What do you do when you want nothing else but to please your parents? You lie, of course. What else would you do? Put in all that effort? pfffff........ Today we will talk about a girl born in Canada to Vietnamese parents who escaped Vietnam right after the 'war'. They only wanted one thing: for their children to have what they didn't have...and education and a high paying job.....despite the parents already owning two very nice cars for the times (early 2000's) and a very nice house in a very nice neighborhood. But, they wanted their children to have more than that, especially their daughter, Jennifer Pan. Things weren't exactly going according to plan for ol' Jen, so, what did she do? Well, I guess we'll have to listen in and find out!!! Sources for today’s episode come from: Toronto Life.com Daily Mail.co.uk Wikipedia.org Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
I tell the listeners and myself, it's really difficult to make that parent proud sometimes, isn't it?
It sure is, dude.
And I don't think, realistically, a parent's children are, you know, expected to make them proud 100% of the time.
I mean, if you have realistic expectations.
But damn, there's those times when you feel like, yeah, I'm doing it, I'm finally doing it!
And then your parents are like, huh?
Oh yeah, that's cool, I guess.
And you're like, fuck!
Why do I even try, man?
This will never be good enough.
Why do we even try?
We do try, though, don't we?
I mean, you know, there are so many people, so many young people out there who want nothing more than to make their parents stoked about who they have become and what they've accomplished and, you know, where they're going, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
But I also think there's a generation of people who don't give a shit.
Right. I mean, they probably do inside, but, yeah, I mean, you remember all the mainstream...
Emo wave that came out in the early 2000s.
Loved it.
Hey, Dad, look at me.
You know, just Simple Plan and all those songs about parent pride.
All those songs.
So many songs.
Oh, yeah, dude.
The angst anthems of the early 2000s.
Well, I am really interested in this next question that I have for you, Scott.
How were your grades in high school?
I'm assuming you were an A student, right?
Oh, thanks for assuming that.
Yeah, you know, I tried.
I have to say, I put my whole ass into it, as opposed to a half-ass.
Yeah, well, I'm pretty sure I maintained a solid C +, B- throughout school, you know?
But hey, in my defense, I was too busy with other things.
I had more important things to do, and to consider, like, living life on the edge, right?
Right? But that was until college, and then I shaped up a little bit, but just a little bit.
Right. Well, you know, it's a great and interesting edge to live on.
A lot of interesting things happen on the edge right there.
A delicate matter of life or death at every waking moment keeps us aware, keeps us awake.
If there's one fact that comes out of it, though, it's that it's not that stressful, really, at all.
Not at all, actually.
If I remember correctly, and I might not be, there was the chugging of gasoline and the smoking of cigarettes in the high school parking lots.
Whoa! Shit, dude.
Like, at the same time?
Just to fit in with the cool kids in the parking lot, or at least I thought I was.
You know, before class started in the third grade.
Yeah, wasn't your fifth grade picture you with a big whipped cream-sized whippet?
Just like, come on guys, try this!
A bunch of scratch and sniff stickers all the way around the floor.
Just highlighter, like every color of highlighter, you know?
Just like sniff markers or whatever.
Well, I can say that that is a much better learning experience than sitting in a classroom.
All that learning and quote, getting an education.
Who needs it?
It's actually the street smarts that I've come to realize are much more valuable and usable in the real world.
You are speaking the truth today.
I am digging it.
Hey, I learned it in school.
Alright, so how about these questions for you?
Were you a fan of Beavis and Butthead?
Oh, yeah.
Celebrity deathmatch?
Oh, you know.
First Claymation?
Hell yeah, brother.
How about Daria?
Daria, yeah, you know.
The Tom Green Show?
Oh, yeah, my bum is on the cheese.
Fucking awesome.
And what about Jackass?
Well, of course, Jackass was sensational when it came out, man.
The first Jackass, everybody was like, no way.
Oh, he really did it!
You know, it was like the first show of that kind, dude.
Yeah, that was pretty good stuff.
But, you know, as we know, TV always becomes the babysitter.
And soon after that, it becomes a full-on teacher of all subjects.
And eventually, it becomes the full-time parents, which inevitably replaced your actual parents who actually love you and care for you.
And hopefully they do.
Because the TV doesn't.
You know, the TVs might not love us, but in the end, we love the TVs.
And I have to say, for myself, I definitely loved both my parents and the TV.
And I played plenty outside.
Don't get me wrong.
I wasn't one of those people that was house-bound, screen-addicted.
You know, I rode my bike.
I got some scrapes.
I got some bruises.
I got scars to prove that I lived life.
But in the end, TV, especially Saturday morning cartoons, homie.
Wow, that shit cheered me up.
It never, never fails.
You know what else never fails?
Well, Trebek, I think I'd have to say an everlasting flame, since it has the word everlasting in it.
Seems like it would never fail.
Thanks, Connery.
Well, you'd be wrong.
And this might be the first time.
But actually, Scott, those can fail.
As we've seen in Moscow, fairly recently with that ballsy-ass 5th grader putting a fire extinguisher right on top of one such everlasting flame that had been burning since 1985.
I can't believe he wasn't killed on the spot by one of the 89 Russian secret police in a 100-foot radius that were standing guard.
Well, to be fair, I think Putin sent them all to the front lines in his desperate and senile attempt for world domination.
Uh, yeah.
That's unfortunately probably true.
Yeah, but that fire extinguisher blew up and put out that everlasting flame.
But, you know what?
You know what else never fails?
Line your way through high school and college.
Yeah, I can see how that could, you know, never fail.
I mean, it's not like your attendance is mandatory or anything, or...
You know, like, they keep track of it.
Or that books need to be read or reports need to be written and assignments not only need to be completed and turned in, but sometimes you have to actually be there physically, present them to the class.
And then there's the whole grading thing.
I mean, you know, you have to, like, receive a grade on the efforts to prove that you're actually a genius.
Or maybe you'll, you know, maybe they prove the opposite.
I mean, it just depends.
You know, we all have different gifts or whatever.
But, you know, who knows?
Yeah, sure.
All those things are important, and you paused at a great point there.
But what about the parents back at home?
Oh, okay, yeah, sure.
Lying to the parents.
Yikes. That is no good, my friend.
You could get, like, grounded for that.
For like a month.
Oh, man, I know.
Well, today, we are going to talk about a girl who faked much of her high school, at least the important part, and all of her college, and so much more, and lied about it all to her parents who trusted her just a little too much.
Parents who trust their kids?
Who are these fucking parents, dude?
But before we get elbows deep in today's story, we do want to remind the listeners, or mostly those who are new to the show, this amazing award-winning show.
Yes, yes, we can't do it without you guys, for real.
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Yeah, there was that unusual suicides episode that we did a few weeks ago.
I mean, that was pretty wicked crazy.
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Super cute, dude.
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But Scott, I do believe you've got a few ingots of weird news for us.
Three, to be exact.
Well, it's funny.
That you should ask that or insinuate that, Coop, because as is most often requested by the listeners, it's time for the favorite segment of the hours.
People are going crazy right now.
Oh, they're going wild.
We need, like, a theme song.
We need, like, a theme song.
I've been trying to find something.
I've been putting, like, circus music in there, so...
Yeah. Anyways, our first story for the Trey for Trey is brought to us...
Actually, this story, Coop, this is sensational, but...
It has been a story for a number of years now.
This is not the first year that this has been reported, but there have been some updates coming through.
Apparently, I don't know if you know this, or if you've heard this, Africa is splitting into two, not one, two continents, bro.
That is nuts.
Like, is it something that we are going to see in our lifetime?
Well, we already are seeing some of it.
But the full effect, of course, is going to take...
Millions of years, as the main impetus is, of course, tectonic motion, which is slow, rapid enough for us to, you know, see it on occasion.
Slow enough that we will not probably, at least you and I, will not see the finished effect.
But apparently, this rift, called the East African Rift System, is complex, and it actually stretches over 1,860 miles from the Afar Triple Junction in the north.
To the Mozambique border, all the way in the south.
And it passes through a bunch of countries.
Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Malawi.
There's three plates in the area, actually, Coop.
I don't know if you're familiar with the geologic systems in the area.
But there's three plates, and they're all moving away from each other.
And two of these plates, rifting apart, are responsible for this.
Chasm that's slowly opening in that area, basically cleaving off the eastern part of Africa.
And apparently there's water filling up in some of the depression areas.
And so geologists and scientists are pretty sure that water is going to link up from certain lakes and it's going to form this giant inland sea further cutting off the land far in the future.
That is very interesting, man.
I mean, it's hard to fathom something of that extreme.
It's just hard for us to cast ourselves into the future and visualize what it's going to be like.
It takes forever.
Millions of years.
It's saying, what, like 5 million years?
5 to 10 million years, and it will actually be completely separated.
And then Africa, and who knows what the other plates will be doing during that time period.
It seems like these three tectonic plates are all moving away from each other in Africa, so Africa's just going to get split.
At least three different chunks, eventually.
Yeah, I mean, by the time it happens, no one's even going to remember what Africa used to look like.
Right. Yeah, the whole world would be a different place.
Maps will have to be redesigned, for sure.
Yep, maps will definitely have to be redrawn.
