A Daughter's Deadly Deception

by Jeremy Grimaldi

  Did he really want to be with Jennifer in the end? We may never know. One lawyer involved in the trial has a theory, implying these feelings are born in the male ego. In his decades working murder and armed robbery cases, he’s seen similar scenarios play themselves out almost exclusively with men time and time again. “Things like this have a snowball effect,” he says. “The idea is this: the conversation [about a crime] happens … then someone is introduced to the original pair … the expectations go up. That person then goes and talks to another person…. At some point a hardened criminal is approached. When serious boys come to play, it reaches a new level and at that point they each have a role to play. [When the time comes], they’ve assumed these roles and they are roles they have to play. The reality is that none have the guts to say, I want out of this.’ They didn’t want to look foolish having gone so far. Daniel was certainly compelled by his self-image and reputation.”

  Perhaps most grievous of all from an outsider’s perspective was Jennifer’s behaviour with co-conspirator Daniel in the lead-up to the murder. They engaged in nervous yet excited baby-talk conversations via text right up until her mother was executed. Their communications continued in the days following the murder and until Jennifer finally stopped writing Daniel love letters from her prison cell. By August 2010, Jennifer started using two separate cellphones. While she continued to call and text from her older Rogers Wireless flip phone, Daniel had also given her another phone to use, this one an iPhone 3 registered with Bell Mobility, which he paid for. “Jen had two phones,” he said. “After the [rape], I gave her the phone. I said, ‘I need to contact you all the time so that I know that you’re okay,’ and ‘If your parents are going to keep taking your phone away from you, then at least try to hold on to this one so I can contact you.’ ”

  In court, it was suggested this was her “secret murder phone,” used for more treacherous purposes, including planning the hits. And the data bears this out somewhat. Between August 3 and November 8, the Bell phone accounts for three thousand calls and texts, 74 percent of all communication. Jennifer never used the Bell phone to call her friends, Adrian Tymkewycz and Edward Pacificador but did use it to call Andrew Montemayor on occasion, Homeboy, and Daniel. And this was the phone David Mylvaganam’s phone called a number of times prior to the murder.

  Jennifer began plotting her parents’ deaths in June while her relationship with Daniel was on the rocks. Initially, she proposed it to Ric, always using her Rogers phone to contact him. But after that plan disintegrated in July, she bided her time. As Jennifer and Daniel’s relationship blossomed anew, she presented a tweaked plan to him. On August 3, Daniel gave Jennifer the iPhone. She was using this phone when the pair shared a marathon phone conversation on August 16. It was during this call that she first presented her plot to Daniel. It was simple and sophisticated, and if it worked, ingenious: hired hit men would break into her home, tie her up, and go on a rampage through the house.

  During the invasion, they would do their best to make it look like a robbery, flipping beds, rifling through drawers, and demanding cash with guns pointed at both Jennifer and the homeowners. In the ensuing minutes, after finding little or no money, other than Jennifer’s, the men would kill her parents under the pretext that they’d grown infuriated with their lack of loot. It would all happen very quickly, and the armed men could be in and out of the house in less than thirty minutes. There would be only one person remaining, the only witness — a poor defenceless girl named Jennifer. Jennifer would then use her penchant for dramatics to place a 911 call from her Rogers phone, which would be conveniently placed in the waistband of her yoga pants. During this call, she’d remain so frightened and helpless that she’d have to be untied by police themselves. When investigators arrived on the scene, they would have no one to interview except Jennifer. As for any remaining evidence, gloves and hats would ensure there would be no DNA left behind, the clothes and weapons would be properly disposed of, blankets would be used to avoid blood splatter, and the SIM card from the Bell phone, which contained evidence of the plan, would disappear before police could get their hands on it.

  The plot would leave Jennifer alive and her parents brutally gunned down. Clearly, this was the weakest part of the scheme for three reasons, which Jennifer clung to until November 22. One, she co-operated by giving the thieves $2,000, money she’d been saving for a new phone. Two, her parents didn’t co-operate by “lying” about the money available. Three, the murderers ran out of time and were suddenly forced to flee, leaving Jennifer tied up one floor above and alive.

