MYSTERY OF THE THAI SILK KING

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-01208R000100100104-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 8
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 2, 2011
• Sequence Number: 104
• Publication Date: May 1, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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ARTICLE ArPlsAll:
LIFE
ON PAGE May 1984
IOC JIM 'PFI S
EEN' SEEN 51C& m' '67,
~ E d ME To C.O.
BY ROBERT SAM ANSON
The promises in the tourist bro-
chures about Bangkok, Thailand,
are true. It is an exotic place,
filled with golden pagodas and
tinkling temple bells; lissome,
beautiful women and smiling,
dark-skinned men; saffron-robed
monks burning incense to images
of Lord Buddha, and elephants
trumpeting under glistening
loads of teak; hawkers in the mar-
kets haggling over elaborate bro-
cades and mounds of sapphires,
emeralds and rubies that may or
may not be fakes; flocks of wild
parakeets screeching fin-'the
steamy night-thus is the magic of
the land that is ancient Siam.
Adventurers have come here,
lured by the mystery: thieves,
dreamers, Conrad and Maugham.
And, if one day you join them, do
not expect to understand it, It is
said that even the Thai do not. But
one thing is certain. There will
come a moment-perhaps while
you are gliding down one of the
inky canals the Thai call klongs
or sipping a Coconut Cooler on
the veranda of the Oriental Hotel
or staring openmouthed at the
bejeweled splendor that is Wat.
Po-when someone will sidle up to
you and in tones of low confidenti-
ality, eyes occasionally darting to
see which of the spirits is listen-
ing, tell you the tale of th e Thai
Silk King.
His name was Jim Thompson,
and there has been no one quite
like him in Asia. He was an Ameri-
can, a war hero, a silk merchant, a
millionaire and an art collector,
and he built himself a house that
is one of the wonders of the East.
I
People like Henry Ford II and
Katharine Hepburn and Bobby
Kennedy came to dine with him ;
and were charmed. Then one '
day-it was Easter Sunday, 1967,
to be exact-hetook a walk in the
Cameron Highlands of Malaysia
and never came back.
There were theories about
what befell him as improbable
and fantastic as the man himself.
At the Foreign Correspondents
Club of Thailand, they held a
"Jim Thompson Night" a few
weeks ago and, over bitter Singha
beer, debated his fate as hotly as
they did 17 years ago. There was,
for instance, the feeling ... But.
that is getting ahead of the story.
To unravel what became of Jim
Thompson, to know him as a
man, you have to begin where he
did, in a different place, a long
time ago.
James Harrison . Wilson
Thompson was born in 1906 to a
world where tradition and breed-
ing mattered. His particular part
of that world was Greenville, Del.,
a horsey-set suburb of Wilming-
ton. His father, Henry Thompson,
was proprietor of a textile compa-
ny and chairman of the state Re-
publican party. His mother, Eli-.
nor, was the daughter.of a Civil
War general and a doyenne of Wil-
mington mington society. The home they
made for themselves and their
five children was a rambling field-
stone farm set down on 14 acres
and maintained by a full-time
staff of 10, among them a Swiss
governess who taught Jim, the
adored baby of the family, to
speak French.
Like his father and uncles be-
fore him, Jim prepped at St. Paul's
boarding school in New Hamp-
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02.
shire en route to Princeton. Grad-
uate studies at the University of
Pennsylvania School of Architec-
ture followed, and afterward he:
joined a New York firm and set-t
tied down to what appeared to be a?
steady, If unspectacular, career
designing homes for the East)
Coast rich. During those years,
Thompson squired debutantes;
and involved himself in such so-,
cially correct undertakings as the'
Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo.
Seemingly. it was the perfect life. I
But there was a part of him that
was restless, and in 1940, without
explaining why either to family or,
friends, he enlisted as a private in
the Delaware National Guard.
When the war broke out he
was commissioned a lieutenant
and eventually posted to Fort
Monroe, Va. There Thompson met
two people who were to profound-
ly affect his life. The first was Pat,
Thraves, a ravishing blond for-
mer Powers model and horse-
woman from Middleburg, Va.,
Thompson promptly fell in love
with her, and after a brief, pas-
sionate courtship, they were mar-
ried. The second person was a re-
cent West Point graduate named
Edwin Black. Worried that the
war in Europe was about to pass
them by, Black persuaded
Thompson to come with him to
Washington to join an outfit that
promised plenty of intrigue and
action. Called the Office of Strate-
gic Services, it was the forerunner
of the CIA.
While Thompson was in Eu-
rope, blowing up communication
centers and railroad tracks be-
hind German lines, Pat was in
New York, falling in love with an-
other man. The news staggered
Thompson, and he immediately
volunteered for service in the Chi-
na-Burma-India theater. Promot-
ed to lieutenant colonel, he was
sent to Ceylon to train a group of
"Free Thai" guerrillas. Their mis-
sion was to parachute into central
Thailand and organize resistance
against 'the Japanese occupiers..
