A Daughter's Deadly Deception

by Jeremy Grimaldi

  6

  Hann Speaks

  When the interview is finished, Jennifer ventures dutifully back to the hospital, keeping vigil at her father’s bedside, wanting to be the first person he sees should he open his eyes. But returning to the same place over and over leaves Jennifer exposed to those attempting to capture the images of the young woman everyone is talking about. On this day it is CTV News cameras that chase her through the parking lot. In the ensuing moments, younger brother Felix is forced to partially shield Jennifer from the prying lenses as she traipses through the blowing cold of the hospital campus. She masks her face and head underneath the hood of her winter jacket but is forced to look up in order to see where she is going. Until a photo from Bich’s funeral replaces it, this is the go-to image for anyone wanting to gawk at the young woman who managed to escape a murderous home invasion unscathed. Of course, shielding her face from the cameras does little to help the presumption of innocence that all Canadians enjoy. Later that day, Jennifer thinks she is being followed in her car. Panicked, and unaware if it is reporters or assailants, she calls police for an escort.

  On November 12, Hann comes out of his coma, but Jennifer is not allowed near him without someone peering over her shoulder. “Not only was my father in the hospital, but there was always supervision,” she says. “I couldn’t … speak to him alone.” Jennifer is not permitted to see him until the police are done with their interviews.

  Hann’s awakening is greeted with jubilation by the rest of his family, and they do their best to comfort him as he deals with his raw emotions. For Jennifer, however, her father’s revival sparks another “breakdown” after which she once again seeks out a hospital therapist. It is during this meeting that Jennifer’s mental health issues, which will be discussed later in the book, first become apparent to others. Just days after her mother’s murder and hours after her father awakes from a coma, one might expect her concerns to be about her grief over her mother or ongoing concern for her father. Instead, it seems that Jennifer’s overriding torment is how the situation is affecting her. She is worried about what is being written about her in the press — more specifically speculation in the media regarding her personal problems. The entirety of Jennifer’s medical records are tightly sealed; however, this morsel, garnered via a source close to the case, gives as clear an indication as possible of her self-absorption at this time, repeatedly putting herself first, suffering mental anguish over her own security and reputation rather than her family’s well-being.

  Hann remains in stable condition, but with a bullet lodged in his neck he suffers great pain. A support device is used to prop him up in bed. At first he can’t speak and is forced to breathe through his mouth with an apparatus fixed around his lips. He also still has bullet fragments in his face, which the doctors are never able to completely remove. “My neck was very painful, my eyes were droopy because I was shot in the face,” he later tells the court. “My neck bone shattered.”

  Hann has little time to mourn his wife and visit with his family before the police initiate an interview. But before they arrive, his siblings fill him in on what has transpired since the murder. Jennifer’s pay-phone call is one of the first things they share with Hann.

  When Detectives Marco Napoleoni and David MacDonald enter the hospital room, they find a broken man — one who has awakened to discover that a most horrific nightmare is, in fact, a grim reality. His wife is dead, and the officers can sense that he feels his daughter is involved. The two investigators begin questioning Hann about what he remembers from that night.

  Hann tells them that two black men and one white broke into his home. They were tall, he says, each about six feet, and they were wearing turtlenecks — possibly, the detectives ask, to hide tattoos? And, finally, Hann tells them that the black clothing they wore appeared to have brown splotches on it. After completing his description, Hann suffers through what must be the most excruciating conversation of his life. He reveals to the officers that, while he and Bich were being “terrorized” under the threat of gunfire, his daughter was “comfortable” and “freely moving around the house.”

  It is after this lengthy conversation focusing on Jennifer that Hann remarks that it is very important to him that the police catch those responsible. As Hann stares into the eyes of the interviewing detectives, it is this comment that sticks with them long after they leave the man’s bedside. “Use your police tactics to find out who did this,” says Hann, an unspoken accusation that everyone in the room understands.

  Although Hann specifically tells his family that he doesn’t want to see his daughter, Jennifer manages to get to his bedside on Saturday, November 13, after police finish interviewing him for the second day in a row. It is the first time Jennifer isn’t under constant supervision around her father, as well as the first time she is free from the sedatives the doctor prescribed to her immediately following the murder.

  Although not bold enough to accuse his daughter to her face, Hann does ask her if she thinks Daniel was behind the murder. “I don’t know 100 percent, but I don’t think he [was],” she tells her father. She later explains to police why she thought he was suspicious of Daniel. “He thinks that we still talk and [Daniel] would go to any length to be with me. I think [Daniel has] moved on so I don’t think he’d go to any lengths to be with me. I don’t think he knows anyone [who could do this].”

  Hann also asks Jennifer if it was “Danny” who she called from the pay phone right after she discovered he was going to survive. Jennifer admits to the call but says it was only to share the good news. (A central tenet of the defence later contends that the call, which was made without the use of her police-monitored cellphone, was intended to be a warning to Daniel that their plan was falling apart. Lawyers showed the court that despite claiming her phone was dead, Jennifer used her mobile soon before and soon after the payphone call to Daniel.) With unrivalled chutzpah, Jennifer then asks her father for $1,200, claiming it is for college tuition.

