#28 - The Vanishing of the Thai Silk King – Jim Thompson

Indiana Jones had nothing on Jim Thompson.

This American-born architect-turned-war-hero-turned-silk-tycoon lived a life like no other; throwing away his successful, well-paying, and highly prestigious career as a New York City architect and ballet director to join the US Army prior to its involvement in World War 2. He became a highly decorated soldier and expert in guerilla warfare and espionage, and after the war, fell in love with and settled down in Thailand only to leave an indelible mark on his new adopted home city of Bangkok.

Jim has been credited with almost single-handedly snatching the entire Thai silk industry from the jaws of irrelevancy, having revived the industry through his own personal investment and entrepreneurship, and heavily promoting it in the West, where it became high fashion among Hollywood elites.

He devoted his life toward preserving Southeast Asian artwork and artifacts, and immersed himself into a culture which he was not born into but adopted as his own.

Jim was one-of-a-kind, with an unparalleled taste in fine art and an eye for design. Yet, the final chapter to the remarkable life of this renaissance man remains tragically unwritten.

While on vacation in the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia, Jim disappeared during an afternoon stroll on Easter Sunday of 1967. He was never seen or heard from again, and his disappearance continues to haunt the Southeast Asian region to this day.

What happened to Jim Thompson?

SOURCES

The Ideal Man: The Tragedy of Jim Thompson and the American Way of War by Joshua Kurlantzick

https://www.introducingbangkok.com/history#:~:text=While%20there%20has%20been%20a,of%20Thailand%20as%20a%20whole.

https://www.mymcmedia.org/blog-the-most-mysterious-disappearance-in-asia-solved-maybe/

https://web.archive.org/web/20200604170024/https://www.jimthompson.com/jims-story/

https://jimthompsonhouse.org/the-thai-house/

https://www.princeton.edu/~paw/web_exclusives/plus/plus_102302thaisilk.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/6484761.stm

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP90-01208R000100100105-6.pdf

https://www.khaosodenglish.com/news/2017/10/21/jim-thompson-disappearance-case-solved/

The Disappearance of Jim Thompson, the “Silk King of Thailand” – A Search and Rescue Analysis by Llewellyn Lew Toulmin

Pezzati, Alessandro. "Jim Thompson, the Thai Silk King." Expedition Magazine 53, no. 1 (March, 2011): -. Accessed February 22, 2024. https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/jim-thompson-the-thai-silk-king/