Criminology - Jennifer Pan

Episode Date: May 19, 2024

On November 8th, 2010, 60-year-old Huei Hann Pan woke up suddenly startled in the middle of the night in his bed with the barrel of a gun being pressed to his forehead. Intruders shot both Hann and his wife Bich. Their 24-year-old daughter Jennifer was tied up. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss Jennifer Pan. Hann survived the encounter, but Bich was fatally shot. As police investigated, they soon began to believe that Jennifer's account of what happened didn't add up. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Listener discretion is advised. So everyone and welcome to episode 308 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morfer. Morf. How you doing, man? I'm doing good. My wife's away traveling for work and I'm doing double duty recording podcast and taking

care of the kids and trying to get them off to school and the school's winding down. So just a little bit of a crunch here, but I'm hoping I can pull it off. How are you doing? Yeah, I'm doing really well. So do your kids get a little anxious or excited as the year starts to wind down? They do. And it's because in Florida here, the school year ends, you know, I think a little bit earlier than most of the other places in the country. They're sort of in that phase a little bit sooner than the rest of the kids.

But it's always fun. I remember back when I was at age when school, school was winding down. You just couldn't wait to get it over in those last few days were almost, I don't want to say a waste, but not a lot got accomplished. Well, my wife's a teacher and she's the same way. She's super excited for her summer to start. Let's go ahead and give our Patreon shoutouts. We had Mom 7x, Libby, and Kat Sivley. So a lot of great new support. We really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks to everyone that takes the time to support the show. It really helps us out. And for anyone else that would like to, you can do so by going over to patreon.com slash criminology to sign up.

All right. It's time to jump into this week's episode. And we're talking about a 2010 case out of Canada. So this is a little bit of an older case, but one that has recently gained attention due to a new documentary that revealed a lot of the information. It's a case that involves murder for hire. And the victims in this case are the parents of the person that did the hiring. We are talking about the case of Jennifer Pan. On November 8, 2010, 60-year-old Huey Han Pan woke up suddenly, startled in the middle of the night in his bed, inside his home located in Unionville, Markham, Ontario. That's in the greater Toronto area. Han didn't wake up afraid because he had a bad dream, but instead it was due to the feeling of the barrel of a gun being pressed against his forehead. According to Toronto's CTV news,

A stranger's voice yelled at him saying, Where is the fucking money? Wake up. Then the stranger gave him an order to get up. Han told CTV, I was very scared and I was surprised. He was marched down to the basement of the home. On his way there, he spotted his daughter, 24-year-old Jennifer Pan,

and a second stranger was pointing a gun at her. A third man was also holding his wife Bick Pan at gunpoint in the family's TV room. She hadn't been asleep when the men entered the home. She was watching TV and soaking her feet in a plastic tub after night out line dancing. According to Thestar.com, Bick told the intruders, you can hurt us, but please don't hurt my daughter. And morph, you know, we profile a lot of very scary scenarios on criminology. To me, this is one of the scariest.

To wake up in the middle of the night to a home intruder, or in this case multiple intruders, people with guns. threatening not only you, but your wife and daughter. That is a very scary thought. I don't know about you, but I've played out a scenario like that in my mind, maybe because of what we do and the stuff we talk about, but I've had this little plan in my head of what I would do to defend my family.

And I don't know if Han had one of those plans, but it's kind of hard when you're woken up from a deep sleep and there's a gun pointing in your head. think any plan you might have could quickly go out the window. Well, I think it's very natural for people to think about not a lot, not dwell on it, but to think about, well, what would I do in this situation? But I'm with you. I think a lot of plans can go out the window very quickly. Number one, when I wake up out of a deep sleep, it takes me a little while just to get oriented. So any plan I might have had is going to be a little bit harder to put into motion. And then number two, somebody's pointing a gun at you.

And that obviously limits your ability to do certain things. But the other thing that really struck me was big telling the intruders, you can hurt us. Just don't hurt our daughter. You can tell from that line. These are parents who would do anything to protect their child. As much, you know, most parents would. Yeah, because if the people are there to steal valuables or take cash or whatever it is they want to do, the end result is you want everyone to be okay and not be harmed. So she's probably thinking she'll cooperate and they'll get out of the situation. But above all, she's putting her daughter's safety even ahead of hers and her husband's. One of the men demanded money again from hand. And he explained to the men that he didn't have much money. The man

didn't believe him and became enraged. Han was hit over the back of his head with a gun. Both Han and Bick were pushed down onto the couch in the basement. A blanket was thrown over them without warning. Bick was shot twice in the head. Hand was also shot twice, once in the shoulder, and then once in the face. Shortly after this, 24-year-old Jennifer Pan called 911. As you can hear in that 911 call,

