Speaker 1: Thinking Sideways stories of things you don't know the answer too. Well.
Speaker 1: Hello there, and welcome to another episode of Thinking Sideways.
Speaker 1: I'm Joe, joined as always by Steve and and in
Speaker 1: this episode we're gonna do the usual thing and solve
Speaker 1: a mystery. Let's se if you're all ready, let's get
Speaker 1: this underway. That's right. We're so good at it, yeah,
Speaker 1: almost an unblemished record. Okay, So we're gonna be talking
Speaker 1: this episode about Jim Thompson. And if you've never heard
Speaker 1: of Jim Thompson, well he was a dude. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: was an American. He more nineteen o six, he was.
Speaker 1: He was a spy for a while in World War Two.
Speaker 1: He worked for the oss UM. He spoke, what's the
Speaker 1: oss is? The OPIC is the Office of Strategic Services,
Speaker 1: which was the predecessor to the CIA. Yeah, so they
Speaker 1: came into being world War two and did some spine
Speaker 1: and stuff like that in covert ops. And so he
Speaker 1: was Yeah, he was recruited into the USS and I
Speaker 1: went to North Africa first to work with the Free
Speaker 1: French in North Africa, and then he after After North Africa,
Speaker 1: he went to Europe for a while and then he
Speaker 1: was sent to the Far East to go into Thailand
Speaker 1: and work with the free time movement. I'm getting ahead
Speaker 1: of myself here, anyway, let me let me, let me
Speaker 1: get to the quick summary. Okay. So he after after
Speaker 1: the war, he became a businessman and he started a
Speaker 1: very successful silk company in Bangkok, Thailand in the late
Speaker 1: nineteen four Don't they say that he's single handedly responsible
Speaker 1: for the silk resurgence. Yeah, for first saving that the
Speaker 1: Thai silk industry. Yeah. Yeah, And but we'll get more
Speaker 1: in that later. That's okay, I don't care. So he
Speaker 1: disappeared without a trace in nineteen sixty seven, so that's
Speaker 1: the mystery obviously. Yeah. So at the time of his disappearance,
Speaker 1: he was one of the most famous Americans living in
Speaker 1: Asia because of because of his company and everything, and
Speaker 1: so it led to the most massive man hunt in
Speaker 1: Malaysian history, except I suppose m H three seventy sure,
Speaker 1: oh that's more of a more of a plane un yeah,
Speaker 1: but well yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. But okay, So okay,
Speaker 1: back to his background, and you know, he was recruiting
Speaker 1: to the USS want to North Africa, Europe and then
Speaker 1: after the surrender of German he went to to Sri
Speaker 1: Lanka as a stepping stone to Tai to Thailand to
Speaker 1: helpliberate Thailand from the Japanese occupation. He got to Thailand,
Speaker 1: unfortunately for him, the Japanese has surrendered, fortunately for the
Speaker 1: rest of us. But he didn't get to do any
Speaker 1: cloak and dagger work in Thailand. But he did go
Speaker 1: ahead and spend some time there, he said, at the U. S.
Speaker 1: S Office there, and then became military Atta for the U. S.
Speaker 1: Embassy there um. And he was still doing some spying.
Speaker 1: He used his contact with the Free Tie and a
Speaker 1: Free Loud movement or groups to gather information. So he
Speaker 1: was spying. And he also served as an intermediary between
Speaker 1: miscellaneous warring groups and tribes and tried to defuse conflicts.
Speaker 1: So he was generally a generally a good guy, did
Speaker 1: good stuff. Uh. He went back to the US, but
Speaker 1: returned to Thailand, and then in he started the Thaie
Speaker 1: Silk Company, and the the Thai Silk Company was you know,
Speaker 1: as you said, he resuscitated the Thai silk industry. He
Speaker 1: had this great business model where he women were weaving
Speaker 1: silk for him and he let them work at home,
Speaker 1: so they could just you know, there's quality control and
Speaker 1: all that stuff. But he let them. He let them
Speaker 1: work at home so they could still do their home
Speaker 1: stuff but make money. Also, a lot of those women
Speaker 1: became the bread winners families. Yeah, yeah, and he, you know,
Speaker 1: he lifted thousands of people on a poverty and so
Speaker 1: it was a good thing. That's great, while letting them
Speaker 1: you know, stay at home with their young kids or
Speaker 1: whatever exactly. He's also well known for his house, the
Speaker 1: Jim Thompson House, which is in Bangkok and is now
Speaker 1: a museum because he built this place. He bought he
Speaker 1: bought like about half a dozen old houses and dismantled
Speaker 1: them and brought him down the river to Bangkok and
Speaker 1: then and then reassembled them but in sometimes different odd
Speaker 1: ways and then and so it's basically almost like a
Speaker 1: little compound rather than just a single house. And they
Speaker 1: feel that they are they connected. Yeah, they're they're interconnected,
Speaker 1: or at least most of some of them are. But
Speaker 1: I've never actually been there. I've seen pictures of it.
Speaker 1: I'd love to go see it. But he was a
Speaker 1: big antique collector and he filled the place up with
Speaker 1: all kinds of exotic antiques, and so now it's now
Speaker 1: it's a museum and a big tourist attraction in Bangkok.
Speaker 1: That's the only reason that I would want to be rich,
Speaker 1: to be able to be an antiques collector. That'd be
Speaker 1: one reason. I also want to be rich so I
Speaker 1: can have some Maserati's and big yacht right well, okay,
Speaker 1: that not with standing. It's the whole antique thing that
Speaker 1: really gets me. It'd be antique Maserati's an antique yachts,
Speaker 1: right yea, or at least antique inspired. Yeah, And and
Speaker 1: the slick thing or slick The cool thing about the
Speaker 1: way he did those houses is that he was he
Speaker 1: studied to be an architect and he did some architectural stuff.
Speaker 1: He wasn't actually an architect. Evidently he couldn't get through
Speaker 1: Caculus is what I read. So he couldn't actually become
Speaker 1: an architect, but he knew what he was doing. And
Speaker 1: what was really cool is some of these houses he
Speaker 1: kept them at their same elevation above the ground of
Speaker 1: where they originally came from. So when you look at
Speaker 1: some of the pictures, there's a house that's, let's say,
Speaker 1: I don't know, in the air it was originally fifteen
Speaker 1: or twenty ft above the ground, and he just elevated
Speaker 1: it and that's how he put it all together. And
Speaker 1: he took some of the exterior walls and he flipped
Speaker 1: them because they disassembled the whole house. So yeah, put
Speaker 1: that wall back in, but by the way, give it
Speaker 1: a eighty degree spin. So the the exteriors now on
Speaker 1: the end side, which it was just really interesting looking
Speaker 1: when I was looking through the photos that they have
Speaker 1: of it. You know, what, have you ever noticed that
Speaker 1: it's it's only really interesting people who go missing. Well,
Speaker 1: there's actually there's uh thousands of people go missing every year.
