A Daughter's Deadly Deception

by Jeremy Grimaldi

  Although she had spent the past four years of her life fostering such a reaction, Jennifer found the behaviour unfair. “I was resentful, furious,” she said. “I tried to be a better person, and I felt rejected, so I thought, Why bother?” Besides this, Jennifer was also suffering from feelings of in­­adequacy. “I believed I was a failure. I had so many lies and so much had happened because of my lies, I believed I was unworthy of anyone,” she told the court. “The neglect I was feeling, since no one needed me around or wanted me around, I didn’t want to live.” Between her inner struggles involving her deep-seated anger toward her father and her wallowing self-pity, it was her indignation that prevailed, eventually consuming her entire life.

  In China there is a myth that any child who commits matricide or patricide will be downed themselves by a strike of lightning by the filial deity Erlang Shen. The Chinese god has a third truth-seeing eye in the middle of his forehead. It’s this myth that gave rise to the Chinese saying that translates as “Being smitten by lightning for being unfilial and ungrateful.”

  In Christianity there is also a saying that corresponds with this time in Jennifer’s life: “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.” In the ensuing months, both Jennifer and Daniel both got up to some nefarious activities. With no school and no clingy girlfriend, Daniel had plenty of time to pursue other things between working hours. If he was ever to achieve his new dream of owning his own Boston Pizza branch, he needed more money, so how long could he continue to ignore the numerous contacts he had still looking for marijuana?

  During this time, he started reconnecting and making new links to those in the drug trade. He became closer friends with a man named Lenford Crawford. By that time, Daniel had ditched bowling and began playing paintball at two sites in Toronto, including Defcon Paintball, near Scarborough, and Sgt. Splatters, near Yorkdale, one of Toronto’s biggest malls. One employee remembers Daniel hanging around Defcon for hours, just “shooting the shit” with customers and employees alike. Casting his mind back, the employee even remembers Jennifer hanging out, too, but can’t quite remember Felix, who Daniel also brought along at one point.

  It was during this time that Daniel also met Jeffrey Fu. When Daniel and Jennifer did speak via text, she said he often told her he was out “doing runs,” which she took to mean he was delivering drugs. And, although she was disappointed at the development, she now had little control over the company he kept or his activities. Thoughts raced through Jennifer’s mind as she spent her days studying piano, cooking, cleaning the house, and in her words, “taking people to appointments.” That involved many in her extended family, including an uncle who had suffered a stroke and her ill grandfather, whose health was beginning to wane after he caught pneumonia at the age of 102. And while her father might have expected Jennifer to expunge Daniel from their lives, he clearly underestimated his daughter’s resolve.

  The reality was that, without Daniel, Jennifer was rudderless and sought somewhere to pour all the emotions besieging her heart. Fear of abandonment and insecurities surrounding her looks and her lingering wish to be wanted, loved, and cared for consumed her existence. It had been Daniel, along with her work, hobbies, and friends, that had kept these emotions at bay for so long. Jennifer replaced these pastimes with contacting people on her cellphone and a large amount of time spent on social media. One negative communication could ruin her entire day. But Jennifer wasn’t a helpless girl. She hated to feel vulnerable and knew that what was good for the goose was good for the gander. Jennifer soon set about assembling her own gaggle of male groupies. Although she remained faithful to Daniel during this time, always believing he was the right one for her, flirting was fair game. This approach won her plenty of suitors, at least two of whom later admitted they had hoped to sleep with Jennifer, each believing he could beat the other to it. Perhaps the most ironic part of these largely telephone-based relationships was that they became as poisonous, if not more so, as her relationship with Daniel.

  One of these men was Andrew Montemayor, a central figure in Jennifer’s story. The pair rekindled their friendship after communicating sparingly over the past few years. If Andrew was her “bad-boy” replacement for Daniel, another man, Edward Pacificador, was a sentimental replacement. Edward was a former colleague from East Side Mario’s and a man Jennifer said she began seeing for a few months. Although their time together was limited, the pair spent hours on the phone. Jennifer carried on a playful, flirty relationship with both men.

  An online commenter says Jennifer piqued his interest around this time. Although he claims to be close friends with Daniel, he maintains he never knew the pair ever dated. “She was somewhat quiet in person, but smiled a lot,” he writes about what he knew of her in high school. “Kept to herself, really. I always thought she was very bright with a lot of promise in her studies. Anyways, it wasn’t till after high school, when I found her on MSN [Messenger], I noticed she opened up a lot. We actually used to flirt back and forth with one another. How she wanted to … well … you know. I’m glad I never followed through. She was manipulative and apparently lied about everything.”

  Try as she might, Jennifer couldn’t bring herself to let Daniel go. He explained how Jennifer played on his emotions, ensuring the pair stayed in contact. “She would say ‘What are you doing? Are you with Katrina?’ that kind of stuff. Sometimes she’d cry and say ‘Don’t you love me anymore? Don’t I mean anything to you?’ After you hear that for a while and you’re such close friends, you feel bad. You feel guilty. But I know I can’t be with her.”