Jennifer was so frantic that the dispatcher had trouble understanding what she was saying. It took a while just to pin down the name of the street. The Pan family lived on. Jennifer told the 911 dispatcher, we just got robbed and I don't know where my parents are. She was speaking very rapidly to the dispatcher saying some people broke into our house and they just stole all our money. At this point, the dispatcher was,

really able to even get a word in. And Jennifer pleaded for the dispatcher to send help. Halfway through the call, there was a loud wail in the background. Jennifer cried out to her father, Dad, speaking to him in Vietnamese, as well as telling him she was calling 911. There was chaos, with the dispatcher trying to get Jennifer to talk and give information. But Jennifer, who was tied up and stuck upstairs away from her parents, was trying to reassure her dad that help was on the way. She yelled out to him, I'm okay, before speaking to him more in Vietnamese. She then told the dispatcher that her dad went outside screaming. By now, the dispatcher was able to get the street name from her, Helen Avenue.

Finally, help was on the way. The dispatcher stayed on the phone with Jennifer, who was still trying to explain what was going on. She excitedly said, someone broke in and I heard shots like pops. I don't know what's happening. I'm tied upstairs. And the one thing about this night. 911 call is just how frantic Jennifer is. I mean, she's pleading for help, but not answering the dispatcher's questions. Namely, you know, what's the address? What street do you live on? You know, she's,

she's just talking so fast that the dispatcher can't even hardly break in. You know, when you analyze something like this, like a 911 call, it's hard to tell. how somebody should be acting. Because like we said, this is a very frightening scenario. If someone was calm, that would seem out of the ordinary. So you would expect someone to be a little frantic or maybe very frantic. The other thing that that I thought, Morp, was that, you know, Jennifer, to me, sounds even younger than 24 years old.

And she does in her interviews as well. There's a lot of interviews that were recorded of Jennifer talking to the police and I'm sure we'll discuss them as we go. She sounds younger to me than 24 years old. Yeah, you bring up some good points about the way that she was on that 911 call, excited, shaken, upset, which I, in my mind, I would envision if I was calling 911 with that kind of situation happening. I'd probably be excited too. But I'm amazed when you hear a 911 call where the person is very calm and very matter of fact. And they're trying to relay the information. And I think you sort of touched on it.

Sometimes you look back at those 911 calls and say, hmm, that seems suspicious that they were so calm in a situation like that. But I think it just goes back to everybody reacts to a situation different. Some of them are very relaxed. and want to get the information out and stay calm and other people are just, they can't deal with it, and they're just too excited and too much in shock to remain calm. But I think the dispatcher's job is to try and get that information out of them as soon as possible one way or the other because the faster dispatcher gets that information, the sooner help can arrive there.

When officers responded to the home, they found Jennifer tied to the banister on the top floor of home, 53-year-old Bick Pan was still in the basement, and sadly it was clear that she was dead. She had been shot twice in the head at close range. Hand wasn't there. He had run out of the home screaming in agony from the pain of the gunshot wounds and probably due to the grief caused by regaining consciousness and seeing his wife dead. He later told the star.com, I shook my wife and realized my wife had no movement. A neighbor had gone outside to see what the commotion was and found him.

This neighbor took Hand into their garage where he collapsed and lost consciousness. The neighbor also called 911. Han was rushed to a hospital where he was placed into an induced coma in an effort to save his life. So we're often discussing, you know, startling scenarios in our episodes. And this is one that I don't know we touch on. enough. And we talk about victims. We talk a lot about people going through their daily routine, walking in the woods and finding a dead body. But what about this scenario? A neighbor runs over to you. He's been shot. He's screaming. I mean, that's going to change your day very quickly.

I guess you never know when you're going to be put in a situation that you're going to have to deal with what's happened to someone else, whether it's something happening and they're running to your door to call 911 or you're driving down the road and an accident happens in front of you and you jump out to try and help save somebody's life. It's that kind of thing can just happen without warning. With her mom dead and her dad in the hospital, this left Jennifer is the only one that could help investigators figure out who was responsible for the home invasion. She was shaken up, but not seriously injured. She wasn't able to give police many clues about the identities of the men, but she said there were three of them, and one of them seemed to be more in charge than the others.

She said to police, I don't remember any of his clothing, unfortunately. The only thing I can remember is he had dreadlocks. Jennifer told police that all three of the men were black, and that one of them had an accent, which she described as Jamaican. Police began their investigation, assuming that it was a clear home invasion gone wrong. But pretty quickly, things didn't line up with that being the case. And police wondered if a robbery was the motive at all. Bick's purse had been left behind in the home and there was still $200 cash inside. It didn't look like anyone had tried to open the safe inside the home and two luxury cars were still parked inside the garage even though the killers would have been able to find the

keys. Hands wallet with multiple $20 bills inside wasn't stolen and neither was his expensive watch. Bick and Hand had been marched down into the basement pretty quickly, where the attackers threw blankets over them before quickly and coldly shooting them. This seemed like it was a plan from the outset to kill them. And in comparison, Jennifer was basically unscathed. As investigators began to look at the case, without assuming it was a home invasion gone wrong, troubling things began to pop up. And the police began to wonder whether Jennifer's boy,

different. Daniel Wong, a local drug dealer, had anything to do with the murders. They explored the possibility that maybe the attack was a hit meant as a message to Daniel. Daniel and Jennifer had reportedly both been receiving harassing phone calls from an anonymous number leading up to the attack. Were they the intended targets? This didn't quite make sense since Daniel was not the home when the invasion happened, and Jennifer was the only one left unharmed. While police had theories and speculated about what may have happened, the person who could help them the most was in a coma. But on November 12th, Han woke up from his coma and regained consciousness.