Thompson, then 39, took the 1
course in parachuting and jungle
survival techniques right along
with them. The jump was set for
August 14, 1945. But as the C-47 j
bearing Thompson and his raid-
ers flew toward the target, the pi-11
lot received a radio message.1
World War II was over;.the Japa-
3e had surrendered.
i
Four days later, Thompson
and a handful of other officers
flew to Bangkok. They arrived to
find a garrison of 105,000 dispirit-
ed Japanese and, as one Ameri
can who lived there during the
.time put It, a place that seemed
not so much a national capital as
"a quaint, rather down-at-the
heels Oriental country town." In
Bangkok, at least, the war had not
been devastating, and after the
Japanese had been sent home,
Thompson had plenty of time to
explore up-country. During one of
his excursions, to the northern
provincial capital of Chiang Mai,
he noticed there were looms in-
many of-the houses. When he in-
quired about their purpose, he
was told they were for the weav-
ing of silk but that the art had vir
tually ceased to exist He was,
however, shown one pile of thel
finished cloth. It was gleaming
and iridescent, yet with a curious-
ly rough texture. Altogether, it
was the most extraordinary fab-
ric Thompson had ever seen, and,
it gave him an idea for the future.
In the. meantime, having re-
signed from the OSS, Thompson
was serving as the U.S. embassy's
political officer, a job that entailed
sorting out not only all the con-,
tending factions in Thailand but'
those on the French-occupied
Indochinese peninsula as well. It
was sensitive, clandestine work?
and in the course of it Thompson
came to know many of the leaders,
of postwar Southeast Asia-along
with many who would ultimately
take to the jungles to oppose
them. One of the closest contacts
he made was Pridi Phanomyong,
a lawyer of immense charm who,
during the war, had served. as re-!
gent to the young Thai king. Pri
di's position put him in the palace,:
where, literally under the Japa-,
nese noses, he had organized the
Free Thai resistance, operating
under the legendary code name
of "Ruth."
. Pridi rose to become prime
minister-a title he was not des-
tined to keep. In June 1946 the
Thai king, Ananda, was found
shot dead in his bed. Though
the evidence suggested suicide,
Pridi's opponents claimed it was
murder and that Pridi was behind
it. Though Thompson and Pridi's
other American friends refused to
believe the charge, he was none-
theless forced from office. A group
of right-wing generals took over In
a coup, and after a disastrous l
countercoup attempt of his own,
Pridi fled the country, settling fi-
nally in China.
By then Thompson had decid-
ed to remain in Thailand perma-
nently. "I often wake up in the
morning and wonder why I am
here and how I ever got involved
in all of this," he wrote to his sister
Elinor. "I must say I enjoy it and
there are enough interesting peo-
ple to talk to whenever you feel
like it, and there is always some-
thing that pleases the eye, wheth- .
er it's a sunset on the river, or a lit-
tle Chinese temple all lit up at
night I was always fascinated by
the Arabian Nights when I was
young, and this part of the world
is very much like that"
The more concrete reason for
Thompson's decision to stay was
business. After resigning from the
embassy, he had joined with oth-
er investors to take over the dilap-
idated Oriental Hotel. But after a
falling-out among the partners.
Thompson decided to try his hand
at selling silk. He found a group of
weavers living on the edge of a
klong in a Muslim enclave known
as Bangkrua. Amid considerable
skepticism, he persuaded them to
weave the fabric in salable
lengths and to. replace the easily
faded vegetable dyes they had
been using with aniline dyes from
Switzerland. The colors and pat-
terns were selected by Thompson
himself. As Maxine North, wife of
a Hollywood screenwriter, who
arrived in Thailand in 1950,E
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remembers, he also did his own
marketing. "My husband and I
were checking into the Oriental."
she recalls, "and there was this
American man standing in the
lobby with a bunch of silk slung
over his arm. Naturally, I was cu-
rious, so I went over. to talk to
him," she continues. "Two days
later, I went over to his shop, a lit-
tle hole in the wall on the end of
Suriwong Road. Jim began drap-
ing silk all over me. 'This is you,'
he would say, and he made you
believe It. He really was the most
fantastic salesman in the whole
world. That day I bought my first
piece of silk, a shimmering laven-
der, and had it made into a dress."
"It's a funny business," Thomp-
son wrote in a letter home, "al-
most like being a missionary, but
with prettier results. I'm afraid,"
he announced, "I could never be
happy with the New York-Wil-
mington life."