  Whether by coincidence or calculation, soon after Daniel ended their relationship, his phone was besieged with crank calls, threats, and cryptic text messages. “After we sort of stopped talking for about a month, then this problem started,” Daniel said, referring to the phantom communications. Only Jennifer can be sure which parts were her doing and which parts were the actions of some mysterious caller. Initially, Daniel was just annoyed by the countless phone calls he was receiving both at home and on his cell. “I started to get more and more [hang-up calls] near the end of 2009. They never said anything,” he said of the calls marked “private.” “One night I would get a hundred; one night I would get seventy; other nights I would get just ten. If I answered, they would call back in an hour, and if I answered again, they would just hang up and call back. But if I rejected the call, they would just keep calling and calling and calling … at all hours of the night.” Daniel said he did wonder if Jennifer was behind the calls and texts, asking multiple times to see proof, but in the end he believed her denials. “There’s a lot of questions,” he said about whether Jennifer was involved. “Because of how long I’ve known her and what we’ve been through together, I believe her. But in terms of seeing any distinctive hard proof of it, I haven’t. She was with me during trouble, and she helped me out and stuff like that. I just trusted her that it was someone who was out to get her.”

  The disruption to his life didn’t end there. The texts eventually progressed into messages advising him to stop talking to Jennifer altogether and focus on Katrina. At first he received messages like: You don’t need her, You’re better off without her, and Don’t be with her. Be with Katrina. Before long, the texts became more personal in nature: We’re watching you. The triangle became complete when Jennifer and Katrina started receiving messages, as well. Katrina says she received threatening messages like: Be careful where you go. Daniel was genuinely worried, but Katrina says she never considered them anything more than a nuisance. Jennifer said the contact to her phone was anonymous, but she claimed she also received emails from a hotmail address. She alleged the messages included: Chrissy and Danny one forever. Eventually, they became more stinging, involving petty insults: Why would he want to be with you. You’re stupid, You look like a man, and You’re ugly. Jennifer told Daniel that every time a car pulled up in front of her house, she received texts not only implying that Daniel was visiting her but that s
omeone was watching her home. At one point she said she got a letter saying she was a “dead person walking” and then she claimed someone even called her: “We’re watching you” the voice said before bursting into demonic laughter. “This is some pretty messed-up stuff,” Daniel said, explaining how he grew concerned for Jennifer’s safety. The messages to Daniel also began referencing sensitive parts of Daniel and Katrina’s life. “[Katrina] has a kid, and the distinctive text message was Do you like playing house?” Daniel said.

  Whether Jennifer was behind the scheme or not, it did succeed in reuniting the pair, with Daniel ensuring he was in constant contact with both women. Jennifer was milking it for all it was worth with messages stored on her phone, including I’m scared that there r still ppl out there to get me, Becuz i am feelin attack and unsafe.

  Concerned for Jennifer’s safety, Daniel started calling to check up on her himself. In return, hoping to promote communication between the pair but under the pretense of having him avoid the crank calls, Jennifer purchased a new phone with a new number for Daniel. The anonymous texts to his phone stopped for a while. Around this time Jennifer said the pair’s relationship grew “stronger” as their communication increased. “Morning calls, afternoon calls, calls during the day, just little messages,” she said. “Compared to most people, I use my phone a lot, so for me it was morning wake-up calls, okay, making sure you got to work, making sure whatever I was doing in the day that I was going to be okay. How I was feeling, and then what he was doing after work, and then also what time I was heading to bed.”

  The added communication with Daniel might have boosted her spirits, but Jennifer remained isolated and her behaviour became even more erratic. The suicide attempt and her cutting weren’t the only worrying signs that Jennifer’s grip on reality might have been loosening. Although the twenty-four-year-old always struggled with some form of insomnia, her sleeping patterns became even more varied during this period. The thoughts that so often coursed through her mind became louder as her stress level continued to increase. With very few responsibilities and very little reason to get up, Jennifer rarely needed to function at a level where sleep became necessary. If she felt tired, she could simply doze off. It tended to be at night that Jennifer got the chance to socialize with her friends, and most importantly Daniel, who had been working all day.

  Another of the men Jennifer was contacting around this time was Otto Li. His relationship with Jennifer is shrouded in mystery. He was a hockey player at the time and appeared to have a crush on her, evident by the sheer number of times he contacted her with little reciprocation. Jennifer seemed to regularly give him short shrift, most often replying with one-word answers. This might have been the result of the way he tried to befriend her on Facebook. “He kept asking me questions … I don’t know if it’s just his personality, but he asked me questions that I thought were too abrupt to ask someone you just met,” she said, explaining that, although he said he knew her from high school, she didn’t remember him. “He asked if I had a boyfriend, and if I was looking for a boyfriend, and if I engaged in sex and things like that.” Their relationship appears to have hinged largely on his desire to know what Jennifer was doing at various moments of the day. He endlessly texted her the simple request for information: What are you doing? Where are you? If nothing else, the messages show how sparse her sleeping patterns had become. At almost three o’clock one morning he texted her: Are you asleep?