Speaker 1: Nobody gives it a damn. Yeah, yeah, unless it's somebody
Speaker 1: that's famous or interesting. So if we disappeared, you know,
Speaker 1: there'd be a huge man hunt. Well obviously, yeah, because
Speaker 1: we are both rich and interesting. Yeah, exactly the hit
Speaker 1: podcast billions of people listening to literally billions. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: They would trigger the largest Manhattan and close in eastside Portland. Okay,
Speaker 1: Well back to our story. In March nineteen seventy, traveled
Speaker 1: to Malaysia with a friend of his whose name was
Speaker 1: whose name was Constance mang Scal I think I'm pronounced
Speaker 1: I think that's right. So they want to the camp
Speaker 1: what's called the Camera in Highlands, and the Camera Highlands
Speaker 1: are that's that's what's kind of called a hill station
Speaker 1: or a collection of hill stations. The Brits back in
Speaker 1: their colonial history, they they would they colonized a lot
Speaker 1: of like really hot, sweaty tropical places, and so they
Speaker 1: always made a point of building hill stations, like to
Speaker 1: have a bunch of hill stations in India. They're up
Speaker 1: in the mountains, so they're elevated, so during the hot
Speaker 1: season they could go up there and be cool. And yeah,
Speaker 1: similar things. They built hill stations up in up in
Speaker 1: the Cameron Highlands, so that the town of Tona Rada
Speaker 1: was one of one of those hill stations. And there
Speaker 1: they stayed with their friends, doctor Ling Tiangi and his
Speaker 1: wife Helen Ling. They were he was Chinese, I believe
Speaker 1: she was an American. And yeah, so they spent several
Speaker 1: days hanging out and on the third day of the visit,
Speaker 1: there was against staying in this house. He left the house,
Speaker 1: presumably to go for a walk. That's what he didn't
Speaker 1: actually say if he was going for a walk, but
Speaker 1: it was about one thirty in the afternoon he said
Speaker 1: to Helen Ling and and to Connie Manscal he said
Speaker 1: good nights, sweethearts, and then he left and never came back. Yeah. Wait,
Speaker 1: at like one thirty in the afternoon, in the afternoon,
Speaker 1: not at night. Yeah, I mean. And the thing about
Speaker 1: about the good night sweetheart thing is apparently they had
Speaker 1: they had a custom in their house. The Links did
Speaker 1: saying good night sweetheart whenever they would take a nap
Speaker 1: or anything. If they're going to bed for the night
Speaker 1: or if they're just going to go take a nap,
Speaker 1: they would say good night, sweetheart. Yeah, regardless of that
Speaker 1: time of day. Yeah, so you know, you'd think he
Speaker 1: would be going to take a nap, but apparently for
Speaker 1: a walk, I guess, like good night. Is that like
Speaker 1: a Malaysian custom of any kind? Not at all, It's
Speaker 1: totally I remember reading something that it's got it's got
Speaker 1: roots in something that's very British. It's just so it's
Speaker 1: so weird. I mean, not to like harken back too much, right,
Speaker 1: but like when we were talking about um mh three seventy, right,
Speaker 1: weren't the last words that were like transmitted good night
Speaker 1: weren't they somebody go listen to the app, Yeah, somebody
Speaker 1: and then emails right now? Yeah, sorry, sorry, I thought
Speaker 1: I believe there was something about I believe there was
Speaker 1: something about good night. I think that was the last
Speaker 1: words I heard his last night. Words to connections are
Speaker 1: being drawn. Remind me never say good night. I'm sorry, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: never ever hear from me again. Now, you said it
Speaker 1: was about one thirty in the afternoon, is when that happened. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one thirty. Dr Lynne was thinking it was stree thirty
Speaker 1: because he said he heard footsteps outside his doors. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why I was. I was asking because I remember
Speaker 1: reading there was a little bit of dispute on the
Speaker 1: time when he went for his walk, and there wasn't
Speaker 1: like an outside gazebo or hammock or like napping spot
Speaker 1: he could have been going to, as far as you know,
Speaker 1: not that I know of. No, I've only seen like
Speaker 1: one picture of the cottage that they were staying, and
Speaker 1: that was like from the front of it and didn't
Speaker 1: have any backyard action in the picture. So because I
Speaker 1: guess that would make sense if he you know, if
Speaker 1: that was the tradition or the custom of the house
Speaker 1: was to say good night as you're going to nap
Speaker 1: or something. And it's know warm, and the kind of
Speaker 1: spring right marches spring, which early spring kind of you
Speaker 1: know in Malaysia you go hang out in a hammock
Speaker 1: and take a nap. That sounds kind of nice. But
Speaker 1: I guess if they probably would have mentioned that, probably yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but as far as you know, the time dispute goes
Speaker 1: and and this may be true, maybe he was going
Speaker 1: out to the hammock to take a nap and then
Speaker 1: suddenly that those are rustling in the broad at the underbrush.
Speaker 1: It's suddenly a dog dressed as a giant spider came
Speaker 1: and he went running off and got lost in the
Speaker 1: jungle and there was eaten by lions and tigers and bears.
Speaker 1: Seems unlikely, doesn't it. You're at yourself of his stature. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So what happened next? Anybody want to guess? Nothing? He
Speaker 1: never came back. Good, guess that's true. Yeah, he didn't
Speaker 1: do that. He never came back. So Dr Link called
Speaker 1: the police that evening and they they said they sent
Speaker 1: somebody around the next day, And sure enough, they did
Speaker 1: send some people around the next day, and they took
Speaker 1: a look at a picture of him, and then they
Speaker 1: recruited about thirty Aborigines and started searching the jungle in
Speaker 1: the area. Found nothing, and as a word of his
Speaker 1: disappearance spread around the area, more than a hundred people
Speaker 1: were looking for him by the end of the day.
Speaker 1: And the next day they continued. They came back and
Speaker 1: they continued sweeping the jungle. Found nothing, I mean, not
Speaker 1: a trace, not not a little torn piece of clothing
Speaker 1: or footprint or anything. After that, the Type Silk company
Speaker 1: put up a ten thousand dollar reward for anybody who
Speaker 1: found In the sixties and that yeah, so, I mean,
Speaker 1: especially in the sixties in America, ten thousand bucks was
Speaker 1: real money. You could buy a house, you know, and
Speaker 1: imagine what that would be entirely for the rest of
Speaker 1: your life money, Oh yeah, and that in that country,
Speaker 1: tell ye, yeah, I mean it is today almost so yeah,
Speaker 1: that's wow. Yeah, a lot of money. His friend Connie
Speaker 1: Mankscal also put some money up. The police put up
Speaker 1: some re word money and still so that obviously motivated
Speaker 1: lots of people who are out looking for but still
Speaker 1: it wasn't turning up, and rumors started began to start
Speaker 1: around that he'd been kidnapped and taken out of the country,
Speaker 1: and I don't I don't know what the basis of
Speaker 1: those was. Yeah, well, I think I think I do
Speaker 1: know what the basis of those are. But I think
Speaker 1: that I think that we're going to get into some
Speaker 1: of that in the theory sections. Yeah, exactly. And the
Speaker 1: rumors might have started because I don't know how well
Speaker 1: known his his association with the OSS slash CIA was. Well,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't have had to be so well, no, I
Speaker 1: mean just a couple of little murmurs that takes Yeah,
Speaker 1: well we've all seen burn Notice it just takes one
Speaker 1: guy knowing because everything I know about spies I learned
Speaker 1: from Burne. I'm I'm confused as to where his plucky,
Speaker 1: semi alcoholic sidekick is at helping him out in all that.
Speaker 1: But but no, I mean, you know, it really is.
Speaker 1: It's it's just one person that you've dealt with before
Speaker 1: that happens to know you, and I know. The theory
Speaker 1: of he being you know, absconded and taken out of
Speaker 1: the country is all that. There's talk about communist rebels
Speaker 1: or something like that in the area, which I always
Speaker 1: found weird because if you look at Malaysia on the map,
Speaker 1: they're kind of ways away from what you would consider
Speaker 1: the big communist stomping grounds like Cambilli and and and Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's a it's a good little distance,
Speaker 1: and it would be a lot of effort to try
Speaker 1: to actually, you know, to to get somebody out of
Speaker 1: that area. Oh yeah, I probably would be so. And
Speaker 1: they may well have been hanging around the area. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't know, you know, I don't know
Speaker 1: what kind of communist insurgery insurgencies we're going on in
Speaker 1: Malaysia at the time. There may have been well, yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll get back to that a little bit. And speaking
Speaker 1: of burn notices, I don't know if you knew this,
Speaker 1: but he actually had a burn notice put out on
Speaker 1: him Jim Thompson, Oh did he really? Yeah? Yeah, because
Speaker 1: he was You really want to tell people what a
Speaker 1: burn notice is? By the way, Yeah, burn notices when
Speaker 1: like say, a company like the CIA tell basically puts
Speaker 1: out a notice to everybody that none of them are
Speaker 1: to have anything to do with this guy anymore, don't
Speaker 1: talk to him. It's basically they blacklist him, right, pretty much. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're you're you're you're done, you're burned. You've got no contact.
