A Daughter's Deadly Deception Read online

  Contents

  Prologue

  PART ONE: SHATTERED DREAMS

  1 The Investigation Begins

  2 Interview One

  3 A Crack Squad

  4 An Anonymous Informant

  5 “That Hasn’t Gone Unnoticed”

  6 Hann Speaks

  7 “What Happens to Me?”

  8 “It Was for Me”

  9 Panic Sets In

  10 An Early Christmas Present

  11The Noose Tightens

  PART TWO: THE TRIAL

  12All Eyes on Newmarket

  13Stranger Than Fiction

  14A Father Betrayed

  15A Brother’s Agony

  16“Astonishing Testimony”

  17A Spanner in the Works

  18Judgment Day

  19Epitome of Evil

  PART THREE: HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN?

  20A New Country, a New Life

  21Great Expectations

  22A Child’s First Deception

  23Young Love

  24A Double Life

  25“House-Arrested”

  26Walking on Eggshells

  27“Oh, That’s the Bad Guy”

  28Deadly Betrayal

  29“She’s Not My Mama”

  30Game Time

  PART FOUR: CONCLUSIONS

  Lives Forever Changed: Impact Statements

  Where Are They Now?

  Afterword by Dr. Betty Kershner, Ph.D., Registered Psychologist

  Bibliographic References

  Author’s Note

  Image Credits

  Prologue

  It has to be a nightmare.

  “Where’s the fucking money?” the voice asks.

  The hushed tones of the intruder are followed by a silent, visceral threat — the cold metal of a handgun against his cheek. As the father of two lifts his gaze, quivering with fear, the man speaks again: “Where’s the fucking money? I said.”

  What is happening? The man is in his own bed, in his own home, sleeping soundly after a long day of work. He attempts to shake off the grogginess of his deep slumber, to understand exactly what’s transpiring. The intruder standing over him doesn’t have time for his attempts at comprehension; he has his orders, now he needs to execute. Today is payday. He grabs fifty-seven-year-old Hann Pan roughly by the scruff of the neck. If Hann had time to put on his glasses, he would be able to see into his assailant’s eyes, though they’re largely hidden beneath a baseball cap that is pulled down low on his forehead. The man leads him downstairs, the gun pressed firmly to the back of his head. As they descend the semicircular staircase, the scale of the threat to Hann and his family is revealed one horrifying step at a time. Downstairs, another masked man, also wearing a flat-brimmed baseball cap, stands over Hann’s wife, Bich-Ha, a gun to her neck.

  Bich’s feet are still soaking in a bucket of water after her weekly line-dancing class. She timidly looks up and asks her husband, in Cantonese, her voice cracking with fright, “How did they get in?”

  “I don’t know,” he answers. “I was sleeping.”

  Impatient, one of the men shouts, “Shut up! You talk too much.” He turns to Hann and repeats, this time slower, his voice seething with rage: “Where’s the fucking money?”

  Hann, believing the men only want to rob him, not hurt his wife or him, obliges. The problem is that since the Pans were robbed years ago when they lived in Scarborough — a rough area he moved his family out of to avoid this sort of confrontation — they no longer keep large amounts of money at home. “I have $60 in my pants upstairs, but my possessions are worth plenty,” he tells his tormentor.

  “Liar! I need the fucking money, nothing else.”

  Hann suddenly feels a searing pain in the back of his head. He falls to the floor. A gush of blood cascades over the living room couch.

  “Get up!”

  As he and his wife are led into the basement of their middle-class suburban home, true fear begins to rise to the surface of Hann’s mind. Still, he can’t imagine the scale of violence and horror that is about to descend upon his home and family this unseasonably warm November night.

  It’s different for Hann’s wife. She senses the imminent danger. She blurts out a panicked plea: “You can hurt us, but please don’t hurt my daughter.” Her mind is racing, frantic, wondering why they’re being taken downstairs. She begins to plead with the intruders, whimpering and begging them to take pity on her humble family.

  In the basement, the couple is ordered to sit on the couch, the same place where their daughter Jennifer lounged, watching her weekly sitcoms, just hours earlier. The men throw blankets over the couple’s heads, blankets that keep the family members warm in the often-frigid basement. Hann remains calm, resigned to his fate; his wife is hysterical. The assailant readies himself, aims, and fires. One bullet rips through Hann’s face, fracturing the bone near the inside corner of his right eye, grazing his carotid artery. A second bullet hits him in the right shoulder, exiting out the back of the top of his shoulder.

  The men turn their attention to his screaming wife. The initial blast from the firearm pierces the base of her neck. A second shot tears through her upper-right shoulder. And a final bullet, this time fired at closer range, enters and swiftly exits her skull: a fatal shot.

  Daughter Jennifer, who is later discovered by the police tied to the upstairs banister, recounts the sound of “four or five pops” and then an unknown number of footfalls before the intruders leave the house.

