Jennifer Pan: the ‘model daughter’ who planned the death of her parents
When she complete 25 years in prison, that is, in 2039, she may request the procedural benefit of parole. If this precautionary measure proves admissible, Jennifer could return to the streets
The parents of Jennyfer Pan, a Canadian of Asian origins, believed that their iron discipline had produced a perfect daughter. But, the pressure to always be the best left her prey to a world of lies, in the end, she ended up falling apart and planned, when she was discovered, the death of her parents.
To carry out the crime, she hired hitmen to whom she paid $ 10,000 and made them fake an alleged robbery. However, the real goal was to end the lives of her mother Bich Ha and her father Huei Hann Pan.
Like many controlling parents, Bich Ha Pan and Huei Hann Pan never let their daughter decide what to do with her time. They also didn’t let her socialize with whoever she wanted.
The unfortunate story had its origins in Jennifer’s school days. There, the young girl began to build a facade of lies about herself that Dani Hendrix narrates for Medium.
Her parents’ routine consisted of dropping her off at school in the morning and picking her up when her day was over. There was nothing Jennifer could do without their knowledge, much less have friends or talk to other children. According to them, this could distract her from her studies, so she could not attend social events at her school such as dances and parties.
As she grew older, Jennifer became adept at falsifying subject reports with perfect scores, honorable mentions, and even a bachelor’s degree. All this because she never went from being a mediocre student and had dropped out of school.
At the university, the situation worsened. She met a boy named Daniel Wong with whom she began a romantic relationship, secretly from her parents.
She told her parents she was studying at Ryerson University. She showed them a fake admission letter and explained that she had moved in with a friend.
Jennifer’s lies to get away from her parents
For a long time, Jennifer kept the lie that she was studying to be a pharmacologist, because that is what her parents wanted. After the supposed two years at Ryerson, she told them that she would transfer to another university in Canada.
She even bought textbooks, watched documentaries to appear informed in her supposed area of study. Thus, she convinced her parents that with the ‘grants and scholarships she had won’, she no longer needed them to pay for her education.
Actually, Jennifer lived with Daniel, her boyfriend, and worked as a waitress in a restaurant, although she also taught piano. A growing resentment towards her parents and an accumulation of constant lies were burning up inside her that ended up overwhelming her. Precisely at that point she came to believe that killing them would be her only way out.
After supposedly “graduating” from college, Jennifer told another lie to prevent her parents from going to the graduation ceremony.
At first, she managed to convince them that she worked in a hospital, with long hours until late at night and on weekends. With this, she argued that it was better to continue living with her “friend from college”, who never existed. It was at this point that her parents began to notice that something was not right.
In 2010, a series of events happened that triggered the fatal outcome. One day her father forced her to take him to the hospital where she supposedly worked.
She walked in hoping that would be enough and that her father would leave. But, he decided to follow her and found no record of her working there.
Then her father called her supposed roommate, only to find out that the girl hadn’t spoken to Jennifer in years. They forced her to confess and she told them everything: that she had not graduated from high school or attended college. And, finally, that all that time she was living with her boyfriend.
Everything went wrong
Jennifer’s dad forced her to return home, quit her real job at the restaurant, and leave her boyfriend Daniel. Although she was already an adult — she was 24 years old — he took away her cell phone and her laptop. He even installed a GPS in her car to monitor her mobility. All of this happened in 2010, the year she decided to kill her parents.
Thus, Jennifer lost the two lives that she had built: the one she invented so that her parents would be happy and the one that she actually lived with her boyfriend.
Her anger continued to grow. The last straw came when she was reunited with an old friend named Andrew, who was experiencing a similar situation and who told Jennifer that he was determined to kill his own father.
Andrew introduced her to someone he knew and the three of them devised a plan to assassinate Jennifer’s father in the parking lot of his work. To that end, the young woman paid her friend $ 1,500 without imagining that he would betray her and run away with the money. This left her even more angry and desperate.
After a while, Daniel — her boyfriend — came back into her life. Jennifer was already convinced that she had to murder her parents, because — according to her — if they were still alive, she would never be happy with Daniel.
So her boyfriend, instead of dissuading her, joined in on the fateful murder plan. Together they decided to hire a hit man to do the job. The idea was to fake a robbery in which Bich Ha and Huei Hann Pan were killed. The connection with the murderers was made by Daniel and the payment was $ 10,000.
Crime and outcome of the Pan family
The events occurred on November 8, 2010. Jennifer opened the door of her house when her parents were already going to sleep, around 10:02 at night. She made the agreed signal, turning the study light on and off. A few minutes later she sent a message to David — one of the three hit men they hired — to proceed.
The alleged thieves entered and took the parents and Jennifer out of their bedroom, whom they “forced” to give all the money that her family had in the house. When she did, they took her back upstairs and tied her hands and legs with a shoelace. Later, the girl’s parents were shot in the head.
The mother died immediately, but the father survived and managed to leave the house and receive help from a neighbour who called an ambulance that took him to the hospital, where he was put into an induced coma. Jennifer called 911 and reported the shots.
Upon arrival, the police realized that there was something strange about the robbery. The “thieves” did not take other valuable possessions, such as the luxury car that was in the garage. Furthermore, the fact that they entered through the front door also raised suspicions.
Jennifer never imagined that her plan would fail and that it would be her own father who would, again, discover her. Mr. Huei Hann Pan managed to survive the assassination attempt. The worst thing — for his daughter — is that he remembered everything that had happened that criminal night.
The father told everything he knew to the police. He even told them that his daughter seemed to know the robbers and that she was never tied up during the false robbery.
The police immediately detained Jennifer and took her for questioning. There, the repressed young woman confessed the whole plan, although she was not able to admit that she wanted to kill her parents.
She also confessed that she had hired the hit men but not to murder her parents, but to stage her own death. She claimed that she was depressed and tired of living, and that the murderers made a mistake. From that moment, the authorities ordered her arrest.
In 2014, the sentence arrived. Jennifer received a life sentence. She was then 28 years old. Her boyfriend Daniel Wong and the three accomplices who helped her with her scheme — Lenford Crawford, David Mylvaganam and Erick Carty — also received the same sentence.
When they complete 25 years in prison, that is, in 2039, all five may request the procedural benefit of parole. If this precautionary measure proves admissible, Jennifer could return to the streets, but she will always be watched and monitored by the authorities, just as her parents did throughout her life.
