Merton assassination theory has gaps that need to be addressed, says biographer

Thomas Merton assassination theory reveals “gaps that need to be addressed” says biographer scholar

Claims that Trappist monk and writer Thomas Merton was assassinated rather than killed by accidental electrocution in 1968 cannot be substantiated by existing evidence — but unanswered questions about the circumstances of his death remain legitimate and have never been adequately addressed. That is the carefully worded conclusion of one of the world’s foremost Merton scholars, who has broken his usual silence on the controversy in a recent public lecture in All Hallows College in Dublin on Thomas Merton and John Moriarty.

Prof. Michael W. Higgins, who completed his doctorate on Merton in 1979 and has written and lectured on his life and work for more than four decades, said he did not subscribe to the conspiracy theory that has circulated in some quarters for years. But he acknowledged that the official account of Merton’s death contains unexplained anomalies that serious scholars have been too quick to dismiss.

“These authors raise important questions because there are in fact gaps in the evidence and we’ve been pretty shoddy in addressing those” he said.

Merton died on December 10, 1968 in Bangkok, Thailand, where he had travelled to attend an international monastic conference — the first time he had left his monastery at Gethsemani, Kentucky, in any significant way in over two decades. The official account, accepted by the Thai authorities and the Cistercian order, holds that he was electrocuted by a faulty standing fan in his room at a conference centre, the fan falling on top of him after he apparently touched it with wet feet, causing cardiac arrest.

Prof. Higgins said he regarded this account as substantially credible. “There’s a great measure of truth in it. I believe it, frankly,” he told his audience. However, he identified a series of specific evidential anomalies that he said had never been satisfactorily explained.