General Sosthene Fernandez. On 8 April 1975, he attempted unsuccessfully to negotiate a peace settlement in Bangkok with representatives of the Khmer Rouge. Arrest and execution Long Boret remained in office until the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh on 17 April 1975. US Ambassador John Gunther Dean recalls that, unlike many government officials who fled Phnom Penh, Long chose to remain behind despite being on a death list announced from Beijing by Norodom Sihanouk: Long Boret refused to be evacuated. He was a competent, able man, much younger than Lon Nol or Sirik Matak. When I personally went to see him on April 12, the very morning of our evacuation, to ask him to take his wife and himself and his young children out of Phnom Penh because I feared for his safety, he thanked me but [said he] thought his life was not in danger. General Sak Sutsakhan recalled that on the morning of 17 April Long decided to take his family and leave the city. Both General Sak and the journalist Jon Swain reported that Long and his family were unable to board the last helicopter flying out of the city. In his memoir, Danger Zones, Ambassador Dean stated that: Long Boret had stayed in Cambodia, thinking that he could have some kind of dialogue with the Khmer Rouge. When he realized that that was impossible, he raced to the airport with his family in a jeep to try and get out of the country. When they arrived at the airport, they got on a helicopter with some military officers. One officer brutally shoved him off the helicopter. The copter took off. The Khmer Rouge captured Long Boret and his wife and killed them all. Boret’s son managed to escaped and is now alive. Long Boret was last seen by Jon Swain, Sydney Schanberg and Dith Pran outside the French Embassy. Swain reported: ...a black Citroën pulled up and Long Boret got out, his eyes puffy and red, his face empty of expression. When we asked him how he was, he muttered a short, incoherent sentence. His thoughts were elsewhere. Dazed, legs wobbling, he surrendered to the Khmer Rouge and joined the line of prisoners. I could not fail to admire his courage. Schanberg gave a more detailed description of the scene: Long Boret arrives in a car driven by his wife...he looks wretched. His eyes are puffed.