The Academy Award winning star of The Killing Fields, Haing Ngor, was gunned down outside his apartment in Los Angeles in 1996. Ngor’s performance in the 1984 film exposed the brutality of Cambodia’s genocidal Khmer Rouge regime of the 1970’s, that he too had survived.

LA authorities called the killing a robbery gone wrong, and convicted three “usual suspect” Asian gang members. At the trial, Ngor was depicted as a saint - a tragic hero, who suffered the ultimate irony of surviving the Khmer Rouge only to be murdered in LA.

Others said Ngor’s death was an assassination by Khmer Rouge – igniting a conspiracy theory that some still believe.

Neither narrative is true. Ngor had gone back to a Cambodia in the midst of United Nations peacekeeping mission - and the massive compassion fad it generated. It was a lawless scene awash in vulture capitalists and “grassroots” organized crime. Bad with money, it’s far more likely that Ngor got himself into trouble.

Even after decades in jail, one of those gang members wrongfully convicted in the Ngor case remains in legal jeopardy: he now faces possible deportation by ICE. It’s time for some justice. It’s time to uncover the true story of Haing Ngor.