Episode 17: The Lie That Led to a Family Murder - The Jennifer Pan Case

A mother is killed inside her own home. A father is shot and left for dead. Their daughter is upstairs, tied up, calling 911.

At first, it looks like a home invasion. But then the father wakes up, and the story starts falling apart.

In this episode of Tell Me The Crime, we cover the Jennifer Pan case: the fake grades, fake university, fake work, hidden relationship, staged home invasion, and years of lies that led to one of Canada’s most disturbing family murder cases.

Was this about freedom, money, Daniel, shame, control, or the fear of finally being caught?

Listener discretion is advised. This episode discusses murder, family violence, and coercion.

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:00

This episode is absolutely twisted. A mother is killed inside her own home, a father is shot and left for dead, and the daughter is upstairs tied up calling 911. And at first, it looks like a home invasion. But then the father wakes up, and the details definitely don't line up with what the daughter said. This is the case of Jennifer Pan on Tell Me the Crime. Welcome back to another episode of Tell Me the Crime.

SPEAKER_02 0:38

Episode 17.

SPEAKER_04 0:40

Episode 17.

SPEAKER_02 0:42

And we And today's episode is very special.

SPEAKER_04 0:45

It's very special because we are moving out of our house and we're moving back to Canada. And so things are so chaotic.

SPEAKER_02 0:55

Yeah, we do not have our podcast studio right now.

SPEAKER_04 0:59

Yeah, we do not. So we literally have a blanket draped over part of us and part of the mic. And so, like, we're standing, or sorry, we're sitting opposite each other on a couch, and it's just this weird contorted contraption. We'll take a picture of it later for people. Maybe we'll post it up on the website or something. Anyway, um, so if uh the audio sucks this week, we apologize.

SPEAKER_03 1:26

Yeah, we apologize for that.

SPEAKER_04 1:28

But we at least we're doing it, right? It late and in a weird way, but yes, we're getting it done. Okay, so today's episode is what is the title? Another crazy one. So this one is called The Lie That Led to a Family Murder. The Jennifer Pan case.

SPEAKER_03 1:50

Oh, okay. It's about lie again.

SPEAKER_04 1:52

I know, just like last week, how we had that guy who lied about um being a doctor being part of yeah, being a doctor and being part of the World Health Organization. This is another one of those pathological liar situations. Okay, so I'll I'll start with uh one sec there. I was just putting my coffee down. Okay, so hopefully we're not getting so much noise from the couch because I'm like moving around so much. Okay, so let's start with the day of the murder.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

Oh wow, okay.

SPEAKER_04 2:27

We're just gonna jump right to that. All right, okay. A 911 call is made, right? And the call is from Jennifer. Okay, Jennifer Pan is is the main character in this show or in this episode, right? So Jennifer Pan um calls the police and says that um there was a break-in, a robbery, um, and these men, these two men, came in, shot her parents, um, and tied her up and you know, ransacked the place and then left. Okay. So it was this big, you know, this big murder scene, right? Her her mom ended up getting killed.

SPEAKER_03 3:12

Mm-hmm. And her dad.

SPEAKER_04 3:13

But her dad did not get killed.

SPEAKER_03 3:15

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_04 3:16

No, so her dad um actually remained alive. So he was, you know, it sh I I think that everyone presumed he was dead. I thought so. I mean, from the story. Yeah, exactly, right? So her and the, you know, the perpetrators thought that he was dead, but he wasn't.

SPEAKER_03 3:37

Okay, so this is not the part where somebody lied.

SPEAKER_04 3:41

Not yet. So the story is Well, I mean, it someone has already lied at this point, right? At this point, okay. It was not a real thing.

SPEAKER_03 3:48

I thought at the beginning, when you mentioned about lies, um the story actually didn't exist, so that murder case did not exist.

SPEAKER_04 3:56

The murder, the murder definitely happened. Yeah. So the mother actually was shot and killed. The dad was shot, um, but he did survive. And eventually he wakes up, and that's when things unravel with the daughter's story.

SPEAKER_03 4:13

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 4:14

So Jennifer, okay, actually lied about this, and she's the one that set up the murder.

