Canadian Dave Walker and Cambodian Sonny Chhoun visiting Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in 2013. Photo: Richard S. Ehrlich
On a tropical Valentine’s Day in Siem Reap, Cambodia, Dave Walker walked out of the guest house where he’d been staying for some months and then seemingly vanished.
Staff there later said he walked out clutching a bottle of drinking water at about 2pm after a housekeeper went to clean his room. Left behind, however were his cheap mobile phone still recharging, MacBook in sleep mode, Canadian passport and luggage.
And that’s about all Sonny Chhoun was left to go on.
Sonny is Dave’s Cambodian colleague in Siem Reap, where they’ve been working together on film scripts and interviewing local Cambodians about their experiences during Pol Pot’s “killing fields” regime after the Khmer Rouge went from jungle-based guerrillas to become fanatic, Mao Zedong-inspired rulers during the 1970s.
Dave and Sonny set up their joint-owned company, Animist Farm Films, hoping to find stories in and around Siem Reap that they could turn into scripts for movies, hopefully funded by international investors.
Dave and Sonny also co-own some undeveloped property near Siem Reap – about two hours away on a bad road – which they dubbed “Animist Farm.”
Sonny is also very well known among foreign correspondents in Southeast Asia where he has worked as a professional media assistant for Canadian TV crews and others for several years. Dave also has many friends throughout the region, including Alan Parkhouse, editor-in-chief of the Phnom Penh Post.
But no one can find any clues about Dave’s disappearance. After several days, his friends in Southeast Asia – myself included – began fearing the worst. We started talking to his friends in Canada, San Francisco and elsewhere.
Knowing him well, we have imagined several scenarios, ranging from ghastly to pragmatic to fantastic.
The first, considered most likely by Dave’s associates, is the possibility of foul play involving an elderly, freaked-out former member of the Khmer Rouge.
During the past year or so, Dave and Sonny interviewed many ex-Khmer Rouge members and their victims for stories about how they survived Pol Pot’s executions, tortures, deprivation, slavery and other horrors, especially around Siem Reap, which is famous for the Angkor Wat temple complex.
In this scenario, an old Khmer Rouge killer overheard Dave and Sonny interviewing villagers about the bad old days, got paranoid and imagined Dave was closing in to drag him off to prison.
This theory is plausible as a few old Khmer Rouge leaders are currently jailed as a result of the widely publicized United Nations-backed trial in Cambodia which has been going on for years.
Unfortunately, this scenario gets worse because usually when someone zaps their opponent in Southeast Asia, they hire a killer who rides by on a motorcycle and shoots the person in the street and drives away. That would mean a body, and no one has found Dave.
Instead, under this grisly theory, the Khmer Rouge former reverts to their modus operandi from Pol Pot’s time: capture their opponent and torture them so severely they falsely “confess” to working for a huge international conspiracy – and name names, even making up names, just to stop the torture – before executing the person and dumping them in a grave where their body is never to be found.
That story is familiar, and the evidence exists in places like Phnom Penh’s Tuol Sleng Prison in Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, where these kind of forced, false confessions were obtained, as well as the nearby execution sites and mass graves, which also appear near Siem Reap and elsewhere.
The only good news in theory number one is that Dave might be still be alive, albeit in a hovel undergoing terrible interrogation.
Our second theory has Dave possibly going off with a tourist or someone else into the jungle and falling victim to an accident.
Perhaps invited on a joyride to see something in the nearby countryside. Or perhaps to show someone a secret way into the Angkor temple complex, as he often told me it was possible to sneak in for free to avoid the expensive gate fee tourists are charged.
Dave has always liked to guide people to events and sites off the beaten path and is very generous with his time that way, so it’s possible he went off with someone, and then they suffered an accident on a back road.
However, that would mean at least one other missing person, likely a foreign tourist or resident, unless something happened the other person ran away to avoid the repercussions.
The third possibility is a type of “panic removal,” in which Dave went somewhere such as a restaurant, got into an argument and was killed. A local, perhaps fearing blame, might have panicked and hid Dave, hoping to conceal the evidence.
Siem Reap is quite densely populated however, so it seems unlikely.
Not to mention, Dave, 58, is seriously overweight and would be very difficult to move.
The more creative of his associates imagine a “Jim Thompson” situation, in which Dave intentionally pulls a mysterious vanishing act.
Jim Thompson was an American who boosted Thailand’s silk industry before mysteriously disappearing in Malaysia decades ago. He was never found. Today, hordes of tourists pour through the house he built in Bangkok.
Dave was a sergeant in the British Army, a former police officer and detective, plus other things, and was versed in survival, escape, and evasion.
Under this theory, Dave either fakes his death or just vanishes without a trace for whatever reason.
As friends, we’d hope the self-disappeared theory could still have a happy ending. Maybe he gets out of Cambodia and some day resurfaces grinning in a safe place, either as Dave Walker or with a new ID. We like this theory because Dave remains in mint condition, and proves, as he has before, that he can do the seemingly impossible.
Finally, from the “wishful thinking” file is the hope that David was spontaneously invited somewhere to do some really cool interview with an English-speaking Cambodian who he has been trying to talk with for some time.
They drive to a village where Dave is invited to stay, where he is treated to the most fabulous tales ever. He belatedly realizes he didn’t bring his phone and doesn’t care.
So he stays in their hut being feasted and anointed, while meticulously detailing the stories of his hosts and all the other villagers who suddenly gather to share their untold stories.
Right now that’s where I’d like to picture Dave, falling for a gorgeous Cambodian woman who is hand-feeding him a special snake curry and turtle-eye dish she’s made in the back of the thatched hut.
After all, Dave’s favorite catchphrase has always been Tolkien’s, “All who wander are not lost.”
Related:
Missing expat writer’s friends suspect foul play in disappearance
Dave’s friends have also created a “Help Find Dave Walker” Facebook group.
Here’s a trailer Walker made for his feature film about Van Chhuon, “a former Khmer Rouge village chief credited with saving the lives of over 100 families during the worst years of the Pol Pot regime:”
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