A Daughter's Deadly Deception

by Jeremy Grimaldi

  After the trial, the Crown requested that there be a no-communication order placed on Jennifer so that she couldn’t contact her family. Although her lawyer, Paul Cooper, argued against it, it was put into force by the judge. Jennifer remains committed to reconnecting with her family, but so far that hasn’t occurred, and unless the order is removed, it won’t occur for more than two decades.

  Where Are They Now?

  Daniel Wong is being held in Collins Bay Institution in Kingston, the oldest prison facility in Canada, located about two and a half hours east of Toronto. The jail is sometimes referred to as “Disneyland North” because of its château-style main steeple. When a friend visited him at the prison in Lindsay, Ontario, prior to his being moved, Daniel, sitting behind a thick Plexiglas pane, was still “happy and cracking jokes.” Wearing an orange jumpsuit, he told his friend he had bonded with some Cantonese inmates in his block and that they were helping him ease into prison life.

  He now spends part of his time composing music and has requested that visitors bring him staff paper. One friend said that, although she wasn’t sure if he was putting up a front, Daniel seemed “normal” when she went to visit him. Daniel told another friend that thinking about “what-ifs” would drive a person mad. He is very focused on his appeal, which is currently working its way through the courts, though it is looking increasingly unlikely that it will be heard. He refused a chance to speak to me about this book, but it is understood he vociferously denies his guilt in the case. Barring an appeal victory, Daniel will be released from prison at age fifty.

  David Mylvaganam is currently incarcerated in New Brunswick at the Atlantic Institution, a former ammunitions depot in Renous, about two hours northwest of Moncton. It’s unclear what David is doing behind the walls of the facility that holds about 240 inmates. He turned down an opportunity for an interview with me.

  Lenford Crawford currently resides at Kent Institution in Agassiz, British Columbia, home of Robert Picton, one of Canada’s most infamous living serial killers. Although it’s unclear if he still maintains this role, Lenford’s mother said he was very involved in prison activities and worked in the kitchen while at Millhaven, where he was previously incarcerated. Lenford refused to speak to me himself, but his parents openly spoke about their firm belief in their son’s innocence. His mother also expressed her anger at Corrections Canada for moving her son so far away from her Toronto residence. Lenford is appealing his conviction.

  Eric Carty is serving his time at Millhaven Assessment Unit, which houses inmates recently sentenced to federal time in Ontario, though he is currently scheduled to be moved. He was granted the chance to serve his time in Atlantic Canada or the West. Furniture for federal government offices is fabricated in Millhaven. Inmates receive a small weekly wage for working there, about $20. It also houses Paul Bernardo, Canada’s most infamous convict. Eric is appealing his conviction in the Kirk Matthews conviction. If that judgment is overturned, he could be out of prison in nine years. He turned down the opportunity for an interview with me.

  Jennifer Pan is being held at Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener, Ontario, about an hour and a half west of Toronto. Many of the offenders in this prison live in residential houses and living units, but overcrowding has often been a complaint. In one letter to Daniel, Jennifer explained that she spent much of her time cleaning the “range” — the living quarters she shared with her cellmates. She complained about the food, about being alone, and she said she missed Daniel. “I get really depressed, the beds are not comfy.” She described her cellmates and how she braided one woman’s hair and that she kept busy by cleaning, hoping this might keep the more aggressive inmates from harming her. Jennifer said some people call her names, and she’s scared of fights occurring or getting hurt. She added that when her close friends, including one woman named Kay, leave, she’s worried how the others will react when there’s no one there to protect her. One lawyer says perhaps the most ironic thing about the trial is that Jennifer will be serving the easiest time by far than any of the men. She maintains contact with at least one of her former friends.

  Jennifer maintains her innocence and is appealing her conviction, which is also unlikely to go ahead. She refused the opportunity to speak to me on a number of occasions. As part of her sentence, she is no longer allowed to communicate with her co-conspirator, Daniel Wong. However, in her final letter to Daniel, Jennifer signs off simply but tellingly — Love Always.

  Afterword

  by Dr. Betty Kershner, Ph.D., Registered Psychologist

  How could a young woman arrive at the point of wanting to kill her parents and cold-heartedly attempt to carry out the plan? Was it nature or nurture? Was Jennifer Pan somehow born with “a bad seed,” a defect in her mental health that would turn her into a monster? Was it the way that she was brought up by demanding “tiger parents”? Jeremy Grimaldi’s narrative contains many fascinating details and insights from the public record, the court testimony, and interviews with some of the people who knew her. I have not met Jennifer Pan nor have I conducted a psychological assessment of her. However, there are psychological factors and profiles generally associated with certain kinds of experiences — the sort of background, upbringing, family, and social life that Jennifer had.

  Based only on what is reported second- and third-hand, I can speculate about the personality and mental health associated with that kind of life and this kind of murder and how the situation might have developed. I cannot say specifically that this is what happened with Jennifer Pan: I do not know her or her family. I can only offer informed speculation.

  I will start at the beginning.

  Jennifer’s parents were immigrants to Canada from Vietnam, where the rural population was bombarded during the war and the middle, upper, and educated classes in the cities were devastated in the immediate aftermath. The entirety of their childhoods took place during wartime (1946–75), and their young adulthoods were experienced in the aftermath of war as the country was being rebuilt. Hann would have been twenty-two during the fall of Saigon.

  We do not know if they or their families were exposed to fighting, relocation, re-education, or whatever else, or how people in their social circle suffered. We do know that Hann attended college in the former Saigon after the war, but there would have been few opportunities for him there. We do not know about Bich’s education or otherwise. When they departed Vietnam, they left behind and lost whatever they had. Certainly, there was trauma all around: in the war on the ground, and on the water in the boats they travelled in to get away. We know that severe trauma in one generation often finds a pathway of effects down to the next and even successive generations.