The silk for Thompson's fab-
rics came from the impoverished
northeast, an area that would lat-
er prove'fertile for Communist in-
surgency, and on his frequent
buying trips up-country, Thomp-
son saw and learned much. His
Republican political predisposi-'
? tion turned liberal Democratic,
and among friends he was outspo-
ken in his opposition to colonial-
ism. "With all the fine, high prin-
ciples our country was founded
on," he wrote sister Elinor In
1949, "it is ghastly to think that
we should support such a foul,
filthy, corrupt, brutal regime as
we have in French Indochina."
Then he added a prescient foot-
note: "If we ever wanted to win,
now it will have to be by brute
force and by annihilating the bet-
ter part of the population, as they
hate us so." -
Such sentiments were unpop-
ular in Thailand, and others had
paid dearly for expressing them.
A number of Pridi's allies who had
been friends of Thompson's were
murdered while in police custody,
and Thompson's most trusted as-
sistant was kidnapped, driven to a
deserted area, then stabbed to
death and buried facedown so
that his spirit could not reach nir-
vana. Afterward, Thompson hid
several of the remaining Indo-
chinese who worked for him, until
he could arrange their escape
from the country. He also became
far more cautious about his own
political comments. Years later,
when asked about his postwar in-
volvements, . he would say only,
"There is nothing to talk about.
All my friends are dead."
The silk business, meanwhile,
continued to prosper, boosted by
Thompson's social contacts in
New York. During one of Thomp-
son's annual fall trips to the
States, Vanity Fair editor Frank
Crowninshield, a pal from deb-
party days in the '30s, introduced
him to Edna Woolman Chase, edi- ,
for of Vogue and the then reigning
grande dame of American fash-
ion. Mrs. Chase looked at the silks
Thompson had piled on her desk!
and announced to her secretary
that none of the staff were to leave
the office, until they, too, had be-'
held this marvel. As word spread,
Hollywood began to seek Thomp-
son out, and he provided the fab-
ric for many of the costumes in-
The King and I and later for Ben-*
Hur as well. Before long, a stop at
Jim Thompson's became a must
on any tour of Asia.
The press of visitors helped
convince Thompson that he need-
ed new quarters. So did his grow-
ing art collection. Thompson had
begun collecting shortly after the
war-only the occasional piece at
first, but as his eye sharpened,
gradually more and more. He
roamed back alleys and country
villages incessantly seeking
finds. On one such expedition, to
the former Thai capital, Ayuttha-
ya, he was accompanied by a Thai
princess, her husband and "Red"
Jantzen, the then CIA station
chief in Ban kok. Also along was
Thompson's nephew Henry, a
stockbroker from New York. As
they toured the ruins of the an-
cient city, Thompson discoursed
at length on Thai culture and ar-
chitecture, much to the amaze=
ment of. the princess, who told ,
him, "You know more about. this
country than I do, and I'm a na- I ?
tive." Finally, they chanced on a
man who was selling a small por-
celain bowl. Henry' was not im-
pressed. "To me," he recalls, "it
looked like something you would
feed the cat from. But Uncle Jim
was not deterred. He asked the
man who owned it how much he
wanted for it and the man said
seventy-five dollars. Of course,
you're supposed to bargain, but
Jim never did. 'Pay the man sev-
enty-five, Henry,' he said to me.
When we got back to Bangkok,
Jim had someone look at the
bowl. Of course, it turned out to
be Ming.'
Thompson began construc-
tion on his new showcase for such
finds in 1958. The residence, set
on slightly more than an acre of
ground directly across the kiong
from. Bangkrua, was of his own
design and consisted of six small,
traditional Thai houses he had
brought down by raft from Ayut-
thaya and linked together. But it
was the art, and the manner in
which Thompson displayed it,
that was most impressive. Somer-
set Maugham, who came to dine
one night, complimented him:
"You, have not only beautiful
things, but what is rare, you have
arranged them with faultless
taste."
Virtually every night there'
was a distinguished dinner guest
at what came to be called the
House on the Gong. If it was not
Adlai Stevenson, then it was Ethel
Merman, belting "Hello, Dolly!" to
Cocky, the pet cockatoo, who
perched on Thompson's shoulder ;
and amused guests by sipping af-
ter-dinner liqueur.- All came to
bask in the presence of the Thai
Silk King. He regaled them all-
celebrities, friends, tourists he'd
met that day in the shop-talking
in a low-pitched monotone, the
boarding-school accent impecca-
bly intact. Years later his guests
could still recount the evenings in
detail: the drinks on the veranda,
the cooled-down version of spicy
Thai food served on a pair of in-
laid gaming tables made for the
palace of King Chulalongkorn, the
servants bustling in and out on,
stockinged feet, the laughter and
joking and smart conversation.
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But mostly they remembered'
Thompson. For all his bonhomie
and seeming accessibility, there'
was a part of him, deep down and
mysterious, they could never
seem to know.