And speaking of sensational, our second story comes to us from CNN, posted, updated, I should say, at 1026 on Tuesday, May 23rd, from the CNN US News.
Apparently, Idaho student murder suspect Brian Koberger has chosen to give the judge the silent treatment in court.
What do you think about that, Coop?
The silent treatment?
It never works in a relationship.
It never works.
It angers the other person.
It just incites more fury.
Right, so how did the judge take that?
Well, apparently this strategy, also known as, quote, standing mute, relies on an old Idaho criminal rule, which basically requires a judge to enter a not guilty plea if the defendant decides to remain silent.
So there was some method to the madness, but it's really not going to change anything.
So what?
He has a not guilty plea entered in the court proceedings.
But as everybody knows, Koberger faces four counts of first degree murder, one count of burglary.
For the November 13th killings of several University of Idaho students, including Madison Mogan, who was 21, Kaylee Goncalves, who was 21, Zanna Kernodle, who was 20, and her boyfriend, Ethan Chapin, who was also 20,
in an off-campus home.
So he is in the thick of it.
That is insane.
And what is this about his parents being subpoenaed to testify?
Apparently his parents have been compelled to testify, to give a deposition, I should say, just because it was their home that he was seized from initially.
So I'm sure the court wants to see them cooperating since they were either knowing or not knowingly housing a wanted fugitive at the time, someone who had charges filed.
I do believe it was just an effort to, you know, okay, you guys going to cooperate with us or no?
And it says here they were also questioned about a missing woman, Dana Smithers, 45 years old.
She went missing in 2022, and authorities believe Brian Koberger may be linked to that missing woman and her death.
I look forward to the case.
Basically moving along or moving ahead just so more light can be shed on these things.
Obviously there's a universal gag order out there, so outlets are banned from reporting on anything tip or fact related.
All we get are these little snapshots of the actual public legal proceedings.
Yeah, we're not going to get a lot of information.
But yeah, we're not going to get a lot of information as the trial is going on.
You know, we'll be there to snap up the scraps.
You know what I mean?
We will give our listeners more than they're going to get from mainstream media.
I'll say that.
Oh, I like that.
I like that.
Yeah. We will not make promises that we can't keep.
Exactly. Mark our words.
Mark our words.
And speaking of marks, or grades, as some people refer them to, our final story for Trey for Trey comes out of NBC News outlet online internet article.
Two teens apparently have pled guilty to fatally beating their Spanish teacher to death over a bad grade.
Are you kidding me?
I'm not kidding you.
And I mean, I know it can be frustrating when the teachers come down on you and they say, Hey man, you gotta perform more.
You gotta work better.
Like, why did you sign up for this class if you didn't want to put the work in?
But going so far as to beat a teacher to death, I mean, shit, dude.
Over... Did she give him a failing grade or just a B instead of an A?
Well, apparently, Willard Miller in a police interview described that he was frustrated with how his 66-year-old teacher, Noma Graber, who was teaching Spanish, was basically single-handedly lowering his whole GPA at Fairfield High School with his low grades in her Spanish class.
The evidence being presented against them...
Basically shows that Miller and an associate of his, Goodale, struck the teacher with a bat.
Oh, Jesus.
Miller admitted that he helped carrying out the plan, but denied ever hitting Graber.
The teacher's body was found in a park nearby, actually way back in November 2021, and it was hidden under a tarp, a wheelbarrow, and railroad ties.
Wow. And the suspects were 16 at the time.
Yeah, the suspects were in high school.
They're being charged as adults.
Yes, they're being charged as adults.
Prosecutors at this point have agreed to recommend a sentence between 30 years to life in prison, but giving them the possibility of parole as part of an agreement with Miller.
That's crazy.
Over a bad grade in a Spanish class.
I get it if it's like a math class, but a Spanish class, I just can't fathom.
Yeah, the whole thing is beyond me.
Kids these days, man.
Apparently, the suspects drove her van, her van, with her body, to this park where she was known to take daily walks.
And then witnesses saw her van leaving the park less than an hour later with two males in the front seat.
So there's a lot of witnesses saying, oh, we saw him do it.
We saw him do it.
Oh, wow.
Anyways. Damn.
I mean, I don't know if it's premeditated.
It sounds like it was somewhat.
The way they went about it was extremely sloppy.
Oh, yeah.
But that's good.
Absolutely. That they were sloppy and they got caught for it.
But, man.
I mean, it definitely was a crime of passion.
They were heated about the grade.
But to take a bat to your teacher and expect to walk away from it?
Like, oh, man.
What is going on in those homes?
Well, that's a great final tray for tray for us to segue into the story for today.
Yeah. Because today we're going to discuss the story of a girl, Jennifer Pond, who was one of three children who only wanted to make their parents the happiest parents in the world.
It's just the way that she went about doing so is a picture-perfect example of what you do not want to do.
What she did was the exact opposite of what anybody should do when they want to please their parents and be the perfect golden child that they are expected to be.
Yeah, depending on the extremeness of your efforts, you're always going to come up against that line of diminishing returns when you try so hard that you're going to have the opposite effect.
I guess it's not in every case.
Sometimes people trying so hard looks like actually just getting straight A's and then getting into good colleges.
But other people try.
They're not making it on their own merits, so then they try to go around the system.
So I guess that's the caveat that we have to put here is when you try to go around The system for your parents' pride, you're just never going to make them proud in the end.
It's going to backfire and become a very slippery slope eventually.
That's a great point.
So Jennifer Pon was born on June 17, 1986, to mother Bik Ha Pon and father Hui Han Pon.
Bick and Huey had escaped the Chinese diaspora as political refugees in 1979 and moved to Toronto, Canada, where they would marry.
The couple would find work at Magna International, which was or maybe still is an auto parts manufacturer based out of Aurora, Ontario.
Huey would work as a tool and dye maker, while Bick would produce car parts.
The couple were very thrifty and saved as much money as they could to make a future for their children.
I love those stories.
I mean, not in the sense that people had, they were forced to work super hard from the ground up, but it just like paints a picture of these parents who loved their kids so much that they were willing to sacrifice and do whatever they had to do just so that they
So come 1986, Jennifer would be born.
Three years later, her brother Felix would be born.
By 2004, the family purchased a house with a two-car garage in Markham, Toronto, which had a larger Asian population where they could assimilate much easier.
Huawei would purchase a Mercedes-Benz C-Class W203.
And Bic would buy a Lexus ES300.
They'd also amass a savings of around $200,000 even after buying that large house and two cars, the Lexus itself being just under $70,000 in 2023 value.
By that time, Jennifer would have been about 18 years old and close to graduating high school.
But ha ha!
Hold up!
Let's not get ahead of ourselves here.
Yeah, it's best we not put the leash before the baby, you know what I'm saying?
Indeed. The pawns were a very close family, very family-oriented, but this didn't prevent Huey and Bic from setting very high expectations for their children.
They had an idea of what their children should be like, and they pushed those expectations on them relentlessly.
And it appears that Jennifer was to be their...
Quote, golden child.
And so she received more attention in regards to these matters.
From age four, Jennifer was forced to take piano lessons as well as figure skating classes.
And she was a swimmer and she practiced martial arts, a form called wushu or kung fu.
And during her elementary years, she had accumulated a number of trophies.
Despite being forced to do these things, she would learn to enjoy them, right?
You know what that's like, right, Scott?
That's true.
I actually was forced to do a number of similar activities when I was a kid, but after a while, it didn't feel like being forced.
And looking back, I am so glad that I was, because what else was I going to do?
Sit at home and do nothing?
Watch TV?
Or sit at home and be a little piece of shit?
No, I'm glad that my parents took the route that they did.
I mean, here we are, you know what I mean?
Doing what we like doing, yeah.
And so Jennifer would actually go and teach piano lessons herself, raking in cash from all the upscale neighbors.
And what about figure skating?
Well, she actually really excelled at that, and she actually did intend to become an Olympic figure skater.
Or maybe that was her parents' dream.
But at any rate, that dream would be torn to bits just like the ligament in one of her knees.
And from then on out, her days of being a gold medalist Olympic figure skating champion were in fact only a dream.
It's so hard.
You know, I actually had a really close friend in grade school all the way through high school who was super flexible and she was really strong.
She would have made a great gymnast.
But when she was younger...
She had two knee injuries that prevented her from further training.
And she was like one of the best with her balance.
She was the right build for it.
But she was just never, ever going to be competitive because of those injuries, even after the surgeries that she had.
And it was just basically tragic.
And she would lament about how she was never going to be able to do what she really wanted to do.
So I have seen a little bit of what that looks like firsthand.
And that's really tough.
That's tough for a person.
Yeah, when you have just one dream and your mind is set on that one dream.
And then everything is just destroyed.
Well, and not only that, but just like being made for it.
Like this girl, for example, that I'm talking about was made to be a gymnast and she can't do it.
It's unfortunate.
It's tough.
Well, it was during these earlier days that Jennifer would wake up early, so at least 5 a.m., you know, you'd think.
And she would go to school and then afterwards she'd go directly to one of the many extracurricular activities that her parents were having her do.
And she'd do these activities until around 10 p.m., You know, that would really take a toll on you, dude.
Especially as a kid.