  Sure, there were flaws in the plan, but Jennifer believed these were calculated risks, considering the lack of witnesses and cellphone evidence. Anyone who’s ever escaped a murder rap has always had a partially deficient defence, but as we all know, finding the suspects is the easy part, proving it is not. Even if investigators had suspicions, there would be no one except Jennifer present to call into question her version of events. No contradictory information would be available if everyone followed the plan. Police might have their doubts and uncover inconsistencies, but they would never risk accusing the victim of trickery and deception on this scale without proof, especially when that victim had just lost both her parents in a double homicide.

  As with so many plans throughout history, Jennifer’s plot looked bulletproof on paper. Any investigation without the weapon, DNA evidence, or witnesses is severely hampered. Theories, motives, and suspects are one thing, but Canada’s judicial framework is based on proof. Without witnesses, a case relies on forensic evidence such as footprints, hair follicles, a murder weapon, cellphone records, wiretaps, or ideally a confession. In Jennifer’s plan, police would have none of these. Of course, there were countless mistakes. However, had those responsible been just a bit more careful, it remains an open question whether the police would have seen the men eventually convicted and had enough evidence to charge Jennifer, or whether the Crown would have had enough ammunition to convict. All investigators say they would have gotten Jennifer regardless, but that’s certainly up for debate. If two or three details had turned out differently — if Hann had died, it died, the iPhone didn’t store messages, and to a lesser degree if Telus didn’t store text messages — the case would have been much harder to crack. At least one lawyer says it would have been very difficult to prove the case had “everything gone according to plan,” especially considering Jennifer’s Samsung phone had little or no evidentiary value other than perhaps the communication with Andrew.

  Detailed phone records show that one month after her last phone conversation with Ric, Jennifer placed what would become a fateful call. On August 16, Jennifer used the iPhone to call Daniel at 1:21 a.m. The two had a five-hour talk. But it wasn’t the length of the conversation that was the most telling detail; rather, it was what occurred during the ensuing forty-eight hours. After this call, Daniel’s cellphone communication with Jennifer was muted. But Jennifer’s frenzy didn’t stop. In the hours following that conversation, Jennifer called and texted Daniel forty times from her Rogers phone, family landline, and her Bell phone. But the attempted communication didn’t cease there. The following day, August 17, she called and texted Daniel a further one hundred times between 1:00 a.m. and 11:30 p.m., again using all three phones. On August 18, she sent four texts and called fifteen times, but all her calls went to voice mail. Then, between 5:53 a.m. and 8:00 a.m. she sent five texts and called another seventeen times, all of which went to voice mail. In the next thirty-five minutes, she called him twelve more times before Daniel finally answered her call at 8:47 a.m. In the follow-up to this call, Daniel eventually capitulated and sent her the bit of information she was seeking — the phone number of a friend. Jennifer didn’t call Daniel back after this until the following day. Instead she began texting a new man, Lenford Crawford, a.k.a. Homeboy. He returned her call at 11:09 a.m., and the pair shared a four-and-a-half-minute conversation.

  There are only two o
utside sources who have described Jennifer’s odd behaviour during this time, namely, the two people she was in constant contact with — her piano teachers, Ewa Krajewska and Fernando Baldassini. The latter says he saw her in the spring of 2010 in the lead-up to a counterpoint exam the pair were working toward in May. “She was already going through a lot,” Fernando says. “When she came in, she didn’t feel all that well. She wasn’t completing her work, and I confronted her. I gave her hell. Jennifer broke down. She said her father didn’t approve of her boyfriend — that he was a cook and her dad didn’t approve.

  Ewa saw her even closer to the murder. “I saw her in September,” she says. “She returned all my textbooks to me and told me she had passed [her piano teacher accreditation exam]. I noticed her face was different. I taught her a very long time and I never saw her like that. It was like she was hiding something, or very sick.”

