Killing of Bich Pan

On November 8, 2010, police in Markham, Ontario, a suburb of Toronto, responded to a report of a robbery and assault at the Unionville home of Hann and Bich Pan, ethnically Chinese immigrants from Vietnam. Both had been shot repeatedly; Bich died of her injuries, and Hann was permanently blinded. Investigators soon concluded the incident was not a robbery but a kill-for-hire arranged by the couple's daughter, Jennifer Pan, who had expected to inherit her parents' money and was angered by restrictions placed on her after her parents discovered she had lied to them about attending university and had been secretly seeing a boyfriend, Daniel Chi-Kwong Wong.

Police became suspicious of the robbery narrative because valuables in the house had not been taken, and because Jennifer had been left unharmed and was able to dial 9-1-1 despite claiming to have been bound. Hann, after waking from a coma, told police he recalled seeing Jennifer speaking softly and in a friendly manner to one of the intruders. Jennifer was arrested on November 22, 2010, during her third police interview; investigators used the Reid technique, including false claims about technology capable of analyzing statements and satellite surveillance, a practice permitted under Canadian law. Jennifer admitted to hiring the men but claimed the intended target had been herself, not her parents.

Additional suspects were arrested in 2011: David Mylvaganam, Eric Carty, Daniel Wong, and Lenford Crawford. The Crown's case connected Wong, who had been contacted by Jennifer using a secret phone, to Crawford, who contacted Carty, who in turn contacted Mylvaganam. Carty later said he had driven and helped select the men who entered the house.

The trial of Pan and her co-defendants began in March 2014 in Newmarket and lasted ten months, involving over 200 exhibits and more than 50 witnesses. Evidence included extensive cellphone and text-message records, including more than 100 messages between Pan and Wong in the six hours before the killing. Carty's case ended in a mistrial after his lawyer fell ill; he later pleaded guilty to conspiracy and received an 18-year sentence, and died in prison in 2018. Pan, Wong, Mylvaganam, and Crawford were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment with no parole eligibility for 25 years.

In May 2023, the Court of Appeal for Ontario ordered a retrial on the first-degree murder charge concerning Bich's death, ruling the jury should have been permitted to consider that the defendants may have intended to kill only Hann; the court upheld the attempted-murder convictions related to Hann's shooting. In April 2025, the Supreme Court of Canada, in a 7–2 decision, upheld that ruling. Following the ordered retrial, the Crown allowed the surviving co-defendants to plead guilty to reduced charges in early 2026: Wong to manslaughter, Crawford to conspiracy to commit murder, and Pan to manslaughter in her mother's death, each becoming eligible for parole substantially earlier than under their original sentences. As of April 2026, Mylvaganam had not yet been retried.