The brain is still developing.
And to subject a kid to that level of stress on a daily basis with the whole sky's the limit expectations placed on you, it can be a bit much for some people.
Some people excel, other people regress.
There have been many studies that actually show that too much cortisol, that being the steroid hormone produced in the adrenal glands, most commonly referred to as the stress hormone because it's released throughout the body and brain in times of stress,
Scary. Yeah, that's terrible.
And those findings are in relation to studies on adults, not children.
So you can imagine a child being subjected to prolonged exposure of cortisol in a very high-stress environment.
Is only going to lead to negative results down the road.
Right. And there are all sorts of other emotional and physical effects that stress has on a person, especially in their formative years as a kid.
And especially when they aren't necessarily treated in the most loving of ways.
Oh, for sure.
And that goes beyond.
That could be with anything.
Anything. I mean, you know.
You know as well as anyone.
There's a million and one ways you can screw up a kid.
So many teenagers and even younger kids will resort to self-harm, the use of drugs and or alcohol, all sorts of things.
And in this case, Jennifer did resort to cutting her own wrists as a way.
Speaking of brains, have you ever watched The Lawnmower Man?
I fucking love that movie.
You remember that movie with everyday heartthrob Pierce Brosnan, like at his peak heartthrobbiness?
Yeah. Yeah, it was actually a Stephen King novel, but turned into a much better visual representation in 1992.
Agreed. And then, if I remember, they followed it up, I think in 96. I'm kind of embarrassed to mention that with a second one.
Oh, man, yeah.
The first one was Amazing with Job, the mentally...
The handicapped landscaper.
Yeah, and then there was Pierce.
Old heartthrob Pierce Brosnan.
He was a doctor.
I don't know if you remember the plot, but he was a doctor.
Hires him, gains his trust, and then he starts to give him these experimental pills, right?
Oh yeah, yeah, the pills, yep, yep.
Combined with a computer-simulated therapy session, and the whole thing was to augment Job's intelligence.
Right, and then Job becomes this genius with psychic abilities, and he becomes this...
Amazing Casanova with all the ladies.
Yeah. It seems amazing, and then as the movie goes on, he starts to realize that everybody around him has been totally taking advantage of him, like his simple mind his whole life, and he gets pissed, and then he plots revenge.
Sounds familiar.
Yeah, but yeah, I've seen that movie.
Great movie.
What about it?
Well, we mentioned brains, and it just...
I don't know.
It just made me think of it.
Mowing on.
Oh, man.
Oh! Cool.
Well, it's worth a mention and definitely worth a watch once or twice over the weekend.
Yeah, do it!
So Jennifer would attend the Mary Ward Catholic Secondary School in Toronto, where she participated in a school band playing the instrument everyone in every school band fights over, the mighty flute.
Well, I know this is going to be controversial, but I completely disagree with that statement.
Well, me, I'm not going to lie, I was in band in my time, but the tuba...
The tuba was where it was at for me.
Fuck those flutes!
Flutes versus the tuba.
It's always the flutes versus the tuba, man.
Always. So in the band, does the flute player and the tuba player, are they always separated on either side just to keep them away from each other and just staring each other down the whole time?
Well, it's actually for instrumental range reasons, but they are separated.
The flutes are always in the front row and the tubas are always in the back row.
There's more to that.
There's more tuba that, yes.
Oh, shit!
Coming in with another zinger.
Yeah, that's pretty good.
So a fellow student would later talk about how Jennifer was a social butterfly, like you, Scott, who easily mixed with every group or clique in school, like you, Scott.
And this student would also say that Jennifer was very basic, you know.
Vanilla, like you, Scott.
As they say, which I am offended by because it puts a negative connotation on vanilla, which has always been my favorite flavor of anything in all of its varieties.
I don't know if I've mentioned it, but I'm with this girl.
I'll keep her name out of the podcast for now, but we're pretty serious.
Vanilla's her favorite flavor, too.
I don't know what it is, man.
Vanilla's the best, bro.
Vanilla, all the way.
You gotta fruit it up sometimes, bro.
You gotta fruit it.
I mean, yeah, every once in a while.
Yeah, man, you know, I like a good sherbet or, you know, like a rainbow sherbet or like a blueberry or blackberry ice cream.
I mean, dude.
But just like the one, the go-to, the one that you will never get tired of, right?
That's vanilla for me.
I don't know, man.
It's just not it for me.
But anyways.
What is yours?
What is yours?
What's your go-to?
My go-to is always going to be something fruity, man.
I'm not going to lie, you know?
It doesn't matter that you don't have a standard blueberry.
That's your thing?
Just anything that's fruity?
Yeah, it could be anything, bro.
It just depends on the day.
I know a lot of people do have a standard that they go back to, but dude, it could be anything.
It could be fucking vanilla.
Blackberry. It could be raspberry.
You know what I mean?
But just any of that.
So Jennifer hardly ever wore makeup.
And if she did, she only wore very little.
And she wore small, round, wire-framed glasses and kept her hair straight.
And this same student would also say that Jennifer was...
Tormented by feelings of inadequacy, self-doubt, and a shame.
I am often tormented by a reoccurring dream.
I have every single lonely night.
I dream a dream of a man.
What does he look like, classmate of Jennifer Pond?
He looks like a man.
I can say he definitely looks like a man.
No defining features to describe him as a unique person in any way?
Oh, yes.
Yes, yes, yes.
Okay. Can you explain those features to us, please?
Oh, yes.
Of course, of course.
All right.
Would you please explain those features to us right now, classmate of Jennifer Pond?
Oh, yes.
He'll look like a man.
Oh, boy.
I should have known.
Yep, you are Miss Swan pretending to be a classmate of Jennifer Pond.
Oh, yes.
You should be ashamed of yourself, Miss Swan.
Yes, yes, yes.
Do you have any candy?
Good Lord, no.
You have to leave now, Miss Swan.
I like candy.
Go. He'll look like a man.
Take care now, okay?
Goodbye, Miss Swan.
Man, that was weird.
It's like she just jumped right out of the Mad TV episode that was stuck that you had freeze-framed on your TV and just showed up in our podcast.
What the hell?
Yeah, that was totally weird.
We did not ask her to come here.
We have to keep the door locked.
So one of her close friends at the time, Karen Ho, who I was able to contact surprisingly, said that Jennifer's parents would never let her do anything that would distract her from her studies.
They would pick her up after school and drive her to whichever activity she had to go to, and then on to the next.
They would closely monitor her and all of the activities that she would do.
She was not allowed to go to any school dances or anything outside of studying or improving her skills on piano.
With that said, it's almost needless to say that her parents forbade her from dating or speaking to anyone of the opposite sex.
On the rare occasion that she would be allowed to sleep over at a friend's house, her parents would drop her off at the house late at night.
Whoa, dude, that's so extreme.
Oh, man, I would just, like, it's embarrassing.
There's no nurturing going on.
None whatsoever.
You know, like, they're just programming.
No nurturing.
Karen Ho would go on to say that Jennifer was an excellent student in her earlier years.
She would go on to say that Jennifer's efforts in her studies began to go downhill as well as her grades as a result of it after she lost out to someone else.
As the 8th grade valedictorian, which she was sure she would be named.
Now Scott, I know that you had a similar background in that everything leading up to your 8th grade graduation was all in preparation to be the valedictorian of your class.
That was a monumental moment for you.
And what can you tell us about that moment?
Well, I gotta say, man, you know, when you're standing up there in front of everybody and you look out in the crowd and you're about to take the mic and you just think, wow.
What has led to this moment in middle school can't be the popularity contest that everyone's waging.
It's definitely achievements.
I say that sarcastically.
But as you probably know, since it seems like you've dug well into my background on this one, I was passed over as the 8th grade valedictorian.
It was not me.
But I did still get...
I guess what you would consider a consolation speech to give, which I did make humorous, and so I can say that over the course of the evening, I did make the audience laugh several times while I took the mic.
Damn. Who knows?
Maybe that was the foundation of this podcast.
I didn't know that you had that speech.
You gave a speech.
Yeah. I wonder if that was recorded.
I didn't find that.
I'm going to have to find that recording.
Well, this is in the days before iPhones, Coop, so I doubt anybody had a phone out recording me at the time, but it'll just have to live on in the legend that was me at my school in the eighth grade.
Jennifer pretty much stopped trying to excel as a student, and her grades would average around the 70% mark, which apparently in Canada is a B grade.
Which is interesting because where I went to school, that was a D grade.
But anyway, despite all that, she was still very adept on many instruments, especially the piano.
Most parents would be content, if not more than happy, for their children to be B students, but not Jennifer's.
Jennifer's parents expected only the best from her daughter, and I mean the best.
Friends of hers would later say that her parents were, quote, absolutely controlling.
And another who did not want to be named said that they, quote, Uh, yeah,
she literally can't do anything fun for a kid to do, or a burgeoning teenager to do.
Anything that she wanted to do is out of the question.
She's doing everything they want her to do, and on top of it, no boyfriend, no hanging out with friends.
I'm sure her life looked so different from...
A lot of other people she was at school at, so she's looking at them going, man, my life doesn't look like that.
I don't know what they're talking about.
I mean, she couldn't even talk to the opposite sex.
