How an MIT graduate student planned a Yale student’s near perfect murder

Kevin Jiang was a 26-year-old Yale graduate student, an Army veteran, and, his friends say, a man of faith who volunteered with the homeless. He seemed to have no enemies, and no one could figure out why someone may have targeted him on Feb. 6, 2021, when he was shot in the street not far from his fiancée’s apartment in New Haven, Connecticut. Jiang had been driving down the street when his car was struck from behind, and when he got out, possibly to exchange information with the other driver police say, that driver opened fire, shooting him eight times. 

At first, it seemed like the murder may have been a random shooting — possibly an act of road rage. But as detectives looked into the case, they began to unravel the truth — unbeknownst to Jiang, someone had meticulously planned his death. Who would want to kill Kevin Jiang? And how would detectives track down the killer?

The story begins with another shooting in December 2020, nearly two months before Jiang’s murder.

Dec. 11, 2020 – Feb. 6, 2021: A string of shootings in New Haven

Beginning on Dec. 11, 2020, a seemingly random shooter fired bullets into four different homes in a couple of New Haven neighborhoods. One home was fired into in December, two in January 2021, and one in February 2021. These shootings had a few key things in common: homes were fired upon and no one was harmed, In two cases a dark-colored SUV was seen fleeing, and .45 caliber fired cartridge casings were found at all four scenes. 

Apart from these similarities, however, police were unable to find any other connection between the incidents. In time, it would become clear that these shootings were linked and were part of a larger plan.

Jan. 30, 2021: Kevin Jiang proposes to the love of his life

On Jan. 30, 2021, Jiang proposed to his girlfriend Zion Perry while on a hike to a waterfall. The two had been dating for about a year and had met at a Christian retreat. They both loved nature, attended church, and were science students: Jiang was a graduate student in the Yale School of the Environment, and Perry was also at Yale, working on a PhD in molecular biophysics and biochemistry.

“They’re both brilliant and hardworking students,” said Pastor Greg Hendrickson, who was Jiang’s pastor and mentored the couple, “and yet… they didn’t feel like their accomplishments were what defined them at the deepest level.”

Perry posted a video of the engagement to her Facebook page.

Feb. 6, 2021 | 8:30 p.m.: Kevin Jiang’s death

At 8:30 p.m. on Feb. 6, police responded to the scene of a shooting in New Haven. When they arrived, they found Jiang deceased in the street. About 100 feet away was his car, a Prius. .45 caliber casings were also found at the scene, and it appeared Jiang had been shot multiple times.

Police obtained video surveillance from a nearby residence. In the video, a vehicle crash can be heard prior to Jiang’s Prius entering the frame, closely followed by a dark SUV. The Prius comes to a stop, then the SUV reverses out of frame. Jiang exits his Prius and walks toward the SUV. A few seconds after he moves out of frame, eight gunshots and a scream can be heard.

One witness reported that she looked at her window after hearing gunshots and saw the shooter standing over Jiang, who was already down on the pavement, firing additional shots. Detectives observed stippling — a burn pattern caused by gunpowder exploding from a weapon fired at close range — on Jiang’s face.

The evidence of close-range gunfire made detectives think there might be more to Jiang’s death than a random shooting or a case of road rage. “It seems a little bit more personal,” said New Haven homicide detective David Zaweski. “When you have someone laying on the ground and not moving, what would cause someone to continue firing at them?”

Just one week after Jiang’s engagement, police were now informing his mother and fiancée about his tragic death. According to detectives the two women were distraught and couldn’t understand why anyone would have done this to Jiang.

Feb. 6, 2021 | 8:57 p.m.: A man stuck on train tracks

At 8:57 p.m. on the same night Jiang was killed, police in the nearby town of North Haven responded to a separate incident: a 911 call was made by a security guard at Sims Metal Management, a scrapyard near a highway entrance. The guard told 911 dispatch that a suspicious vehicle — a dark SUV — had driven through his yard.

When officers responded to investigate the vehicle, they found the SUV — and its driver —stuck on snowy railroad tracks behind the scrapyard. The officers had not yet heard about Kevin Jiang’s murder, which had occurred just half an hour before in New Haven, and to them this call was nothing out of the ordinary.

“I’ve been on the tracks I don’t know how many times with vehicles that were, you know, called in as suspicious,” said Sergeant Jeffrey Mills of North Haven Police Department, who responded that night. “People always come down there… and they turn around in the front lot and they leave ’cause they missed the highway or something.”