He was able to tell investigators what really happened. Despite the trauma, Han had experienced, he was very detailed in the description of events for the police. He told investigators that two of the men were dark skin and all three looked to be in their 20s. One thing that was vividly clear to Han was that one of the men had paintball stains on his dark turtural neck shirt. But one thing that really caught the attention of investigators was that Han recalled Jennifer talking to one of the armed strangers, almost like they were friends or knew each other. This information that Hand provided helped some of the inconsistencies in Jennifer's

story make more sense to police. Investigators had been suspicious of her, even asking her to demonstrate how she could call 911 with her hands tied behind her back. She was easily able to demonstrate, taking her phone out of her pocket, flipping it open and holding it. She claimed she had the phone on speaker and was yelling down to it. When this part of her story checked out, they had to be careful with pushing her to her. There could be reasons other than deceit. For an unclear story after such a traumatic event, but it really was hand, who confirmed

what investigators had been leaning towards all along. According to Yahoo News, hand urged investigators, use your police techniques to find out what Jennifer did. He basically was asking them to solve the case, even if it meant learning that his daughter wanted him dead, which is what he seemed to believe. And there is a lot of video from the police talking to Jennifer.

and this part specifically is interesting to me because you can see how they approach Jennifer and then how they're questioning kind of changes over time. You know, this demonstration of how she could possibly call 911 while her hands are tied up. And she goes kind of through the whole scene, how she got the phone out, how she flipped it open, even demonstrating how she was, you know, yelling down into the phone while it was on speaker. And to me, Morph, these interrogation videos are some of the most fascinating parts of any case. To see and hear exactly how someone reacts to different questions, to see whether their stories line up or they start to stray and differ and just their tone. And to me, you can tell a lot in someone's tone and demeanor.

And I think that's especially true here in the case of Jennifer Pan. I think police have to be careful when they're dealing with someone that's gone through this experience between thinking they could be involved or be a suspect and having to consider whether they're just an innocent victim. But the police have to dig into that possibility, especially when you have her dad, who seems to be hinting that I think Jennifer played some role in this. So police have to walk that line of not blaming the victim and automatically assuming that she's involved here, but finding out what the truth is and if there's any involvement. Police promised Han that they would work hard to find the truth.

And 10 days after Han came out of his coma, Jennifer was interviewed for a third time. Investigators had been reluctant to go. hard at her up to this point. But in this interview, they went after her hard, saying to Jennifer that they knew she was involved in the attack. And almost immediately, Jennifer began talking. She told them that she had hired someone called Homeboy, but she claimed that the plan was never to hurt or kill either of her parents. According to Jennifer, she had hired Homeboy to kill her, but it all went terribly wrong. Phone records would show that Jennifer had been talking to a man named Lennford Crawford, who was determined to be Homeboy.

She had offered him $2,000 to break in and kill her so that she would be free from all the pressure and sadness she claimed that she was feeling. In her mind, no one could judge her for it the way they might judge her if she took her own life. Police were blown away and didn't know what to believe. And for me, this goes back to, you know, how interesting these interviews are. You can see the progression. She has a story in the beginning, which is, you know, I don't know these people. They broke in. They shot and killed my mom.

They shot and tried to kill my dad. And they tied me up. And then eventually she says that she hired someone to kill her and that it went terribly wrong. And maybe that's the part that fascinates me the most. The part where someone deviates from their story and the police kind of know that they have In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency?

We just walked in the door, and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, blood and water. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. They started taking a very close look at Linford Crawford, who worked as a mechanic part-time and hustled selling weed the rest of the time. He was quickly detained in question. He revealed the link between himself and Jennifer.

It was Daniel Wong. Apparently, Daniel and Jennifer hadn't been allowed to be together. Since her parents had found out about their relationship, in the months between their breakup and the murders, Daniel had started dating another woman. When investigators first interviewed him, he was surprised that anyone would think he could be involved. He explained that Jennifer was in his past. According to RadioTimes.com, Daniel said, her parents didn't want us to be together. And I respected that decision and I moved on.

