A DAUGHTER who callously orchestrated a murder-for-hire plot to assassinate her parents is an enigma who slowly descended into madness under the weight of her own lies, an ex-reporter who covered her trial says.
Jennifer Pan was convicted in 2015 of masterminding the murder of her mother, Bich Ha Pan, and the attempted murder of her father, Huei Hann Pan, who were both blindfolded, bound, and shot inside their Markham, Ontario home, in November 2010.
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It was Jennifer, then 24, who first alerted police to the shooting, hysterically crying to a dispatcher that her home had been stormed by armed intruders, urging them to “please send help.”
By the time officers arrived, Bich was already dead but remarkably her father was still clinging to life despite having been shot in the face at close range.
A severely wounded Huei Hann was rushed to the hospital and placed into a medically-induced coma.
Meanwhile, a distressed and seemingly grief-stricken Jennifer was treated with sympathy by investigators as they attempted to make sense of the senseless-seeming crime, which at the surface appeared to be a burglary gone awry – but nothing of value seemed to be missing from the Pan home.
News of the frightening ordeal made headlines nationwide and sent waves of panic rippling across Ontario.
But within 72 hours, the direction of the investigation would take a shocking turn.
Jennifer’s father miraculously awoke from his coma and told police to “find out what Jennifer did.”
Huei Hann told investigators he remembered seeing his daughter talking to one of the intruders “like a friend” before he and his wife were shot.
Police would soon learn that – despite her tearful denials – Jennifer had hired three hitmen to kill her strict Vietnamese immigrant parents with the promise of a $10,000 check that would be cut from her inheritance.
The gunmen – Lenford Crawford, Eric Carty, and David Mylvaganam – had been introduced to Jennifer by her pot-dealing boyfriend, Daniel Wong, whom Bich and Huei had forbidden Jennifer from seeing.
It would also be discovered that Jennifer had been spinning an elaborate web of lies for years and was not at all who she claimed to be.
Under mounting pressure from police, Jennifer would later admit to hiring the gunmen but claimed she had instructed them to kill her, not her parents, having apparently grown tired of living.
Jennifer, Daniel Wong, and the three gunmen were all later convicted of first-degree murder and attempted murder.
Jennifer’s trial lasted 10 months, one of the longest in Canada’s history.
She was handed a sentence of 25 to life but her case is currently in appeal.
Jeremy Grimaldi, a former crime reporter who covered the entirety of Jennifer’s trial and later wrote a book about the case, called the Pan family saga “the craziest true crime story of all time” in an interview with The U.S. Sun.
Grimaldi spent the better part of a decade reporting on Jennifer and recently served as an executive producer on a new Netflix documentary chronicling the case, What Jennifer Did, which aired on the streaming platform on April 10.
We don’t know what happened in that household, the only people that know are Jennifer, her father, and maybe her brother.
Jeremy Grimaldi
But in all that time, Grimaldi said he’s never managed to pin down who Jennifer truly is – and why she wanted her parents dead.
“I would say the most shocking thing for me [about this case] … is the descent into what I’d almost call madness,” he said.
“This descent from a straight-A student who had plans to go to the Olympics for figure skating, who was in the Royal Conservatory [of Music], and who had won musical competitions since a very young age, how do you go from that to this?
“Everyone would dream of a daughter who had some of the traits Jennifer had, and to go from that to a killer – or at least allegedly conspire to kill – is just one of the most shocking things I’ve ever seen.”
Grimaldi added, “I don’t know when, but something went terribly wrong for the family.
“The dichotomy between the two Jennifers is the most shocking detail of all.”
WEB OF LIES
For much of her adolescence, Jennifer was viewed by her parents – who immigrated from Vietnam to Canada – as their golden child.
She was a straight-A student at a Catholic school who won scholarships and secured early acceptance to college.
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Just as her father had always dreamed, Jennifer also went on to graduate from the University of Toronto’s prestigious pharmacology program and later began working for a blood-testing lab at a children’s hospital.
Or, at least, that’s what Jennifer had them believe.
In reality, Jennifer flunked out of high school and was never a student at UT. She spent years forging report cards and exam results to sell her lies.
On the days she told her parents she was attending lectures at university, she would actually go to a local public library and take notes on topics she thought she would be learning and hang out at Daniel Wong’s house.
Jennifer kept the ruse up for years.
Her web of lies eventually came crashing down after her father tailed her to work one morning only to discover she didn’t work at a hospital as she claimed.
Jennifer’s parents confronted her about her lies and she confessed that she’d never attended the University of Toronto and had been secretly living with Wong.
