Here at The Casual Criminalist, we do not often shy away from difficult questions. Instead, we make our opinions known on controversial topics, such as the death penalty or which substances are appropriate to enjoy in moderation while filming YouTube videos.
So, with that in mind, I’d like to pose a question that I don’t think has ever been asked or answered on this channel before. It is a question that does have a simple legal answer, but it does not have a simple ethical one. It involves a police practice that has helped solve innumerous crimes; however, the catch is, I’m not going to reveal the question until the very end because today’s story is extremely relevant, and the information provided to you throughout will be vital to answering it effectively.
So, if you are just here for a good story, feel free to disregard the question at the end and simply enjoy this episode as you would any other, but if you would like to exercise your mind, hold on, because some things are less black-and-white than they first appear.
The Canadian Dream
As I see it, there are few things more terrifying than the idea of leaving everyone you know behind, traveling across the world, and attempting to start anew in a land that is so foreign to you that you cannot even read the name of the street on which you will be living—setting out into the unknown with nothing more than the promise of opportunity and without any aid, support, or lifeline. It makes my stomach hurt to think about, yet there are people who do just that every day as they seek a better life for themselves and their families.
In 1979, Huei Hann Pan (pronounced like ‘Hwee’ with emphasis on the ‘Hw’ sound), a political refugee from war-torn Vietnam, arrived in Canada and began working toward this better life. He was an experienced engineer and quickly found a home in Scarborough, one of Toronto’s many suburbs. While there, he met a young woman named Bích Hà (pronounced as ‘Bi(t) Hah’ in Vietnamese, but many English speakers say ‘Bick Hah’), another refugee from Vietnam who had immigrated to Canada in 1980. The pair were soon married at a little ceremony in Toronto.
Now, excited to start a family of their own, they found jobs at Magna International, an auto parts manufacturer in Aurora, Ontario. Here, Huei secured a position as a tool fabricator, while Bích Hà worked on the manufacturing floor constructing the car parts themselves. These jobs paid well enough; however, the work was grueling. Bích Hà had it the roughest as she worked long hours in miserably hot conditions, handling scalding hot car parts that had—just moments earlier—been molten aluminum.
In the winters, the factory floor was uncomfortably hot, but in the summers, it was downright nightmarish. They both opted for overtime whenever it was available to them, and by the time their workdays were complete, their feet and backs hurt, and it took everything in them to stay awake. Yet staying awake is exactly what they had to do.
As said the Pan family motto, “Family Comes First,” and Huei and Bích Hà practiced what they preached. Every evening, no matter how exhausted they were, the couple worked with their two young children, Felix and Jennifer, to help them finish their homework, get ahead in school, and go beyond what was expected of them. They pushed their children hard, expected excellent grades, and enrolled them in extracurricular activities that they hoped would earn them a spot at a good private middle and high school. It was a challenging life for the entire family, yet they persevered.
After decades of work, this never-ending drive paid off. It allowed the Pan family to purchase a nice home in a safe neighborhood within Markham, one of Toronto’s other suburbs known for its large Asian population. And by the early 2000s, the pair had even managed to save over $200K, and Huei was driving his own Mercedes-Benz while Bích Hà was driving a Lexus ES 300. These things, they said, were nice-to-haves, but their greatest achievements were their children’s achievements.
Thanks to their parents’ success, both Felix and Jennifer were able to attend expensive private schools like the ones Huei and Bích Hà had always imagined, and neither child had to worry about holding down a job or saving for college because those things were already taken care of for them. Instead, their spare time was spent volunteering and performing other services that both helped their communities and looked good on a college application.
Felix and Jennifer had been given everything they needed to build upon the success that their parents had achieved—and build upon it they did. Felix was academically gifted and often achieved near-perfect marks, and when it was time for him to start applying to colleges, he was the crème of the crop. Every school in and around Toronto was eager to accept him, and he eventually found a spot at a prestigious university where he studied mechanical engineering in hopes of following in his father’s footsteps.
Jennifer was no slouch either. Her grades were good also, but where she really excelled was in arts and athletics. By the time she entered high school, she had been taking piano lessons since age four and was on the path to becoming an Olympic-level figure skater, a goal that many people thought she had an excellent chance of achieving.
However, unfortunately for her and her doting parents, a knee injury ended Jennifer’s sports career sooner than expected and killed her dream of someday competing professionally. It was a disappointing time for the family to be sure, but even after this setback, Jennifer was determined to succeed in life. She shifted her focus back to academics and began studying to become a doctor, a goal that her parents eagerly supported and pushed her to pursue.
To say that Huei and Bích Hà had accomplished something impressive would be a massive understatement. Together, they had immigrated to a foreign land with nothing but the clothes on their backs, worked hard to provide for their family, and been rewarded for it in almost every conceivable way.
Their success, police believed, was the exact reason their family was targeted.
The Canadian Nightmare
At a little past 10 PM on November 8th, 2010, emergency services in Markham, Ontario received a frantic phone call from a young woman who stated that her home had been broken into by three strangers and her parents had been shot. The caller was 24-year-old Jennifer Pan, and in the background of the call, Huei was heard shouting in pain and screaming desperately for help.
Jennifer pleaded with the dispatcher to send that help and said that the three men had entered her home unexpectedly, stolen her family’s valuables, and left her tied to a staircase banister. She said that she had only managed to retrieve her cellphone from her back pocket after the men had already fled the home.
When the police arrived, they discovered a truly disturbing scene. Huei was laying on the front lawn with two gunshot wounds, one in his shoulder and one in his face. He was unresponsive but alive—barely. Behind him, they saw a trail of blood leading from inside the house, and it appeared as if the man had been shot inside and somehow managed to drag himself outside to scream for help.