  There is no evidence that Jennifer passed her exam. A former co-worker, Melissa, says she saw Jennifer a week before her mother was murdered but didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary, and that the pair had agreed to meet for lunch in the near future.

  Unlike her first foiled plot, Daniel assured Jennifer that if anyone was capable of bringing in the players to execute such a brutal act, it would be Homeboy. Jennifer would be responsible for initiating contact over the next ten days, which she did. The two texted back and forth before having relatively brief conversations that usually lasted only a few minutes.

  The sum of money agreed upon remains a bone of contention. While there is no direct knowledge of how much was paid by Jennifer to those involved, there are three clues that hint at the deal that was negotiated. In her version of events, Jennifer admitted that Homeboy said it would cost $20,000 for a murder, but for her he’d do it for $10,000 to $15,000. Daniel told police that someone could be killed for $10,000 on the street. These weren’t the only instances in which the sum of $10,000 was thrown around. Although this might not seem like much to split between the five men, including a number of others on the periphery, investigators said it is, in fact, a lot of cash to certain segments of the population. One investigator in Toronto, speaking on condition of anonymity, says murders in Toronto can be carried out for much less — as little as $500. Furthermore, there have been suggestions by seasoned investigators that those involved would have hoped to swindle further funds from a naive Jennifer after the murder. A number of police officers and lawyers say the men could have easily used their knowledge of the crime or threats of violence to gain access to Jennifer’s newfound insurance riches.

  One vital part of Jennifer’s plan revolved around her connections to the murderers, or better yet, the lack thereof. This strategy is often employed in Hollywood plotlines. Reminiscent of the movie Reservoir Dogs, in which six complete strangers use aliases such as Mr. Blonde, Mr. Pink, and Mr. Brown, the Markham plot was dependent on the fact that Jennifer had no direct links to the intruders. This approach would ensure silence through ignorance. It was simple, really: if she didn’t know her co-conspirators, she couldn’t rat them out or implicate them in other ways. Police can’t pressure a suspect to give up names or identities if they’re unknown, and if or when police make connections, it’s harder to prove their existence.

  As far as her four co-accused go, Jennifer only plotted directly with one man she actually knew: Daniel. She came to know his associate, Lenford, only by his nickname. They spoke over the phone and texted only a handful of times. Jennifer knew the name Homeboy, his telephone number, and the sound of his voice, that was all. As for the other men, all of whom Lenford independently recruited and coordinated, Jennifer would have ideally never met or spoken to or contacted them, with the exception of the few minutes they spent in her home committing the act. If all the communication between the plotters was destroyed, police would have few options other than what one might say or do in the aftermath. Although Daniel knew both Jennifer and Lenford, both men benefited from indisputable alibis on the night of the murder. Furthermore, all communication between the three was supposed to be destroyed the night of the murder. If police were to check Jennifer’s Rogers cell, they’d only find “clean communication.” The men who broke into the Pan home wouldn’t have alibis, of course, but by virtue of their anonymity, they wouldn’t need them.

  It all comes down to degrees of separation. If everything went according to plan, police could prove that Jennifer knew Daniel and maybe that Daniel knew Lenford, but considering both men had concrete alibis on the night of the murder, police would have a difficult time getting warrants for much beyond that. Of course, there were countless mistakes made. Lenford was using a phone registered to himself, which police easily tracked from Jennifer’s cellphone records. These they extracted from her iPhone, a device that stores messages to the SIM and the phone itself, which was discovered out in the open in her room. David Mylvaganam’s phone was used to contact Daniel and Jennifer in the lead-up to the murder, likely by Eric Carty. Daniel had sold drugs with Eric in the past and they had shared texts, later recovered, about those transactions. Jennifer didn’t manage to destroy her iPhone records or even to delete sensitive messages from her phone. Daniel admitted to police that Jennifer had asked him to murder her parents. Furthermore, Jennifer confessed to a plot involving Homeboy and then seemingly told Detective Cooke that Eric was Number One. It’s hard to imagine police becoming wise to Eric and David’s identity had they just purchased a new burner phone to be used only that night to call Jennifer. Unfortunately for them, both were broke.

