There is now some direction in the case. The tangled web of deceit has no longer just ensnared Jennifer and Daniel, but now his friend, Lenford. Police leave the meeting wondering: Did we just speak to Homeboy? But even if they have, what comes next throws them for a loop. After the interview, MacDonald discovers that on November 8 Lenford signed into work using a thumb scanner and remained there until midnight when his shift ended. Daniel also has an unassailable alibi: he was at work until late, as well.
On the other side of town, Detective Courtice is getting nowhere with his interview. Demetrius Mables has told him he had nothing to do with any murder, has no idea about a phone call from his phone and, besides, that night (November 8) he was working at a construction site.
That isn’t enough to exclude Demetrius or Lenford from the investigation. Courtice and Cooke keep searching, thumbing through the series of phone numbers until they come across one that is also contained in Jennifer’s Rogers Samsung phone. On November 29, Cooke sits down with Andrew Montemayor, a young-looking Filipino lad. When police first contacted Andrew’s girlfriend, he grew faint-headed, felt sick, and wanted to throw up. As Detective Goetz later puts it, he was “terrified.”
“I didn’t talk to Jennifer November 8,” Andrew begins in his police interview. But his denials won’t do him any good.
Slapping a stack of documents on the table in front of the frightened man, Cooke tells him, “These are all the text messages. This is for November 8, all these pages,” he says, leafing through the data. “How do you explain that if you didn’t talk to her that day … you texted her almost one hundred times — seven pages of texts. This is the day her mother was shot and killed, and you’re texting her at that time. That concerns me, Andrew. You knew sooner or later [Jennifer was] going to get arrested, and she’s sitting in that chair. She’s going to tell us everything that happened: who she was talking to and how this thing came about.”
The records show that on the day of the murder, between 4:30 p.m. and 10:26 p.m., Andrew and Jennifer texted each other a lot, so much so that the total — eighty-seven texts and four calls over six hours — was about half the texts the pair shared between August and November. Andrew, who isn’t experienced in dealing with the police, can see things as clearly as the investigators. It isn’t looking good for him. He can only play dumb for so long, and he eventually spills the beans. Andrew tells police that Jennifer called him that day, advising him how fed up she was with her parents, annoyed and suffering under what she called their brutal rules, which felt to her like house arrest. He says Jennifer said she was really “pissed” at them and wanted to get away from them. Andrew adds that she told him she’d planned a home invasion at her home that night but was going to make it look like a robbery. She told him the men would demand money and shoot her parents. Jennifer was to be tied up but not hurt. She said it was going to involve two people busting through the door and would begin when she got a text. Although Andrew claims at first that he thought she was mad, speaking out of anger or even joking, he also says Jennifer wasn’t laughing and even states she sounded serious. He told her it was up to her what she wanted to do. As for the texts, he says they were about his enduring crush on Jennifer and the stress he was suffering at his job.
But this isn’t all he shares. Andrew also tells the police that Jennifer approached him in the spring of 2010 about having her parents killed. He says Jennifer was angry about her issues with her parents — how they didn’t trust her, how she felt “house-arrested.” She said she wanted them killed, offed, taken care of, and asked him to help her find a way to do it.
From Jennifer’s jailhouse letters around the time of this interview, we can see that she not only knew when police were interviewing her friends, but was afraid of what information they might reveal. In December, Jennifer wrote to Daniel, stating: “Talked to Ed [Pacificador] and he said he is talking to the cops again. I am nervous about that. He now doubts me as well. Adrian [Tymkewycz] is talking to them now, so he will probably be leaving my side as well. Why do they want to take all that I have left in this world? I am not sure I am going to be OK. I am one voice, muffled in a crowd of screams.”
