ADVENTROUS SPIRIT: Sean Flynn in Vietnam in the late 1960s. (Picture: Tim Page, The Courier-Mail)March 29, 2010
By Sophie Elsworth
The Courier-Mail (Australia)
TWO Queensland adventurers think they have found the remains of Sean Flynn, the dashing son of screen legend Errol Flynn.
Flynn's disappearance during the Vietnam War in 1970 prompted an international mystery spanning 40 years.
David MacMillan, 29, and Keith Rotheram, 60, went to Cambodia on a search partly funded by the Flynn family.
They have spent four months digging in a remote north-eastern pocket of Cambodia after a local – who has since died – informed them of nearby wartime executions.
"I've been on an expedition there for four months, I had hand digging crews, we just dug hole after hole and we slit trench after trench," Mr MacMillan said yesterday.
"We found human remains and a jaw bone."
On March 14, the pair discovered four well-preserved teeth, two of them still bright white.
The remains have been flown to the US where DNA tests will be performed and checked against Flynn's dental records.
He was known for his excellent teeth and Mr MacMillan, a Nambour-born graphic designer who lives in Vietnam, said an expert who studied photographs of the remains said they showed signs of dental work done in the US when Flynn was a budding actor.
Flynn was working as a photojournalist for Time magazine when he disappeared along with another US journalist on April 6, 1970.
Many attempts were made to find the 28-year-old but proved unsuccessful.
Mr Rotheram, from the Gold Coast, said the findings were part of an "adventure of the decade".
"It's the greatest mystery of the world. Where is Sean Flynn? We were making a documentary on the final search for Sean Flynn," he said.
"In our opinion, we have a 50 per cent chance of it being the remains of Sean Flynn."
The pair worked in 45C heat using hand shovels before opting for a much easier method.
"We went about it the Gold Coast way, I went in there with a bobcat," he said.
"By hand, we spent weeks and weeks and weeks, but by backhoe it took us about an hour-and-a-half before we found something.
"It's right in the middle of nowhere, you had to know where you were digging or you had no chance."
Flynn's 53-year-old sister, Rory, has written of her relief over the find in an email.
"I grew up with Sean and also named my son after him, so we have hoped and prayed that his remains would be found," she wrote.
"Information came to me in the past year that motivated this private search and we hope that the person found is my brother so that he can finally come home."
One early theory claimed Flynn was executed by lethal injection.
A witness who helped Mr MacMillan and Mr Rotheram described a Westerner matching Sean Flynn's description being executed in 1971.
The witness said the man was forced to dig his own grave and then was battered to death with a rock after his executioner's gun jammed as he tried to shoot his victim in the back of the head. Other finds include clothes, and jungle vines used to tie up a prisoner.
It is believed Flynn was executed by brutal rebel soldiers belonging to Cambodia's Khmer Rouge.
His grieving mother, Lili Damita, Errol Flynn's first wife, spent huge sums on failed expeditions to find Sean before she died in 1994.
He was the image of his movie idol father, the star of films such as The Adventures Of Robin Hood and Captain Blood.
Additional reporting Daily Mail
Flynn's disappearance during the Vietnam War in 1970 prompted an international mystery spanning 40 years.
David MacMillan, 29, and Keith Rotheram, 60, went to Cambodia on a search partly funded by the Flynn family.
They have spent four months digging in a remote north-eastern pocket of Cambodia after a local – who has since died – informed them of nearby wartime executions.
"I've been on an expedition there for four months, I had hand digging crews, we just dug hole after hole and we slit trench after trench," Mr MacMillan said yesterday.
"We found human remains and a jaw bone."
On March 14, the pair discovered four well-preserved teeth, two of them still bright white.
The remains have been flown to the US where DNA tests will be performed and checked against Flynn's dental records.
He was known for his excellent teeth and Mr MacMillan, a Nambour-born graphic designer who lives in Vietnam, said an expert who studied photographs of the remains said they showed signs of dental work done in the US when Flynn was a budding actor.
Flynn was working as a photojournalist for Time magazine when he disappeared along with another US journalist on April 6, 1970.
Many attempts were made to find the 28-year-old but proved unsuccessful.
Mr Rotheram, from the Gold Coast, said the findings were part of an "adventure of the decade".
"It's the greatest mystery of the world. Where is Sean Flynn? We were making a documentary on the final search for Sean Flynn," he said.
"In our opinion, we have a 50 per cent chance of it being the remains of Sean Flynn."
The pair worked in 45C heat using hand shovels before opting for a much easier method.
"We went about it the Gold Coast way, I went in there with a bobcat," he said.
"By hand, we spent weeks and weeks and weeks, but by backhoe it took us about an hour-and-a-half before we found something.
"It's right in the middle of nowhere, you had to know where you were digging or you had no chance."
Flynn's 53-year-old sister, Rory, has written of her relief over the find in an email.
"I grew up with Sean and also named my son after him, so we have hoped and prayed that his remains would be found," she wrote.
"Information came to me in the past year that motivated this private search and we hope that the person found is my brother so that he can finally come home."
One early theory claimed Flynn was executed by lethal injection.
A witness who helped Mr MacMillan and Mr Rotheram described a Westerner matching Sean Flynn's description being executed in 1971.
The witness said the man was forced to dig his own grave and then was battered to death with a rock after his executioner's gun jammed as he tried to shoot his victim in the back of the head. Other finds include clothes, and jungle vines used to tie up a prisoner.
It is believed Flynn was executed by brutal rebel soldiers belonging to Cambodia's Khmer Rouge.
His grieving mother, Lili Damita, Errol Flynn's first wife, spent huge sums on failed expeditions to find Sean before she died in 1994.
He was the image of his movie idol father, the star of films such as The Adventures Of Robin Hood and Captain Blood.
Additional reporting Daily Mail
2 comments:
i know, stupid KR killed a lot of people, khmer, foreigners alike. they even killed a lot of talented khmer people like the famous musicians, singers, movie stars, doctors, lawyers, gov't officials, merchants, business people, rich people, famous people, beautiful people, royal family, etc... that was the stupid KR. they were extremists and radical group of ignorant, backward, stone age, dark age, uneducated people who happened to come into power. they were ignorant and uneducated people for sure. thank god they were now history and cambodia and the world will never allowed them to exist again in cambodia or anywhere in the world for that matter, really! god bless cambodia.
WHAT'S REALY! 1:58pM
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