Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This article contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
The real life horror story that happened inside Pan family´s home shattered the serenity of their normally quiet upscale neigborhood.
in many ways this is an immigrant´s tale.
The Pans were the epitome of an immigrant success story. Hann Pann and his wife bich.were vietnamese boat people who escaped to find a better life.
Hann Pan worked as a tool and die maker ,his wife worked in the same factory and bich made car parts. but he was very intent on his children doing better then he did .
Felix and Jennifer
And the Pan chiuldren were by all accounts nearly perfect.felix was away studying mechanical engineering at a prestigious university .hannwanted his son designe cars.not assemble them.and daughter Jennifer was an olympic caliber figure skater an award -winning pianist and a straight A student.
Hann wanted his daughter to be a doctor,eventually changing that to a pharmacist because he said that she didnt have the stomach for it.
The pans led a very discplined and frugal life.but lived in a nice house and drove two luxury cars.
Cops believe those pricey possessions may have been what lured the three gun-toting thugs into their home that horrible night.
on this home security camera across the street you can actually see the gunman infront of the house.
Det.B.Courtice: you can see three shodowy figures comin into the house together. they asked for money.
I´ts the beginning of what detective bill curtis describes as 18 minutes of sheer terror.
Det.B.Courtice:initially the confront bich in the living room area.
Hann wakes up to a muzzled pressed firmly to his forhead.
Det.B.Courtice: one goes upstairs and actuallt rousts hann pan out of bed and he´s taken downstairs.
Jennifer tells police she was in her room upstairs talking on the phone when she hears something strange outside her door. she heard footsteps.
Det.B.Courtice:nott o be her parents ,somehow she identified that as not being her parents.
Jennifer peeks out the door to find a pistol pointed directlyat her.
Paul Cooper Defense Attorney.
Paul : there were guns to everyone´s back.they were screaming”where is the money ” it was a horrific time.
jennifer claimed there where three assailant.
Det.B.Courtice:they were all male black.
A gunman ties jennifer´s behind her back with a shoelace and drags her from room to room and ransacks the house.
Jennifer hands over twentyfive hundred dollars,she had saved from teaching and another eleven hundred her mother had hidden in a nightstand.but its not enough.
Det.B.Courtice: Hann pan explained that he didn´t have any many or cerrtanily not large quantities of money .
One of the assailant pistol whips hann across the back of his head and a robber then takes jennifer back to the second floor and ties her to the banister.
Det.B.Courtice: so ,her hands were behind her back and then they were tied to the banister.
The gunman downstairs suddenly shoved bich and hann to the baseman he orders them to turn around and thows a blanket over their heads.
Bich final words are pleads for gunman to spare jennifer´s life
then …..
five gunshots pierced the night. moments later the killers taking off.for some reason ,they spared jenifer´s life. and she dials 911.
then 34 second into the call something unexpected on the 911 call someone else screaming. that´s hann pan.
Hann Pan somehow survives what was meant to be his execution.
tragicaly hann finds his beloved wife dead at his feet.
Bich Pan
Det.B.Courtice: she was shot multiple times in the back and ultimately the fatal shot was to the back of the head.
That´s what police wanted to know too .when they get to the house ,they find jennifer tied up exactly the way she described that raises more than a few eyebrows.
she telling the 911 operator that she is tied to the banister, but she also making the call on ther cell phone.
To the rest of the world Pan was a grieving daughter ,the survivor of a horrible home invasion tha left her mom bich shot dead. and her dad in coma ,fighting for his life.
Hann Pan
Paul: there was 18 minutes of complete horrorfor her whole family .
But police were begining to wonder if the young woman with the angelic voice was really the devil in disguise.
Det.B.Courtice: obvious questio that people ask is how is it that they left someone unharmed to be a be the wittness.
Grimaldi: my initial thought was that there was something odd about it ,something fishy.
crime reporter jeremy grimaldi covered the Pan´s home invasion for the local paper.
Grimaldi: the criminals who did this would have to be pretty bumbling to shoot two people in the head and then leave one witness.,surviving tied up upstairs.
Grimaldi says his reporter instincts told him this was more than a home invasion.
Grimaldi:not much was stolen . there was a mercedes and a lexus in the garage. they werent stolenthere were tv:s there were devices ,there was money that was found in the house.which wasn´t stolen. thieves that get away into the night without cash that was left on the counter aren´t very good thieves.
Cops hav a lot of question too ,one of the biggest.
Det.B.Courtice: we were concerned about how she could make the 911 call whit her hands tied behind her back.
jennifer had a flip-phone wich will would make it even harder. so the the investigators brinh jennifer into police hadeuarters fot a demonstration.
at first jennifer appears hesitant.remember ,she says the robbers used a black shoestring to bind her arms.