That's insane.
Yeah, I definitely call that oppressive parenting, for sure.
Absolutely. I could not imagine growing up like that.
Now, a quick aside.
When I was that age, actually when I was a little bit younger, I was the first, I'll blame it on the fact that I was the first of my family, child-wise.
My rules and limitations looked a lot like that.
I was not allowed to talk to people of the opposite sex.
If a girl tried to holler at me via the phone, you know, like we had back in the day, my mom would pick up and she would say, I'm sorry, Scott's not allowed to talk to girls on the phone.
Whoa! And then I'd hear about it at school!
I wouldn't even know that they would call, bro!
Oh, man, she was blocking me from the beginning.
That is crazy.
Your mom, a cock blocker.
I can tell you that...
Oh, yeah, dude.
But, you know, just like...
It obviously didn't get to the level of this young lady, but I can tell you it led to some resentment and some crazy times down the road.
Let me tell you.
Man, that's insane.
Yeah, a little insane there.
So, you know, I guess I'm just saying I can relate a little bit.
I can relate a little bit.
Well, in Jennifer's case, there actually will be a...
Boyfriend who comes into the picture here in a minute.
Oh, that sounded ominous.
But here's the thing, you know, like I said earlier, Huey and Bic truly only wanted the best for Jennifer.
How they went about that, the whole forcing it upon her, is where they went wrong, clearly.
But we have to understand where they were coming from, right?
Sure, yeah.
The 1970s in Vietnam, or, you know, North and South Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos.
It was not exactly a pleasant place to be with all the insane atrocities being committed by factions of rebels, such as the Viet Cong, and even governments of those places.
I feel at this point it's necessary to remind the younger generations of a not-so-long-ago war that happened in the 1960s and 70s, which was a less-than-stellar example of American foreign politics at work.
But hey, come on, tricky dick, am I right?
I am not a crook.
I am not a crook.
That's verbatim from the speech that he gave defending himself.
Right, well, after the war ended in 1975, Vietnam was left in shambles.
At least 3 million people, if not countless more, were out of work and left to fend for themselves to find food and resources.
The farmland and businesses were taken over by the government and severe restrictions were placed on the people, literally denying them of the most basic human rights.
Something we see here in America going on these days.
And because of all of this, and so much more, people were looking to escape any way they could and hopefully make it to the number one and number two destinations, Canada and the USA.
The Pons, Hue and Bic, they lived through all that shit and were able to escape and were given refugee status by Canada as more contention and disagreements grew between Vietnam, Cambodia, and China.
And in 1979, the same year the Pons made it to Toronto, Vietnam was successfully able to invade Cambodia and overthrow the brutal regime that was in power at the time, the jetted Khmer Rouge, who then fled to Thailand.
You know...
You'd think we'd have it together by now, but the atrocities just continue and they continue and they continue all over the world.
Brutal regimes getting propped up.
Horrible dictators allowed to carry out their rule.
Sociopathic rulers.
Presidents and politicians.
It just never ends.
Money, power, and control, dude.
It's like the worst mix that a human being can possess.
I know, it's 2023, dude, and we're still seeing this shit happen over and over.
History repeats itself over and over.
But bro, John Emmerich Edward Dahlberg Acton.
Holy. Yeah, better known as Lord Acton, the English writer, historian, and politician back in the late 19th century, said it the best, and his words still ring clear to this day, and will always ring clear.
Here is a recording.
Power tends to corrupt.
And absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Great men are almost always bad men.
Even when they exercise influence and not authority.
Still more when you super add the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority.
Now, if you turn your attention to the game trail in the corner view of the screen.
You'll see a small family of marmots proceeding towards us at a rate of approximately 1.5 miles per hour.
The youngest in the back looks as if it's struggling along with a slight injury to the foot, and if they can't keep up with the main group, they may not last the night.
Wow.
Lord Acton, he's very observant of animals.
Yeah, he's well-rounded.
I guess he was making that recording when he was also doing some filming for Nat Geo way back in the day.
Yes, in the 19th century, yeah.
Yeah. So yeah, the pawns wanted their children to have much better lives than they had growing up.
And I have to say here that just being born and growing up in Canada set Jennifer and Felix light years ahead of their parents.
But Huey and Bic would do everything they could to ensure that their children would be top students.
So that they could get into the best colleges Canada had to offer and be on their way to obtaining high paying careers.
It is reasonable.
It is, yeah.
But the extent they went was a little too much.
And I thought my parents were too hard on me growing up when all they wanted was the bare minimum, you know what I mean?
But man, I can't even imagine what life like that would be like.
Just every moment of your existence is dictated to you.
And it's just this automaton extension of these people who birthed you through a hip-breaking experience.
Sometimes it's just not good enough.
The parents want more and more and more.
And it's just not good enough.
We're all human.
We're all human in the end.
And we do human things like human people want.
Jennifer is no different.
So when Jennifer's grades started to slip and she was getting those shameful and troubling bees on her report cards, she knew her parents would not be happy with her.
Now, Scott, I want you to put yourself in this girl's shoes for a minute, you know, so this shouldn't be too difficult for you.
Now, take a guess at what she would do.
What did I do to you today, man?
What do you mean?
Did I do something earlier to anger you in some way?
Or did I not caramelize the surface of my homemade creme brulee enough for you?
Did I not put enough salt in the soup?
What is going on, man?
Tell me.
Tell me.
It's nothing like that, my friend.
And you actually caramelized the creme brulee perfectly.
I've never seen a finer job.
Oh. Well...
Thanks, man.
That makes me feel really good.
It's actually a technique I learned from Mary Berry on The Great British Baking Show.
Oh, yeah.
Excellent. That show, I mean.
But yeah, great work.
The soup, on the other hand, far too bland, man.
Far too bland.
Oh, yeah.
So I guess the coriander maybe wasn't coming through and maybe a little too much bay leaf.
I think it was all bay leaf.
Yeah. I did put about 45 bay leafs in there, so yeah, I'm not surprised.
I don't know what kind of soup that was, but...
It was Soup Saturday yesterday, man, so it is what it is.
You're stuck with what you got.
But I guess I'll try harder on the soup next time.
Maybe next time.
But to postulate an answer to your question before you belittle me any further, I'd have to guess that she lied to her parents about her grades.
I'd have to say that she probably even went as far as faking her report cards.
I mean, am I on the right track?
It's the only reasonable explanation here.
Yes, sir.
Correct on both accounts.
What she would do is she would take her report card that represented her reprehensible bees, and she had set that aside.
Then she'd take older report cards that represented her more praiseworthy A's, cut those little letters out, then glue them over the new report card showing those.
Bees. Then put that into one of those evil copy machines and make copies.
And this worked.
Wow, the old switcheroo.
Nice employment of it, I have to say.
Jennifer's real grades, those incredibly embarrassing bees, they were still good enough for her to be accepted into Ryerson University, which is in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
But unfortunately...
For her, she would fail her calculus class in grade 12, resulting in her not being able to graduate, and Ryerson University would rescind their offer.
Could you imagine the devastation when she got that notice in the mail and how horrible it would have been?
Oh, it would hurt.
Just knowing.
I mean, not even for her, but just knowing how her parents were going to take it, bro.
Yeah. Yeah.
Jeez. I have to say, like, even through all the BS, I never did fail a class in school.
Never did fail a class.
So already lying about her high school grades and telling her parents that she'd been accepted into Ryerson, she just kept up the charade and told them that she would be starting college in the fall.
Jennifer told them that it was her plan to finish two years of science there and then transfer to the University of Toronto's pharmacology program, which is what her father, Hue, wanted her to do.
He was proud of his daughter for what he only knew as the truth and bought her a congratulatory laptop.
But let's just back up about a year.
This is an important part of the story here.
While in high school, grade 11, Jennifer would meet a boy named Daniel Chi Kwong Wong, who was of Chinese and Filipino descent.
He played the trumpet in the school band and also in the marching band outside of school.
The two were at first just friends up until the band would take a school trip to Europe in 2003.
Oh, the old band trip away from the rents, dude.
After they had performed a show in a venue packed with smokers, Jennifer suffered an asthma attack.
Daniel was right there to comfort her and calm her down.
Later, she would say that he had saved her life and that it meant everything to her.
Aww, so romantic.
Yeah, so that summer they started dating officially.
And at some point, Daniel had to transfer from Mary Ward to a different school called Cardinal Carter Academy because of his poor grades.
Oh man, shitty.
This didn't stop them from dating though.
And later on, Daniel would attend York University for further study.
This is the third largest university in Canada and has about 56,000 students with about 7,000 staff and faculty.
He was seen as a very bright student with a great future ahead of him.
Ah, well, until a vagina came along.
One word, Scott.
Teeth of the original.
They are terrifying and often deadly.
Did you know there's actually a condition called urethophobia or copophobia?
Or genitophobia, where a person has a real fear of the vagina.
And on the other hand, someone who fears the penis, oh, the God-forbidden penis, has what's called...
Foulophobia. Oh, man.
I was not aware of these phobias, but I mean, I feel like there's probably a phobia for anything.
Oh, there is.
So now that Daniel has been introduced, let's go back to after she accepted that laptop from her father.
