I haven't had a reply from the French laboratory yet, with regards to whether they might be able to help us in carbon dating the partial skull. So I have just written to them again. (Edit. Just had a reply. It is possible. 800 euros. One month for results).

I sent a message to Hampshire Police on Wednesday, updating them, telling them that I had gone back to the French Police, had had discussions with them, and came away with the partial skull again. I told them that the French Police were happy for me to keep it.

So whether I store it in the UK, or France, I see no reason to hand it over to any authority, a) because they seem to have no compassionate interest in its existence, and b) because if it is illegal for me to hold onto it, then perhaps this is a way to push for compassionate action in somehow securing dna testing being done on the item.

Tommy's brother and sister's dna samples were taken on February 12th this year. Hampshire Police have the results on their database, with the ability to test against unidentified bodies, worldwide.

Testing the partial skull for potential dna is relatively easy, takes 3 or 4 weeks, and doesn't cost the earth.

Tommy's family have had zero to little help from authority in the 51 years that Tommy has been missing.

How good would it be for the appropriate authorities to test the skull?

I wonder if public opinion could sway action? That's if public opinion agrees with our stance.

The Ouest France newspaper article with Tommy's story, and informing the public of the partial skull's existence. (May 3rd 2026).

My notes for Sunday's talk about Some Mother's Son.

I still haven't come up with the talk's angle. I'm veering towards the theme of "What business is it of ours to try and find out his name?" Opinions vary around the philisophical and moral answers to this question. Yet my feelings towards an answer, are just that-feelings.

The gentleman had his passport and merchant navy discharge book with him when he died. I therefore imagine he wasn't consciously trying to disappear, or rid himself of identity. And as a Torpoint neigbourhood police officer said to me back in January of 2025, he wouldn't have had his identity papers on him if he had wanted to be nameless.

And if we knew then what we know about dna and forensics now, there is every chance he would have had a much better chance of been identified at the time.

I would say that percentage wise, consciously, he was probably not adament on dying the day that he died, but he just subconciously created the circumstances in which it happened. I could imagine it being close to a 50 percent chance of surviving, against not surviving.

His gravestone is plain for all to see. It stand prominently on the corner of the grass, for walkers, joggers, cyclists, dog walkers, all to see, on a daily basis.

I still feel a voice in the calm, saying, I'm here. Please help me. Please return me my name.

From the start, until now, my search has felt gentle, not forced, not obsessive.

To me, it just feel like his name will fall into our laps, when the right circumstances allow it.

Damned if I know what those right circumstances are though, or how to create them. But there are all sorts of ways of the truth coming to light, and quite often, with very little human intervention at all.

Right Time. Right People. Right Place.

Right Circumstances.

Horson Cemetery, Torpoint.

The chapel in the cemetery. The gentleman's dark headstone directly left of the chapel on the corner of the grass.

On the corner.

For all to see.

...and the coin collection is growing.

Buy Simon Owens a coffees

Become a member

Monthly Level.

Support me on a monthly basis

Just Do It.

Other ways.

Ongoing.