Ep 6-Carry On

A Field Marshal, his son, and his son's father-in-law — holding the army and the government in the same fist. History calls them the Three Tyrants.

When Somchai was arrested, one of them told reporters the punishment should be execution by firing squad. "One bullet may not be enough. It should be eighty-one."

Two years later, they change the story to the bombing never happened. That Cathay Pacific made it up.

Eighty-one bullets to it never happened. Same family. Same fist.

He walks free. Then he collects on the insurance policies he took out on his daughter and his fiancée.

This is Episode 6. Carry On.

 "How to Get Away with Mass Murder in Thailand," by Andrew MacGregor Marshall

If this story is part of your story too — I'd love to hear from you. hazyyellowfeeling@gmail.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

I don't know exactly why I'm doing this. If my cousins and my aunts and uncles are listening, and I hope some of you are, that's my honest answer. I just feel like someone should tell this story. And maybe you feel the same way. Maybe that's why nobody has. Because we're all standing at the same edge, wondering who goes first. Well, I guess it's me. This is a true story about a family from a small town in Wisconsin, about a bomb on a plane in 1972, about six people who never came home, and about everyone who was left behind to figure out how to keep living like normal people. A small town grieved and moved on. We did too. Or maybe we just went quiet. I'm Andy Kane, one of the cousins. As I said, I'm not exactly sure why I'm telling this story, but I hope I find out along the way. He walked. Some Chai Chayaset, the man who by all accounts planted that bomb and killed 81 people, got off scot-free. But how? The evidence against him was a mountain. Sixty-seven witnesses testified against him. A pilot who said he'd handed him two pounds of C4 himself. A cop some chai had asked where the best place to hide a bomb on a plane would be. An airline engineer he'd grilled about what a blast does inside a jet liner. Four identical cosmetics cases in his house, two of them with holes drilled into the sides. His explanation was he'd been planning to hide a camera. And there was the paperwork. Weeks before that plane went down, some Chai took out life insurance policies on his fiancee and his seven-year-old daughter. The two people he then put on the flight. The two people he didn't go along with. Four witnesses testified for him. One of them was his father, who was also his lawyer. A court said not guilty. That's not the same thing as innocent. It just means in that room with those people, the evidence didn't matter. So who were those people? Thailand in 1972 was run by three men: a field marshal named Tanam, his son Colonel Narong, and Narong's father-in-law, Field Marshal Prupat. A father, a son, and the son's father-in-law. One family holding the military and the government at the same time. It was a family with an army. History remembers them as the three tyrants. That's who was above the judge in Sam Chai's courtroom. When Sam Chai was first arrested, Colonel Narong told reporters the punishment should be execution by firing squad. One bullet may not be enough. It should be 81, he said. One bullet for every person he killed. Two years later, that same family had a different story. Prupat, the father-in-law, was telling reporters the bombing never happened. Said Cathay Pacific made it up. Said the airline had invented a bombing of its own plane to hurt Don Moang Airport and steal business for the airport in Hong Kong. I've got six dead relatives that say it wasn't made up. It wasn't a phantom flight. But that was the official line said by the very government that family ran. It went from 81 bullets to it never happened. Two years, same family, same country, same regime. It feels like the verdict was decided before the trial started. Everything in between was theater. The judge stood up after two and a half hours of summing up and said none of the evidence proved anything. No one saw some chai place the bomb. His family wasn't poor, so why would he need the money? A Thai man doesn't kill his own child. Not guilty. The courtroom didn't gasp. It cheered. People stood on tables and chairs, cheering a verdict, while Tom and Robbie and Kaki and Danny and Mary Jane and Colleen and everybody else on that plane got cheered right along out of that room with him. The prosecutor appealed in 1976. Same result. Some Chai went back to his job at the Royal Thai police like a man coming back from a leave of absence. And then he sued the insurance companies. Once not guilty as on paper, they had no legal ground left to stand on. He was legally entitled to collect on the policies he'd taken out on the two people he'd just been acquitted