The Ivy League Murder

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Speaker 2 You start dealing with a series of shootings. It's a little out of the ordinary.
Take me me through that.

Speaker 3 The first shooting occurs on December 11th, 2020 at Huntington Street in New Haven. There's a report of five gunshots in the area.
The residents were struck multiple times.

Speaker 3 The house was occupied, but nobody was hit. When police responded, they located multiple.45 caliber shell casings at the scene.
There's a second shooting that occurs January 15th, 2021.

Speaker 3 The third shooting occurred February 5th. A fourth incident occurred on February 6th.
It's another residence. It was occupied, but nobody was hurt inside.

Speaker 3 There were five rounds that were shot into. It was occupied.
Fortunately, nobody was hit. The residence was struck multiple times by gunfire.
Nobody was injured.

Speaker 3 Patrol officers located one.45 caliber located in multiple casings. 45 caliber.
45 caliber shell casings were located at the scene.

Speaker 2 Four shootings over a few months. Do they have anything in common?

Speaker 3 The combined mirror was the caliber of the gun that was used. It's 45-caliber casings that were located at all four of those scenes.

Speaker 3 And in the last two shootings, there was a description of a dark-colored SUV.

Speaker 2 Are officers concerned that at some point, someone is going to get hurt?

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 5 8:30 Saturday night, residents in the East Rock neighborhood heard the distinct sound of gunfire.

Speaker 3 On February 6th, at around 8:30 p.m., we get the report of a person shot at Lawrence and Nichols Street in New Haven.

Speaker 3 That person was later identified as Kevin Jong and was pronounced deceased on the scene.

Speaker 3 We located 8.45 caliber shell casings.

Speaker 3 There were a few 911 callers that saw a dark-colored SUV flee the area.

Speaker 5 A sense of shock and sadness has settled on the Yale University community after the Saturday night shooting death of grad student Kevin Gian.

Speaker 1 What's up everyone? Welcome to another episode of Fitness with Kevin. I'm Kevin.

Speaker 6 It still doesn't feel real.

Speaker 6 You know, like it still doesn't feel real.

Speaker 7 You're such a cutie.

Speaker 8 He was just a very happy person.

Speaker 8 A very genuine soul.

Speaker 5 The victim was a student at Yale's School of the Environment, originally from Chicago. He was an Army vet who posted on Facebook just a week ago his joy in getting engaged.

Speaker 8 He was so in love with Zion. He was just like, oh, Zion this and Zion that.
Like everything was about Zion. He really loved her.

Speaker 2 So you guys walk up to the scene. What do you see?

Speaker 3 Kevin's body, he was laying on his right side. His feet were on the stop line here, and his head was towards the first line of the crosswalk.

Speaker 3 And then we see the casings. There's a shell casing by the bottom of of the S and a few feet from the P and then there were six more spread out by the first crosswalk line.

Speaker 3 We could see gunshot wounds to his upper body and to his head. There were some shots that were at close range.

Speaker 2 There was something personal about this.

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 3 We'll use Facebook as a tool to try and get a little bit background.

Speaker 10 on an individual who they're friends with.

Speaker 2 And so you're going down the list of names. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

Speaker 11 And then you're like, whoa.

Speaker 9 There's our connection.

Speaker 12 Anne-Marie Green reports the Ivy Lead murder.

Speaker 2 It was a cold night in February 2021 when lead detective David Zoweski and his colleague Stephen Cunningham arrived at the crime scene.

Speaker 3 The patrol officers had already been out there canvassing the area. They were knocking on doors looking for anyone that might have seen anything or heard anything.

Speaker 3 The crime scene detectives were starting to locate all the shell casings.

Speaker 2 26-year-old Yale graduate student Kevin Jong was lying in the street, shot eight times.

Speaker 3 His body was still on scene, covered in a white sheet.

Speaker 2 When you saw the body, what did you see?

Speaker 3 What we could see were contract wounds to his upper body and to his head. And you can see stippling on the left side of his head.

Speaker 2 Stipling is a burn pattern caused by gunpowder exploding from a weapon fired at close range.

Speaker 2 About 100 feet down the street.

Speaker 3 There was a Prius just parked in the middle of the road with his hazards on.

Speaker 2 They quickly discovered the Prius belonged to Kevin. Crime scene detectives noticed a peculiar bit of damage that suggested it had been hit from behind.

Speaker 3 There was an impression that was left on the back bumper that looked like a license plate holder.

Speaker 2 So this is like a fender mender. It's not a violent crash.

Speaker 3 No, there's not much damage.

Speaker 2 One witness told detectives she heard the sound of an accident and went to the window to look.

Speaker 3 When they look out, they see a Prius come to a stop and put his hazards on. They see a dark-colored SUV pull up behind it and then reverse back towards the intersection.

Speaker 3 They see the operator of the Prius walk out and approach the SUV, most likely to see how they were, exchange insurance information.

Speaker 3 When the operator gets to the black SUV, they hear a round of gunshots. and they see the muzzle flash from the gun from the driver's side of the SUV.

Speaker 2 Another witness heard the first round of gunshots and went to her window.

Speaker 3 When she looks outside, she sees a subject wearing all black standing over another individual who's laying on the ground.

Speaker 3 She hears another round of gunshots and she can see the muzzle flash from the gun as he's firing.

Speaker 2 She sees someone standing over another person, which means the victim is already down

Speaker 2 and they're still shooting. Yes.
What did you think?

Speaker 3 There's a little bit more to it. It seems like a little bit more personal.
When you have someone that's laying on the ground and not moving, what would cause someone to continue firing at them?

Speaker 2 The detectives were able to confirm these accounts when they got a look at video from a neighbor's security system.

Speaker 3 It was located on the inside of a window facing outward.

Speaker 2 Because most of the frame is a reflection of the interior of the house, we've zoomed in to focus on what's happening on the street. A warning this may be difficult to listen to.

Speaker 3 We hear the collision between the two cars. And then that's when you see Kevin's Prius pull into frame and the SUV pulls up behind him

Speaker 3 and then reverses out of frame.

Speaker 3 You see Kevin exit his vehicle and then walk out of frame to approach the SUV.

Speaker 3 You then hear two gunshots,

Speaker 3 a scream,

Speaker 3 And then six more gunshots.

Speaker 2 Moments later, the video shows the SUV driving off into the night. Can you make out any details when it comes to the SUV?

Speaker 3 Unfortunately not. You could kind of get the idea of the potential and make and model of it with the taillights, but you couldn't discern any identifying features.

Speaker 2 Investigators soon felt the dark SUV and the.45 caliber shells recovered at the scene pointed to a potential link to those earlier shootings around the area that police had been investigating.

Speaker 2 Four times over a two-month span, someone fired shots into family homes. The fourth incident occurred just one hour before Kevin Jong's murder.

Speaker 3 We had detectives in the Bureau looking into each of the incidents to see if there's any more of a connection to link them.

Speaker 13 Two bullets came in through this window and ended up in this wall.

Speaker 2 Paul and Nairi White's home was the target of the third shooting.

Speaker 13 We had just finished dinner.

Speaker 15 I had a fire going.

Speaker 2 Nairi, a school teacher, headed upstairs to take a shower. Paul, an educator with degrees from Yale, Harvard, and Columbia University, was sitting downstairs.

Speaker 13 All of a sudden, something comes through this window.

Speaker 13 Then a second bullet came through. You heard the pop and the glass going everywhere with that one.

Speaker 2 Paul shouted a warning to Naireen.

Speaker 14 Get down, someone's shooting.

Speaker 6 And then I heard bang, pop again, and I turn and I literally saw the frame of the door just splinter.

Speaker 2 And then she yells back at you.

Speaker 14 Right,

Speaker 13 that's someone shooting upstairs.

Speaker 2 It was over in a matter of moments and no one was injured.

Speaker 2 Do you feel lucky?

Speaker 4 Yes. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 Absolutely. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 Detectives interviewed the whites and the occupants of the other houses.

Speaker 3 There didn't seem to be any connection between them.

Speaker 2 And none of them, investigators say, had any connection to Kevin Jong.

Speaker 2 But the shell casings from all the shootings would later tell a different story.

Speaker 3 When the casings are sent to the lab, they all came back as matches to the casings found at the homicide.

Speaker 2 The casings matched, but Kevin was the only person murdered, and detectives didn't know why.

Speaker 3 It could have been a road rage incident that turned a little too violent.

Speaker 2 Or was Kevin Jong targeted?

