The Shocking Murder and Chilling Lies Behind What Jennifer Did
Originally appeared on E! Online
When an intruder killed Bich Ha Pan and seriously wounded Huei Hann Pan in their Markham, Ontario, home, on the night of Nov. 8, 2010, their daughter Jennifer Pan called 911.
She told the dispatcher that "they were holding my parents at gunpoint" and she needed help, that "some people broke into our house and stole all this money." Asked if she could lock her door, she said she couldn't because her hands were tied.
A few days later, a detective questioned how the 24-year-old was able to make the call despite her hands being bound behind her and tied to the banister at the top of the stairs, which is where she was when officers arrived at the scene. She said she'd managed to reach the phone in her pocket and, asked to show how she did it, she gave a plausible demonstration.
Yet the maneuver didn't deter the detectives who were wondering why she hadn't been shot, too. During the interview she suggested she wasn't shot because she "cooperated." But that was just one of the loose threads investigators seized on that eventually led to her story unraveling, as detailed in the Netflix documentary What Jennifer Did.
In addition to commentary from members of law enforcement who worked the case, the production prominently features video footage of York Regional Police detectives' interviews with Jennifer, whom they at first believed to be the traumatized survivor of a deadly home invasion.
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As seen in the documentary, Jennifer was interviewed on camera three times in two weeks before being arrested for murder, attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder two weeks into the investigation.
In her third interview with police, Jennifer admitted to arranging for at least one person to come to her house—but, she said, he was supposed to kill her, and she had no idea why he went after her parents instead.
Media reports called Jennifer a "mastermind" and described the "double life" she'd allegedly been leading: On one side, the dutiful child of hard-working Vietnamese immigrants living in a quiet, family-oriented community. And on the other, a resentful young woman who wanted her parents out of the way so she could be with the pot dealer ex-boyfriend they didn't approve of.
Jennifer was convicted of first-degree murder and attempted murder in 2014—as were three others—for her role in the plot and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
But the saga continues: The murder convictions were all overturned and in 2023 the Court of Appeal for Ontario ordered new trials for Jennifer, Daniel Wong, Lenford Crawford and David Mylvaganam, all of whom originally pleaded not guilty.
The court ruled, according to the CBC, that the trial judge erred in not giving the jury the option of finding the defendants guilty of a lesser charge of second-degree murder or manslaughter. Instead, the only guilty scenarios for the jury to consider were that the plan was always to kill Jennifer's parents, or that it was supposed to be a home invasion and the couple were harmed in the course of committing that crime.
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At the same time, the appellate court rejected the appeal of their attempted murder convictions, and all four remain in prison. Another accomplice, Eric Carty, pleaded guilty back in 2015 to conspiracy to commit murder and was sentenced to 18 years in prison.
E! News has reached out to Jennifer's lawyer Stephanie DiGiuseppe for comment but did not hear back. She told TODAY.com in April that her client "maintains her innocence and she hopes to one day be exonerated through this long process. I can say that the Netflix documentary paints one side of the story and that Jennifer is very much hoping to have an opportunity to respond to that narrative—which is really the police's side of the story—at her upcoming trial."
Meanwhile, as Netflix viewers were discovering What Jennifer Did, enough so that it debuted atop the streamer's global Top 10 movies list in April, a tech writer took pause with two smiling photos of Jennifer in a red halter dress that, at a glance, simply seemed to be examples of her in happier times.
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Catching Photoshop snafus being all the rage, unsurprisingly there's now a faction of the Internet convinced the images are bogus—which, to them, calls the entire documentary's credibility into question.
Futurism's Victor Tangerman observed in an April 14 article that the images "have all the hallmarks of an AI-generated photo, down to mangled hands and fingers, misshapen facial features, morphed objects in the background, and a far-too-long front tooth."
E! News reached out to Netflix for comment on the controversy but did not hear back. Executive producer Jeremy Grimaldi has defended the production, saying the photos were edited only so much as to protect the identity of who provided them.