Andrew’s comments definitely help strengthen the case against Jennifer, but they bring police no closer to the men who committed the violence. In the following months, police conduct hundreds of interviews, a process that consumes countless officers’ lives for a time. Detective MacDonald, a young father, works straight through from November 8 to December 21. Detective Courtice says he survived on coffee and cigarettes more than a few nights. “Bill [Courtice] and I were always yelling at each other,” says Detective Cooke with a chuckle about the late nights and long days they spent together in the office. “It could be about anything — the speed and flow of the investigation, its direction. Other times we’d just be bouncing ideas off one another.”
Eventually, all the work, coupled with a bit of luck, pays off. Detective Courtice discovers that of the three major telecom companies in Canada, only one, Telus Mobility, stores all incoming and outgoing text messages for thirty days (to the chagrin of police nationwide, this has now ceased to be the case). It turns out the “Peter Robinson” phone is a Telus phone, so the police are able to request the records in time, receiving them on December 17. “I remember that day clearly. It was like an early Christmas present,” Courtice quips.
And just as the officers hope for, the data is a treasure trove of information for an investigation starved of it. Within days, police contact two women whose numbers appear on that phone as contacts: Georgia McQuaid and Francine Johnson. When they speak to McQuaid, she types the number into her phone and comes up with the name of a man she knows called Indian, but that’s the only information she can provide. It is Francine Johnson who gives up the goods, however. Despite having called her lawyer to sit in on the police interview, investigators get lucky when he lets McQuaid speak to Detective MacDonald privately — once the detective promises that his inquiries don’t involve Francine directly. Francine admits that the number belongs to a man she knows by the name of David Mylvaganam. After running his name through the system, police discover he has no criminal record but that at one point was arrested on fraud charges in Montreal. And just like that, police have their first suspect who might very well have been inside the house.
After he receives a communication from Francine about what just occurred with the police, David panics. He doesn’t want to contact Francine directly now that the police know his name, so he begins texting another person, an unknown male, to communicate with Francine for him. Police eventually garner this information, once again using the Telus storage system. The texts are deciphered with the assistance of Detective Gawain [the Welsh spelling of Gavin] Jansz, a Toronto police officer and an expert in street and codified language.
D: Dem bwoy de a di yard an a talk to Francy. [Police talked to Francine.]
UM: What she do.
D: Text her and tell her two link u on a different link u overstand. [Get her to call you on a different phone number. Do you really understand me?]
UM: Y ct u tell me. [Why can’t you tell me?]
D: Dem a tak bout a m an a numba linkage bout rea. [Police talked about an M (murder) and about a phone connection.]
D: Dem a sa a pure fakery a gawan over de. [Police said bullshit went on over there.]
The conversation ends bluntly. The male on the other end, clearly worried about David’s overuse of text communication to relay sensitive information, demands he stop and ring him immediately: Call me nw.
Later the two men and Francine share a three-way conversation, police say. And the next time police attempt to speak with Francine, she spends forty-five minutes yelling at them over the phone. Needless to say, she no longer co-operates with the investigation. But police are already hot on David’s trail. The man on the other end of David’s texts remains unidentified for the moment. A picture of David is immedi
ately sought from Quebec police.
On January 6, Hann Pan walks into York Regional Police’s Markham detachment to take part in a photo lineup police have prepared. Taking his seat, he quickly dismisses the first four of the twelve pictures out of hand. It is on the fifth picture that Hann hesitates for the first and only time during the lineup. He frames the picture with his fingers as if the man is wearing a hat. “I think maybe. I think maybe this guy,” he says in broken English. “Maybe. Because long time, right. I can see him only ten minutes without glasses. I’m not 100 percent. I did not confirm 100 percent, but it very much like the person who held me.”
It is the picture of David Mylvaganam.
One last stroke of good fortune for police strengthens the case against David. The owner of the “Peter Robinson” phone had texted social services his name, age, address, and social insurance number (SIN). The burner phone definitely belongs to David Mylvaganam.
“[Now] that’s luck,” says Detective Cooke, who indicates David had been attempting to secure welfare with the text.
