While reading about old criminal cases in the 1990s in Vietnam (out of curiosity), one really caught my attention: the case of jungleman “người rừng” Ma Seo Chứ. This dude is, no kidding, a real-life version of Rambo. Probably one of the most fascinating and badass life stories I’ve ever read.
We all know how the Rambo story goes: John Rambo, a special forces operator, returns home from Vietnam and finds himself greeted with hostility from the local populace. He drifts from town to town and gets arrested by an overly gung-ho cop who finds no identification on Rambo. Rambo beats the cops, escapes the police station, and makes his way up the jungle. There, using his skills learned in the army, he makes makeshift weapons and booby traps and fights off an entire army of federal troops.
At the end of the day, Rambo is a good man who is misunderstood by distrustful locals and forced to bring out his special set of fighting skills to survive.
Chứ’s story is eerily similar.
Peaceful Beginnings and Promising Future
From what I’ve read, Chứ was born a bright boy in a mountainous region in Lào Cai. He was the only one in the entire village who could read and write. He joined the army and was trained to become a commando.
After 5 years of service in the army, he returned home and became the ‘mayor’ of his village. He got married, had a son. His career was stable and promising. Life went by peacefully.
Losing Faith in Humanity
One day in 1990, he got back home from a business trip. It was late in the evening, and he saw the silhouette of a man standing in front of his gate. He called out several times but the man did not respond. Worried that it might be a thief, Chứ charged and punched the man, only to find out it was the… exorcist (thầy cúng).
(I have no idea how to translate this into English. Exorcist seems the closet I can think of).
Apparently there had been a funeral right next to his house which is why the exorcist was present.
The exorcist ran off. Chứ was dead worried that they might get revenge on him, so he packed up his stuff and left for the mountains, telling his wife to leave him food at a certain spot in the jungle.
The following weeks the exorcist started to spread rumours that Chứ had been possessed by an evil spirit and hence his disappearance. Everybody in the village trusted the exorcist including Chứ’s wife.
So when Chứ returned, he told his wife he was okay, just hungry. His wife fed him, then secretly notified the villagers. The villagers captured him, tied him to a post and held a ‘beating party’. They feasted on pork, beef while beating him repeatedly out of… mercy and pity. Apparently they wanted to beat the devil out of him.
Around midnight, when everyone was tired from the beating and full from the eating, Chứ untied himself and fled into the mountains. By this point, he had officially lost all trust in people. He later told a reporter that “When even your wife betrays you, who are you supposed to trust?”
Becoming a Jungle Nomad
Chứ drifted around from village to village. He hunted wild animals, picked mushrooms, and traded them for other necessities at local markets. He only appeared in a population centre once a month, made his quick barter, then quickly disappeared back into the mountains.
He lived a nomadic life like this for 7 years. Many locals spotted silhouettes of a mysterious man moving around in the jungle, and therefore urban legends about a “jungleman” were passed around.
In 1997, as Chứ was making his way through a town also in Lào Cai, local people suspected him for being a thief. The village had been hit with a string of cows and buffaloes thefts recently, so the villagers called the police to arrest Chứ.
The police found no identification on his body. He was subsequently detained.
Around 3 am in the morning, when the guards were asleep, Chứ stole an AK-47 with 5 rounds of ammo. He ran off into the mountain, again, in the pitch black of the night.
A massive manhunt was launched. They found no trace of Chứ. By this point, the man had been a native to the jungle and mountain terrains.
Becoming a Criminal!
About a year later, in 1998, local passers-by saw smoke coming from a cage. They came closer and saw a man cooking. The police was immediately notified, and several units of policemen headed to his location.
When they got there, Chứ was still sitting still, unaware of the approaching company. When a policeman called out his name, Chứ sprung forward into a cave, grabbed his AK and fired 2 shots, killing that policeman instantly. He then (again) quickly retreated into the mountain.
So now the man had two criminal charges: murder and possession of a military weapon.
12 Years of Solitude In The Jungle
For the next 12 years, he continued evading human contact and surviving off the wilderness. He kept switching his residences in fear of getting caught. He purposely picked high spots that made the perfect vantage point for watching movements below. He set up various booby traps around his residences. Occasionally, he’d venture out to a town market to trade for some food and basic necessities.
In 2010, he was spotted in a village. He fought back with a machete but was quickly apprehended.
That is it. He ended up getting a life sentence, and is now serving his time in a prison in Phú Thọ.
Final Thoughts
Here are the parts that I’m most impressed with from reading his story:
- His will to survive is incredible.
- He was once bitten by a copperhead snake. He sucked the poisoned blood out with his mouth, but still became unconscious for 3 days. He then woke up and crawled to pick the leaves of a local herbal plants to treat his wound.
- Another time, he encountered noises from a large animal. Thinking it was a boar, he hit it with a tree stick. Turns out it was a bear. The bear attacked him, he fought back, and somehow escaped unscathed.
- He had very few clothes, and so his body just gradually adapted to the environment. He could sleep in a freezing winter night with only a few layers of clothing.
- Just the fact that he managed to live 20 years without human contact is absolutely astonishing. Chứ recalled the initial 6 months when he missed his wife and his fellow villagers so much that he cried himself to sleep every single night. And then gradually he just got used to the feeling of living entirely by himself I guess.
- I’m not clear why he decided to kill the policeman. His mind was probably clouded by paranoia at that point. It’s also not clear whether he has come back to pay respect to the deceased man.
- After his final arrest in 2010, Chứ did not say a single word for several months making interrogation very difficult. It’s still unclear whether he did that on purpose or if he simply lost his language abilities from so many years lacking human contact.
- Chứ now says that he actually enjoys his time in prison. He doesn’t have to worry about where his next meal will come from, doesn’t have to sleep in a cave in freezing mountain weather, and doesn’t have to fight just to survive anymore.
I’m not sure why nobody has made a movie about this man yet. If I had the resources and the talent I’d definitely commission a film about his story.