  I hardly sleep, she responded. I was never one to sleep much. Since I was young I had a lot to do and always and so much on my mind so sleep was never all that to me. When asked how this affected her immune system and whether she regularly got sick, she told him she had been sick. But I don’t milk it like most girls. I hate to feel vulnerable.

  What do you do when you don’t sleep? he asked.

  Stare into the darkness, Jennifer wrote. My life is so full of shot [shit] that most nights I am in thought.

  Another night he texted again at three o’clock to see if she was awake. Jennifer responded Of course.

  By the following morning, she still hadn’t slept. What are you doing? he asked in another text.

  Laying in bed, came Jennifer’s reply.

  Jennifer also spoke about the tendency to inflate seemingly small issues so that they eventually consumed her thought processes, causing all her inner turmoil to bubble to the surface. When Daniel didn’t respond to her texts or calls, she stewed about it, convincing herself he was with Katrina and ignoring her, at one point even suggesting he and Katrina were discussing marriage. This sort of behaviour is constantly discernible in her texts to Daniel. If Daniel didn’t answer in time, her mind might go into overdrive. “I believe I overreacted,” she said. “I thought way out of the bubble. I took things way too much to heart. Everything. I thought, I over-thought, and over-exaggerated in my head.”

  It was under this sort of emotional stress that Jennifer once again, however feeble her effort, tried to take her own life. This time she said she ditched the pills and picked up a knife. “I wasn’t happy with any parts of my life,” she said. “I tried to cut vertically one time. I was able to feel physical pain, so I didn’t have to think about other parts of my life. But I like serrated knives over sharp knives because you can feel the pain more. It wasn’t too shallow, but the more I went down, the more relief I felt, the more reality I felt, the more I knew how ridiculous committing suicide was.” She said she never attempted suicide again after a friend she told her dilemma to said, “Don’t be stupid.” While this revelation might have dawned on her, the poisonous emotions she was feeling still consumed her and an outlet for those emotions remained elusive.

  27

  “Oh, That’s the Bad Guy”

  It’s easy to question the motives behind Jennifer’s relationship with Andrew Montemayor and vice versa. After all, Andrew is the man Jennifer credits with giving her the initial idea to murder her own father. And, although he denies any such thing, Jennifer went one step further, saying he not only suggested a hit on Hann but followed it up by conspiring with her and another man to complete the task. The pair initially met when they were just kids in the same class at St. Barnabas Elementary School in Scarborough.

  Andrew and Jennifer had a special bond if for nothing else but the fact that Andrew’s father worked alongside Hann and Bich at Magna. According to Jennifer, Andrew was living in Mississauga in 2010 with another man. She said that after high school he’d struggled but had seemed to come out on the other side, landing a job at HomeSense in his mid-twenties. However, she also said he’d been bragging to her that he and his roommate had been busying themselves with armed robberies. More specifically, Jennifer said that Andrew had told her he’d been terrorizing people with a blade in parks, relieving them of their wallets and cash along with his roommate, Ricardo Duncan, a.k.a. “Ric.” It was during this time that Jennifer said Andrew had a crush on her. And he admitted that both he and Ric had a bet going to see who could sleep with Jennifer first. It’s clear that Jennifer didn’t shun Andrew’s attentions. Instead, she brought him closer, despite harbouring no interest in being with him intimately. When I contacted Andrew to discuss the relationship, he refused to speak to me. But in court he denied ever telling Jennifer about any armed robberies, as did Ric. None of these allegations were proven in court; neither man was ever convicted of any involvement in this crime or any others, and both acted as witnesses for the Crown.

  Jennifer claimed she initially reached out to Andrew to seek advice, knowing he’d had a confrontational relationship with his own father at some point. The pair eventually found each other again on social media, starting with Facebook, then MSN Messenger, and then on a now-defunct social media app called Friendster. Jennifer said Andrew had lived through a rocky spell with his father and ended up dropping out of high school. However, Andrew had carved out his own path and ended up landing on his feet, working as an apprentice at an insurance company. As their te
lephone conversations continued, he shared with her a few options to relieve herself of the pressures she faced. Jennifer said the first idea he proposed involved running away, which she told him wasn’t possible, claiming she wanted to remain with her family. His second was even more extreme, she said. That idea involved having her “kidnapped” — another plan she rejected because she said she didn’t want to “leave her mom.” However, his third scheme set her mind racing, she said.

  It was this suggestion that Jennifer said caused her to begin contemplating something she’d never thought of before: that it was her father who was the problem all along. She said Andrew recounted how he had once tried to kill his father during a physical altercation. “When I confided in him, he understood my feelings…. He said, ‘You know what? One time I even tried to kill my dad,’ ” she told the court. “It kind of felt like something clicked between what he was saying and what I was feeling, because my dad was the one making me feel isolated. My mom made me feel home and warm. As bad as it sounds, when he said he wanted to kill his dad at that point, that triggered something inside that was like maybe, maybe life would be better without him. We spoke about it sometimes. Reality would hit me, and I’m like, that’s ridiculous.” However, over time and further conversations, Jennifer said her feelings began to shift, slowly coming around to the idea that killing her father could be the solution to all of her worries.