EPISODE ONE
AN INTRODUCTION TO SEASON TWO
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.
EPISODE FOUR
A TORTURED BODY AND SOUL
Patricia Nunan sits down with writer 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.
EPISODE SEVEN
OLD FRIENDS
Being a movie star allowed Haing Ngor to make new friends - and to connect with some 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.
EPISODE EIGHT
TIMBER MAFIA
COMING: NOVEMBER 14, 2025
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 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 “compassion fad” economy.
Was it nostalgia? Naïveté? Or did Ngor think he had what it takes to swim with the sharks?
EPISODE 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.
EPISODE FIVE
COMPASSION FAD
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.
Scroll down to “The Crime Scene and Trial”
EPISODE THREE
THE KHMER ROUGE MISDIRECT
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 SIX
THE STORY OF JASON CHAN
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 text conversation with Chan, that lasted nearly two years.