Mysterious body washes up on English beach

A faded black and white photo of a smiling toddler, a set of keys and a single shoe: they are the only clues police have to solve the mystery of a body that washed up on an English beach.

The body of the man was found washed up on a beach in Cornwall on Tuesday afternoon.

A shoe, some keys and a wallet were found close to the corpse.

Inside the wallet was an eerie black-and-white photo from 1952, that featured a smiling toddler standing in a garden.

The man's death is being treated as suspicious after a post-mortem discovered that he had suffered "numerous injuries across many parts of his body" that were inconsistent with drowning, Detective Chief Inspector Dave Thorne said.

It is believed the man had something wedged in his throat, but police are refusing to comment on specific wounds.

Police believe that he may have been in the water for between 12 to 24 hours.

"We cannot rule out the injuries may have been caused by some perfectly innocent activity," said Det Chief Insp Thorne.

"People involved in manual work activity could result in getting injuries.

"We can't go into the detail of those injuries at this moment in time but we are happy they are not necessarily caused by natural events and we have to treat them as suspicious."

His fingerprints have been sent to Interpol to check for identification.

Source: MailOnline

Author: Natasha Lee, Approving editor: Nick Pearson