On the morning of June 9, 1946, the 20-year-old Ananda Mahidol, King Rama VIII of Siam, was shot through the head and killed in his bedroom in the Barompiman Hall building in the Grand Palace complex in Bangkok. Later that day his 18-year-old brother Bhumibol Adulyadej was proclaimed King Rama IX. Bhumibol has reigned ever since: he is now an old and frail man, confined to Siriraj Hospital on the west bank of the Chao Phraya River that weaves through the capital, but he remains Thailand's king.
Officially, the killing is described as a mystery, one of the world's most extraordinary unsolved crimes of the past century. In reality, it has long been clear who killed Ananda. The truth has been suppressed by Thailand's establishment, partly through use of the draconian law of lèse majesté, Article 112 of Thailand's criminal code, which has been used to criminalize open and honest discussion of Thai history and politics.
Within minutes of Ananda's death, the crime scene was deliberately tampered with to hide the evidence of what really happened. Those who were in the Barompiman Hall that morning have never publicly revealed the truth of what happened, and only one of them remains alive: King Bhumibol himself. It seems likely that he will never reveal what happened, and will take his secret to the grave. The official investigation into Ananda's death considered three possibilities: that he was murdered, committed suicide, or shot himself by accident.
The investigation deliberately excluded a fourth possibility: that Ananda was accidentally shot by somebody else. This fourth possibility is the truth. Ananda Mahidol was shot and killed by his brother Bhumibol. It seems inconceivable that the killing was premeditated. It was a terrible tragic accident or aberration, and it has haunted Bhumibol Adulyadej ever since.
Bhumibol is a dying, decrepit old man now. It is clear he has suffered a lifetime of shame and sorrow because of what happened that morning in 1946. Many Thais believe the truth should remain buried, because revealing it now will only cause more pain. But 21st century Thailand is mired in an agonizing crisis because of the refusal of powerful factions among the elite to allow open and honest debate about the country's past, and about its future. The lèse majesté law has blighted Thailand. It is time for the truth to be told, so Thailand can move forward.
Despite the destruction of evidence, and the fact that those involved lied about what happened, it is possible to reconstruct how Ananda died. The first key point is that there is no credible possibility that an unknown assassin sneaked into the Grand Palace that morning, took Ananda's Colt .45 automatic pistol from his bedside cabinet, shot him through the head with it, and escaped, unseen by anyone. The killer can only have been somebody in the Barompiman Hall.
In the immediate aftermath of Ananda's death, it was widely assumed that he had commited suicide. The large assembly of princes and politicians who gathered downstairs in the Barompiman Hall after Ananda’s death did not spend much time debating whether he had been assassinated by an intruder — as they surely would have done if there were genuine suspicions that this had been the case — but instead fretted over how to explain Ananda’s death to the public. Ananda's mother Sangwan begged Pridi Banomyong, the inspirational statesman who was prime minister at the time, to declare that the shooting was a self-inflicted accident rather than suicide. Partly in order to preserve royal prestige, Pridi and the government complied.
But the story that Ananda shot himself by mistake was never remotely plausible. The Colt is a relatively heavy handgun, weighing more than a kilogram when fully loaded, and to be fired it requires considerable pressure to be placed not just on the trigger but also simultaneously on a safety panel on the back of the butt. The chances of Ananda doing this by accident, while the gun was pointed at his forehead, were extremely slim. Furthermore, the gun was found lying beside Ananda’s left hand. But he was right handed. Also the evidence seemed to suggest that Ananda had been lying flat on his back when he was shot. And he had not been wearing his spectacles, without which his vision was appalling. It seemed barely credible that Ananda would have been playing with his Colt .45 while lying on his back and without his glasses.
Suicide was a slightly more credible theory, but for many of the same reasons that ruled out Ananda accidentally shooting himself, it seemed desperately unlikely. It is almost unheard of for somebody to commit suicide lying on their back, and the trajectory the bullet had taken through Ananda’s skull was also very unusual for a suicide. Within hours of Ananda's death, royalist politicans — in particular Seni Pramoj — began spreading rumours that Pridi Banomyong had conspired to have Ananda murdered. This allegation was entirely bogus, and no credib