He was, according to the few
people who really did know him,
including' Ed Black, who had
stayed in the Army and came to
Thailand as a? general, an essen-
tially lonely than. As nephew Hen-
ry put it, "He was the sort who
sells tickets to the Christmas
bash but never comes." He had
his affairs (with men as well as
women, say his friends), but there
was always a distance. "People
warn me about the future and
how awful it is to live alone," he
wrote to Elinor. Someday, he con-
ceded, he might "turn into an ec-
centric old recluse and sit in the
midst of my treasures," but for the
moment he was content. "The
people of Asia are so sensible and
practical," he wrote. "There are
never any great loves or romances
here."
One of the other curiosities
about Thompson was that for all
the years he spent in Thailand, he
never learned to speak more than
a few phrases of the language. Yet,
in most respects, he was more
Thai than the Thai. He refused to
refer to his adopted land by the
name it had taken in 1939. To him
it would always be Siam. Similar-
ly, while many modern Siamese,
as Thompson called them, were `?
busily installing air conditioners,
Thompson banned the contrap- !
tions from his home. Likewise, he
mounted no screens against the
mosquitoes that nightly swarmed
in from the klong.
Temperamentally, he was just
as quirky. Placid most of the time,
he was nonetheless possessed of
fearsome rage, and after a petty
disagreement he refused to speak
for more than a decade with one
couple who had been among his
closest friends. Yet with the Thai
he was more understanding. At
one point it was discovered that
one of his oldest, most trusted
Thai assistants was taking huge
kickbacks and had been system-
atically looting the shop. Thomp-
son, however, refused to believe
it-even after the assistant quit
and opened up a silk shop of his
own directly across from Thomp-
son's establishment. Finally, the
scoundrel went bankrupt, and
Thompson, to the surprise of no
one, hired him back. "Jim's atti-
tude about things like that was
very Thai," notes William War-
ren, his friend and biographer.
"He simply pretended they didn't
exist"
In his personal habits,
Thompson lived with almost ex-
aggerated simplicity. He dressed
plainly and, despite his renowned'
dinner parties, was no gourmet
The press, which lionized him, re-
ferred continually to the "Thai i
Silk- Millionaire," which was true,
only in the most literal sense of
.the word,. He did have a million
dollars, which was left to him by
.a distant cousin, and it sat in a
Philadelphia bank. He touched it
only once, " wwhen he withdrew
$58,000 to buy the land for his
house. The rest of the time -he
lived off his salary, which, at the
time of his disappearance, was
only $10,000 per year. Even the
silk company was not truly his
but was controlled instead by
Thai 'investors. Thompson him=
self never owned more than 20
percent of the stock, and over the
years he gave -a number of his
shares away.
His attitude was best ex-
pressed in his continuing letters
home to Elinor. In 1948, when the
demands of the silk business
were beginning to overwhelm
him, he wrote, "I have two Lao
families so wrapped up in it for
their livelihood that I feel duty
bound to keep it going. just for
them if for nobody else. If I had
pulled out, they would have noth-
ing to live on, and their children
couldn't go to school." Thirteen
years later, after many of his em-
ployees had grown rich. started
businesses of their own and sent
their children off to college, he,
was still not ready to return to the'
States. "I am afraid," he wrote.
"that I like backward places that .
need to be developed better than
all the high-powered superhigh-
ways, motels and gigantic cities at
home. I do love the color and gen-
eral confusion of the Far East.
There is so much to see and learn
out here. Also, I do feel that I am
being useful."' But there was a
trace of wistfulness, of somehow
feeling out of place. "My life," he
confided to his sister, "seems
miles apart from anybody else's."
The spring of 1967 was a very
'
busy time for Thompson. In addi-
tion to managing the silk busi-
ness and the usual crowd of tour
ists, he was supervising the
construction of a new and vastly'
expanded shop. The cottage in-1
dustry he had discovered two dec-
ades before now employed 20,000
weavers nationwide and brought
millions to the Thai economy. But
whatever pride Thompson felt
was leavened by exhaustion. So
on -Easter weekend, he wangled
an invitation to visit old friends
In Malaysia.
The cool of the country's
Cameron Highlands, nearly 7,000
feet above sea level, has long
made the area a favored retreat
for the sweltering residents of
Bangkok and Singapore. During
colonial times the British in Ma-
laya (as it was then called) sent
troops there on convalescent
leave, and their presence, which
lingered on through the 1960s,
gave the lush green valleys and
jungled hills a faintly English air.
But beyond the golf courses and ;
good hotels, most of the High-
lands remained wild. There were
tigers and cobras and tribes of ab-
origines who hunted with blow-
guns and poisoned darts. But it
was the jungle itself-vast and
trackless, laced with creeper
vines and hidden ravines 100 feet
deep-that was most forbidding.
Even today hikers who dare to
chance it are given a list of warn-
ings. The first is the most Impor-
tant: "Never walk alone."