Det.B.Courtice: how do you make the phone call 911. and do you talk to her down like that?
Jennifer: yeas.i´m yelling at the phone.
Det.B.Courtice: how can you hear
Jennifer: i turned the volume on max.
Det.B.Courtice: so ,that´s exactly the way you´re talking to her against the railing.
Jennifer: Mhm.
Jennifer and Felix
but cops still weren´t convinced jennifer so they had a secret police detail follow her even to her mothers funural .
Det.B.Courtice: didnt´see any tears.it didn´t appear genuine anywas.
Detectives immeditely went back to work and out of curiosity listened to that 911 call on more time.
and bingo.
Det.B.Courtice: after we heard the 911 call. you know ,the question begged me answered was what parent would not check on their child .he could hear he screaming but he doesn´t.
The only person who could answer that question was fighting for his life in ICU.
Det.B.Courtice: hann pan was in induced come at the hospital,bich had sadly succumbed to the injuries,she died ,after being shot . and we only had jennifers wordthat this what happened.
But that what about to change.
Det.B.Courtice: Hann pan came out of his induce coma.
Hann pan is alive out of his coma and talking. some say it´s a miracle after have being shot in the face in very close range.during what his daughter jennifer describes as a horrific home invasion.
Hann tells the police he remember every singel detail about what happened.inside their home the night he amlost died and he´s wich bich was murdered.and cops says that´s not goods news for he´s daughter.
The crime scene: Jennifer told police intruders had forced her parents down into the basement after tying her to the banister with a shoelaceCredit: Court Exhibits
Det.B.Courtice: When hann pan came out of his induced coma he described something completely diffrent than what jennifer pan had descbribed it.
And it´s not the first time jennifer pan has been caught in a lie .
Jeremy :she lies about lot of things.
almost everything according to crime reporter jeremy grimaldi. in fact , hie claimes jennifer pan wasn´t anything close to the innocent straight A piano playing daughter she pretended to be.
Jeremy: she was living with her boyfriend and working.
Grimaldi who´s dug deep into the pan family says jennifer started lying as a young child.
Grimaldi:she blamed a lot of her behavior on what´s what´s known in popular culture as a Tiger parenting.
Tiger parenting is common in Asia culture it´s described as tough love some say bordering on tyranny and Grimaldi says Hann Pann was the classic Tiger dad.pushing education over all else. even shoosing what career path Jennifer would follow and instead of praising her academic accomplischments Grimaldi says Hann Pann would often tell his daughter she wasn´t good enough.
Paul: she created lies for them to believe that she was the daughter that they wanted her to be.
Grimaldi: she begins to lead a double life of deception,she starts manufacturing report cards with a photocopier.
Det.B.Courtice: she never did gratuate from high school.
but their parents thought she did .they were never quite aware of what was going on. Jennifer even doctored up a college acceptance letter to an elite pharmacy school.the carrer her dad choose forher.
Grimaldi:she bought text books. she had highlighters, she had notbooks, she would tell her parents about professors and exams and people in her class.and you know , her entire family knew a complete false history about her education. career.
And when it came time to graduate she bought a diploma
Another thing often forbiden by tiger parents, dating. so when Jennifer the seemingly good girl met a badboy named daniel wong.
Grimaldi says she concocted more more lies to hide their relationships
Daniel Wong Jennifer Pan
Grimaldi:he was a part- time drug dealer.
Laurence: very complication relationship.no psychiatrist but it looked like Jennifer looked to mr wong as a knight in shining armor.
but Jennifers perferctly constructed web of lies spun out of control and finally unraveled.
her mom and dad got suspicious so they followed their daughter straight to her forbidden lover ,daniel wong.
Grimaldi: she was caught in multiple lies, she was caught of living with him , she was caugt out not attending university.she was eventually locked in her home.
her parents basically put her on lockdown when they figured out what she was up to .
Grimaldi: she is no longer allowed to drive, she ´s no longe allowed to use her cellphone. she could onyl leave the house for piano lessons and she said that her father was acctually tracking the miles on on the car.
police say Hann pan gave his daughter an ultimatum go back to school and quit seeing daniel.get out of my house,or wait until i´m dead to see him.
Cops say ,she didn´t want to wait that long.
Grimaldi: she decided i think at that point she had strategized to move forward to get them out of her life.
text messages show the boyfriend daniel put jennifer in contact with known hitman he´d met through his drug dealing.telling jennifer..