Obviously, there were many opportunities for her to stop playing this game and come clean.
I mean, she had unlimited opportunities to stop at any time, but she just kept putting coal into the furnace.
Choosing to carry on, she now knew that she had to make it look like she was attending college.
So she went out and found all the used textbooks that she needed and bought all the school supplies that would be necessary to fool even the most seasoned of investigators.
Yeah, you know, like an ALF lunchbox, which, you know, comes with a matching thermos.
That's number one.
Gotta have that.
Hell yeah.
Erasers, permanent markers, pencil sharpeners, a glue stick maybe.
I'm thinking she probably had a handful of crayons.
And, you know, a pencil pouch just to put it all in.
And a Trapper Keeper with the sweet A-Team graphics, bro.
What else?
What do you think?
What else?
Nothing, man.
That's it.
That's all one needs.
Oh, yeah.
Just college 101 kit, you know?
College 101 kit.
That's all you need.
What did you have in your college kit, bro?
Oh, fuck, bro.
Well, not the Elf Lunchbox.
I definitely missed out on that.
Yeah. I didn't have a lunchbox at all.
I think all I had was like some Groupons.
Yeah, I just had a backpack with, I don't know, my books and a pencil.
Yeah, I think I had a 40 of Mickeys.
I think that's about, that was in my college, my first day of college kit, if I'm not mistaken.
A little Edward Fortyhands.
With supplies in hand, she then pretended to attend freshman week in the beginning of fall semester, and her parents would see her off with hugs, kisses, and smiles.
When it came to the topic of tuition and how she was going to pay for it all, she told them that she had received an OSAP loan, which is Ontario's financial aid program, and furnished the doctor documents to prove it.
She also convinced her parents that she had won a $3,000 scholarship.
Oh, my gosh.
She's getting in so deep.
Like, this lie is...
Like, at first, you're kind of like, okay, all right.
It's like a movie.
It's like a movie.
But, like, I mean, just forging the documents for the scholarship and the financial aid program, and, like, her parents, they have no idea.
Like, they don't know.
Next was being able to prove that she was actually attending classes.
Because remember, her parents, more specifically her dad, were helicopter parents.
And helicopter parents, for those who don't know, are parents who pay excessive attention to the children's every move.
They are highly involved and overprotective.
They oversee every aspect of the children's lives.
And I should note here that, as Jennifer's high school friend Karen Ho said, Hue was a classic tiger dad.
And Bic...
Oh, that's so interesting.
So it was really more of her father being overbearing and expectant and not so much the mother.
So that's different from some of the family dynamics that I witnessed when I was in high school.
We did have some pretty traditional families who helicoptered their children.
And I'm talking music lessons every day after school.
Had to go to after-school classes just in some studies just to make sure that they had the best possible.
And honestly, dude, by the time they got to college, they were burnt crispy.
And they just ended up doing, like, nothing remarkable.
It's sad.
You know, it didn't work out very well for these people that I'm thinking.
I'm not going to name any names.
But it was the moms in those cases that were the overbearing figures and not the dads.
But yeah, it's just really interesting that in Jennifer's case, it was more her father who was the one being overbearing.
I actually wasn't expecting that.
Right. I mean, they both were, but it was really her dad, Hue, who took the lead in directing the upbringing and future for the children.
And Bic, the mom, was sort of on the sidelines.
And there would even be times when she would tell Hue to just let Jennifer be herself because he was always asking about every detail about everything.
And so Jennifer knew that her father would be interested in seeing and hearing about everything she was learning in school, especially since she was studying pharmacology, which was her father's interest.
And so she would take...
Her forged textbooks, which she thought that she would need for the classes, and all of her notebooks, and her pencil pouch and Power Rangers Trapper Keeper, and she would take the public transit downtown telling her parents she was heading to class, but she was really going to public libraries where she would look online for all of the relevant topics that she needed to know with only one purpose in mind,
to fool her parents and everyone around her.
Jennifer would literally sit there for hours and fill her notebooks with handwritten notes about all these numerous topics in which she would then show her parents when they asked about her classes were going.
It just sounds so painful and stressful.
Like, I feel like there'd be so, so much stress hormone in her system.
Like, I feel like her gray matter in her brain would be slowly disappearing.
Probably, man.
She's so stressed out, dude.
And to help pay for her secret life, she took up a job as a server at a restaurant and later did some bartending work at the pizza shop where her boyfriend, Daniel, worked as a kitchen manager.
She would also teach piano lessons on the side.
And in order to cover all of her bases, she would also need to lie to the vast majority of friends she had around her in the event her parents were to speak to any of them.
But this did not slow her down for a moment.
For two years.
Two whole years.
730 days.
Oh, well, unless there's a leap year in there, bud.
Alright, true.
And so if either of those two years happened to be a leap year, then there would have been 731 days.
Thank you for that, Scott.
You know, that's what I'm here for, bro.
Wayne Dale keeps making me sign things.
All these long legal documents.
I'm talking pages and pages of very fine print, so I'm just trying to keep it on the ups.
Really? Well, I wonder what that's about.
I mean, do you read them?
What are they?
Do I read them?
Hell no, I don't read them, man.
Ain't got time for that shit, bro.
Ain't got no time for that.
You should probably read those.
But Jennifer would keep this up while, quote-unquote, enrolled at Ryerson University.
At that two-year mark, her father would begin asking her about the transfer over to the University of Toronto for the pharmacology program that she was so excited for.
So naturally, she told them that she had been accepted into the program and then suggested that instead of staying home with them, she would stay with her friend, Topaz, who lived closer to the campus, you know, for three nights out of the week.
And after some serious consideration, her father would actually agree to that arrangement.
But the one thing was, was that she wouldn't stay with Topaz at all.
Did Topaz at least know that Jennifer told her parents that?
Because she'd be like, slipping if she didn't.
Yeah, so Topaz was aware of the situation.
She was one of the very few who had any idea.
And we're talking only like two, three people knew this.
So Jennifer would actually stay with Daniel and his parents from Monday until Wednesday.
And then stay with her parents Thursday through Sunday.
Even Daniel's parents were being lied to, because, well, they had to be to keep up with the charades.
They would often ask Jennifer to meet with her parents, but she would always come up with some workable excuse after the other of why they couldn't.
So Scott, two more years.
She does two more years like this.
Like, how the fuck?
That's so crazy.
So you're carrying on this secret relationship.
You have parents that aren't all that far away from each other, but have still never met each other, and everybody's like, cool with this.
I mean, I guess her boyfriend probably wasn't being like, oh, yeah, we're going to get married.
So, you know, there'd be real no push for people to meet up and whatnot.
Plus, they were probably a lot more well-balanced.
And, you know, she's obviously smart, right?
Oh, yeah.
She's doing a stupid thing, but she's obviously smart and she's obviously talented.
So I'm sure his parents had no idea, like, this crazy web of shit that she had going on.
Yeah, I mean, if anyone had suspicions, they kept them to themselves.
So two more years, man.
That's a total of four years of lying about attending college and forging all of these documents and all of that time spent at libraries writing copious amounts of notes just to make it seem legit.
I know.
And that's just, like, nuts to think if she had spent that time, like, actually being in a college, like, doing what she was, you know, supposed to be doing, and it just sucks because she didn't get into college.
But, I mean, for all intents and purposes, she She looks like a successful person that didn't make it to college.
That's what people do.
They get a job.
They go live.
They make a little money.
They do their hobby on the side.
So, I mean, it just sucks because her parents' version of successful wasn't in line with her actual success.
So she had to perpetrate this lie.
And to what end?
Well, that's just it, man.
To what end?
It's just crazy.
Like, I have a hard time understanding what's going through her head.
Like, what is her endgame here?
What is it she wants to ultimately accomplish with all of this?
You know, her father was so scary to her that all I think she wanted to accomplish was staying on his good side.
You know, even with the terrible lie.
So at this point, after these two other years go by, it was technically time for her to graduate the pharmacology program.
And Scott...
She was prepared for it.
She and Daniel had found someone online who agreed to make fake transcripts for Jennifer.
All A's.
Now, do you remember your graduation ceremony, Scott?
Oh, yeah, of course.
Of course I remember.
Do you recall the size of the venue?
Absolutely. Do you think you could ever have gotten away with telling your parents that there weren't enough seats and that students could only bring one guest?
No, definitely not.
Well, that's what Jennifer did.
She told them that since her class was extra large that year, there weren't enough seats for every student to bring more than one guest.
And since she could only bring one of her parents, she decided that it would be unfair to her other parent.
So she just gave her ticket to a friend.
Oof, boy.
That's pretty crazy.
Like, as a parent...
I'd call the school and I'd be like, hey, so can there be any arrangements made where we can make this work?
This is such a big day.
Are you guys going to be televising it?
And they'll be like, oh yeah, what's your student?
And then boom, you're done.
I'm thinking about all this.
I mean, you've got four years of all these lies.
Just say four years of all these lies.
You'd think at some point you would make a phone call to check one of these lies out.
Just to verify it.
You'd think.
But she was so good at manipulating her parents that her parents, I guess, just believed her so well.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, they probably just thought, wow, we succeeded.
Like, we did it.
She got a scholarship to this college that she's going to.
