Shows
Who Killed Haing Ngor?History is a Living Thing - Bonus EpisodeThe 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 2's bonus episode of Who Killed Haing Ngor - Patricia Nunan revisits the film through firsthand accounts, exploring how "history is a living thing."
2025-12-1536 minWho Killed Haing Ngor?The Known UnknownsHaing 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 narratives – a Khmer Rouge assassination; a murder linked to the timber mafia; the murky question of involvement by Prime Minister Hun Sen.
This episode recaps the “known unknow...
2025-11-2120 minWho Killed Haing Ngor?Timber MafiaHaing 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 sound like Ngor had it easy. But he was dogged by the same financial turbulence that characterized nearly all his efforts in Cambodia’s post-war “compass...
2025-11-1435 minWho Killed Haing Ngor?Old FriendsBeing 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 se...
2025-11-0732 minWho Killed Haing Ngor?The Story of Jason ChanJason 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.
2025-10-3120 minWho Killed Haing Ngor?Compassion FadIn 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.
2025-10-2423 min
In the Shadows of Utopia: The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian NightmareS3: Interview: Who Killed Haing Ngor? With Patricia NunanYou've seen The Killing Fields, you probably know that Haing Ngor, who played Dith Pran in the film won an oscar. You might also know that he was murdered in Los Angeles. But the version of that story you've known for years... isn't true.
Patricia Nunan, or MP, is a veteran journalist who has worked for a variety of well regarded institutions. She is now tackling the murder of Haing Ngo - completely challenging the narrative that I had assumed was completely sorted since the late 90's.
I urge you to subsribe to Who Killed Haing...
2025-10-1734 minWho Killed Haing Ngor?A Tortured Body and SoulPatricia 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.
2025-10-1732 minWho Killed Haing Ngor?The Khmer Rouge MisdirectIn 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.
2025-10-1025 minWho Killed Haing Ngor?The Crime SceneEpisode 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.
2025-10-0333 minWho Killed Haing Ngor?Season Two - IntroHaing 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.
2025-10-0308 minWho Killed Haing Ngor?Who Killed Haing Ngor - Season Two - TrailerA look ahead at Season Two of "Who Killed Haing Ngor" - currently being investigated. Stay tuned for a release date!
2024-05-1902 minWho Killed Haing Ngor?Art Imitates Life - Then Changes ItArt, 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.
2023-08-0118 minWho Killed Haing Ngor?It’s Always the Fixer...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.
2023-07-2620 minWho Killed Haing Ngor?Trauma TalkingThis 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...
2023-07-0518 minWho Killed Haing Ngor?Finding Comrade Duch - Part IIhere’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 ou...
2023-06-2618 minWho Killed Haing Ngor?Finding Comrade Duch - Part IA 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.
2023-06-2119 minWho Killed Haing Ngor?The Dissident and the DictatorI 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 phon...
2023-06-0219 minWho Killed Haing Ngor?The Oscar Winner vs the OrphanageHaing 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.
2023-05-2617 minWho Killed Haing Ngor?Journos - Part IIIThe 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.
2023-05-1120 minWho Killed Haing Ngor?Journos - Part IIA 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.
2023-05-0916 minWho Killed Haing Ngor?Journos - Part I"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.
2023-05-0513 minWho Killed Haing Ngor?From Refugees to DeporteesA 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.
2023-04-0423 minWho Killed Haing Ngor?Andy Pendleton - ”The Mayor of Bamboo City”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.
2023-03-1316 min
Who Killed Haing Ngor?Episode One - An Introduction to Who Killed Haing Ngor?An Introduction to Who Killed Haing Ngor?
2023-02-2208 min
FSRNHuman rights activists push for ISIS to face UN war crimes tribunalThe U.S.-led fight against ISIS spans multiple countries. In Iraq, the offensive in Mosul continues, and in Syria ground forces are closing in on the last of ISIS’s major urban strongholds — the city of Raqqa. If ISIS loses its territorial claims across Iraq and Syria, what comes after military action? To human rights activists the answer is a war-crimes tribunal. FSRN’s Patricia Nunan has more from New York.
For more information on this story, as well as a transcript, visit https://fsrn.org/2017/04/human-rights-activists-push-for-isis-to-face-un-war-crimes-tribunal/
2017-04-1404 min