Despite Daniel saying that he had moved on from Jennifer, text messages would prove this wasn't quite true. apparently they were still texting even using pet names with each other and saying that they would always be there for each other. If he had moved on, he hadn't gone very far. According to Radio Times, text between Daniel, Jennifer, and Crawford consistently made reference to 10 stacks, which investigators knew was a code for $10,000. According to the star.com, on Halloween night, Daniel texted Jennifer that Homeboy and a few of his associates were going to do it tonight. Around 9 p.m., Jennifer called Daniel

trying to cancel the hit. She didn't have enough money to pay him, and she was worried that there would be too many kids out trick-or-treating and that they might wind up being witnesses or maybe even victims. It's not clear. A couple of days after Halloween, on November 2nd, Jennifer and Daniel texted about a cancellation fee of $8,500 that would still need to be paid out to Homeboy.

Daniel also texted Jennifer about his new. girlfriend, who he was pretty serious about. One of his texts read, I feel the way you feel about me, but with her. I'm sorry. Later that night, Jennifer told Daniel, so you feel for her what I feel for you, then call it off with Homeboy. Daniel responded with the text, you said you wanted this with or without me. On November 3rd, Homeboy Lentford Crawford texted Jennifer, asking her about a time of

completion, adding, think about it. When confronted by police about this text exchange, Jennifer denied that Homeboy was asking her to set the time of the attack on her parents, instead claiming that he wanted to set up a time to pick up or receive the cancellation fee. One thing that caught my attention there was just how the money situation seemed to be bouncing around. First, the initial plan supposedly is that Jennifer is going to to pay $2,000 for this to happen. Then there's a reference to 10 stacks or $10,000. And now there's an $8,500 cancellation fee.

So this money situation is jumping all around. And maybe that's just proof that, you know, one lie started another lie. And we don't really know what the truth is about the money situation. But it seems like there's a lot of money bouncing around here in these scenarios. Yeah, well, that's part of it, right? people have a hard time sticking to a story when it's not the truth. The truth is easy to stick to.

It is what it is. But when you're trying to make up, you know, an elaborate story, that's where a lot of times things go off the rails. The other thing that really jumped out at me is that, you know, these people didn't realize that these texts they were sending could later come back to haunt them. You know, it doesn't seem as though, you know, we're dealing with a real seasoned group of criminals here. Yeah, we've certainly talked about cases where the criminals were more thorough. They'd go as far as taking, you know, not only not texting on their phones, leaving at trials for detectives to later follow, but they'd take out their memory cards and things like that so that they couldn't be tracked.

Their cell phone usage couldn't be tracked. They couldn't be linked to the locations of the murders. And here we see the complete opposite of that. It's a good thing that criminals make mistakes and help the police piece things together. Police quickly established that everyone involved in this plan did it for financial gain. The three men were looking for a chunk of cash for a quick hit,

and Jennifer was expecting to inherit half of everything from her parents. Their home in Markham had been paid off. She would never need to worry about a place to live. Her parents had two cars. So luckily one of those luxury vehicles would become hers, and the other one might go to her brother Felix. Her parents had also built a sizable savings account of about $200,000, half of which would go to Jennifer, and half of which would go to Felix. The couple also had an insurance policy valued at about $1 million, which Jennifer would receive half of. Had everything gone according to plan, and both her parents died, and police didn't catch on to the scheme, Jennifer would have been very well off.

And we've seen people kill or have people killed for a lot less money. This would have been a sizable amount of money for Jennifer to come into, especially at, you know, 24 years old. But to think of, you know, coming into that money as a result of orchestrating the death of both of your parents. I mean, what kind of person can do that? And I think that's one of the questions that we have to answer in this case. What kind of person is Jennifer Pan?

While financial gain was a clear motive for Jennifer, it might not have actually been her primary reasoning for wanting her parents gone. Jeremy Grimaldi, the executive producer of the recent Netflix documentary about the case called what Jennifer did, told Oxygen, now with a bit of time. we can look back and see it's maybe a bit more of a nuanced story and that it's more complex. Jennifer may have felt she had no other way out of the hole she had been digging for herself for years. She had built what could be described as a double life for herself. Jennifer was expected by her parents to excel and do well and achieve ambitious goals.

she tried to make them think that that was the past she was on. But the truth was that Jennifer was lying to her parents. And with each lie, it made it harder and harder for her to dig her way out. Eventually, she couldn't keep the act up anymore. Jennifer felt an incredible amount of pressure on herself from a young age, but she seems to have internalized most, if not all of it. By the age of four, Jennifer was taking piano lessons and was obviously expected. to excel. She did excel, and she seemed to enjoy music. In elementary school, she took figure skating

lessons, and once again, she excelled there, earning awards and trophies. On nights that she had lessons, she would get home at around 10 p.m. to do her homework, and then go to bed. This was all while she was in elementary school. Most kids at age or asleep well before 10, but this was just when she was wrapping up her day outside of the home. Jennifer was very good at figure skating, so good that she had her eye on one day competing in the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. A torn ligament in her knee abruptly ended that dream. By high school, she wanted more from her life.

