Ontario court orders new murder trial for Jennifer Pan convicted in plot to kill parents
May 20, 2023

Ontario’s top court has ordered a new first-degree murder trial for a Toronto-area woman who was convicted in a murder-for-hire plot against her parents.

Jennifer Pan, then 28, was sentenced in 2015 to life in prison with no parole for 25 years for first-degree murder, and life for attempted murder in a 2010 attack at the Pan family home in Markham, Ont., that left her mother dead and her father with a critical head wound.

Her three co-accused — her on-again, off-again boyfriend Daniel Wong, Lenford Crawford and David Mylvaganam — were convicted on the same charges.

Pan and the three men appealed and the Court of Appeal for Ontario ordered new trials Friday for the first-degree murder convictions.

The trial judge erred by suggesting to the jury only two plausible scenarios for the attack – one in which the plan was to murder both parents and another in which the plan was to commit a home invasion and the parents were shot in the course of the robbery, the court said.

But the trial judge should have given the jury second-degree murder and manslaughter as other possible verdicts in the death of Pan’s mother, the Appeal Court said.

“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 said in its decision.

“This could give rise to a conviction for second-degree murder.”

The jury could have also doubted there was a plan to kill Pan’s mother, but concluded there was a reasonably foreseeable risk of harming her with the plan to kill Pan’s father, which would lead to a manslaughter conviction, the court wrote.

Prosecutors said during trial that neither Wong nor Crawford were at the Pan home that night, but acted as middle-men for her and the men who carried out the killing. Another man whose case proceeded separately pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and was sentenced to 18 years.

The Crown said Pan started plotting her parents’ murder after they forced her to choose between them and Wong, who dealt marijuana and managed a Boston Pizza.

The ultimatum came after the Pans discovered much of what their daughter had told them over the past decade was a lie. She had never graduated high school, graduated from university with a pharmacy degree, volunteered at the Hospital for Sick Children, nor was she working at a Walmart pharmacy, the Appeal Court said.

Pan decided to move back home, but testified that she had a poor relationship with her father, who was the “rule maker” of the household, while she was closer with her mother.

The court dismissed the appeals on the attempted murder convictions.

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Tragedy of Toronto’s murderous ‘golden child’ Jennifer Pan resonates with Asian immigrants
She convinced her parents she was a straight-A high school and college graduate – but when they discovered her lies, she hired hitmen to kill them
29 Jul, 2015

For a while, Jennifer Pan’s parents regarded her as their “golden child”.

The young Canadian woman, who lived in the city of Markham just north of Toronto, was a straight-A student at a Catholic school who won scholarships and early acceptance to college. True to her father’s wishes, she graduated from the University of Toronto’s prestigious pharmacology programme and went on to work at a blood-testing lab at SickKids hospital.

Pan’s accomplishments used to make her mother and father, Bich Ha and Huei Hann Pan, brim with pride. After all, they had arrived in Toronto as refugees from Vietnam, working as labourers for an car parts manufacturer so their two kids could have the bright future that they couldn’t attain for themselves.

But in Pan’s case, that perfect fate was all an elaborate lie. Pan, born in 1986, failed to graduate from high school, let alone the University of Toronto, as she had told her parents.

Her deception culminated in bloodshed – the murder of her mother, and the attempted killing of her father.

Her trial, for plotting with hit men to kill her parents, ended in January, and she’s serving a long sentence. But the full story of this troubled young woman is just now being told as a complete and powerful narrative by someone who knew her.

In a story published in Toronto Life magazine last week, young reporter Karen Ho detailed the intricate web of deception that her high school classmate at Mary Ward Catholic Secondary School in north Scarborough spun to prevent her parents from discovering the unimaginable: that their golden child was, in fact, failing.

Using court documents and interviews, Ho pieced together Pan’s descent from a precocious elementary schooler to a chronic liar who forged report cards, scholarship letters and university transcripts — all to preserve an image of perfection. The headline: “Jennifer Pan’s Revenge: the inside story of a golden child, the killers she hired, and the parents she wanted dead.”

Their high school, Ho wrote, “was the perfect community for a student like Jennifer. A social butterfly with an easy, high-pitched laugh, she mixed with guys, girls, Asians, Caucasians, jocks, nerds, people deep into the arts. Outside of school, Jennifer swam and practiced the martial art of wushu.”

But Ho would “discover later that Jennifer’s friendly, confident persona was a facade, beneath which she was tormented by feelings of inadequacy, self-doubt and shame”.

The real Jennifer never enrolled in university. She never graduated from high school.

Instead of heading to the University of Toronto, Jennifer would go to public libraries for the day.

Years later, it was time to “graduate”. When it came time for the ceremony, Pan told her parents there weren’t enough tickets to go around and they could not attend.

Ultimately, Ho wrote, Pan’s parents got suspicious, began tailing her and learned the truth.

When Pan’s parents learned that all of their efforts had been for naught, they placed tight restrictions on their now-adult daughter. No more cellphone. No more laptop. No more clandestine dates with her boyfriend, Daniel Wong.

