Unspeakable Acts

by Sarah Weinman

  IN THE SPRING OF 2010, JENNIFER RECONNECTED WITH Andrew Montemayor, a friend from elementary school. According to Jennifer’s later evidence in court, he had boasted about robbing people at knifepoint in the park near his home (a claim he denies). When Jennifer told him about her torturous relationship with her dad, Montemayor confessed that he’d once considered killing his own father. The notion intrigued Jennifer, who began imagining how much better her life would be without her father around. Montemayor introduced Jennifer to his roommate, Ricardo Duncan, a goth kid with black nail polish.

  Over bubble tea in between her piano lessons, according to Jennifer, they hatched a plan for Duncan to murder her father in a parking lot at his work, a tool and die company called Kobay Enstel, near Finch and McCowan. She says she gave Duncan $1,500, earnings from her piano classes, and they agreed to connect later by phone to arrange the date and time of the hit. But Duncan stopped answering her calls, and by early July, Jennifer realized she had been ripped off. (Duncan says she called him in early July, hysterical, requesting that he come and kill her parents. He said he felt offended and said no, and that the only money she gave him was $200 for a night out, which he promptly returned.)

  According to the police, it was at this point that Daniel and Jennifer, who were back in contact and exchanging daily flirty texts, devised an even more sinister plan: they’d hire a hit on Bich and Hann, collect the estate—Jennifer’s portion totaling about $500,000—and live together, unencumbered by her meddling parents. Daniel gave Jennifer a spare iPhone and SIM card, and connected her with an acquaintance named Lenford Crawford, whom he called Homeboy. Jennifer asked what the going rate was for a contract killing. Crawford said it was $20,000, but for a friend of Daniel’s it could be done for $10,000. Jennifer was careful to use her iPhone for crime-related conversations and her Samsung phone for everything else. On Halloween night, Crawford visited the Pans’ neighborhood—probably to scout the site. Kids in costume streaming up and down the street provided the perfect cover.

  On the afternoon of November 2, the plan took an unexpected turn. Daniel texted Jennifer, saying that he felt as strongly about Christine as she did about him. Suddenly, everything was thrown into question. She texted Daniel: “So you feel for her what I feel for you, then call it off with Homeboy.” Daniel responded, “I thought you wanted this for you?” Jennifer replied to Daniel, “I do, but I have nowhere to go.” Daniel wrote back: “Call it off with Homeboy? You said you wanted this with or without me.” Jennifer: “I want it for me.” The next day, Daniel texted, “I did everything and lined it all up for you.” It seemed Daniel wanted out of the arrangement. But within hours, they’d reverted to their old ways, texting and flirting. Later that day, Crawford texted Jennifer, “I need the time of completion, think about it.” Jennifer wrote back, “Today is a no go. Dinner plans out so won’t be home in time.” Over the following week, there was a flurry of text and phone conversations between Jennifer, Daniel, and Crawford. On the morning of November 8, Crawford texted Jennifer: “After work ok will be game time.”

  That evening, Jennifer watched Gossip Girl and Jon & Kate Plus Eight in her bedroom while Hann read the Vietnamese news down the hall before heading to bed around 8:30 p.m. Bich was out line dancing with a friend and a cousin. Felix, who was studying engineering at McMaster University, wasn’t home. At approximately 9:30 p.m., Bich came home from her line dancing class, changed into her pajamas, and soaked her feet in front of the TV on the main floor. At 9:35 p.m., a man named David Mylvaganam, a friend of Crawford’s, called Jennifer, and they spoke for nearly two minutes. Jennifer went downstairs to say good night to Bich and, as Jennifer later admitted, unlock the front door (a statement she eventually retracted). At 10:02 p.m., the light in the upstairs study switched on—allegedly a signal to the intruders—and a minute later, it switched off. At 10:05 p.m., Mylvaganam called again, and he and Jennifer spoke for three and a half minutes. Moments later, Crawford, Mylvaganam, and a third man, named Eric Carty, walked through the front door, all three carrying guns. One pointed his gun at Bich while another ran upstairs, shoved a gun at Hann’s face, and directed him out of bed, down the stairs, and into the living room.