SPEAKER_03 4:20

Oh wow.

unknown 4:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:22

For their parents?

SPEAKER_04 4:23

Yep. So she is sort of the mastermind behind the whole thing. Now, like, how the hell did it get there, right? And this is where the lying comes in. So we talked about how the last guy, you know, he just kept lying and lying and lying. Yeah. And then that led to, you know, more and more chaotic stuff and eventually, you know, murders, right? So similar here. Um, so this story begins with Jennifer um going to school, and her parents were really strict, right? Her parents apparently were like um, they came over from I think China, and I think they had like Chinese and Vietnamese backgrounds. Um, and they immigrated to Canada. So this is a special reason because we're moving to Canada and we are from Canada. So this is a special education. I guess not everyone is friendly in Canada, huh? So yeah, so they were actually really close to where we're going. So they were in Markham, Ontario.

SPEAKER_00 5:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 5:28

And uh so they uh they moved there, you know, and they had Jennifer in I think 1986 or something like that. Anyway, so um they were really strict, right? They had really high hopes for their daughter. Um, they were very much like no dating boys, you know, no going out late, you know, you can't use you know your phone other than you know, for that I get it, right?

SPEAKER_03 5:59

Like, and and that kind of happens a lot, I think, with um well Asian Asian cultures in general, but I'm not I'm not saying that it's always like that.

SPEAKER_04 6:07

No, it's not always, but yes, I've heard stories that it's often like that, right? For for especially for second generation kids, right? That that come to a new country and like you have to be someone. Yeah, you have to be, yeah, exactly. And so um so she basically started lying to her parents in high school about and I who knows how long she'd been lying to her parents about other things, but she was lying to her parents about her grades in high school. She faked report cards and claimed that she was getting straight A's when she was not getting straight A's. She was only good in like music, I think. I think she had really good grades in that, but then otherwise she was kind of an average student. And in in fact, in one case, she failed a class. So she failed um calculus. And because of that, uh she um got her Ryerson University admission, early admission, revoked. So they took away the um the offer to go to the university that they initially had for her. So now her dreams of going to university are also shot.

SPEAKER_03 7:19

Wait, um, so the university So she's in high school, right?

SPEAKER_04 7:24

So she applied to a bunch of different universities. There was one university, Ryerson University, that offered to let her, you know, come to the based on what? Based on her application, right?

SPEAKER_03 7:36

Okay, because uh uh I think what I know from some Asian countries, like the admission could be based on your um accomplishment in either academic or sports, or the university admission is based on all your grades only without giving you any tests. But the general students they have to apply for the university through some kind of test and they have to pass a test.

SPEAKER_04 8:06

Well, I'm not sure about that, but I think that she was I think at least for for when I was applying for universities, I mean it was you just apply to the it wasn't through like any sort of general, you know, admission test. It was it was you just you interesting write the application towards that particular university that you want. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:28

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 8:29

Um I I'm assuming that's the same thing because it is in Ontario.

SPEAKER_03 8:33

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 8:33

But anyway, so she she didn't, you know, she basically now um, you know, her parents think she's getting straight A's, she's not getting straight A's. Um she failed calculus and now she can't even get into university. So what does she do? Does she tell her parents more than that?

SPEAKER_03 8:49

I don't think so. I don't think so.

SPEAKER_04 8:52

No, she doesn't tell her parents. So instead of telling her parents and coming clean, she decides to continue lying. And she continues lying for uh a couple of years and can be.

SPEAKER_03 9:05

She was in the university?

SPEAKER_04 9:06

Yep. She convinces them that she was in university, that she was going to Ryerson. And uh she would uh go to cafes instead of going to class. Um she would, you know, buy used books, she would take notes and like have like fake study notes that she would take home. And so like she did this whole ruse, but really all she was doing was actually staying at her boyfriend's place, Daniel, who her parents didn't approve of. They didn't like him at all. So they um so she was just lying to her parents the whole time. And um, so that you know, uh her parents obviously would be pretty pissed off if they found out that the parents definitely gave the uh the university um like the school fee and maybe living costs for her. Exactly. Yep. So in reality, she was just like I said, you know, hanging out in cafes and whatnot, and she did have some part-time jobs, like she did like teach piano and she worked in a restaurant. Um yeah, so her her parents were aware of like the piano teaching, I think. Um, but I don't think they were aware of most of it. So um then she said that she was going to that she got into University of Toronto Pharmacology.

