Jennifer later remarked how taking risks without properly assessing the repercussions before engaging in serious regret became a recurring theme in her life: “I tend to react on the spot and go back and think about what I have done. I have memories from the past that haunt me, and, like the lies, they all tumble in my head.”
24
A Double Life
The metaphor is as common as it is poignant, in this case. A singular falsehood, given the right circumstances, can act like a snowball, rolling down a snow-capped mountain gathering ever more speed and heft as it descends. In Jennifer’s case, it’s helpful to picture her — a solitary figure standing alone at the base — sustaining it, too comfortable to slow its progression and too petrified to bring it to a shuddering halt. The hope was always the same: that by some magical happenstance, she would be spared its carnage.
The initial fabrication about university was intended to avoid the wrath and shame of the inaction and lies she had been fostering since grade nine. That original lie was contained, involving only her immediate and extended family. However, as the deception grew in size and scope, so did the consequences. The eventual impact radiated so furiously that its reckoning was endured by not only Jennifer and her immediate family but by her extended family and friends and complete strangers, eventually rippling out from there to damage countless lives, some of which hadn’t yet begun. Like so many other details in her life, Jennifer thought she had it all worked out. Her mind worked feverishly, often into the wee hours of the morning, to come up with strategies and contingency plans as dilemmas arose.
In hindsight, it’s clear that she failed to properly devise her exit strategy from underneath the weight of her dishonesty. It would seem that Jennifer’s dedication to her original plan blinded her, prompting her to avoid decisive action or consider easier routes. She continued to put reward ahead of the consequences of confessing. Instead of realizing her failures and developing a new plan of attack, she stubbornly stuck to her guns. As time wore on, and her plan began to crumble, Jennifer tried to escape one lie with ever more, formulating a pyramid of dishonesty that leads one to question whether she properly grasped the consequences of her actions. Looking back, perhaps the most shocking detail of her twisted tale is how little Jennifer appears to have considered that her plan could, and most likely would, eventually come to a destructive end. It might have been due to Jennifer’s youth and the slow progression of her lies that she failed to notice how big it was becoming and that the impetus had now shifted. Others suggested, an assertion she agreed with, that she had simply built a fantasy world, and her “plan” was actually a delusion. Still others say she didn’t care what happened as long as she could remain with Daniel.
When Jennifer started telling her lies, she rationalized that she could eventually pick up her grades, avoiding detection. The problem with her new lie about university was that there was no going back to her old life without enduring the punishment she so desperately wanted to dodge. Rather than face her lies, she told more so that her scheme became more tenuous. But she felt that, as long as her family continued to force her hand, she had little choice, and she became emboldened, increasingly devoted to her deviance.
One can only assume that part of this misplaced confidence in her falsehoods can be chalked up to her successes in deceit up to that point. It’s often this type of confidence in one’s ability to fool others that can cause or reveal narcissistic tendencies. As time passed, Jennifer indulged in more selfish behaviour, eventually thinking only of herself — to the point where even Daniel became a victim of her fabrications. The feeling that she was so hard done by gave way to self-pity, even though the consequences were the direct result of her own poor judgment and could have been foreseen by any right-thinking person her age.
After reading her story, hundreds of people spoke out about their own run-ins with strict parents, many sharing their own stories of deceit. In almost all of those stories, though, the conflict inevitably reached a head and the ramifications were felt in varying degrees. Jennifer, on the other hand, never had the courage to face her parents. Instead, she repeatedly put off owning up. In short, she appears to have approached deceit with the same will and dedication that so many of her teachers spoke about throughout her youth. The reality is that she never properly faced the consequences of her actions until she was found guilty by a jury of her peers for planning the horrible murder of her parents. Despite this, however, to this day Jennifer maintains her innocence.
When questioned about how her fictitious university career might play out, Jennifer later admitted she only thought in the short term. “I never thought that far [ahead],” she said. But reality dictates, especially given her parents’ dedication to her schooling and career, that her plan was fanciful at best. “I thought once I finished my diploma that would be it, and I could go and live my life as an adult,” she said. “I wanted to show my parents I could make it teaching piano, get my own place.” But she also admitted she never imagined that snowball would grow so immense. “Honestly, I didn’t think it would get as far as it [did].”
As her classmates set off for university, and her cousin, Michelle, headed to the University of Waterloo for science and accounting, Jennifer remained at home. Emboldened by her parents’ trust and how easy it was to fool them, she decided to trick everyone else in her life, as well — except Daniel, of course. “I believed … that if anyone knew, one person could tell another person … and somehow this lie would come out and unravel. So, as terrible as it was, I lied to everyone.”
