A Daughter's Deadly Deception

by Jeremy Grimaldi

  The investigators watching the interview later insist that, despite her behaviour, they kept an open mind. As such, Detective Cooke explains that the lead detectives watched her behaviour with a keen eye. “She was holding her stomach like she might throw up,” he says. “There were a lot of inconsistencies in her story from the first one. You always have a suspicion. You may say, ‘Okay, that person is exhibiting these factors,’ but you lead by the evidence. You can’t have tunnel vision.” He says that what investigators are particularly interested in are a person’s reactions to being caught in a lie, seeking out what poker players call tells. “We all do it in our everyday lives,” Cooke adds. “You can tell when someone’s lying.”

  Finally, Jennifer is given a breather, and she seems relieved, her demeanour growing calmer when Slade explains that they will now be moving on to talking about her past. The shift in her behaviour at this point in the interview is dramatic. As if she’s lying on a therapist’s couch, she begins for the first time in her life to describe the true story of her past as well as her relationship with Daniel, the love of her life. She starts at the beginning, reminiscing about how she and Daniel first started dating and fell in love, all under her parents’ noses. “It just happened. We started going out — well, saying we were going out — but I didn’t really get to see him much,” she says. “I wasn’t allowed to have a boyfriend. I was seventeen.” She explains how it was her father who was against her having a boyfriend and that her mother took a back seat to his opinion.

  Jennifer concedes that she still has feelings for Daniel as the questions slowly shift, dredging up the uglier parts of her past. She admits to the fraudulent university career and all that went with it. “My father was very adamant [that I do] something in the medical field. He wanted me to become a pharmacist.”

  “What do you do for the next few years?” Slade asks, seemingly shocked by the extent of her deceit. “While your dad [wants] you to get into the medical field, what do you do?”

  “I lied to him. [I told him] that I was going to school for my bachelor of science,” she continues, explaining how instead of attending class at two separate institutions — Ryerson University and the University of Toronto — she was actually going to the library to falsify notes. She also worked as a server at the time, studied piano, and lived with Daniel three days a week.

  “You would have had bills. How were these bills being paid?” Slade asks, still trying to wrap his mind around how someone could manage this sort of deceit.

  “I was working at East Side Mario’s and I took care of myself,” she says. “Financially, my father never took a hand in [paying] bills.”

  “Both your parents thought you had gone to university?” he asks.

  Jennifer nods.

  “Do they still to this point think you [went] to university for sciences?”

  Glancing at her hands like an ashamed daughter caught red-handed by her father, she softly responds, “Yes.”

  “How did you feel about that? How did you feel about having to lie to your parents?”

  Jennifer responds by explaining that, although she felt guilty, there was so much expectation from her parents that she simply chose to power through rather than disappoint them. Perhaps most shocking of all, Jennifer goes on to plead with Slade not to expose her lies to her father, insisting that, although he caught her lying about some of her schooling and living at Daniel’s home, Hann still believed she attended one of the two universities. It’s during this line of questioning that it becomes clear how much the opinion of her parents still means to Jennifer. By this point, her mother’s murder takes a back seat, her reputation the front, as she grows consumed by the idea of her family uncovering the last vestige of her lies. Seemingly oblivious to the fact that she might be on her way to becoming a suspect in the murder of her own mother, it is this deception, the one she managed to maintain all those years, that she is still determined to keep from her parents. “I don’t want to disappoint my mother. They don’t know about that university stuff, and I don’t want people who saw my mother as a good person to think wrongly of her,” she says. “She was such a good mom and I don’t want that to change because of my decision.”

  With disbelief at the sheer number and scope of the lies this bewitching young woman who sits before him has told, Slade inquires over and over again how she managed to pull the wool over her father’s eyes regarding so many details. While Slade refuses to pass judgment on her behaviour because of the restrictions she was living under, he does appear perturbed by her actions, perhaps imagining his own daughters trying to pull off this level of deception.

  Jennifer explains to him how her life during the time spent at home consisted of waking up, playing piano, helping with chores, going to music lessons, and returning home again. She recounts for him the only time she left the house at night over the past few months was on her birthday when she went skating with her friend, Topaz. That night, she says, her parents confirmed directly with Topaz before Jennifer left the house, and they secured Topaz’s cellphone number so they could check in on them throughout the night. Even with those restrictions, she explains, she had to be home before 9:00 p.m. This, she says, was a strict curfew in place since high school and was only relaxed once — for a close friend’s wedding reception. Clearly not wanting to lie to Slade when she didn’t have to, whether for fear of incriminating herself or betraying the bond they’ve developed, Jennifer opts to skirt his next question.

  “Did you have any resentment toward [your parents] for this?”

  Her response shows how a devious Jennifer fooled so many for so long, obfuscating when possible, only lying when absolutely necessary. “I chose what I chose,” she says, shaking her head. “But in the end I chose my family.”

  When the questions move to her alleged involvement in the drug trade alongside Daniel, she insists over and over again that she was never involved. However, when Slade asks about whether her parents were involved in either gambling or drugs, she leaves the door open ever so slightly. “Not that I know of,” she says.

