A new Netflix documentary, “What Jennifer Did,” tells the story of a young Canadian woman and her alleged plot to kill her parents.
The documentary opens on the alarming 2010 emergency call Pan placed to the police after her mother was fatally shot to death and her father critically injured in their home.
What unfolds over the next 86 minutes is the harrowing story that police did not initially see coming.
Producers from the documentary secured footage from the interrogation room as investigators tried to piece together what happened the night Bich Ha Pan, 53, was killed and Huei Hann Pan, 60, was put into a coma.
The documentary walks viewers through how Pan’s parents allegedly pressured her to excel academically and eventually forced her to choose between her family and her on-again-off-again boyfriend, Daniel Wong.
The film also shows that Pan allegedly lied to her parents about graduating from high school, college, and working as a pharmacist for years.
Eventually, prosecutors alleged, Pan enlisted Wong and two others to help her coordinate her parents’ deaths in a murder-for-hire plot.
What was Jennifer Pan initially found guilty of?
In 2014, at the age of 28, Pan was found guilty of both first-degree murder of her mother and the attempted murder of her father.
In January 2015, she was sentenced to life in prison with no parole for 25 years, according to court records obtained by TODAY.com.
Pan’s three co-conspirators — Lenford Crawford, David Mylvaganam and her on-again, off-again boyfriend Daniel Wong — were also found guilty on both charges.
Why are Jennifer Pan and her co-conspirators getting a new trial?
Pan and the three men appealed the decision and in May 2023, the Court of Appeal for Ontario ordered new trials for the first-degree murder convictions.
According to the CBC, the court found that the judge in the initial trial erred by suggesting to the jury only two possible scenarios: one in which the plan was to murder both parents and another in which the plan was a robbery gone wrong, ending with both parents being shot.
The appeals court found that the trial judge should have also offered the jury second-degree murder and manslaughter as other possible verdicts in the death of Pan’s mother.
Following the lower court granting Pan and her co-defendants a new trial, the prosecutors filed an appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.
“What happened after that was that the crown — which is like the district attorney in Canada — appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada,” Stephanie DiGiuseppe, Pan’s lawyer, tells TODAY.com, adding that Pan and her co-defendants have cross-appealed the decision to uphold the conviction in respect to the shooting.
Pan’s appeal questions “whether it’s fair — in such a factually entwined case — to send back for a retrial, only one of two counts,” DiGiuseppe says. “The result, conceivably could be that she’s acquitted in the death of her mother, but continues to be convicted to the death of her father which would be irreconcilable results. And we just leave the public always wondering what really happened in this case without any sense of resolution.”
Pan’s legal team is expecting a hearing in the Supreme Court of Canada “probably late 2024 or early 2025,” DiGiuseppe says, adding that the case means Pan’s trial in the lower court is “on hold.” Her next hearing in the Ontario court is just an administrative appearance on June 14, 2024, according to online court records.
How does Jennifer Pan feel about the Netflix documentary?
DiGiuseppe says that Pan maintains her innocence and hopes a new trial will give her a chance to share her side of the story.
“She maintains her innocence and she hopes to one day be exonerated through this long process,” DiGiuseppe says.
“I can say that the Netflix documentary paints one side of the story and that Jennifer (Pan) is very much hoping to have an opportunity to respond to that narrative — which is really the police’s side of the story — at her upcoming trial.”
Where is Jennifer Pan now?
Pan is currently incarcerated, the Correctional Service Canada confirmed to TODAY.com. In Canada, prisoner’s specific locations are not revealed for privacy reasons.