She wanted a social life. She wanted to hang out with friends. There was no time for her to do anything but study and practice her extracurriculars. even if she had time, her parents didn't let her do anything. She wasn't allowed to have a boyfriend or even go to any school dances or parties. Her dad forbid all that stuff because according to oxygen, he wanted his children to be focused only on education. Even with the long hours for music and sports,

Jennifer was a great student until she wasn't. She had been a straight A student until around high school. But then her grades slipped. They were all passing, but they weren't what her parents expected from her. She couldn't bear the judgment and how disappointed they were. So she made a fake report card using her old ones to make it look like she had passed all her classes with good grades. So I don't think there's any doubt more if a lot of expectations were placed on Jennifer by her parents. They wanted her to excel in life.

and it seemed as though they wanted her to focus on her education. You see that in a lot of families. But what happens when you can't live up to those expectations? I remember covering a couple cases on this show where there was a similar situation where someone usually a child or son or daughter of the victims, for whatever reason feels that they just have to lie and then another lie on top of that one before they know it, it's snowballed and they can't control it. And they don't feel they can go to their parents and just tell them the truth about what's

happened, what's going on and what they want. And I don't know what would have happened with Jennifer's parents had she done that. But to get to the point where you think it's okay to hire someone either, as Jennifer originally claimed, because she wanted her life to end over this, or if it was because she wanted her parents lives to end over it one way or another to get to that point all because she didn't tell them what she was thinking and what she wanted and and all that. It's just awful that it got to that point. Now, all the disconnects with her parents sort of is what Jennifer portrayed as the reason things got to this point. But of course, the financial gain motive was there too. So

one way or another, for her mom to wind up dead and her dad be seriously injured over this, whatever the reason, it's not acceptable. Yeah, and it could have been a combination of these things, but the one thing that I don't think you can do is take Jennifer Pan at her word at this point. When Jennifer was 16, her parents allowed her to travel to Europe on a school trip because she would be studying music. During this trip, she met Daniel Wong. He was a year older than her.

He also had Asian parents and had grown up living about 20 minutes away from her. At some point during the trip, Jennifer had an asthma attack that basically turned into a panic attack because of its severity. She felt like she was losing consciousness and truly feared that she was going to die. Daniel came to her aid and helped her focus on breathing and calmed her down. From Jennifer's perspective, Daniel had saved her life, and it was an immediate deep connection that the two formed. They started spending even more time with each other, talking more, and getting closer. They were basically as inseparable as two people could be without her parents knowing that he existed. Daniel didn't have the best reputation though. He was known to sell weed

around the high school. Not only was Jennifer not allowed to date, but she had chosen to date someone who was a known troublemaker. There was no way her parents would ever let her be around him. During her senior year, Jennifer failed one calculus course, and it set her on a downward path academically. She couldn't tell her parents, so it was just another thing she had to forge. She did get an early acceptance letter from Ryerson University in Toronto, which is now called Toronto Metropolitan University. Her parents were obviously happy, as they had always expected that she would go to college. A degree was a necessary stepping stone to a life of greatness in their minds. Eventually, Jennifer was working to for,

documents that made it look like she had graduated with the rest of her class, that she had taken out a loan for college, and that she had earned a modest scholarship. She also didn't tell them that her invitation for Ryerson University had been revoked due to failing calculus, which she also didn't tell them about. It was around this time, Daniel moved to Toronto. Jennifer told her parents that she would be living on campus at the college, about 30 minutes away from home. But she actually moved in with Daniel. Jennifer made the drive home on weekends and told her parents more lies about how well her classes were going. She even bought used copies of the textbooks for the courses she should have been in and did the work to study the material and take notes. She claimed that

after two years she would be transferring to the University of Toronto, where she went under their pharmacology program. This is what her father, Han wanted her to study. Everything was going perfectly, or so it seemed. Jennifer's parents were proud of her. She wasn't in trouble. They were supporting her financially, and she got to be with Daniel. She began to teach piano lessons to earn money while Daniel worked as the kitchen manager for Boston Pizza, where she eventually started bartending. Meanwhile, Jennifer's younger brother Felix was earning his real degree in engineering from McMaster University, and that ate at Jennifer. In 2009, two years into her fake college career, Jennifer told her parents that the University of Toronto had accepted her into their. into their pharmacology program.

She also said that she wouldn't be around as much on the weekends because she would be volunteering at a hospital's blood testing lab. For some reason, this is what made Han suspicious that something wasn't right with her story. Han told Jennifer that he and her mother would be personally dropping her off at the hospital for her volunteering the next morning. Han later told CTV news, I was frustrated. and I was concerned that something was not right. He had noticed that Jennifer didn't have a uniform for that job.