The driver was Qinxuan Pan, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate student from Malden, Massachusetts. His driver’s license came back clean, and officers said he seemed calm about his situation. Mills didn’t notice anything odd – just a yellow jacket on the passenger seat, and some bags in the car including a black briefcase and a blue bag with a Massachusetts logo.

Officers called a tow truck to help Pan get off of the tracks. Since he didn’t have cash to pay for the tow, officers helped him get a hotel room for the night at a nearby Best Western, telling him he could pick up his car in the morning and head home. Pan agreed and went to the hotel. To Mills, nothing seemed suspicious about the encounter. But that would soon change.

Feb. 7, 2021 | 11 a.m.: A shocking discovery

The next morning at 11 a.m., another 911 call was made, this time from an employee at an Arby’s restaurant in North Haven. Sergeant Jeffrey Mills was at the end of his shift and about to head home when he heard about the call, but he decided to stop by the Arby’s anyway to investigate.

That decision changed the course of Jiang’s case. At the Arby’s, employees had found something strange — discarded bags containing a .45 caliber gun. There were also numerous boxes of ammunition, three license plates, and some clothing. Some of these items looked familiar to Sgt. Mills: there was a yellow jacket, a black briefcase, and a blue bag with a Massachusetts logo. It struck Mills that these were the same items he’d seen in Pan’s car the night before on the railroad tracks. The Arby’s was right next door to the Best Western hotel where Pan had been dropped off.

By now, Mills had heard about the homicide in New Haven, and knew detectives were looking for a dark SUV. Mills had encountered a dark SUV the night before and had reason to believe its driver was the owner of the .45 caliber gun found at the Arby’s. He called New Haven Police.

When homicide detectives arrived, they went to the Best Western in search of the mysterious Pan. But Pan had disappeared – in fact, according to detectives, it seemed like he had never stayed in the room at all.

The SUV was still at the tow facility. Where had Pan gone? And how would they find him?

Feb. 8, 2021: A stolen vehicle

In Malden, the town where Pan was from, a car had been reported stolen from a car dealership. And not just any car – the same dark SUV that Pan had been driving, which was now at a tow facility in North Haven. The dealership employee told police that Pan had asked to borrow the car for a test drive and had never returned.

On Feb. 8, police from Malden went to Pan’s home with a warrant for his arrest for the stolen car. Officers from New Haven accompanied them, as Pan was now a person of interest in Jiang’s homicide.

When they arrived at the address where Pan lived with his parents, however, neither Pan nor his parents were home. The parents could have simply been out of town or on vacation, but officers also worried about them.

“Given the heinous act that occurred in New Haven the day before, were they potentially kidnapped by their own son?”  said Det. Joe Galvan, who worked with both New Haven Police and the U.S. Marshals’ Task Force in Connecticut.

That same day, the U.S. Marshals, who had joined the case, conducted a search for any phone numbers associated with Pan. They found a number and traced the phone to Garysburg, North Carolina. At a gas station there, officers found a cellphone that had been crushed.

“Like a car ran over it,” said U.S. Marshals Supervisor Matthew Duffy.

Feb. 11, 2021: Pan’s parents stopped in Georgia

On Feb. 11, the U.S. Marshals received several license plate reader hits on the license plate of Pan’s mother’s car. Georgia officials were able to locate and stop the car – inside were Pan’s parents, Hong Huang and Hao Pan, but their son was not with them.

Authorities say Hao Pan, Qinxuan Pan’s father, told them that roughly four or five days before he’d gotten a call from his son Qinxuan Pan and Qinxuan told him he was in Connecticut and needed help, though Hao Pan didn’t say why. Hao Pan did say that he and his wife Hong Huang then left Massachusetts and picked up their son in Connecticut. Qinxuan Pan then took the wheel and drove them south to Georgia, a days-long journey.

As for where their son was now, authorities say Hao Pan told them that his son had stopped the car, gotten out, and walked away, and Hao Pan did not know where he went or why. Pan’s mother, Hong Huang, refused to answer any questions without an attorney, but later volunteered that she believed her son may have walked away and killed himself.

Investigators say they were skeptical of that story, and began to suspect that in order to find Qinxuan Pan they may have to watch his parents. The Pan family had access to millions of dollars in assets in Shanghai. Financial records showed Pan’s parents had been making large cash withdrawals, possibly to give to their son. Marshals say they worried that Pan might attempt to use this money to flee the country. 

Feb. 16, 2021: Military honors for Kevin Jiang

On Feb.16,  Jiang was buried with full military honors. He was an Army veteran and a National Guard Reservist, trained to operate a tank. He had served in the 118th Multifunctional Medical Battalion of the Connecticut National Guard.