  When Hann slowly regains consciousness and opens his eyes, he is gripped with terror as he comes to realize that the last eight minutes of his life have not been a gruesome nightmare but instead a terrifying reality. As the details of the break-in race through his mind, he looks beside him, where the love of his life lies, bloodied; her body has slumped to the floor. He crawls to her, wincing in pain, blood dripping from wounds in his shoulder and head. He shakes her, calls out her name, once, twice, three times — no response. The life has already left his wife of thirty years. He begins to howl in agony, a pain both physical and emotional. As he lurches upstairs, his desperate screams and moans are clearly audible to the 911 operators fielding his daughter Jennifer’s panicked call for assistance. Hann reaches the main floor and staggers to the front door. Outside, he collapses in front of a neighbour who is on his way to an early shift at work.

  “Dad?” his daughter Jennifer yells down to him. “I’m calling 911 … I’m okay.”

  But her father doesn’t hear her. He is racked by pain in his own world of dread.

  The names of some persons have been changed to protect their identities.

  1

  The Investigation Begins

  “Nine-one-one. Do you require —?”

  Before the operator can get all the words out of her mouth she hears a young woman’s frenzied cries for assistance: “Help me, please! I need help … I don’t know where my parents are …”

  “Ma’am, ma’am, calm down. What’s going on?” asks the operator.

  “Some people just broke into our house and they just stole all our money!” the girl screams. “I just heard shots, pops. I’m tied upstairs. I had my hands tied behind my back. I had my cellphone in my pocket. Please come … help!”

  “What did they look like?”

  “I’m not sure … the guy who was with me, he was a male … one of them had a hoodie. They had most of the lights off before they left. I think he was black, I think, I’m not sure. They didn’t hurt
me…. They had guns and they were holding me at gunpoint…. They took my parents downstairs and I heard pops.… All they said was ‘You’re not co-operating.’” The woman is calling from a live crime scene.

  In the background a blood-curdling howl is heard.

  “Dad …? I’m calling 911 … I’m okay!” the caller yells out.

  “Do you hear [your] mom anywhere downstairs?”

  “I don’t hear her anymore …” The girl’s voice trails off and cracks with emotion. She sounds petrified and begs the operator to remain on the phone with her until the police arrive.

  Moments later, sirens and loud shouting can be heard as police officers arrive on the scene.

  Three men jump out of the cruisers and take in the gruesome scene, their eyes struggling to grasp what lies before them. Two men, one partially dressed and dishevelled, are in the driveway of 240 Helen Avenue. Neighbour Peter Chung stands worriedly beside Hann Pan, who screams about the pain in his face in broken English. His clothes are drenched in blood, a “thick red liquid dripping from his nose.” When Constable Mike Stesco approaches, he hears the confusing cries of Hann, but quickly realizes that gunmen have robbed the home when Hann motions with his fingers in the shape of a gun. Hann manages to get across that the intruders shot him and his wife and left his daughter inside the house.

  Nothing is further from York Regional Constable Mason Baines’s mind than murder as he drives around the peaceful city of Markham, Ontario, in his cruiser that night. After hearing the gun call on his CB, he races over to Helen Avenue, breaking the posted limit and covering the mile and a quarter in two minutes flat. When he gets out of his car and draws close to the door of the house, he recalls from his training what to do when faced with a gun call — hit the wall, draw your pistol, check that the coast is clear.

  The young uniformed officer glances down and notices blood droplets leading to the front door. Following them inside and through the home’s dining room, he calls out, trying to locate the person yelling from within. A panicked female voice answers, telling him that she’s “upstairs.”

  “I’m okay!” she cries, but says something is wrong with her mother, who’s in the basement and has been shot.

  Baines makes his way through the house and is confronted with an eerily calm scene. The trail of blood leads him slowly forward. Other than the red drops that stain the hardwood, the rest of the main floor seems in order.

  Mike Stesco, along with rookie partner Brian Darroch, follows Baines. He later notes: “Everything in the house seemed to be where it should be. Obviously, we’ve done home invasions in the past where the house had been ransacked, but [in this case], nothing was out of place, nothing taken.”

  The basement crime scene.

  When the three officers descend into the basement, Baines recoils at the sight before him. The body of Bich-Ha Pan lies face down in front of a sectional leather couch. She is wearing green silky Winnie-the-Pooh pajamas. Her feet are still wet from the water they were soaking in mere minutes earlier.

  Stesco later describes the scene: “There was a lot of blood. It was a real dark sort of thick-coloured blood. It wasn’t like the trail we followed down, light sort of splatter, it was thicker. It was by her head and then she had a blue towel over her head.”

  At the scene, Stesco speaks to the woman but knows deep down it’s pointless. There is no response. Baines checks her pulse, then notices two shots to her neck and back. Darroch notices Bich’s legs are discoloured in pale shades of grey.

  Four paramedics rush in soon after and flip over the lifeless body. They try to revive her, but it is a useless exercise.

  Stesco tells his partner to head upstairs to secure the young woman. Darroch, his gun drawn, moves cautiously up through the house. As he approaches the home’s final victim, he starts to holster his weapon. When he calls out, Jennifer tells him she’s unsure if the assailants are actually gone. Darroch grips his service pistol again and quickly raises it. Peering through the gun’s sight finder, he acknowledges Jennifer, then proceeds to clear all the rooms. The master bedroom is in shambles, the mattress flipped, the drawers — clearly rifled through — lie broken and empty, the contents spilling across the floor. The others appear in order.