As a single officer tended to his wounds and waited for paramedics to arrive, the rest of the team entered the Pan’s home cautiously to begin clearing the scene. Immediately, they discovered Jennifer with her hands bound behind her back and tied to the staircase banister as she had described in the 911 call. She was uninjured but very frightened.
As they followed the trail of blood left by Huei to the basement, they found Bích Hà’s body lying in a pool of blood with multiple gunshot wounds. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
After officers had finished clearing the home completely, they cut the bindings off Jennifer’s wrists, and she immediately rushed to her father, who was then being loaded onto a stretcher and placed into an ambulance. She was nearly inconsolable as the flashing red lights carried him away toward the nearest hospital.
Once Huei arrived, a trauma team began working to prepare him for surgery. Eventually, they were able to remove the bullets, and he was moved into the Intensive Care Unit—but his chances, doctors said, were slim.
Back at the crime scene, police were searching for evidence but finding little. The Pan family’s home itself did not have a security system; however, investigators did receive camera footage from a neighbor’s home that showed the three men approaching on foot. They had walked across the Pan’s grass and entered through their front door, which was unlocked.
Now, although they didn’t enjoy the idea of dragging Jennifer downtown after such a traumatic incident, investigators knew that collecting her witness statement quickly was vital to their investigation because every minute lost put more time between her and the incident; it allowed more opportunity for her to either forget or repress vital information. And since Felix had not been home during the time of the attack and her father was unlikely to recover, Jennifer herself was the best lead they currently had to catch whoever was responsible. She was the only person they could talk to who had witnessed the horrors that night in person.
At around 2:30 AM, a detective transported Jennifer to a local police station. She was seated inside a stuffy room, given a box of Kleenex, and asked to describe—in detail—the events leading up to the attack so that police could hopefully understand how and why the Pan family had been targeted.
While speaking through tears, Jennifer explained that the previous day had started out rather mundanely. She said that she had woken up at around 9:30 AM as she normally did, practiced piano, and chatted with her friends over the phone. Her father had left for work at his normal time, and her mother, who was not scheduled to work that day, had left at around midday to visit Jennifer’s ill grandfather. She said she then made herself lunch at around noon and began studying piano history as she waited for them to return.
Later that afternoon, at around 3:30 PM, her mother arrived home and began preparing the family’s evening meal, and soon after, her father also returned from work at his usual time. After eating together, each of them went back to doing their own thing: Huei went upstairs to do some work on his computer, Bích Hà left the home to go line dancing, and Jennifer invited a friend over to watch a movie on the living room television.
Then, at around 9 PM, once the movie was complete, her friend returned home, and Jennifer went upstairs to watch the television in her room and call another friend on her cellphone to chat before bed. As she did this, her father was also winding down for the night in his bedroom, and her mother, who had just returned home, was relaxing downstairs.
So far, everything about the day seemed completely normal; however, this is where things took a turn.
At approximately 9:30 PM, from inside her bedroom, Jennifer heard her mother shuffling around downstairs and calling her father’s name loudly. Jennifer then hung up the phone, turned down the TV, and realized that her mother and father were speaking to one another in English, something that neither of them ever did while at home. She then also heard several other voices—deep male voices—that she did not recognize.
At about this time, unfamiliar footsteps came running up the stairs to the second floor, and Jennifer listened quietly as her mother, father, and the men began arguing and struggling with one another throughout the home. Terrified, she placed her ear on her closed bedroom door, listening silently and waiting for the voices and footsteps to leave so that she could peer out.
After a moment of silence, she became convinced that everyone had gone downstairs, cracked open her door, and was spotted by a hooded man. Because the hallway was dark, Jennifer was not able to provide any details about the man’s appearance, but said that he rushed at her, took hold of her arms, and tied her hands behind her back. He told her that he had a gun, ordering her to stay quiet or he would shoot her in the head.
Then, after the man had checked Jennifer’s pockets for cash and led her downstairs into the pitch-black living room, she spotted the silhouette of a second man standing beside her father and a third man standing over her mother, who was then seated on the living room sofa. Jennifer said that the man beside her father had a Caribbean accent and was demanding money from him.
As she and the first man reached the base of the stairs, he pushed her to her knees, pressed the gun to the back of her head, and demanded to know where her mother’s purse and father’s wallet were.
Seeing Jennifer in distress, Huei began pleading with the men as Bích Hà attempted to stand and rush to her, but the third man pushed her mother back onto the sofa. Due to the language barrier between them, her mother was having trouble understanding the men and kept trying to stand up. The man kept pushing her back down onto the sofa and yelling the word “purse” angrily at her.
Seeing that the other men had the situation under control, the second man began searching the home’s downstairs for valuables. Thinking that her mother may have crammed her purse inside the kitchen refrigerator to hide it from them, he opened its door and Jennifer was able to get a good look at him for the first time. The tiny light inside revealed that he was a black man with dreadlocks wearing a hoodie pulled over his head and a bandana covering his lower face.
Pleading with the men to let Jennifer go, Huei then told them where to find his wallet; it was upstairs in the master bedroom.
With her hands still tied behind her back, the first man led Jennifer back upstairs to search for it, but unfortunately, the wallet was nowhere to be found. Jennifer did find some cash in her mother’s nightstand, but it was not much.
The man then led Jennifer around upstairs as she gathered up smaller amounts of money that the family had stashed away in various places. This included the tips she had earned while working as a waitress and her father’s emergency fund. In total, the amount she found for him was relatively small and nowhere near what he was hoping to find.
With no patience remaining, the man then tied Jennifer’s hands to the banister where she would later be found by police and returned downstairs to Huei and Bích Hà.
Jennifer said that she heard the men marching her parents down the basement steps as the first man berated them. He shouted, “you lied to us,” and then she heard two gunshots followed by her mother screaming. Then there were two more shots. Then all was quiet.