Speaker 17 The car accident was deliberate to get him out of the vehicle, possibly seemed like it was planned.

Speaker 3 And if he was specifically targeted, what could have happened in his life to drive someone to do this?

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Speaker 2 It was late when Detectives Zoweski and Cunningham left the crime scene on February 6th.

Speaker 2 They went to Kevin Jiang's home looking to find a family member to notify about what had happened. His mother, Linda Liu, came to the door.
It's got to be the hardest conversation.

Speaker 3 It is. They always are.

Speaker 7 Hi, Mom.

Speaker 3 Happy birthday. We want to be direct and upfront and make it clear, as horrific as it is for them.

Speaker 3 So we explained to her that that he was shot and killed in the area of Lawrence and Nicholl Street in New Haven.

Speaker 2 Can she even comprehend that?

Speaker 3 She's absolutely devastated. She falls to the ground crying.

Speaker 2 The detectives wanted to know everything about Kevin and why he may have been targeted that night. Linda began to tell them about her son.

Speaker 3 It was just the two of them. And he was actually supporting her.

Speaker 3 She told us that he was a grad student at Young University and was in the Army National Guard.

Speaker 2 Kevin was deeply religious. He and his mother were part of the congregation at Trinity Baptist Church.

Speaker 2 Pastor Gregory Hendrickson knew them both and says that Linda, a divorced single parent, got Kevin through a tough childhood where he was often bullied.

Speaker 19 She was very committed to sort of seeing him come through and eventually he thrived on the other side of that.

Speaker 19 I think he had a sense of honoring his mom by as she had cared for him when he he was a child, caring for her as she was getting older.

Speaker 2 Kevin bought this house in 2019, and Hendrickson says he invited his mother to come live with him.

Speaker 19 She was living alone. She was living on the other side of the country.

Speaker 9 She didn't have a lot of family support around her, and he wanted her to come and be with him during his studies at Yale.

Speaker 2 Police also learned that Kevin had recently gotten engaged to his girlfriend of a year, Zion Perry.

Speaker 2 She posted the proposal on Facebook.

Speaker 2 This was just one week before he was murdered.

Speaker 8 He was so in love with Zion. You could tell he didn't even have to really say too much.

Speaker 2 Naja Hubbard, who served with Kevin in the Army National Guard.

Speaker 8 Oh my gosh. So I remember one time he was on the phone with her, and I was like, wow, like you could hear the genuineness and his love towards her.

Speaker 8 And I was like, wow, I hope I found someone like that.

Speaker 2 Zion Perry grew up in Pennsylvania, where she was an honors high school student. A couple met in January of 2020 when Zion was still an undergraduate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT.

Speaker 19 He said, you know, I met her at a Christian Retreat and she's very kind and we enjoy talking and just have great conversations together. Then she came to do her PhD at Yale.

Speaker 19 They clearly shared a lot in common. They both love nature.
I mean, Zion's a scientist. She was studying molecular biophysics and biochemistry.

Speaker 17 So, you know, he was studying in the School of the Environment.

Speaker 19 They're both brilliant and hardworking students, and yet they didn't feel like their accomplishments were what defined them at the deepest level.

Speaker 2 Zaweski and Cunningham then interviewed an emotional Zion.

Speaker 2 She told them them she and Kevin had spent the day together.

Speaker 3 They had gone ice fishing and had dinner at her house, and then he left her house around 8.30 that night.

Speaker 2 Kevin didn't get far. His Prius was struck by the dark SUV just two blocks from Zion's house.

Speaker 2 Close enough for Zion to hear the gunshots that followed.

Speaker 3 She remembers hearing the gunshots, but she thought there was a good five or ten minutes after he'd left to when she heard the gunshots.

Speaker 3 So she didn't think he was anywhere near the area and didn't think twice about him potentially being involved in any way.

Speaker 2 Did she have any idea who would have done something like this?

Speaker 17 At that point, I don't know. Nothing that she told us that she could think of.

Speaker 2 After speaking with Zion, detectives were no closer to figuring out why Kevin would be a target.

Speaker 3 Seemed like just an innocent, innocent guy.

Speaker 2 Did you think this was gonna be a tough case though?

Speaker 3 That night,

Speaker 3 we had a little bit, but there wasn't a lot to go on.

Speaker 20 I just had somebody drive through my yard here.

Speaker 21 How you doing?

Speaker 2 But just 15 hours after the shooting, what are you doing back here? They got a huge break.

Speaker 3 Little did we know that we'd get the phone call the next day.

Speaker 22 I just got in here accidentally and I got stuck.

Speaker 10 And it was like, okay.

Speaker 11 Wow.

Speaker 2 News of Kevin's murder spread among his loved ones and closest friends.

Speaker 8 I was at home and I actually got a phone call from another soldier. And she was saying, I know you guys were close.
And her voice cracked. And she told me that he had passed away.

Speaker 8 And I was like, not comprehending what was going on. So I text him and I was like, answer your phone, please.
And obviously, he never answered me.

Speaker 2 Lieutenant Hubbard reached out to Captain Jamila Aye. And if sharing the news about Kevin wasn't tragic enough, someone posted the chilling video of his murder online.

Speaker 2 And his fellow soldiers now saw and heard Kevin's final moments alive.

Speaker 8 To this day, I can still hear him hear him screaming.

Speaker 8 Yeah, I was like, why did I listen to that?

Speaker 2 Detectives Zoweski and Cunningham were back at their desks in headquarters, struggling for answers and leads to pursue.

Speaker 8 Day two, you get a phone call.

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 2 The call from a sergeant at nearby North Haven Police Department was urgent.

Speaker 3 Two incidents had happened in North Haven the night before and then earlier that morning.

Speaker 2 It began with a 911 call from a local scrap metal yard around 9 p.m., less than a half hour after Kevin was killed.

Speaker 20 I'm a security guard at Simmons Metal Management.

Speaker 11 I just had somebody drive through my yard here.

Speaker 20 They didn't know where they were going, so I'd have been chasing them around the yard,

Speaker 20 and they just pulled way in the back off the property. It's like a black minivan, SUV type of thing.

Speaker 2 Police body cameras were rolling when Sergeant Jeffrey Mills and Officer Marcus Artiz spotted that vehicle stuck on snow-covered railroad tracks.

Speaker 2 Not far from the rear exit of the Sims scrap metal yard,

Speaker 2 they approached the driver.

Speaker 21 What are you doing back here though?

Speaker 22 I just got it here accidentally and I got stuck. Is there any way to get us stuck here?

Speaker 22 The only thing I can do is call you a tow truck.

Speaker 21 Okay, cool. Fix.

Speaker 2 The motorist was 29-year-old King Chin Pan from Malden, Massachusetts.

Speaker 22 Okay, do you have your driver's license on you? Yes.

Speaker 18 Registration?

Speaker 2 His driver's license and criminal background were clean. During the encounter, Sergeant Mills noticed a yellow jacket on the passenger seat.

Speaker 2 He also saw a blue bag and a briefcase in the back seat, but not much else.

Speaker 22 He took a wrong turn.

Speaker 23 He got lost.

Speaker 7 And he thought the Jeep was probably chasing him, the security guy.

Speaker 2 Because Sergeant Mills hadn't heard about Kevin's murder, he wasn't particularly concerned.

Speaker 21 Says nothing, you think?

Speaker 21 Yeah, he's

Speaker 21 kind of scrapping anything.

Speaker 22 I mean, no.

Speaker 14 I've been on the tracks, I don't know how many times with vehicles that were, you know, called in as suspicious or whatever, but kids go back there.

Speaker 15 People always come down there, according to the security guard, and they turn around in the front lot and they leave because they missed a highway or something.

Speaker 2 Did he look nervous?

Speaker 14 He wasn't nervous at all. He was perfectly calm.

Speaker 24 So what do you recommend I do?

Speaker 23 I mean, if I can get it off the track, I prefer to drive it myself.

Speaker 14 It was just like, oh, sorry, I got stuck on the tracks. Can you help me get off?

Speaker 24 So how about you get a hotel for the night? We'll have the tow truck drop you off the hotel, you pay for a credit card, and you can arrange picking up a car in the morning.

Speaker 23 Okay, let's get to the hotel then.

Speaker 21 Yeah, let's do that if it is difficult. That's probably the safest thing to do.
Okay, okay.

Speaker 14 The tow truck came.

Speaker 15 It took a little work, but it got it off the tracks.

Speaker 3 He gave Mr.

