Sorry for the two posts in a row the last one was getting too long.
Why allow the body to be found if he was?
If someone killed him to send a message to someone else then it would have made no sense to leave the body where it couldn't be found. If it was a suicide for any reasons it could have just been a matter of him choosing a place he considered to be pleasant and where he knew he would be found and given a funeral.
Even in the case of a suicide it could been chosen to convey a message if his body was found... say, if spies were involved, if there was a romantic problem, even if he was mentally ill and suffering from delusions of getting 'revenge' on the world.
Any agency worth its salt would have created a coverup to explain why the man died even if they were unable to immediately get to the body before the authorities - If they simply stated that the man was an unnamed foreign national and then obtained the remains, there would be speculation about what happened, but not much beyond that. Or they would have possessed the means to dispose of the body themselves and would have done so in a manner that would preclude easy detection.
I disagree.
Even in the case of foreign nationals an autopsy may still be required by local laws.
Remember also that this happened in 1948, methods of transportation were different from today. An autopsy would be easier to perform in the country where someone was found, than after days of the body being sent somewhere else, maybe even in less than optimal conditions.
From what I understand, even if deaths that were not at all suspicious, when someone died abroad they were often buried in the country where they died, due to the difficulty of transportation and the costs involved.
An embassy claiming that a man nobody knows who he is is actually one of their nationals... how would they know? Why would they be claiming the body? That would entail much more talk, much more attention on them. As it is now, nobody knows who did it.
Of course an agency could have been concerned. But if they were following the case, no leads came up then, maybe it was best to not intervene than draw attention.
Taking the tags out of the clothing would lead to more questions being asked than anything.
I agree. However, maybe whoever did it decided that simply removing the labels was quick and easy... it would raise questions, as it did, but we're certainly not sure of who did it and why, so ultimately the missing labels weren't such a big lead. Maybe they even expected it to be taken as a sign of someone poor buying old clothes.
An intelligence agency might have made the death appear to be a drowning if they were concerned about the body being found
Again if they wanted to send a message then throwing the body in the sea would risk it not being found and no message being sent.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I think that even a presumed drowning would still involve an autopsy.
The logistics of using a poison, if one was used, by luring the mystery man into a trap, then someone picking up the body and disposing of it could cause extra trouble and be a risk for the perp(s).
Leave the body in a hotel or motel - Especially after an alleged poisoning as a death in a motel/hotel, if no evidence of a violent struggle was present, would be chalked up to either natural causes or drug overdose/suicide. leaving the body outside would increase the speculation about who the person was and how they died.
Good point, but again, if he was killed then factors like why he was killed and how it would be most effective and less risky for the perps may have counted.
Your points about other options are good, but some of the things IMO count against them:
- The poison the man used (if any) was not detected. It's true that technology wasn't so advanced in the 1940s but they knew the technology they had. IMO if a common poison had been used it would have been detected. A regular person committing suicide, especially someone who was poor, wouldn't be getting some special and unusual poison to do it IMO. It would be more likely to get something that could be readily sold over-the-counter for household usage OR which could be procured with a prescription... and something that wasn't so costly. The local coroner would like have seen many such cases in his time and would have been able to figure it out.
- An illegal immigrant (a stowaway for example) could be possible and could explain how he knew Jessie as I've read here she taught English to immigrants. Someone who was simply travelling would have documents somewhere on him, in a hotel, in his luggage. Someone who was just travelling would IMO leave more tracks.
- It's possible he died of natural causes, I've read some things about the autopsy which have been posted here, but IMO it would have had to be something unusual that the doctors wouldn't be used to and which would cause them to consider him healthy.
None of those scenarios completely explain the code found on him, the missing book found in someone else's car from which the piece of paper he had was torn, the list goes on.
If there weren't so many unexplained things about this that aren't common, people wouldn't consider it a mystery.
:twocents:
