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 2's bonus episode of Who Killed Haing Ngor - Patricia Nunan revisits the film through firsthand accounts, exploring how "history is a living thing."

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 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 unknowns” - the unanswered questions that shape the last years of Ngor’s life.

This is the last episode of season 2’s investigative arc. From eliminating known suspects, we’ll pivot to advancing the investigation.

Season 3 will be out in early 2026.

*** A BONUS EPISODE WILL DROP IN DECEMBER 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?