Growing up in Southern California, Darrell Berrigan was as restless as any other young American. He loved his country. But in the fall of 1938, at 24 years old, he chose a wilder course, leaving his hometown of Bakersfield and heading for the Far East, where he would spend the rest of his life. He covered World War II and its aftermath for United Press and other U.S. news outlets, earning a reputation as one of the finest reporters of his generation. He wrote for The Saturday Evening Post and The New York Times after the war and eventually settled in Bangkok, Thailand, where he launched the Bangkok World - an English-language newspaper that Time magazine called one of the "genuinely cultured pearls of the East." He returned briefly to the United States but said he couldn't get "un-Oriented." On the morning of October 3, 1965, his lifeless body was found in the back seat of his car near his home in central Bangkok. He had been shot in the back of the head under mysterious circumstances. He was 51 years old and gay.… (more)