Murray Weiss

The lead up to that was victim impact statements were made for about an hour. Kevin's mom spoke, other people spoke, people that were friends with him with the military, and his fiance, Zion Perry, spoke. And during that entire presentation of victims' statements, and some of them were enormously sad, and they spoke about Kevin and the loss of Kevin. you know, in front of the judge.

He just sat there, Pan, through the entire thing, looking kind of down, not at any of the people who were speaking. The only time he actually turned to look at the podium where they were speaking was when Zion Perry spoke. And that was shortly before he allocuted for himself. Then he accepted his plea and admitted, you know, what he did and expressed remorse for it.

I've been around crime stories a long time. You'd be shocked how many tens of thousands of murders I've actually covered. Kevin was absolutely one of the most remarkable young people to be caught up in such a sad, tragic story. I mean, he worked with the homeless. He cared for his mom. He was at Yale and studying the environment.

Kevin had a YouTube channel that was dedicated to teaching fitness and health. And his fiance, you know, their pastor, if you recall, made a very telling remark about them that their achievements as students wasn't really their touchstone. It was, you know, their deeds and what they planned on doing together in life.

Yeah, 100%. And that vigil you referenced, nearly 700 people got on that vigil. It was during the pandemic, so you had to, you know, make an effort to get on a Zoom call.

Same here.

Well, I agree with everything you said. You know, this is like an American dream story, but it's an American dream story, obviously, that turns into a nightmare. Our challenge is how do we take this complicated story that involves two extraordinary gifted people and one of whom is murdered by another one? and try to tell it to the viewers so that it's clear what has happened here.

And I think the approach I decided was that there were a string of shootings that occurred in New Haven in advance of Kevin's murder. And that might be the starting point to introduce the viewers into what the police were seeing from the get-go.

So it's a way of introducing the enormity of not just the murder, but the investigative side of it, and ultimately how it led to this extraordinary person who turned out to be the killer.

Correct. Once they got Pan's name and they determined he was from MIT, they couldn't find a connection to Kevin. But then when they did see her name, Zion Perry, the fiance, they actually went to talk to her. And she was stunned that they even mentioned his name to her because her interactions were so minor. that she had already graduated from MIT. She had moved on to Yale.

The leading theory that the investigators had was that he somehow was fixated on her, that there was some sort of obsession. There was a telling part where when she graduated, he reached out to try to, you know, have like a FaceTime congratulatory, you know, meeting with her. And she didn't. She declined.

And in fact, she posted the engagement proposal, the video of the proposal only a week before Kevin was murdered.

But we got full cooperation from the detectives and the law enforcement people, all of whom spoke to her. I mean, these are extraordinary moments for homicide detectives where they have to go and break tragic news to families and relatives of people. Zion Perry and the mom, I mean, they're completely crushed, crying, sobbing, disbelief.

And yet the homicide people ultimately have to, you know, they become steely and their goal is to get information out of the key principal players, really, that are going to hopefully provide some leads that lead them to the killer.

According to the police, he actually asked not only reclining in the seat, said he wanted to go camping and maybe he'd be sleeping in it. He talked about the trunks. In a couple of cases, he actually said he was going to show it to his mechanic to check out the car for him.

And investigators said they later determined that the dates that he convinced these dealership owners to lend him the car for a test drive, he actually came down to Connecticut fired bullets at these different homes. Now, this was starting in December of 2020. So the game plan, according to the police, was to commit these random shootings.

And then when Kevin was killed, they would never, ever think that somebody who's in Massachusetts, who's an MIT student, was coming down to another state and is in New Haven committing these crimes. So it was very, very well thought out. Very, very well thought out and very preplanned.

Well, that's a fascinating turn. Supervisory Assistant State Attorney Stacey Miranda even said at the sentencing that Pan could have possibly gotten away had he not been stuck there on the railroad tracks. And I think in this case, the theory is he drove into this scrapyard metal, that he knew it was there.

and that it would be a safe and smart place to discard a murder weapon if you're in a... It actually is the largest scrapyard in all of Connecticut, that place. But also, cleverly, the scrapyard is very near the interstate highway, so it's very convenient for getting... Not only you could drive into it, throw the gun away, come out.

I mean, this is part of the theory that the investigators have, that he would come out of the yard and then... Go back, get on the highway and drive to Massachusetts and nobody would be the wiser.

Well, you should note he is the one who responded to the 911 call. Right, right, exactly.

Yeah. Well, to a point you made earlier, it was a it was a vehicle from a dealership and the dealership had gave him the car. So it wasn't reported stolen or anything. And probably even more importantly, Mr. Pan, the motorist, was extremely calm and he had a clean criminal background, his license of his own. And he just seemed like, you know, a guy who got lost.

And Sergeant Bills was, you know, no harm, no foul here kind of thing. But it even though that a murder had been committed, much less a crime that fit a description of the car.

