The Pan Family
Jennifer Pan grew up in Markham, Ontario, Canada, and was described as “The Golden Child” by her hardworking, strict immigrant parents. She had one younger brother, Felix Pan, who she was very jealous of. Her brother’s life and future were of no concern to her overbearing parents; they were overly focused on her. He was just there, not worried about a single thing.
Her father, Huei Hann Pan, and her mother, Bich Ha Pan, expected Jennifer to dedicate herself to her education and after school activities. Hann, a tool and die marker, and Bich, who worked on car parts, wanted Jennifer to work just as hard as they did. They had Jennifer taking piano along with figure skating lessons by the age of 4. Jennifer went on to win trophies and even competed in the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, but her athletic career ended after a torn knee ligament. Her parents, however, still had high expectations of her when it came to academics. She was not allowed to date nor permitted to attend after school dances or other social events. Hann, described as “The Classic Tiger Dad”, only wanted her to focus on her education so that she would succeed in life. During Jennifer’s junior year, however, she was allowed to go on a school trip to Europe to study music. There, she fell for Daniel Wong.
A Web of Lies
The amount of pressure from Jennifer’s parents wanting her to excel academically continued. Jennifer earned mostly B’s throughout high school. Knowing this wasn’t going to make her parents happy enough, she ended up doctoring her report cards to show that she was actually getting straight A’s. This was only the beginning of her lies. Eventually, Jennifer falsified her high school diploma when she didn’t end up passing her calculus class and couldn’t graduate. This then led to her generating a fake acceptance letter from Ryerson University for college. Jennifer continued weaving a web of lies and she thought she wouldn’t ever get caught. She bought second hand textbooks and filled notebooks, making it appear as though she had been going to classes. She was really working as a server in a restaurant and teaching piano lessons to make money.
After two years of calming to study at Ryerson’s, Jennifer told her parents she was accepted into the University of Toronto’s pharmacology program. Because of this, Jennifer was gaining enough trust from her parents and they let her live with one of her female friends for three nights a week, although she was really staying at Wong’s house with his family. Her lies eventually began to unfold when she told her parents she was volunteering at a hospital testing lab.
Her Father, Hann, grew suspicious when he noticed Jennifer didn’t have a badge or uniform whenever she left to “volunteer.” One morning, her mother, Bich, followed her to see if she was actually going to the hospital. After figuring out that their daughter had been lying about this, they called the female friend Jennifer claimed she was staying with, who told them Jennifer hadn’t been staying with her after all. Jennifer’s parents confronted her, and she confessed to her parents that she never enrolled at the University of Toronto, was not volunteering at the hospital, and that she had been staying with Wong. They became furious.
Hann, at first, wanted to kick Jennifer out of their home, but Bich convinced him to let her stay. Since Jennifer was made to stay under their roof now, Hann and Bich had her quit all her jobs aside from teaching piano lessons. They monitored the odometer on her car to see how far she drove and took away all her personal electronic devices for two weeks. Jennifer described this punishment as living “under house arrest.” Even after the two weeks of confiscating her devices, her parents monitored her messages and emails and prohibited her from seeing Wong. Jennifer’s parents eventually granted her permission to take a calculus course, but more often than not she ended up sneaking out to go see Wong. When her parents caught her sneaking out one night, they once again demanded her to cut off all contact with Wong – to never see him again.
What did Jennifer do?
In spring of 2010, Jennifer met up with a school friend who then introduced her to a man named Ricardo Ducan. Jennifer told Ducan that she would pay him
$1,500 to murder her father at his workplace. Although Ducan said she asked, he never agreed to kill Hann. A few days after Ducan’s refusal, Wong and Jennifer plotted to kill her parents for her $500,000 share of their estate. This led to Wong giving Jennifer a burner phone to contact another man named Lenford Crawford. He agreed to kill her parents for only $10,000 since Jennifer was Wong’s friend. Text messages between Crawford, Jennifer, and Wong showed the murder was set for November 8, 2010. That same night, at 9:35 pm, Crawford’s friend named David Mylvganam, who was in on the planning, called Jennifer to go downstairs and unlock the front door. At 10:05 pm, Cawford and his two other friends in on the murder, all armed with guns, entered the house. One of the men approached Bich in her living room and pointed a gun to her head. Another one of the men went upstairs to Jennifer’s parents’ master bedroom, found Hann, put a gun to his head, and forced him to go downstairs to the living room with Bich. Meanwhile, Jennifer supposedly had her “hands tied behind her back.” (her brother, Felix, at the time of the attack, was not present as he was studying at McMaster University.) All the armed men demanded money from Hann, who said he only had $60 in his wallet. The armed men had enough. They took Jennifer’s parents to the basement, covered their heads with blankets, shot Hann in the shoulder and face, and then shot Bich in the head three times, killing her instantly. Jennifer then called 9-1-1 and spoke to the dispatcher. Hann was screaming in the background and trying to escape to go outside. A neighbor from the Pann’s neighborhood saw Hann and also called 9-1-1.
How did Jennifer get caught?
After interviewing Jennifer twice, police noticed how several parts of Jennifer’s story didn’t add up. She told investigators that she had been tied up with her hands behind her back, leading to them question how she was able to access her phone, which she said was in the waistband of her pants, to dial 9-1-1. Authorities also questioned the motive of the intruders. If it was a robbery, why didn’t they take anything from the house?
While Bich was killed instantly, Hann survived but the shot in the face and shoulder caused him to go into a coma shortly thereafter. Investigators got their biggest break when Hann woke up from his coma on November 12, 2010. He told police that he witnessed the intruders speaking in a friendly manner with Jennifer and said that she was not bound in any way at the time of the robbery. 10 days after Hann woke up, investigators interviewed Jennifer for a third time, telling her they knew she was involved in the murders.
Jennifer confessed, saying that it was a suicide attempt gone wrong and that she had paid $2,000 for the men to kill her but that they killed her mother and father instead. During the trial, prosecutors used more than 100 sent messages in the hours just before the murder to show how Jennifer had planned it all. Hann testified, along with 50 other witnesses. Jennifer was found guilty of first degree murder of her mother and attempted murder of her father and sentenced to life with possible parole after 25 years. As for Daniel Wong and the 3 hit-men, they were sentenced on December 13, 2014. In 2015, Hann and Jennifer’s brother, Felix, filed restraining orders against Jennifer, prohibiting her from contacting them ever again.
After the Truth
Jennifer is currently serving her prison sentence at the Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener, Ontario. Despite her appeal, Jennifer will be eligible for parole around 2040. Fourteen years after the deadly attack, the Pan murder case, including footage of Jennifer’s interrogations and interviews with investigators who got her to confess, was featured in the Netflix 2024 documentary What Jennifer Did.
Overall, Jennifer was a lying and manipulative person who got her way by cheating over the finish line. Although she was considered “The golden child”, that ended up being far from the case.
References
“Where Is Jennifer Pan Now? Inside the ‘What Jennifer Did’ Subject’s Life Today.” People.com, 9 November 2025, https://people.com/where-is-jennifer-pan-today-11846185. Accessed 13 March 2026.
Accessed 27 February 2025.
“Why did Jennifer Pan Orchestrate a plot to Murder her parents.” https://www.aetv.com/articles/jennifer-pan-parents-murder. Accessed 13 March 2026.