Speaker 1: Any contact that knows you will say they don't know you,
Speaker 1: they won't interact with you. Yeah. So, yeah, he had
Speaker 1: a burn notice put on him after he was appearance
Speaker 1: or before. I think it was about nineteen sixty two,
Speaker 1: right around their early sixties. Um, yeah, he was. He
Speaker 1: was actually opposed to US policy in Southeast and Southeast Asia.
Speaker 1: He felt that he felt that really we we should
Speaker 1: be working with guys like ho che Man and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. He felt like we should be not starting wars.
Speaker 1: And he also felt that the CIA was was getting
Speaker 1: too militarized. He felt like they were just too much
Speaker 1: like an army and not enough just just being a
Speaker 1: spy and intelligent gathering it from agency. Sounds like a
Speaker 1: man before his time. Yeah, he was. So he was
Speaker 1: openly critical of US policy and that's probably the reason
Speaker 1: he got black or burned, burned, and so yeah, I
Speaker 1: didn't know that. That's really interesting. Yeah, well of course
Speaker 1: made that joke. Yeah no, no, it's true. Well, I
Speaker 1: actually shouldn't say it's true. It's something I read in
Speaker 1: the internet. So obviously we don't know that it's true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well let's get back to the manhead for a second here.
Speaker 1: So of course, as there were the rumors, Okay, enough
Speaker 1: of that. And on April one, another search was begun.
Speaker 1: Uh Edwin Black was a general in the U. S.
Speaker 1: Army and he had known Thompson since World War Two.
Speaker 1: He came there with a couple of guys, one of
Speaker 1: the one of whom was like a scout, and I
Speaker 1: forget what the other guy was, he was just a civilian.
Speaker 1: And they were These were guys who knew the jungle,
Speaker 1: knew that area well, and they knew all about the jungle.
Speaker 1: So they head out to search, and they got together
Speaker 1: with two other men from the police force and they
Speaker 1: calmed the area again on even further out into the
Speaker 1: jungle for about about two days and found absolutely no trace. Eventually,
Speaker 1: after eleven days of searching, it started winding down. On April,
Speaker 1: a Britain named Richard Noon arrived. This is another guy
Speaker 1: who knew the jungle well, and he went out with
Speaker 1: a couple of guys in search and he searched beyond
Speaker 1: where the other searchers had been had reported reportedly gone,
Speaker 1: and they saw some Aborigines who hadn't seen it, has
Speaker 1: not seen a trace of Thompson. And eventually they gave
Speaker 1: up the search and came back and he talked to
Speaker 1: reporters and he said that he was sure Thompson was
Speaker 1: not in the jungle. No. I read this in a
Speaker 1: lot of the documentation, and I know you've said it
Speaker 1: a couple of times, and I just want to clarify
Speaker 1: to make sure I understand this. When you say Aboriginal,
Speaker 1: that's just I mean, that's that's local basically, Is that correct.
Speaker 1: That's that's not that's somebody who is from the area
Speaker 1: that isn't you know, westernized and living in this city.
Speaker 1: It's more of they live out in the jungle and
Speaker 1: they do what they do is kind of a subsistence space. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like the original tribesman. So if you look at it,
Speaker 1: if you look at a place like Malaysia, besides besides
Speaker 1: Brits and Americans coming and living there, there's a uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Chinese and Japanese and all kinds of other
Speaker 1: people who have also come in. But these are the
Speaker 1: original local inhabitants of the area. And I just wanted
Speaker 1: to clarify that because I know initially what I heard
Speaker 1: when I read that term. Whenever I hear and this
Speaker 1: is just because of the popular things that we hears.
Speaker 1: I hear aboriginine and I think you think Australia. I
Speaker 1: think Australia. That doesn't make any sense. Well, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, these may have been Australian Aborigines who call it.
Speaker 1: I don't know. First description was accurate, not the same,
Speaker 1: probably probably if you know what they everybody else calls
Speaker 1: what we call Native Americans. Yes, those are also Aborigines. Yeah,
Speaker 1: better term. Yeah. Next Next in our drama, a psychic
Speaker 1: named Peter Hurkos arrived. He was an American and he
Speaker 1: apparently nobody invited him. He just sort of showed up,
Speaker 1: just knew something was wrong. Yeah, he's a psychic. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he might have read something in the newspaper too. If
Speaker 1: he was so psychic, why didn't you show up before
Speaker 1: he disappeared? You know? In his favor, I got to say,
Speaker 1: it's just because your psychic doesn't mean you can see
Speaker 1: the future. So by way, our psychic went to the
Speaker 1: cottage where Thompson had been staying and put on a
Speaker 1: little a little dramatic dog and pony. Can you describe
Speaker 1: it for me? Can I describe it? Yeah? Well, he
Speaker 1: kind of went into a trance and then said and
Speaker 1: did a lot of stream of consciousness. I don't want
Speaker 1: to actually quote his entire thing because it really goes
Speaker 1: on for quite a while and it's a little racist. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I found it racist reading it. You found it well
Speaker 1: than it was. Do you want to read it? No?
Speaker 1: I don't. But he spits out I mean, the whole
Speaker 1: thing is long, but he spits out these garbleygook were
Speaker 1: words which when I read them phonetically, I could see
Speaker 1: how they sounded like something from an Asian language, Like
Speaker 1: he didn't know what he was doing. He was just
Speaker 1: trying to spit out words. It maybe sounded like something
Speaker 1: in a local dialect, hoping he would land upon something.
Speaker 1: So that's why I said it sounded a little racist.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, so he um he Finally, when this was
Speaker 1: all done and he comes out of his trance, he
Speaker 1: said that Thompson had been kidnapped and taken to another country,
Speaker 1: just like the rumors. And he also said that Thompson
Speaker 1: was not being held for ransom, So that means apparently,
Speaker 1: I guess he was being taken to be interrogated or
Speaker 1: some kind of political prisoner. Yeah, yeah, maybe, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, if if he if it was suspected that
Speaker 1: he still had contacts in the CIA, which of course,
Speaker 1: of course he probably didn't. Not everybody maybe do that.
Speaker 1: Maybe somebody thought that they could interrogate him and torture
Speaker 1: enough to get some useful information out of him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, yeah, well, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: we've learned a lot about what some people will do.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it's not always like yeah, hey,
Speaker 1: by the way, we have this person and we're gonna
Speaker 1: release them if you give us a million dollars. You know.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's well, we're probably going to need to negotiate
Speaker 1: with something at some point, so let's just keep this
Speaker 1: person on the back burner and eventually we'll use them.
Speaker 1: And eventually they just like procrastinated a little too long,
Speaker 1: and they were all old and you know, and they
Speaker 1: felt bad and they become friends and yeah, or they're
Speaker 1: movement fell apart and they all got hauled away, and
Speaker 1: knows about ability, they forgot that they had a prisoner
Speaker 1: locked up to that. For Jim, Yeah, I just took off. No,
Speaker 1: I don't think so. But so one last strange occurrence. Uh,
Speaker 1: And nobody knows if this is related or not. But
Speaker 1: five months after he disappeared, his sister was murdered. That's weird.
Speaker 1: She was blunting, wasn't she like a crowbar, like a
Speaker 1: brutal then. Sure, they didn't recover the weapon, but they
Speaker 1: thought it was either like a crowbar or something like that.
