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It would have been an incredible end for such devout adherents of Roman Catholicism, which sternly condemns suicide. But, in fact, the President and his brother were obviously murdered. According to one version, Diem and Nhu should have been sent abroad by plane; but, instead, they escaped from the palace, were found in the Cholon church by a troop of soldiers who arrested the pair and drove them off in an armored car toward military headquarters. On the way, an order was given to kill them. When the armored car arrived at headquarters, both men were dead. "Unofficial" photographs showed Diem's bullet-riddled body lying next to a personnel carrier, with a soldier leaning over him. A picture of Nhu showed him on a stretcher, his body marked by bruises. According to the same report, he had been stabbed to death.
Again the accusing voice of Mme. Nhu was heard from Los Angeles: "Any crime committed against the Ngo family cannot be hidden under the label of suicide. I affirm that suicide has always been considered incompatible with our religion." She also worried over the fate of her three young children, 4, 11 and 15, but reports from Saigon suggested that they were safe. She added amid sobs: "If really my family has been treacherously killed with either the official or unofficial blessing of the American Government, I can predict to you all that the story in South Viet Nam is only at its beginning."
The Trung Sisters. The reports of Diem's murder that swept through Saigon left a cold chill among even the bitterest of his enemies. But for a while nothing could cool the exultant crowds in Saigon. Buddhist monks, quickly released from jail by the revolutionary regime, joined the throngs. Shouting students turned the town on end. The mob smashed bookstores that had been owned by Diem's brother, Bishop Ngo Dinh Thuc, and by Mme. Nhu. Another crowd toppled and broke up the statue of Viet Nam's revered Trung sisters, stalwart Vietnamese heroines who fought Chinese overlords in the 1st century A.D.; their monument had been sponsored by Mme. Nhu. At the National Assembly, a shouting anti-Diem crowd sacked the hall, then carried Diem's portrait onto the front steps and shredded it.
At first, the soldiers of the military junta let the excitement run its course, then troops nudged the mobs off main thoroughfares, urging them to quiet down. They obviously had orders from the nation's new boss, Duong Van Minh, to avoid the kind of tough measures that might make enemies for his regime.
Oriental Gulliver. Eight years ago, General Duong Van Minh made a triumphal entry into Saigon to the cheers of his countrymen. Minh's troops had hunted down the last guerrilla forces of the dreaded Binh Xuyen bandits, a sort of Oriental Cosa Nostra that pillaged the countryside and controlled vice in Saigon. Sometimes it was known as "the whorehouse sect." So moved was President Ngo Dinh Diem by Minh's victory that he kissed his general on both cheeks.