of killing. It sounds inconceivable, but that's how the law works. In 1978, he won 5.5 million bot for his efforts. If you want the whole trial, the testimony, the witnesses, the way the story got rewritten in real time, there's a piece by journalist Andrew McGregor Marshall called How to Get Away with Mass Murder in Thailand. The link is in the show notes, and I'd recommend you read it. Some Chai lived seven more years, moved to the United States in 1983, and then went back to Bangkok two years later to die. He was 43 years old, and liver cancer did its job. I thought about Kim Fuck for a minute, the girl in the picture, or napalm girl. She forgave the pilots, forgave the generals, forgave all of it. I thought if she can forgive that, I can forgive this. But that's not what happened with me. I'm not going to pretend it is. There's just nothing to be done. He's dead, the trial's over, the verdict stood twice. Nothing we do or think or feel changes any of it. What's done is done. He walked, and that's all there is to it. So we moved on. All of us. Me, my cousins, my uncle, the people who knew them and still come up to me now, 50 some years later, and want to talk about it. We all did the same thing. What else were we going to do? Build a monument? There is one actually. Kenny Park here in West Bend. Donated by my uncle and named for the Kenny family. It didn't change anything either. Everyone just moved on. Not because we'd made peace with it, but because there was nowhere else to go. You call it forgiveness because there's no better word for it, but really it's just the story's over and we're still here, and the only thing left is our own lives. And how strange that now I'm older than my older cousins, even Uncle Tom. My whole life I looked at them through the eyes of a seven-year-old, scared and in awe of the ghosts from the woods. I'm still not exactly sure why I did this, but I can say this much. Maybe I give some proof to the idea that we're not forgotten after we're gone. There's comfort in that. That is a lesson told through generations. We can keep people alive through the stories we tell. My family has never been big on mapping our family histories. That really hasn't changed. But there's a deeper lesson here that's been spoken, but never quite. I've always known it, but I think that's why I did this. I didn't do anything special. I just took the time and talked to people who remembered and pieced together a story no one wants to be true. And somewhere in that, I kept people alive. Not in our physical world, but in the telling, in the way we remember them out loud together. Because the dead are not gone when we remember. I came across something I wrote years ago. I wrote it to all those I knew who left before me, and I hope you'll indulge me. I'd like to read it to you now. I imagine you sitting with me one more time, physically here as you are in my mind. Not sick or disfigured, no, the whole of you, the picture I carry in my head and my heart. And we talk. We are frugal with our words but not tight-fisted, not holding back. We know how valuable each sentence is. We are together and calm for it. And you always say the same thing. My time here is over, yours is not. It's a wonderful life, Andy. The trivial things, the small moments that go by without a second look, those are the ones to cherish and notice as much as the big times. I tell you, the insignificant are worth just as much. I don't want you to lose them in your grief. I know you'll miss me as I was, but you don't need to. I am here, same as you, in a different form. So please, savor the time you have left in the world we both inhabited just a few short moments ago. I will miss it. Catch the slips, breathe in the cold winter air, and notice your breath hanging there in front of you. It's magical smoke from our childhood. The hugs and kisses, so quick, so hurried, they hold an eternal tap on the shoulder that we are connected, you and I. It is forever. Do not punch and kick too long. Do not fold down, do not take cover. Regret? No, not that either. Instead, do this in my honor and your own. Live. Savor, hold, kiss, dance, sing your ass off and laugh with me. I'm in the next room, and I am better than okay. I don't want to see you suffer. I don't want to see you sad, same as you never wanted that for me. So what I am saying is live your time on earth for both of us now. Carry on. My flesh and blood are gone, but I live on in you, in your memories, in your stories, and in your life. And I am grateful for it. One last thing. Thank you, genuinely, for listening, for sticking with this, for telling somebody else about it if you did, for sharing your memories, for asking your questions. I wish I could say how cool that is to me, but words are flimsy. So I'll simply say thank you and carry on.