In case it wasn’t obvious by now, I was living in Malaysia for the last 1.5 years. About a few months after we moved, my husband and I decided to take a road trip to the beautiful Cameron Highlands, known for its tea gardens and lush landscapes.
We stayed at The Cameron Highlands Hotel at a friend’s recommendation. On every wall was a photo of this guy.
Now, there’s always two kinds of people. Those who will read every plaque and sign in a museum or hiking trail to learn more about the place. You better believe I am reading every. single. word. From that I gleaned that this man’s name was Jim Thompson. Interesting…
THEN, as we check in, the front desk clerk slides a piece of paper towards us with a list of their weekend activities. Again, I read every. single. word. It had the typical activities we’d expect for that area, nature walk, guided tea tour, morning yoga and then at the bottom there it was: ‘JIM THOMPSON MYSTERY TRAIL’.
I immediately ask the clerk, “What is this one about?”. He describes it as an enjoyable nature trek that Jim Thompson supposedly took through the nearby jungle.
“Is Jim Thompson the man in the photographs?” I ask. He nods proudly.
That was all I needed to hear. I signed us both up immediately for the 8 am slot on Sunday morning.
Fast forward to Sunday. We do the entire hike, which was a stunning trek in the thick Malay jungle, but not a SINGLE word about Jim Thompson. I was patiently waiting for the guide to say something, but he didn’t even mention his name. Then when we were about to wrap up the hike, the guide asked if we had any questions. So, I finally asked…”Who is Jim Thompson and what’s the mystery?”
The guide’s face lit up. “Ah, finally someone asked.”
Now, I’m going to tell you what he told us, supplemented with my research, which included going down a massive rabbit hole of old FBI and CIA documents:
So, Jim Thompson was born in 1906 and formally went to school for architecture. After failing the licensing exam 3 times, Thompson moves on and in 1940 at 34 years old he joins the Delaware National Guard.
Just a year later in December 1941, the United States entered World War II and Thompson was eager to serve. However, where he was stationed in North Caroline, didn’t see much action.
However, Thompson’s luck was about to turn because a friend of his just joined a newly formed division called the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and recommended Thompson to transfer to this new unit. So, he did.
The OSS would later become the Central Intelligence Agency, better known as the CIA.
Thompson spent the next six months in spy school. Too cool. After graduating, he was immediately shipped off all over the world engaging in undercover operations. Then in August 1945, Thompson was sent to Thailand to train a guerilla group to survive in hostile terrain.
The mission objective was to parachute into the middle of the jungle and organize a resistance against the Japanese occupation in Thailand.
As the plane hatch opened ready for Thompson and his crew to jump out. The pilot suddenly entered the cabin shouting and waving his arms. ‘It’s over,’ he was yelling. ‘The goddamn war is over!’” Japan had surrendered.
With Thompson’s assignment abruptly over, it meant going back to the States and resuming a normal life, which is not what he wanted. So, Thompson decided to be discharged from the OSS and returned to Bangkok as a civilian.
With no formal plans of his next move, Thompson was a free agent and could write this next chapter any way he wished. He had no idea that he was about to begin an entirely new adventure that would become his legacy.
It didn’t take him long to figure out what that next move was. He noticed that Thai silk was unlike any silk he’d seen before. It was hand woven in a particular way so that it reflected light. This makes the garments appear to shimmer when worn. However, it was a dying industry.
So Thompson decided to buy a ton of Thai silk and utilized his network to get contacts in the fashion industry. He then packed several suitcases filled with woven Thai silk and hopped on a plane to New York where he somehow managed to nab a meeting with Edna Woolman Chase, the Editor in Chief of Vogue Magazine at the time
Edna was enamored with the fabric and saw its potential, so she told Jim to leave the fabric with her as she made a few calls to the fashion houses.
In the meantime, Thompson traveled to D.C. to wrap up his work at the OSS.
While there, the OSS, now CIA, sent out a memo that Jim Thompson will be returning to Bangkok, not as an agent, but as a civilian.
However, underneath this memo is a sentence that is still redacted to this day - more on that later.
Back in New York, Thompson got an exhilarating call from Edna. The fashion designer Valentina bought some of the mauve Thai silk fabric and designed a dress for herself.
She was subsequently photographed in that dress for Vogue. This was just about the best brand marketing Thompson could dream of and the Thai Silk Company by Jim Thompson clothing line took off.