By coincidence, Sergeant Mills, he responded to the 911 call the night before of the guy on the track and convinced Pan to go to a Best Western hotel overnight, which is right next door to the Arby's. So the following morning when that 911 call came in and when he got there, He saw the clothing. He saw a bag that he recognized was in the vehicle that he had helped the night before.

My pleasure seeing you again.

By then, he knew there was a homicide in New Haven that involved a dark SUV. This is one brave character. I mean, he knows that he's going to go to the Best Western and he's going to try to speak to a man that may be a murderer and committed a very brutal murder just the night before. So he's a guy who's willing to walk up to you and and confront you if you're a killer.

And I give him a lot of credit and courage to be able to do that.

Correct. And not only that, to see what kind of resources he has around them, they checked the financial records and saw that his parents had made a modest withdrawal of money on the night that he disappeared in New Haven from the hotel. You know, one of the marshals said something like, there's two difficult types of fugitives for us to track.

There's the ones who have no resources, no help, and are desperate. Then the other ones are the ones who have resources and intelligence, and those are probably more difficult to track and more dangerous. And they said he fit into that category.

Yeah, that's what the marshals were told when they went around scoping out stuff on him. And I'm not saying it gave him additional hope that he wasn't as sharp as they thought, because if you recall, his attorney described him as a genius who was studying artificial intelligence, and he was an MIT student. So at the end of the day, He had a shortcoming, clearly, and he didn't get that job.

But that didn't make him any less a formidable foe, if you will, for the marshals to track.

Yeah, that's an extraordinary moment for the Marshalls, actually, in my opinion. You know, it took months before they actually caught up with Mr. Pan there. But that phone call for them was a eureka moment. And that number led them to a boarding house in Alabama, right? where they sent a team of marshals, hopefully to find Mr. Pan.

You know, these are people who are trying to find somebody who has committed a extraordinarily vicious murder. He's been on the run for three months. They know that he had pre-planned this. He had already committed four other shootings. So how do you want to approach somebody like that? The simple answer is there's safety in numbers here.

And it's very wise because if it prevents the suspect from getting violent, it actually not only protects the law enforcement people, but any other people who were in that boarding house at the time.

He just came out and said, you know, I'm your guy that you're looking for.

We wanted to see if he would confirm what the theory of the police were, you know, that there was some sort of hidden obsession there.

Unfortunately, he didn't want to. At the end of the day, he was yes, no, yes, no, but no.

Yeah.

And it's very wise because if it prevents the suspect from getting violent, it actually not only protects the law enforcement people, but any other people who were in that boarding house at the time.

He just came out and said, I'm, you know, I'm your guy that you're looking for.

We wanted to see if he would confirm what the theory of the police were, you know, that there was some sort of hidden obsession there.

Unfortunately, he didn't want to. At the end of the day, he was yes, no, yes, no, but no.

The lead up to that was victim impact statements were made for about an hour. Kevin's mom spoke, other people spoke, people that were friends with him with the military, and his fiance, Zion Perry, spoke. And during that entire presentation of victims' statements, and some of them were enormously sad, and they spoke about Kevin and the loss of Kevin, you know, in front of the judge.

He just sat there, Pan, through the entire thing, looking kind of down, not at any of the people who were speaking. The only time he actually turned to look at the podium where they were speaking was when Zion Perry spoke. And that was shortly before he allocuted for himself. Then he accepted his plea and admitted, you know, what he did and expressed remorse for it.

I've been around crime stories a long time. You'd be shocked how many tens of thousands of murders I've actually covered. Kevin was absolutely one of the most remarkable young people to be caught up in such a sad, tragic story. I mean, he worked with the homeless. He cared for his mom. He was at Yale and studying the environment.

Kevin had a YouTube channel that was dedicated to teaching fitness and health. And his fiance, you know, their pastor, if you recall, made a very telling remark about them that their achievements as students wasn't really their touchstone. It was, you know, their deeds and what they planned on doing together in life.

Yeah, 100%. And that vigil you referenced, nearly 700 people got on that vigil. It was during the pandemic, so you had to, you know, make an effort to get on a Zoom call.

Thank you very much. Same here.

Well, I agree with everything you said. You know, this is like an American dream story, but it's an American dream story, obviously, that turns into a nightmare. Our challenge is how do we take this complicated story that involves two extraordinary gifted people and one of whom is murdered by another one and try to tell it to the viewers so that it's clear what has happened here.

And I think the approach I decided was that there were a string of shootings that occurred in New Haven in advance of Kevin's murder. And that might be the starting point to introduce the viewers into what the police were seeing from the get-go.

So it's a way of introducing the enormity of not just the murder, but the investigative side of it, and ultimately how it led to this extraordinary person who turned out to be the killer.