Speaker 1: It was blood. There's blood splattered all around. Yeah, you say,
Speaker 1: the police report said there was literally blood on every
Speaker 1: wall of her bedroom. Yeah, and they don't And it
Speaker 1: was an unsolved murder. Yeah, it was that the police.
Speaker 1: The police said that it was not related. But how
Speaker 1: the hell would they know that? I mean, it might
Speaker 1: have been. I mean I can't. I can't say one
Speaker 1: way or the other. And she was not like a
Speaker 1: public figure in her own right. She was also a
Speaker 1: good bit older than he was. She was like nine
Speaker 1: years older than him because he because he was born
Speaker 1: in n six, he was like in his he was sixty,
Speaker 1: I believe, and she was. That's not that's not totally
Speaker 1: unusual though, No, but but she's a fair bit older.
Speaker 1: There's a bit of a generational gap there. You know,
Speaker 1: if I was going to run in certain circles and
Speaker 1: do something, and my brothers through who's around the same age,
Speaker 1: would likely be involved in those same things. But when
Speaker 1: you get ten, twelve, fifteen years apart, there's less chance
Speaker 1: of that. But there's also like an even less chance
Speaker 1: of you being kidnapped and your sister being blunted to death.
Speaker 1: It does seem to you, right, Yeah, so it's yeah,
Speaker 1: it is one of those weird things that maybe maybe
Speaker 1: it adds something, maybe it doesn't. Yeah, there might be
Speaker 1: there might be an angle here that nobody, nobody really
Speaker 1: knows about. There might be somebody who had a grudge
Speaker 1: against the family and they kidnapped him and murdered him
Speaker 1: and then murdered her five months later. It's possible, but nobody,
Speaker 1: you know, nobody knows. There's no evidence that these things
Speaker 1: are related, but it kind of seems like maybe they
Speaker 1: would be. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's that whole again.
Speaker 1: We've talked about this before, the whole kind of grasping
Speaker 1: at straws. There's not a whole lot of information, So
Speaker 1: there really isn't If there's two weird occurrences connected to
Speaker 1: one thing, it's hard. It's hard to not connect them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, but it could be I'll add that to
Speaker 1: my list of theories, is that he actually wanted to
Speaker 1: murderous sister so he disappeared and then yeah, and then
Speaker 1: if they ever arrested, you can say, hey, I was
Speaker 1: I was disappeared at the time I was disappeared, dude.
Speaker 1: The reason Joe suddenly turned a ninety ree corner on that,
Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemens, because I gave him the are you
Speaker 1: kidding me a look? Yeah, so crap, you guys, Joe
Speaker 1: is gonna go missing, goes missing, and I'm moving me
Speaker 1: too immediately. So you guys ready to talk about some series?
Speaker 1: And there lots of series out there, they really are,
Speaker 1: and some of them are some of them are pretty
Speaker 1: outland is do you want to start with the more
Speaker 1: mundane ones? You let's just take him in order as
Speaker 1: you got him on here. Yeah. I slapped him down
Speaker 1: kind of randomly. That's perfect. Yeah. Okay, So first the
Speaker 1: one you got lost in the jungle and E actually
Speaker 1: just died some you know, I mean from whatever, fell
Speaker 1: down and fell down a ravine or over a cliff, um,
Speaker 1: so that that seems so unlikely to me. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess. Yeah, Okay, the jungle is dangerous, but if
Speaker 1: he had the life that you described prior, it seems
Speaker 1: like he would have like known how to traverse the
Speaker 1: jungle and been pretty hardened. And yeah, he well he
Speaker 1: apparently according to people who knew him, he apparently had
Speaker 1: had jungle survival training and all that stuff. And so
Speaker 1: he actually just the day before, he and his friend
Speaker 1: dr Ling had been out at a walk in the
Speaker 1: jungle and they got lost just the day before and
Speaker 1: they found their way out. Um, so that is one though,
Speaker 1: But but there are I mean, the jungle does have
Speaker 1: dangerous stuff going on going on in it, and well,
Speaker 1: and the thing about the jungle is okay, so there's
Speaker 1: like several hundred people at a time combing the jungle
Speaker 1: for you, but it's still the jungle. And by that
Speaker 1: I mean lots of vegetation that's dense. And if I
Speaker 1: get hurt, you know, I falled down own or something
Speaker 1: bites me and takes a chunk out of me, and
Speaker 1: I'm not doing so well, and I crawled up against
Speaker 1: the edge of a tree to try and hide against
Speaker 1: it and hide behind some leaves and then I die there.
Speaker 1: You know, somebody could walk two ft next to it
Speaker 1: and never know that the body was Okay, it happens
Speaker 1: all the time. So I'm I'm gonna like duel side
Speaker 1: this for a minute here, So I'm willing to say
Speaker 1: that it's possible. But given the credentials of the people
Speaker 1: who were looking for him, they would have seen something.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't know. I mean, they would have It's not
Speaker 1: even like I would think, so I'm like they would
Speaker 1: have seen something. If he was bleeding and crawled any
Speaker 1: amount of distance, they would have seen something, whether it
Speaker 1: was a massive flies going to that spot or the
Speaker 1: actual blood stain, or there should be physical wild disturbance
Speaker 1: where he because he would have fought right, I mean,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't have been like a just random like oh,
Speaker 1: one bite and then you're dead. And if it was well,
Speaker 1: and they do one bite and they poison you and
Speaker 1: they take off right, but then you would fall down
Speaker 1: and you would disturb I'm just saying I understand that
Speaker 1: there should be physical side. On the other hand, if
Speaker 1: you are a trained spy, trained and espionage trade and
Speaker 1: how to move through the jungle without leaving a trace,
Speaker 1: you just naturally fall into that. I can tell you
Speaker 1: from personal experience that you fall into. That thing about
Speaker 1: it is though, is that if you're lost, and like
Speaker 1: saying the jungle or wherever, you're gonna want to leave
Speaker 1: marks for your for your own reference point, because if
Speaker 1: you wind up going in circles, you want to know this,
Speaker 1: and so you need to like so you gotta break
Speaker 1: branches deliver. So then the assumption would be that he
Speaker 1: didn't know he was lost. That's at a certain point
Speaker 1: he must have known he was lost, right, But I think,
Speaker 1: you know, the assumption is right that like he didn't
Speaker 1: know he was lost and he got like bit by
Speaker 1: a snake and just fell down dead. Okay, well, but
Speaker 1: then I still maintain that like a snake isn't gonna
Speaker 1: eat the whole, you know, so there would have been
Speaker 1: signs the like well, I mean, and then yeah, some
Speaker 1: remains would have been found. I mean, obviously scavengers would
Speaker 1: have come along and shooting and yeah, yeah, and so
Speaker 1: so it's kind of mean. I think it's possible still
Speaker 1: if he got lost and somehow just died by accident.
Speaker 1: I found a quote from the Internet regarding this. I
Speaker 1: know the person said basically and I cleaned up the
Speaker 1: cleaned up the grammar just a little bit. But his
Speaker 1: quote is quote people in the Malaysian jungle like people
Speaker 1: climbing up mountains covered with snow. Many get lost, many
Speaker 1: van as Jim Thompson is one of them. So that's
Speaker 1: what this guy said on the internet. Uh, here's another
Speaker 1: quote with somebody in the Malaysian jungle. To walk away
Speaker 1: from a group or walk away from your house in
Speaker 1: the evening is a high risk. There's a high risk
Speaker 1: thing even today, not to talk about forty years ago.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't. And I've never been in the Malaysian jungle.