It’s still around today and known for its vacation clothing!
It was wildly popular all over the world and even more so in Thailand because Thompson made sure to hire locally to boost jobs and never outsourced any of the work. This made him beloved among the Bangkok people and internationally famous as the Silk King.
As a result, the Thai Silk Company became the largest silk manufacturer in the world, producing luxury fabrics from Broadway to Hollywood.
As well known as he was for silk, Thompson was almost as well known for his lavish parties that he threw in his famous mansion in Bangkok.
Now his residence is open to the public as a highly popular tourist attraction in Bangkok.
On a nearly daily basis, Thompson was hosting anywhere from ten to hundreds of people at his abode.
It became a hot spot melting pot (say that five times fast) of Asia’s high society. Anyone who was anyone wined and dined at Jim Thompson’s residence.
The house itself was a conversation piece because it was created from six antique houses from all around Thailand, which were then shipped and constructed together to make one large mansion complete with an art gallery.
After a snafu where Thompson was blatantly displaying stolen Buddha heads in his art gallery that caused him to be almost arrested, Thompson became disenchanted with Bangkok and looked South to the Malaysian peninsula for an escape.
In fact every Easter from then on, Thompson would vacation at the beautiful tea stations in the Cameron Highlands with his friends Dr. Ling, Mrs. Ling and Mrs. Constance Mangskau.
The Lings owned a bungalow in the Cameron Highlands called Moonlight Bungalow where they vacationed every year with Thompson and Mrs. Mangskau
And this brings us to the day of his disappearance.
On Easter Sunday, March 26 1967, just like the previous years, the four friends spent the morning at the local Church.
After the service, the four of them head back to Moonlight Cottage in Tanah Rata.
Then they all engaged in another daily tradition of taking an afternoon nap.
The Lings were stretched out on the bed about to doze off when Dr. Ling heard the crunching of gravel outside the window.
He noted it was likely Jim taking his afternoon stroll through the jungle, which he often did. This is corroborated by the cook.
Thompson asked the cook to make him fish head curry, which he said he would eat as his dinner when he returned from his walk. The cook nodded and began the prep.
With that Thompson walked out the door at 3 pm and never returned.
When the Ling’s woke up from their nap 1.5 hours later they noted that Thompson hadn’t returned, but they weren’t overly worried at this point. It wasn’t unlike their friend Jim to meander. He enjoyed getting lost in the jungle, but always found his way back.
When Thompson didn’t show for pre-dinner cocktails at 7 PM, that was when they all became seriously concerned.
Mrs. Mangskau thought, perhaps he slipped into the cottage and was actually asleep in his room. But when they went to check, there was no sign of Thompson and all his clothing and belongings were untouched.
In fact they found more information in his bedroom that troubled them further. Thompson’s pack of cigarettes were still sitting on the bedside table along with his pain medication for his gallstones. Two things, Jim would never leave without if he knew he’d be gone for a while. Thompson was a chainsmoker and was in considerable pain. Leaving without his pain killers was abnormal. It was at this the point that they called the local authorities.
Immediately, a search effort was put together that involved local, international and even the aboriginal tribes. Over 500 people assisted in an 11 day search for Jim Thompson. The largest search in Malaysian history at the time
Frustratingly, the search resulted in zero clues. Absolutely no evidence and no leads to go off of. That’s when the wild theories began to start.
At first everyone thought Jim Thompson was eaten by tigers. If he was mauled by tigers, which the jungle is native to, there would’ve been a body or bones. None have been found to this day.
Then if you look at the declassified FBI investigation files, they all request information and assistance in the possible kidnapping of Jim Thompson.
The FBI believed a kidnapping was plausible given Thompson’s high profile status and wealth. However, all known Asian mafias and crime organizations were contacted and all responded saying they were not involved.
Our guide, Madi, was 12 years old when Thompson went missing and remembers it well. Soldiers descended upon this mountain town within hours to find the Thai silk mogul.
Madi’s father was involved in the search and his good friend owned a food stall at the base of the mountain where Moonlight Cottage resides. This food stall owner says he saw Mr. Thompson walk to the bottom of the hill past his stand and get into a black car that looked like a taxi. Inside the car was “a tall white man in a uniform.”
That’s all he saw before the car drove away.
