Jennifer Pan has pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the killing of her mother
Pan, who organized an attack on her family home in 2010, claims her mother’s death was unintentional. Her real target, she says, was her father
Jennifer Pan has pleaded guilty to manslaughter for the death of her mother, who was killed in a staged Markham home invasion in 2010.
It’s the latest twist in a long-running court saga that has gone from the Ontario Superior Court to the Supreme Court of Canada and back, after the higher courts found Pan’s case in need of a re-trial.
According to an agreed-upon statement of facts presented in court today, Pan was living with her mother, Bich Ha Pan, and father, Hann Pan, at their family home in Markham in 2010. Pan’s relationship with her father was strained and, that year, she asked a former boyfriend, Daniel Wong, to have Hann killed.
On the night of November 8, 2010, three armed men hired by Pan entered the home, tied the daughter to a banister and took her parents to the basement, where both were shot. Hann was seriously wounded and Bich Ha was killed.
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Pan was charged with first-degree murder. The Ontario Superior Court judge who first tried her case asked the jury to consider two possible scenarios: one in which the attack was planned with the intention of murdering both parents, and another in which the couple were victims of a home invasion and robbery. In 2015, Pan was sentenced to life in prison.
Higher courts, however, found that a third situation should have been considered by the jury: one in which Pan planned to have her father murdered but not her mother. Last April, the Supreme Court of Canada ordered a new trial for Pan’s count of first-degree murder.
When Pan submitted her manslaughter plea to the Newmarket court, she alleged that Hann was abusive and controlling, and that she arranged the hit to kill him alone. Nevertheless, she conceded that she should have known her mother would be put in harm’s way. “I’m ashamed of what I did,” she said.
It will now be up to another judge and jury to determine if Pan’s story is credible.
Anthony Milton is a freelance journalist based in Toronto specializing in long-form magazine writing. He previously worked as an assistant editor at Toronto Life, where he launched the Front Row newsletter. He regularly contributes all sorts of stories to the magazine, including deep dives on sports, business and housing as well as short-form commentary on our ever-changing city, from its obsession with cherry blossoms to its maddening NIMBYism. His work has also appeared in Maclean’s, Ricochet, TVO, the Trillium and more.
