Watch above: (Aug. 19) Catherine McDonald reports on Jennifer Pan’s first day of testimony.
NEWMARKET, Ont. – A woman accused of plotting to have her parents killed in a staged home invasion says she orchestrated her own murder after several failed suicide attempts.
Jennifer Pan, 27, says she felt distraught after falling out with her family in the summer of 2010 and arranged to pay $10,000 for someone to shoot her dead.
But Pan, who is testifying for a second day in her murder trial, told a Newmarket, Ont., court today that she changed her mind after her relationship with her family started to improve that fall.
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She previously told the court she had abandoned any plans to have her father killed after an earlier attempt failed, and never intended for her mother to die.
Pan and four others – including her boyfriend Daniel Wong – were charged with first-degree murder and attempted murder following the attack at the family home in Markham, Ont., in November 2010.
Her mother, Bieh Ha Pan, 53, was shot dead. Her father, Hann Pan, 60, was shot in the face but survived.
Pan testified she hired someone she knew only as Homeboy to kill her but started to have second thoughts when it appeared she might reconcile with her father.
Phone records presented in court showed a flurry of calls between Pan and Homeboy on Oct. 31, 2010, which she said were about the plan.
“I was trying to convey to him that I wanted to call it off… I wanted to live,” she said.
The two of them discussed it with Wong over the next two days and by the end of Nov. 2, Pan said, “everyone was in agreement that it was over.”
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