Why the case at the center of Netflix’s What Jennifer Did isn’t over yet
Jennifer Pan at the time of her 2010 arrest. | Courtesy Ontario Police
Jennifer Pan allegedly hired hitmen to kill her parents in 2010. But the case is in limbo.
The end of Netflix’s new true crime documentary What Jennifer Did reveals a bombshell detail: After we’ve learned of the alleged culprits and the alleged motive for the horrific 2010 murder of Toronto mom Bich Pan and the attempted murder of her husband, Huei Hann Pan, we learn that the perpetrators have all had their convictions overturned. They are currently awaiting retrials.
The documentary chronicles the unraveling secrets of the Pans’ daughter, Jennifer, in the aftermath of a shocking home invasion and shooting that left Bich dead and her husband blind in one eye. Over the course of the film, audiences unfamiliar with this infamous crime learn of the elaborate, enormous web of lies that Jennifer Pan wove for her parents for years — lies that began in high school and included everything from doctoring report cards to faking her high school graduation and subsequent college attendance to nonexistent internships and lies about her relationship status — all to keep up the facade of a golden child.
Through taped interrogation interviews with Jennifer and more recent interviews with authorities who worked the case, we come to understand that the more her parents saw through Jennifer’s deceit and tried to rein in her behavior, the more pressure she felt to break free of their control. At age 24, while living at home under a set of strict rules as a result of all her lies, Jennifer Pan tried repeatedly to hire someone to kill her father. On November 8, 2010, she allegedly succeeded, leaving the door unlocked for three assailants, friends of her ex-boyfriend Daniel Wong, to enter the house and attack her parents.
During the investigation, Jennifer’s lies rapidly collapsed, and she was convicted at trial of first-degree murder and attempted murder and sentenced to life in prison alongside three of her co-conspirators. A fourth pleaded guilty to conspiracy and received an 18-year sentence, but died in prison in 2018.
These convictions, the documentary informs us, have all since been tossed out — and the film ends without explaining why or elaborating on the status of the case, beyond noting that retrials are planned.
So what happened, and what’s next?
Improper jury instructions led to new trials for Jennifer and her co-conspiratorsThe overturned convictions come as a result of appeals filed by Jennifer Pan and her three remaining co-conspirators: her ex Daniel Wong and his friends Lenford Crawford and David Mylvaganam, who were both involved in the home invasion and shooting. The appeals had seven points of argument, including the argument that in the original 2014 trial, the presiding judge Justice R. Cary Boswell improperly instructed the jury. This tactic can be a strong form of appeal for defense attorneys because how a judge instructs a jury can influence how they view evidence and testimony and lead them to disregard certain verdicts.
Attorneys for the Pan defendants argued that, in this case, both things happened: that Justice Boswell influenced the jury to consider only two “paths to liability” for the accused. This doesn’t mean he instructed them to consider only two verdicts, but rather that when he was advising them how to think about the facts of the case, he suggested they consider either one of two possible scenarios for how the home invasion and murder occurred: that the assailants planned to murder both of Jennifer’s parents, or that they planned to “commit a home invasion/robbery” and the murders occurred in the process.
The appeal argued that these instructions significantly limited the conclusions the jurors could have drawn from the evidence presented at trial. For instance, Jennifer herself had argued as part of her defense that she had tried to hire the hitmen to kill her, not her parents — a third scenario Justice Boswell did not mention.
In May 2023, a Canadian appellate panel agreed with the defense. “In my view, this is the most difficult and most consequential error that is put forward,” Justice Ian Nordheimer wrote in the panel’s decision. “If it succeeds, it requires a new trial for all the appellants on the murder charge. I have concluded that it does.” The court rejected the defendants’ appeals for their convictions for the attempted murder of Hann Pan, so they have remained in jail, still serving that sentence, while awaiting their retrials.
This is, however, complicated in the Canadian court system; unlike the US, in Canada, prosecutors also have the right of appeal at this stage, so in August 2023, prosecutors for the Pan case filed their own appeal against the appellate ruling with the Canadian Supreme Court. That means we’ve entered a double limbo: We’re waiting on the Supreme Court of Canada to decide whether to hear arguments on the appeal. If they don’t, or if they do but ultimately side with the defense, then the retrial order remains, which means that then we’ll be waiting on the lower courts to decide whether to bring the case to a retrial.
In the latter event, a retrial seems very likely, given what a high-profile case this is — a 2015 story by reporter Karen Ho about the case went massively viral and brought the Pan case to broader attention, after which came reporter Jeremy Grimaldi’s 2016 book on the case, which formed the basis of the documentary. There’s also still plenty of evidence against the perpetrators, in the form of texts, phone records, and their various testimonies against each other. These all add up to, well, What Jennifer Did — and what Jennifer did is already the stuff of true crime legend, whether the courts ultimately rule in her favor or not.