Thompson appreciated the
beauty and peace of the place, as
did his host, T. G. Ling, a Chinese
doctor from Singapore, and his
American-born wife, Helen. In,
1960 they had acquired a Tudor-
style bungalow at the crest of a
lovely ridge. The place was'called
Continual
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s
Moonlight Cottage, -'a namee -that!
belied its bloody past. During Ma-
laya's Communist insurrection in
the 1950s, Moonlight had served',
as command post for one of the
guerrilla groups, and in the gar-
den where Helen now grew roses,
summary executions had taken
place.
Thompson had stayed withthe Lings on two occasions before
and particularly enjoyed daily
treks through the jungle. Though
he was 61 and not in the best of
health (he suffered from gall-
stones and had just recovered
from a bout of pneumonia), he
prided himself on his stamina !
and his knowledge of bush lore.
His first morning in the High-
lands. Thompson and Dr. Ling set
off down one of the trails. It was
a new one, and before long, the
two men were lost. Eventually.
Thompson spotted a stream and,
following accepted practice
traced it until it brought them to
more familiar surroundings. The
adventure, however brief, was
elating, and the rest of that day
and evening Thompson was in
ebullient spirits.
The next morning, Easter Sun-
day, they all attended services at a
small Anglican church, then re-
turned to the cottage to prepare a
hamper for a picnic that had been ,
planned the day before. The pic-
nic had been his idea, but Thomp-
son seemed unaccountably rest-
less, and they had hardly finished
lunch before he was gathering ;
up the plates and rejecting all
pleas that they linger for a nap in !
the sun.
It was 2:30 when they got back
to the cottage. The Lings retired to
their bedroom, leaving Jim sitting
in the living room. Shortly after
three p.m., the Lings heard foot-
steps crunching on the gravel
driveway. They assumed Jim was
going for a walk. Thinking noth-
ing of it, they drifted off to sleep.
Alarmed when Thompson
failed to return by nightfall, the
Lings alerted the local police, and
early the next morning a handful
of officers began combing the
area. More searchers, including a
group of British soldiers on leave
in the Highlands, quickly joined
in, and by Monday afternoon
nearly a hundred people were
crisscrossing the trails, crying
"Jim! Jim!" There was no reply,
nor any sign of his presence, not
so much as a single footprint or
broken twig. Nor, to their relief,
were any vultures circling over-
head.
The next day, Tuesday. the
search party was augmented by
the'arrival of a sizable contingent
of Malaysian Field Force police,
along with. 30 local aborigines
who knew the jungle trails inti-
mately. By the end of the day, al-
most 400 - people-the largest
search party ever mounted in Ma-
laysia-were looking for Thomp-
son, among them a bomoh, or
witch doctor. After going into a
trance, he declared that the miss-
ing American was alive but held
captive by evil spirits in the
jungle.
On Wednesday General Ed
Black flew down from his head-
quarters in northeastern Thai-
land to take over personal com-
mand of the effort. He brought
with him three military helicop-
ters, but they proved of little use in
the dense triple-canopy jungle.
By then, Thompson's disap-
pearance was making front-page
headlines around the world. In
Bangkok the news was greeted
with shock by some, but by many
others with mirth. Jim, mischie-
vous devil that he was, must sure-
ly be playing a prank. In a day or.
two, certainly not. more than a
week, he would be back, enter-
taining his dinner guests with
tales of his latest adventure.
But a week passed, and
Thompson did not return, and
around Bangkok people suddenly;
began to worry. His friends put up
$10,000 reward money for infor-
mation leading to Thompson's re-.
covery; the sum was later in-,
creased to $25,000. There were,
less conventional stratagems as
well. At one point, several days of
ter Thompson's disappearance, a!
young Thai woman presented
herself at the Thai Silk Company,
and said that if she were given use
of a room, she would reveal
Thompson's whereabouts at that
very moment Willing to try any-
thing, Silk Company executives
complied. The lights were
dimmed, candles and joss sticks
were lit, and the woman hung on
the wall a square of white cloth on
which, she claimed, Thompson's
employees would be able to see
their boss "just like on TV." They
saw nothing. The woman, howev-
er, claimed to have observed
Thompson quite clearly. He was
being held at gunpoint, she an-
pounced, by two young men.
In the Highlands, meanwhile,
the search was continuing with'
no more success than before, and
ominous new questions were be-
ing raised. Why, for example, had
Thompson, a' chain smoker, left
his cigarettes in his room? The
suspicions deepened after the ar-
rival of Richard Noone, a British
planning officer with SEATO in
Bangkok. A Cambridge-trained
anthropologist with considerable
experience in the Highlands,
Noone brought along a ? border
scout from North Borneo and an
aborigine bomoh who had once
helped him locate a missing man
in the jungle. For 36 hours they
trekked deep into the bush and in-
terviewed a number of aborigines.
When Noone emerged, he stated
flatly, "I am fully convinced that
Mr. Thompson is not lost in the
jungle."