After this, the man in charge said that it was time to leave, and the men were heard running back up the basement staircase and exiting the home.
At this point, Jennifer was able to retrieve her cellphone from her pocket and dial 911. She held the phone at her hip—as high as her bound hands would allow—turned the volume all the way up and shouted into it to be heard.
Too Many Unknowns
Once Jennifer’s statement was finalized, she left the police station and went to visit her father at the hospital; however, investigators were not finished with her yet. They still had many questions about the home invasion, but they also knew they needed to wait, gather more evidence, and collect their thoughts before proceeding. This is because several details in Jennifer’s story didn’t quite make sense to them, and while they didn’t have any reason to believe that she was purposefully lying, they strongly suspected that she knew more about the attack than she was letting on.
This is because, throughout the interview, Jennifer’s demeanor had seemed somewhat odd given the circumstances. Most of the time, victims and witnesses of horrific crimes—like the one Jennifer had just experienced—will be emotionally charged and eager to help police in any way they can. And since they are usually in a state of heightened awareness during the crime, many can provide vivid details about the incident with little effort.
This usually results in them speaking and answering questions rapidly and without much thought so that they can get the information out as quickly as possible. In other instances, victims may be in shock and cannot remember anything at all about the incident.
Jennifer’s statement, however, was unlike either of these. Throughout her interview, she had spoken quietly, mumbled, and taken an unusual amount of time to think before answering certain questions. This behavior was understandable considering what she had just been through, but what concerned police greatly was that her behavior was inconsistent as she did not show the same hesitation when answering questions about her family’s day prior to the attack.
These strange behaviors only appeared when speaking about the break-in itself. While this didn’t prove anything, it gave police the impression that she was answering some questions honestly while either making up answers or trying to remember answers for others. At several points, Jennifer seemed to recognize that she was taking a long time to answer and apologized by saying that she was thinking because she “didn’t want to say the wrong thing.”
In addition to this, while Jennifer was visibly upset, sleep deprived, and shaken by the whole ordeal, her emotions had seemed to rise and fall erratically, and the words and phrases she had used throughout the conversation seemed odd. One moment she was stuttering and on the verge of tears, and seconds later, she was relaying information clearly and without issue. It was like someone was flipping an emotional light-switch on and off repeatedly—or, perhaps, she kept forgetting that she was supposed to be upset.
At one point, Jennifer even referred to her mother’s killer as “the gentleman,” and later, while describing what she had heard after the gunshots were fired, she imitates her father’s cries for help and sounds almost like she’s mocking him.
While some wondered if Jennifer wasn’t telling the whole story because she had been threatened by the men and was afraid for her life, others leaned toward a more sinister narrative. They believed that Jennifer was somehow involved in the crime herself. While this prospect seemed both unthinkable and unlikely, they weren’t ruling out any possibilities nor were they taking any chances on account of how cold-blooded the crime had been.
When Jennifer left the station that morning, she unknowingly did so with a police tail attached to her that would follow her everywhere she went for the next several days—including to her mother’s funeral. While observing her, officers noted that Jennifer’s demeanor did not seem natural. While she did usually seem upset when the moment demanded it, she had not cried at all during her mother’s funeral—even when her older brother was standing beside her and bawling his eyes out.
As the investigation continued, they were also left puzzled by several more inconsistencies that they could not wrap their heads around:
First, Jennifer’s story made the entire incident seem like a robbery gone wrong, but the crime itself did not make sense. The Pan family’s house was nice and clean but modest. Huei and Bích Hà earned a healthy income but nothing—other than the expensive cars in their driveway—alluded to them possessing substantial wealth. The family lived frugally, and none of them wore fancy or flashy clothes nor did they ever display large amounts of cash or brag to their friends or neighbors about the savings that they had stashed away for retirement.
On top of that, even if the robbers had somehow known about the Pan’s savings, what reason would they have had to believe that their money was stashed away inside the family home? The men had seemed certain that there was a large amount of cash somewhere, but why? What had given them that idea?
To add to the confusion, another obvious problem was the fact that the police were not investigating a robbery, they were investigating a murder. Why would the men needlessly escalate their crimes when their faces had been covered and there was no reason for them to kill either Huei or Bích Hà? Surely there had to be a reason that the pair were not just set free once it became clear that the robbery had failed.
And if there was a reason that they were killing witnesses, why did they choose to leave Jennifer alive? She was a massive loose-end, and neither the police nor Jennifer could come up with a reason that her parents had been shot while she had been spared. At one point, Jennifer had suggested that they may have let her live because she had cooperated and her parents had not, but this seemed very unlikely.
The next set of major problems surrounded the 911 call itself. According to Jennifer, she was able to call for help using her cellphone, which she had slid into her back pocket after hearing the intruders enter her home. This made sense, but what did not make sense was why the man who had searched her pockets for valuables had not discovered and confiscated it. Even if he hadn’t intended to take the cellphone with him out of fear of being tracked, he would have at least taken it temporarily so she could not stealthily call for help while they were still inside the home.
Also, regarding the cellphone, if Jennifer’s hands had been tied during the time of the call as she claimed, she would have had a very difficult time dialing 911. You see, her hands were bound extremely tightly to the point that her bindings were cutting off circulation, and her cell phone was an old flip phone. This meant that she would have had to retrieve the phone from her back pocket, flip it open, dial 911, and put the phone on speaker while her hands were almost entirely immobilized and the phone was out of her line of sight. While this was not completely impossible, it would have been very difficult, and Jennifer had made it sound easy in her retelling.
Setting the Record Straight
To put investigators’ minds at ease, they asked Jennifer to return for a second interview to go over the events in detail once again. This time, however, they wanted to start by focusing on Jennifer herself and her relationship with her parents.