In the lead-up to the school year, Hann and Bich were keen to show just how proud they were of Jennifer’s achievements, showering her with money so she could buy anything she needed — school supplies, new clothes, and a new top-of-the-line $2,700 laptop. They also advanced her cash so she could focus on her studies without worrying about finances. Bich even co-signed a credit card for her. How many thousands passed between the two remains unknown. On that first day of school, Jennifer woke up early and dressed for success. Then, holding her new book bag filled with notebooks and highlighters, her head held high, she left the house. And so it began. Her destination, though, was not the frosh week festivities she had told her parents about, but rather a Toronto library. Once at a desk, she filled reams of pages and Word documents with notes she garnered from pharmacology websites. With her signature attention to detail, Jennifer also highlighted certain passages — with numerous school supplies she purchased from Staples — so that if her parents ever cared to look, the notes would appear genuine. “In the beginning, in my first year, it wasn’t too hard because my family trusted me and they believed I was a good person, that I was a good student,” she said. “I started looking around at what my friends were doing … getting letters in the mail, saying that this was going to be frosh week, you will need to buy certain textbooks. [I bought] used scientific books, biology books, physics books. I pretended I attended, but came back home every night.”
Her brother recalls her behaviour around this time quite clearly: “She always went to school, she always had a backpack with her; she had a laptop, she had books and everything.” On certain days, Jennifer took the bus; on others she’d get a ride from her mother. And for the first little while she consistently spent her days at the library before growing more comfortable and eventually stealing away to visit Daniel at York University. She later said that it was only around him that she could relax during this frantic time. To fool those around her, Jennifer even created small anecdotes to share with her parents to give further weight to her lies, all the while engaging in hours of futile note-taking that consumed her daytime hours. “I started to make all these little lies to make it seem like I was going to university,” she said. “It was a huge lie, and unfortunately a huge lie requires a huge amount of work ….”
One could argue that her lies took so much dedication that the effort far outweighed the effort it likely would have taken to simp
ly right the ship — get the calculus credit and begin attending university. On the other hand, one might conclude that Jennifer simply hated school and didn’t want to attend. This argument is strengthened by the date of the home invasion — almost exactly two months before her father was planning to force her hand, ensuring her attendance at the college laboratory tech course.
Regardless of her motives, the focus required to weave her web of lies remains one of the most fascinating aspects of the story. Imagine going to bed each night and waking up each morning always thinking of the same thing: how to trick people into believing you were doing something you weren’t. Each day having to come up with bogus life details about who you met; what you did in class; what instructor you had that day; when your next test, assignment, or exam was; how many people were in each lecture; and what your professors’ names were. It sounds easy — unless, of course, you had to remember it all. After all, these weren’t details she could simply dismiss once they were spoken. Jennifer had to commit them to memory and build on them. And at the drop of a hat she could be forced to recall one specific detail in order to properly recount her supposed activities. To do this, she literally had to develop an alternate universe for herself. “In my mind I started making it seem like I was accepted [into university],” she said. “I started to make all these little lies to make it seem like I was going to university. From there, they trusted me; they believed I had a graduation, that I graduated. They had my [high school] graduation photos. My mom kept them in her wallet for a bunch of years. So they trusted that I did graduate and I was going to Ryerson. They had that belief in me then.”
Jennifer further admitted how the daily grind of lies and deception she was engaging in eventually caused her sense of reality and imagination to warp to such a degree that she had a difficult time distinguishing between the two. “I had this fantasy world,” she said, admitting that she had become so lost in her lies that, by the end, she had all but convinced herself she was actually attending university. Jennifer became so adept at creating the lies, and so in-depth in maintaining and then resurrecting them, that she became a fantasist.
Her acceptance of this theory came out in court during an interesting back-and-forth with Daniel’s lawyer, Laurence Cohen, during which she admitted to having a “dual personality” and stating that she switched back and forth.
LC: My sense of your testimony is you had to create a separate life for yourself where you could be happy away from the pressure of your family, away from all these people that abandoned you, and you created like a separate life for yourself.
JP: I had a fantasy world, yes.
LC: You’re so good at living this fantasy life that you actually take steps to convince people that (you are) living this life.
JP: Yes, I convinced myself.
LC: You’re using this deception to protect yourself. You go to the library like you’re going to university. People who would lie probably wouldn’t have gone to the lengths you went to…. You went to the university, you went to the library, you went to Staples and bought supplies, right? You were living the life of a university student. You were so detailed in it you were almost able to convince yourself you were going to university.
JP: Correct. That’s what I said.
When asked if she was a complicated person, she agreed wholeheartedly, noting that she was a Gemini.
One detail that allowed Jennifer to escape detection was her knowledge that her father didn’t concern himself with the family bills. It was her mother who was the family banker, and it was from Bich that Jennifer wrenched control of her taxes.
But, over time, Jennifer started to feel the weight of her own lies. The resulting stress began to impact her behaviour. “It took probably most of my day trying to make up pretend notes and trying to travel from uptown to downtown,” she said. “I sat at cafés or sat at the library and thought, Where is this going? I was exhausted. But there were times when I got time to myself … [when] I was somewhat relaxed.”
