Sean Flynn
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Sean Leslie Flynn, born May 31, 1941 - died April 6, 1970, was an American actor and freelance photojournalist.
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Flynn was the son of actors Errol Flynn and Lili Damita.
During the Vietnam Conflict, Sean Flynn was working as a freelance photo journalist under contract to Time Magazine. On April 6, 1970 he and fellow journalist Dana Stone (working for CBS) left Phnom Penh on rented Honda motorbikes to find the front lines of fighting in Cambodia. Traveling southeast on Route One near a eucalyptus plantation in eastern Cambodia, the two men were stopped at a check point at grid coordinates XT171209 in Svay Rieng Province, Cambodia, and led away by elements of the Viet Cong Tay Ninh Armed Forces and elements of the combined North Vietnamese-Viet Cong Ningh Division based in Cambodia.
Information obtained from indigenous sources indicated that Stone and Flynn were executed in mid-1971 in Kampong Cham Province, Cambodia. Various sources, including an intercepted radio message from COSUN, the Viet Cong high command, indicate that Flynn and Stone survived. One source reported that he had seen "a group of very long haired, bearded, tall prisoners near Minot, Cambodia" who were identified as "imperialist journalists". Over the years, meanwhile, there has been occasional word from isolated Cambodian villages that someone saw the "movie star" who is being held prisoner by the Khmer Rouge.
Although Lili Damita spent an enormous amount of money searching for her son, he was never found and in 1984 was declared legally dead. He is among the 22 international journalists missing in Southeast Asia, most known to have been captured.
Sean Flynn was immortalized by The Clash in the song "Sean Flynn" from the album Combat Rock. Sean Flynn is a major character in Michael Herr's "Dispatches," perhaps the most acclaimed American literary treatment of the Vietnam War. Herr's friendship with Flynn during his years in Vietnam is vividly described.pl:Sean Flynn