  If Hann and Bich themselves did not face or were too young to be aware of danger, most likely their parents did. Parents who have faced horrific experiences and demonstrate resilience often do so at the cost of shutting down aspects of their own emotions. Scars harden over tender spots, making people less vulnerable but also less aware of and sometimes less responsive to their own emotional needs or the needs of others. Recognizing emotional need can sometimes be too risky, threatening to open the floodgates and allow emotion to overwhelm. Often, parents who have been exposed to trauma want to keep it from their children to protect them. They do not talk about it. They do not share it.

  Children in such families can feel that something is missing, that there is something bad, threatening, amorphous, unknown, and not labelled, but is part of their environment, creating in those children a vague sense of apprehension. The very wish to protect children can lead to unanticipated, unintentional fears and worries in them because they sense something is wrong but no one talks about it and they do not know what it is.

  We do know that Jennifer was afraid to be alone, afraid that she could die, and that she was asthmatic. Jennifer met Daniel, the “love of her life” and co-conspirator, when they both travelled to Europe as part of the school band. Asthma can be triggered by en
vironmental factors such as the smoke in the auditorium where the band performed but also by emotional stress. This was the first time that Jennifer was away from her family. Who knows what that meant to her? Much as she wanted to go, Jennifer was accustomed to her family’s constant monitoring and supervision. The separation might have left her feeling exposed and vulnerable. When she suffered an asthma attack, it was Daniel who stayed with her. He comforted and calmed Jennifer and helped her to breathe. Jennifer believed that Daniel saved her life that day, and she began to love him.

  Both of Jennifer’s parents worked hard and were determined to make a better life for their children. Following Chinese/Asian cultural norms described in tiger parenting and endorsed by Felix’s testimony, Hann and Bich may not have believed in praise as a form of child guidance. Instead, they appear to have criticized and demanded more. It has been said that in that cultural form of parenting, children do not get emotional support but only demands and expectations. The paramount goal is the creation of the necessary credentials to build a future. There is also the matter of appearances: the family must look successful. To that end, Hann and Bich worked hard. Money went to the children and to keeping up appearances: a nice home and high-end cars. Energy and time went into jobs, the home, and providing transportation for the children’s activities. While Jennifer sometimes came home from hours of skating practice only to practise piano and do her homework, staying up late into the night, she would not have been the only one in the family with little or no time for a personal life. Neither of her parents, especially her mother, seem to have had much unstructured time — no moments to just relax with Jennifer. There might have been little opportunity for the kind of “quality” time that allows people to really get to know one another and really feel intimate on a deep level: open, shared periods together.

  Jennifer’s father and Felix did some of the chores together; her mother was kept busy with the household. In those circumstances, Jennifer might have felt she was not really known by her family — she talked about being a mystery and no one knowing everything about her. She might not have felt loved for herself, intrinsically important to them, since she stated they did not really know her; but rather, as she said later, that she was important to her parents only for what she could achieve. How could they know her when she herself apparently did not believe she really, solidly existed as a person in her own right? Her fear of being alone suggests that Jennifer did not know how to self-soothe and also that, during her early childhood, her normal childish fears were not, or not adequately, addressed. Infants left to “tough it out” and “deal” might manage, but some will not and will be left with feelings of vulnerability and danger that are beyond their capacity to cope.

  Little children might experience fear of annihilation: that without someone strong to protect them, someone who cares enough to bother and to be there, they might die or simply disappear. Thinking of their parents as all-powerful, infants can develop the misperception that if their parent is not there to see them and validate them, if they are not present in their parents’ eyes and can see themselves reflected, they do not exist. This is why “Peek-a-Boo” so delights a young child: they are just at the point of figuring out that someone continues to exist even if they are out of sight, and are thrilled to be proven right when that person comes back. But if a parent does not come when the child is afraid and calls out for them, that infant/toddler can be left with a sense of doubt and insecurity, apprehensive that the parent really has vanished into thin air and so might they. This can create a deeply held, even unconscious feeling of vulnerability and a kind of hole in the beginning sense of personhood.

  Jennifer’s descriptions of her adult feelings suggest the possibility of a childhood where, at least sometimes, she was left on her own with her infant fears beyond her capacity to handle. Her mother might have comforted her at points here and there, but in those moments of childhood terror, that childhood crisis, comfort might not have been dependably available. Jennifer seems to have thought in her heart of hearts, curled up in the fetal position as she did at times, such as under the heavy stress of police interrogation, that she did not really exist, that she was alone and helpless, might disappear, and be nothing substantial.

  Similarly, if Daniel did not love her, withheld that validation, she was “nothing.” On top of that, if Jennifer believed she did not exist in her own right rather than as an appendage and at the discretion of her parents, she might feel she existed only to fill their image of what she should be. Otherwise, she might think she would be hollow inside. In this kind of situation, people tend to feel insufficiently separated from their parents — enmeshed. Forming a core identity as distinct from the parent is something that normally happens for a child in the early years. If it does not happen successfully, the person tends to become entwined with their parent, caught in a tangle that keeps them close, at least emotionally, and interferes in the development of a freely chosen life.

  Jennifer might have failed in a primary task of normal child development: the development of a solid sense of oneself as separate from her parents. Her sense of herself during her elementary school days and into high school is described as dependent on her parents’ perception of her and a growing sense that she was “not good enough” — tellingly, the very phrase she used later with Daniel when he told her he cared for another woman. This suggests that her very being was shaped to please her parents. It might have felt like freefall when her performance fell short and she displeased them, as if she would be destroyed or disappear.