Netflix documentary revives interest in Canadian murder-for-hire case

The most popular movie on Netflix Canada has resurfaced a dramatic murder-for-hire plot that shook an Ontario city in 2010.

The documentary What Jennifer Did explores the life of Jennifer Pan and the complicated events that led to her mother being killed and her father severely wounded in a Markham, Ont., case that was granted a new trial last year.

"The fact that it's true, I would say it's wilder than fiction. It's a Hollywood script," executive producer Jeremy Grimaldi told CBC Toronto's Dwight Drummond. "But we always have to remember that it's a tragedy."

Pan had a difficult relationship with her strict and demanding parents, who had extremely high expectations for her and closely monitored her after-school activities. She and her friends believed they were controlling and restrictive.

Eventually, they caught her in a series of lies about graduating from high school, obtaining a pharmacology degree and volunteering at a children's hospital. Secretly, she was also spending time with her then-boyfriend, Daniel Wong.

During the trial, the Crown said Pan started plotting her parents' murder after they forced her to choose between them and Wong. He also became implicated in the murder plot.

Pan testified that she had a poor relationship with her father, who was the "rule maker," but was closer with her mother.

One night in November 2010, three men entered the house where she lived with her parents and shot them both multiple times, killing her mother and severely wounding her father, who escaped to a neighbour's house with gunshot wounds in his face and shoulder, and would later go on to testify against his daughter.

Pan was initially assumed to be a victim of a home invasion, but police soon turned on her as a suspect, and a series of texts and phone calls between her and Wong appeared to reveal a plot to have the men kill her parents for $10,000.

The documentary is not sitting well with everyone.

Karen K. Ho, a business and art crime reporter in New York City who went to school with Pan and Wong, wrote an article for Toronto Life in 2015 that detailed the complexities of the case and Pan's family dynamic, emphasizing the pressures placed on Pan and other children of immigrant families. 

Ho's article has been rehashed on true crime podcasts and received a new wave of attention since the documentary came out Wednesday. 

She says she is uncomfortable with the "true crime industrial complex" and what she called American audiences' "all-consuming and endless" appetite for content about murder.

"I am not watching it and I'm choosing not to watch it, because I do not want to incentivize the further production of this stuff, without at least really thoughtful consideration."