Now, if you go to this area in person, there are many cars now due to the paved road that winds up the hill to Moonlight Bungalow. However, back in the 1960s, it was very rare to have a car come up that way, let alone in the small mountain town of Tanah Rata, so seeing a car pull up to this area would’ve been memorable to the food stall owner.
This food stall owner is still alive at 93 years old and sticks to his story, per my guide.
The driver of this black car is also still alive and was a taxi driver all his life. He maintains that he drove Jim Thompson to a helicopter, in which he got in and was flown off. He is known locally as Thompson Taxi for this reason.
All we have is their word. There is no evidence to corroborate or, on the other hand, disprove their claims.
But if we go with their eyewitness accounts, perhaps Jim Thompson wanted to disappear? But, why?
Five months after Jim Thompson’s disappearance, the mystery grew more disturbing when Thompson’s sister, Katherine Wood Thompson, was found bludgeoned to death in her house on August 30, 1967. There were no signs of assault and nothing was taken from the house.
Her murder also remains unsolved. It’s unclear if Thompson’s disappearance and his sister’s tragic death were connected in any way. At the minimum, it’s a horrible sequence of events.
So, what happened to Jim Thompson?
Lew Toulmin, an expert on rescue missions who has been researching this case for more than a decade, puts to rest several of the popular beliefs put forward over the years.
Toulmin says it can’t be a kidnapping because you wouldn’t want to kidnap a high profile person in a tiny mountain town like Tanah Rata where everyone knows everyone and sees pretty much everything.
If kidnapping was the plan, then it would make much more sense to conduct a kidnapping in a bustling city like Bangkok, not in Tanah Rata.
On top of that, if it was a kidnapping there would be a ransom note given who Jim Thompson was, yet there was no ransom note and nothing of value taken from his belongings.
It is possible that Thompson got lost in the jungle and fell into a pit. The search was extensive, but not exactly thorough. They swept the area only once.
However, Lew believes the most likely scenario is none of the above.
Remember that redacted CIA memo? Let’s get back to that
Per the US National Archives, Thompson resigned from US intelligence (the OSS) on January 1, 1947. However, he reportedly continued to work with the intelligence community as a CIA asset and agent (but not officer), setting up key meetings with his many contacts in South East Asia.
The memo in question was issued on Dec 9, 1946 and reads, “JT, “formerly General Attaché at Bangkok, has returned from post….He will not return to Siam in the Government service.”
After more than 70 years this sentence is still not redacted. 95% of everything else, all the confidential correspondence, telegrams and investigations at the highest level of the FBI and CIA are all declassified now. This memo is technically declassified as well, but that sentence remains redacted.
However, from the context, it is theorized that the sentence likely says the following, “However, Thompson will return to Siam and work for and with US intelligence as a civilian businessman.”
What adds more credence to this line of thinking is that a week after Thompson officially resigned, he was invited to an OSS faculty meeting of the Far East Office, which was “a regular gathering at which the whole outfit discusses various problems in the Far East”. This meeting was attended by all the big players in the Far East.
So it’s believed that Thompson returned to Bangkok as an unregistered CIA agent enlisted to gather info on key persons of interest.
Remember what time frame we’re in - it’s the middle of the Vietnam War and the Japanese Occupation.
All those parties Jim Thompson threw? Premeditated opportunities to listen in on conversations being had amongst the most influential names in Asia, people who may have been sympathetic to the Communist cause or aiding in the war.
Perhaps the CIA was alerted to the fact that the wrong people got a whiff that Thompson was feeding information to the Americans and needed to quickly extract him out of Asia for his own safety.
Former CIA Chief of Disguise, Jonnah Mendez claims that the story of Thompson’s disappearance matches the CIA’s methods for extraction.
“Leave the house with all your stuff, stating you’ll only be gone for a little while and then never return.”
The moonlight bungalow itself is shrouded in dark history. It served as a communications center during WWI, and again later by the Japanese where unspeakable events happened in the flower gardens, and according to our guide Madi, it served as a comms center even after that by the KGB. Eventually it came to be owned by The Lings. After the Lings passed, ownership went to the current owners of the Bungalow who also own and run the Time Tunnel museum in Tanah Rata which displays many images of Jim Thompson and memorabilia from the investigation.
Who knew that this sleepy tea town was the epicenter of one of the most puzzling disappearances?
What do you think happened to Jim Thompson?
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Silk, Spies & Shadows