And he knew that to get around the hospital, you needed a key card, which she also didn't have. The next morning, when they dropped Jennifer off at the hospital, she got out of the car and took off running. And more of, I think we have to just take a step back here and really look at the magnitude and the links that Jennifer went to, to kind of build this fake life. You know, forging all of these documents, her grades, buying textbooks and actually taking notes for classes that she wasn't even attending. I mean, it's mind-boggling. She was doing a bunch of work to make it seem as though she was really doing work.

It's kind of hard to square in your mind. Yeah, whenever I hear about situations like this, it just, I can't get myself into their thinking. It's odd that they would take that much time and effort. And sometimes the time and effort that they're doing to cover up the lies is more than just doing the work to begin with. So it just doesn't make sense. And one of the thoughts I have here is I get it.

A person, you know, kind of starts down this path. It's kind of something that they have to keep going. but doesn't a person know in the back of their minds? At some point, this is going to crumble. There's no way that I can keep this up forever. You know, at what point is she going to graduate from pharmacology school? At what point is she going to graduate? She's going to have this, you know, pharmacology degree.

She's going to be a pharmacist. She's going to fake going into a pharmacy. It just doesn't make sense. I think it's clear that she wasn't thinking ahead to what the end game was, what the end goal was. At what point does she stop all the lying? I think she's just trying to get through in her mind the present and trying to keep up the charade without thinking about where does it end. Fresh air, longer days, a chance to reset.

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commitments. You just pay per session. Grow helps you find therapy, on your time. Whatever challenges you're facing, Grow Therapy is here to help. Grow accepts over 100 insurance plans, including Medicaid in some states. Sessions average about $21 with insurance and some pay as little as $0.0 depending on their plan. Visit growtherapy.com slash book now to get started. That's growtherapy.com slash book now. Growtherapy.com slash book now. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. The next time Jennifer talked to her parents was the following morning after they had tried to drop bar off at the hospital. This is when Jennifer's fake

old shattered. Her parents learned that she was living with Daniel, wasn't attending college, and had never even graduated high school. Obviously, all of this upset Jennifer's parents. Han later told CTV news, I was very upset. Han seemed to have had suspicions for quite a while, but his wife discouraged him from prying. He recalled his wife, Bick, saying, Let her be herself. Too much interference will not be good. It created a very large lack of trust between Jennifer and her parents. There were also major consequences for these lies. First, there was the shame and embarrassment of having all of her lies years worth revealed.

Hand completely cut her off financially and took her computer and her cell phone for two weeks. When she got them back, she could only use them when her parents were with her. And she had to let them check her text messages randomly at any time. finally the odometer reading from her car was written down and tracked by hand so that she could only go exactly where she said she was going not one wrong term or quick stop would go unaccounted for according to the radio times hand told jennifer that if she wanted to be with daniel then she would have to wait until he was dead he would never approve of her being with him nor would he have anything to do with her if she didn't cut ties to her with him. All of the monitoring caused Jennifer and Daniel to be even more secretive about their relationship than they had been when she first met him on their trip. When he found out that they were still talking just months before the home invasion, and gave Jennifer an ultimatum. According to CBC News, he told Jennifer, you have two options.

First, stay at home and go to school. Second choice, you go with Danny Wong and never come back. Jennifer was very plainly given the choice to be with Daniel if that's what she's. wanted to do. She just couldn't continue to live with her family and be supported by them if that was what she chose. It appears that murder seemed like the best solution in Jennifer's mind. Some people may think that Han didn't want Jennifer to be in a relationship with anyone, but it was more that he didn't want her dating Daniel specifically. In Han's mind, Daniel was dragging her down. Han explained his reasons for not wanting Jennifer to be around Daniel, telling CTB news. He had covered for my daughter to stay out of school for the last four years.

In his mind, Daniel didn't have Jennifer's best interests at heart. And instead of helping her thrive, he took steps to help her fail. The pressure hand put on Jennifer and the high expectations he had for her were because he cared about her. Hand told the star.com, I wanted her to have a future in her hands. And Jennifer's brother Felix told Business Insider.com, dad was very old school. He was very controlling. He went on to say, it's just the way my dad is. It's sort of like tough love. And we talked about these high expectations. You know, every parent wants their child to succeed, to have a good life. Can you make the case that, well, maybe this was a little over the top? Yeah. maybe the pressure was a little more than what most people would experience, but it's certainly

not unique. And to me, it shouldn't have ever led to, you know, what happened. And I think a lot of parents, they're so focused on their kids having the best lives they can and having a better life than they had, that they can overlook what it is that their children actually want out of life because they have in their minds, whether it's schooling or athletics or music, whatever it is that the parents think is the best for them. Sometimes they they just overlook what their kids are wanting out of life. And I'm not making an excuse for what happened here. I don't think that her parents should have been attacked for wanting to

do this, for wanting to have their children have the best lives they could. But maybe in Jennifer's mind, it put pressure on her that had that pressure not been there, maybe this never would have happened. Well, I definitely think from her perspective, this was all too much for her. And she couldn't be with the person she wanted to be with. She couldn't get the grades. But what it ultimately led her to do is kind of hard to fathom. There's undoubtedly countless parents.

like this that pushed their kids hard, yet those kids don't wind up planning and carrying out the murder and attempted murder of their parents. So obviously something was different with Jennifer because she was outside the norm. This usually doesn't happen. Han and Bick had both immigrated to Canada from Vietnam and worked to secure a stable life together. They tried not to spend much extra money, even going as far as to never go back home to visit family, or spending money on themselves regularly so that they could give both of their children the best education possible. They had their kids' best interest at heart and wanted to see them succeed in life. It may have been tough love, but it was love.