That seemed to eliminate an-
other theory, floated briefly, that
Thompson had committed sui-
cide. His friends insisted that.
whatever his troubles, depression
was not one of them. There was
only one other possibility: He had
been. kidnapped. The question
was by whom?.
That point was still being ar-
gued when in inid-April a most re-.
doubtable figure entered the case.
His name was Peter Hurkos. A
Dutchman, Hurkos was at that
time perhaps the most famous.
psychic in the world, largely be-
cause of his role in helping to
track the notorious Boston Stran-
gler. Hurkos did not succeed in
identifying the strangler, but he
did provide the police with har-
rowingly accurate descriptions of
several of the murders and man-
aged, simply by touching one of J
the many confession letters that!
came in, to provide a precise de-
scription of the writer. Hurkos
also told' the police intimate
things about themselves,- such-as
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informing one young officer, cor-
rectly. that a few hours earlier he
had been making love to his wife
on the kitchen table. Hurkos evi-
dently was a man with consider-
able gifts, and Thompson's fam-
ily, frustrated by the lack of
progress in the case, brought him
to Asia
On his arrival at Moonlight
Cottage, Hurkos paced the house
and garden - restlessly, as if
searching for psychic clues. Fi-
nally, he sat down on the veranda
and laid out a photograph of
Thompson and two maps, one of
Asia, the other of the Highlands.
His face tensed. Then all at once
he began talking, the words gush'
ing out in disconnected bursts.
He was sitting in the chair .. .
right there ... he was not sitting in
the house ... the chair was on the
veranda ... ag, Prebi, oogh .
Thompson ... Prebi, Pridi.'..four-
teen people ... fourteen people
captured him ... he is not in the
jungle....
After some minutes Hurkos
completed his vision and then be-
gan to amplify and clarify his sto-
ry. According to the ? William
Warren biography, the psychic
declared that Thompson had.
been met on the veranda by a
man he knew. They had walked
down the road together; then, af-
ter half a mile or so, the man sud-
denly knocked Thompson out,
with morphine. At that point a
truck, disguised to look like a
Malaysian army vehicle, pulled
up with 13 men inside dressed
in green uniforms. The men,.
claimed Hurkos, were Commu-1
nists, and after hustling Thomp-
son aboard the truck, they took
him somewhere, then moved him
out of the country by plane. A few'
minutes later, while he was!
drinking coffee, Hurkos jumped
up and pointed at one of the maps.
"There!" he exclaimed excitedly,
"That's where he is now! Cambo
dial That's where he is. I'd give my
neck on it"
The press, meanwhile, was,
quickly coming to similar conclu-
sions. The Asian edition of LIFE 1
suggested that Thompson might
have been captured so that the
Communists could brainwash,
him and then produce him as a
defector, denouncing the U.S.; .
presence in Thailand. Given
Thompson's influence, the gov-
ernment might be persuaded to
close the U.S. air bases in Thai?
land that were then being used to,
pulverize North Vietnam.
There were other speculations
in Bangkok, encouraged in part
by Hurkos's mention of "Prebi.
Pridi," whom the That naturally;
took to be the former prime minis;
ter. Suppose Pridi had arranged to
meet Thompson in the Highlands,
to sound him out on the possibili-'
ty of mounting a new coup. Ac-
cording to this scenario. Thomp-
son discouraged his old friend; i
at which point Pridi, worried'
that Thompson might talk, kid-
napped him. The only problem
with the story was that Pridi, later
questioned in Paris, resolutely
and convincingly denied any
knowledge of what had befallen
Thompson.
The most tantalizing and per-
sistent theory linked Thompson's
disappearance to Vietnam.
Around Bangkok his involvement
with, and sympathies for, various
Indochinese nationalists was well
known. It was also said that he
was a personal friend of Ho Chi
Minh's, a frequently repeated as-
sertion that Thompson, typically,
neither confirmed nor denied. Ac-
cording to General Black, one of
the few people Thompson confid-
ed in about political matters, he
was also close to the Cambodian
leader, Prince Norodom Siha-
nouk, and "helped Sihanouk get a
better deal from the French than
either the Lao or the Vietnamese
got" Moreover, Thompson had
also spent considerable time in
Laos and, Black says, "was the
.only man who could get the three
Lao princes [neutralist, pro-
Western and Communist] to sit
down at the same dinner table." I
Adding to the Vietnam specula-
tion was Thompson's correspon-
dence with Elinor, which, at least
during his early days in Bangkok,
was frequently and bitterly criti- !
cal of U.S. policy. At one point
Thompson suggested that the U.S.
ambassador, a particularly gung-
ho anti-Communist, "should have
his neck wrung." In another letter,
Thompson bemoaned the fact
that. the U.S. "always seems to
back the wrong horse. It makes
me sick," he added, "to see
these little countries get torn to
pieces by the Communist powers
and us."