David Mylvaganam (left) and Eric Carty (right)daniel and jennifer.
Jennifers plan may have never been discovered.but there were one thing she never expected.her dad survived.
Det.B.Courtice: Hann pan said that he saw daughter come downstairs and was unbound speaking in a friendly manner. to a white guy.now jennifer pan becomes a suspect.
with Hanns stunning accusation against his own daughter. cops bring jennifer back in for questioning. so she had already shifted in the eyses of the law from victim to possible perpetrator.
Det.B.Goetz: there was nothing to arrest her at that pioint. but there were concerns raised after the interview of Hann pan.
veteran investigator bill Goetz says jennifer tells him that she finally wants to tel l the truth. she brings up a whole news story. Cops are on to jennifer pan.
the seemingly perfect daughter is more like the daughter from hell,living a devilish charade.
Grimaldi:she snapped and began to devise the most devious scheme i´ve ever enountered.
police suspect she methodically hired three hitmen to stage a home invasion as a cover-up in a plot to kill her parents.
the motive police say:forbidden romance.her parents told her the love of her life daniel wong had to go. or she had to get out.
Grimaldi:rather than disappoint them she decided to kill them.
the problem with her evil plan her dad. Hann Pan.he was shot in the face but lived and told police his daughter lied about being tied up to a banister during the attack.In fact he told police that he actually saw jennifer butting up to the gunman who killed her mother.
Grimaldi:that would be the nail in the coffin.
After nine grueling hours of police interrogtation jennifer finally cracks .she says she´s ready to tell detective bill g the hole truth and nothing but the truth
But it´s not what anyone was expecting.
Det.B.Goetz: she eventually kind of retreats gets her head down and then in a very low voice she says.”it was supposed to be me”
Jennifer says she arranged for a hit all right.but she was supposed to be the target. a suicide by proxy Jennifer claimes .she was so upset at not being able to see daniel wong she wanted to die.
Grimaldi:she said that she failed multiple times when she tried to commit suicide ,so she descided this wouild be the way that she could meat her fate.correctly.
but cops wonder was this just another lie from Jennifer .Jennifers attorney paul cooper says there´s a simple explanation.
Paul: what went wrong is she called it off and she had to pay a fee. these were real bad individuals
Cooper says jennifer had a last -minute change of heart.but the gunman still wanted the ten thousand dollar cancellation fee and when she couldn´t pay it , they showed up and shot her parents. Now cops don´t know what to believe so they haul in daniel wong for questioning.the forbidden boyfriend.
and daniel and jennifer apparently didnt´get the story straight beforehand. he tells the investigators, jennifer indeed wanted her parents dead.
Det.B.Goetz: we now have her own boyfriend acknowledging that she had sought to do this.
cops also discovered daniel had given jennifer a burner phone to contact the hitman.but jennifer claimed the sim card containing a history of her texts had mysteriously vanished.
Grimaldi: she seemed to have got rid of a sim card in her phone but she didn´t get rid of the phone and the police found text messages on the phone.
Jennifer may have lied to police but her phone records didn´t. cops uncover hundreds of texts between the hitmanand jennifer .two of them reaid :
Det.B.Goetz: this are all texts we actually had from her phone.
But the most telling text dropped just minutes before the gunman killed her mother and shot her father in the face.saying:
The Police are able to link the time of the text to this exact moment right here captured on home security video from across the street.police believe that´s jennifer turning the light in her bedroom on of . signaling she´s unlocked the front door.giving the hitmanVIPaccess to murder her parents.
Grimaldi:had the father not survived and had the phone messages not be found.the question remains open about whether she would have been caught.
Cops cuffed jennifer on the spot.
Det.B.Goetz: she was arrested for the conspiracy and the murder of her parents or her mother in the attempted murder of her father .
daniel wong and the hitman.are also charged.
but which story would a jury believe ?
the suicide by proxy that went terribly wrong
or the daughter from hell who wanted her controlling parents out of the picture so she could have a boyfriend.
Paul: there´s a difference between being a pathological liar as some people called her and being a killer.
this time jennifer didn´t fool anyone, jennifer,daniel and two of the gunman are sentenced to life in prison . the third gunman pleads guilty to conspiracy commit murder .
Jennifer also reveives a non- communication order . meaning she can never speak to anyone in her family. again.
But before she was carried off to prison ,her father did adress her saying
Jeremy Grimaldi has now written jennifer´s appropriately called:
Grimaldi:she masterminded one of the one the greatest tricks in criminal history.
allthough Grimaldi wonders if she ´ll ever come clean.
Grimaldi:you wonder at what point is this women just going to stop lying sand tell the truth.