To see all of their efforts wasted was devastating to Han. He told the Radio Times, When I lost my wife, I lost my daughter at the same time. I hope my daughter, Jennifer, thinks about what happened to her family and can become a good, honest person someday. Both Han and Felix were granted a no-contact or her against Jennifer. They did not wish to ever hear from her again. Hand survived the attack that night, but he lives with constant chronic pain due to the shooting.

Doctors weren't able to remove all of the bullet fragments from his head and his carotid artery was grazed. He doesn't just live with physical pain. His whole life was changed. Nothing is fun anymore. He no longer enjoys his hobbies, like gardening or working on cars. He doesn't like listening. to music anymore. He told the Toronto Star, nothing tastes as good as his wife's cooking, which he will never have again. He tried to sell the family home so he didn't have to live in the home that he was almost killed in, the home where he found his wife of 30 years dead at his feet, but no one would buy. And obviously, this has taken an incredible toll on hand. He lost his wife. you heard him tell the paper. You know, he lost his daughter at the same time. And I don't know how you

continue to live in a home where something horrible like this happened. I think that would be a very difficult thing to do. Obviously, you know, he was trying to sell it. But if nobody wants to buy it, and how many people, let's face it, want to live in a home where someone was murdered, what do you do? Yeah, I can't even imagine what he's gone through. Just have a lot of. Just have a home. I don't even imagine. just have his, as you put it, have his world turned upside down over all of this and to see these lasting effects, it's something that I wouldn't want to imagine going through. On December 13, 2014, Jennifer Pan was found guilty of the first-degree murder of her mother, Bick Pan, as well as the attempted murder of her father, Han.

When the verdict was announced, Jennifer put her head down and cried. Despite the guilty verdict, it's still unknown today exactly who pulled the trigger that, night. Each of the defendant's lawyers tried to minimize their role in the murders. According to Business Insider, Daniel Wong's attorney claimed his only role was passing on messages. His attorney asked the judge in court, are you going to convict my client of a cold-blooded murder based on a couple of text messages? Linford Crawford's lawyer took the same stance, saying he was only relaying messages. Justice Kerry Boswell did not let anyone off the hook, telling the courtroom, these were crimes of terrifying violence.

Hannan Big did not deserve the death penalty Jennifer imposed on them, adding that for the defendants, this was a business transaction, the commodity death. Daniel Wong, Linford, Crawford, and David Milvaganon were also found guilty. A fifth suspect, Eric Carty, who had recruited Milvaganon

into the plot, had his trial severed from the rest of the defendant. about five months into the long trial because his attorney got sick and could not continue. A mistrial was declared for him, but not the other defendants. In 2015, Jennifer, who was by then 28 years old, was sentenced to serve life in prison. She will be eligible for parole after 25 years. This parole eligibility will begin around the year 2014. Long, Crawford, and Milvaganum received the same sentence.

Jennifer's currently serving the sentence at the Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener, Ontario. After the others received life sentences, Hardy admitted to his role in the murders, saying he had asked Milvaganum to join them, and he had been the driver that night. He was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder as part of a plea deal. In December 2015, he was sentenced to 18 years in prison to be conserved concurrently with a 25-year sentence that he was already serving for a different murder in 2009. In June 2018, Cardi was found dead in a cell at the Kent Institution. In May of 2023, just about a year ago now, the Court of Appeal for Ontario granted Jennifer's appeal for only the first-degree murder conviction.

She and her three co-conspirators will each receive a new trial. In the first trial, the judge didn't give the jury many options to consider. They were given the scenario that Jennifer planned for both parents to be killed. or that she planned a robbery that didn't go smoothly, ending with both of her parents being shot. Due to this, the jury didn't even consider lesser charges of second-degree murder or manslaughter. The Crown, the prosecution there in Canada has appealed the decision for a new trial. And Jennifer's defense team has actually also appealed. Obviously, the prosecution believes their strategy was firm and fair and does not agree with having,

to try this case again, Jennifer's defense doesn't think it's right to only have the charges related to Bix murder to be retried. The charges for shooting hand should also be retried, just an entire new trial because the charges are so closely related and happened at the same time with the same people involved. The Supreme Court of Canada will hear this case in late 2004 or early 2025, according to Jennifer's lawyer, Stephanie D. Giuseppe. Until this hearing is completed,

no new trial will move forward. If the Supreme Court declines to hear the case, Jennifer Pan, Daniel Wong, Lennford, and David Milvaganam will be able to ask for parole immediately, according to a Business Insider article. Jennifer Pan's attorney told

