On November 8, 2010, dispatchers received a 911 call from a family home in the quiet neighbourhood of Markham, Ontario.
The caller was a distressed Jennifer Pan who described through violent sobs that gunmen had broken into the family home, demanded money and shot her parents before fleeing. All while she was tied-up upstairs.
Her mother, Bich Ha Pan, died instantly while her father, Huei Hann Pan, miraculously survived.
The home invasion was brutal and calculated; Jennifer and Hann were lucky to be alive. However, her recollection of the night's events had a few holes in it that left people with more questions than answers.
Watch the trailer for Netflix's What Jennifer Did. Post continues after video.
More than 14 years after Bich was murdered and Hann was severely injured, a new Netflix documentary, What Jennifer Did has been released.
It explores how a star pupil, golden child, and gifted pianist not only ended up at the centre of a brutal home invasion — but was also the cause of it all.
The true story behind the Netflix documentary What Jennifer Did.
Hann and his wife Bich moved to Canada in 1979 following the war in Vietnam.
They worked at an auto parts manufacturer to make ends meet and eventually saved enough to buy a home with a two-car garage in 2004. They owned luxury cars and had more than AUD$308,000 in the bank at the time.
Their story was the classic rags to riches tale, but their sacrifice did not come without expectations. Hann and Bich demanded excellence from their daughter Jennifer, born in 1986, and son Felix, who was born three years later.
They were expected to get high grades, become musicians, and excel at sports.
Jennifer grew up playing the flute, took piano lessons, trained in martial arts and swimming, and was even was working to become a figure skater until a knee injury stopped that.
As a teenager, she could not attend social events, go to parties or date boys. The constant pressure took its toll. Their precocious daughter with straight A's became used to getting B's — for her parents, that would not do.
From age 14, she faked her grades and pretended she was topping her classes. According to Toronto Life, Jennifer wasn't all that concerned with her slipping grades because, luckily for her, she was accepted early into a Toronto University called Ryerson.
But when she failed her final maths exam, she could not graduate from high school and the offer was rescinded
Instead of telling her parents the truth, she kept the lie going and bought old biology and physics textbooks. She would spend hours split between libraries, casual jobs and her boyfriend Daniel's family home, whom she had begun secretly dating in high school.
Jennifer continued the charade for years and even told her parents she had been accepted into a prestigious program in pharmacology that her father wanted her to attend.
Instead of doing that, she worked as a piano teacher, bartender and waitress.
When it was time to graduate, she created false transcripts for her grades. She also told her parents they couldn't attend her ceremony — another lie.
Jennifer's deception caught up to her eventually when she told her parents she worked as a volunteer at a blood-testing lab. Her father thought her claim was suspicious because she didn't have a uniform.
Hann and Bich insisted on dropping Jennifer off at her workplace and when Bich followed her inside to check if she really worked there, their daughter hid for hours.
Their daughter's lies were eventually revealed.
She confessed she did not work at the hospital, nor did she get into the prestigious pharmacology program (she did, however, keep up the charade that she attended Ryerson University).
Her father ended up banishing her from the family home but after a lot of pleading from Bich, she was eventually allowed to return. However, she was forbidden from seeing Daniel again.
This didn't matter much to him though as had grown tired of Jennifer sneaking around. Now 24 years old and still unwilling to leave home, he broke off their relationship.
From there, Jennifer's hatred for her parents spiraled. In a conversation with an old friend, Andrew Montemayor, she realised how much easier life would be if Hann and Bich were dead.
Andrew put her in contact with another friend called Ricardo Duncan, who allegedly agreed to kill her dad for $1500.
But the plan fell through (Ricardo says he never agreed to her request in the first place).
At this point, Jennifer had gotten back into a flirty relationship with Daniel who then helped her set up an elaborate hire-to-kill plan for $10,000. She enlisted Lenford Crawford to carry out the murder and a few months later in November 2010, after a lot of text exchanges, it was finally ready to go ahead.
On November 8, Jennifer's brother Felix was away at university but Hann was home. Soon after, his wife returned at approximately 9:30 pm.
Not long after, the three hitmen (Lenford, David and Eric Carty) entered the home through the front door that had been left unlocked by Jennifer (a statement she admitted to before retracting).
Once they were taken to the basement and their heads were covered with blankets, Hann was shot once in the shoulder and then in the face. Bich was shot three times in the head and she died instantly.
All the while, Jennifer remained upstairs tied to a bannister before somehow managing to reach for her phone tucked into the waistband of her pants.
"Help me, please! I need help!" she can be heard crying to the 911 dispatcher. "I don't know where my parents are!... Please hurry."
Hann could be heard in the background moaning. He had crawled up the stairs to the main floor and stumbled outside where he confronted his neighbour leaving for work.
Police investigators were immediately suspicious of Jennifer, who questioned why the criminals hadn't taken either Hann or Bich's car, why the house had been so easy to break into and why Jennifer wasn't escorted to the basement like her parents were.
She couldn't answer any of these questions and by the third round of police interviewing, she confessed that she had hired hitmen to kill her — she no longer wanted to live but could not bring herself to commit suicide.
Jennifer and three of the accomplices, including Daniel, went to trial in March 2014 (Eric's case went to the courts later).
Jennifer was found guilty and given a life sentence with no possibility of parole for 25 years. The same sentence was handed down to Daniel, David and Lenford.
Felix eventually moved away from Ontario to escape his family's violent past and in 2015 Hann was still trying to sell the family home, according to Toronto Life.
Neither of the remaining Pan family members speak to Jennifer but in a statement at her trial, Hann said: "When I lost my wife, I lost my daughter at the same time.
"I don't feel like I have a family anymore. Some say I should feel lucky to be alive but I feel like I am dead too.
"I hope my daughter Jennifer thinks about what has happened to her family and can become a good honest person someday."
What Jennifer Did is now streaming on Netflix.
Feature Image: Netflix.