TERRIFIED Jennifer Pan barely made sense as she screamed down the line during a frantic, desperate call to cops.
“Please send help,” she cried, sobbing that her parents had been shot by armed intruders.
Her dad Heui Hann could be heard moaning in the background as Jennifer told an operator how she’d been tied to a bannister before hearing a series of “pops” downstairs.
When police arrived Jennifer’s mum Bich Ha was already dead and her dad was rushed to hospital where he clung to life in a coma.
Cops felt desperately sorry for Jennifer, then 24, who was clearly distressed, constantly rubbing her eyes and covering her face in grief during interviews.
But it wasn’t long before they discovered there was something far more sinister about the unassuming, bespectacled woman.
When her dad woke from his three-day coma, he told police: “Find out what Jennifer did.”
Heui Hann told Canadian detective David MacDonald that his daughter was never tied up - and that he’d seen her talking to one of the gunmen.
MacDonald said: “Huei told me he was on the couch being pistol whipped. Mrs Pan was sitting on a separate couch begging for her life and, while this happened, Jennifer walked down the stairs in the company of one of the suspects.
“She’s without binding on her hands and appears to be in friendly conversation.”
As police dug deeper and the full story of Pan's family life was revealed, the truth was truly shocking.
Jennifer had hired hitmen to kill her strict Vietnamese mum and dad, said to be ‘Tiger’ parents who banned her from having a social life.
Tiger parents are strict on authority and ‘hothouse’ their kids to become high achievers.
Police also discovered Jennifer had spun a web of lies for six years to convince her parents she was a top-flight school pupil who had won a place at University in Toronto to study pharmacy.
In reality she was average at school, had her university place pulled after failing maths and had a drug-dealing boyfriend called Daniel Wong.
Every day Huei, then 60, and Bich, 53, drove their daughter 40 minutes to university from their home in Markham, Greater Ontario, in the mistaken belief she was studying after Jennifer faked report cards and exam results.
Now the vengeful daughter’s story is being told in a new Netflix documentary which revisits the horrifying night in November 2010 when Jennifer left the door open for the hitmen so they could try to kill her parents.
Tragically her mum Bich’s last words to the assailants were: “Don’t hurt my daughter.”
The documentary, What Jennifer Did, includes footage from police interviews in which she tries to cover up the hit.
Jennifer claimed she paid almost £6,000 for the men, who were associates of her boyfriend, to kill her - not her parents - because she was so miserable at home.
She said her mum and dad, who had migrated to Canada as refugees in 1979, had overly high expectations which pushed her over the edge and led her to self-harm.
Pals say Jennifer was barely allowed out and forbidden to go to parties or school dances as Heui and Bich tried to set her up for success - packing her days with school, piano and skating lessons.
I was looking at a room that was ransacked…bloody clothing, pyjamas, the area where Bich was soaking her feet after line dancing
Lead investigator Bill Courtice
Writing in the Toronto Sun, friend Karen Ho said: “By the age of 22, she had never gone to a club, been drunk, visited a friend’s cottage or gone on vacation without her family.
“Presumably their overprotectiveness was born of love and concern. To Jennifer and her friends, however, it was tyranny.
“I discovered that Jennifer’s friendly, confident persona was a façade, beneath which she was tormented by feelings of inadequacy, self-doubt and shame.”
Piano teacher Fernando Baldassini tells the documentary how Jennifer was the “best of the best”, constantly winning competitions and that her parents “spent thousands” to hone her talents.
He said: “She was exceptional, winning all the competitions year after year.
“At one of our lessons, Jennifer started to sob and break down and said, ‘Fernando, my parents don’t trust me, where I go, they follow me around and they don’t want me to go out with my boyfriend, he’s not acceptable to my father.
“'He (dad) won’t allow me to waste time to go out with a cook. They are driving me crazy.'”
The cook in question was Daniel Wong, 28, who Jennifer met at high school and had a conviction for possessing and dealing drugs.
Huei and Bich banned Jennifer from seeing Daniel when they found out about her relationship but she tried to carry on seeing him in secret.
Wong was the person who would just…he filled an empty void for me so I felt that a part of me was missing
Jennifer Pan
When her grades started slipping she faked report cards to pretend she was a grade A student.
When she failed to graduate she told her parents they couldn’t attend the ceremony due to ticketing issues.