Speaker 1: I've been in other jungles, have never been in the
Speaker 1: Malayian Gungal, but it sounds like, you know, it's very
Speaker 1: very easy to get lost in those jungles. Well, I guess,
Speaker 1: depending on the account. Either way, though, I don't think
Speaker 1: that in March three thirty or one thirty, respectively, are
Speaker 1: the evening. Necessarily you have a reference and even if
Speaker 1: it is cover you know, again, I just go back
Speaker 1: to his training and the credentials of people who were
Speaker 1: who were looking for him. I find it hard to
Speaker 1: believe that if he had simply been lost and died
Speaker 1: in the jungle that he would have never been found. Yeah,
Speaker 1: either you know, either he wouldn't have been lost, or
Speaker 1: he would have left Mars, or somebody would have found him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they would have like say, say, if you've gotten
Speaker 1: lost and died and then animals eating on him, they
Speaker 1: would have drug his stuff, you know, his clothes would
Speaker 1: have been spread all around and stuff like that. And
Speaker 1: so especially if it was like an actual predator like
Speaker 1: a tiger or something, they would have pulled him up
Speaker 1: into a tree. There would have been a fight, a
Speaker 1: struggle the tiger. I don't know if there would have
Speaker 1: been that much of a fight. There would have been
Speaker 1: a little bit of a struggle. I'm sure. I mean
Speaker 1: they're not it would yeah, but they're not like secret killers, right,
Speaker 1: I mean they leave behind a bit of a fuss
Speaker 1: and maybe a little bit of a mess. Yeah. Blood
Speaker 1: and the tigers in Militia there are okay. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was wondering if you're just making up an example of
Speaker 1: a big cat or not. You guys are really serious
Speaker 1: about the tea now. Actually that that is another one
Speaker 1: the theories is that he was eaten by a tiger
Speaker 1: or something, you know, And and so that is one
Speaker 1: of the theories. Of course, the tiger is not going
Speaker 1: to go to the trouble to hide the remains, and
Speaker 1: so they probably would have stumble across the remain. But
Speaker 1: some big and I don't know what big cats are
Speaker 1: in that area, and maybe you guys have a better
Speaker 1: idea than I do. I didn't think to look into that,
Speaker 1: but some big cats are a lot of them are
Speaker 1: known to drag whatever they kill up a tree. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but then you see the drag mar potentially maybe you're
Speaker 1: you're you're searching, and you're standing under the tree, just
Speaker 1: sort of like standing there looking around, and suddenly you
Speaker 1: feel this drip drip, like predator on the top of
Speaker 1: your head. Yeah. No, I mean, you know, I think
Speaker 1: I'm standing by my my assertion that if you're if
Speaker 1: you're not seeing the actual remains, you're seeing the scavengers
Speaker 1: that are coming after. I'm not discreening with you at all.
Speaker 1: You know, it happens for a long time. Yeah, So well, also,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean that the man hunt went on
Speaker 1: for days, and so obviously the tiger had it, had
Speaker 1: himself a pretty decent meal, and then and then and
Speaker 1: then uh, there's still there's from the tiger's point of view,
Speaker 1: there's all these people out there. It's good eats, you know,
Speaker 1: why didn't he eat somebody else? So I don't know
Speaker 1: if there are tigers are there? Um, did the Aborigines
Speaker 1: do like tiger pits or absolutely that just that's another
Speaker 1: one of the theories is that apparently that they did
Speaker 1: use tiger pits to catch tigers. And one of the
Speaker 1: theories is that he was wandering through the generally he
Speaker 1: fell into a tiger pit. And I don't know what
Speaker 1: the protocol is for a tiger pit. I mean, in theory,
Speaker 1: they're they're still camouflaged. I mean, obviously a tiger is
Speaker 1: not just gonna walk into an open hole yet to
Speaker 1: cover them up with stuff. So he gets all the
Speaker 1: way out and mostly onto this thing, and then it
Speaker 1: collapses and he falls into the hole and he's impaled
Speaker 1: on spikes, you know, all this stuff. And so when
Speaker 1: you've done something like that, you obviously don't want your
Speaker 1: friends and neighbors walking into this pit. So wouldn't you
Speaker 1: put some sort of sign or signal. I mean, you
Speaker 1: can put a sign up it says danger tiger pit,
Speaker 1: and the tiger is not gonna be able to read
Speaker 1: a sign. So I don't know what the protocol is
Speaker 1: or was back in those days or something like that,
Speaker 1: but anyway, that is the theory is that he fell
Speaker 1: into a tiger pit. The Aborigines come back and they
Speaker 1: see that they've just killed a killed a white guy,
Speaker 1: and you know, back in those days, it probably could
Speaker 1: bring some some bad mojo down in your hand. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: and so seeing this, they just said, well, let's just
Speaker 1: fill in the hole. Dudes, what do you think? What
Speaker 1: do you say? So that's that's possible. I guess that's
Speaker 1: also you know, it's not depending on how like mooring
Speaker 1: the tribes are. It's probably not a huge concern if
Speaker 1: like some Dumbo from the neighboring tribe wanders into your
Speaker 1: pit and kills himself because he's in your territory. And yeah,
Speaker 1: well yeah, you know so, but this was this would
Speaker 1: have been very close to a to a hill station,
Speaker 1: which is basically a town. Yeah yeah, I mean out
Speaker 1: in the deep jungle maybe, but close to a town
Speaker 1: like that, you're gonna have all kinds of people walking
Speaker 1: around out there. Okay, next there he got whacked yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: not by the mob necessarily, but there's as possible that
Speaker 1: he was there was a block, there was a hit
Speaker 1: by a business or political enemies, a business competitor could
Speaker 1: have had him killed. I have heard that that happens
Speaker 1: in Thailand. I mean, and we were talking about he
Speaker 1: was on the blacklist. So it's not inconceivable that you know,
Speaker 1: his big ex business associates whacked him. Well, yeah, they're
Speaker 1: you know, I don't think that. I'm sure they wouldn't
Speaker 1: have whacked him just for basically criticizing US and c
Speaker 1: I a policy. But they at this time they had
Speaker 1: you heard of the secret War in Laos and all
Speaker 1: that stuff, are America and all that stuff. I do
Speaker 1: co host a podcast called Unsolf Mystery. Yeah, you have
Speaker 1: heard of that. I have that was that bad movie
Speaker 1: with was it Robert That was not a really a
Speaker 1: good movie. It was a lot of fun. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was kind of amusing in parts. But so they were
Speaker 1: ramping up their sequel were in Laos, and since of
Speaker 1: course obviously he wasn't in the loop on that, but
Speaker 1: at the same time he had a lot of contacts
Speaker 1: in Thailand Laos, so he quite possibly got wind of
Speaker 1: that and maybe was talking about maybe threatening to go
Speaker 1: public with the story. Yeah, so that would give them
Speaker 1: a little motivation to haven'm whacked and again, bekase he
Speaker 1: could have been whacked just by some political or excuse me,
Speaker 1: by some business competitor, could have been that of course you.
Speaker 1: At the same time, they didn't do a very good
Speaker 1: job of it because the High Silk Company continued on.
Speaker 1: So it would have made more sense to whack him
Speaker 1: and also burned the company down, didn't do you correct
Speaker 1: me if I'm wrong. I swear in the reading the
Speaker 1: Tie Silk Company. Once he disappeared, they started using his
Speaker 1: face and all their advertising and basically changed their name
Speaker 1: to the Jim Thompson Silk Company. Yeah, like they just
Speaker 1: embraced and use that. Yeah, they kind of milk the
Speaker 1: whole thing, which is wild. Yeah, if you go out
Speaker 1: to the web page, just like Jim Thompson dot com
Speaker 1: or something like that. Yeah, I'm gonna have to go
Speaker 1: visit those guys if I ever get to, maybe maybe
Speaker 1: somebody in the company, you know, knowing that they went
Speaker 1: that round, I can wonder if maybe somebody in the
Speaker 1: company is going, you know, we're doing all right, but
Speaker 1: things are kind of flagging and we really really need
Speaker 1: to drum up some public support and sympathy for the company. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Jim has kind of been a jerk for
Speaker 1: the last five years and had enough of his crap.