Speaker 15 Pan a ride back to Best Western and I cleared the call, like any other call.

Speaker 2 But hours later, there was another call to 911.

Speaker 7 February 7th, around 11 a.m.

Speaker 11 Hello, can I help you? This is the police department.

Speaker 25 Hello. I work at Arby here in North Haven.

Speaker 21 We found a gun and probably like

Speaker 21 10 boxes of

Speaker 11 bullets.

Speaker 7 An employee found a couple of bags on the grass at the north entrance here. When they brought them in, there were three bags.

Speaker 21 This one, that one, and this. Got it.

Speaker 7 Took a better look at the bags that it came in. And here's a blue retail bag with a Massachusetts local on it.
and a small leather black briefcase and it instantly hit me.

Speaker 7 These are the bags that were in Mr. Pond's car the night before.

Speaker 2 The Arby's was right next door to the best western where Penn was dropped off. And by then, Mills had heard about the murder in New Haven.
What's going through your brain?

Speaker 7 At that point, knowing that New Haven had a homicide, they were looking for a dark-colored GMC SUV.

Speaker 7 Now we've got a firearm, and then Officer Bianchi shows me a yellow jacket that was in it, and the suspect was wearing a yellow jacket.

Speaker 23 Jacket.

Speaker 21 So it reminds me, yeah, Beth Weston.

Speaker 7 And when we got here, I went in to the front desk and spoke with the attendant there and asked if Boxon Pan had checked in, which they checked in and said, yes, he did.

Speaker 7 I mean, he hasn't checked out yet.

Speaker 2 That's when Mills alerted New Haven homicide about Pan.

Speaker 2 Do you immediately think there might be a connection with the homicide?

Speaker 3 There's a very good chance the vehicle matched. And the items that were left behind at the Arby's restaurant, it included a.45 caliber handgun, PowerPoint,

Speaker 3 and that matched the casings that were up the scene.

Speaker 2 Zaweski immediately sent detectives to meet Mills at the Best Western.

Speaker 7 So we got a key, went to room 276.

Speaker 7 We knocked on the door. We entered the room.
The room was clean, nothing in it. It didn't appear that anybody stayed in it for the night.
At first, we were like, oh, we lost them.

Speaker 2 New Haven police sent investigators, including Detective Joe Galvin, to track down Pan. Galvin went to Malden, Massachusetts, where Pan lived with his parents and was a graduate student at MIT.

Speaker 4 Right outside of Boston, very affluent homes. There was no one there when we knocked on the door.
So the day after the homicide, we were unsure if maybe the family was on vacation,

Speaker 4 out of state, out of the country.

Speaker 2 But police were also worried.

Speaker 4 Were they, given the heinous act that occurred in New Haven the day before,

Speaker 4 were they potentially kidnapped by their own son? Were they victims of another horrible crime?

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Speaker 2 With Kenshin Pan and his parents missing from their home, Detective David Zaweski turned to his computer searching for Pan.

Speaker 3 The first thing I want to know is who he is and if there's any connection between him and Kevin.

Speaker 3 I see that he has a Facebook page.

Speaker 2 What was his page like?

Speaker 3 There was not much activity at all. His last post was back in 2016, and he had a few photos with some other students, but that was it.

Speaker 2 Is that when you first found out that he's an MIT grad student?

Speaker 3 Yes, that was the first time we got the connection between him and MIT.

Speaker 3 So I check his friends list to see if Kevin is in there.

Speaker 27 Is he?

Speaker 3 Kevin is not listed, but I do notice that Zion Perry is listed.

Speaker 2 Zion Perry, Kevin's fiancé, who also went to MIT.

Speaker 3 Now we have a connection. I got in contact with her.
She explained that they had met at MIT back in 2019

Speaker 3 and they were more associates than friends.

Speaker 2 Nothing romantic?

Speaker 3 No.

Speaker 3 She said that they never dated. They never had any romantic relationship.

Speaker 3 The last time she spoke with him was May of 2020. He reached out to her through Facebook Messenger to congratulate her on graduating.
He asked to FaceTime with her and she politely declined it.

Speaker 2 She must have been wondering why you were asking me so many questions about this guy. What did you say to her?

Speaker 3 She was, and that's when I told her that he was a person of interest in this.

Speaker 3 And she was completely shocked. He was barely a part of her life and why he would have been involved with this in any way.