  Upstairs, Carty confronted Jennifer outside her bedroom door. According to Jennifer, Carty tied her arms behind her using a shoelace. He directed her back inside, where she handed over approximately $2,500 in cash, then to her parents’ bedroom, where he located $1,100 in US funds in her mother’s nightstand, and then finally to the kitchen to search for her mother’s wallet.

  “How could they enter the house?” Bich asked Hann in Cantonese. “I don’t know. I was sleeping,” Hann replied. “Shut up! You talk too much!” one of the intruders yelled at Hann. “Where’s the fucking money?” Hann had just $60 in his wallet and said as much. “Liar!” one man replied, and pistol-whipped him on the back of the head. Bich began weeping, pleading with the men not to hurt their daughter. One of the intruders replied, “Rest assured, she is nice and will not be hurt.”

  Carty led Jennifer back upstairs and tied her arms to the banister, while Mylvaganam and Crawford took Bich and Hann to the basement and covered their heads with blankets. They shot Hann twice, once in the shoulder and then in the face. He crumpled to the floor. They shot Bich three times in the head, killing her instantly, then fled through the front door.

  Jennifer somehow managed to reach her phone, tucked into the waistband of her pants, and dial 911 (despite, as she later claimed, having her hands tied behind her back). “Help me, please! I need help!” she cried. “I don’t know where my parents are! . . . Please hurry!” At the 34-second mark of the call, the unexpected happens: Hann can be heard moaning in the background. He had awoken, covered in blood, with his dead wife’s body next to him, and crawled up the stairs to the main floor. Jennifer yelled down that she was calling 911. Hann stumbled outside, screaming wildly, and encountered his startled neighbor, who was about to leave for work, in the driveway next door. The neighbor called 911. Police and an ambulance arrived at the scene minutes later, and Hann was rushed to a nearby hospital, then airlifted to Sunnybrook.

  York Regional Police interviewed Jennifer just before 3:00 a.m. She told them that the men had entered the house looking for money, tied her to the banister, and taken her parents to the basement and shot them. Two days later, the police brought her in again to give a second statement. At their request, she showed how she’d contorted her body to get her phone—a flip phone—out of her waistband to place a call while tied to a banister.

  Holes began to emerge in Jennifer’s story. For instance, the keys to Hann’s Lexus were in plain view by the front door. If it were indeed a home invasion, why did the intruders not take the car? And why didn’t they have a crowbar to get in, or a backpack to carry the loot, or zip ties to restrain the residents? And most important: Why would they shoot two witnesses but leave one unharmed? The police assigned a surveillance team to monitor Jennifer’s movements.

  By November 12, Hann had woken up from his three-day induced coma. He had a broken bone near his eye, bullet fragments lodged in his face that doctors couldn’t remove, and a shattered neck bone—the bullet had grazed the carotid artery. Remarkably, he remembered everything, including two troubling details: he recalled seeing his daughter chatting softly—“Like a friend,” he said—with one of the intruders, and that her arms were not tied behind her back while she was being led around the house.

  On November 22, the police brought Jennifer in for a third interview. This one developed a different tone: the detective, William Goetz, said that he knew she was involved in the crime. He knew that she had lied to him, and said it was in her best interest to fess up. Jennifer, hunched over and sobbing, asked repeatedly, “But what happens to me?”

  Over nearly four hours, Jennifer spun out an absurd explanation. She said the attack had been an elaborate plan to commit suicide gone horribly wrong. She had given up on life but couldn’t manage to kill herself, so she hired Homeboy, wh
ose real name she claimed not to know, to do it for her. In September, however, her relationship with her father had suddenly improved, and she’d decided to call off the hit. But somehow wires got crossed, and the men ended up killing her parents instead of her. Police arrested Jennifer on the spot. In the spring of 2011, relying on analysis of cell phone calls and texts, they also nabbed Daniel, Mylvaganam, Carty, and Crawford, and charged all five with first-degree murder, attempted murder, and conspiracy to commit murder.

  THE TRIAL BEGAN ON MARCH 19, 2014, IN NEWMARKET. IT was expected to last six months but stretched for nearly 10. More than 50 witnesses testified, and more than 200 exhibits were filed. Jennifer was on the stand for seven days, bobbing and weaving in a futile attempt to explain away the damning text messages with Crawford and Daniel and the calls with Mylvaganam, and desperately trying to convince the jury that while she had indeed ordered a hit on her father in August 2010, three months later she had wanted nothing of the sort.

