Jennifer Pan seemed cheerful, almost playful, as she brushed
lint off her lawyer’s robes before the jury filed into the
Newmarket courtroom on Saturday afternoon with a verdict, nine
months after her murder trial began.
It didn’t last. After three-and-a-half days of deliberating, the
twelve jurors found her guilty of the first-degree murder of her
mother and the attempted murder of her father, responsible for
cold-bloodedly planning the assassination disguised as a violent
home invasion for months, using her on-and-off boyfriend Daniel
Wong’s drug-dealing contacts to carry out the hit for the sum of
$10,000.
Pan called 911 on the night of Nov. 8, 2010 in a seeming panic
to report that violent gunmen had robbed the Markham home where
she lived with her parents.
Her mother, Bich Ha Pan, was found shot dead at point-blank
range in the basement, her father, Hann Pan, was shot through
the cheek and was in an induced coma for days.
Wong allegedly connected Pan with Lenford
Crawford, another middleman who helped plan and pass information
between Wong and Eric Carty.
Carty is serving life in prison on an unrelated first-degree
murder conviction and was severed from the trial after his
lawyer fell ill. He was accused of being at the scene of the
shooting and recruiting alleged shooter David Mylvaganam.
Apart from Carty, who will stand trial at a later date, Pan,
Wong, Crawford and Mylvaganam were found guilty of first-degree
murder and attempted murder after a trial that began in
mid-March. They will serve automatic life sentences, and will be
unable to apply for parole for 25 years.
The twelve jurors heard from dozens of witnesses throughout the
trial, including Jennifer Pan’s father and little brother Felix,
as well as an expert in “urban street slang,” Eric Carty’s many
girlfriends and even a man Mylvaganam’s defence lawyer claimed
was one of the gunmen in the house but who was never charged by
police.
They were taken through hundreds of pages of cellphone records,
including phone calls, text messages and location data.
Pan, who
testified for days in her soft, girlish voice, said that she
hired Crawford and others to kill herself — a way of committing
suicide that would not shame her parents. Then she changed her
mind and negotiated a cancellation fee of $8,500, she claimed.
The jury did not believe her.
The Pan family and Jennifer Pan’s web of deceit
To explain what could have motivated Pan to want her parents
dead, prosecutors took the jury back to the beginning.
Crown prosecutors Jennifer Halajian and
Michelle Rumble argued that Jennifer Pan’s parents, who came to
Toronto as refugees from Vietnam in 1979, wanted the best for
their children — to work hard, get a university education and
have a better life than they did.
Pan, however, felt pressured by those high expectations.
A high-achieving competitive figure skater and pianist in
elementary school, she testified that she began to forge her
report cards when she didn’t win a prize for the first time in
eighth grade.
The lies snowballed over the next decade.
She faked graduating from high school and hid her relationship
with Daniel Wong.
She lied about attending university, though her parents were
paying for it, and pretended to live with a friend downtown when
she was really living in Ajax with Wong and his parents and
working at East Side Mario’s.
The lies began unravelling in 2009 when her
father became suspicious of Pan’s fake volunteer job at Sick
Kids hospital.
When her father discovered the truth it
prompted the ultimatum the Crown points to as the tipping
point for Pan: “Cease your relationship with Daniel Wong. If
not, you’ll have to wait until I’m dead.”
She chose to stay at her parents’ home in
Markham under strict rules, including a curfew and cellphone
restrictions, and began preparing to apply to colleges.
“I could have moved out but I didn’t want to abandon my family.
I didn’t want them to abandon me,” Pan told the court.
Pan admitted that she did try and have her
father shot dead outside his workplace in the early summer of
2010, approaching a gangsterlike “shifty-eyed” friend of a
friend, Ricardo Duncan. She says the plan fizzled after Duncan
ran off with the $1,500 she paid him during a meeting over
bubble tea at the mall.
Duncan told the court that Pan did ask him to kill her parents,
but that he refused and never stole money from her.
A murder disguised as a home invasion or a robbery gone wrong
The Crown alleged that after she was turned down by Duncan, Pan
hatched a plan to have her parents killed in a staged home
invasion and turned to Wong for help.