"Any filmmaker will use different tools, like Photoshop, in films," Grimaldi, who also authored the 2016 book A Daughter's Deadly Deception: The Jennifer Pan Story, told the Toronto Star. "The photos of Jennifer are real photos of her. The foreground is exactly her. The background has been anonymized to protect the source."
Not in question, though, is that Jennifer's mom was killed and her dad was shot and left for dead. And Jennifer admitted to police that she had orchestrated an elaborate ruse to make her parents think she was living the life they wanted for her. This is how she ended up accused of murder:
A Robbery Gone Wrong?
On Nov. 8, 2010, the last night of Bich Ha Pan's life, she ate dinner with her daughter Jennifer Pan and then went out line-dancing, as the 53-year-old did every Monday.
Bich returned to their home in Markham, Ontario (about 19 miles northeast of downtown Toronto), at around 9:30 p.m., Jennifer told a York Regional Police detective hours later, as seen in interview footage included in the Netflix documentary What Jennifer Did.
Later that night, Jennifer continued, she heard her mom calling for her dad, Huei Hann Pan, and then a man appeared upstairs and proceeded to tie Jennifer's arms behind her back, telling her he had a gun and to do what he said. He demanded she show him where the money was, she told police.
Jennifer said she was tied to the top of the banister and could hear her mom ask, as she and her husband were being led downstairs to the basement, if her daughter could go with them. The "last thing I heard them say was, 'You lied to us, you lied to us,'" Jennifer told police, "then I heard two pops. My mom screamed, I yelled out for her, then a couple more pops."
While her mother died at the scene, her 57-year-old father was taken to a nearby hospital, having survived being shot in the face near his eye. But Hann spent the earliest days of the investigation in an induced coma, according to detectives.
In the documentary, homicide investigator Det. Alan Cooke recalled worrying Hann would die, leaving Jennifer as their only witness.
The Investigation Begins
Jennifer's first interview with Det. Randy Slade of the York Regional Police Homicide Unit took place in the early morning hours of Nov. 9.
The detective asked Jennifer how the suspects got in. She said, "I don't know."
Footage from a neighbor's security system showed three suspects entering the Pans' house through the front door on the night of the attack. One was seen leaving the house quickly 30 minutes later, with the other two running out a short time after.
Who Would Want to Hurt Jennifer's Parents?
Talking to the detective, Jennifer described her parents' economic situation as having at least enough money in the bank to pay bills. According to Det. Bill Courtice, the lead investigator on the case, Bich had been a supervisor at a car part company, where her husband was also employed as a machinist. Det. Deborah Gladding, a victim liaison officer, noted in the Netflix doc that the family's home was paid off.
Jennifer told York that her dad "drives a Mercedes and he loves that baby," while her mom drove a Lexus.
In the doc, detectives recalled wondering early on if the attack was maybe related to gambling or drugs, or a dispute with a neighbor. Against crime scene photos showing a blood-smeared couch in the Pans' house, they said that valuables including a watch, a wallet containing a number of $20 bills and a safe were untouched.
Family friend Hong Ngo described Hann in the film as "a humble, down-to-earth man," and both he and Bich were "hospitable, very generous people who loved their friends."
Hann worked five days a week, plus overtime, she said, and "certainly isn't involved in the Mafia or gambling or drinking."
The Picture Starts to Come Into Focus
Within a couple of days, investigators found out that Jennifer had been in a relationship with Daniel Wong, who'd been arrested previously for marijuana possession and trafficking. (He told police in an on-camera interview excerpted in the doc that he "stopped" after he got in trouble and "didn't really do anything else.")
He told police at the time that he was Jennifer's ex-boyfriend and that, while they dated for years starting toward the end of high school, he had never been invited to sit down formally with her parents for dinner or any other significant interaction. He said he guessed that they didn't approve of him because he didn't make much money managing a pizza place.