SPEAKER_03 10:34

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 10:34

Which um she was not, right? Um, but instead of uh going to class again, she was just going to hang out with Daniel, right? Now um one of the things too that she was um lying about that sort of got her caught in in in one way from her parents was the fact that she told them she was also um volunteering at sick kids hospital. Right. And she was supposedly going there quite frequently and her dad asked, he said, you know, he was he was confused because he asked why she didn't have um why she didn't have a uniform, right? And what was it? There was one other thing that was like the the problem, right? The um she didn't have a uniform and she didn't have an ID badge. That was the other thing, right? So the dad thought that was a little bit weird. Um so they also you know they they they started to get a little bit suspicious, and they even contacted one of her friends who she claimed that she had been staying with. Um, when in reality, again, she was staying with Daniel, right? So they call contacted the friend, and the friend said, no, she hasn't been staying with me. So now they know she's lying in some regard. And then the mom actually followed her to work, quote unquote work, right? Um, you guys can't see the air quotes, but we did the air quotes. So she followed her to these you know sick kids or whatever, and um yeah, she obviously didn't go there, right? So um the mom busted her, they confronted her, and she admitted to not attending university, the whole thing, right? So they found out about everything. So they were pretty pissed off.

SPEAKER_02 12:32

Of course.

SPEAKER_04 12:33

Um, they already didn't like Daniel um as a boyfriend, right? He was already a you know a boyfriend in in high school of hers. And they didn't like him, they thought he was a bad influence. Um and I mean, for good reason, you know. Um but um okay, so then they found out and they got like super, super restrictive, right? So they wanted to throw Jennifer out, for example, right? Like the dad was particularly, you know, adamant about like kicking her out of the house. Um and the mom was just like, no, let's, you know, let's not do that, right? She she was a little bit more soft-hearted, so she persuaded him to stay. And then um, but they did say, you know, there's no contact with Daniel to be had, you're not allowed to go out anywhere except for piano teaching. Um, and then there's like limited access to your phone and your computer and all that stuff, right? So basically, you had she was, you know, under house arrest essentially, right? So then um she was, you know, she was she was feeling pretty crappy about all of this. She feels you know caged and she feels like everything has sort of collapsed because of her her lies, right? Now, um oh, one of the things too about the line, this is interesting too, is that her relationship with Daniel, there was one point where he got tired of like of all the restrictions, and he got tired of like sneaking around so much, it was just like kind of uh it became a nuisance, and he broke up with Jennifer um for a while and he started dating someone new. And Jennifer obviously found out about this new girl, and you know she confronted her. Instead of saying, like, hey, I miss you, can we get back together? She made up this whole crazy lie. So she about what she said, she told Daniel that a cop came to her house, barged into her place with a whole bunch of other men, they gang raped her.

SPEAKER_02 14:52

What?

SPEAKER_04 14:53

Yep, and then a bullet was sent to her place in an envelope as like a threat, and that the person who arranged all of this and sent the bullet was the girl that he was seeing now. Oh was Daniel's new girlfriend, right? Wow, okay. So she wanted to be like, yeah, your girlfriend did all of this to me, so you should stop seeing her, you know, which is crazy, right? It's just like it's nuts. Okay, so she's a huge liar. You know, it's kind of like it's it's almost like she can't stop herself from just she's a pathological liar. Okay, so um apparently, too, there was, you know, before the whole murder of her mom and of the dad, or the attempted murder of the dad, um, she had tried to kill the dad. You know, there was well, this is all alleged, right? That um she tried to hire someone prior to that. Wow to kill the dad in a parking lot to like shoot him. Um but uh and and she had exchanged money. She told police that she gave money to this guy named Duncan, I think, and apparently he well, he he denies it, right? He says that that didn't he that he didn't actually take any money to to kill anyone. So anyway, he never got convicted or anything either, so um so who knows what actually happened there. Anyway, um okay, so the you know, Jennifer decides basically that all of this is um really annoying for her. It's a pain that she has to, you know, be so restricted. She can't see Daniel anymore. She's, you know, she feels you know like she's under house arrest, right? So she decides she's going to take care of the situation, right? She'll have access to Daniel, she'll have access to inheritance money, right, if she kills her parents. What? Yeah. So if so her and Daniel um decide to arrange this whole thing where they get um a couple of guys to come in and stage a robbery and um kill the parents. Yeah, and that's essentially what they did. So before she went to bed, she left the door unlocked. And uh then those people came in. And and so, you know, at first this whole plan worked, right?