Nasya Hubbard, who served with Jiang in the National Guard, described him as a “very happy person, just genuine, very genuine soul,” and said that he seemed deeply in love with his fiancée Zion Perry.

At a memorial service for Jiang, Perry said, “Kevin often spoke of how precious the gift of life is, because we are but mist that may vanish in a moment.  Never have I felt the impact of those words until now. Kevin would want us to cherish the gift of life we still have on earth.”

Feb. 26, 2021: A warrant and a possible motive

After New Haven detectives received samples back from the lab that indicated Qinxuan Pan’s fingerprints were on the gun found at the Arby’s and gunshot residue was on the yellow jacket and the door of the SUV, a warrant was issued for his arrest in connection with the murder of Kevin Jiang.

By now, detectives also had in mind a possible motive for Pan. Zaweski had turned to Facebook to find information about Pan and had learned that he was Facebook friends with Zion Perry, Jiang’s fiancée

Detectives say that when Perry was asked about the connection, she told officers that she and Pan met when she was an undergraduate at MIT, but they’d only been acquaintances. According to Perry they had never had a romantic relationship of any kind. Detectives found that online communication between the two was minimal – when Perry had graduated MIT, Pan had asked to video call with her to congratulate her, and she had politely declined. That was the extent of their conversation.

Still, it seemed that perhaps Pan had made more of this connection than Perry. Though Pan’s motive was never confirmed, the murder of Jiang occurred just one week after Perry publicly announced her engagement to Kevin on Facebook.

Said  Zaweski, “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.”

March 2021- May 2021: Patience

The U.S. Marshals knew it would take patience to track Pan, who was a brilliant MIT graduate student studying artificial intelligence.

At this point they knew that Pan was capable of disabling GPS in vehicles. They knew Pan had turned off the GPS in the SUV he had driven the night of the murder, the one he’d picked up from a dealership. 

It turned out that that wasn’t the only time Pan had taken a car from a dealership for nefarious purposes. Investigators were able to find numerous other instances of Pan claiming he was going to test drive a dealership vehicle, only to drive that vehicle down to Connecticut. They compared the dates of his test drives with the four shootings that had occurred in New Haven from December 2020 to February 2021 and found that they matched. 

Detectives believe Pan had a meticulous plan. They say Pan committed those four shootings in order to mislead police into thinking that Jiang’s death was just another incident in a string of random shootings.

Knowing that Pan was potentially dangerous and may be looking to flee the country, U.S. Marshals were careful and methodical in their search. For weeks they steadily kept an eye on his parents’ activities, believing that eventually something would lead them to their son.

May 2021: Qinxuan Pan’s mother makes a call

In May 2021, U.S. Marshals tracked Pan’s parents south to Georgia again, this time traveling with another couple. U.S. Marshal Kevin Perreault said that he believes the parents took unwitting companions along to “make it appear that it’s a regular trip. There’s no big deal, we’re just going on a trip, meet some friends … we’re not here to help our son.”

The two couples stayed one night at a hotel, where Pan’s mother Hong Huang would be recorded on a surveillance camera making a phone call. The hotel clerk told investigators that Huang had asked to use his phone, had made a call, and then had deleted the number.

But U.S. Marshals were able to track the call anyway, and it led them right to Qinxuan Pan.     

May 14, 2021: Qinxuan Pan arrested in Alabama 

U.S. Marshals took what Duffy called a “small army” to a boarding house in Montgomery, Alabama, where Marshals had tracked that phone call. Marshals found the room where Pan was staying, and according to Duffy, Pan “just came out and said, I’m who you’re looking for.” Qinxuan Pan was arrested for the murder of Kevin Jiang.

At the time of his arrest, Pan had approximately $20,000 in cash on him, as well as multiple communication devices, seven SIM cards, and his father’s passport. 

February-April, 2024: A guilty plea and a sentence

After multiple delays, Qinxuan Pan pleaded guilty in court on Feb. 29, 2024, to the murder of Kevin Jiang. His plea deal required a 35-year prison sentence without parole, and he was officially sentenced on April 23. He is scheduled to be released in 2056, when he will be 65 years old. Pan’s parents have never been charged with anything.

Zion Perry spoke at Pan’s sentencing. The only time Pan looked up was when she approached the podium.

“I wanted to address Pan specifically,” she said. “Although your sentence is far less than you deserve … there is also mercy. May God have mercy on you. And may he have mercy on all of us.”