Eventually, he continued, he told Jennifer, "'Your parents don't want us to be together and there's nothing I can do about it.'" They broke up, he said, and he had moved on with another girlfriend.
But, Daniel continued, he and Jennifer were still in touch—and before the attack on her parents they were both being harassed, first by anonymous hang-up calls and then texts saying things like, "We're watching you." According to Daniel, the last ominous text he got read, "bang bang bang."
Jennifer Admits She Was Living a Lie
In her second police interview shown in the doc, Jennifer was confronted with information she hadn't offered during the first sit-down, including her relationship with Daniel. She acknowledged dating him for six years in secret because her parents didn't approve.
They did finally find out she had a boyfriend, Jennifer said, and her dad gave her an ultimatum, to choose Daniel or them.
"I chose to stay home with my family," she said. But they stayed friends, and when she was caught talking on the phone with him, they took away her cell and started driving her everywhere.
Jennifer, an accomplished pianist, told the detective she had wanted to study kinesiology after high school, but her father insisted she do something "more successful" in the medical field, like be a pharmacist.
She didn't get into college, she continued, but kept that from her parents. Instead, her mom drove her every day into Toronto to drop her off, thinking she was going to Ryerson University for her bachelor of science, and she forged financial aid forms and report cards to keep up the ruse.
She felt guilty, she said, but every time she almost came clean, "there was just so much expectation."
After four years, she made a fake diploma celebrating her B.S. from the University of Toronto.
It ultimately came out that she did not graduate from college, Jennifer told the detective, though she told them she did go for two years but dropped out, after which they wanted her to pay back the money they thought had been going toward tuition.
Still, she said, "at the end of the day I love my parents and I chose to be with them." She denied engaging in any illegal activity.
The Story Falls Apart
But then Jennifer's father woke up from his coma.
Courtice and field investigator Det. David MacDonald recalled their shock—"You've got to be f--king kidding me," were Courtice's words—when Hann told police that, while he was being pistol-whipped and his wife was begging for her life, he saw his daughter, her hands not tied, coming down the stairs talking to one of the other intruders.
Hann said that his wife's last words were a plea for the intruders to not hurt her daughter.
"At this point," Courtice said in the film, "I'm absolutely convinced she's involved in the murder of her mother and the attempted murder of her father."
Jennifer Becomes a Suspect
In her third on-camera interview with investigators, as seen in the doc, Jennifer said that she "wanted it to stop," but didn't know what to do.
"They were only supposed to take me," she said. "I needed them to kill me…I didn't want to live anymore."
She said she had agreed to pay someone she only knew as "Homeboy" $2,000 and arranged to unlock the door so he could get into the house.
A dive into Jennifer's text messages showed, according to detectives, that Daniel was also involved. A text shown in the doc read, "call it off with homeboy? u said you wanted this with or without me. u said u wanted this for u."
The detectives explained that they were ultimately able to identify "homeboy" as Lenford Crawford, as well as identify two other suspects as Eric Carty and David Mylvaganam.
Calling the plot "evil," Courtice said in the doc they concluded that, on the night of the attack, Jennifer got a text from Homeboy, she waited till her mom came back from dancing, went down to say goodnight and unlocked the door, "effectively leaving her parents as prey."
She continued to text with the suspects, the detective continued, and then turned her bedroom lights on and off, signaling for them to come in.
Jennifer was arrested Nov. 22, 2010, on suspicion of murder, attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
Announcing the charges at a news conference the next day, police initially did not say whether she knew the other suspects they were looking for.
The Defendants Go to Trial
Jennifer, Daniel, Lenford, Eric and David all pleaded not guilty and went to trial in 2014 on charges of first-degree murder and attempted murder.
During the trial, per the CBC, Jennifer testified that she did at first plot to have her dad killed, but then reconsidered after she "realized how real it was" and then—distressed over the "complicated" lies she'd been telling and fearful of bringing shame upon her family—wanted to change the plan so that she'd be killed instead.