Now, after giving you a brief rundown of the Pan family during the start of this episode, you might have been left feeling like you have a decent understanding of the family’s dynamic; however, like any family, the Pans had secrets, and as investigators spoke to Jennifer, those secrets began to spill.
Jennifer said that, although she and her father had gotten along well for most of her life, the past few years had put a strain on their relationship, and the biggest reason for this tension was her father’s unreasonably high expectations for her. As she explained, Huei was not an easy father to please. He had worked hard in life and succeeded, and he expected his children to do the same; however, instead of allowing them to decide what they wanted to do with their own lives, he had made the decision for them before they were even born. He wanted Felix to be an engineer like him, and he wanted Jennifer to become a doctor.
Now, while neither of these career paths were easy, Felix had abided by their father’s demands far better than Jennifer had been able to. He had excelled in everything he put his mind to, achieved excellent grades, and earned his degree in engineering as their father had insisted. However, Jennifer was not so fortunate. Although her grades were above average through most of her high-school years, they were never high enough for Huei.
So, instead of pushing herself beyond her capabilities, Jennifer decided to focus on extracurriculars that she excelled at, such as playing the piano and figure skating.
This decision to prioritize anything besides her grades did not make Huei necessarily happy, but her early success in figure skating did allow him to recognize her potential and stop hounding her about her grades. It wasn’t an ideal solution since Jennifer wasn’t really interested in professional figure skating either, but she went along with it because it got her father off her back.
Unfortunately, as I said earlier, Jennifer suffered an injury that ended her athletic career early, and after it became clear that she would not recover well enough to compete again, her father’s demands for academic success reemerged. While she wanted to become a piano teacher, Huei insisted that she was not skilled enough to achieve meaningful success in this field and demanded that she once again refocus her efforts on becoming a doctor instead.
Over the next few years, as Jennifer realized that she would not be able to achieve the goals her father had set, she began to feel like a failure as her sense of self-worth plummeted. To prove herself to him, she said that she was forced to turn to deception.
When Jennifer entered high school, she began forging her report cards to show better grades. This placated her father, but since he was no longer pushing her to succeed, her grades began to gradually slip even lower, and she ended up failing her senior year due to both poor test scores in one of her required math classes as well as truancy.
The truancy was a whole other can of worms. You see, Jennifer had also been skipping school to hang out with her secret boyfriend, Daniel Wong. Huei did not approve of her and Daniel’s relationship for several reasons—primarily because Daniel was not Vietnamese and was a small-time drug dealer—but he had also forbidden Jennifer from dating all together because he believed that a relationship would interfere with her school and volunteer work.
When graduation day came, Jennifer said that she should have just come clean but was terrified of how her father would react and decided to purchase a fake high school diploma and lie about being accepted into a local college. Instead of taking a step back, apologizing, and finishing high school, Jennifer told him that she was on the fast track to becoming a doctor.
Overjoyed by her success, Huei then purchased several necessities for Jennifer’s college education, such as a cellphone and laptop, and gave her the money she needed for tuition and living expenses. He believed that this money would allow Jennifer to continue focusing on her academics and not on money. However, instead of using it for its intended purpose, Jennifer then spent the next six years accepting and using these funds to purchase books for classes that she was not enrolled in and renting an apartment for herself and Daniel across town. To keep the lie alive, she also called home periodically to tell her mother and father made up stories about her new nonexistent friends and professors, and at the end of each semester, she presented more forged documents that showed passing grades.
As I said, this charade went on for over six years, and when it came time for her to graduate and return home permanently, Jennifer did the same exact thing she had done in high school: she presented her parents with a fake diploma that they hung on the wall and celebrated. They had no idea that their daughter was not a doctor and was secretly a high school dropout.
Somehow, despite several close calls throughout the years, Jennifer had gotten away with her lies; however now, her real problems were just beginning. Obviously, Huei expected her to use the fancy new degree he had paid for to start earning some money of her own, and this proved to be a massive headache for which Jennifer could not find a simple solution.
Unsure of what to do next, she then attempted to buy herself some more time by telling her parents that she was having trouble finding a job in healthcare. She said that, until a position became available, she would volunteer at a local hospital without pay, and Huei and Bích Hà, who were proud of her for sacrificing her time to help others, agreed to continue supporting her until she landed a paying job.
Now, it’s unclear how long Jennifer planned to keep living her fake life, but before she could figure out a way past her lies, her father became suspicious when she was unable to show him a uniform or badge for her new volunteer position.
One morning, when she left for work, Huei followed Jennifer’s car across town and was led directly to Daniel’s apartment. To say that he was furious would not even begin to cover it. For lack of a better term, he absolutely “lost his shit” when he discovered that Jennifer had been lying to him since high school and had wasted her entire college fund on her loser, burnout boyfriend.
As the full scope of Jennifer’s lies came into focus, Huei was livid, and he gave her an ultimatum: Stop dating Daniel Wong, finish high school, enroll in college, and get her life back on track, or she would be disowned entirely. There was no negotiation; there was no time to think or consider other options. Her cards were on the table, she had a losing hand, and they both knew it.
Now, at nearly 25 years old, Jennifer was very much an adult; however, she was also still completely financially dependent on her father for support as she had never held a job for more than a few days and was completely ill-prepared by every measure to enter the workforce. She could have walked away and stayed with Daniel, but that would have meant losing everything important to her, including her family, her inheritance, and her future.
Seeing no other options, Jennifer returned home with her tail between her legs and found herself in a new type of misery. Since Huei had purchased her laptop and cellphone, he confiscated them both and forbade her from contacting anyone outside the family home. She was not allowed to drive anywhere on her own. She was not allowed to see her friends.
