Was the death of Haing S. Ngor a murder by a group of gangbangers? That’s the official theory of the case, and three men are doing time for his murder. However, there’s still speculation that his murder was actually a revenge hit by the Khmer Rouge.
I remember being angry and upset when I heard about the murder; that a man who had been through so much would be killed on the street by scumbags for a watch and locket enraged me. But there’s a natural human tendency to see patterns and conspiracies even where none are present; we use this as a tool to try and make sense of the world. (Stingray has a wonderful post on this at the Atomic Nerds site.) As much as I’d like to believe Ngor’s death was part of a conspiracy by the Khmer Rouge, I’d need to see more evidence than what’s in the LAT article.