Speaker 1: It could have been an internal we keep talking about.
Speaker 1: It could have been somebody external who came after him.
Speaker 1: It could have been a company internal, you know, somebody
Speaker 1: else in the situation. Yeah, somehow he doesn't strike me
Speaker 1: as a jerk either. But you know, there's there's all
Speaker 1: kinds of things that you don't hear about. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's there's all kinds of details that always get lost
Speaker 1: in the shuffle. But yeah, I think that if it
Speaker 1: was somebody, somebody in the business, even for that matter
Speaker 1: of business competitor, That's why I don't buy I don't
Speaker 1: buy the whole theoria you got wiped by a business competitor,
Speaker 1: because it would have made a lot more sense to
Speaker 1: just stab him to death or shoot him in some
Speaker 1: alley in Bangkok. Didn't leave his body there, Yeah, because
Speaker 1: because Bangkok I think it's probably a more a more
Speaker 1: dangerous place with a lot more yeah. Yeah, yeah, And
Speaker 1: you know, so it would really make a lot more
Speaker 1: sense that just you know, shoot him and take his wallet,
Speaker 1: his watch and that and so with that, and plus,
Speaker 1: if you follow somebody all the way to Malaysia and
Speaker 1: he's catching multiple flights to get there and everything, and
Speaker 1: you're following him all the way there, you're gonna leave
Speaker 1: a lot of fingerprints. You're catching flights and stuff like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a paper trail. So that's why I
Speaker 1: don't think. Yeah, I don't think it was that. It
Speaker 1: could have been the CIA, but again I think they
Speaker 1: would have just whacked him in Bangkok too. Again, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the number four or five, I don't know. But he
Speaker 1: was accidentally run over, so he was he was just
Speaker 1: walking down a road because there were people. Actually a
Speaker 1: couple of witnesses saw him on roads. One person said
Speaker 1: she swears she saw saw him and she recognized about
Speaker 1: about four four o'clock PM on a road she came down.
Speaker 1: He walked down the road and stopped in their garden
Speaker 1: and looked around and then eventually left. That would make sense,
Speaker 1: I mean, it would make sense for somebody who knew
Speaker 1: that the jungle was dangerous. But when it take a
Speaker 1: lot a walk, Yeah, I go down the road. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's no Yeah, I mean he went for a walk
Speaker 1: he didn't necessarily go into the jungle. But but here's
Speaker 1: the one thing that with the and I know that
Speaker 1: we haven't gone into this, but the thing that I
Speaker 1: have a problem with about he took a long walk
Speaker 1: is if he was gonna go for a walk, he
Speaker 1: left a lot of things behind, Like he didn't take
Speaker 1: a jacket, but one of the things that he didn't
Speaker 1: take with him was his cigarettes because he was evidently
Speaker 1: a notorious heavy, heavy smoker. And if you anybody who
Speaker 1: knows the smoker, if they're going to be gone for
Speaker 1: more than half an hour, they take their cigarettes with them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well but he left him behind unless they're taking a nap. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but tak nap? And why did he go stare at
Speaker 1: this person's garden a half hour to two and a
Speaker 1: half hours later? That was yeah, that was two and
Speaker 1: a half hours later. Yeah, so he was. But but
Speaker 1: the thing about it is is they they found a
Speaker 1: pack of smokes that were there, But that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: to let the smokes behind him might have had more
Speaker 1: than one pack, but it doesn't say that this open
Speaker 1: pack of cigarettes. That's very true. And also we all
Speaker 1: know smokers that you know have like five pack going
Speaker 1: and yeah, this one, I'll just take the full pack
Speaker 1: with yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, so you didn't necessarily leave
Speaker 1: without a smokes. I mean that that is a relevant
Speaker 1: I remember reading that his lighter wasn't with him, he
Speaker 1: was there still in his room and stuff, which happened.
Speaker 1: If he has actually a good five star smoker, he's
Speaker 1: going to have more than one lighter. Two. I mean, alright, alright,
Speaker 1: you shot me down. Yeah it doesn't. Yeah, it might have.
Speaker 1: It might have been. It almost sounds like he was
Speaker 1: going to go take a nap. But yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: that whole sign off, right, I mean, like that's the
Speaker 1: traditional like, hey, I'm gonna go sleep sign off like
Speaker 1: gold they have been there have been a tiger waiting
Speaker 1: for him by the hammock. Yes, and again I'm I'm
Speaker 1: gonna god, I'm playing Devil's advocate here today. But you know,
Speaker 1: I know, the whole good night sweetheart thing, I didn't
Speaker 1: read that as just for when I'm going to go
Speaker 1: lay down and take a nap. I read it more
Speaker 1: as whenever you're gonna leave for a while, so I'm
Speaker 1: going to go take a hike, Like let's say he
Speaker 1: and his he and his friend, the day before we
Speaker 1: had gone on a hike. So theoretically, the way I
Speaker 1: interpreted it, they would have said to the ladies good night, sweetheart,
Speaker 1: and left and they come back eventually from their walk,
Speaker 1: whereas you two have both kind of interpreted that as
Speaker 1: it's only a sleep sign off. I read it as
Speaker 1: always whenever you were leaving Mike. My I guess might
Speaker 1: come back to that would be if he was this
Speaker 1: kind of survivalist that he you know, I was trained
Speaker 1: and all that stuff. You tell somebody where you're going
Speaker 1: you're going for a walk, especially if you're going for
Speaker 1: walking the jungle, But if you're going for a walk,
Speaker 1: you don't say like, oh goodbye, sweetheart, nothing, you're going
Speaker 1: for a walk, good night, sweetheart. Yeah, I'm not I'm
Speaker 1: not disagreeing with that, that makes sense. I just there's
Speaker 1: just something missing in this a little bit. Yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: he wanted to be alone. You would think you would
Speaker 1: say something on the order of going for a walk,
Speaker 1: anybody want to come with? Well, even if he wanted
Speaker 1: to be alone, you know, I think he might have
Speaker 1: wanted pretty reasonable to just say like, I'm going for
Speaker 1: a walk by Yeah, and he didn't say that. We've
Speaker 1: all done that when we were out like camping or whatever,
Speaker 1: and you just need to get away from the group. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. So maybe he was run over most mysterious. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my theory is that he was his his lighter stopped working,
Speaker 1: and so he decided to go down to the Quickie
Speaker 1: mark if by himself a new lighter and plus an
Speaker 1: extra pack of smokes while he was down there, and yeah,
Speaker 1: you got run over on the way. Anyway, let's get
Speaker 1: back to thes here. So he was actually only run over,
Speaker 1: so he was walking around on the roads. And I
Speaker 1: have heard and I've never been to Malaysia. I really
Speaker 1: wanted to go. Actually, I've got friends living over there.
Speaker 1: I hope before they come back to the States, I
Speaker 1: have time and money to get over. Yeah, it'll be
Speaker 1: like the field assignment. Yeah, if you guys want to
Speaker 1: come with, we can do it, like you know, we
Speaker 1: can do our podcast edition. Yeah. But yeah, they live
Speaker 1: in they live in Kuala On Poor and it would
Speaker 1: be really a major fun to go over there. But
Speaker 1: I diverge here. The Malaysian driving, I understand, is kind
Speaker 1: of dangerous, you know what I mean, It's that way
Speaker 1: in much of the world word. So if again, it's
Speaker 1: like a tiger pit thing if you run over, if
Speaker 1: you're all over this guy, you recognize him as not
Speaker 1: just being a guy, but a white guy and a
Speaker 1: famous white guy or famous rich white guy who's kind
Speaker 1: of a national hero for Thailand. Yeah, yeah, exactly, And
Speaker 1: they'd be thinking, oh man, my life is over. But
Speaker 1: what if I had the body, And so they shoved
Speaker 1: the body and some bushes and then after dark to
Speaker 1: come back with a shovel and just and just bury him.
