting the all clear.

On This Day

  • 1970 – Black Tot Day: The last day of the officially sanctioned rum ration in the Royal Navy.
  • 1971 – Apollo program: the Apollo 15 astronauts become the first to ride in a lunar rover.
  • 2007 – Operation Banner, the presence of the British Army in Northern Ireland, and the longest-running British Army operation ever, comes to an end.

Deaths

  • 1875 – Andrew Johnson, American general and politician, 17th President of the United States (b. 1808)
  • 1886 – Franz Liszt, Hungarian pianist, composer, and conductor (b. 1811)
  • 1917 – Hedd Wyn, Welsh language poet (b. 1887)
  • 2009 – Bobby Robson, English footballer and manager (b. 1933)
  • 2012 – Gore Vidal, American novelist, screenwriter, and critic (b. 1925)
  • 2013 – Michael Ansara, Syrian-American actor (b. 1922)
  • 2015 – Roddy Piper, Canadian wrestler and actor (b. 1954)
  • 2018 – Tony Bullimore, British sailor & businessman (b. 1939)
  • 2020 – Alan Parker, English filmmaker (b. 1944)

Last Meals

Back in June 2021 we read about the Somerton Man, one of Australia’s most baffling and enduring mysteries – the unsolved case of an unclaimed body dubbed ‘Somerton Man’ who was found with a coded note in his pocket on a beach 74 years ago – which may have finally been unraveled after a professor claimed he used DNA analysis to uncover his true identity.

The fully-clothed body was discovered slumped against a sea wall by two trainee jockeys near the shore of Somerton Park Beach, Adelaide, on December 1, 1948. He had an unlit cigarette resting on his chest.

A post-mortem examination ruled he was poisoned, but was never identified because no family members came forward to claim him.

He was in a perfectly-pressed double-breasted suit and tie; a coded note and a book of Persian poems among his belongings lent themselves to wild theories that he was a Cold War spy or had been murdered by a scorned ex-lover.

Now, more than 70 years later, Adelaide University researcher Derek Abbott says the man was Carl ‘Charles’ Webb, a 43-year-old electrical engineer and instrument maker from Footscray in Melbourne.

Professor Abbott, who has been working alongside renowned American genealogist Colleen Fitzpatrick, used hair from a plaster mask police made in the 1940s to construct a DNA profile.

After building a family tree of around 4,000 people, Abbott and Fitzpatrick had a breakthrough on Saturday – successfully matching the DNA from the hair to samples from Webb’s distant relatives.

‘By filling out this tree, we managed to find a first cousin three times removed on his mother’s side,’ Abbott told the flying monkeys. ‘It just felt like I climbed and I was at the top of Mount Everest.’   

Webb was born the youngest of six children in 1905 in Melbourne. No death records or photos exist on file.

Professor Abbott said they also found a link between Webb and the name ‘T.Keane’ – which was printed on the Somerton Man’s tie.

‘It turns out that Carl Webb has a brother-in-law called Thomas Keane, who lived just 20 minutes drive away from him in Victoria,’ Professor Abbott told the flying monkeys.

‘So it’s not out of the question that these items of clothing he had with T. Keane on them were just hand me downs from his brother-in-law.’ 

Professor Abbott said they had also found a potential reason why the Melbournian  was in Adelaide.

‘We have evidence that he had separated from his wife, and that she had moved to South Australia, so possibly, he had come to track her down,’ he said.

In May last year, South Australia police exhumed the Somerton Man’s body from its resting place at West Terrace Cemetery.

However, experts from Forensic Science SA encountered difficulties analysing the DNA due to the small amount of ‘comparison samples’.

South Australia Police, who are conducting a parallel investigation, are yet to verify Abbott’s findings.

South Australia Police have been contacted for comment.  Professor Abbott hopes their work will be confirmed by authorities to enable further research into Webb’s life.

Webb was born on November 16, 1905, in the inner-city Melbourne suburb of Footscray.

Abbott said there are few records to shed light on his early life and they have not been able to find any photos of him in public databases or relatives’ photo albums.

However, Webb later married Dorothy ‘Doff’ Robertson, and the last known record on file is a court notice in April 1947 when she went to court to file for divorce because he had disappeared.

After Robertson filed for divorce in Melbourne, documents from 1951 show she had moved to Bute in South Australia, 144km northeast of Adelaide.

Abbott said Webb liked betting on horses and the mysterious code found in the man’s book could relate to horse names.

The researcher said Abbot was also fond of poetry, which could explain the Tamam Shud note.

Last Week’s Birthdays

Michael Biehn (66), Wesley Snipes (60), Emilia Fox (48), Rico Rodriguez (24), Dean Cain (56), J.K. Rowling (57), Christopher Nolan (52), Arnold Schwarzenegger (75), Hilary Swank (48), Lisa Kudrow (59), Laurence Fishburne (61), Jean Reno (74), Terry Crews (54), Frances de la Tour (78), Carel Struycken (74), William Atherton (75), Kate Bush (64), Wil Wheaton (50), Hannah Waddingham (48), Elizabeth Berkley (50), Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (53), Taylor Schilling (39), Donnie Yen (60), Sandra Bullock (58), Kate Beckinsale (49), Jason Statham (55), Kevin Spacey (63), Helen Mirren (77), Nana Visitor (65), Eve Myles (44), Mick Jagger (79), Matt LeBlanc (55), D.B. Woodside (53), and Iman (67).

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