Speaker 2 What did she have posted on her page?

Speaker 3 The last things that she had posted were the engagement between her and Kevin.

Speaker 2 Are you starting

Speaker 2 to formulate a theory about the case that goes a little beyond possible road rage?

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 3 It did seem like there was a secret obsession of Pan's going on behind the scenes that Kevin wasn't aware of and that Zion wasn't aware of.

Speaker 2 The next day, Zion Perry joined Kevin's mother, Linda Lu, and father, Ming Shen Yang, and nearly 700 people on a virtual vigil for Kevin. Zion addressed the mourners.

Speaker 28 One day I will get to see Kevin again, yeah, in heaven and when everything is made right. I thank Miss Liu and Mr.
Jiang for raising such a fine young man and for bringing him into the world.

Speaker 29 He gave me a lot of joy. He's a very

Speaker 29 sorry, warm boy, taking care of me, and I miss him.

Speaker 30 He's a nice boy.

Speaker 30 Everybody likes him.

Speaker 30 Thank you. Thank you, you all.

Speaker 2 That week, Pastor Hendrickson eulogized Kevin at his funeral.

Speaker 19 We come to you today remembering Kevin,

Speaker 9 grateful for his life,

Speaker 9 grieving over his loss.

Speaker 2 Zion read a poem Kevin wrote to her.

Speaker 31 It began, If this world falls apart, it will be all right because we have each other's hearts.

Speaker 2 A medical officer also trained to operate tanks, Kevin was buried with full military honors just two days before his 27th birthday on Valentine's Day.

Speaker 2 Meanwhile, Detective Galvin, a member of the U.S.

Speaker 2 Marshal's Fugitive Task Force in Connecticut, along with Supervisor Matthew Duffy and Deputy Marshal Kevin Perot, were utilizing their vast resources to urgently gather intelligence on Pan.

Speaker 10 MIT graduate, not socially active.

Speaker 10 Degree in computer science.

Speaker 32 Grad student in artificial intelligence.

Speaker 2 Lawyer William Gerais.

Speaker 32 Very smart.

Speaker 4 Genius?

Speaker 3 Genius.

Speaker 32 Socially not a genius.

Speaker 2 The Marshals discovered Pan had three active phones, and they noticed that in the months before Kevin was killed, Pan was using one of those phones to contact car dealerships.

Speaker 4 He would tell them all the same thing. He said he's going for a test drive.
I believe he said he was going on a camping trip.

Speaker 2 Investigators were able to match the date of Pan's test drives with each of the 45 caliber shootings in New Haven, including Kevin's murder.

Speaker 2 It was all part of a plan, investigators say.

Speaker 2 They believe that Pan likely fired shots into those homes to ultimately mislead them, hoping they would think Kevin's murder was just another random shooting.

Speaker 3 He planned it and he knew we'd be looking at these other things. Yeah, he did his best to

Speaker 4 mislead us.

Speaker 3 And now we knew that, yes,

Speaker 3 this wasn't a random incident out there, that he was targeted.

Speaker 2 They also discovered that not long after Kevin's murder, Pan called his parents and they made a cash withdrawal of about $1,000.

Speaker 32 They had tremendous assets, somehow from Shanghai.

Speaker 33 Access to large sums of money, several million dollars.

Speaker 2 The Marshals zeroed in on Pan's parents and picked up a ping on their phone at this North Carolina gas station.

Speaker 4 Our task force found it

Speaker 4 on the ground.

Speaker 2 The cell phone was crushed.

Speaker 10 Yeah. Like a car ran over it.

Speaker 2 Three days later, investigators caught up with Pan's parents driving near Atlanta, Georgia.

Speaker 10 Georgia state police pulled him over.

Speaker 2 He's not in the vehicle.

Speaker 2 Police told them they suspected their son had killed someone. Were they shocked?

Speaker 15 No.

Speaker 2 They weren't shocked that their son was being investigated and connected with a cold-blooded murder.

Speaker 33 They may have been, but they didn't lead on to us at all. They didn't lead on to us at all.

Speaker 4 The father said our son called, said he was in Connecticut and needed help. He asked us to bring cash.

Speaker 4 Then once we picked him up in Connecticut, he took the wheel and then they take this very long drive down south.