Yet before his disappearance,
Thompson's ardor for the Indo-
chinese cause seemed to have
cooled. At one dinner party he de-
livered a tongue-lashing to a
prominent New York visitor, Mar-
ietta Tree, who had been . con-
demning the U.S. role in Vietnam
as Immoral. "His expressed atti-
tude," says a friend, "was that It
was probably a mistake for us to
be there, but now that we were
there, we couldn't leave. What he
really believed, God only knows."
The speculations, in any case,
did not assist in finding him, and
after 10 days the search in the
Highlands was formally terminat-
ed. Unofficially, the hunt contin-
ued, not only in the.Highlands,
where the arrival of assorted
bomohs had created a bizarre,
carnival air, but also in Bangkok,
where the various explanations
for Thompson's disappearance
ranged from being captured by a
love-starved Malaysian princess
to having offended the gods by
placing an incorrect spirit at the
top 'of his house. A British mind
reader, then appearing in a Bang-'
kok nightclub, stated with equal
certainty that Thompson, in the
manner of an old 'elephant, had
gone into the jungle looking for a
secret place to die. Another report
had Thompson living in Peking,
having traveled there at the invi-
tation of the Chinese government,
which had paid him $1 million
(supposedly on deposit at a Hong
Kong bank) to establish a Chinese
rival to the Thai silk industry. All
of the stories-and there were doz-
ens-were checked out. All of
them came to naught.
Thompson's friends, however,,
remained determined. One theory
that particularly captured their,
attention came from an Austra- ,
lian nightclub performer and:
former major in the British
Army named Robert McGowan.
McGowan claimed that, in a vi-
sion, he had seen Thompson be-
ing held captive in a two-story
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house in Stung Treng, Cambodia.
There are many two-story houses
in Cambodia, but this one
was identifiable, according to
McGowan, because there was a !
wagon wheel leaning against It.
Several of Thompson's friends,
including Maxine North and a pi-
lot for the CIA's Air Americ were
prepared to take him seriously,
particularly after McGowan dem-
onstrated his extrasensory bona
fides by driving through Bang-
kok's hectic traffic-blindfolded.
The plan they hatched called
for the Air America pilot to feign
engine trouble over Stung Tieng,
land, find the house with the wag-
n wheel, then, with the aid of a
4
Gurkha lieutenant who had been
_recruited for the expedition, burst
in and rescue Thompson. But be-
_fore_the scheme could be put into
.operation, th.e CIA got wind of it
_and_stopped the flight Undaunt-
ed,the Gurkha lieutenant made
his way to Stung Treng and snt
two weeks_there in a vain search
.for a.- to -sry house with a wag-
-on_wheel leaning against It.
Then in late August, just as the
leads were beginning to diminish,
there occurred a grisly tragedy
that reignited interest in the case.
In Bucks County, Pa., Thomp-,
son's eldest sister, Katherine-the
ex-daughter-in-law of the former
governor-general of the Philip-
pines, Leonard Wood-was found
bludgeoned to. death. Thompson
and his sister were not close, and
the police discounted any connec-
tion between his disappearance
and her death, but that did not de-
ter the more conspiratorial ob-
servers of the matter. In their
minds, there had to be a link. After
all, they pointed out, Katherine's
farmhouse had been ransacked,
but her valuables had been left
untouched, as if her killer were
looking for something-revealing
letters from her brother, perhaps.
Katherine's killer was never
found, the link was never proved,
and as time passed, even the most
diehard of Thompson's friends
gradually began to give up hope.
Finally, in 1974, seven years after
Thompson's disappearance, a
Thai court, at ? the request of
Thompson's family, declared the
Thai Silk King legally dead.
But his legend, and the mys-
tery of what became of him, live
on. While Thompson's family,
and many of his associates, are
now prepared to accept an inno-
cent explanation for his disap-
pearance-he was lost, fell down a
ravine, was eaten by a tiger-there
are just as many others who will.
never buy it.
Thompson's friend Richard
Hughes, the late, fabled Hong
Kong correspondent for the Lon-
don Sunday Times, went to his
grave believing that Thompson
was on a mission for the CIA
when he disappeared. Hughes's
reasoning was simple. Thompson I
had been a "spook" for the.OSS, i
and, as Hughes put it in one of the
many columns he wrote about the
Thompson case, "once a CIA man,
always a CIA man."
Thompson's family wondered
about a possible CIA link as well,
and several months after his dis-
appearance made discreet inqui-
ries with officials in Washington.
The agency professed ignorance
about Thompson's fate and In-
sisted that he had no CIA affli-
aiion. But anagency man assured
one of Thompson's Bancok
friends, "You can be certain we
are turning overevery rock look-
ing for him. Jim__was OSS. He was
one of ours."
