Who is Jennifer Pan? What did she do and where is she now?

Canadian woman Jennifer Pan, whose case is the subject of a new true-crime documentary, is serving life behind bars for her part in a kill-for-hire plot that left her mother dead and her father seriously injured.

Aided by a group of accomplices, Pan is said to have planned the 2010 attack on her parents’ home as a consequence of her mother and father’s discovery that the then-24-year-old had been weaving an extensive web of lies, all in a bid to paint herself as the high-achieving daughter they demanded she be.

What happened to Jennifer Pan’s parents?

On the night of 8 November 2010, armed intruders entered the Pans’ family residence in Markham, Ontario, located some 20 miles outside of Canada’s largest city, Toronto. In a home invasion apparently intended to look like a robbery gone awry, they proceeded to shoot Pan’s father, Huei Hann, and her mother, Bich Ha (pronounced ‘Bick’). Bich Ha was killed instantly, and Huei Hann was taken to hospital in critical condition.

Pan, who lived with her parents, had seemingly facilitated the attack by unlocking the front door to the home. It was she who then called 911. The gunmen had tied her up, but not so tight as to prevent her from using her mobile phone to alert the authorities. “Please send help!” Pan urged the dispatcher, with her father’s cries of pain audible in the background. “Please hurry!”

Having been placed in an induced coma, Huei Hann woke up three days later - and his memories of the attack helped detectives to uncover Pan’s role in it. Crucially, he told investigators that his daughter had seemed to know the intruders. Four years later, he testified against Pan at her trial.

Web of deceit culminates in murder

It was, in particular, Pan’s strained relationship with her father that had driven her to spin out a years-long series of lies to her parents about her academic feats.

Vietnamese immigrants who had met in Canada and built a prosperous life there, they placed great pressure on Pan and her younger brother, Felix, to achieve. As Pan’s former high-schoolmate Karen Ho wrote in a 2015 article in the Toronto Star, “their expectation was that Jennifer and Felix would work as hard as they had in establishing their lives in Canada. They’d laid the groundwork, and their kids would need to improve upon it.”

Most of the pressure came from Huei Hann, however. Ho describes him as “the classic tiger dad”, while the easier-going Bich Ha was “his reluctant accomplice”.

When Pan’s grades started to drop in high school, she avoided her father’s ire by forging report cards to make it look like she was getting straight ‘A’s. Later, the magnitude of her cover-up grew: she failed to graduate from high school, costing her a place at college, but didn’t tell her parents. They believed she was studying pharmacology in Toronto, and was getting work experience in a blood-testing lab at the city’s Sick Kids hospital.

When Pan was finally rumbled, Huei Hann was incandescent. It also emerged that she had been staying with her boyfriend, Daniel Wong, when in Toronto; not, as agreed with her parents, with a friend. Although she was well into her 20s by this point, she had been forbidden from having a boyfriend until after college.

Pan was ordered not to see Wong anymore, and had her phone and laptop confiscated. In a social-media post, she described herself as being “under house arrest” at her parents’ home. It was at this point, prosecutors explained in her 2014 trial, that she began plotting Huei Hann and Bich Ha’s murder. With Wong’s help, she is said to have hired Lenford Crawford, David Mylvaganam and Eric Carty to pull off the hit, at a cost of C$10,000 ($7,500). It remains unclear exactly which of Pan’s co-conspirators entered the house on 8 November 2010, however.

Where is Jennifer Pan now?

Arrested on 22 November 2010, Pan was charged with murder, attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder. Convicted in December 2014, Pan was sentenced to life in prison for the attempted murder of her father, and life with no parole for 25 years for the first-degree murder of her mother. Wong, Crawford and Mylvaganam were also convicted of the same charges, and Carty pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder.

“When I lost my wife, I lost my daughter at the same time,” Huei Hann said in a written statement when Pan was sentenced. “I hope my daughter Jennifer thinks about what happened to her family and can become a good, honest person someday.”

Pan is now incarcerated at the Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener, Ontario.

In May 2023, the Ontario Court of Appeal ordered that Pan, Wong, Crawford and Mylvaganam face new trials over the killing of Bich Ha, arguing that the jury should also have been given the option of a second-degree-murder or manslaughter conviction.

“The jury might have had a doubt about the planned and deliberate murder of Pan’s mother but be satisfied that the appellants knew that the murder of Pan’s mother was a probable consequence of a plan to kill her father,” the court said. Pan’s lawyer, Stephanie DiGiuseppe, told CBC News: “Because the jury was deprived all of the available options, the conviction is not safe.”

The Supreme Court of Canada is now deciding whether to uphold the Court of Appeal’s ruling.

‘What Jennifer Did’: how to watch new documentary

What Jennifer Did is due out on the streaming service Netflix on Wednesday 10 April 2024.

Made by Jenny Popplewell, a director also known for documentaries such as 2020′s American Murder: The Family Next Door, the 90-minute film draws on police interrogation footage, as well as interviews with detectives who worked on the case, and conversations with people close to the Pan family.

‘What Jennifer Did’: watch the trailer

How much does Netflix cost?

You can sign up to the streaming service’s ad-free standard plan for $15.49 a month, and to its ad-free premium plan for $22.99 a month. A standard plan with ads is also available, for $6.99 a month.