Correct. Once they got Pan's name and they determined he was from MIT, they couldn't find a connection to Kevin. But then when they did see her name, Zion Perry, the fiance, they actually went to talk to her. And she was stunned that they even mentioned his name to her because her interactions were so minor. that she had already graduated from MIT. She had moved on to Yale.

The leading theory that the investigators had was that he somehow was fixated on her, that there was some sort of obsession. There was a telling part where when she graduated, he reached out to try to, you know, have like a FaceTime congratulatory, you know, meeting with her. And she declined.

And in fact, she posted the engagement proposal, the video of the proposal, only a week before Kevin was murdered.

But... We got full cooperation from the detectives and the law enforcement people, all of whom spoke to her. I mean, these are extraordinary moments for homicide detectives where they have to go and break tragic news to families and relatives of people. Zion Perry and the mom, I mean, they're completely crushed, crying, sobbing, disbelief.

And yet the homicide people ultimately have to, you know, they become steely and their goal is to get information out of the key principal players, really, that are going to hopefully provide some leads that lead them to the killer.

According to the police, he actually asked not only reclining in the seats that he wanted to go camping and maybe he'd be sleeping in it. He, you know, he talked about the trunks. In a couple of cases, he actually said he was going to show it to his mechanic to check out the car for him.

And investigators said they later determined that the dates that he convinced these dealership owners to lend him the car for a test drive, he actually came down to Connecticut, fired bullets at these different homes. Now, this was in December, starting in December of 2020. So the game plan, according to the police, was to commit these random shootings.

And then when Kevin was killed, they would never, ever think that somebody who's in Massachusetts, who's an MIT student, was coming down to another state and is in New Haven committing these crimes. So it was very, very well thought out. Very, very well thought out and very pre-planned.

Well, that's a fascinating turn. Supervisory Assistant State Attorney Stacey Miranda even said at the sentencing that Pan could have possibly gotten away had he not been stuck there on the railroad tracks. And I think in this case, the theory is he drove into this scrapyard metal, that he knew it was there.

and that it would be a safe and smart place to discard a murder weapon if you're in a... It actually is the largest scrapyard in all of Connecticut, that place. But also, cleverly, the scrapyard is very near the interstate highway, so it's very convenient for getting... Not only you could drive into it, throw the gun away, come out.

I mean, this is part of the theory that the investigators have, that he would come out of the yard and then... Go back, get on the highway and drive to Massachusetts and nobody would be the wiser.

Well, you should note he is the one who responded to the 911 call.

Yeah, well, to a point you made earlier, it was a it was a vehicle from a dealership and the dealership had gave him the car. So it wasn't reported stolen or anything. And probably even more importantly, Mr. Pan, the motorist, was extremely calm and he had a clean criminal background, his license of his own. And he just seemed like, you know, a guy who got lost.

And Sergeant Bills was, you know, no harm, no foul here kind of thing. He didn't even know that a murder had been committed, much less a crime that fit a description of the cars.

And by coincidence, Sergeant Mills, he responded to the 911 call the night before of the guy on the track and convinced Pan to go to a Best Western hotel overnight, which is right next door to the Arby's. So the following morning when that 911 call came in and when he got there, He saw the clothing. He saw a bag that he recognized was in the vehicle that he had helped the night before.

By then, he knew there was a homicide in New Haven that involved a dark SUV. This is one brave character. I mean, he knows that he's going to go to the Best Western and he's going to try to speak to a man that may be a murderer. and committed a very brutal murder just the night before. So he's a guy who's willing to walk up to you and confront you if you're a killer. Absolutely.

And I give him a lot of credit and courage to be able to do that.

Correct. And not only that, to see what kind of resources he has around them, they checked the financial records and saw that his parents had made a modest withdrawal of money on the night that he disappeared in New Haven from the hotel. You know, one of the marshals said something like, there's two difficult types of fugitives for us to track.

There's the ones who have no resources, no help, and are desperate. Then the other ones are the ones who have resources and intelligence. And those are probably more difficult to track and more dangerous. And they said he fit into that category.

Yeah, that's what the marshals were told when they went around scoping out stuff on him. And I'm not saying it gave him additional hope that he wasn't as sharp as they thought, because if you recall, his attorney described him as a genius who was studying artificial intelligence, and he was an MIT student. So at the end of the day... He had a shortcoming, clearly, and he didn't get that job.

But that didn't make him any less a formidable foe, if you will, for the marshals to track.

Yeah, that's an extraordinary moment for the marshals, actually, in my opinion. You know, it took months before they actually caught up with Mr. Pan there. But that phone call for them was a eureka moment. And that number led them to a boarding house in Alabama, right? where they sent a team of marshals, hopefully to find Mr. Pan.

My pleasure seeing you again.

You know, these are people who are trying to find somebody who has committed a extraordinarily vicious murder. He's been on the run for three months. They know that he had pre-planned this. He had already committed four other shootings. So how do you want to approach somebody like that? The simple answer is there's safety in numbers here.