Unidentified body on the moors near Manchester, 2015

[CGP]

Here's an article with some additional bits of information, and some interesting comments from armchair detectives:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...neil-dovestone

One point: his rail tickets from Ealing Broadway onwards were found on his body. If he'd travelled to South Ealing by train before that, why wouldn't that ticket have been found too? And if he had deliberately travelled without any identification, why wouldn't he have disposed of the rail tickets too?

[Debra Arif]

He could of course have been a relative of someone who died - not involved in it but affected by it.

Do you mean in the 1949 plane crash, Robert? Yes, I wondered about that too.

[Robert Linford]

Hi Debs

Yes, the plane crash. I feel that unless he was seriously disturbed mentally, the moor must have meant something to him. If not the crash, then maybe he'd lived there as a child, or whatever. Surely people don't decide where to die by sticking a pin in a map.

Chris, the tube ticket was a single. Don't the machines keep those?

I was wondering why there were no reports of change in his pockets. He bought train tickets and a sandwich, yet the only report is of £130 in notes. Maybe he had change and it was deemed not worth reporting.

[Debra Arif]

Hi Debs

Yes, the plane crash. I feel that unless he was seriously disturbed mentally, the moor must have meant something to him. If not the crash, then maybe he'd lived there as a child, or whatever. Surely people don't decide where to die by sticking a pin in a map.

Chris, the tube ticket was a single. Don't the machines keep those?

I was wondering why there were no reports of change in his pockets. He bought train tickets and a sandwich, yet the only report is of £130 in notes. Maybe he had change and it was deemed not worth reporting.

I agree, Robert. The place must have had significance for him.

[Christer Holmgren]

Fish, is that mixed race or pure Pakistani?

Here´s a long but useful answer from the net, quoting a Pakistani man:

"I was born in Multan, Pakistan and my family is from Multan and Islamabad. As a kid I had white skin, blonde hair and blue eyes. Now i am 19 and all that has changed since my childhood is my hair which is now brown. For 10 years now I have been living in Canada and people always assume I am some random white person when I go to dinners and stuff. Until i blow their minds with some Urdu. That has led to some very awkward moments as well. People go so far as asking my parents right in front of me if I am adopted in Urdu, thinking i can not understand what they are saying. Many people even talk to my parents in Urdu and only talk to me in English. I have seen many other white Pakistanis but they all have that distinctive face that shows that they are south Asian or something about them that tells me they are not North American. For my case I look like a native Canadian person.

I always used to question my colour since all my friends were brown. Pakistan is just full of a variety of colours depending on where you are. The more north you go in Pakistan, the more fare skinned and lighter people get. You have people in Karachi that are almost black and people in Peshawar who are pretty white."

I realize that the girl on the photo I posted may look "non-typical" for a Pakistani, but it is a fairly typical Peshawar look. Here´s a more "typical" Pakistani man - with blue eyes:

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/i...Pp1Rdf7YhDeCPm

[CGP]

Chris, the tube ticket was a single. Don't the machines keep those?

That's a good point. It might explain the absence of an earlier ticket to South Ealing. But then I don't understand why the same wouldn't be true of the ticket from Ealing Broadway to Euston, which was found on his body.

The whole story is very strange. You would think the place must have meant something to him. But he couldn't have known it well, as he had to ask for directions.

[Robert Linford]

Thanks Fish. Yes I think the same applies in India - the southern Indians are darker skinned, while the northern ones are much fairer and tend to be higher caste.

[Robert Linford]

I don't know. Perhaps at Euston, a crowded and complicated terminus, he shows his ticket and walks through to minimise the chance of missing his train.

[CGP]

I don't know. Perhaps at Euston, a crowded and complicated terminus, he shows his ticket and walks through to minimise the chance of missing his train.

I suppose something like that must have happened for him to have retained the ticket. But when leaving Euston tube station I didn't think people normally had any option but to go through the automatic barriers. Maybe there was some kind of problem with the ticket and/or the barriers.

There are so many odd things. Another is the strychnine. It's all very well to say it's still available in Pakistan, but how did it get into this country? Why should anyone take the risk of smuggling strychnine into the country? Unless the suggestion is that the dead man had smuggled it in himself, and it had been put into the medicine bottle to get it through customs.

[Robert Linford]

Yes, none of it makes sense. Why would he want strychnine? To kill someone? Unlikely. Or was he forced to drink the strychnine which someone else gave him? In that case it must have been a pre-arranged meeting. It doesn't sound right to me.

[Phillip Walton]

There is also isotope testing of his teeth and bones that could give a clue as to where he originated.

[Robert Linford]

Why the cross on the Out ticket?

http://www.itv.com/news/granada/2016...-on-the-moors/

[CGP]

Why the cross on the Out ticket?

I think the Virgin staff would have done that at Euston. They made an almost identical cross on my ticket there yesterday.

[Robert Linford]

Ah, right. They used to clip tickets - back in days of yore.

[CGP]

I see there's some more discussion of this on Casebook:
http://forum.casebook.org/showthread.php?t=9703

Apart from all the strange details, the things I find difficult to understand are:
(1) Why should the man have been so determined to conceal his identity (as it seems he was)?
(2) Didn't there have to be someone helping him, in London or Manchester or both?