General Black, now retired, is
not satisfied. "Jimmy," he notes,
"was a loyal alumnus of OSS, and
if the government wanted him to
do anything. he would have done
it He wouldn't have minded if it
was a little bit dangerous. That
would have been stimulating to
him." Black is still troubled by
the U.S. government's handling of
the case. Embassy personnel in
both Bangkok and Kuala Lum-
pur, the Malaysian capital, he
says, "showed a singular lack of
interest in doing anything re-
motely active. I knew them pretty
well," he goes on, "but I couldn't
get anywhere with them. They
were completely unhelpful. The
State Department was afraid of
making political waves. Their at-
titude was, the sooner the
Thompson case was forgotten, ?
the better." Black reports running
into similar stonewalling from
the CIA. "I couldn't get anywhere
7
with those guys," he recalls.
"They were patting me on the
head, trying to give me a run-
around. It was as if they knew,
something that I didn't know, or'
couldn'i ieopardize their careers
because, this was a politically
.sensitive thing." Black shrugs.I
"Maybe they knew he was dead."
The CIA still refuses to com ,
ment on Thompson, other than to
say that the agency's files contain
"a number of items" about him.
The agency refuses to divulge
those items, however, under a law
? that empowers it to keep secret
..official titles, salaries or num-
bers of personnel employed by the
a enc ."Thompson himself nev-
er discussed his intelligence con-
nections, past or present. "His at-
titude about OSS," says a friend,
"was that It was a closed chapter,
and he didn't want to talk about
it." Once, though, he did make joc-
ular reference to an alleged CIA' i
affiliation. In a 1960 letter to Eli-
nor he reported that the king's
mother and the minister of the in-
terior had been trying to obtain a
decoration from the Thai govern-
ment for him, but that it was un-
likely he would get it, because the
minister of foreign affairs be-
lieved he was working for the .CIA.
Thompson commented, "If I did, I
would really be the boy wonder. I
don't know how they think I have
the time to do all my sleuthing
around in addition to the silk and
tourist business."
Whatever the truth of Thomp-
son's identity and whether or not
the CIA was involved in his disap-
pearance, his friends agree on one
fact'. Thompson would have rel-
ished the controversy. He was a
man who was aware of his legend
and, according to his friend Wil-
liam Warren, worked hard to.per-
petuate It. "He built up the charac-
ter that was Jim Thompson,",
Warren said in Bangkok one re-,
cent humid night. "He embroi-
dered stories. He let people won-
der whether he might or might not'
be a spook. Actually, he wanted
them to believe it. It made him
larger than life. He was bored with
the truth, and when he disap-
peared, it caught up with him."
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or.
Bangkok today is very different
from the "Oriental country town"
Jim Thompson fell In love with.
Most of the kiongs that made it
- "the Venice of the East" have been
filled in to better accommodate
the traffic that makes It seem
more like the Los Angeles of Asia.
The formerly ramshackle old Ori-
ental Hotel has been expanded
and modernized into what, ac-
cording to a survey of American
bankers, is the finest in the world.
It probably would amuse Thomp-
son to know that a $300-per-night
suite has been christened In his
I
Thompson's silk company
continues to thrive, selling 10
times the volume it did before his
disappearance. But the weavers
of Bangkrua are mostly gone, Vic-
tims of progress and their own;
prosperity. Today most of the
work is done up-country in a fac-!
tory that Thompson, with his love
of the old ways, would have hated.
Everything has changed in Bang-
kok, perhaps for the better, per-
haps for the worse.
One thing, though, remains
the same. They still talk about
Jim Thompson, still wonder what
happened to him on that sunny,
Easter afternoon. A Frenchman'
and a Japanese have written nov-
els based on Thompson's life, and
the BBC has made a movie. The
best account-Warren's 1970 bi-
ography, The Legendary Ameri-
can-continues to sell, and the au-
thor says he gets dozens of letters
each year, many of them offering
explanations of their own. Maxine
North, who still has that shim=
mering lavender silk dress she
bou ht 3 years a ~o +nsist at
toe CL has a maULln Bangkok, de-
tailed to do nothing Plae except,
"keep what hap~enn o .iim uil.~
der wraps."
At the House on the Kiong I .
they don't pay much attention to'
any of this. Jim's servants know
that he is coming back. While:
they wait, they maintain his'
house as a museum in which
nothing has been changed. "You
know. Jim's, temper," explains
Henry, his nephew and heir. "He'd
hate having his things moved."
The dining room table is set, as if
the master and his guests are.ex-
pected for dinner. His clothes re-'
main in the closets, and at night
the lights in the living room still
burn bright. If one day you go to
Bangkok, there is a young Thai
girl who will show you Jim's trea-'
sures, and if, as surely you will,'
you ask her what happened to the
Thai Silk King, she will giggle ner-
vously, as the Thai do when they
are anxious not to offend. And
then she will say, "Nobody
knows."
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