Jennifer went further, pretending she had won a place at university, even buying biology books and ‘studying’ at the library.
She also claimed to have won a scholarship so her family didn’t need to pay ‘fees’.
After faking a degree certificate Pan told her parents she couldn't get a job as a pharmacist and claimed she was working as a volunteer at a hospital for sick children.
Her dad grew suspicious when he noticed Jennifer didn’t have a hospital ID badge or uniform and the whole story unravelled when they followed her one day.
They also discovered she was still seeing Daniel Wong, a pizza cook who dealt cannabis.
Huei was raging but allowed his daughter to stay in the family home so long as she stopped seeing Wong.
Jennifer vowed never to see her boyfriend again but they kept in touch over the next two years - despite the fact Wong had a new girlfriend called Christine.
Distraught at no longer being the love of his life, Jennifer asked Wong to help her hire a hitman and messages between the two revealed a contact called ‘Homeboy’.
When her mum came home from line dancing on a dark November night, Jennifer unlocked the front door so the three hitmen wouldn’t need to smash their way in.
She later told cops: “Wong was the person who would just…he filled an empty void for me so I felt that a part of me was missing. I wasn’t happy with any part of my life
“My friends were moving on with their lives and I was kind of being left behind.”
Police finally got her to admit her involvement after bringing in an expert called Bill Goetz.
He lied to Jennifer that satellites with infrared technology could determine movements in buildings - showing she was next to the killers downstairs.
The method would be illegal in Britain but police are allowed to use such tactics in Canada.
Jennifer broke down telling Goetz: “I wanted to stop it..I didn’t know who they (the men) were…they were only supposed to take me.
“I needed them to kill me - I didn’t want to live anymore. I didn’t want to be here anymore because I was such a disappointment.”
How was Jennifer able to make that phone call (to police) with her hands tied behind her back to a bannister?
Bill Courtice
Chillingly, police later discovered that Jennifer had also previously tried to recruit a “goth kid” at school to carry out a hit on her folks.
Childhood friend Nam Nguyen tells filmmakers that Jennifer was a “happy, confident and very genuine” person but doted on Wong.
He said: “They seemed happy at first but there was a lot of drama in that relationship, someone always high or low, someone heartbroken or getting back together.
“Expectation is not specific to Vietnamese culture but it’s definitely a hard style of parenting because it can make or break a child.
"For Jennifer, she wasn’t anywhere close to being top of the class, not even with earshot and it was a school where getting straight A’s was kind of standard.”
Lead investigator Bill Courtice described the crime scene as “very violent” and told how police originally probed theories that car factory worker Huei could have been involved in drugs, gambling or even a neighbourly dispute.
He said: “Was he involved in a nefarious business deal, was this a hit with gambling debts or weapons or drugs or a dispute with a neighbour?
“I was looking at a room that was ransacked…bloody clothing, pyjamas, the area where Bich was soaking her feet after line dancing.
“But there was also stuff there that ought to have been taken, some valuables that haven’t been touched. There’s a safe and a very expensive camera and a wallet with a bunch of 20 dollar bills that would have been taken if cash was what they (the gunmen) wanted.”
He said discovering Jennifer had lied about her education gave cops a breakthrough they needed to uncover the truth.
“This was huge,” he said. “This is of the same level a covert operator would use as a cover story.
“How was Jennifer able to make that phone call (to police) with her hands tied behind her back to a bannister?”
Detective Courtice said Jennifer was nervous during interviews “grooming” her hair and touching her stomach constantly.
After she finally admitted hiring the hitman, Courtice said: “You can imagine the shock, the horror that Bich and Huei must have experienced when those strangers entered the house. That’s evil - it’s as evil as it gets.”
Jennifer was convicted of first-degree murder of her mum and attempted murder of her father in 2014 after her dad gave evidence against her.
Her accomplices, ex boyfriend Wong, David Mylvaganam, 34, Lenford Crawford, 28, and Eric Carty got life sentences with no chance of parole. Carty, 35 when jailed, died in prison in 2018.
Last year the Ontario Court of appeal ruled that the jury in the original case should have been presented with the choices of second-degree murder or manslaughter as possible verdicts.
As a result, the first-degree murder charges for the four were overturned and the Supreme Court of Canada is in the process of deciding whether it will hear the case.
Jennifer is behind prison walls where she has continually protested her innocence
What Jennifer Did is out on Netflix now
