Being a movie star allowed Haing Ngor to make new friends - and to connect with old ones he thought he had lost. In this episode, Patricia Nunan talks to Ngor’s Hollywood agents, who knew the eager actor happy to take any job to finance his humanitarian work in Cambodia. She also connects with CC, a friend from Ngor’s student days, who knew both his warmhearted and arrogant sides. CC offers vivid details about Ngor’s tumultuous life in Cambodia - including the steady stream of death threats he was receiving - in the seven months before he was killed.

Jason Chan is one of the trio of gang-members who, in 1998, were convicted of killing Haing Ngor.  Prosecutors said Chan was holding the gun – because somebody had to be. The jury didn’t buy it – but he still got life without parole. Join Patricia Nunan has she shares parts of her nearly two-year text conversation with Chan, a client of the Innocence Center.

In the 1990s, Cambodia became the world’s newest “compassion fad” — a post-conflict boomtown flooded with aid groups, investors, and opportunists. Haing Ngor was one of many who returned, hoping to rebuild his country. Instead, he found himself caught in a feud – with another humanitarian. In this episode, Patricia Nunan opens her exploration of Ngor’s financial turbulence in the years before his murder.

Patricia Nunan sits down with journalist Roger Warner — Ngor’s close friend and co-author of A Cambodian Odyssey. Together, they explore how karma, revenge, and untreated PTSD shaped Ngor’s life after he survived the Khmer Rouge and became an internationally recognized actor and activist.   In some ways, it’s almost as if the universe was hinting that Ngor was on thin ice. ⚠️ Contains descriptions of Khmer Rouge torture and violence.

In 1996, Oscar-winning actor and Khmer rouge survivor Haing S. Ngor was gunned down outside his home in Los Angeles. His murder gave rise to a conspiracy theory - that the Khmer Rouge sent assassins to silence their most famous critic.This episode dismantles that myth - and examines how it stopped the right questions from being asked. ⚠️ Contains descriptions of Khmer Rouge torture and violence.

Episode Two - Season Two The Crime Scene Patricia Nunan visits Ngor’s home, in LA’s Chinatown - where Oscar-winning actor and Khmer Rouge survivor Haing Ngor was murdered in 1996. With Innocence Center lawyer Mike Semanchik and friend Doug Niven, she retraces the crime and questions the state’s narrative.

Haing S. Ngor survived the Khmer Rouge, only to be shot dead outside his Los Angeles home. His raw performance in the 1984 film, “The Killing Fields,” won him an Academy Award and brought international attention to Cambodia’s genocidal Khmer Rouge period. At the time of his murder, Ngor lived between worlds: Hollywood and post-war Cambodia. He was admired, but also resented. Who Killed Haing Ngor explores his extraordinary life, and investigates the leads the LAPD missed or ignored.

A look ahead at Season Two of "Who Killed Haing Ngor" - currently being investigated. Stay tuned for a release date!

Art, it’s been widely said, imitates life. But there are also moments when it changes it. The impact of “The Killing Fields” was so profound, that some credit it with helping launch Cambodia’s peace plan, ending decades of civil war. This is the second episode of a two-parter, in which I talk with journalist Jon Swain and photographer Roland Neveu. Along with Ngor, they share the distinction of having been the only people on the set of “The Killing Fields” who were also in Phnom Penh in 1975.

The first of two episodes covering my conversations with Jon Swain, of the Sunday Times, and photographer Roland Neveu. We take a look a closer look at Dith Pran, a so-called "fixer" for New York Times correspondent Sydney Schanberg, whose courage and heroism is what "The Killing Fields" is about. Both Swain and Neveu covered the fall of Phnom Penh to the Khmer Rouge in 1975 and went on to be involved in the film, “The Killing Fields.” We'll hear about that in the next episode.

This week I’m talking with Dorothy Chow, the producer of the “Death in Cambodia” podcast. In it, she interviews her father, Robert Chau about his experience as a teenager escaping the Khmer Rouge. That’s relatively rare. Many survivors are reluctant to talk about their unresolved trauma. That trauma - and the intergenerational trauma they’ve handed down to their children - are linked to the conspiracy theories surrounding the murder of Dr. Haing Ngor. But Dorothy Chow is a co-founder of Khmer Courageous Conversations - a new initiative to break the culture of silence and to loosen grip the Khmer Rouge still have on survivors, even decades later.

here’s an enduring conspiracy theory about the murder of Haing Ngor. Many believe that the Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot had him killed. That suggests that Pol Pot’s power stretched from the jungles of Cambodia to the streets of Los Angeles. The person probably most responsible for fueling that conspiracy? It was Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Comrade Duch.He the top executioner for the Khmer Rouge. That Pol Pot killed Haing Ngor is an idea I find wildly implausible, and so does Nic Dunlop, the Irish photographer who found Comrade Duch.  This is the second part of our conversation.

A conversation with Nic Dunlop, the man who found and “wrote the book” on Kaing Guek Euv, better known as Comrade Duch. He was the infamous head of S-21 - better known as Tuol Sleng - the Khmer Rouge prison and torture center. Duch is the one who claimed Pol Pot ordered the murder of Haing Ngor - a conspiracy theory we dismiss.

I have to admit: from the moment I decided to launch this podcast about the murder of Haing Ngor, I knew I had to interview Sam Rainsy. When I was reporting from Cambodia in the 1990’s, Sam Rainsy was seen as a bright and shining star. He was a democracy activist, who had worked in finance in Paris – so he had his own money, and was seen as uncorruptible. He became Cambodia’s Finance Minister. Rainsy was also an absolute darling of the international press. That’s partly because he made himself super accessible. If you got Sam Rainsy on the phone, you could always count on him for quote. And there’s one quote I remember : It’s been stuck in the back of my head for decades. It was when Sam Rainsy said that Hun Sen was behind the murder of Haing Ngor.

Haing Ngor returns to Cambodia's "Wild West" in the 1990's to run his foundation. But he soon find himself mired in a dispute with a Canadian-run orphanage, that drains his finances and impacts his ability to work. At the same time? He's shopping a screenplay.

The last installment of our look Tim Page and Marianne Harris's quest to resolve the fate of missing journalists Sean Flynn and Dana Stone. Tim Page had competition in his search, in the form of military veteran and investigator, Zalin Grant. It’s a tale of rabbit holes within rabbit holes — and here are more of them. Part Three of Three.

A look at the extraordinary casualty rate of the press corps in Cambodia in the 1970’s, including the disappearance of Sean Flynn and Dana Stone, and Tim Page’s quest to resolve their fate. It’s a tale of rabbit holes within rabbit holes — such as the mutiny on the Columbia Eagle, a US Merchant Marine vessel delivering napalm to Vietnam. Part Two of Three.

"The Killing Fields" is one of the top "journo" movies ever made, because it shows how frightening and confusing it is to work in a war-zone. In fact, Cambodia in the 1970's had an extraordinary casualty rate among the press. What happened to the journalists who just disappeared, like Sean Flynn and Dana Stone? We take a look at “gonzo” photographer Tim Page’s quest to resolve their fate. It's a story of rabbit-holes within rabbit-holes.

A look at how too often, former child refugees from Cambodia are forced to join gangs to survive in the US. If they commit a felony? Then, they may get deported back to Cambodia - a country they only know through the traumatic memories of the previous generation.

My interview with friend and veteran aid-worker Andy Pendleton, about working on the Thai-Cambodian border amid the Vietnamese invasion and Cambodia's civil war in the 1980s, and how he came to know Haing Ngor.