THAILAND'S MOMENT OF TRUTH - ZENJOURNALIST

Ananda was almost certainly shot by somebody who lived or worked in the Barompiman
Hall. And the only person whose movements are unclear that morning is Bhumibol
Adulyadej. He has always claimed that around the time of his brother’s death, he was
moving back and forth between his playroom and his bedroom, in the opposite wing of the
Barompiman Hall from Ananda’s bedchamber. And he claims he never heard a shot – he
heard shouting, and that prompted him to go and see what had happened, to find his brother
already lying dead in bed. But the royal nanny testified that she was in Bhumibol’s bedroom
when she heard a gunshot, and raced to see what had happened: she made no mention
of seeing Bhumibol. Moreover, there were two routes between Bhumibol’s quarters and
Ananda’s, which meant he could have got in and out of his brother’s bedchamber without
having been seen by the rest of those in the upper floor of the building.
From the start, all the speculation about the death of Rama VIII was framed in a way that
suggested only three possibilities: he committed suicide, he shot himself in the head by
mistake, or he was murdered by an intruder. But there is a fourth possibility, and the fact
that it was never mentioned in official discussion of the possible scenarios is in itself very
significant.
Ananda could have been killed by accident, but not by his own hand. His brother could have
shot him by mistake. And this is the overwhelming likelihood.
Rayne Krueger’s meticulous investigation into Ananda’s death in The Devil’s Discus
discusses at considerable length the possibility that Bhumibol shot his brother:
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The accident theory has been shown to be almost worthless, but this has been on the
assumption that Ananda was alone when he died. However, the fact that the boys
always played with their guns together, and the less well-known fact that the highspirited
Bhoomipol sometimes playfully pointed a gun at Ananda who sternly told
him not to, has given rise to a far more persuasive theory, which continues to be held
by most Westerners. It is that Bhoomipol visited the sick Ananda and while they were
playing with the .45 he accidentally fired it.
No one ever gave more authority to this idea than Bhoomipol himself, by his
extraordinary change from gaiety throughout his seventeen years preceding Ananda’s
death to unsmiling gravity in the following fourteen. The resilience of youth, and the
Siamese trait of quickly forgetting disagreeable events, appeared in him to have been
overborne by an emotion which many interpret as remorse or guilt.
The evidence in the regicide case also gives ample scope for speculation. Before
the fatal shot, the Royal Nanny and Bhoomipol were in and out of the playroom
and Bhoomipol’s bedroom at the same time. She was in the bedroom putting away
movie films when she heard the shot and rushed out, while Bhoomipol said he heard
not a shot but a shout which drew him from the playroom. This difference is as
odd as their lack of reference to each other in their respective testimonies; indeed
Bhoomipol even said he saw no one. Moreover he said the shout drew him out to
the front porch where, directly along the front corridor to Ananda’s study, he met
the lady-in-waiting. If indeed the study door was for some reason left unlocked, it is
theoretically possible for him to have gone this way to Ananda, and after the accident
run out by the same door, unremarked by the two pages in the back corridor outside
the dressing-room but encountering the lady-in-waiting.
Then there is the Princess Mother’s agitated conversation with him which Butr
allegedly overheard when the body was being washed, “Whatever you wish to do, do
it!” The explanation of this could be that Bhoomipol wished to confess to the Palace