They initially banished their daughter from their home but Jennifer’s mom eventually convinced her father to let her stay so long as she abided by their strict rules, which included cutting contact with Wong and no use of a cell phone or computer without supervision.
Forbidden from seeing her boyfriend, Jennifer and Wong’s relationship fell apart and he started seeing someone new.
Jennifer grew resentful and eventually schemed to have her parents murdered.
‘TIGER PARENTS’
In an article published in Toronto Life in 2015, one of Jennifer’s high school classmates, Karen Ho, described Bich Ha and Huei Hann as classic “tiger parents” who were strict on authority and banned Jennifer from having a social life growing up.
Jennifer would later tell investigators she’d called a hit out on herself because she was so miserable at home, with her parents’ high expectations pushing her over the edge, even leading her to self-harm.
“I needed them to kill me – I didn’t want to live anymore,” she told police. “I didn’t want to be here anymore because I was such a disappointment.”
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In her article, Karen Ho reported that Jennifer’s downward spiral began when she was “snubbed” for valedictorian of her class in eighth grade.
Her interest in academics plummeted therein and so she began lying to her parents, fearful of how they may react to her shortcomings.
All the while, Jennifer grew more resentful of her parents because of the regular teenage life they were forcing her to miss out on.
“By the age of 22, she had never gone to a club, been drunk, visited a friend’s cottage, or gone on vacation without her family,” wrote Ho.
“Presumably their overprotectiveness was born of love and concern. To Jennifer and her friends, however, it was tyranny.
“I discovered that Jennifer’s friendly, confident persona was a façade, beneath which she was tormented by feelings of inadequacy, self-doubt and shame.”
LINGERING QUESTIONS
Jeremy Grimaldi said the truth of what life was really like growing up inside the Pan family home will likely remain a secret.
He also said he’s unsure how much of an impact Bich Ha and Huei Hann’s tiger parenting had on Jennifer’s apparent descension into madness.
“We don’t know what happened in that household, the only people that know are Jennifer, her father, and maybe her brother,” said Grimaldi.
“In the documentary, we did our best to let Jennifer tell the story of her life but she’s not a reliable narrator, so we don’t know what happened, other than what she said to police about not being allowed to go to birthday parties or on play dates.
“Jennifer’s an enigma,” he added. “It’s very hard to get to the core of who she is, because, firstly, Jennifer has never spoken publicly about the matter, and second of all, she’s a liar.
“She’s been caught in countless lies, by her family, by the courts, by the police, and so even if she did grant us an interview [which she didn’t], we never really knew what we’d get out of her.
“And that’s what makes Jennifer such a fascinating case study, because you never really know why she did it; was it for her boyfriend? Was it for insurance money? Did she do it because of the shame of being with a boy her parents didn’t approve of? Did she do it to save face?
“This is why I always ask for feedback when people read the book, and when the documentary comes out, to tell me what they think because I’m still looking for clues myself.
“And I think it’s going to be a life’s journey figuring it out, to be honest.”
CONVICTION OVERTURNED
Last May, the Ontario Court of Appeal granted Jennifer and three of her co-accused a new trial, suggesting the presiding judge failed to present all available options to the jury, including the chance to convict on second-degree murder and manslaughter charges in the death of Bich Ha.
Instead, the judge presented only two possibilities: that Bich Ha was killed as a result of a deliberate plan, or that the home invasion was planned and Bich Ha was shot during a robbery.
“The jury might have had a doubt about the planned and deliberate murder of Pan’s mother but be satisfied that the appellants knew that the murder of Pan’s mother was a probable consequence of a plan to kill her father,” the court wrote in its decision.
“This could give rise to a conviction for second-degree murder.”
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In the same decision, the court denied Pan’s appeal on the life sentence she received for the attempted murder of her father.
Prosecutors challenged the Court of Appeal’s verdict and the case is now being considered by the Supreme Court of Canada.
A request for comment left with Jennifer’s lawyers has not yet been returned.
Reacting to the successful appeal in May 2023, Stephanie DiGiuseppe, one of the lawyers who represented Jennifer, called it a “very important day.”
“Her fight is not over,” added DiGiuseppe, who called the decision a landmark moment in Jennifer’s push to exonerate herself.
Grimaldi said he’s unsure how Jennifer’s appeal will pan out.
But as ever with this case, he says he will continue to expect the unexpected.
“It will be interesting to see if there will be a new trial or whether they’ll just wash their hands of it,” he said.
“Either way, the saga continues and at the heart of it all is Jennifer and the tragedy that surrounds her life.”
What Jennifer Did is now streaming on Netflix.
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