True Crime/Paranormal/Conspiracy Stories Part VI

Jennifer Pan Story

Jennifer Pan (born June 17, 1986) is a Canadian woman who was convicted of a 2010 kill-for-hire attack targeting both of her parents, killing her mother and injuring her father. The crime took place at the Pan residence in Unionville, Markham, Ontario, in the Greater Toronto Area. Pan was found guilty on multiple charges and sentenced to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole after 25 years, the same penalty as her co-conspirators. In May 2023, the Court of Appeal for Ontario ordered a retrial for Pan and her conspirators on the first-degree murder charge but upheld the attempted murder conviction.

Early life and education

Jennifer Pan's mother, Bich Ha Pan (pronounced "Bick"), and father, Huei Hann Pan, were immigrants from the Chinese diaspora in Vietnam (Viet Hoa) to Canada. Hann was born and educated in Vietnam, moving to Canada in 1979 as a political refugee. Bich also immigrated as a refugee. The couple was married in Toronto and lived in Scarborough. Their two children are Jennifer, born 1986, and Felix, born 1989. The Pans found work at Magna International, an auto parts manufacturer in Aurora, Ontario. Hann worked as a tool and die maker, while Bich made car parts. Hann and Bich were thrifty and by 2004 were financially stable enough to purchase a house with a two-car garage on a residential street in Markham, a city in the Greater Toronto Area with a large Asian population.

Jennifer's parents set many goals for their children and had extremely high expectations of them. Jennifer was made to take piano lessons at the age of four, as well as figure skating classes where she trained most days during the week. She had hopes of becoming an Olympic figure skating champion until she tore a ligament in her knee. Jennifer attended Mary Ward Catholic Secondary School where she played the flute in the school band. According to her high school friend Karen K. Ho, Hann was seen as "the classic tiger dad," and Bich was "his reluctant accomplice." The Pans picked Jennifer up when classes ended each day and monitored her extracurricular activities very closely. They never permitted her to date while attending high school, or to attend high school dances out of fear that these activities would distract her from her academic commitments. Jennifer was not permitted to attend any parties during the time her parents believed she was attending university. At the age of 22, "she had never gone to a club, been drunk, visited a friend's cottage or gone on vacation without her family." Jennifer and her friends reportedly regarded this upbringing as restrictive and greatly oppressive.

Despite her parents' high expectations that Jennifer receive good grades in lower school, her grades throughout high school were somewhat average (in the 70% range) except for music. She forged report cards multiple times using false templates, deceiving her parents into thinking she earned straight As. When Jennifer failed calculus class in grade 12, Ryerson University rescinded her early admission. As she could not bear to be perceived as a failure, she began to lie to those she knew, including her parents and pretended she was attending university. Instead, she sat in cafés, taught as a piano instructor, and worked in a restaurant to earn money. To maintain the charade, Jennifer told her parents she had won scholarships, later falsely claiming that she had accepted an offer into the pharmacology program at the University of Toronto. She went to the extent of purchasing second-hand textbooks and watching videos related to pharmacology to create notebooks full of purported class notes that she could show her parents.

Jennifer also requested permission from her parents to stay near the campus with a friend throughout the week. She was staying with her boyfriend, Daniel Chi-Kwong Wong, whom she had met in high school. He was of mixed Chinese and Filipino ancestry, resided in Ajax, and worked at a Boston Pizza restaurant. Wong, once a student at Mary Ward, transferred to Cardinal Carter Academy in North York, Toronto, due to low grades, and later studied at York University. He was an active marijuana dealer and managed a Boston Pizza.