  That day, Detective Courtice officially makes Jennifer a suspect in the investigation. It doesn’t take long before Jennifer’s relationship with her family grows too tenuous to bear. Although no one is comfortable with her staying in their home, she is, after all, blood, and she has nowhere else to go. “No one was particularly happy about it, but there was an obligation there,” one investigator says. “They are family, and until they know for sure …”

  It is Hann’s family who are the most suspicious. Jennifer’s Uncle Juinn first confronts her and then even threatens to call the police on her. He wants her to go and speak to the investigators, knowing police want Jennifer in for another interview, but she resists under cover of organizing her mother’s and grandfather’s funerals. Later, Juinn also advises the police that, at one point Jennifer told him that she managed to survive the home invasion because the men “liked her.”

  “My family, on my dad’s side, who [were] never really a part of my life, became a part of my life,” Jennifer says. “But then, suddenly, I felt that they started pulling away again.”

  Two days later, on November 15, Jennifer attends her mother’s funeral, something she later complains her father left her to organize all by herself. In Chinese culture, the older members of the family are buried first, according to Jennifer, so the funeral for Bich’s father was held days before. Jennifer then begins picking caskets, clothing, and special blankets for Bich’s Buddhist ceremony, which will follow. She is laid to rest four days later, according to Jennifer’s testimony.

  Jennifer Pan and her brother Felix leave their mother’s funeral. Their father, Hann, was not well enough to attend.

  Police and another attendee describe Jennifer’s behaviour at her mother’s funeral as “remarkable.” A Buddhist monk presides over the ceremony, which takes place in front of about one hundred mourners inside Scarborough’s Ogden Chapel. Jennifer stands at the front alongside her brother and beside her mother’s caske
t. Police later say they attended not only to observe Jennifer’s actions, but also to pay their respects, insisting they were deeply disturbed by what they saw. “She’s up there rubbing her eyes, then looking up at us, then rubbing her eyes again, but never crying,” one police officer says. “That funeral really got to me. Don’t be looking at us when you’re paying your respects to your mom who was just killed.” The police aren’t the only ones to report this sort of behaviour. Jennifer’s former long-time piano teacher, Ewa Krajewska, similarly states that while many in the chapel are awash in tears, Jennifer remains dry-eyed: “She wasn’t crying, her head was down, it was like she was crying, but with no tears.”

  Jennifer bemoans how she “had to make out on her own” after Felix returned to school to complete his exams. She also displays her tactlessness once again when she says how disappointed she is that, despite her father being cleared by doctors to go, he chooses not to attend his late wife’s funeral.

  A picture is snapped by a photographer from the Chinese Sing Tao Daily when Jennifer and her brother leave the chapel.

  On November 17, surgeons remove some of the bullet fragments from Hann’s face, seal them in a bag, and send them off for analysis to Canada’s Centre of Forensic Sciences in Toronto.

  Three days after burying her mother, on November 22, Jennifer receives a phone call from her Victim Services liaison informing her that she has to come in again to speak with the police. Jennifer resists, but she is overruled and advised that there is little option but to attend. “I had family over, I was grieving,” she later says. “There was so much going on. I wasn’t mentally prepared. I had just buried my mother and I [thought] they could just give me a day. She insisted it was [important] that I come in.”

  A widely held perception among many Canadian citizens is that police are obliged by law to tell the truth. Jennifer counts herself as one of those people. However, this is far from reality. In 2000, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that police are allowed to lie not only about evidence but tactics, as well. The decision in R v. Oickle sets out four factors that should be considered when judging whether a police confession is voluntary: whether there are threats or promises made by police; whether the oppression to gain a confession is “distasteful or inhumane”; whether the suspect is aware of what they’re saying and who they’re saying it to; and the level of trickery, whether it’s so egregious it “shocks the community.” Outside those tenets, police can pretty much say what they like, truth or fiction. In the Oickle case, although he passed a lie detector test, police told him he had failed in order to obtain a confession. They also neglected to mention that the results of a polygraph test are inadmissible in court. Police often use this interrogation method under the guidance of something called the Reid Technique, a common police confessionary tactic that involves interrogators flipping the founding principle of Canada’s justice system — “innocent until proven guilty” — on its head. It hinges on the interrogator implying guilt from the beginning of the interview and is often conducted as a monologue by the friendly, patient, and seemingly understanding interviewer. Eventually, the suspect is offered an “out,” with the interrogator offering psychological justification for the crime.