She was not allowed to go anywhere except for her piano lessons. And while Huei didn’t physically lock Jennifer inside the family home, he did draw a line in the sand and told her that, if she crossed it, she would not be given a third chance.
Jennifer then spent the next two years of her life isolated as she finished high school and started working on a degree in pharmacy, a degree that Huei now felt was more achievable for Jennifer than becoming a medical doctor.
This is the life that Jennifer had been living when her mother and father were attacked.
After hearing this longwinded admission, the interviewing officer knew that he had found a clear motive and a much more convincing narrative than a burglary gone wrong. He knew that—although she wouldn’t openly admit it—Jennifer likely hated her father, but he didn’t believe that she had pulled the trigger herself. The video evidence corroborated her claims that three men had been inside her home at the time of the attack, but the detective was sure that Jennifer knew who the men were. He just needed to get her to admit it.
At this point, the witness interview had gradually morphed into an interrogation, and the detective began walking Jennifer through her story once again; however, this time, her narrative began to unravel. After telling her story so many times, Jennifer was beginning to forget small—but important—details, such as the fact that her hands had been tied when she was led downstairs to where her parents were being held.
At one point, the detective requested that Jennifer stand up and demonstrate how she had been able to retrieve her cellphone from her back pocket and dial 911, and Jennifer was able to show him a semi-believable reenactment, but this still wasn’t enough to convince him.
He then took on the role of a sympathetic friend. He asked how she felt about her father’s ultimatum and suggested casually that his actions justified what had happened to him. The detective obviously didn’t believe what he was saying, but he was hoping that Jennifer would be more likely to confess if he appeared non-judgmental to the crime and understanding of her and her father’s domestic issues.
For the next 4 hours, the detective continued to chip away at her story; however, Jennifer refused to crack, and he was forced to end the interview. She was once again allowed to leave as a free woman.
Discouraged and possessing no other evidence to go on, they began planning their next moves; however, this is when the unexpected happened.
A Surprise Witness
On November 22, 2010, nearly two weeks after the events that launched their investigation, detectives contacted Jennifer and requested that she return for a third and final interview; however, this time, the police’s position had improved considerably. They didn’t just suspect Jennifer of hiding something, they had a witness who could testify to it.
Days earlier, unbeknownst to Jennifer, Huei Han Pan had defied all expectations and awoken from his coma. He had suffered minor brain damage from the gunshot wound to his face, but his memories from that night were crystal clear, and when he learned of his wife’s fate, he was compelled to make a statement.
From his hospital bed, Huei told police that he had witnessed Jennifer standing beside and speaking jovially to the three assailants, and that her hands had not been bound the way she had described when he and his wife were escorted down the stairs to the basement. He couldn’t hear what was being said between Jennifer and the men, but he could tell by their body language that she was completely comfortable around them and believed that she knew at least one of them prior to the attack. There was also no robbery and no mention of his wallet or Bích Hà’s purse. The entire point of the break-in had been to murder him and his wife, and Jennifer had completely fabricated the rest of the story.
When Jennifer sat down with the detectives once again, she was not aware that her father had awoken from his coma, nor did she know that he had given this statement. By this point, Detectives were less concerned with Jennifer’s guilt and much more interested in the identities of the three men. They hoped that by presenting her with a version of events that made her seem less culpable, they could coax a confession out of her slowly and get her to give up her accomplices.
Once again, the detective took on the role of a sympathetic friend. He revisited her and her father’s relationship, his overly controlling nature, and his high expectations for her. According to the detective, what Jennifer had experienced at the hands of her father was simple, straightforward abuse, and he said that, sometimes, victims of abuse make decisions that seem irrational to regular people. He then shifted the conversation to her Daniel Wong and asked if either of them held any resentment over how her father had forbidden their relationship.
Jennifer admitted that, of course, there were hard feelings between the three of them but reiterated that she stood by her decision to break things off. She said that she knew that her father would never accept Daniel as a suitable partner and wanted to make him proud and repay him for all the lies by sticking to her word and finishing school, becoming a pharmacist, and marrying someone of whom he approved.
After spending two more hours rehashing the events of that evening and wearing down Jennifer’s resolve, the detective then employed a controversial yet effective technique to get a confession: lying.
Yes, if you are not aware, the police are allowed to lie to you in most circumstances, and they often do so without hesitation when it benefits them. So, hold on because you are about to see how detectives got a confession out of Jennifer without a single piece of physical evidence against her:
Based on the statement given by her father, the police knew that Jennifer had not been tied up throughout the break-in as she described, and the detective utilized this knowledge in a clever way:
He told Jennifer that Canada’s government utilizes a mass surveillance system comprised of thousands of tiny spy satellites that are equipped with heat sensing technology and capable of seeing through solid objects, such as walls and roofs. He said that these satellites have the ability to monitor and record the interior of Canadian residences and document who is inside the home, where they are standing, and what they are doing. He said that he had been given access to those recordings and that, after reviewing them, he knew for certain that she was lying.
He said that those recordings directly contradicted her version of events and that it was impossible for her story to be true based on what he had witnessed happening inside the home at the time of the attack. She had not been tied up, and they had not ransacked the home as she described. Those things happened after her parents had been led to the basement.
Now, of course, the Canadian government doesn’t actually use spy satellites to monitor its citizens inside the privacy of their own homes—as far as we know—but Jennifer had no way of knowing this. She believed the detective’s story without questioning it and, feeling backed into a corner, admitted that she had not been truthful during her previous statements.
It’s at this point that her lawyer should have stepped in and ended the interview; however, she still had not requested one after over a total of ten hours of intense interrogation.
The story that Jennifer then told the detective was so unbelievable that it dominated news headlines in her hometown for days. She said that while she had originally hired the three men to kill for her, she had not taken out a contract on her mother and father; she had taken out a contract on herself.