  Before the jury delivered the verdict, Jennifer appeared almost upbeat, playfully picking lint off her lawyer’s robes. When the guilty verdict was delivered, she showed no emotion, but once the press had left the courtroom, she wept, shaking uncontrollably. For the charge of first-degree murder, Jennifer received an automatic life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years; for the attempted murder of her father, she received another sentence of life, to be served concurrently. Daniel, Mylvaganam, and Crawford each received the same sentence. Carty’s lawyer fell ill during the trial, and his trial was postponed to early 2016. The judge granted two noncommunication orders, one banning communication among the five defendants until Carty’s trial is complete, and a second between Jennifer and her family, at the latter’s request, effectively preventing Jennifer from speaking to her father or brother ever again. Her lawyer addressed the order in court. “Jennifer is open to communicating with her family if they wanted to,” he said.

  Hann and Felix both wrote victim impact statements. “When I lost my wife, I lost my daughter at the same time,” Hann wrote. “I don’t feel like I have a family anymore. [ . . . ] Some say I should feel lucky to be alive but I feel like I am dead too.” He is now unable to work due to his injuries. He suffers anxiety attacks, insomnia, and, when he can sleep, nightmares. He is in constant pain and has given up gardening, working on his cars, and listening to music, since none of those activities bring him joy anymore. He can’t bear to be in his house, so he lives with relatives nearby. Felix moved to the East Coast to find work with a private technology company and escape the stigma of being a member of the Pan family. He suffers from depression and has become closed off. Hann is desperate to sell the family home, but no one will buy it. At the end of his statement, Hann addressed Jennifer. “I hope my daughter Jennifer thinks about what has happened to her family and can become a good honest person someday.”

  THIS WAS A DIFFICULT STORY FOR ME TO WRITE. IT’S complicated to report on a murder when you were once friends with the people involved. Late last year, I drove up to the correctional facility in Lindsay a few times to see Daniel. In the harsh, white, empty halls of the massive building, even separated from me by a large pane of Plexiglas, he still seemed so familiar—a little pudgy, happy, cracking jokes. His favorite color was always orange, but he tugged on his bright pumpkin jumpsuit and said he’d cooled on the color lately, then broke into a big laugh. He asked how I was doing, and I told him my parents had recently separated, and how it had been tough on me. He said that if he ever got out, he would give my dad relationship advice.

  I asked him if he ever wonders whether, if even little things had gone just slightly differently, he wouldn’t be in prison. He shook his head and said thinking like that could drive a person mad. He said the best thing for him was to focus on reality: that he was in jail, and he had to make the best of it. Daniel said he’d bonded with the Cantonese speakers in his block and was helping them adjust to life inside. When I asked him about the case, he clammed up, citing limitations set by his lawyer. He intends to appeal, as do Jennifer, Mylvaganam, and Crawford. Presuming they lose, they’ll be eligible for parole in 2035. Jennifer will be 49, Daniel 50.

  A number of questions linger. Was Jennifer mentally ill? A chemical imbalance would certainly make the ordeal easier to understand. But her lawyers didn’t attempt to present her as unfit to stand trial. That leaves a harder conclusion: that Jennifer was in complete control of her faculties. That she wanted Bich and Hann dead and put a plan into action to make it happen. That the guilt of years of her snowballing lies and the shame when it all came out drove her to murder.

  It’s not that simple, though. I believe that on some level, Jennifer loved her parents. “I needed my family to be around me. I wanted them to accept me; I didn’t want to live alone [ . . . ] I didn’t want them to abandon me either,” she said on the stand. She was hysterical on the phone when she called 911 and teared up in the courthouse while describing the sound of her parents being shot. Yet how do you believe a liar? Jennifer lied in all three statements she gave to police. Under oath, she was repeatedly caught in tiny half-truths.

  Some think her parents were to blame. “I think they pushed her to that point,” a friend of Jennifer’s told me. “I honestly don’t think Jennifer is evil. This is just two people she hated.” In February, I submitted separate formal requests to interview Jennifer and Daniel about the trial itself, the judgment, and the sentence. They declined. The result is the purgatory of not knowing what my former schoolmates were thinking, feeling, and hoping for. And it’s likely I never will.