Today.com, Jennifer maintains her innocence, and she hopes to one day be exonerated through this long process. So that's a little scary thought that they could all possibly ask for parole immediately. Now, that's not to say that any of them will be paroled, would be paroled right away. I definitely see both sides of this. You know, obviously the prosecution doesn't want to have to retry the case. The defense is going to do whatever they can to get a new trial. and they would obviously want the jury to consider second degree manslaughter,

anything other than first degree murder. But I don't know more if you know, as we wrap this one up, the evidence against these people seems to be pretty strong. You know, and I'll keep it to Jennifer specifically. It's tough for me to buy this story about, you know, her wanting to pay someone to kill her and then things went sideways you know when you think about

her being tied up okay how does that fit into her story of events i think this was a a young woman who just got to the point where you know she had been lying so much she had created a fake world essentially And it was to the point where it was all crumbling down around her. And she thought the best way, maybe in her mind, the only way out of it was to kill her parents. She wouldn't have to keep up, you know, all of these different ruses anymore. She would inherit some money.

Maybe she could be with Daniel. I just think this is what was going on, you know, in her mind. Yeah. whenever I hear these kinds of cases where someone goes through these lengths and it leads to this kind of result, part of me wants to reach out to them and say, hey, you know, your young person, you're not thinking straight. You're not thinking about the consequences or the long-term picture, but Jennifer was 24 years old when this happened. So you can't even really say that she was young and not thinking clearly. She's an adult. She knew what she was doing was wrong. And whether or not her

parents had shown her tough love or had been very strict on her. They were loving parents that gave their kids a good home. There's no allegations of abuse. So obviously we can't go back in time, but had Jennifer just gone to them early on and said, look, I know what you want for me. That's not what I want for myself. This is what I want to do. This is the path I want to go on. There might have been pushed back from her parents, but I think over time, they wouldn't have disowned her. I think they probably would have come along and maybe not agree with some of her life decisions, but I think at the end of the day, they would have still wanted her in their lives and she could have been the person she wanted to be on her own path. Yeah, there's no way to know

for sure how that would have played out. But that versus the alternative, what actually happened. Yeah, I'm with you more in the going back and kind of sitting this person down and saying, hey, don't do this, right? Knowing what's going to happen, you're not thinking straight. Yeah, if you come clean to your family, is it going to be a great situation? No, probably not. You know, she had been lying for years and years and years. There's going to be a lot of disappointment.

There's probably going to be some resentment. But is it something a family can't work past? I don't know. All families are different. But just to go to the extreme of thinking in your mind, my only way out of everything that I've been doing for years now is to have my parents murdered. That is just a concept that I can't wrap my mind around. Yeah.

And for me at the end of the day, I don't really know in Jennifer's mind what drove her to this ultimate decision. Was part of it the greed knowing she would inherit the money? Or was it more the fact that she felt pressured that she'd never be able to get out from underneath this lie? Only Jennifer knows why she ultimately did what she did. And that might be something that she never really shares with anyone. The other part that's a little unclear is her wanting to possibly be with.

Daniel or the two of them wanting to be together because it did sound as though Daniel had a new girlfriend. So I don't know how much of that actually factors in. And then I do want to go back and talk about the money for a little bit. You know, let's say there was $10,000 as was reported or as the police thought, well, we find out that there's four guys involved in this. What are they splitting and each getting $2,500. I think we're always surprised. I don't know that we should be any more at this point, but to kill somebody for any amount of money doesn't make sense, but to kill somebody for $2,500.

Yeah, to me, the fact that whenever we talk about cases where there's multiple people involved that somebody doesn't just step up and say, well, hold on here. This is, we're going too far. even if they're criminals, even if they deal drugs, somebody should stand up and say, we can't commit a murder. This is going too far. But for whatever reason,

in many cases we talk about where multiple people are involved, there's no voice of reason. They just go along with it and at the end, the end result is something terrible happens. Well, that's certainly what happened in this case. But that's it for our episode on Jennifer Pan. If you love the show,

but haven't done so yet, take a minute, give us a rating, leave a review. Keep telling your friends. That word of mouth about the criminology podcast really goes a long way. If you want to find us on social media, we're on X with the handle at Criminology Pod. You can also find us on Facebook by going to facebook.com slash criminology podcast. And you can join our Facebook discussion group, criminology podcast discussion and fans.

So that's it for another episode of Criminology. But Morph and I will be back with everyone next Saturday night with. the brand new episode. So until then, for Mike and Morph. We'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.