SPEAKER_03 17:37

Well, the parents were right about about uh her boyfriend.

SPEAKER_04 17:40

Well, yeah, that's that's what I'm saying. That's why I said, like, yeah, for good reason they were like a little bit like annoyed, you know, thought he was not really a good influence. But I mean, it sounds like she's not exactly great either. Who knows who was the real mastermind behind it, right? I mean, it sounds like she's pretty manipulative. Um, anyway, so wait, wait, hold on. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:01

So you said that Danielle uh started seeing a new girl.

SPEAKER_04 18:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:06

So did they get back together? Did he and Jennifer?

SPEAKER_04 18:09

Oh, sorry, yeah, he did. Get back together? Yeah, yeah. After that whole lie about, you know, the girl um being crazy with a bullet and all that shit. So she they end up um getting these two guys to come in and do the whole thing and kill them. And um and it seemed like they were gonna get away with it, right? Because she was tied up upstairs. She somehow managed to get uh in a 911 call. And um and then, you know, it it just seemed like a robbery and and they just um killed the parents. But here's the thing that twisted things around. Well, there were a few things, right? One of the things that people were a little bit suspicious about, or you know, it kind of like it didn't make sense to them. There were certain details about the crime that didn't make sense. Like, how is it that both parents got shot?

SPEAKER_03 19:17

But not her.

SPEAKER_04 19:17

But not her. They left her alive, yeah, where she could call 911. Yeah, right, and her hands were all bound and tied too. So how was she even able to make the call if her hands were tied up, right? So there were little details like that that just didn't quite add up. But the one big thing though that really turned um police onto her as a suspect is when the dad woke up. And like I said, I don't think the dad was supposed to wake up, but he did. And um he told police that he saw his daughter talking to one of the guys in like a friendly kind of whisper voice.

SPEAKER_00 20:04

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 20:05

You know, like like he like she knew who they were.

SPEAKER_00 20:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 20:10

And he said that it, you know, I don't know exactly how he positioned it, um, how the dad positioned it to police, or if it just came up naturally in conversation, or if he was suspicious of of that interaction, but he told police that's what he remembered seeing. And um that just didn't obviously sit right with police, so they thought, okay, we gotta start looking into this. And one of the so then they interviewed her many times, right? And she, of course, at first denied everything and you know, just said it was a home invasion, whatever. But then one of the detectives um gave this uh well, he lied about about this evidence that they had, right?

SPEAKER_03 20:54

So apparently what do you mean by he? What does he refer to? The detective?

SPEAKER_04 20:58

The detective lied, yeah. So one detective decided to tell Jennifer that they had this technology that was like I I don't know, like infrared technology or something that was able to track her movements while she was in the house when the murders when the murder took place and the shootings took place, right? And the detective said, if you're lying, we'll know about it because the technology doesn't lie and it'll tell us where you were moving. So if this doesn't line up with what you're saying, then you know, you could be in big trouble. And then you know that which all of that was not true. Um, but it worked on her and she said, Okay, yeah, um you know, I I did plan it, but the plan was never to kill the parents. It was for them to barge in and kill me. What? Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 21:58

It doesn't make sense.

