to Close Case Of Misling American By H. D. S. Green forerunner of the Central Intelligence W4shIngton Post Foreign Bar ea Agency. He decided to stay on in-the , March 25---On Tuesday East and built the weaving of silk in Thailand up from a small and dying It will be seven years to the day since cottage industry into a multimillion James H. W. Thompson disappeared dollar business known all over the without a trace In the Cameron High- world. He was a great raconteur and lands of Malaysia. After seven years, entertained often in his beautiful and the courts are entitled to declare him theatrical Thal-style house on a canal. legally dead, but the case has never He became a legendary local char- been solved. acter and during the 1950s and early Not a single clue has proved reliable 1960s an introduction to Jim Thomp- and, as one of his' dose friends said son was eagerly sought-after by visi- last week, "All the theories are im- tors to Bangkok. probable and some of them are ridicu- On March 26, 1967, Thompson was lous." visiting friends in the Cameron High- The life of this American expatriate lands resort in Malaysia. It was Easter was itself improbable and the facts Sunday and, following a picnic lunch, and fantasies concerning his disap- the house party of four returned to pearance have become one of the their cottage in the early afternoon more romantic and controversial mys- for a nap. Thompson may have sat teries of the East. out on the lawn while the others dozed ' Thompson came to Bangkok right in their rooms, it is not certain, but after World War II as an officer in shortly after 3 p.m., his friends heard JIM THOMPSON the Office of Strategic Services, the See THOMPSON, Al2, Col 1 ... missing Thai silk king THOMPSON, From Al was brutally murdered in the sound of a deck chair her house in Pennsylvania. being placed on the veranda As the years passed noth- . and the sound of footsteps ing appeared either to prove going down the gravel drive or disprove any of these the- to the road. ories. In recent years, the It was presumed that the secret missing theory has footsteps were Thompson's date, favors the theory that •-•.: and that he was going for a can troop withdrawal from • stroll. But no one 113 sure, Vietnam and the Paris for Thompson was never agreements have taken seen or heard from again. place apparently without -.Later his suit coat was Jim Thompson's help. But found over the back of the the murder theory has not deck chair and in his room abated even though no one were his cigarettes and has come up with a concrete some pllls he took to kill the motive. pain of gallstones. By Ken Bursens—The Washington. Post Thompson's friend and bi- The Cameron Highlands ographer, William Warren, Thompson was last seen whose book "The Legendary are well laid out for hikers in Cameron Highlands. with numerous footpaths, American" is the most com- but closing in on every side plete study of the case to are some of the most impen- —perhaps he had been kid- date, favors the theory that etrable jungles in the world. naped for political reasons. Thompson was lost in the jungle as the least improba- It was first assumed that Perhaps he had gone volun- Thompson had lost his way ble of the many theories or perhaps wandered off the tarily on some secret mis- that have been presented. trail. The following morning sion. Richard Noone notwith- standing, Warren, feels that the search began with po- Thompson was 81 when he licemen, soldiers, volunteers the thoroughness of the and even local aborigines disappeared and it had been search has been exagger- from the forests joining in. 20 years since his cloak and ated, given the extreme dif- The woods were combed dagger days. Nonetheless, ficulty of the terrain. for 10 days, but nothing was the idea that he might have Connie Mongskau, an old found. It was then that been involved in some high- friend who accompanied Thompson on his Malaysian minds began to turn -toward legel espionage persisted. more sinister suspicions. holiday • seven years ago, Might there have been foul Early in the case, a well- says that she does not be- play, perhaps a kidnaping? known British jungle ex- lieve that Jim Thompson is Myriads of mystics and local pert, Richard Noone, de- still alive. She leans toward witch doctors descended on clared that it was most un- the Warren theory that if the highlands. A Dutch likely that Jim Thompson Thompson is ,ever found it had been lost in the jungle. will probably be in the Cam- are scores of imitators to- clairvoyant named Peter eron Highlands. Hurkos, who had become fa- Noone