Yeah, they're just happy.
So, I don't know, somehow she was able to convince them.
I mean, she was their golden child, you know?
Wow. The lie had to go so deep.
And it must have been clear that this couldn't last forever.
I mean, what were her plans to show for an income from this pharmacology job that she was about to have?
Right, so she's going to have to do the same thing that she's been doing for the last four years and develop some kind of alternate plan to provide proof of an increased income.
I mean, a pharmacology job, like a pharmacist?
That's good money.
So what are you going to do, rob a bank or something?
I mean, she could just forge documents to show that she's the new...
Quote, unquote, bank manager, and then she can just, like, walk into the vault, right, and just be like, hey, I'm gonna need to audit $30,000 just to convince her dad.
Might as well.
They probably wouldn't suspect, right?
Like, she's been successful this whole other time, but anyways, yeah, she'd have to get that money and then bring it to her dad and just, like, tell him, see, they pay me cash, daddy.
Yeah, and then life just goes on without a hitch after that because he, like, totally believes her.
Man, life's so easy when it's all a fantasy, bro.
Yeah, I have no idea what she could have been thinking, man.
But I do have a statement from her about her self-perspective around this time.
She said, quote, I tried looking at myself in the third person and I didn't like who I saw, end quote.
And later she would say, quote, but rationalizations in my head said I had to keep going.
Otherwise, I would lose everything that ever meant anything to me, end quote.
So the interesting thing about that statement, it's just, it's so crazy.
So, like, she's saying she would lose everything that ever meant anything to her, and I don't know if she was starting to basically just come to grips with the potential of, like, any real-world consequences, like legal stuff, or if she was referring to her parents,
and her parents love, which would show almost like a Stockholm Syndrome level of love for them.
I mean, they are her parents after all, right?
I mean, no matter what, we just can't help but love our parents.
So she's talking about losing, maybe even losing her parents after this whole thing comes down, even after everything that they've been pushing down.
I personally think that what she was talking about, about losing everything that meant anything to her, was her parents' respect and love.
I think that's exactly what it was.
Because everything she was doing was just trying to please her parents.
That was all she wanted to do.
And she just went about it in these crazy ways, man.
True. Then, while still, quote-unquote, studying at the University of Toronto, she ran to her parents to share some very exciting news.
She had decided to volunteer at the blood testing lab at a place called Sick Kids.
Well, this might have been a bad idea.
So Jennifer goes on to tell them that she volunteered at this place and the job required late night shifts on Fridays and weekends.
Jennifer suggested that she spend an extra night at Topaz's, bringing it to four nights a week at Topaz's.
But this is when Hue was really starting putting all these little pieces together and he notices that Jennifer doesn't have a uniform or a key card from sick kids.
So the next morning, Hue demanded that he would drop Jennifer off at the hospital where she worked.
They drove there, and once Hue parked the car, Jennifer ran as fast as she could inside.
Hue told Bic to follow her inside, which she did.
Jennifer would hide, and when she saw her mom looking for her, she then hid in the waiting area of the ER for about three hours until Hue and Bic left.
Oh my gosh.
Just the crazy desperation in that moment to run into this establishment where you have no association and just try to pull it off.
Staff is like, um, excuse me?
Can we help you?
And you're just like, no, go away.
Or whatever she said to people.
She's hiding in the fucking ER, dude.
That's so crazy.
I'm thinking about what's going on in her mind on the ride there the whole time.
Like, she's like, fuck, what do I do?
What am I gonna do?
What a just...
Oh, man.
Like, I wonder if she just almost went crazy numb, because you know she had to have, like, adrenaline at this point.
Oh, yeah.
Just surging.
Oh, yeah.
Through her system, like, thinking of...
Obviously, she was good at thinking of ways to get out of shit, right?
She'd been doing that for four years.
So she's spending this whole car ride thinking, like, how am I going to get out of this?
How am I going to get out of this?
I could just run right for this.
I could go for this.
Because she's probably never even been to this fucking place.
So she doesn't know...
She's not even familiar with the layout, right?
Yeah. I mean, probably.
And it's like, she just...
Doesn't that look sketchy?
To where parents, you just jump out of the car and run inside and hide, right?
What the hell's going on?
Yeah, they're like, whoa.
Especially if they're already a little bit suspicious.
I mean, they're gonna be like, whoa, what the fuck is going on?
Yeah. So early the next morning, they called Jennifer's friend Topaz and asked where Jennifer was.
It was right then that the whole thing came crashing down.
Jennifer would arrive home and broken.
Her father would confront her and she would confess.
She would confess that she didn't volunteer at SickKids, that she had never been in the University of Toronto's pharmacology program, and since she wasn't staying at Topaz's house the whole time, where was she?
So she confessed that she had indeed been staying at Daniel's.
But she chose not to tell him about the whole not graduating high school thing and that other thing at Ryerson University, you know, the two years over there.
She didn't confess to all of that.
So now she's back home full-time.
Her parents are way more restrictive than they were before.
Now they are going to monitor her every move like a Hodgson's hot cuckoo.
Nothing's getting out of their sights.
First... Hue kicked her out of the house, but Bic got him to relinquish his command and was able to calm things down.
But he took away her laptop and phone for two weeks and could only use them in her parents' presence.
But, Scott...
You know how this goes in desperate times while in the throes of desperate love?
Oh yeah, my buddy.
Jennifer was forbade from seeing Daniel ever again.
She was also ordered to quit all of her jobs except for the teaching piano part.
She could still do that because she was just so good at it.
And they also began to track the mileage on the odometer on the car that she drove.
Whoa! Dude, they're going so nuts!
Like instead of turning the spotlight in on themselves and thinking, hmm, is it possible that we had contributed to this massive lie somehow?
Like why did our daughter feel the need to go to all these great lengths?
Instead of doing that, they tightened down the screws, leaving no meter unchecked.
I mean, we're talking oil being measured, radiator fluid.
Break fluid.
Windshield washer fluid, bro.
Nothing is getting past them now.
Fingerprints on the radio.
They're like, better be some fingerprints there.
We know you like to listen to music when you're driving around.
Just like, I mean, dude, it's insane.
So now housebound, she was miserable to say the least.
But her mother was more on her side than she thought, and Bic told her where Huey hid her phone, and she would randomly check her messages in secrecy from her dad.
In February of 2009.
Jennifer snuck in a post on her Facebook account saying, Living in my house is like living under house arrest.
I bet in hindsight that sounds a hell of a lot better than where she's, I don't know, possibly living now?
I guess we'll get to that though, huh?
Yeah. So she would also post a note, and I don't know if this is just a note in the house in a refrigerator or something, or if it's an online forum type place for people to share their private lives, I don't know.
But it says in full, No one person knows everything about me, and no two people put together knows everything about me.
I like being a mystery.
Yeah, because where do you go when everything you have around you is starting to crumble, right?
You go inward, and you start to just embrace whatever you are.
Even if you don't know what you are, you're just running with it.
You're like, I'm living a life of chaos.
That's what it is.
That's what I am, and that's what I will be.
And then she would sneak phone calls with Daniel at night through the spring and summer.
Besides still seeing or talking to Daniel behind her parents' back, she did straighten up her act a little bit and even enrolled in a calculus class so she could finally graduate high school and move on from that mistake.
And because of these better decisions, her parents would slowly begin to give her a little more freedom.
Now back on the right path in life.
Things were looking a little better for 24-year-old Jennifer.
That is, except for Daniel.
He wasn't exactly happy with their situation, and he wasn't too impressed that Jennifer was 24 and still allowed herself to be dominated by her parents' rule.
He had enough of all that secrecy.
Years of secrecy.
And so he decided to end his relationship with Jennifer.
After breaking up with her...
And some months went by.
Daniel started seeing another woman named Christine who he could see openly and not have to worry about all these lies, deceit, and the manipulation.
Jeez. Well, I feel like I know the answer to this question, but how did old Jenny take the breakup?
Jennifer was absolutely destroyed.
And after finding out that Daniel was seen in this girl Christine, she decided to pull out her extra crazy card.
Oh, the extra crazy card coming out.
Alright, what's this one gonna look like?
One night, Jennifer would call Daniel.
She was hysterical and clearly in distress.
Daniel, being the compassionate person that he was, would patiently listen to her as she explained a horrible attack on her that had happened in the months after he broke up with her leading up to this phone call.
Jennifer would tell him that one night while she was home alone, she heard a knock on the front door, so she went to answer it.
When she opened the door, a man quickly found out.
Whoa! She took it to such an extreme,
dark place for this.
And as Daniel, I'm just trying to put myself in his shoes, hearing that, believing her, I mean, maybe incredulous, hard to say, right?
But she's so hysterical, you know, she's so hysterical, and the relationship went on for a long time.
So maybe he would believe her.
I mean, but she's the queen of lies.
But yeah, she is the master, though.
But he knows that, too.
I know, he knows.
So it's just like, what the fuck?
So less than a week later, she would go unaccompanied to check the mailbox outside.
You know, she's not scared to go outside or anything.
Things are chill.
You know, she just got gang raped, whatever.
She's happy, glowing, and the world is her oyster.
Yeah, that does seem a little weird.