Speaker 2 Pan's father didn't say why his son was heading in that direction.

Speaker 4 And he says he's quiet, acting weird, doesn't really say what's going on.

Speaker 4 They make it down to Georgia.

Speaker 10 He pulls over and he gets out of the car and walks away.

Speaker 4 He said no words to them, just walked away from the car.

Speaker 17 That was their story.

Speaker 2 Pan's parents agreed to be photographed pan's mother declined to answer any questions without an attorney but she later volunteered that her son walked away from her and his father and likely killed himself the marshals were skeptical we knew after talking to the parents that they would go to jail for him

Speaker 10 knowing the degree that the parents were helping him and his resources, his intelligence,

Speaker 10 we had to take a different approach on it.

Speaker 33 We needed to focus in on the parents because they probably would lead us to him.

Speaker 10 They would go to the ends of the earth to help support and hide him.

Speaker 2 And what does that mean?

Speaker 10 Patience.

Speaker 2 And they would need plenty of it. Weeks went by without an arrest.
They wondered if they missed something and if their murder suspect had outmaneuvered them.

Speaker 18 What do you think of Pan's plan to mislead investigators? See more of the evidence at 48hours.com.

Speaker 2 Five weeks pass without a solid lead on the MIT student wanted for Kevin Jong's murder.

Speaker 34 U.S. Marshals are leading a nationwide manhunt this morning morning for the man charged in the murder of a Yale grad student.

Speaker 2 You give me a real sense of the pressure.

Speaker 4 Yeah, because this became so high-profile, so fast, it was

Speaker 4 just heightened.

Speaker 2 Then the manhunt for Penn suddenly heated up. Police said his mom told them she suspected her son killed himself, but they noticed his parents had a lot of banking activity.

Speaker 33 We start to see large sums of cash being withdrawn.

Speaker 16 How much?

Speaker 33 At that time, it was about $5,000, $10,000.

Speaker 4 That's a large sum of money that someone could use to get out of the country.

Speaker 10 They still have family in China.

Speaker 2 And then Pan's parents rented a car.

Speaker 33 They stopped traveling south again.

Speaker 2 But the vehicle's GPS system the Marshals were tracking went dark.

Speaker 35 Did they turn it off?

Speaker 10 It was disabled.

Speaker 2 By then, investigators said they knew that their son had disabled GPS systems in several cars he drove in the run-up to Kevin's murder.

Speaker 10 Counter tactics. Counter tactics.

Speaker 2 At one point, surveillance cameras at this Georgia mall recorded Pan's father purchasing a computer.

Speaker 33 Now, this is during COVID, so everybody has their masks on.

Speaker 33 We see the father walk in, and probably about 10 minutes later, we see an individual fitting the description of the son. So the story of the suicide out in the woods,

Speaker 33 that's not true.

Speaker 33 So from there, the parents end up traveling back north.

Speaker 10 Once they're in Connecticut, the GPS comes back on.

Speaker 33 We felt the clock was really ticking.

Speaker 2 And it ticked away for nearly two more months until May 4th, 2021, when Pan's parents drove off for a third time. But there was a difference.

Speaker 10 They were traveling with another couple.

Speaker 2 What do you think the deal was with the other couple?

Speaker 33 Yeah, make it appear that it's a regular trip. It's no big deal.
We're just going on a trip to meet some friends. We're not here to help our son.

Speaker 2 Pan's parents and their unwitting companions were eventually placed under surveillance at a North Carolina hotel where Marshals interviewed a clerk after the pants checked out.

Speaker 4 At one point, Kinchin Pan's mother came to the clerk's desk late at night and asked to borrow his phone.

Speaker 2 Here is the picture of Pan's mother making the call that broke the case wide open.

Speaker 4 After she used his phone, she deleted the number from his phone.

Speaker 2 Were you able to find that number?

Speaker 4 Yes,

Speaker 2 the Marshals tracked the phone to this boarding house near Alabama State University in Montgomery. See you guys are closing in.
Yeah.

Speaker 10 They went out there with a small army, around 20 guys. They ended up finding his room.
And they knocked on it, and he just came out and said, I'm who you're looking for.

Speaker 33 He had approximately $20,000 cash on him. He had his father's passport.

Speaker 10 Father's passport.

Speaker 33 And he had multiple communication devices on him.

