Jennifer Pan pleaded guilty to manslaughter on Wednesday for the death of her mother during an arranged Markham, Ont., home invasion in 2010 that also left her father seriously injured.
Pan made the plea in a Newmarket courtroom.
Pan’s lawyers, Breana Vandebeek and Nathan Gorham, welcomed the “fair” resolution of the case.
The now 40-year-old was initially found guilty of first-degree murder and attempted murder and was sentenced to life in prison in 2015.
However, in 2023, the Court of Appeal for Ontario overturned the first-degree murder conviction and ordered new trials for Pan and her three co-accused — a ruling that was affirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada.
The case got renewed media and public attention in 2024 after Netflix released the documentary “What Jennifer Did.”
“We were pleased that the Crown accepted the resolution on the basis that she didn’t intend for her mother to die, and she accepted the objective seriousness of what she did,” Gorham told CTV News Barrie outside the courthouse.
“She expressed remorse in court, said she was heartbroken for the impact that this had on her brother, and her family offered her regret and insight into the harm caused by her actions, and so the judge accepted that it was her expression of remorse.”
According to an agreed statement of facts submitted to the court, Pan initiated a plan to have her father killed as their relationship had been deteriorating for months. She also “financed” the plot, the documents state.
Pan enlisted the help of Daniel Wong, with whom she had been in a relationship. Wong then aided her in finding intruders and organizing the hit.
On the night of Nov. 8, 2010, three men armed with guns entered Pan’s home. At the time, Pan was in her bedroom while her father, Hann, was in his second-floor bedroom, and her mother, Bich-Ha, was on the main floor.
According to the agreed statement of facts, one intruder woke up Hann and brought him to the family room at gunpoint, where Bich Ha was also being held by another gunman.
The third intruder went upstairs and interacted with Pan and later tied her to a banister with a shoelace.
Following a discussion about money, both of Pan’s parents were taken to the basement and ordered to sit on the sectional couch. They were told to put a blanket over their heads and were shot.
The three men later left with Pan unharmed.
Pan’s mother suffered three gunshot wounds, including one to the back of her head, which was the cause of her death. Meanwhile, her father sustained two gunshot wounds but survived the attack.
According to the agreed statement of facts, while Pan did not plan to kill her mother, she knew or ought to have known that she could be in the house when the home invasion was carried out.
Gorham emphasized that his client was pushed into a situation that many people would have broken under.
“She committed a very serious offence, but then afterwards, she returned to being a good person. And so, I don’t think it’s a straightforward thing to say to look at it from the perspective that she’s an evil person,” he said.
“She’s a good person, in our view, who did something bad because she was pushed in a very, very bad spot, and so we feel that the manslaughter resolution is a fair resolution for everyone.”
With files from Mike Arsalides
