What Jennifer Did revisits the horrifying tale of Jennifer Pan, who became the subject of Canadian headlines when she survived a home invasion that took the life of her mother Bich and left her father Hann in critical condition. Nonetheless, American Murder: The Family Next Door writer/director Jenny Popplewell’s Netflix documentary (April 10) is a clumsy addition to the ever-expanding true-crime canon, tipping off its central twist with its title, leaving out key details that might have enriched its drama, and sidestepping a discussion of the larger socio-economic forces underscoring its tragedy. It’s consistently engaging, but also not much more revealing than a quick perusal of Jennifer’s Wikipedia page, and the fact that its real-life saga may not be over only amplifies the impression that it’s less than the full story.
On Nov. 8, 2010 (a date that isn’t provided by these proceedings), 24-year-old Jennifer (whose age isn’t relayed) called 911, frantically reporting that a trio of gunmen (all Black, one with a Jamaican accent, and another with dreadlocks) had broken into her Markham, Ontario, home looking for money. In this recording, Jennifer—who claims that the intruders have tied her to an upstairs banister as they assault her parents—is heard yelling to her father, who audibly moans in the background. When police arrived, they discovered a grisly scene: the house was ransacked, Bich was dead, and Hann had suffered a grave gunshot wound to the eye that compelled doctors to place him in a medically induced coma.
Much of this is recounted by homicide detectives Bill Courtice and Alan Cooke, who were initially baffled by the crime. The Pans were one of many immigrant families in the neighborhood, and known to be hard-working and unremarkable. Originally from Vietnam, Bich was a car parts supervisor and Hann was a machinist at the same auto parts manufacturer, and though they owned nice sedans (a Mercedes and a Lexus), they lived a modest middle-class life. The idea that intruders had targeted them for their wealth thus seemed off from the outset. More puzzling still, valuables remained in the house, including a wallet filled with $20 bills, a nice watch, and a pricey camera kept in a closet safe, suggesting that if these men had intended to make off with a bounty, they’d failed miserably—and resorted to unnecessary murder.
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What Jennifer Did features the usual array of ho-hum dramatic recreations, but its central material is footage from the York Regional Police Department’s interrogation room, where Jennifer sat for three separate interviews. In extended clips from those talks, Jennifer expands upon her 911 account, avowing that on the night in question, she was at home when her mother returned from line-dancing and sat down in the living room to soak her feet. After saying goodnight to her mom, Jennifer retreated to her room, where she was ultimately accosted by one of the intruders, who bound her hands to the staircase railing. Despite this physical situation, she managed to phone authorities, which struck investigators as odd—and inspired her interrogator to ask her to demonstrate how she pulled off that feat. Through tears, she asserts that she doesn’t know the identity of these men. Nonetheless, police swiftly learned about her boyfriend Danny Wong, a known drug dealer, and that proved to be the key to unraveling this mystery.
In his own interview, Danny acts puzzled about why the Pan clan was singled out by thieves, yet he offers up crucial background on the troubled household. He and Jennifer dated for six years, largely behind the backs of Bich and Hann, who forbid the romance—no surprise, given that he was a going-nowhere drug dealer who worked at a pizza parlor—and more or less kept Jennifer under lock and key, confiscating her cell phone and driving her to and from school. This was an extension of their demanding tiger parenting, and as Jennifer soon admitted, she’d buckled under the weight of their expectations. A successful and award-winning pianist who had started playing at the age of 4, Jennifer was not an academic superstar, and she responded by lying to her parents (for four years!) about attending university to become a pharmacist. She additionally said that she had been receiving the same sorts of mysterious, threatening texts and phone calls that had plagued Danny, who had remained her friend even after moving on to a new relationship.
This was all suspicious, and it pointed in one direction. With no forced entry and the robbery motive appearing to be suspect, cops began assuming that Jennifer wasn’t being completely forthright, and What Jennifer Did’s interrogation videos depict her as an increasingly agitated individual, compulsively wringing her hands and stroking her hair. When her dad emerged from his coma and told investigators that he remembered seeing his daughter speaking casually with the criminals during the home invasion, her involvement was irrefutably established. In her third sit-down with law enforcement (this time with Bill Goetz, who legally used deception to extract a confession), she once again changed her tune, stating that, because of her unhappiness, she’d hired three men to kill her. This too made no sense, and phone records eventually proved that she and Danny had conspired to employ acquaintances to murder Bich and Hann—all, ostensibly, because Jennifer couldn’t stand to be apart from Danny.
What Jennifer Did conveys this lucidly, if shallowly. It dawdles excessively on certain points, while more or less ignoring Jennifer, Danny, and their accomplices’s ensuing trial; that they earned life sentences for Bich’s murder and Hann’s attempted murder, and are now awaiting a new trial thanks to a successful appeal, are merely noted in closing text cards. Moreover, Popplewell’s film exhibits minimal interest in the cultural and familial dynamics that created this nightmare in the first place, giving passing lip service to the idea that immigrant moms and dads can be tough on kids. Even the question of what Jennifer was really up to during the four years she pretended to attend school is left unanswered, as are specifics about the crime itself. As such, it’s an initially intriguing whodunit that comes across as a sketch rather than a full-bodied portrait.