Let me explain:
Jennifer said that, when her lies were exposed, she had accepted her father’s ultimatum and agreed to abide by his wishes by returning home; however, she quickly realized that she had made a massive mistake. She felt alone and isolated and hopeless. She loved Daniel, but she had been forbidden from seeing him ever again, and this left a massive void inside her. She said that it felt as if a piece of her had been ripped out.
Jennifer then said that she couldn’t take it anymore. She wanted to die but didn’t want to dishonor her family by dying by her own hand. She wanted to make her death look like a murder to spare her mother and father the embarrassment, so she reestablished contact with Daniel Wong and asked him to put her in touch with a hitman. Daniel complied and introduced her to the three men.
She then took out a contract on herself; however, before the contract could be completed, her living situation improved. Jennifer was permitted to start speaking to her friends again and her cellphone and laptop were returned to her on the condition that she stay in school and away from Daniel. According to Jennifer, her life had improved so much that she changed her mind about wanting to die and tried to call the whole thing off.
Unfortunately, she said, it was too late; the men she had hired were not willing to cancel the contract, and they showed up that night demanding payment.
Now, if your eyes have not already rolled out of your head, hold on because it gets even worse.
Jennifer said that, because she was not able to pay them the 10% they were demanding to cancel the hit, they killed her mother and attempted to kill her father as a warning to her. This was supposed to motivate her to find the money they were owed or else they would return and do the same to her. The hit was never supposed to be on her parents, they had just been caught in the crossfire. That’s why they had not killed her; they were still expecting payment.
As soon as Jennifer admitted this, the detective knew that it was just another lie; however, it was a very consequential lie, and he was beyond thrilled to hear it. Not only had she admitted to lying to the police, but she had also directly implicated herself and Daniel Wong in a murder-for-hire plot and revealed that she knew the identity of her mother’s murders. She had just sealed her own fate; she wasn’t going home that afternoon, and she would very likely never be going home again.
Jennifer then told the detective that the names of the three men were Lenford Roy Crawford, AKA Homeboy; Eric Shawn Carty, AKA Sniper; and David Mylvaganam, a hitman who didn’t even have his own codename. What an absolute loser.
Wrapping Up the Case
Although Jennifer continued to claim that she had never once intended to have anyone in her family—besides herself—killed, she was then promptly escorted from the interrogation room and booked into the local jail as an investigation into the three men she had just named quickly commenced.
Using her confession, police obtained Jennifer’s cellphone records, which included text messages between herself and Daniel where the couple had communicated her intention to have her father murdered. While searching through hundreds of messages in which the pair had plotted their crime, they saw a completely different person than the shy, soft-spoken girl whom they had interviewed. They saw a greedy, scheming, self-obsessed person whose ultimate goal was to have her parents murdered so that she could collect her inheritance and move to another country with Daniel.
At multiple points during their conversations, Daniel had encouraged Jennifer to seek a different solution by simply leaving home and coming to live with him, but Jennifer had refused. She knew that she would be disowned and was not willing to give up her inheritance. She wanted it all, and the only thing standing in her way, she said, was her mother and father.
And so, with her mind made up, Daniel provided Jennifer with a second SIM card and gave her the contact information of a local hitman. This was Lenford Roy Crawford, AKA Homeboy. The two of them then worked out a deal. Crawford would contact two of his men, Carty and Mylvaganam, and the three of them would be paid a total of $10,000 dollars once Jennifer’s inheritance came through. That was what her parents’ lives were worth to her and the three men: $10,000.
The plan they formulated over text was simple:
Crawford and his men would park outside the family home on a night that Jennifer chose and wait for her to unlock the front door for them. Then, once the way was clear and Jennifer was safely back inside her bedroom, she would flash her bedroom light on and off several times rapidly to signal that it was time for the three men to enter the home. Once they were inside and her parents were subdued and taken to the basement, she would then reemerge and help Crawford stage a robbery that would serve as motivation for the break-in. Crawford would then bind her wrists, and she would use her cellphone to dial 911 as the men made their escape.
As a bonus, she said, the men would be allowed to keep any money they found while staging the robbery, and all three of them walked away that night with approximately $2,000 in cash, less than $700 each.
It was an excellent plan, they believed, but unfortunately it wasn’t, and they were all too stupid to see it. Police had seen through their ruse almost immediately, and the three amateurish hitmen had botched the job, which only further cemented their fates.
Eventually, Daniel Wong, Lenford Roy Crawford, Eric Shawn Carty, and David Mylvaganam were also arrested for their parts in the crime, and trials for each soon commenced. In the end, all but Eric Shawn Carty were tried, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison. Carty opted to enter a guilty plea for a lesser charge after his lawyer became ill during his trial and he did not wish to start over with a new lawyer. He was deemed eligible for parole after 9 years.
Jennifer herself was also tried, and her father and brother both testified against her. She was found guilty, sentenced to life in prison, and forbidden from ever contacting her father, brother, or Daniel Wong ever again. She is now housed at the Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener, Ontario.
Note: As of the time of writing this, in May 2023, an appellate judge has just granted Jennifer Pan, Daniel Wong, and the two hitmen who received life sentences a retrial for the murder of Bích Hà Pan. This decision was based on the belief that the trial judge that oversaw their original cases did not allow the jury to consider any scenario that would have resulted in a charge that was less than first-degree murder. They have been granted a retrial for this conviction; however, the appellate judge upheld their convictions for the attempted murder of Huei Han Pan. As of now, it is unclear how this decision will affect their sentences.
Question Time
Okay, now that we’ve reached the end of this episode, it’s time for me to present you with the question that I promised in the pre-intro:
One of the things that makes Jennifer’s case somewhat unique is that it was solved almost entirely inside an interrogation room. You see, even without any physical evidence linking her to the crime, police were able to use Jennifer’s confession to obtain a search warrant for her cellphone records. These records, as we have discussed, were the singular piece of evidence that ultimately tied the entire case together, but had it not been for her confession, police would not have had the probable cause needed to subpoena them.