  Satisfied that no intruders are still present, Darroch returns to Jennifer. Later, the constable, a Scotsman and new to Canada, says the young woman’s position on the floor reminded him of Copenhagen’s Little Mermaid statue. Her ankles are to her side, her bound wrists able to move away from the banister about eight inches. Darroch retrieves a pair of scissors from Jennifer’s bedroom and cuts the bootlace binding her tiny wrists. Noticing her panic, he tries to soothe her with his deep Glaswegian voice. Once she’s free, he immediately ushers her out the front door, noting no redness or bruising on her wrists.

  When Darroch sees Jennifer shiver, either because of nerves or the brisk night air, he covers her with his police jacket and delivers her to the waiting paramedics, implying that he is worried she might have been sexually assaulted by the men. Later, he says: “I asked them to have a look at the young lady. Sometimes things happen to ladies that they don’t want to divulge to men, so I just wanted to make sure that she was okay.”

  As paramedics load Hann onto a stretcher and begin working on him, Peter Chung — the neighbour Hann implored to call 911 as his blood seeped onto the driveway — watches helplessly along with several other neighbours and a solitary cameraman, all witnesses to the ghastly results of gun violence.

  Also being treated by paramedics, a worried Jennifer yells, “Daddy, are you okay?” These are the last words Hann hears before the doors are shut and his ambulance speeds off to the hospital.

  Ever the gentleman, Darroch accompanies Jennifer to the hospital in her ambulance. It is only when she inquires about the well-being of both her parents that he breaks the news to her that her mother is dead. He asks her what she can remember from the night. Not much, she replies. There were three men — one was smaller than the rest and another had dreadlocks. It was too dark in the house during the invasion to catch sight of the men, she tells Darroch. The only light that shone occurred when the thieves opened the refrigerator while searching for her mother’s purse.

  Hann Pan is placed into an ambulance at the scene of the home invasion. He would be transported to nearby Markham Stouffville Hospital in serious condition.

  When Jennifer finally walks through the doors of Markham Stouffville Hospital, she is soon informed of the severity of her father’s injuries. Many people seem surprised he’s even alive. Hann wasn’t able to speak as doctors worked furiously to save his life.

  As the anguish of what has just occurred sinks in, Jennifer begins to fall apart when she acknowledges her new reality: life without her mom and possibly her dad. She reaches out to crisis workers at the hospital and is seen by them at 11:15 p.m. An anti-anxiety medication is prescribed for her to calm her badly frayed nerves. Outside, Darroch stands guard.

  Finally, Jennifer is released back into Darroch’s custody. It is now 1:31 a.m. on November 9. Before the pair get into Darroch’s cruiser to drive to the Markham police station, Jennifer’s Rogers Samsung phone is seized as part of the impending murder investigation.

  2

  Interview One

  Just four hours after the double homicide attempt, with her father still clinging to life, twenty-four-year-old Jennifer Pan is led to an interview room at the Markham police station where she will be questioned by York Regional Police Detective Randy Slade, a veteran of the homicide unit. It is 2:45 a.m. on November 9. The interview will last two hours.

  Faced with an obviously broken young woman who has just been left motherless by armed thugs, Detective Slade does his best to deliver his questions with kid gloves. The young woman before him is wearing glasses, and a French braid hangs down over her left shoulder. She’s dressed in an oversized figure skating club sweate
r, black yoga pants, and a pair of bright blue–bowed Asian-style slippers.

  Slade gently explains to Jennifer that the sworn video statement caution form sitting between them is not accusatory. It’s a guarantee that she swears to tell the whole truth. To this she nods in understanding. However, as he carries on, pointing out that this is a homicide investigation and laying out the penalties for dishonesty, her head moves up and down far more pensively. When she’s informed that the jail term for lying is fourteen years, Jennifer grows nervous, fidgeting and rubbing her legs before placing a delicate hand over her heart. Slade leaves the room briefly to get a Bible for her to swear on. Jennifer appears startled when he returns. Despite the anti-anxiety drugs now coursing through her system, she seems awfully jumpy.

  Jennifer is photographed during her first interview with police the night of her mother’s murder.

  Promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help her God, the young woman with perfect posture then blurts out “As much as I can remember” as her bottom lip quivers.

  “That’s all I ask for,” a concerned Slade responds. “This form, please don’t take it personal, okay? But it’s something we go through with everyone.”

  It’s only when the murder of her mother is mentioned that Jennifer begins to display intense emotion — bowing her head and sobbing uncontrollably. Her heartache appears so great, she struggles to pronounce her mother’s name, eventually sounding out the correct pronunciation — Bick-Ha Pan — before turning her face away and weeping. It doesn’t take long before Detective Al Cooke, observing from an adjacent room, notices something troubling. When Jennifer is given a tissue, it comes away dry — there are no tears. “When she came in to her first interview, obviously, yes, we were watching,” he says. “She wasn’t crying. She wasn’t very upset. She could have been in shock, so you can’t rely on that as a piece of evidence. It’s just something you look at, and maybe it’ll mean something later.”