Who Killed Haing Ngor?

Three-quarters (or so) of the way through Season 3, the Haing Ngor investigation has gotten complicated. In this episode, Patricia Nunan reviews the path so far:  Cambodia, Taiwan, the film industry, debt, threats, banks, money-laundering, the “Singapore Group,” and the political climate. Nearly all of these are leads the LAPD overlooked… or blew off. It’s a recap. The investigation is still unfol...

Patricia Nunan returns to Phnom Penh to follow the Cambodia side of the Haing Ngor story — the places he lived, the people who remember him, and the circles he moved through in the years before his death. The reporting examines fragments: a former home, a school built on land Ngor once owned, and traces of the business and social world he moved through in the 1990s. Nunan set out to find people  –...

Our main suspect in the Haing Ngor murder – “Larry” – represented a “Singapore group.” That’s according to an interview that Ngor’s secretary gave to the LAPD. So who were they? In this episode, Patricia Nunan and Frank follow that lead through Singapore's corporate records, interviews with former FBI financial-crimes investigators, and a maze of companies that raise more questions than answers. S...

In 1995, Haing Ngor tried to sell a license to open a bank in Cambodia. When the deal collapsed, police records say the buyer, “Larry,” threatened to kill him. That single detail sends Who Killed Haing Ngor? into one of another corner of post-war Cambodia: a banking system flooded with corruption and increasingly, organized crime. In this episode, Patricia Nunan traces how Cambodia went from aboli...

Another dimension to Haing Ngor’s life that went ignored by authorities in Los Angeles?  His decision to go into politics.  In the weeks before his death, Ngor told friend that he had been asked to run for high office. But he got out of it, because “it would get him killed.”  And  in Cambodia – the weeks surrounding Ngor’s death were especially volatile. Ngor may have been trying to right a wrong...

A Taiwanese triad  - the Bamboo Union - carried out the assassination of Henry Liu in California. Was that a precedent that could explain the murder of Haing Ngor?  That’s the question what Patricia Nunan went to Taipei to explore. But Ngor wasn’t just doing business in Cambodia. He was an actor – active in in the Hong Kong and Taiwanese film industries. The movie business was deeply entangled wit...

In 1996, a Taiwanese hitman moves to Cambodia. His triad, the Bamboo Union, was already on the ground — loan-sharking, moving money, and running protection rackets with corrupt officials. Those networks didn’t disappear. They metastasized. Today, they sit inside a cyber-scam economy worth billions — built on fraud, coercion, and trafficked workers. So can today’s triad members shed light on what w...

In the last episode, we introduced the assassination of Henry Liu — a Taiwanese-American journalist killed in California in 1984 by members of the Bamboo Union. The killing had some similarities to the murder of Haing Ngor. In this episode, Patricia Nunan travels to Taipei to find out if that case can reveal any new truths about the Ngor killing.  After all, if a triad had the reach to carry out a...

Patricia Nunan begins to explore the question of which triad or organized crime syndicate had the capacity to carry out a killing in the United States. That search leads to another case: the 1984 assassination of Taiwanese-American journalist Henry Liu, carried out by members of the Bamboo Union — a powerful triad with a history of transnational violence. The parallels are circumstantial but also ...

The Man We Call “Larry” Welcome to the launch of season three of Who Killed Haing Ngor. This season, we dive deeper into a key question:  If Haing Ngor was killed in Los Angeles, because of something that happened in Cambodia — then who had the reach to do that?  The answer is a triad – a transnational organized criminal group. Enter “Larry.” He was a business partner of Ngor’s. When a deal over a...

The Killing Fields is often described as a film that changed history. In Cambodia, it served a more practical purpose. Before modern international courts, commissions of inquiry, or formal human-rights mechanisms were in place, the film became one of the few ways a devastated country could convey what had happened — and why the Khmer Rouge could not be allowed to return to power. In this - season...

Haing Ngor’s life reads like a Greek tragedy — promise, loss, survival, and a final act no one can quite explain. People who knew him describe a man split between warmth and arrogance, humanitarian impulses and anger.  Plus there was his untreated trauma. LAPD claimed Ngor’s murder was a robbery gone wrong. But nearly every part of that narrative collapses under scrutiny.  So do the other narrativ...

Haing Ngor was a doctor – launched into an unlikely career as an actor and activist. When Cambodia opened up in the early 1990’s, he decided he was also a businessman.  He bought a saw mill – an investment in forestry: one of the most dangerous economic sectors there is, run by the “timber mafia.”  Top players in that mafia? Ngor’s own brother, Chan Sarun, and Prime Minister Hun Sen.  That may sou...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 ha...

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 invo...

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 conspi...

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...