  Originally published in Toronto Life, July 2015

  The Perfect Man Who Wasn’t

  By Rachel Monroe

  By the spring of 2016, Missi Brandt had emerged from a rough few years with a new sense of solidity. At 45, she was three years sober and on the leeward side of a stormy divorce. She was living with her preteen daughters in the suburbs of St. Paul, Minnesota, and working as a flight attendant. Missi felt ready for a serious relationship again, so she made a profile on Ourtime.co.uk, a dating site for people in middle age.

  Among all the duds—the desperate and depressed and not-quite-divorced—a 45-year-old man named Richie Peterson stood out. He was a career naval officer, an Afghanistan veteran who was finishing his doctorate in political science at the University of Minnesota. When Missi “liked” his profile, he sent her a message right away and called her that afternoon. They talked about their kids (he had two; she had three), their divorces, their sobriety. Richie told her he was on vacation in Hawaii, but they planned to meet up as soon as he got back.

  A few days later, when he was supposed to pick her up for their first date, Richie was nowhere to be found, and he wasn’t responding to her texts, either. Missi sat in her living room, alternately furious at him (for letting her down) and at herself (for getting her hopes up enough to be let down). “I’m thinking, What a dumbass I am. He’s probably at home, hanging out with his wife and kids,” she says.

  At 10 p.m., she sent him a final message: This is completely unacceptable. A few minutes later, she got a reply from Richie’s friend Chris, who said Richie had been in a car accident. He was okay, thank God, but the doctors wanted to do some extra testing, since he’d suffered head trauma while in Afghanistan. Chris sent Missi a picture of Richie in a hospital bed, looking a little banged up but grinning gamely for the camera. Missi felt a wave of relief, both that Richie was okay and that her suspicions were unwarranted.

  When she finally did meet him in person, her relief was even more profound. Richie was tall and charming, a good talker and a good listener who seemed eager for a relationship. He could be a little awkward, but Missi chalked that up to his inexperience—he told her he hadn’t been with a woman in eight years. Plus, dating him was fun. Richie had a taste for nice things—expensive restaurants, four-star hotels—and he always insisted on paying. He kept a motorboat docked at a nearby marina, and he’d take Missi and her daughters out for afternoons on the wate
r. The girls liked him, and so did the dog. Richie mentioned that his cousin Vicki worked for the same airline as Missi. The two women didn’t work together regularly, but they knew each other. Missi thought it was a fun coincidence. “Don’t mention us to her,” Richie said. “One day we’ll show up together to some family event and surprise her; it’ll be great.”

  A few months into their relationship, she missed a shift at work and got fired. Richie leapt into provider mode. He told her that he’d take care of her bills for the next four months, that she should relax and take stock of her life and spend time with the kids. Maybe he could put her and the girls on his university insurance. Maybe, he told her, with the benevolent confidence of a wealthy man, she wouldn’t have to work. The offer wasn’t all that appealing to Missi—“I didn’t want to be a stay-at-home mom again,” she says—but she took it as a sign that things were getting serious.

  The longer they kept dating, though, the more problems cropped up. Richie liked to say he didn’t “do drama,” but drama seemed to follow him nonetheless. It got to feel as if every text from him was an announcement of some new disaster: he had to check his daughter Sarah into rehab; he had to put his beloved shih tzu, Thumper, to sleep. Richie had lingering medical problems from his time in the service, and Missi was constantly having to drop him off at or pick him up from the hospital. He was always canceling plans, or not showing up when he was supposed to. When Missi got fed up—Why did I get out of a crappy marriage just to be in this crappy relationship?—some new tragedy would happen (his mother died; he was in a motorcycle accident), and she’d be roped back in.

  One day in early August, driven by a feeling she couldn’t quite pinpoint, Missi took a peek at Richie’s wallet. Inside was a Minnesota state ID with a photograph that was unmistakably Richie’s, but with an entirely different name: Derek Mylan Alldred. The wallet also contained a couple of credit cards belonging to someone named Linda. Missi’s heart sank. She’d had a nagging sense that something wasn’t right in her relationship, but she’d shaken it off as her being untrusting. These mysterious objects in his wallet, though, seemed to affirm that Richie was engaged in some larger form of deceit, even if she didn’t understand all the details just yet.