And after all the conspiracy theories he was just a normal everyday “bloke” in Aussie lingo (bloke = man). Congratulations
@Identifinders for your work on this case.
Little is known about his early life, Abbott says, but he later married Dorothy Robertson — known as Doff Webb.
When Webb emerged as the prime person of interest on the family tree, Abbott and Fitzpatrick set to work, scouring public records for information about him.
They checked electoral rolls, police files and legal documents. Unfortunately, there were no photos of him to make a visual match.
"The last known record we have of him is in April 1947 when he left Dorothy," said Fitzpatrick, founder of Identifinders International, a genealogical research agency involved in some of America's most high-profile cold cases.
He disappeared and she appeared in court, saying that he had disappeared and she wanted to divorce," Fitzpatrick said.
They had no known children.
Fitzpatrick and Abbott say Robertson filed for divorce in Melbourne, but 1951 documents revealed she had moved to Bute, South Australia — 144 kilometres northeast of Adelaide — establishing a link to the neighbouring state, where the body was found.
"It's possible that he came to this state to try and find her," Abbott speculated.
"This is just us drawing the dots. We can't say for certain say that this is the reason he came, but it seems logical."
The information on public record about Webb sheds some light on the mysteries that have surrounded the case.
They reveal he liked betting on horses, which may explain the "code" found in the book, said Abbott, who had long speculated that the letters could correspond to horses' names.
And the "Tamam Shud" poem? Webb liked poetry and even wrote his own, Abbott said, based on his research.