Thailand to Close Case of Misling American by H
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Thailand 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 BANGKOK, 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 place apparently without seen or heard from again. Jim Thompson's help. But -.Later his suit coat was the murder theory has not found over the back of the abated even though no one deck chair and in his room has come up with a concrete were his cigarettes and motive. some pllls he took to kill the Thompson's friend and bi- pain of gallstones. By Ken Bursens—The Washington. Post ographer, William Warren, The Cameron Highlands Thompson was last seen whose book "The Legendary are well laid out for hikers in Cameron Highlands. American" is the most com- with numerous footpaths, plete study of the case to but closing in on every side —perhaps he had been kid- date, favors the theory that are some of the most impen- Thompson was lost in the etrable jungles in the world. naped for political reasons. jungle as the least improba- It was first assumed that Perhaps he had gone volun- ble of the many theories Thompson had lost his way tarily on some secret mis- that have been presented. or perhaps wandered off the sion. Richard Noone notwith- trail. The following morning standing, Warren, feels that the search began with po- Thompson was 81 when he the thoroughness of the licemen, soldiers, volunteers disappeared and it had been search has been exagger- and even local aborigines 20 years since his cloak and ated, given the extreme dif- from the forests joining in. ficulty of the terrain. The woods were combed dagger days. Nonetheless, the idea that he might have Connie Mongskau, an old for 10 days, but nothing was friend who accompanied found. It was then that been involved in some high- Thompson on his Malaysian minds began to turn -toward legel espionage persisted. holiday • seven years ago, more sinister suspicions. Early in the case, a well- says that she does not be- Might there have been foul known British jungle ex- lieve that Jim Thompson is play, perhaps a kidnaping? pert, Richard Noone, de- still alive. She leans toward Myriads of mystics and local clared that it was most un- the Warren theory that if witch doctors descended on Thompson is ,ever found it likely that Jim Thompson are scores of imitators to- the highlands. A Dutch had been lost in the jungle. will probably be in the Cam- clairvoyant named Peter Noone knew the Cameron eron Highlands. day. Hurkos, who had become fa- Highlands Well from his ex- During the war, Jim Thompson never made a mous for his eerie revela- perience as an anti-guerrilla Thompson had been trained company was basically Thai- tions during the Boston fighter, and soon after to parachute into Thailand owned. When he vanished, strangler murder case, behind the Japanese lines, Thompson's disappearance he held only 18 per cent of 1 showed up in the highlands he went there to talk to the but the Japanese •surren- and said that Thompson had aboriginal tribes who live in dered literally as Thomp- the shares. been kidnaped by someone the forest. Noon's position son's plane was in the air. His other great loves were known to him, drttgged and was that you just do not He had attended St. Paul's his priceless collection of taken to Cambodia. lose a man in the jungle, not School and Princeton Uni- Chinese and Southeast All. Thompson's earlier 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 in tacular- Thai house he built was his association with the 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 weaving into an industry much a- museum as a dazz- ile in China. It was recalled Later it was suggested that during the late 1940s and selling the product ling and exotic theater in that he had been kidnaped overseas. Many Americans which to entertin. Thompson also knew many and murdered to cover up anti-French Vietnamese, first noticed the beautiful Originally, Thompson had some dark secret in Thai- textures and rich colors of intended to leave the house Cambodians and Laotians as land, the nature of which well. Thai silk when Jim Thomp- and his collection to the has never been agreed upon. son's silk was chosen for the Siam Society here. Several If Thompson was not kid- The conspiracy and murder costumes of the "King and years before he disappeared naped for money—and as theory was given fresh im- I" In the 1950s. Although he got into a row with the the months went by there petus when, later that year, Thompson's Thai Silk Co. is gnvernrnent's Fine Arts De- was `no demand for ransom Jim Thompson's elder sister 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.