Speaker 1: So I think that's what is actually a credible theory.
Speaker 1: Do you guys have any thoughts on that theory at all?
Speaker 1: I can see it happening. Yeah, so far it's a
Speaker 1: good contender. Another theory is that he ran away from home,
Speaker 1: and there are people that are actually positive this theory
Speaker 1: that he, uh he was tired of his life and
Speaker 1: wanted to just make a new start. And I don't
Speaker 1: believe it because, uh, number one, he doesn't need to
Speaker 1: go to a camera highlands to disappear and do that.
Speaker 1: You can, you know, you can put his affairs in
Speaker 1: order back in Bangkok. Also, he's a super rich, super
Speaker 1: famous kind of national hero white dude, and so you
Speaker 1: want to just like disappear, become like kind of homeless
Speaker 1: and then be like, you know, dirt poor, and you know,
Speaker 1: and and all this stuff. Why would it Why would
Speaker 1: he do that? That makes utterly no sense. Alright. Our
Speaker 1: next theory is suicide. People have claimed that he, you know,
Speaker 1: committed suicide. I don't buy this one because nobody reported
Speaker 1: him being depressed or anything like that. It's also hard
Speaker 1: to commit suicide and not leave a body behind. I
Speaker 1: was about to say, Okay, this this we could, we
Speaker 1: could dive into this, but I think we've kind of
Speaker 1: beaten the crap out of what would happen when we
Speaker 1: were talking about the tiger bit is that there'd be
Speaker 1: the body and there's all the signs and all the things.
Speaker 1: It's more credible to me though, like if there were
Speaker 1: a ravine or river, I don't know what the like
Speaker 1: topography of that area is. But you know, he's trained
Speaker 1: to not leave a trace, which we talked about, right,
Speaker 1: So he's like he's deciding, I'm not going to leave
Speaker 1: a trace, and I'm gonna throw myself into this ravine
Speaker 1: and my body will float down the river out to
Speaker 1: the sea. Yeah, but it's it's not likely too. It's
Speaker 1: what's gonna happen, is it's gonna float down the river
Speaker 1: and it's gonna get caught up in some logs and
Speaker 1: snags and stuff. You'll be found. But there's a way
Speaker 1: you can do it. Will you do it? Is you
Speaker 1: get yourself, get yourself a carabineer, some heavy chain, and
Speaker 1: a couple of a couple of large weights like you know,
Speaker 1: use from weights, carry them into the exactly, you carry
Speaker 1: them miles out of the jungle until you find a
Speaker 1: deep pool and you basically chain the weights to your
Speaker 1: neck and then and then lock them with the carabineer
Speaker 1: and then just dive head first into the pool. That
Speaker 1: seems really likely. Yeah, I know exactly. There wasn't a
Speaker 1: lot of issues with Yeah. I mean, I think there
Speaker 1: are ways to commit suicide and and conceal the body,
Speaker 1: but they're not they're not easy, and so it's a
Speaker 1: lot that's an obscene amount of planning. Yeah, No, so
Speaker 1: suicide I think is kind of not so much for suicide.
Speaker 1: Another theory is that he was abducted by communist guerrillas,
Speaker 1: and apparently there were some communist guerrillas in the area,
Speaker 1: and that's that's what we talked about briefly at the beginning. Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly what exactly I mean, if they if they abducted him.
Speaker 1: I suppose they could have just abducted him and killed him.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing is that people being abducted by
Speaker 1: communist guerrillas in the area didn't seem to be a
Speaker 1: really common thing. Yeah, there's not a lot of stories
Speaker 1: of that happening. Yeah, the communist guerrillas would very likely
Speaker 1: have not had even any clue that he was there.
Speaker 1: It would have been a totally random thing that they
Speaker 1: stumbled upon him. And again, I'm not even convinced that
Speaker 1: he was wandering around the jungle where the communists would
Speaker 1: have been hiding. So I think we can dismiss this one,
Speaker 1: not entirely, but kind of. So let's be fair. It's
Speaker 1: not so far from Vietnam. Yeah, it's not. Well, it's
Speaker 1: also not super clear, and it could have been it
Speaker 1: could have been some like some Vietcong like field trip.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe they want a vacation. They could have been
Speaker 1: left over and not known that the war was over.
Speaker 1: The war was actually not over by that time. The
Speaker 1: war had started, but it was it hadn't according I
Speaker 1: think at that point, according to the U. S. Military,
Speaker 1: it hadn't okay, well, accord, because everyone what the U. S.
Speaker 1: Military says, when things do due, what's the next theory,
Speaker 1: what's the next thing? Okay, kidnapped for ransom? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think we could listens this one out of hands. Okay,
Speaker 1: we ever got a ransom note so and last of all, nope,
Speaker 1: yea disappeared so we could get a sex change. And
Speaker 1: the the reasoning behind this is that he wanted to
Speaker 1: become like like an ascended master in silk and apparently
Speaker 1: to learn to learn all the highest secrets of silk
Speaker 1: and silk making and all this stuff. You have to
Speaker 1: be a woman. I'm not saying I buy this, but
Speaker 1: I've actually heard this, I've actually seen this. This is
Speaker 1: a serious theory, I don't I've seen it out there.
Speaker 1: I don't know if these people were serious. I can't
Speaker 1: believe anybody would take this seriously now, personally, I don't
Speaker 1: think so. I be honest, I thought you made this up.
Speaker 1: I did too. I did not make it. This is
Speaker 1: like a typical Joe print. I saw this on the
Speaker 1: interwebs world. Wait, so recap, what would the reason be
Speaker 1: for this to happen because he wants to become an
Speaker 1: ascended master of silk making, and order in order apparently
Speaker 1: to learn all the highest secrets of silk making, you
Speaker 1: have to be a woman is forbidden to teach him
Speaker 1: to a man. But he wasn't making this silk. He
Speaker 1: was interesting. There was interested in the silk thing, I mean, obviously,
Speaker 1: and I don't I think that most likely whoever put
Speaker 1: this seria out there was just having fun too. I
Speaker 1: don't think. I don't think anybody seriously could buy this.
Speaker 1: I agree because and and also by the way he leaves,
Speaker 1: becomes a woman, learns everything you can about kind of
Speaker 1: about silk, but well, never puts it to use. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't put it to use because so obviously it's
Speaker 1: it's ridiculous, but it's kind of funny, and so I
Speaker 1: thought i'd share it with our listening. Okay, Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's way out in left field. So to wind up
Speaker 1: our mystery, some bones were found in a few miles
Speaker 1: down the road and another one of them hill station towns. Yeah,
Speaker 1: then from where he was last seen, you know, the tribesmen.
Speaker 1: He found the bones. They were buried in a shallow grave,
Speaker 1: and they found the bones and gave them to the police,
Speaker 1: and the police apparently apparently with some human bones no head,
Speaker 1: and they gave them to the police, and the police
Speaker 1: apparently have never bothered to do any sort of DNA
Speaker 1: analysis on those. And I don't know how easy that
Speaker 1: would be. I guess you had to dig up his
Speaker 1: sister and see if you can salvage a little DNA
Speaker 1: from her. Well, I think you can like kind of
Speaker 1: map the basic genome, right, you can at least tell
Speaker 1: like what race that person to the DNA level, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of things. You can look at it and
Speaker 1: you figure out isn't a man or a woman? Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: can we infer, as Devin said, the race, and then
Speaker 1: if it is a white guy, then it would be
Speaker 1: worth try to get the money to maybe, but also
Speaker 1: maybe not if the Jungle of the Dangerous says they've
Speaker 1: been saying, like there's a ton of stupid white dudes
Speaker 1: out there on top of like the other like millions
Speaker 1: of tribes people who have somehow And that's that's the thing,
Speaker 1: is that you know it could be him, but there's
Speaker 1: probably lots and lots of people who died and were
Speaker 1: buried in shallow graves. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it'd be interesting
Speaker 1: to find out. But apparently nobody's ticking the trouble to
Speaker 1: do so so far. So that's it. So I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go oh totally, Now I'm gonna go for. But the
Speaker 1: theory I'm gonna go for a vote for is that
Speaker 1: somebody who ran him down and just hit the body.
