This podcast details true crime cases.

It contains adult themes and may contain descriptions of violence.

It is not intended for children.

Listener discretion is advised.

Thank you for joining me for today's episode of Once Upon a Crime.

We're in the series Academy Award-winning crimes.

Today's story is an unlikely one.

A man suffers horrible deprivation and torture,

as do many of his family members, friends and colleagues,

during the Cambodian genocide, and somehow managed to escape to America.

Not long after arriving, he is cast in a film,

and never having acted before, is nominated for an Academy Award.

This is the story of the Killing Fields of Cambodia and Dr. Heng S. Nor.

On February 25, 1996, shots rang out on the 900 block of North Bodry Boulevard, a working-class

neighborhood in Los Angeles. North Bodry is flanked by the border of the Chinatown

District to the south and Dodger Stadium to the east. Like many neighborhoods in central Los

Angeles, the street was located on a slope. From the top of North Bodry,

you could see the high-rise buildings and the lights of downtown Los Angeles. It was a Sunday night,

clear and getting cold, now that the sun was down. A slight dark-haired man had just driven

into the carport of his apartment building and was emerging from his gold-colored

Mercedes to walk the few feet to the door of his two-bedroom flat when he was accosted. What transpired

is a mystery, but what is known is that within moments he had been shot in the chest. When police and

...