Two days before that, Ricardo Duncan, a.k.a. “Ric,” the man Jennifer had implicated as being the one who had given her Homeboy’s number, breezed into a police interview room. After a lengthy interview, police realized they weren’t dealing with the man Jennifer had painted as a possible suspect. “He’s a security guard, not a murderer,” says Cooke, implying he used his experience to decipher what sort of man police were dealing with. Nonetheless, Ric told the interviewers a fascinating tale.
Ric said he had met Jennifer in the spring of 2010, six months before the murder. His connection to Jennifer was through his roommate at the time, Andrew (Montemayor), who was a friend of hers. Ric said that when he met up with Jennifer at the coffee shop in Scarborough, she was highly emotional. She told him that she resented her parents, adding that she was angry about her situation and was feeling trapped. During one of the pair’s two meetings, Ric said Jennifer asked him to kill her parents. But he said once he realized she was serious, he refused to speak with her again. The police soon discover that Ric was the black male Jennifer’s uncle had seen her with at a coffee shop. The pair had shared eighty-nine texts between May and July of 2010.
On January 6, 2011, police receive the forensic report from the bullets recovered from Hann, Bich, and the couch in the Pan’s basement. Experts have found that bullet fibres recovered from the couch match fibres on Hann’s T-shirt and that the bullet fired through Hann’s shoulder is from the same gun that fired the two bullets found in Bich’s body. This means it is highly likely there was one triggerman. However, due to the fact that no foreign DNA was found at the house, this remains a case reliant on the cellphone information being uncovered. The “Peter Robinson” phone is still the catalyst of the investigation. The police are focused on one thing — arresting the three men who were in the house that night. They essentially eliminate Daniel and Lenford from their list of possible assailants, since they both have alibis. So who was there?
When the cell tower records are finally secured, police discover a clue that blows the case wide open: In the hour leading up to Bich’s murder, the “Peter Robinson” phone can be seen travelling across Highway 401, which cuts across the northern part of Toronto, at 9:30 p.m. before heading northbound up Highway 404 toward Richmond Hill and Markham. While en route, the person using that phone contacted Lenford Crawford (9:45 p.m.) just after calling Jennifer Pan’s Bell iPhone at 9:34 p.m.
While reviewing surveillance footage taken from a camera located across the street from the Pan home, a sharp-eyed detective notices that just prior to the Acura passing by, a light in Hann’s study was turned on. The time was 10:02 p.m. The light remained on for exactly one minute and twenty-one seconds and was then switched off. Was this a signal from inside the house?
The grainy footage then shows the Acura driving up the road, turning at the street that runs kitty-corner to the Pan home, and (presumably) parking out of view. In the moments prior to gunmen bursting into the Pan home at 10:13 p.m., another call came in to Jennifer’s iPhone from the “Peter Robinson” phone. During this call, both phones were pinging off the tower closest to 238 Helen Avenue. After the three-minute-and-twenty-three-second call, the “Peter Robinson” phone was turned off. The time was 10:09. The men, three figures, are seen running up to the house at 10:13. The upstairs lights come on at 10:15. The men were in the house for fourteen minutes before one man runs out at 10:30 and then two others exit at 10:32, returning to the car and speeding off at 10:33. Video then shows police arriving, sirens blaring, at 10:38.
Other than the fifteen minutes following the murder, the “Peter Robinson” phone is in almost constant use inside the car as it makes its way to Markham and back. The phone calls and texts numbers in Rexdale and one number in Montreal. Thirty minutes earlier, at 9:42 p.m. during one set of texts to Montreal, someone, likely David, makes a colossal mistake while in a conversation with an unknown female.
DM: In a meeting with Kimble I will text you to call k love.
UF: OK, was that who I heard cussing, tell him I say whatup.
DM: Ya ya u now go to sleep for now.
