Headless diver with no fingers discovered off the Dover coast as his id stays a thriller
The discovery of a diving suit off the coast of Dover in 1992 led to a major investigation – but the identity of the headless, handless diver has never been discovered
A dredger working just off the coast of Dover stumbled upon a macabre discovery in February 1992. The vessel, known as the Admiral Day, was working just outside the Western Docks when it scooped up an old, orange-coloured diving suit from the seabed.
Assuming the “battered, old-fashioned” suit was empty, they brought it back to shore early on Friday, February 28. To everyone’s shock, when the suit was opened, it revealed the skeletal remains of a man.
Even more disturbing was the fact that the skeleton was missing its head, neck and hands. The case was referred to the coroner, and officers began investigating whose remains they had found and where they had come from. Within days, rumours suggested it could be a French worker – one of several who had gone overboard during the recent construction of the Channel Tunnel.
However, this lead turned out to be a dead end after consultation with the French authorities. There was even speculation that the remains could belong to a foreign serviceman involved in maritime espionage during the Cold War. The Warsaw Pact, a key feature of the Cold War that saw a military alliance between the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellite states against NATO, had ended after a period of improved relations between the US and Soviet Union in 1991.
Could the mystery man have been a secret agent? Other theories pointed towards a protected wreck situated off Dover’s coastline. Could the unfortunate diver have been illegally exploring in and around it before encountering difficulties? There had been no reports of missing divers in Dover’s waters for years.
The investigation was extended far and wide. Interpol, the international police network, was approached. They were asked whether they had any records of divers who had vanished in the past 10 years.
Given the ebb and flow of the tides, the body could have drifted a substantial distance before the dredger made the discovery.
Responses to all the questions posed were limited. An examination of the remains indicated the body had been submerged for anywhere between two and five years.
Interpol came up empty-handed. Bill Maddocks was the coroner’s officer charged with the investigation. His job was to collect all the evidence to present before the coroner.
“At this stage, there is very little to work on,” he said during the initial weeks of his enquiries. “It is a complete mystery.”
A crucial starting point was with the diving suit’s manufacturer. He tracked it back to a company in Norway. The suit had been manufactured in 1985 but he found it could have been purchased anywhere – either in Norway or, more probably, internationally. The investigation was further complicated by the fact that many sellers and manufacturers of such equipment, including the Norwegian firm, had gone bust over the preceding years, making it almost impossible to trace the person who had purchased it. Another line of investigation came to a dead end.
Meanwhile, the key tools for identifying a deceased body – teeth or fingerprints – were missing. Due to the advanced state of decomposition of the remains, a consultant pathologist declared it was impossible to determine the cause of death.
A year after the diving suit was found, an inquest into the death was held in Dover. The pathologist’s findings only extended to the belief that the bones belonged to an adult male – the cause of death was impossible to ascertain.
“The body appeared to have been in the water between two and five years,” Bill Maddocks told the inquest. “The firm which made this [diving] suit has gone out of business. The most they could come up with is that it was made in Norway. They believe it had been sold outside this country. In view of the fact the hands and head were missing, I do not hold out any hope we will find out who this was.”
With such limited information, the coroner was obliged to rule an open verdict. In other words, the cause of death could not be determined.
As for the remains? They were buried in a council cemetery in a numbered grave. If the mystery was ever solved, it would mean the remains could be exhumed. They never have. A peculiar case. Yet, just months later, another diver’s body was discovered. And, once again, their identity remains a mystery.
Still listed on the UK Missing Persons Unit website, the male diver’s body was retrieved by a passing ship and brought to land at Dover on October 3, 1992. His body was so severely decomposed that investigators could only estimate his age to be between 16 and 60.
The diver was clad in a black wetsuit with black and cream flippers. He was described as white, of medium build and standing between 5ft 5in and 5ft 8in tall.