Sure, they had Huei Han Pan’s statement, but his word was not considered reliable because he had suffered brain damage during the attack and no judge would have signed off on a warrant based on his testimony alone because he had not yet been deemed competent. That means that, had Jennifer kept her mouth shut, it’s very possible that police would have never solved this crime—or, at the very least, they would have had a much more difficult time with it.
The reason her case—and many others like it—are considered controversial is because of the way her confession was obtained. Police lied to her, and even though that lie was a ridiculous lie that involved heat-sensing spy satellites, it still tricked Jennifer into confessing, and many people argue that this is completely unethical.
Currently, there are no laws in America or Canada that prevent the police from lying to a suspect, and as a result, police deception is a common tactic that is used daily, and it takes many forms. Sometimes this deception can be something very small, such as telling a suspect that they already know what happened and encouraging them to be honest. However, other times, the deception can be huge, such as when the police attempt to pit two criminals against one another by saying that the other has already confessed.
But no matter the circumstance, the goal of this deception is to pressure the suspect into saying something incriminating or revealing information that the police wouldn’t otherwise have, and the techniques they use are so well-established and well-rehearsed that books have been written about how to effectively lie to a suspect in order to pry information out of them.
If the police were forbidden from lying to suspects, it’s likely that many criminals would never be caught. Without using deception to exaggerate or outright lie about the evidence they have and the source of that evidence, many guilty criminals would go unpunished. That would mean more unsolved cases, more violent criminals roaming the streets, and—certainly—more crime.
So, while lying certainly has its uses, its downsides are also numerous. First, it further erodes the fragile trust between communities and those charged with protecting them, and at a time when police approval is at an all-time low in many parts of the world, that can be a major problem.
More concerningly, these lies can also sometimes result in false confessions—especially from people who are either young, impressionable, mentally disabled, or simply unfamiliar with police interrogation tactics. This is because the people who do not know or cannot understand that the police are legally allowed to lie to them may try to justify or explain away nonexistent evidence and inadvertently implicate themselves in the process.
For instance, if the police tell a suspect that they have his/her fingerprint at the scene of a murder, the suspect may assume that the police are telling the truth and attempt to explain away the evidence by saying that he/she was there for some unrelated reason. The suspect is innocent in this case; however, what they do not realize is that by saying this they have placed themselves at the scene of the crime around the time of the murder, and even without the nonexistent fingerprints, the police now have an admission that can be used against them in court.
The US Department of Justice estimates that at least 50,000 individuals have been incarcerated due to false confessions resulting from police deception, and I don’t need to explain why that is a problem; however, another statistic that is not tracked is how many times deception has been used to bring an accurate resolution to an otherwise hopeless case—and that’s because there are far too many to account for. As I said, deception is very common and very useful for obtaining information, and there is no doubt in my mind that police solve more cases using deception than they would otherwise do so without.
So, with all that in mind, the question I have been teasing is this:
Should the police be forbidden from lying to a suspect in order to coax a confession from them or gain evidence that they would not otherwise have? Why or why not?
A Legal Perspective on Police Deception
The following section was contributed by Liam, a lawyer from the UK who works within the legal system of England & Wales.
Firstly, I want to premise this discussion with the fact that I am not an American lawyer, I have only ever worked within the legal system of England & Wales and there are one or two key differences between these legal systems when it comes to police lying. Firstly, in England and Wales, S.76 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) requires judges to throw out any confession if that confession is disputed, so long as the prosecution cannot prove that the disputed confession was not gathered through ‘oppressive means.’ This means, effectively, if a police officer does lie to a defendant and his lie results in the defendant admitting to a crime, then that admission cannot be relied upon. The second restriction can be found in S.78 of PACE, this enables the court to throw out any evidence that would be unfair to the defendant if allowed—this is also a section that the courts have used when dealing with evidence obtained from police lying.
So, after all that you may consider that, in England & Wales, we don’t allow the police to lie to a defendant, but that is not true; we are actually the country that invented the rule that police won’t be punished for lying, and I’m about to argue that that’s a good thing.
So, firstly, let’s get the errant guilty pleas out of the way. It’s important to distinguish between a defendant that has rendered a confession and a defendant that had pled guilty. In England & Wales and the US of A, when a defendant pleads guilty, it is the end of the case and no more inquiry will be held. Any guilty plea rendered because of a lie is therefore clearly a miscarriage of justice, especially if the defendant didn’t commit the crime.
However, I don’t think that’s an issue. Why not? Because of that narcissism I spoke about earlier.
This is why lawyers exist, and if you have a lawyer and the police bring up this airtight evidence that bangs you to the crime, your lawyer is going to ask to see that evidence. When the police can’t produce said evidence, that lawyer will tell you that the pigs are pulling porkies.
Now, many of you may be saying: “but Liam, not everyone can afford a lawyer!” and that’s where you’re wrong. In both the US and England & Wales, if you cannot afford a lawyer in a criminal case then one will be appointed to you at no cost. Now, yes, not all of these legal aid lawyers are good quality, but even the most basic lawyer should be capable of challenging that evidence. If they aren’t then the problem isn’t with police lying, it is with the quality of lawyers in your jurisdiction.
So, now we have the issue of errant guilty pleas out of the way, what does that leave us with? It leaves us with dumb ass criminals, such as I have been reliable informed the criminal in this case was. At this point, we should look at the law in general as your views will be decided by the philosophy you bow down to.