  The method, which has been banned in many countries, involves an implicit assumption of guilt without evidence that might go something like this: “Can we locate the body by you telling us where it is, or will you have to show us?” It’s this, detractors say, that can lead to false confessions, much like what occurs in the case of Steven Avery’s nephew Brendan Dassey in the true-crime documentary Making a Murderer, or a premature narrowing of the investigation, reinforcing assumptions of investigators. An investigator with the York Regional Police, speaking on condition of anonymity, says the Reid Technique is widely used in the service; however, it is rarely done in textbook fashion, since officers develop their own styles and methods. Some, he says, don’t like to lie, others prefer to use the practice in tandem with the fabled “good cop, bad cop” technique. He says, at the core of the method are “themes” explaining that everyone has a “weak spot” that must be exploited. The first step involves direct confrontation. The second step tries to shift the blame from the suspect onto others. Three discourages the denial of guilt, which if uttered, can make the process more difficult for the interrogator. Four involves turning a reason why the suspect didn’t commit the crime into a confession, and on it goes until number nine.

  7

  “What Happens to Me?”

  On November 22, 2010, a taxi is sent to pick up Jennifer (paid for by police) and drops her off at the police station around 2:00 p.m. Jennifer must know something has to give. On top of staying with a family that suspects her of killing her own mother, she also contends with intense police scrutiny coupled with media speculation that is becoming too acute to bear.

  When Jennifer walks in and takes her seat in the interrogation room, there appears to be previously unseen resignation in her behaviour. There are remnants of the damsel-in-distress persona she has used so effectively with Detective Slade; however, she now seems to be a more solemn and lonely figure. Her manic demeanour and constant fidgeting are still present to a degree, but as the interview wears on, they’re supplanted with more insular behaviour as she replaces her nervous tics with a complete shutdown — often descending into the fetal position and resting her face in her hands. In short, although Jennifer hasn’t entirely given up hope of a resolution, she now appears to grasp the gravity of the situation. In her pocket she carries two crisp hundred-dollar bills and sanitary pads, fighting not only the ensuing emotional roller coaster but menstrual cramps, it seems, as well.

  At this point, two weeks after the murder, Jennifer has ditched her oversized running shoes, arriving well dressed after perhaps gaining access to someone’s closet. Of course, she now appears to have money, so she might have purchased them. Her ill-fitting footwear has been replaced with black European-style runners, while her raggedy plaid winter jacket has been swapped for a stylish thigh-length black coat. Underneath, Jennifer sports black slacks and a black V-neck cardigan over a collared white shirt , which initially masks a vertically striped back-and-white t-shirt.

  This interview is going to be much different than her last one. She is no longer a victim in the eyes of the police; rather, she’s their lead suspect.

  Faced with a new interrogator, Detective Bill Goetz (pronounced Gates), Jennifer is about to be confronted by a dramatic shift in interview style. Detective Goetz is not a homicide investigator; he’s a seasoned interrogator and polygraph expert. The “truth-verification expert,” as he calls himself, will come across as far less paternal than Slade, who has taken over another murder case and is no longer available. There will be little comfort for Jennifer this time around. Goetz — or “Gator” as he’s known around the force — is cold and calculating from the get-go. He clearly means business and is in no mood for Jennifer’s manipulative tendencies. A burly and imposing figure with grey hair in a military-style crewcut, he strikes an unsympathetic figure, playing both good cop and bad cop with Jennifer, a role with which he seems entirely at ease. His interview will contain a series of outright lies as part of the Reid Technique. (A number of suspects and witnesses involved in the Pan case would later complain before judge and jury that the police were dishonest with them.)

  When Jennifer sits down to begin, Detective Goetz makes it clear he’s in no mood for her diversions. His questions are direct and delivered without sympathy. He initially asks her if she knows why they are here today.

  “To discuss stuff,” she says reluctantly.

  “Regarding what?” he asks bluntly.

  After a short pause in which she stares at the ground, she purses her lips and says, “About what happened at my home.” Then she looks up to see his expression, but quickly bows her head.

  “As a result of that home invasion your father was actually shot and your mother Bich-Ha was actual
ly killed,” Goetz says. “Is that correct?”

  With her eyes closed and head down, she nods.

  “You’ll have to speak up.”

  “Sorry … yes,” she replies softly, wiping her eyes. This time, no tissue is offered. When the audio equipment fails, forcing them into another room, Jennifer tells Goetz she doesn’t want to be left alone when he steps out. But instead of getting an officer to sit with her, he simply tells her to “hang on.”

  Once they’re settled in the new room, Goetz begins by reading Jennifer her rights, signalling her responses will now present her with a real and present danger of legal repercussions. “If you had any involvement in that home invasion, then you could be facing charges of murder and attempted murder,” he informs her. “Anything you do say to us regarding that home invasion is being recorded and could be used as evidence in court. You understood that?”

  Jennifer’s jet-black mane of hair, neatly braided, has but one strand loose that she repeatedly places behind her left ear before she answers “Yes.”

  As they continue, Jennifer’s responses are muffled by sobbing each time her mother is mentioned, but rather than console her, Goetz nonchalantly but sternly tells her to speak up.

  Goetz is not only an expert at detecting deception, he says, but is also well versed at coaxing information from those who otherwise try to deceive the police. In Jennifer’s case, he spends the next two hours gaining her trust. Once that stage is complete, he turns the tables, using the goodwill and familiarity he’s built with her to secure a confession.