Alexander Williamson Fallon (1914 - 18 November 1987), previously known as Body 115 and Michael, was an elderly man who was killed in the King's Cross Fire at King's Cross St Pancras Tube Station.
He was identified in 2004.
Case[]
Fallon was a native of Falkirk, Scotland. In December 1974, his wife Janet died of ovarian cancer; Fallon struggled to cope with the loss and eventually became homeless. He left Scotland for London in 1980. He remained in touch with his four adult daughters via letters and regular phone calls, but these came to an abrupt end in late 1987. At the same time his monthly government pension also stopped being collected.
Image comparing a photograph of Fallon to his reconstruction.
The King's Cross Fire occurred on 18 November 1987 in the Upper Booking Hall at King’s Cross Underground station. Thirty-one people were killed in the disaster. By the time the official inquiry into the disaster had come to a close in 1988, only thirty of the deceased had been identified. A plaster reconstruction of the remaining unknown man's face was created by Manchester University forensic odontologists from skull fragments, but this generated no leads. He was eventually buried in a marked grave alongside Ralph Humberstone, another fire victim whose body went unclaimed.
At one point the body was tentatively identified as a missing man named Michael who was later found alive, but the nickname stuck.
Identification[]
In 1997, missing man Alexander Fallon entered the police's radar as a potential identity of Body 115. He was originally ruled out as a match due to being taller and older than the unknown man was thought to have been, but two partial fingerprint matches cast this into doubt.
The identification was finally confirmed by matching a foreign medical device found in the right side of Body 115's brain to one that had been used on just 300 people in the UK, of which Fallon was among only 90-100 men to have it in the same location as the decedent. It had been implanted at the Royal London Hospital in 1980 after he had collapsed in the street and was treated for an aneurysm. Scars from the surgery were also matched between Body 115 and photos of Fallon. Definitive DNA matching was unable to be conducted due to legal issues in having to remove the bodies of both the unknown man and the unclaimed Ralph Humberstone from their shared grave as Humberstone had no known next of kin to approve the exhumation.
Characteristics[]
- History of heart disease.
- History of lung disease.
- Full set of dentures.
- Sugita No. 5 Aneurysm Clip, manufactured in Japan from 1977-1982, on the right side of the brain from craniotomy.
Gallery[]
Media[]
Fallon's case was the subject of the 1990 Nick Lowe song "Who Was That Man?" while he was still unidentified.