Lenford Crawford was found guilty of conspiring with Jennifer Pan to kill her parents. Here's where he is today.
Netflix
- Jennifer Pan is the subject of a new Netflix documentary, "What Jennifer Did."
- She was found guilty of attempting to murder her father.
- Lenford Crawford was one of her co-accused. Here's where he is today.
The new Netflix documentary "What Jennifer Did" tracks the investigation into a November 2010 home invasion that left Bich Ha Pan dead and her husband, Huei Hann Pan, injured.
Authorities said the home invasion was actually orchestrated and staged by their daughter, Jennifer Pan, then 24 years old, after years of academic pressure and control over her social life. A Canadian court found that Pan and her former boyfriend, Daniel Wong, whom her parents had disapproved of her dating, planned the incident, involving three other men.
One of those men was Lenford Crawford, a connection of Wong's also referred to as "Homeboy." Here's how he was connected to the case, and where he is today.
Crawford was one of the 3 men who invaded the Pan home
Toronto Life reported in its definitive account of Pan's life and the incident that Pan was first connected to Crawford in 2010 through Wong. Prior to planning her parents' murder with Wong and Crawford, Pan had previously asked a former classmate to kill her parents for her, but that classmate refused, Toronto Life reported.
According to the publication, Wong and Pan began to put together a plan to hire someone to kill her parents. Toronto Life reported that Crawford gave Pan a discounted rate — $10,000 vs. a standard $20,000 — to kill her parents since she was a friend of Wong's. Crawford reportedly scoped out her neighborhood on Halloween night in 2010, and coordinated with Pan to eventually carry out the plan on November 8.
Crawford, Toronto Life reported, was one of three men who entered the Pan household that evening alongside his friend David Mylvaganam and another man, Eric Carty. According to the publication, Crawford and Mylvaganam shot Bich and Hann in the home's basement, killing Bich and injuring Hann.
After the incident, Pan — who had been tied to the banister — called 911. Pan gave two interviews to police before Hann, who was receiving medical care, gave police a conflicting witness account: He recalled his daughter speaking casually with one of the men, and said that she had been led around the house unbound.
Pan was arrested after her third interview with police. During that interview, which is depicted in "What Jennifer Did," she didn't tell police who "Homeboy" was or the friend who had put her into contact with him. Through analyzing phone calls and text messages, police identified Crawford, Wong, Mylvaganam, and Carty, and arrested them in early 2011. At the time that he was charged in May 2011, Crawford was 28 years old, the CBC reported.
Crawford was sentenced to life in prison
Pan, Wong, Crawford, and Mylvaganam all received the same sentence in 2015 after they were found guilty of first-degree murder in Bich's death and attempted murder in the shooting of Hann. Carty's trial was postponed due to his lawyer becoming ill, and he died in prison in 2018.
On the first-degree murder charge, Crawford received a life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years, as did Pan, Wong, and Mylvaganam. On the attempted murder charge, all four received a life sentence.
All four filed appeals, however, and in May 2023, the Court of Appeal for Ontario ordered a retrial on the first-degree murder charge, the CBC reported. The court found that the judge in the original trial had not presented the jury with the full range of potential convictions, including second-degree murder and manslaughter. The attempted murder charge, which also bears a life sentence, still stands.
As the Markham Economist & Sun reported, prosecutors in the case filed their own leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada. That means that the Supreme Court has to decide whether to hear the case. If it doesn't, prosecutors can decide whether to hold a new trial, per the publication. If they don't, then Crawford, Pan, Wong, and Mylvaganam can seek parole on the attempted murder charge.