  Had all this not gone wrong, Jennifer’s suspicious behaviour, the fact that nothing was stolen from the house, her dodgy call while tied up, would have been simple suspicions, nothing more. One thing the evidence does bear out is that as Jennifer and Daniel delved further into the plot, their communications doubled, increasing to levels not seen since before their breakup. Between August 3 and September 26, a period of just fifty-five days, the pair shared 969 calls and texts. But the majority of the communications originated from Jennifer (809, compared to a paltry 160 from Daniel). Between September 27 and November 8, that number jumped to 1,754 calls and texts — 1,067 from Jennifer and 687 from Daniel. They shared another 3,000 calls and texts on her Rogers phone between May and November. The communication with Lenford paled in comparison. After their initial conversation, Jennifer texted Lenford on six separate days until the end of August; they had one conversation in September, three in October, and twelve in November, totalling forty minutes.

  There remain no psychological evaluations about Jennifer’s mental health. However, it’s clear that her behaviour is beyond the realm of what our society deems normal. She was not only lying to everyone in her life, including her parents, for almost a decade, but she was also forging documents, cutting herself, and experiencing suicidal thoughts. Some might conclude this was due to the depression she suggested she was struggling through, questioning whether she wanted to continue living. However, according to Barbara Greenberg, a well-known American therapist, this is just what Jennifer wanted those around her to think. According to her, this was a ruse designed to portray Jennifer as the victim when in reality she was predatory — a selfish young woman who had become an expert at manipulating those around her. Furthermore, she describes Jennifer’s depressive behaviour as “impression management” by a very intelligent, decisive, “creative and crafty” young woman.

  Barbara, a clinical psychologist practising in Connecticut and specializing in the treatment of young people and their parents, often deals with cutters, those suffering from intense depression and a range of personality disorders. She says Jennifer’s behaviour is more consistent with that of a sociopath than someone who is suicidal, depressed, or struggling through the symptoms that lead to cutting. “There appears to be some narcissism involved, but I think the more accurate diagnosis is anti-social personality disorder,” she says. “She started lying in her teen years early [around age fourteen] … a characteristic
of ASPD, and she clearly had an impaired moral compass. Most people who are narcissistic do have a moral compass and do have a sense of what’s right and what’s wrong, but it’s when narcissism overlaps with ASPD that you can start to have the makings of a young woman like Jennifer. For a person who is narcissistic alone, even malignant — the worst type of narcissist — it would be unlikely that they’d have the heart and the mind for this type of behaviour.”

  Greenberg says that one particularly worrying tendency was not only Jennifer’s penchant for creating large-scale lies from a young age but how those lies grew in size and scope over time. She says Jennifer managed the lies effectively, perfecting the behaviour associated with this type of disorder, with her story only falling apart because it simply grew too big for her to maintain. A good example Greenberg gives of this type of escalation is a boyfriend who first verbally insults his girlfriend during a fight, then punches walls, and finally physically assaults her. Each time he gets away with the behaviour, he is emboldened and takes it a step farther until it is too late. These are the criminal deviants, often men, who show progressively aggressive behaviour, that police most fear. An example of this is a sexual predator who gropes unwitting victims before escalating to violent physical assault such as trying to remove their clothing. It’s at this point that investigators redouble their efforts to locate the suspect because there is a heightened risk the perpetrator might escalate his attacks. Greenberg says that, while minor deception might be ever-present in homes with high expectations, those lies might be characterized by children as not divulging information or merely forging a few signatures. Jennifer, on the other hand, started with fraudulent report cards and then escalated with further forgeries — first, a university scholarship and then entire transcripts.