  She further implicates her father with a rambling and intricate story implying that he was engaged in an extramarital affair with a “Chinese-speaking woman.” “My father doesn’t even know I was on the line … it was a lady’s voice I have never heard before … this woman was saying, ‘You have to come over right away, right away,’” she says. “My father kept saying, ‘I can’t come over. No.’” Soon after that, she says, her father left the house, telling Jennifer he had to go to the Luongs’ house (Jennifer’s aunt and uncle) to help them with some housework. It was at this point, Jennifer says, that she caught her father lying. When she confided in Michelle about the conversation and his hasty departure from the home, she was told that Hann had indeed come over, but that it hadn’t been until much later.

  When the landline at the Pan home received another private call soon after, Jennifer says she became enraged and yelled into the phone. “These phone calls were happening periodically…. My mother and I answered and they’d hang up on us,” she adds, noting this took place in late August, early September, of 2010. “A few days later, I was home by myself and I got a private call, and I didn’t hear them hang up, so I yelled in Chinese: ‘Do not ever call this number ever again!’ They called probably one time after that and then the private calls stopped.”

  Whether Detective Slade’s departure from the interrogation room at this point is a strategic move to see how Jennifer will react, or just an appropriate time to speak to his colleagues, is unclear, but it certainly causes a stir. Although Slade leaves the door open a crack, trying to ease Jennifer’s concerns about being left alone, it does nothing to calm her. She begins to lose control very quickly during the ensuing half-hour.

  Watching the tape is like witnessing a train wreck; one is unable to look away. Jennifer begins breathing heavily and pacing back and forth before sitting back down, her stomach c
learly convulsing. Detective Constable Deborah Gladding, who is sitting in a neighbouring room watching this young woman in clear distress, walks in and attempts to ease her anxiety. She gives her some water and then clears the hallway to give Jennifer a washroom break. When Jennifer returns to the room a few minutes later, she starts to sway, putting all her weight on one foot before switching to the next. Before long she begins to pace back and forth — all while facing Gladding, who is still in the room — thoughts no doubt rippling through her mind. Her obsessive movements eventually morph, and she begins to manically stroke her ponytail.

  Jennifer then begins to speak, a litany of words tumbling from her lips. “I’m just beating myself up,” she says as she continues to pace back and forth, as if she’s on amphetamines. “He’s asking me these questions like I should have been more attentive, but it just happened so fast, and it’s like … and I can’t give him the answers I don’t know.”

  “You don’t want to make up something —” Gladding starts to say.

  But Jennifer interrupts her. “No, I’m not, it’s not that,” she says, continuing to stroke her hair. “I wish I was able to answer. I want to be able to answer it, so it would help.”

  “But if you don’t know, you don’t know,” Gladding states matter-of-factly. “That’s the bottom line. Who are we to say? We weren’t there. You’re the one that went through this.”

  Jennifer then inquires about how the investigation is going. “Have they been able to find out anything? Do they have any leads or suspects? Does anyone know where the car went after?”

  Once again Jennifer is so caught up keeping herself from emotional breakdown that she fails to realize she’s giving the investigators watching in the next room a front-row seat to a meltdown of epic proportions. After Gladding watches Jennifer appear to grow dizzy then steady herself on the wall, she asks if Jennifer wants some food, noting that she can hear her stomach grumbling. “That’s your stomach saying you’re hungry,” the detective implores. Despite Gladding practically begging her to have chips, a bagel, or a chocolate bar, Jennifer refuses, clearly too agitated and nauseated to eat. The detective then pleads with Jennifer to take a seat because she’s doing so much pacing. When she sits down, Jennifer grips the arm of the chair tightly before assuming the fetal position, her head between her knees, something that will become normal practice for her over the next few years. She then covers her face and weeps.

  When Detective Slade finally returns to the interview room, he attempts to calm Jennifer. Referring to her emotions as “survivor’s guilt,” he tells her it’s something she will have to work through with the help of therapy. “It’s a long road. What you’re feeling,” he says, “I hate to say it’s normal, but it is. It’s something that a lot of people who are in the same circumstance will feel.”

  This apparent sympathy for Jennifer’s situation doesn’t last long as the seasoned detective gradually takes up an accusatory style of interrogation, first using the media as cover to suggest that it’s her association to the drug underworld that might have led to the murder. “[The media are] bad. They can be very bad when they start to sniff around and they sense something,” he tells her. “And I can tell you that the media is portraying [this as] some sort of drug-related thing: that you guys weren’t a random target; that you guys were a targeted house because of drug activity. Is it possible that you were being mistaken somehow of being involved with [Daniel’s] life in those things?”

  Jennifer continues to deny that she was involved with the business of marijuana. “I wanted nothing to do with it, so I refused to know what [Daniel] was doing,” she says.