Her father Hann testified that he woke up on the night of Nov. 8, 2010, to a gun pointed at his face. He told the court that he witnessed one of the intruders talking to his daughter and he never saw her tied up.
"I could not hear what was being said but they were speaking softly," Hann said.
He also corroborated Jennifer's account of a big rift in the family over her relationship. "I was very upset because all our effort was to help her attend school and she was not," Hann testified. "I told her to cease the relationship with Danny Wong or wait until I'm dead."
Attorneys for Daniel and Lenford argued during the trial that their clients were not at the Pans' house when the attack occurred and that there wasn't sufficient evidence tying them to any murder plot. David admitted during the trial that he went to the house but denied that he ever went inside and said he did not shoot anyone.
A mistrial was declared for Eric midway through the 10-month trial after his attorney fell ill, the CBC reported at the time. The other four were convicted of first-degree murder and attempted murder and subsequently sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
Jennifer's attorney Paul Cooper told the CBC his client was "devastated" and would appeal the verdict, saying, "This whole event is a tragedy for her whole family, including herself." Daniel's lawyer Laurence Cohen told the Toronto Sun he was "shocked" and they would "definitely" appeal.
In December 2015, Eric—who was already serving a 25-year prison sentence for an unrelated 2009 murder—pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and was sentenced to 18 years in prison, to be served concurrently.
While he maintained he never went into the Pans' home, Eric confessed to Justice Michelle Fuerst that he conspired with Jennifer and the others to plan the killing of her parents, recruited David for the job and drove everyone to the house, according to the Markham Economist & Sun.
The Saga Continues With a Major Twist
In May 2023, the Court of Appeal for Ontario threw out all the first-degree murder convictions and ordered new trials for Jennifer, Lenford, Daniel and David.
In their ruling, the justices agreed with the defendants' argument that the jury should have been allowed to consider convicting on lesser charges of second-degree murder and manslaughter, in addition to the severest charge.
"It's a very important day," Jennifer's attorney Stephanie DiGiuseppe told CBC News afterward. "Her fight is not over."
Appeals on the convictions for attempted murder were dismissed and the defendants all remain in prison while they await new murder trials.
![<p>Meanwhile, DiGiuseppe told <a href="https://www.today.com/popculture/tv/jennifer-pan-jennifer-now-rcna147646" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank" data-ylk="slk:TODAY.com;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas" class="link ">TODAY.com</a> in April that the proceedings are ongoing because prosecutors appealed the appellate panel's decision—and Jennifer and her fellow defendants have all cross-appealed the attempt to further uphold the murder convictions.</p> <p>"What happened after that was that the crown—which is like the district attorney in Canada—appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada," the attorney explained.</p> <p>Ultimately, she continued, it was a question of fairness. "The result conceivably could be that [Jennifer is] acquitted in the death of her mother" but still considered guilty of trying to kill her father, the lawyer said, "which would be irreconcilable results. And we just leave the public always wondering what really happened in this case without any sense of resolution."</p> <p>She said they were looking at "probably late 2024 or early 2025" for a hearing in the Supreme Court of Canada. </p>](https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/LKygHZ_TmnR49Eqw_nnQpA--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTk2MDtoPTYxMw--/https://media.zenfs.com/en/e__181/830a1155781c6065f1a7c6c40b471e7f)
Meanwhile, DiGiuseppe told TODAY.com in April that the proceedings are ongoing because prosecutors appealed the appellate panel's decision—and Jennifer and her fellow defendants have all cross-appealed the attempt to further uphold the murder convictions.
"What happened after that was that the crown—which is like the district attorney in Canada—appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada," the attorney explained.
Ultimately, she continued, it was a question of fairness. "The result conceivably could be that [Jennifer is] acquitted in the death of her mother" but still considered guilty of trying to kill her father, the lawyer said, "which would be irreconcilable results. And we just leave the public always wondering what really happened in this case without any sense of resolution."
She said they were looking at "probably late 2024 or early 2025" for a hearing in the Supreme Court of Canada.
