{"id":270862,"date":"2024-08-05T12:00:27","date_gmt":"2024-08-05T11:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=270862"},"modified":"2024-08-03T06:10:20","modified_gmt":"2024-08-03T05:10:20","slug":"photographs-expose-thomas-merton-murder-cover-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/08\/photographs-expose-thomas-merton-murder-cover-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Photographs Expose Thomas Merton Murder Cover-up"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

8 Jul 2024 <\/em>– Thomas Merton was the most influential Catholic writer of the 20th<\/sup> century.<\/p>\n

He was almost as well-known in the United States as the author Ernest Hemingway or the popular Bishop Fulton J. Sheen.<\/p>\n

He had been raised in France where his American mother and New Zealander father had met in a Paris art school, and he was educated as a teenager at a boarding school in England. After a wasted year at Cambridge, he had gone on to Columbia, near his prosperous grandparents\u2019 home.<\/p>\n

Shortly after his graduation in 1938, while working on his M.A. in English, he became a Catholic. He interrupted his work toward a Ph.D. to pursue a religious vocation, entering a Trappist monastery just a few days after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. He remained at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky until his death in 1968.<\/p>\n

\"Thomas
[Source:\u00a0irishtimes.com<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A voracious reader and always interested in writing, Merton, encouraged by his first abbot, Frederic Dunne, continued his career as a writer at the monastery, getting books of his poetry published. Then Dunne suggested that he write a book about his eventful and tragic young life.<\/p>\n

His mother had died when he was very young, his father had died when he was a boarding student, and his younger brother, his only sibling, had been killed in an accident as a member of the Canadian Air Force in World War II.<\/p>\n

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\"The
[Source: goodreads.com<\/a>]]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

The resulting book, The Seven Storey Mountain<\/em>, became a surprising overnight sensation. He continued writing, and during the 1950s and 1960s, almost every Catholic home in America owned books by Thomas Merton.<\/p>\n

In the 1960s his writing turned political, as he wrote about civil rights and non-violence, warning that the press was responsible for promoting wars. If Merton had lived, there is a good chance that he would have become the leading Catholic voice against the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n

In 1968, three prominent advocates for peace died under questionable circumstances: Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert F. Kennedy, and Thomas Merton. It was the last full year of Lyndon Johnson\u2019s presidency. King and Kennedy were publicly assassinated, with the identity of their assassin or assassins continuing to remain in doubt, regardless of the press-endorsed lone-crazed-gunman official verdict. Merton\u2019s secret assassination was covered up as an accident. The cover-up succeeded for a half-century.<\/p>\n

On December 10, 1968, at around 4:00 p.m. at a cottage at the Red Cross retreat center near Bangkok, Thailand, where they were attending a Catholic monastic conference, three Benedictine monks found Thomas Merton\u2019s body when they entered his room. Abbot Odo Haas, Archabbot Egbert Donovan, and Father Celestine Say immediately recognized that Merton was dead.<\/p>\n

\"A
[Source:\u00a0amazon.com<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Say\u2019s room was just across the hall, and the scene was so odd that Donovan encouraged him to get his camera and photograph what they saw. Say took two photographs of the body just as they had found it. Say intended to give the photographs to the Thai police, but it quickly became clear to him that the police were not doing a proper investigation.<\/p>\n

As we can see, Say took his two photographs of Merton\u2019s body from different angles. He later said that he did not tell the police about the photos because he thought that they might confiscate his film and camera. After the film was developed, he sent one of the photographs (the other was underexposed) and a letter on March 18, 1969, to Merton\u2019s Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky.<\/p>\n

Burning with curiosity over the odd death scene, Say asked Abbot Flavian Burns if there had been an autopsy to determine the cause of Merton\u2019s death before his burial. The abbot, in fact, had not ordered an autopsy and none had been done, although the doctor\u2019s certificate and the death certificate affirmed that a \u201cpost-mortem examination\u201d had been done in accordance with the law.<\/p>\n

Abbot Flavian shared Say\u2019s photograph with John Howard Griffin. Griffin, a frequent visitor to the abbey and famous for his civil rights book, Black Like Me<\/em>, had been authorized by the abbey to be Merton\u2019s biographer.<\/p>\n

Griffin immediately recognized the significance of Say\u2019s photographs and joined Abbot Flavian and Merton\u2019s recently named secretary, Brother Patrick Hart, in an effort to secure the film negatives from Say. They praised Say for taking the important pictures and asked him to send them the negatives so that they could be \u201cprotected.\u201d Say sent his negatives to the abbot as a gift. The negatives became the property of the Abbey of Gethsemani.<\/p>\n

Griffin advised Abbot Flavian and Brother Patrick that the negatives should never be published or available to anyone. What did the Benedictine monks see that prompted them to take photographs of Merton\u2019s body? Why was it deemed necessary at the abbey that these photographs be hidden from the public?<\/p>\n

