Content Warning: This Article Discusses Domestic Violence and Suicide.
On the night of November 8, 2010, a hysterical Jennifer Pan called 911, telling the operator armed men had broken into her home in suburban Ontario to steal money, terrorising her and her parents.
She’d been tied up and was frantic with worry about her mum and dad’s fate.
As police raced towards the scene, Pan’s mother Bich Ha was already dead, killed by a gunshot wound to the head.
Her father, Hann, was miraculously clinging to life after being shot in the shoulder and face.
Placed in a medically induced coma, he was taken to hospital while Jennifer was taken to the station to help police with their investigation into who was behind this violent crime.
What detectives would soon discover was that Pan, then 24, was the key to this mystery – not because she was an eyewitness but because she was at the centre of the crime.
Throughout Pan’s life, her parents had controlled her choices, dictating her extracurricular activities and not allowing her to have a social life.
This led her to start living a double life, lying to her parents about what she was doing and who she was seeing.
She even faked going to university for a staggering four years to meet their expectations.
But her web of lies had slowly been unravelling and her parents had discovered the truth.
They had also found out that she was still associating with her ex-boyfriend Daniel Wong, who she had been forbidden from seeing.
This raised police suspicions that Pan might be involved, but it would be the chilling account of her father that would put her firmly in the sights of detectives.
Days after the shooting, Hann emerged from his coma and in his account of the events that night revealed that he saw his daughter talking with one of his attackers.
He told a detective to “find out what Jennifer did”.
During recorded interviews with police, which forms the backbone of the Netflix documentary What Jennifer Did, Pan confesses to hiring the men – but claims the deal was for them to kill her, not her parents.
Police refused to believe it was a “suicide by hitmen” gone wrong.
They found text messages between her and Wong, who helped set up the hit, and the hitmen who carried out the shootings.
At her trial, Hann told the court he had said to Pan to “cease your relationship with Daniel Wong. If not, you have to wait till I’m dead.”
Pan was convicted of first-degree murder and attempted murder and sentenced to life in prison alongside three of her co-conspirators.
A fourth, who died in prison in 2018, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and was sentenced to 18 years.
While the documentary suggests that’s the end of the story, another chapter will soon play out.
Pan, 37, is expected to return to court after securing a retrial for the murder of her mother.
While her conviction for the attempted murder of her father stands, Pan and her three co-conspirators successfully argued that the judge in the original trial limited the conclusions the jurors could have drawn from the evidence presented.
He did not give the jury a chance to select second-degree murder and manslaughter as the verdict in the killing of Pan’s mother.
Instead, the judge offered them only two options: either she was killed as aresult of a deliberate plan, or that the home invasion was planned and Bich Ha was shot in the course of the robbery.
Pan has continued to maintain as part of her defense that she had tried to hire the hitmen to kill her, not her parents.
Prosecutors are hoping to have the decision for a retrial overturned by Canada’s highest court.
The Supreme Court’s decision is still pending.
Hann, who testified against his daughter during the trial about seeing her talking with one of his attackers, was granted a life-long order preventing Pan from ever contacting him.
If you or someone you know needs help, contact Lifeline Australia on 13 11 14 or visit the website at lifeline.org.au. If it’s an emergency, call 000.
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