Fundamentally there are three philosophies for the law: natural law, the liberal atomistic approach, and the paternalist approach. Put very simply, natural law theorists hold that the law can be worked out in relation to a set of objective rights and wrongs, liberal atomists think the law’s only purpose is to defend the rights of the individual above all else, and paternalists feel the purpose of the law is to protect individuals from harm.
It’s up to you to choose which one of these three that you ascribe to, and, ultimately, I am not going to change your view by arguing here, so I won’t try. What I will say is, fundamentally, both the atomistic and paternalist views of the law view criminal law as being charged with capturing criminals to protect individuals and wider society.
So, with that in mind and with the fact that lying cops leading to guilty pleas is only an issue if you have bad lawyers, all we’re really doing by lying to those accused of crimes is punishing dumb criminals. I’ll also add at this point that this principled argument does ignore plea bargains as plea bargains are dumb and should be done away with, such as here in England & Wales where we have no such mechanism.
So, that was the argument of a defence lawyer for police officers being allowed to lie. I didn’t see myself making that argument when I woke up this morning.
Key Takeaways
- Jennifer Pan orchestrated her parents’ murder after years of forging academic credentials and hiding her relationship with Daniel Wong from her controlling father.
- Police obtained Jennifer’s confession by falsely claiming spy satellites recorded her inside the home, a legally permitted deception tactic in Canada and the US.
- Jennifer’s father Huei survived the attack and provided critical testimony that contradicted her claims of being a bound victim during the home invasion.
- The case highlights a central ethical debate: police deception solves crimes but risks false confessions, with an estimated 50,000 wrongful incarcerations in the US alone.
- England and Wales restrict use of confession evidence obtained through deception under PACE sections 76 and 78, though police lying itself remains unpunished.
Dana Ortiz covers prosecutorial mechanics, evidentiary procedure, and how investigations unwind decades after the original case file went cold.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who were the members of the Pan family?
The Pan family consisted of Huei Hann Pan (the father), Bích Hà Pan (the mother), Felix Pan (the older brother), and Jennifer Pan (the daughter).
What happened on November 8, 2010 at the Pan family home?
At a little past 10 PM, three men entered the Pan family home through an unlocked front door. Bích Hà Pan was shot multiple times and killed in the basement. Huei Hann Pan was shot twice (once in the shoulder and once in the face) but survived. Jennifer Pan claimed she was tied to a staircase banister and called 911.
What was Jennifer Pan’s relationship with her father like?
Jennifer’s relationship with her father was strained due to his unreasonably high expectations. Huei wanted Jennifer to become a doctor and was extremely controlling. He forbade her from dating, and when he discovered her lies about attending college, he gave her an ultimatum: stop dating Daniel Wong, finish high school, enroll in college, and get her life back on track, or be disowned entirely.
What lies had Jennifer Pan been telling her parents?
Jennifer had been forging report cards since high school, failed her senior year due to poor grades and truancy, purchased a fake high school diploma, lied about being accepted into college, and spent six years pretending to attend university while actually living with her boyfriend Daniel Wong. She presented fake diplomas and forged documents showing passing grades, and used her parents’ money for tuition and living expenses for classes she was not enrolled in.
How did police eventually get Jennifer Pan to confess?
Police used deception during interrogation. A detective lied to Jennifer, claiming that Canada had mass surveillance spy satellites with heat-sensing technology that could see through walls and had recorded the interior of her home during the attack. He said these recordings contradicted her story. Believing this lie, Jennifer admitted she had not been truthful and confessed to hiring the men.
What was Jennifer Pan’s initial claim about why she hired the hitmen?
Jennifer initially claimed she had hired the three men to kill herself, not her parents. She said she wanted to die but didn’t want to dishonor her family by committing suicide, so she wanted to make her death look like murder. She claimed she changed her mind when her living situation improved, but the men demanded 10% payment to cancel the contract, and when she couldn’t pay, they killed her mother and attempted to kill her father as a warning.
Who were the three hitmen involved in the crime?
The three men were Lenford Roy Crawford (AKA Homeboy), Eric Shawn Carty (AKA Sniper), and David Mylvaganam (a hitman without a codename).
What was the actual murder-for-hire plot according to Jennifer’s cellphone records?
According to text messages between Jennifer and Daniel Wong, Jennifer wanted her parents murdered so she could collect her inheritance and move to another country with Daniel. Daniel provided her with a second SIM card and contact information for Lenford Roy Crawford. The plan was for the men to wait outside while Jennifer unlocked the front door, then flash her bedroom light as a signal. After her parents were subdued and taken to the basement, she would help stage a robbery, be tied up, and call 911.
The total payment was $10,000 from her inheritance.
What happened to the people involved in the crime?
Jennifer Pan, Daniel Wong, Lenford Roy Crawford, and David Mylvaganam were all tried, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison. Eric Shawn Carty entered a guilty plea for a lesser charge after his lawyer became ill and was deemed eligible for parole after 9 years. Jennifer was forbidden from ever contacting her father, brother, or Daniel Wong again. As of May 2023, an appellate judge granted Jennifer Pan, Daniel Wong, and the two hitmen who received life sentences a retrial for the murder of Bích Hà Pan, though their convictions for attempted murder of Huei Han Pan were upheld.
What controversial police tactic was used to solve this case?
Police used deception/lies during interrogation to obtain Jennifer’s confession. Specifically, a detective falsely claimed that Canada had spy satellites with heat-sensing technology that could see through walls and had recorded the interior of the Pan home during the attack. This lie tricked Jennifer into confessing. The case is controversial because there are no laws in America or Canada preventing police from lying to suspects, and while this tactic helped solve the crime, it can also lead to false confessions and erode trust between communities and police.
Sources
- Original Casual Criminalist video: The Perfect Daughter’s Dark Secret: The Jennifer Pan Story
- Hero image source by Canmenwalker / openverse, by.