knew the Cameron day. mous for his eerie revela- Highlands Well from his ex- During the war, Jim Thompson never made a tions during the Boston perience as an anti-guerrilla Thompson had been trained company was basically Thai- strangler murder case, fighter, and soon after to parachute into Thailand Thompson's disappearance behind the Japanese lines, owned. When he vanished, showed up in the highlands he held only 18 per cent of and said that Thompson had he went there to talk to the but the Japanese •surren- 1 aboriginal tribes who live in dered literally as Thomp- the shares. been kidnaped by someone son's plane was in the air. known to him, drttgged and the forest. Noon's position His other great loves were was that you just do not taken to Cambodia. He had attended St. Paul's his priceless collection of lose a man in the jungle, not School and Princeton Uni- All. Thompson's earlier Chinese and Southeast if you know how to read the versity and during the 1930s Asian antiques and the spec- OSS days were recalled as signs. If Thompson had been he lived a fashionable life was his association with the in tacular- Thai house he built eaten by a tiger or fallen in New York. But his brief great fortune out of silk. His former Thai Premier Pridi a ravine, the aboriginals marriage did not survive the to put them in. Thompson's Phamnomyong, leader of would have found some war and he turned his back famous "House on the the anti-Japanese under- trace, Noone said. Yet there on his former life to settle Klong" is still open to tour- ground in Thailand during was nothing—no spot of in Bangkok. ists two mornings a week. the war, who when Thomp- blood, not even a vulture His great commercial suc- .When Thompson lived son disappeared, was in ex- wheeling in the sky. cess was in organizing silk- there, the house was not so ile in China. It was recalled Later it was weaving into an industry much a- museum as a dazz- that during the late 1940s suggested that he had been kidnaped and selling the product ling and exotic theater in Thompson also knew many overseas. Many Americans which to entertin. anti-French and murdered to cover up Vietnamese, some dark secret in Thai- first noticed the beautiful Originally, Thompson had Cambodians and Laotians as textures and rich colors of intended to leave the house well. land, the nature of which has never been agreed upon. Thai silk when Jim Thomp- and his collection to the If Thompson was not kid- son's silk was chosen for the here. Several The conspiracy and murder costumes of the "King and naped for money—and as theory was given fresh im- years before he disappeared the months went by there I" In the 1950s. Although he got into a row with the petus when, later that year, Thompson's Thai Silk Co. is was `no demand for ransom Jim Thompson's elder sister gnvernrnent's Fine Arts De- still the best known, there partment over some Buddha Br BM Snead—Tito Woohutston Post Before his disappearance, an invitation to Thompson's dramatic "Bouse on the Wong" was widely sought after by visitors to Bangkok. images which the Fine Arts what they considered his pa- house should be set up as a that this will happen before Department said had been tronizing attitude. Thai foundation to be main- the summer. stolen. Thompson did not "Jim began collecting art tained as "an art museum Meanwhile, the House on deny that some of them before there was much in- for the benefit and enjoy- the Kiong remains almost probably had been stolen, terest In it here, it true, ment of the people of Thai- the way Thompson left it but took the attitude that if but, whenever we disagree land and of visitors to it." seven years ago. The big he bought them, at least with him, he thinks we are The petition to create the white cockatoo bird that they would be preserved in ungrateful," a Thal com- foundation will go up to the used to sit on Thompson's Thailand instead of being plained a few years ago. courts when Jim Thompson shoulder is still alive and smuggled out of the coun- Shortly afterwards he is declared legally dead, ac- waits for him to talk try. changed his will leaving his cording to the present man- through the door again. Al- Thompson never forgave estate to his nephew, Henry ager of the Thai Silk Co. Be- though they are now in the the Thai authorities for the Thompson, a New York cause of legal complications minority, some friends still incident and there were stock broker. The nephew and the slow-moving Thai think that one day Jim some Thais who resented has agreed that his uncle's bureaucracy it is unlikely Thompson will do just that.