She was motivated to get rid of her parents so she could be with
Wong — who was now with another woman but still in regular
contact with Pan — and gain a sizeable inheritance, the Crown
alleged.
She allegedly contacted Wong and Crawford through a second phone
dubbed the “secret murder phone” during the trial.
At one point, Wong texts Pan: “I did everything. I lined it all
up for you.”
The murder plan was originally supposed to
be executed on Nov. 3, 2010, the Crown alleged.
The day before, Pan and Wong were texting each other about their
relationship and Wong’s new girlfriend.
Wong: I feel the way you feel, but about her. Im sorry. i was
always walking on eggshells with you.
Pan: So you feel for her what I feel for you, then call it off
with Homeboy (allegedly Crawford).
Wong: You said you wanted this with or without me
At 3:23 p.m. on Nov. 3, Pan texts Crawford:
“Today is a no go. Dinner plans out so won’t be home in time.”
The next agreed date was Nov. 8, 2010, the Crown alleged.
That morning, Crawford texted Pan: “To after work OK will be
game time”
Hann Pan testified that his wife had come
home from line dancing that night and was soaking her feet in
the living room while watching television. He went to bed
upstairs.
The Crown alleged Pan left the front door unlocked for the
intruders.
Hann Pan
testified that an armed man woke him up with a demand:
“where’s the f---ing money?”
As he was taken downstairs, he saw his daughter speaking softly
with another man. He told police in a statement after he awoke
from an induced coma that she spoke to the man “like a friend.”
He and his wife were taken to the basement. Bich Ha Pan pleaded
with the gunmen not to hurt their daughter.
Their heads were covered in blankets, Hann Pan recalled. He was
shot and passed out. He woke up to see his wife lying dead at
his feet.
His daughter was arrested weeks later,
after he miraculously awoke from a coma.
Pan’s lawyer suggested in his closing
arguments that the home invasion was genuine, led by
“psychopathic killer” Carty, since Pan had not yet paid the
$8,500 cancellation fee.
Both Wong and Crawford were at work on the
night of the shooting.
The lawyers for Wong and Crawford argued that they were not
involved with any murder plot or robbery, and that it is
impossible to rely on the texts and statements of Jennifer Pan,
a “disturbed young woman” living in a fantasy world of lies and
deceit.
Mylvaganam admitted that he was in the car,
which carried the intruders to the Pan home on the night of the
shooting, and that he let Carty use his phone. However, he
denied knowing of any plan to murder Hann and Bich Ha Pan.
The judge took more than three days to
instruct the jury on the legal principles they must apply in
this case.
During the jury charge Pan would often lean forward in the
prisoner’s box, her head touching her knees, and remain there.
When the jury foreperson read the verdict at 2:45 p.m. on
Saturday, she silently bowed her head and did not cry.
One lawyer, who asked not to be named, said when the courtroom
cleared, Pan was seen shaking and crying uncontrollably. “They
didn’t even give me a chance,” she said. The lawyer said she
expected a much longer deliberation by the jury.
Pan’s lawyer, Paul Cooper, said she intends to appeal.
Sentencing will occur on Jan. 23, 2015.
Source
Commentary by the Ottawa Mens Centre
This is one of the rare cases where a woman was actually charged
with murder.
In Ottawa on July 1, 2012 Ottawa Police detective Peter Van Der
Zander was given one woman who had just attempted to kill her
husband by strangulation.
To defeat any criminal charges Det. Van Der Zander Fabricated a
report that he actually asked her if she tried to choke him
and that she denied attempting to strangle him. The Video recording
however of that interview shows that he never asked her that
question but was concerned about her propensity to kill him with a
knife.
He sent her home in a victim witness car while keeping the male
victim of domestic violence incarcerated for a further 16 hours, and
while in custody, terrorizing him with his own false unsubstantiated
allegations of being a pedophile.
If you are women who wants to kill your Husband, and if you get
arrested, make a call to Det. Van Der Zander of the Ottawa
Police so he can terrorize the victim.
Ottawa Mens Centre
With files from Jeremy Grimaldi, Metroland