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John Howard Griffin [Source:\u00a0wikipedia.org<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Associated Press had reported on December 11, 1968, the day after the death, that Merton \u201cwas electrocuted Tuesday when he moved an electric fan and touched a short in the cord.\u201d Their source was not the official Thai investigating authorities but rather anonymous \u201clocal Catholic sources.\u201d The Gethsemani Abbey quickly echoed the AP conclusion and has adhered to it to the present day.<\/p>\n

In 2017, we discovered Say\u2019s negatives in the papers of John Howard Griffin at the Butler Library of Columbia University and quickly realized why they had been hidden. With modern technology we were able to get the underexposed negative developed, and the two photographs reveal what looks very much like a crime scene that had been staged to appear as an accident.<\/p>\n

The first thing that the witnesses noticed was the unnatural position of the body. They saw Merton lying flat on his back with his arms straight by his side. People don\u2019t fall like that. And how in the world did the fan, well free of his hands, get across his body? His body had electrical burns, but his hands did not. It looks as though Merton had been rolled over onto his back by someone else. The rolling would have required that his arms be by his side.<\/p>\n

\"A
[Source: Photo courtesy of David Martin]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Vernon Geberth, author of Practical Homicide Investigation<\/em>, writes that, \u201cif you have a gut feeling that something is wrong, then, guess what? Something is wrong.\u201d The initial gut feeling of the first witnesses was that things were not what they appeared to be. That was why Donovan had Say take the photographs.<\/p>\n

The abbey not only concealed the photographs, but they concealed the official Thai reports. Officially, Merton died of a natural cause. Contrary to the AP report, the Thai police, while deceptively noting the presence of the defective fan, had concluded that Merton had died of \u201cheart failure\u201d and that he was already dead before he encountered the fan. Hardly anything could be more absurd. Like the fan that had been effectively cooling Merton\u2019s room, this defective one had been manufactured by the reliable Hitachi company.<\/p>\n

Some of the muddled descriptions of Merton\u2019s death came from his former abbot, James Fox. Fox wrote that Merton had been electrocuted by a faulty wire in a large fan in his room.\u00a0According to Fox, Merton either had a heart attack and grabbed the fan and it fell with him, or he grabbed the fan and it fell with him, or he had been fixing the fan and grabbed a badly insulated wire.<\/p>\n

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\"Rev
[Source: findagrave.com<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

The staged scene left the public to debate whether the cause of death was an accident or a natural cause. The placement of the fan by the perpetrator directed attention away from a head wound seen by witnesses.<\/p>\n

The final authorized biographer, Michael Mott, who took over for Griffin when Griffin became too ill to continue, in The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton<\/em> revealed that the wound, which was in the back of Merton\u2019s head, had \u201cbled considerably.\u201d In his next sentence Mott writes, \u201cThe obvious solution appears to be that it was caused when his head struck the floor.\u201d It is important to point out that neither the Thai police investigators nor anyone in the press made any mention of that bleeding head wound.<\/p>\n

Was it obvious to Mott, or did that just appear to be the cause of the long-bleeding wound? Can anyone imagine a person falling backward onto a level floor receiving such a wound? It is very doubtful that Geberth, a long-time homicide investigator for the New York City Police Department, would have seen anything obvious about it.<\/p>\n

Say\u2019s photographs were hidden for additional reasons. The photographs prove that Merton\u2019s abbey knowingly spread false information. On December 19, 1968, the abbey circulated a suspicious unsigned letter from a group of conference attendees in response to requests for more details about Merton\u2019s death. The letter stated that it was difficult at that time to determine the cause of Merton\u2019s death and then it speculated that Merton may have had a heart attack or suffered a fatal electric shock.<\/p>\n

Detective Geberth tells us that ambiguity is one of the features of a staged crime scene, and it is hard to get any more ambiguous than that. The letter also had several errors of fact, for example, that Merton \u201ccould have showered\u201d and that a fan was found \u201clying across his chest.\u201d The letter accurately stated, though, that Merton was found \u201cin his pajamas.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1973, the abbey shared the letter with a wider audience when it was published in a book, The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton<\/em>. The book included a description of Merton\u2019s death by Br. Patrick, who wrote in the postscript that Merton had taken a shower before his \u201caccidental electrocution.\u201d The three words, \u201cin his pajamas,\u201d were removed in the copy of the letter published as an appendix. Those pajamas had no place alongside Brother Patrick\u2019s shower story.<\/p>\n

Brother Patrick was working closely with the two other editors of The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton<\/em>, Merton\u2019s New York literary agent, Naomi Burton Stone, and his New York publisher, James Laughlin. All three of them knew about the photograph of Merton in his pajamas, so they had to have known that the shower story was not true. Witnesses in the cottage where Merton died also said that he did not take a shower.<\/p>\n

\n
\"The
[Source: amazon.com<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