While she eventually gained more freedom, Pan stayed angry. And so, with Wong’s help, she plotted to kill her parents.

The scene described in the trial is gruesome. In November 2010, in a planned murder disguised to look like a robbery gone awry, Pan played the part of helpless witness as hired hit men fatally shot her mother and severely wounded her father. She called 911, distraught, to bolster the illusion of a home invasion.

But police officers investigating the case caught on within a couple weeks. This lie — that an immigrant couple was shot by random burglars and not through the will of their daughter — would have to be Pan’s last.

This January, an Ontario court found Pan, Wong and two of the hit-men guilty of first-degree murder and attempted murder. They were all handed life sentences with no chance of parole for 25 years. A third man, who has pleaded not guilty, will be tried separately.

Since it was published last Wednesday, the Toronto Life article has struck a powerful chord with Asian immigrant children in Canada and the United States who have taken to social media to share tales of childhoods characterised by high expectations and the crippling fear associated with not meeting them.

But it’s a mistake to take one case and generalise or stereotype, noted Jennifer Lee, a sociology professor at the University of California Irvine who specialises in Asian-American life in America. And she said, it would be a mistake to attribute Pan’s troubles to “tiger parenting”.

Pan’s story is an extreme case. “It’s so easy to blame immigrant parents,” said Lee, who co-authored the recently released book The Asian American Achievement Paradox. “The danger of highlighting cases like Jennifer’s is that they contribute to a misconception that all Asian-American kids experience this extreme pressure and are mentally unstable.”

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Jennifer Pan describes complicated lies she told her parents
August 19, 2014

A woman accused in the killing of her mother and attempted murder of father during an apparent home robbery in November 2010 testified at her trial on Tuesday, describing to the court the complicated lies she told her parents.

Jennifer Pan told the court she had once planned to have her father, Huei Hann Pan, killed.

She said she paid a man $1,300 to “shoot him dead” but claimed to have backed out of the plan. Pan told the court she then attempted to commit suicide.

She said her teenage years were difficult and that her parents had high expectations for her. She said she began forging her report cards in Grade 9, lied about graduating high school and attending university, and even faked her diploma.

“I didn’t want my parents to be ashamed of me,” she said.

Pan even lied about her romantic relationship, keeping her boyfriend Daniel Wong a secret from her parents. But when her complicated lies began unravelling, Pan’s father forbade her to see Wong.

Pan and four others, including her boyfriend, are charged with first-degree murder and attempted murder after an apparent home invasion in Markham, Ont. Pan’s mother, Bieh Ha Pan, 53, was shot dead. Her father was shot in the face but survived his injuries.

Pan was at home at the time of the alleged staged home invasion. According to Pan’s lawyer, Paul Copper, she did not know the attack was going to happen.

“November 8th was never supposed to happen,” he told the court.

Pan’s testimony is expected to continue for the several days.

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Court shown video of agitated Jennifer Pan
April 16, 2014

A fascinating new interrogation video has been released into evidence in the Jennifer Pan trial.

The four-hour police interview, which took place only days after the murder of her mother, Bich Ha Pan, shows Ms Pan sitting in a York police interview room being questioned by Det.-Sgt. Randy Slade.

In parts, a sobbing Ms Pan, often with her hand on her chest, denies telling the investigator any lies during the interrogation about what happened on the night of the Nov. 8, 2010 murder and during its lead up.

Ms Pan and her four co-accused, including her former boyfriend, Daniel Wong, have been charged in the murder and the attempted murder of her father, Hann Pan. The Crown alleges that Ms Pan cooked up a fake home invasion plot after she was caught out on a number of lies she was telling those close to her about attending university, working at a pharmacy and volunteering at Sick Kids.

It is alleged that she was to be tied up during the robbery to make it look like she played no part in the incident only to live off her parents’ almost $1 million fortune when they were gone.

The plan went awry, however, when Mr. Pan survived and contradicted Ms Pan’s version of events, the Crown said.

During the video interview, Det.-Sgt. Slade asked Ms Pan to explain what happened that fateful night a number of times, even, at one point, asking her to tell the story backward.

Despite her insistence, there are inconsistencies, including one version where she was told to kneel by the intruders and another time she was asked to sit cross-legged.

At one point, Det.-Sgt. Slade also asked about how much money Ms Pan could receive if her parents ever died.

“What about life insurance policies. Do your parents have life insurance policies?”

To this, she replies: “I … I think … I don’t know.”

Another question is put to Ms Pan about whether there was any lasting anger about her being asked to break up with Mr. Wong by her parents after she was caught living at his home.

Det.-Sgt. Slade said: “It’s an obvious one, the resentment that you may have had toward your parents for the interference in your relationship and your life and, essentially, locking you down in your house.”

To this, she replied: “At the end of the day I love my parents and I chose to be with them and if I wanted to I could have just left, but I didn’t, I wanted to stay with them.”

Det.-Sgt. Slade then asked: “So, this wasn’t some evil plot that you thought up to …”

“Oh my God, no,” she interjected.

After the detective leaves the room, Ms Pan is seen pacing, rocking back and forth and covering her face with her hands.