Following a public appeal by police, the copy of the "Rubaiyat" from which the page had been torn was located. A man showed police a 1941 edition of Edward FitzGerald's (1859) translation of the "Rubaiyat", published by Whitcombe and Tombs in Christchurch, New Zealand. Detective Sergeant Lionel Leane, who led the initial investigation, often protected the privacy of witnesses in public statements by using pseudonyms; Leane referred to the man who found the book by the pseudonym "Ronald Francis" and he has never been officially identified. "Francis" had not considered that the book might be connected to the case until he had seen an article in the previous day's newspaper.