After the abbey received Say\u2019s photograph, the abbey continued to state that Merton\u2019s chest had been burned deeply by the fan found lying across his chest. A wound on the chest would suggest that it had something to do with the heart failure. Say\u2019s pictures prove that there was no such burn on the chest.<\/p>\n

In 1967 Merton had signed an agreement to create the Merton Legacy Trust, to ensure that his valuable literary estate would belong to the abbey in the event of his death. Hardly a year had passed before Merton was dead. The three original members of the trust included Stone, Laughlin and Merton\u2019s good friend Thomasine \u201cTommie\u201d O\u2019Callaghan. Only a few people knew about the secret photographs. Stone and Laughlin agreed with Brother Patrick and Griffin to keep the photos a secret from O\u2019Callaghan.<\/p>\n

On July 24, 1969, Griffin warned Brother Patrick that O\u2019Callaghan suspected that the abbey was keeping things hidden from her. Griffin advised Brother Patrick to \u201cbe as bland and dumb as possible\u2026sending her the vaguest answers.\u201d On August 19, 1969, Stone wrote to Griffin that O\u2019Callaghan was \u201ca hazard we shall just have to live with,\u201d adding that she disliked \u201cthe necessity of keeping things from [O\u2019Callaghan] (which I feel is essential and I know [Laughlin] agrees)\u2026\u201d Stone, Griffin and others admitted that they burned and destroyed letters to each other, but a few of their letters have survived.<\/p>\n

One obstacle to the truth being known has been the charming, likable nature of Brother Patrick. Many people remember him fondly, making it difficult for them to accept the very solid evidence that he contributed to the cover-up of Merton\u2019s assassination. Brother Patrick had an unwavering loyalty to the abbey and especially to his former abbot James Fox, a central figure in the cover-up. Fox was responsible for the story that the fan was found lying on Merton\u2019s deeply burned chest. Brother Patrick had seen Say\u2019s photograph with the fan across the pelvis and no burns on the chest, so his participation in that lie can be added to his invention of the shower story among his major contributions to the cover-up.<\/p>\n

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Br. Patrick Hart, Thomas Merton, Br. Maurice Flood\u00a0[Source: virginiatrappists.org<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There is popular photograph of Brother Patrick and Merton together.\u00a0 It cements in the public mind the false impression that Merton and Br. Patrick were friends.\u00a0 The photograph was taken on the day of Merton\u2019s departure from Gethsemani.\u00a0 In the original picture, Br. Maurice Flood is standing on the left side of Merton.\u00a0 Flood was also a secretary to Thomas Merton, but Flood is frequently cropped out of this photograph.<\/p>\n

The place where Merton died is significant. In 1968, the Phoenix Program, an assassination operation run by the CIA, was active in Thailand and the agency worked closely with corrupt Thai officials. The U.S. government has admitted committing about 20,000 assassinations in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. The Vietnamese estimate the number is closer to 40,000.<\/p>\n

Thomas Merton, the peacemaker, was an incorruptible force challenging the propaganda news media and warfare state. Killing Merton in Thailand would have been business as usual for the CIA assassins.<\/p>\n

\"Several
CIA agent James \u201cBill\u201d Lair pictured training personnel from the Thai Police Aerial Reconnaissance Unit (PARU), which was involved in Phoenix-type operations in Thailand that extended into Laos. [Source: juleswings.wordpress.com<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The only possible problem might have come from Merton\u2019s surrogate family at the Abbey of Gethsemani. The killers had to know in advance that they would have no more problem from Merton\u2019s abbey than with the Associated Press, The New York Times<\/em>, and all the others. That proved to be the case in spades. Had the abbey really cared about knowing the truth, they would have insisted that an autopsy be performed. They did not. The abbey also hid Say\u2019s photograph and the official Thai reports, and they seemed to do everything in their power to persuade the public that Merton had died of a tragic, though bizarre, accident.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Hugh Turley<\/span> as a volunteer columnist for the<\/em> Hyattsville Life and Times, is winner of the National Newspaper Association award for best serious column, small-circulation, non-daily division. He<\/span> is co-author, with David Martin, of<\/em> The Martyrdom of Thomas Merton: An Investigation<\/a>, and\u00a0<\/em>Thomas Merton\u2019s Betrayers: The Case Against Abbot James Fox and author John Howard Griffin<\/a>. He can be reached at: turley2u@mac.com<\/span><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – covertactionmagazine.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thomas Merton was the most influential Catholic writer of the 20th century.\u00a0He was almost as well-known in the United States as the author Ernest Hemingway or the popular Bishop Fulton J. Sheen.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":138621,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[900,97,260,2571,3353],"class_list":["post-270862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-focus","tag-biography","tag-catholic-church","tag-history","tag-official-lies-and-narratives","tag-thomas-merton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270862"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":270866,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270862\/revisions\/270866"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}