Speaker 1: What do you guys think? You know what? Honestly, that
Speaker 1: one appeals to my common sense the most, knowing what
Speaker 1: I know about him, knowing what I know about the
Speaker 1: people who looked for him. He doesn't seem like the
Speaker 1: kind of guy to just be the bomber just gonna
Speaker 1: wander into the jungle by myself telling anybody. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: again he was lost the previous day and he found
Speaker 1: that he found his way out, Yeah he did. He
Speaker 1: seems like the kind of guy who would have been
Speaker 1: able to get out of the jungle and he'd been
Speaker 1: stuck there, he you know, would have left a trace
Speaker 1: if he had been attacked walking down the road. Is
Speaker 1: the logical, especially after getting lost maybe the night before. Right,
Speaker 1: you know, if you get lost the night before going
Speaker 1: in the jungle, you're not going to be like I'll
Speaker 1: just go back into twice. Yeah, used the roads and
Speaker 1: you know, accidentally getting hit. Yeah, for whatever reason. I
Speaker 1: agree with Joe tonight, and I see a lot of
Speaker 1: credence in that. But there's this, this whole disappearance is
Speaker 1: just so out of the blue for me that I
Speaker 1: kind of I kind of either Lee, I kind of
Speaker 1: leaned towards somebody taking him. I'm not saying who took
Speaker 1: game or for what reason, but it's just it's so
Speaker 1: out of character for so many reasons that we said,
Speaker 1: it's the only thing that I could see that would
Speaker 1: make sense for why he would just vanish into the
Speaker 1: You know what's interesting is that we've now we've done
Speaker 1: two mysterious disappearances in a row right at this point,
Speaker 1: and neither of them brought up alien abduction, Like, which
Speaker 1: is weird, right though, because like these are both like weird.
Speaker 1: Especially this one is just like he just disappeared into
Speaker 1: thin air and nobody's like, yeah, it was probably aliens,
Speaker 1: Like that isn't even on the list, and like there's
Speaker 1: so many other things that made it onto the list
Speaker 1: that are crazy. There were there were no jungle crop circles,
Speaker 1: there was no decimated cows, like there was nothing to
Speaker 1: indicate that the aliens were there enough you would think
Speaker 1: that they were going to be anywhere. They'd be in
Speaker 1: the camera in highlands there. It's pretty here. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: you don't know, but we're gonna we're gonna lay money,
Speaker 1: I think on getting run over, because I still think
Speaker 1: that if you're going to do something like kidnap him
Speaker 1: or or just or kidnapping or just take him, kill
Speaker 1: him and so his body in the river or something
Speaker 1: like that, you would do it in Bangkok because that's
Speaker 1: where he's at. He didn't, you know, I don't know
Speaker 1: how many people he informed of his plans to go
Speaker 1: to Malaysia. Probably not that many people knew, And so
Speaker 1: it would just seem a lot simpler to do it
Speaker 1: in Bangkok, where he is nine of the time. And
Speaker 1: so that's why that's why I'm leaning towards that somebody
Speaker 1: ran him over a kind of theory. And you know,
Speaker 1: the thing about it is is when somebody gets run over,
Speaker 1: you can go look for a car that's like got
Speaker 1: damage to the grill. But that's the third world, where
Speaker 1: every car is already beat up. So what are you
Speaker 1: gonna do? Yeah, yeah. Okay, well I guess that's it.
Speaker 1: I guess we saw that mystery. So yeah, time to
Speaker 1: time to like tell you if you find facts like
Speaker 1: you know, well, first of all, find us on Facebook
Speaker 1: and like us, like the hell out of us, Like
Speaker 1: us multiple times if possibly can. Oh yeah, of course
Speaker 1: you can find us on iTunes and you probably know
Speaker 1: this because that's probably where you found us already. But
Speaker 1: if you don't know this, yeah, find us on iTunes.
Speaker 1: You can download our episodes, leave a comment, leave a rating.
Speaker 1: We would really appreciate that, especially a good rating. And
Speaker 1: also you can find us on Stitcher if you don't
Speaker 1: have time for the whole download thing, you just want
Speaker 1: us on stitcher and stream us. Also, you can find
Speaker 1: our episodes on our website, which is Thinking Sideways podcast
Speaker 1: dot com. All right, and also we would love it.
Speaker 1: We would love to hear from you if you have
Speaker 1: any thoughts. Uh. We like positive stuff like Joe is
Speaker 1: really wonderful and see Oh yeah, so far we have
Speaker 1: gotten tons of those, uh, so please send us emails
Speaker 1: and obviously criticals too. We've actually received some critical emails
Speaker 1: in the past and we appreciate those two because hey,
Speaker 1: you know, feedback is good even you know, sometimes negative
Speaker 1: feedback can be more useful than positive. Yeah, there's things
Speaker 1: we do wrong and correct absolutely, so by all means
Speaker 1: be critical. And last of all, we have a little
Speaker 1: bit of listener email to read to you. So this
Speaker 1: email is from Mike. Uh. Mike says, I'm so glad
Speaker 1: I came across your podcast. It's shot up to my
Speaker 1: favorites quickly. I've always been highly interested in the Wow signal. Thanks,
Speaker 1: and that's how I found your show. It's right up
Speaker 1: my alley. It's done perfectly. Please never quit. I've binge
Speaker 1: listened all week and dread the depression that I'll hit
Speaker 1: once I catch up. I have a few topics that
Speaker 1: you guys can look into, and it gives us a
Speaker 1: couple of things, one of which we're we're about to do.
Speaker 1: He don't don't give it away. There's like five suggestions here.
Speaker 1: He doesn't know Okay, okay, yeah, so we're going to
Speaker 1: do one of those. Don't worry. Uh. And then it
Speaker 1: says I only really know famous unsolved mysteries. I wish
Speaker 1: I had a not so known one for you. I
Speaker 1: really just wanted to say how much I've been enjoying
Speaker 1: your podcast. I love that the three of you take
Speaker 1: the bull crap like ghosts and magic and stuff completely
Speaker 1: out of the equation in a mat and look at
Speaker 1: the matter in a realistic way. Thanks for reading. Oh,
Speaker 1: thank you, Mike. I love I love this like you
Speaker 1: like getting Yeah, I do well. I mean, as we've
Speaker 1: talked about, like I like the negative ones too, in
Speaker 1: that it gives us something to improve on because we're
Speaker 1: human and we are not perfect, and we don't know
Speaker 1: what we're doing wrong. Sometimes I really just think we
Speaker 1: don't know what we're doing because we don't we have
Speaker 1: no idea what we're doing. We're just three people sitting
Speaker 1: in a room talking microphones and then putting it out
Speaker 1: and people are liking it. It's pretty random. Yeah, but thanks, thanks,
Speaker 1: I really appreciate it. Actually, the email and uh, that's
Speaker 1: about it for this week. Tune in next week when
Speaker 1: we're going to solve a really exciting mystery. It's the
Speaker 1: mystery of I'm just kidding. I'm not going to tell
Speaker 1: you it's gonna by guys. Uh,