  Slade seems to take her protestations at face value before continuing. “I don’t know if that’s, in fact, what happened,” he tells her, exasperated. “I’m trying to find a rhyme or reason for why your house was targeted. I’m still trying to figure out how they got in your house. You didn’t hear a doorbell. You didn’t hear a … knock. You didn’t hear a door kicked in. Somehow they got into your house by getting through your mom, down on the lower level. So it’s very confusing. Generally random events are not, in most cases, random.”

  Then Slade gets down to business, something the other investigators have long been encouraging him to do. “So you’re telling me you had no involvement in what happened? You had no involvement in any type of illegal activity that would have drawn … attention [to] you? To have bad people come to your house looking for large sums of money? You’re not involved in this any which way?”

  Again, choosing not to speak, Jennifer shakes her head, her bottom lip quivering.

  “Because the question obviously stands, Jennifer; you’re upstairs and they’re downstairs, so it’s a natural concern. Why would they leave you alone? Why would they not do the same to you?”

  Jennifer continues to shake her head before going back to her faithful line. “The only thing I can say is that he said I co-operated,” she insists, weeping. “But I asked him to take me with my mom.”

  “You’ve admittedly lied. Not to me,” Slade continues unabated. “You’ve lied to your parents. Who’s to say this whole thing isn’t a lie? That what you’re telling me is a lie? Because if you are lying, it’s the most cold-blooded thing I’ve ever faced in my life.”

  A wily Jennifer stares at him as if he’s just put a dagger through her heart. The silence hangs thick in the air as the two contemplate each other. Eventually, Jennifer glances down and away and resumes shaking her head.

  Slade speaks first, inquiring if Hann and Bich had life insurance policies.

  “I think. I don’t know,” Jennifer responds.

  “Back to another very difficult question, but if I don’t ask it … it’s an obvious one,” he says. “The resentment that you may have had toward your parents for the interference in your relationship, in your life, and essentially locking you down in your house …”

  “At the end of the day, I love my parents,” she responds, once again skirting the crux of his query. “And I chose to be with them. If I wanted to, I could have just left, but I didn’t. I wanted to stay with them. And take care of them.”

  “So this wasn’t some evil plot that you thought of to —”

  Her hand on her chest and a shocked expression on her face, she interjects indignantly, “Oh, my God, no!” Her eyes remain fixed on his, not blinking.

  “You didn’t have anything to do with this whatsoever?” Slade asks again.

  “No” is the response.

  “Because you know it will be a very easy thing to discredit you on, right?” Slade says. “It’ll be very easy to find flaws in what you’ve said, which then again turns the focus back to you. It’s a natural thing that investigators do. We eliminate people or draw our attention to them. It’s a natural thing. It’s not brain surgery.”

  A knock at the door draws Slade back into the hallway. Jennifer’s leg begins to shake again, moving so forcefully this time that her hand and arm rattle the rest of her torso. “Can anyone come in?” she requests in a petrified child’s voice.

  Gladding responds, “I’m here,” but without entering the room. Jennifer returns to the fetal position, rocking back and forth.

  “You really scared me,” she scolds Slade when he returns. “It’s hard to take. I’m just afraid, because I know everything is just pointing negatively right now and I don’t understand why. I feel the way you’re speaking to me it’s kind of like … I know you said you had to say those things … there’s like ideas in my head. And I’m afraid to say it out loud.”

  “The fact that you’ve lied to your parents over a long period of time … that is disturbing,” Slade says. “At times we have to point the finger … and provoke you and see what you’re going to do, how you’re going to respond. It’s only a question and it’s been answered, and if you’ve been truthful, you have nothing to fear.” After a moment, he asks, “Is there anything [in your account
] you think you want to change?”

  “Now I feel like I’ve said something wrong,” she responds.

  Slade then tries the direct approach. “Could you be lying to me?”

  “I can’t,” Jennifer insists.

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re scaring me,” she finally says.

  Slade tries to reassure her. “In a case that makes no sense, that may be the only sense we get out of the investigation, is that strange things happen. Right now there [are] no fingers being directed at anyone. You’re our only link … until your dad is able to be spoken to. You’re our only link to this case.”

  After four hours, the interview is finally over and Jennifer walks out of the Markham police station at 2:00 p.m.

  In addition to the question of Jennifer’s behaviour in the interview room and why her life was spared by the intruders (she wasn’t injured at all during the attack, nor was she sexually assaulted), Detective Cooke’s inquisitive mind swirls around another question he’s contemplated from the start: Just how inept can the thieves involved in this robbery be? Is it possible to have been so unprepared? After all, Cooke is being asked to believe that a group of three grown men would break into a house looking for money without any tools to jimmy open the door and no bags to carry the loot. Furthermore, by that point, investigators have figured out that the string used to bind Jennifer to the banister came from her mother’s sewing kit. The men didn’t even have duct tape or rope to tie up the victims. “What do they leave the house with?” he asks. “They have [almost] nothing.” But this isn’t all. His suspicions about what led criminals to the home in the first place persist. “They [aren’t] even business owners, they’re nobodies. Why choose this house? That’s what kept running through my head.”