Lenford Crawford was found guilty of attempted murder alongside Jennifer Pan, who conspired to have her parents killed in 2010.
Netflix
Correction: April 25, 2024 — An earlier version of this story stated that Crawford was one of the three men who entered the Pan household. It has been updated to reflect that The Crown acknowledged that Crawford may not have been present at the house on the night of the murder, and he asserted an alibi.
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.
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.
It is not clear whether Crawford entered the Pan household that evening with his friend David Mylvaganam and another man, Eric Carty. As reported by the Toronto Sun, his lawyer in the 2014 trial, Darren Sederoff, claimed that Crawford had an "iron-clad alibi": he was at his job in Rexdale that night. In court, the Crown acknowledged that Crawford may not have been present at the house that night.
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.
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.