Speaker 33 Seven SIM cards, seven SIM cards, and

Speaker 10 a computer.

Speaker 2 Penn was arrested for the murder of Kevin Jong and brought back to Connecticut. He maintained his innocence, but a judge ordered him held on a $20 million bond.

Speaker 17 Huge relief.

Speaker 2 His case was delayed by the pandemic, but investigators had amassed a trove of evidence. Remember that license plate imprint on Kevin's car?

Speaker 2 Police say it matched the plate on the bumper of the SUV Pan was driving when Kevin was rear-ended.

Speaker 2 And forensic tests revealed that Pan's DNA was on the gun and ammo found outside Arby's, and Kevin's blood was also on Pan's hat and the gear shift of the SUV Pan was driving the night Kevin was murdered.

Speaker 2 Was there anything missing?

Speaker 27 The murder weapon.

Speaker 2 Turns out the gun recovered at the Arby's was not the gun that was used to kill Kevin.

Speaker 2 Supervisory Assistant State's Attorney Stacey Miranda.

Speaker 27 Who knows where that murder weapon ended up?

Speaker 2 But there was so much other evidence that Pan's lawyer William Gerais recommended he cut a deal.

Speaker 32 Overwhelming evidence.

Speaker 4 Overwhelming evidence.

Speaker 2 On February 29th, 29th, 2024, three years after Kevin's killing, Pan pled guilty to his murder in exchange for serving 35 years in prison without parole.

Speaker 27 And had he not been stuck on the railroad tracks, this still might not be a self-case. We might not know who did this.

Speaker 36 Bring out Pam, please.

Speaker 2 At his sentencing in April, Pan sat silently as Kevin's loved ones and friends described their loss. By court order, the camera was fixed on him.

Speaker 2 Some of Kevin's mother's remarks were read by a family friend.

Speaker 35 I was dreaming that Kevin will have a few beautiful children after getting married. This beautiful and joyful dream is destroyed.
I am left alone by myself.

Speaker 35 I will never see Kevin smile again.

Speaker 2 Then Kevin's mother decided to speak.

Speaker 29 To charge the mother of Penn 35 years in prison is too short and too light.

Speaker 2 Pan never explained why he killed Kevin, but the only time he looked up was when Zion Perry rose to speak.

Speaker 31 I wanted to address Pan specifically.

Speaker 31 Although your sentence is far less than you deserve,

Speaker 31 there is also mercy. May God have mercy on you, and may he have mercy on all of us.

Speaker 2 Then Pan briefly addressed the court.

Speaker 10 Your Honor,

Speaker 36 what I'm thinking about

Speaker 36 is my action

Speaker 36 and the horrible consequences. I feel sorry for what my actions caused

Speaker 36 and for everyone affected. I fully accept my penalties.

Speaker 33 Court is going to impose the agreed-upon sentence of 35 years.

Speaker 2 Finally, Judge Harmon passed sentence. Pan was led away in handcuffs.

Speaker 2 Did you ever consider charging his parents?

Speaker 27 We couldn't charge him because we couldn't prove that they knew when they picked him up that he was

Speaker 27 had committed a murder.

Speaker 2 So they might be lucky that they didn't find themselves charged as well.

Speaker 27 100%.

Speaker 2 We reached out to Pan's parents for comment, but did not hear back.

Speaker 2 Now, Kevin's friends are left to wonder what Kevin, a man of deep faith, might have thought about his killer.

Speaker 2 Do you think Kevin would have forgiven Pan?

Speaker 8 Yes. Oh, I do.

Speaker 29 Without a doubt. Yeah.

Speaker 2 The officers visited Kevin's grave after they spoke to 48 Hours. Lieutenant Hubbard recalled her first time there when she says she felt Kevin's presence.

Speaker 2 And did something happen?

Speaker 8 It's just like wind blew, you know? I I don't know.

Speaker 2 Did you feel like it was him?

Speaker 8 I felt like it was definitely different as it's like a piece kind of like, I want you to carry on. Don't be

Speaker 8 sad that I'm gone.

Speaker 8 Just keep going.

Speaker 18 Ken Shin Pan is scheduled to be released in 2056 when he is 65 years old.

Speaker 2 Join me Tuesday for post-mortem from 48 Hours, where we'll dive even deeper into today's episode and answer your questions about the case.