Remains that may be those of Sean Flynn, the swashbuckling combat photographer son of Hollywood icon Errol Flynn, have been found in a mass grave in Cambodia. Tests are scheduled to be conducted on the jaw and femur bone found last month and handed over last week to the U.S. embassy in Phnom Penh. Sean Flynn, a dead ringer for his famous father, was 28 and shooting for Time Magazine when he and Dana Stone, a buddy from CBS, were captured by Khmer Rouge guerrillas on April 6, 1970. They were never heard from again, though some believe they lasted a year in captivity before they were executed. The mysterious fate of the two dashing journalists has been memorialized in several documentaries and books, including Two of the Missing, and the Clash song, Sean Flynn, from the album Combat Rock. Errol Flynn was already dead when his son vanished but his mother, French former Hollywood star Lili Damita, spent millions over the years chasing down phantom rumors of a movie star being held prisoner in the jungle. In 1984, she gave up and had him declared legally dead. She died ten years later. Flynn had followed his father into pictures as a teenager, but found movie sets boring and became a big game hunter in Africa before picking up a camera and heading to Vietnam and Cambodia. Author Jeffrey Meyers, in his 2002 father/son double-biography Inherited Risk, wrote that Sean Flynn died after botched treatment for malaria and may have been buried alive. Keith Rotheram, a Briton who owns a guesthouse in the Kampong Cham province, said he uncovered the bones this month after a local villager led him to a place where he said he saw Khmer Rouge guerrillas executing a prisoner matching Flynns description in 1971. Keith Rotheram said the jawbone he and Australian David MacMillan dug up has two fillings, indicating the remains are of someone treated by Western dentists, he told the London Telegraph. U.S. Embassy spokesman John Johnson said the remains were being tested at the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command in Hawaii. Each case is different so it is difficult to speculate on how long the analysis may take, he said. Tim Page, a Vietnam War photographer who has spent decades searching for his missing friends, criticized MacMillan and Rotheram for how they handled the mass grave. It was not a forensic dig: They used an excavator and uncovered a full set of remains, which they removed from the site, Page said, according to the Phnom Penh Post. They are ignoring the strong possibility of them being the remains of another possible nine foreigners who are thought to be in the same area, he said. MacMillan said he had received authorization for the search from Rory Flynn, Seans half-sister. At least 37 journalists vanished in the Killing Fields of the 1970-75 Cambodian War. Journalists who survived are planning a Phnom Penh reunion next month, where they plan to honor the dead.
Posted on: Mon, 31 Mar 2014 14:50:13 +0000
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