So she opens the mailbox and inside she finds a bullet enclosed in an envelope addressed to her.
And that was all that was there.
Oh, sure.
Yeah, just having to take it one step further like she always does, you know.
Who's this bullet gonna be from?
Let me guess.
Yeah, so to her, the gang rape and the bullet were warnings from Christine, Daniel's new girlfriend, basically telling Jennifer to leave Daniel alone.
Happens all the time.
I mean, that's pretty much what happens in relationships after a breakup.
The new girlfriend always orchestrates some violent threat against the ex-girlfriend as a warning to leave her man alone, you know?
Happens all the time.
Although I have seen quite a bit of the other end as well.
Good friends of mine breaking up with their boyfriends, and then their boyfriends threatening the new boyfriend, or...
Driving by the house and saying, I just drove by your house.
I see his car there.
Just like stalking stuff like that, dude.
Like, I've seen that too.
Guys are just as crazy sometimes.
But anyway, that's neither here nor there.
But of course, all that was a lie and a ruse to get Daniel back in her life and away from Christine.
And guess what?
It fucking worked.
Kind of.
And only briefly.
So it was during this period of time that Jennifer started to discuss eliminating the problem that had always stood in the way of their relationship, her parents'way and big pawn.
Daniel seemed a little intrigued about the idea, but he was more intrigued when Jennifer mentioned that she would be able to collect a $500,000 inheritance after her parents had passed away.
At this point, the idea was just an idea, nothing more than a fairy tale.
But in the spring of 2010, April or May, I believe, Jennifer would reconnect with her old friend from elementary school, Andrew Montemeyer, and apparently she would tell him about her father and how much she hated him.
Andrew would connect with her because he also hated his dad, and even told her that he had planned to kill his dad at one point.
This put quite a spark in Jennifer's conniving brain, and it really gave her the push to really consider killing her own dad.
She reveled in the thoughts about how much better her life would be without the existence of her father being around.
Andrew and Jennifer would discuss this matter for a while, and then Andrew would bring up the name Ricardo Duncan.
According to Andrew, this goth kid would offer her dad for pretty cheap.
Jennifer liked the sound of that, so he would later introduce Jennifer to Ricardo.
According to Jennifer.
She and Ricardo would meet in between the piano lessons that she was teaching to develop a plan to kill her dad in the parking lot as he was leaving work at the auto parts company that he worked at for over 30 years.
Jennifer would eventually give Ricardo $1,500 to do the deed, which was money she earned from the piano lessons.
After that, it was agreed that they would later arrange the date for the hit and Jennifer would call him when she was ready.
When she was ready.
Ricardo just ignored her calls and texts.
He wasn't gonna kill her, Dad.
Of course.
I saw it coming from a mile away.
Paying in advance?
Yeah. You don't pay till the job is done, bro.
What was she thinking?
Yeah. Hired hitman payment 101.
Yeah, seriously.
Anyways. So Jennifer realized that she got ripped off.
So she went back to Daniel and the idea of that $500,000 in the house and the cars and everything else really sounded good to Daniel.
And Jennifer, for that matter, seeing that she'd apparently do anything for this dude.
This is when Daniel would bring Lenford Roy Crawford into the picture.
His street name was Homeboy, and he was a Jamaican-born criminal at heart, and he could do a contract killing.
Jennifer was ecstatic.
When asked how much he charged, he told her it would be $20,000, but since she was a friend of Daniel's, he would do it for half the price, $10,000.
Wow, cut her a deal.
Well, I mean, I guess it's who you know, right?
Daniel then gave Jennifer a throwaway cell phone and a SIM card so she could safely contact Lenford.
Lenford would then get in touch with his homie, Eric Sean Carty, and he in turn would get in touch with his homie, David Milvagenum.
These three men would be directly involved with the murder-for-hire plot.
On Halloween of 2010, Lenford scouted the house using the holiday as cover and on November 2nd, Daniel would text Jennifer telling her that he really liked Christine.
Then began a string of texts about Jennifer wanting to call it off due to Daniel's feelings for Christine and Daniel telling her that he had set everything up for her and that she said that she wanted to do this with or without him.
And then Jennifer would say, quote, I want it for me, end quote.
Later that day, Lenford would text Jennifer asking for the date to carry it out.
And for the next week, they would work out a plan that would work for everyone.
November 8th would be decided.
crazy. Just to go through all these steps and you got the person and.
There's so many times you'd be like, no, I'm not doing this.
But when this girl's just been like literally she's been pushed into being this crazy.
And if he didn't say, like, look, Jennifer, you said you want to do this for you.
Like, if he didn't say those words, she probably would have just called it off.
But Daniel just kept pushing her, man.
So on the evening of November 8th, Jennifer stayed in her room and watched two of your favorite TV shows, Scott.
Gossip Girl and John and Kate Plus 8. Ah, yes.
Those are my nighttime cozy feeling.
Sit down with a nice wheel of cheese and slowly heat it up.
Just spooning it into my mouth watching this show.
Gossip girl.
Under a glowing lamp covered in my Snuggie.
Oh man, that sounds really nice.
Good stuff, man.
Good stuff.
Her dad was down the hall from her bedroom, which is upstairs on the second floor, in his bedroom reading the Vietnamese newspaper.
And he would go to bed around 8.30pm.
Bic was out at her line dancing classes and would return home at about 9.30pm.
Felix, her brother, He was away at university studying engineering.
Oh man, successful one.
Yeah, the real golden child.
Yeah, seriously.
At 9.35pm, David Milvagenum would call Jennifer and they discussed what was going to happen over the next several minutes.
After that phone call, Jennifer walked downstairs to say goodnight to her mother and then she walked to the front door to unlock it without her mother seeing.
Wow. At this point, you have to wonder, okay, there's definitely adrenaline.
We know that for sure.
But is it resolve?
Is it fear?
Is it both?
Is it excitement?
Is it numbness?
Like, what was it?
What was she feeling?
I just can't put myself there.
Like, you'd have to have that mentality to understand it.
But, man.
True. True.
And you'd have to go through all of the oppression prior to, like, have a...
Have, like, the feelings, like the depth of feeling, obviously, that's led her to go to these lengths.
But yeah, no, I obviously couldn't do it.
No, fuck that.
That's insane, man.
So, she went back upstairs, and at 10.02 p.m., a light in one of the rooms turned on, and exactly one minute later, it turned off.
This was the signal for the intruders to break into the house and murder her parents.
Three minutes later...
David called Jennifer again and they talked for several more minutes.
And only moments later, Eric Carty, Lenford Crawford, and David Milvagenham, all armed with guns, walked through the unlocked front door.
Immediately encountering Bick, she was held at gunpoint while the other two went upstairs.
One would go after Huey and ordered him out of bed and to get downstairs.
Eric Carty would go to Jennifer's room.
And the plan was to make it look like all three of the pans were victims.
He would tie her arms using a shoelace behind her back, and then she would walk him around the house to where she knew her parents kept money.
One of those places was downstairs in her mother's wallet, so they headed downstairs where everyone else was.
Downstairs, Hue and Bic were asking each other how they got inside the house.
And one of the men decided to pistol-whip Huey in the head and took his wallet for the $60 inside.
Bick began to cry and just pleaded with the men not to hurt their daughter, and one of the men would say, quote-unquote, At that point, Eric Carty brought Jennifer back upstairs where he sloppily tied her arms to the banister on the stairs.
David and Lenford Oh my gosh,
dude. I don't understand that part.
Why they would shoot...
The father, once in the face, I know it was an accident for the shoulder, but they literally shot the mom three times in the head, making sure she was dead.
But why didn't they do that to the dad?
It's just weird to me.
It's unclear from the description who actually did the shooting.
I wonder if the first one was just like...
Not really sure of himself?
Yeah, he's not sure of himself.
He hasn't done these hits or whatever.
Shoots him in the shoulder, shoots him in the face.
He's like, okay, that's how that feels.
Then shoots three times in the head.
Right. You know, but regardless, like, it's just so.
All of the men then fled the house, leaving Jennifer barely tied to the banister railing upstairs.
So she easily managed to loosen the shoelace and get to the phone that she had in her waistband, which she used to call the police.
While on the phone with 911, Jennifer would feign cries, saying, Help me, please.
I need help.
I don't know where my parents are.
Please hurry.
My biggest fear right now is that I'll wake up, and this conversation won't be a dream.
While on the phone with 911, at the 34-second mark, Wade can be heard in the background moaning and yelling for help.
As he was crawling up the stairs, Jennifer yelled down to him that she had called 911.
We stumbled outside, screaming to get all the attention he could get.
And neighbors would be up getting ready for work and would call 911 as well.
The police and an ambulance would arrive within minutes.
We would be airlifted to Sunnybrook Hospital, who are more suited to handle traumatic bullet wounds to the head.
Jennifer would be interviewed almost immediately and she would tell authorities that the three men entered the house looking for money.
They tied her to the banister while they took her parents to the basement and shot them.
That was pretty much all she could tell them at that time.
Two days later, they would give her a second interview when her mind was cleared up a little bit.
After some brief questioning, they then asked her to play out the scenario of how she was tied to the banister and able to contort her body and able to get the old flip phone out of her waistband.