The stored texts once again prove indispensable. Police now know the name of at least one other person in that car — Kimble. Finding out Kimble’s identity, however, proves to be a monumental task. In the coming weeks, police exhaust every avenue and investigate every shred of information they come across to try to identify him. Whoever he is, he is very diligent about keeping his identity hidden. “It was like finding a needle in a stack of needles,” Detective Cooke says about the challenges they faced. “It was driving us crazy.” Sure, “Kimble” is identified by his nickname, but police have no name or picture to go on. Cooke spends weeks and countless hours cross-referencing phones, interviewing people, and gaining bits of information, but it is never enough. However, this technique does provide some clues. Cellular data indicate to Cooke which phones logically belong to Kimble — constantly changing numbers, he texted the same contacts the following message multiple times: Yo bro, this is my new number. However, when those contacts responded “Who is this?” he always replied with one of his nicknames, usually Snypa. Alternatively, he used the name of one of his kids’ mothers, Cooke says.
When Cooke runs the nickname “Kimble” through the national police database — the Canadian Police Information Centre (CPIC) — nothing comes up. But when he runs “Snypa,” he discovers the name is linked to a number of people across the country. Listed in the details about one of these men is a request to call Toronto Police Sergeant Sheila Ogg, who has been searching for a suspect for more than a year. Can this be Kimble? After speaking to Sergeant Ogg, Cooke has a much better understanding of what may have happened on November 8. Just two weeks before Cooke’s inquiries, a man by the name of Eric Carty was identified by a traffic cop after the car he was a passenger in was pulled over. Beside Carty was his good friend, Lenford Crawford, who was issued a traffic ticket. The two men were then sent on their way. “That was the first link we had between the two,” Cooke says.
The collection by the police of personal information from members of the community who are not suspected of criminal activity is what’s called “carding.” This police technique is used to gather intelligence on those who might later have run-ins with the police. It is now all but outlawed in Ontario after months of campaigning by those who consider the practice to be a form of racial profiling. In the Pan case, though, the information proves indispensable.
Not long after Cooke and Ogg’s chat, Eric’s name makes the RCMP’s most-wanted list when his picture is released in a Canada-wide warrant in connection with another murder case. Police receive information almost immediately about Eric’s whereabouts. He is apparently hiding out in Brampton, a suburban city in the Greater Toronto Area. But when the police show up, he makes a mad dash and escapes. Police are closing in on him, though, and in his hasty departure, Eric leav
es his asthma inhaler behind, complete with his full name and prescription information. Three days later, on January 28, police receive a call from an informant who tells them that Eric is in the food court at the local mall — Bramalea City Centre. Subsequently, members of the Peel Police street crime and gang unit make the arrest without incident that same day.
Police eventually discover that one of the twelve phones Eric Carty was using at the time — a collection that included burners and those belonging to various girlfriends — is registered to “Larry Davis,” a name with an interesting story attached to it. Larry Davis was a New Yorker who shot six police officers in 1986 after the cops allegedly opened fire despite Davis warning them his children were inside the apartment that was under raid. Police said the purpose of the bust was to question him about the killing of four suspected drug dealers. However, at trial, Davis’s defence attorney said the incident was the result of Davis having information about police corruption. After the shooting, there was a massive manhunt, and Davis survived on the run for seventeen days. He later became a folk hero, a symbol of resistance, considering the frustration black communities were facing with regard to their treatment by white police officers in the Bronx in the 1980s.
On February 24, Jennifer writes Daniel a letter from prison warning him about the police investigation. “I really wish I could see you, at least … talk to you. I worry about you in here.… How are you doing. Where you go. If you are being VERY careful. As you know, they are still looking into things.”
After discovering Eric’s whereabouts, police set up wiretaps on Lenford’s and Daniel’s phones and assign surveillance teams to Lenford Crawford, David Mylvaganam, and Daniel Wong.
Once the taps are in place, Daniel is summoned to one last interview. Detective Courtice wants to stir some chatter over the wires, and he gets his wish. The night before the interview Daniel and Lenford have a tête-à-tête in Ajax. An unwitting Daniel almost makes a costly blunder during the conversation, but a street-savvy Lenford stops him cold, reminding him the phones aren’t safe.
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