Work had the ability to relax Jennifer as well as stress her out. Her job at East Side Mario’s in Markville Mall was a sanctuary of sorts, a place where she could be around people her own age, experience independence, manage her environment and actions as she saw fit, and devote her time to a pursuit at which she really excelled. Jennifer was one of the best servers at the restaurant. It was difficult to find quality staff and, as a result, there was a very high turnover rate. Jennifer was a manager’s dream, being able to serve seven tables at a time, always professionally, managing her time so the food came out promptly, and she made few mistakes. She took plenty of shifts and often worked five nights a week. “She was a strong server,” says one former colleague. “She could take more tables, a bigger section, make bigger tips … she eventually became a supervisor and certified trainer.”
However, two other members of staff agree that when Jennifer was “in the weeds” — server lingo for having too many tables/being overworked — she grew very bothered. One former server in particular says he recalls the intense focus with which Jennifer set about her job. He says he noticed that her stress levels seemed to mount over time. Others agree. “She was very focused when it was time to work, but when she was in the weeds she would stress,” one of her former co-workers says. “She’d be running around trying to do everything.”
Jennifer was well liked by her colleagues, who say she was “extremely normal,” nice, shy, and quiet. After work, Jennifer and her colleagues either sat on the patio and caught up on gossip and news, or headed to the bar for a few drinks. Sometimes they went bowling and, on occasion, Jennifer drank alcohol during these outings, but never more than one or two. One disturbing detail garnered from Melissa, one of her restaurant co-workers, provides a small window into Jennifer’s behaviour and the level she went to perpetuate her lies. Despite only tenuous ties to her parents (through Felix, who by that point had started working in the restaurant’s kitchen), Jennifer went to great lengths to convince her colleagues that she was actually attending university. This, among other details, raises questions about the blurred line between Jennifer keeping up a lie to fool her parents and creating an alternate reality, a space where she felt comfortable and could project to the world what she wished her life was like. “Jennifer was a year ahead of me, and I remember sitting on the [restaurant] patio talking to her about graduation,” Melissa says. “I even remember her, between shifts, studying with all the staff who were taking exams. We were all there. She had her notes out and books and was cramming with the rest of us.” But her lies didn’t end there. “She talked to me about being stressed, about having to maintain a certain grade-point average to keep her entrance scholarship,” Melissa adds. “There was no reason not to believe her. She was your typical Joe. She was a typical Asian girl. She did figure skating and played piano like many of my friends in Scarborough. Music is always a big part of their lives. They are very obedient to their parents.”
Melissa says that she distinctly remembers Jennifer being close to her mother, recalling when Bich purchased a pair of Lulu Lemon yoga pants for her, possibly the same ones she was wearing that fateful night. Despite these admissions, Melissa is clearly uncomfortable speaking about the kind of person Jennifer was, saying she still feels betrayed by her lies, many of which she remembers with great clarity and sometimes thinks about all these years later. “The girl I worked with doesn’t exist. The person I knew doesn’t exist,” she insists, her voice betraying the anger she still has concerning Jennifer’s dishonesty.
The stress that Jennifer was experiencing began to take its toll on her, and Bich — the person who knew her daughter’s emotional pattern better than anyone — started to notice. During one particular morning drive to Ryerson, Bich questioned her behaviour. Jennifer explained that it was the long commutes at the heart of her worry. Taking advantage of her mother’s concern, Jennifer proposed a solution: she suggested that going to live with Topaz at her fri
end’s small Toronto apartment between Monday and Wednesday would help avoid so much travel time. Bich, in turn, brought the idea to Hann and convinced him that it was in the best interest of their daughter. The leniency shown by her parents gave Jennifer a break from her never-ending worry for at least part of the week, but simultaneously added a further, much more perilous dimension to her lies. Instead of going to live with Topaz, who was herself under the false belief that Jennifer was attending Ryerson, the pair worked out a deal: if Hann or Bich called the apartment, Topaz was to tell them that Jennifer was in the bathroom and execute a three-way phone call, pretending to pass the phone to Jennifer when she exited. A reluctant Topaz, who had a fiancé by this point, might have been the perennial good girl; however, well aware of the circumstances Jennifer was living under, she obliged.
The new arrangements quickly became permanent, allowing Jennifer to live with the man she loved. At the beginning of each week, she ventured off to live with Daniel in his family’s new home in the easterly suburb of Ajax (the Wongs had also left Scarborough after a break-in at their home).
“It was pretty relaxing,” she said about the situation. “I got to see him when I wanted to, and I got to spend more time with his family. So between me and Daniel, things were okay.” Initially, Jennifer slept in the large home’s spare room. One thing Jennifer was insistent on was not betraying his parents’ trust and sneaking into Daniel’s bed at night. Daniel’s parents, especially Evelyn, fell in love with Jennifer. And over time they repaid this trust by allowing Jennifer to stay with Daniel in his room.
A Daughter's Deadly Deception Page 25