SPEAKER_04 22:00

Doesn't make any sense. No. So they wanted so so she she tried to like even when she got busted, right? Like she decides to change it to something else. She's lying again, right? So she just she's constantly lying. I guess when you get that deep into lies, you just it's a natural tendency for you to just keep doing it. I don't know, but she wanted to, you know, she told every she told them that she wanted to get herself killed. That which is such a weird thing. Like, why would you even do that? What's the motive there? Like, you know, anyway, so um they eventually uh, you know, got the truth out of her, right? So um, yeah, so so uh they eventually got her and her boyfriend Daniel and the other two guys involved, um uh and they all got found guilty. And they all got sentenced to life, except for one guy who got a plea deal, I think, and spent 18 and got sentenced to 18 years. But he but he was he actually ended up dying in prison. Oh yeah. Mm-hmm. Wow. Yeah, so that's a crazy, crazy story.

SPEAKER_03 23:22

But uh, it's another lie again.

SPEAKER_04 23:25

Yeah, yeah. Oh, here oh, the other thing too, one of the reasons that I, you know, that I forgot to mention too is that they were able to sort of um you know, they were able to get her to admit to everything was they had um they had a SIM card and another iPhone that she was using that was separate to call those guys involved, right? To text them, and there were over like a hundred text messages back and forth between her and those guys, you know, to plan everything. So they you know, they had everything. They had way too much evidence for her to refute anymore.

SPEAKER_03 24:06

And does the dad still ali still is he's still alive now?

SPEAKER_04 24:10

He's still alive now, and she also has a little brother. Um, I was about to ask. Yeah, she has a brother, Felix, and he was um in school at McMaster University at the time. And so since then, um, they've actually given victim statements in court, like, you know, impact statements or whatever, like to tell people how, you know, to tell the the the person who's being charged, like how much they hurt them and all that. So the dad and the the brother did that. And they have since um I think they filed a restraining order against her too, but she's I mean, she's in prison. So but they've de definitely, you know, disowned her, obviously. They tried, you know, she tried to kill the parents and she killed one of them, so yeah. So yeah, there you go. That's the case of Jennifer Pan. Oh wow, yeah, it's wild, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 25:11

I know, right?

SPEAKER_04 25:12

I don't understand how like you can't see anything. Like, and and it's all from it's just like the other one, just like the last week's episode on the the World Health Organization guy, right? Where it starts out as lies. Yeah, and then it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger.

SPEAKER_03 25:27

How she could keep the lies for so long. I mean, I would assume that even like my parents would ask me, Can I see a report? Yeah, right. You know, yeah, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 25:37

Well, I mean, she forged reports though, right?

SPEAKER_03 25:39

That's true, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 25:40

And she took notes, like she made it like seem like everything was real. So she, you know, like the last, you know, in in last week's episode where he would take pens home from the World Health Organization, right? He would actually go there. Like she would do things like that too, right? She would have notes to show her parents, and yeah, she made it very detailed. But uh yeah, eventually it's like I guess the the lie got too big, and then she got busted for it, and then she felt like everything was too restrictive. And uh yeah, she decided to get out of it. Apparently, they would have gotten like I think five hundred thousand dollars for life insurance if um you know if they got away with this murder.

SPEAKER_03 26:28

But how would you leave with the money if um someone who loves Yoruhu love dies? You know?

SPEAKER_04 26:35

Well, like how would you leave?

SPEAKER_03 26:36

Are you actually able to leave and take it and enjoy the money?

SPEAKER_04 26:41

Well, that but well, that's coming from you and I, right? Because we can't see ourselves ever doing anything that like evil. But if you're willing to kill your parents, obviously they don't care about that, right? So they're just about the money. They have a very different moral compass, I think, than we do. So yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:01

Anyway, that was it.

SPEAKER_04 27:02

So yeah, that's a good one, right?

SPEAKER_03 27:04

That's a good one. That's a good one.

SPEAKER_04 27:06

Okay, so yeah, hopefully that was not too um shitty audio quality. We'll see as soon as I edit it.

SPEAKER_03 27:13

And uh you will upload it in a few minutes.

SPEAKER_04 27:16

In a few minutes, because it's uh late. I think it's yeah, it's like it's almost, yeah, yeah. We'll get it up before midnight, though, for sure. Um, so you know, it's our Friday release. So join us next week and we'll hopefully be set up again properly. So yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:34

All right, see you next week. Thank you. Thank you.