She did this, but the police felt that something was sketchy about the whole thing.
They wondered why nothing of value was taken, like the Lexus was at the front door with its keys right there in plain sight.
I wonder, like, why nothing of value was taken, like the Lexus was at the front door and its keys were right there in plain view next to the door.
And they wondered.
Why the intruders didn't bring with them like a crowbar to get in, or a backpack to carry shit, or zip ties to restrain the victims.
I mean, we're wondering why the intruders didn't bring with them like a crowbar to get in, you know, maybe a backpack to carry some shit, or like zip ties to restrain the victims.
They also wondered why these intruders would shoot two witnesses but leave one completely unharmed.
I'm wondering why these intruders would shoot two witnesses but leave one completely unharmed.
The authorities were very suspicious of Jennifer and even placed her under surveillance to monitor her movements.
Just like her parents.
Oh, shit.
On November 12th, Hue woke up from a three-day drug-induced coma.
The bullet had broken part of the orbital bone by his eye, and there were bullet fragments lodged into his head that the doctors were not able to remove.
He also had a shattered neck bone, and miraculously, the bullet actually grazed the carotid artery, which would have meant certain death.
Man, this dude is tough as nails, bro.
Huey could also remember the entire series of events that occurred only days earlier.
He remembered two real specific things that stuck in his memory at the time of the events happening.
He recalled that Jennifer was talking with the intruders as if they were friends.
She didn't seem scared or anything like that.
And the other thing he thought was odd was that her arms were not tied behind her back while she was being moved around the house, which was contrary to what she was telling the police.
Ugh, she's hit, bro.
It's not like this dad doesn't have an eye for details, and he already doesn't trust her and knows that she's a liar.
She's hit!
Yep. Something was smelling awfully like COVID.
Yes, it does smell fishy.
November 22nd rolls around and the police have Jennifer come in for a third interview.
In this interview, the interrogating officer, William Goetz, falsely told Jennifer that they had computer software that could analyze what she is saying as either truthful or untruthful, and that they had satellites.
That used infrared technology to analyze movements in buildings.
This probably freaked this girl out.
Smart, smart.
After hours of interrogation, Jennifer would finally admit that she hired hit men.
Wow, I wonder at what point she just broke down and finally said it and how the police reacted.
You know they're so good at not reacting.
When they're in the moment.
Because they don't want to fuck anything up for the trial.
We're talking three different interrogations and hours in each of these interrogations.
But she said that she hired the hitman to murder her, not her parents.
Oh man, just couldn't get through one more scenario with the whole truth.
Had to do another lie.
Had to bend it a little bit.
So get this.
In Canada, the police there are legally allowed to lie to the people that they are interrogating.
In regards to what technique the goats used, he used what is called the Reed technique.
Reed was a polygraphist and a former Chicago police officer, and he developed this high-pressure environment for the person being interrogated, then given sympathy and understanding and forgiveness and all that shit, all to help get a confession.
And this has become a mainstay of police procedure to this day, especially in the United States.
The technique was proven to result in an unacceptably high rate of false confessions, or those who are strong-willed will just stop talking and therefore don't give any information for detectives to work with, you know, to prove or manufacture their guilt.
Yeah, that sounds about right.
So after getting intensely goatsed for nearly four hours, Jennifer kept asking, But what happens to me?
Can I, like, keep teaching piano lessons?
Can I at least have my phone to text Daniel?
happens to me?
She said that the plan was to commit suicide, but it went horribly wrong.
You see, Jennifer gave up on life and wanted to die.
She wanted to kill herself, but she didn't have the ovaries to do it herself.
Therefore, she needed to hire someone to break into her family's home and shoot her.
Obviously. So she found someone named Homeboy, who we know to be Lenford Crawford, who would have no problem taking her out.
Like we said earlier, her relationship improved with her dad and she needed to call off the hit on herself.
Unfortunately, whoever was supposed to be relaying information messed up big time.
You had one job to do!
One job!
So instead of calling the self-hit on Jennifer off, the hitman showed up anyway and killed her parents instead.
Again, how did that defense not work?
Well, yeah, you're right.
I mean, I'm left scratching my head on this one.
Jennifer was arrested on November 22, 2010, and they had no problem whatsoever in tracking down everybody involved.
Lanford Crawford was put into custody on May 4, 2011.
Eric Carty was already being held in the Maplehurst Correctional Complex on another crime on April 15, 2011.
David Milvaganum was taken down while enjoying a day at the Jane Finch Mall on April 14, 2011.
And Daniel Wong would be arrested at his place of employment on April 26, 2011.
All five of them were charged with first-degree murder, attempted murder, and conspiracy to commit murder.
The trial started on March 19, 2014, and lasted about 10 months.
More than 50 witnesses were called to testify, and more than 200 exhibits were filed.
Jennifer herself took the stand for a full seven days and attempted to explain away all of her texts with everybody involved.
And while she did admit that she did order a hit on her dad back in August of 2010, three months later she changed her mind.
I feel like the prosecution's job on this one would have been so easy.
I mean, because all they have to do is paint her out to be a manipulator.
A liar and a crazy person.
And they have all of this evidence against her.
It's all there.
There wasn't one thing that she did that didn't make her out to look like a lying psycho.
I know, man.
It's so crazy, dude.
So, all but Eric Carty would be sentenced to two life terms in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.
Two run concurrently.
That's together as if they're just one sentence.
Eric Carty's trial was postponed because his attorney became sick.
When his attorney gathered himself and was well enough to enter the courtroom again, Eric would be found guilty and given 18 years.
But on April 26, 2018, he passed away in his cell.
Oh, wow.
What happened?
Well, according to a police source, Eric was shanked to death in his cell.
Oh, wow.
Well, for our younger listeners, to be shanked is to be stabbed with a makeshift knife or tool or any other sharp instrument that's been fastened into a blade.
Yeah, for the purpose of stabbing.
The more you know.
The court put an order in place at the request of the Pond family that Jennifer is not to contact her brother or her father ever again.
Although... Her lawyer did address the court saying that Jennifer is open to communication if they ever wanted to.
Her father wrote a victim impact statement.
Hue wrote, quote, When I lost my wife, I lost my daughter at the same time.
I don't feel like I have a family anymore.
Some say I should feel lucky to be alive, but I feel like I am dead too.
I hope my daughter Jennifer thinks about what has happened to her family and can become a good, honest person someday.
End quote.
Today, Jennifer Pond is incarcerated at the Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada.
Well, that's coming up.
Well, yeah.
Poor guy had nothing to do with any of this.
And just had these terrible life events occur one right after the other.
It'd be fucking awful.
It's so awful.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, that is the story of Jennifer Pond.
And the sources for today's episode come from torontolife.com, dailymail.co.uk, wikipedia.org, and a bunch of other websites.
On a personal note, there's never an excuse for murder.
But I do feel like in this case it's understandable how she was pressured to that point.
I mean, it's terrible that she got her mom involved.
I mean, it's terrible that anybody had to die.
Nobody did have to die.
But the way they raised her, it messed her up.
And she had to go to extreme lengths to try to prove that she was worthy of their love and respect.
Because coming clean wouldn't have gone very well.
She did have many times to back out and make a better decision, and she chose not to.
And you can't blame all of your life's choices on your parents.
You just can't.
So she was a big girl.
She made the decision to do what she did in the end, and I support the life term.
I think it's terrible that her family had to suffer.
Yeah, it's extremely unfortunate.
I mean, she's 24. Obviously a woman who can make her own decisions and choices.
If she would only have just gotten that valedictorian in 8th grade.
Ah yes, the missing piece.
That was the turning point.
That's where it all started going downhill.
So ladies and gentlemen, please help us out and click that subscribe button.
By doing so, you will help others notice our show and you'll get our weekly upload.
We have a great episode lined up for next week.
People murdered by pets.
Oh yeah, man.
Your pets might murder you, so you gotta watch out for those guys.
Or girls.
Sometimes people think they can supersede the law of the jungle, but you can't.
You know, what they're doing is they are just observing you and waiting for the moment to strike.
Absolutely. It's like you enter into an unspoken game of chess where...
The first move is made when you purchase the animal.
The next move goes to the animal itself.
And you never know what that's going to be.
There's no time clock.
There's no time clock.
But you know what?
It's probably going to be checkmate.
Nine times out of ten.
The queen gets the king.
You know what I mean?
Watch out for your pets.
But yeah, that's what we will be doing next week.
So come back.
Come back.
Grab your field glasses, your safari hat, your sunscreen, your encyclopedia.
Encyclopedia. Bug spray.
Because we're going to take you on a wild ride through the dung-infested...
No, let's just take that part out.
Now, we are going to be traveling all over the world with these pets who murder stories.
If you like travel, intrigue, murder, if you're a foodie, this is going to be the episode for you.
So come back.
Listen to it.
It's going to be awesome.
It's going to be great, guys.
Oh, yeah.
And you can also check out our Twitter page at Paranautica and our Facebook page and our Reddit page where you can talk shit to Wayne Dale.
We honestly have no idea what goes on over there, but Wayne Dale's on top of it.
Oh yeah, that's Wayne Dale's territory.
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And send us an email, if you would, at paranautica at gmail dot com.
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