Death
Samouth disappeared in disputed circumstances in July 1962; the event was a closely guarded secret until the later 1970s. Although he is usually assumed to have been murdered by Sihanouk's police, it has been suggested that Pol Pot may have arranged Samouth's death to ensure his own promotion to party secretary. Pol Pot denied this in one of the last interviews before his death, stating that Samouth, who had left his safe house to obtain medicine for his sick child, had been arrested by Lon Nol's men, interrogated, and killed: "If Tou Samouth had talked, I would have been arrested. He was killed at Stung Mean Chey pagoda. We loved each other." The historian Ben Kiernan notes, however, that there is strong evidence that Pol Pot's circle was responsible for Samouth's disappearance: in particular a secret Party report on 'internal enemies', dating from 1978, accused Kandal Province Secretary Som Chea of killing Samouth. Chea, who was later executed, had been a courier for Pol Pot's group in 1962.
Pol Pot was elected Party secretary early in 1963, and subsequently broke decisively with the Vietnamese communists, securing instead the backing of China.
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