Killing of Bich Pan

On November 8, 2010, police in Markham, Ontario, Canada, 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. The investigation revealed that the crime was not a robbery but instead a kill-for-hire arranged by the couple's daughter Jennifer Pan. She had expected to inherit her parents' money and was angered that they had forbidden her to see her boyfriend after they discovered she had been deceiving them about her education.

Jennifer's police interrogation involved a technique in Canada, where police are legally allowed to lie to those they are interrogating regarding the evidence they have allegedly collected, and the strategies they are using. At trial, Pan was found guilty on multiple charges and sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for 25 years, the same penalty as her co-conspirators. In May 2023, the Court of Appeal for Ontario ordered a retrial for Pan and her co-conspirators on the charge of first-degree murder of her mother, allowing for the possibility that – despite explicitly waiting until Bich was home before signalling the killers to enter – they might only have planned to murder Hann, and the jury should have been allowed to consider that option; the Court of Appeal upheld the attempted murder convictions for the shooting of Hann. Two years later, in April 2025, the Supreme Court of Canada sustained the appeal.

In 2026 the Crown was ordered to retry the four defendants charged in the killing then still alive. All pleaded guilty to lesser charges that made them immediately eligible for parole.