The Cambodian Genocide: The killers of four Americans Finally Face Justice

June 27, 2011 - PRLog -- Imagine the handsome son of your next door neighbour, venturing off on the yachting voyage of a lifetime, dashing off postcards from exotic spots around the world, and then vanishing. In response to his family's frantic search, his government investigates, discovers the young man was gunned down by soldiers of a genocidal regime, and then drops the case. News outlets briefly report, and then abandon the story. History forgets. This is the story of Richmond, B.C. native and SE Asia yachtsman Stuart Robert Glass, shot and killed in August 1978 while sailing a 28-foot, Malaysian bedar named Foxy Lady off the coast of Democratic Kampuchea, as Cambodia was called under the murderous Khmer Rouge. The fate of eight other Western yachtsmen – four Americans, two Australians, a New Zealander and an Aussie -- would be far worse, as Dave Kattenburg recounts in this compelling work of investigative journalism.

The author is available for radio, television and print media interviews and can submit brief magazine or online articles and photos. Publishers are invited to extract passages from the book. Foxy Lady – Truth, Memory and the Death of Western Yachtsmen in Democratic Kampuchea is an investigative journalist’s account of one of history’s most intriguing footnotes: the murder of four Americans, two Australians, an Englishman, a New Zealander and a Canadian by Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge. Foxy Lady chronicles the life and times of the Canadian, Stuart Robert Glass – his restless youth in British Columbia; his travels across Europe, North Africa and Asia; his forays into drug smuggling; his brutal 1978 death on board a little yacht called Foxy Lady. Stuart’s mates, New Zealander Kerry Hamill and Englishman John Dewhirst, would suffer a worse fate – dragged off to the Khmer Rouge’s Tuol Sleng death house in Phnom Penh, charged with being CIA spies, tortured for a few months and then killed.

As Stuart’s life unfolds, Foxy Lady charts the course of a parallel universe – Pol Pot and his gang boring their way to power. It focuses on the career of the Khmer Rouge’s chief executioner, Kaing Guek Eav, alias ‘Duch’. It was Duch who conveyed the orders that Stuart’s pals and the other yachtsmen should be killed and their bodies burned to ashes. Duch was the first Khmer Rouge leader to be tried for his crimes, by an international tribunal in Phnom Penh. The tribunal delivered its verdict on July 26, 2010. The trial of Democratic Kampuchea’s most senior leaders (Case 002) will begin on June 27, 2011. Having stumbled on the story of murdered Stuart Glass, the author travels to Cambodia to watch Duch testify; interview former Tuol Sleng guards and investigate the death of the ‘Western’ yachtsmen. But ‘truth’ is elusive. Imperfect memories and conflation are among the most intriguing products of his three year, four-continent investigation.

Foxy Lady will appeal to students of Asian history, political psychology and conflict studies. Journalists, adventure travellers, Indochina war buffs and lovers of popular culture, adventure travel and narrative non-fiction will want to read this book too. http://www.foxyladyachtsmen.com

Author is available for commentary and written submissions. He wishes to be in contact with veteran yachties who recall Foxy Lady and her crew. Dave Kattenburg can be reached through:
The Key Publicity
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E-mail: media@thekeypublish.com
Tel: 416-935-1790.
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