A trial into the murder of a Bucks County nurse opens with dueling accounts of who was responsible

The trial into the murder of a Feasterville nurse opened Monday with attorneys sparring over who was responsible for the violent, late-night ambush.

Prosecutors in Montgomery County assert that Ebony Pack, 30, was the victim of a “well-planned, well-executed and well-concealed” plot fueled by romantic jealousy. Defense attorneys for the two suspects balked at that claim, albeit for different reasons: One said his client was innocent, and accused a missing triggerman as the true culprit. Another cast significant doubt on the prosecution’s key witness, saying the murder case was built more on “circumstantial suspicion” than actual evidence.

Chong Ling Dan, 50, and Ricky Vance, 54, have been charged with murder, conspiracy, and related offenses in the slaying of Pack, a nurse who cared for COVID-19 patients. She was gunned down two days after Thanksgiving 2020 as she sat in her Nissan sedan at a red light in Lansdale.

The two men, both Philadelphia residents, were engaged in a murder-for-hire plot orchestrated by Dan, who once dated Pack’s girlfriend, Jasmine Stokes, said Assistant District Attorney Lindsey Mills during her opening statement Monday.

“Piece by piece, we will present this case to you,” Mills told jurors. “And when we piece it all together, you will see that all the defendants played a critical role in the murder of Ebony Pack.”

Dan ordered Vance and another man to kill Pack, prosecutors said, in an act of revenge. Stokes told detectives that she had ended their relationship months before Pack’s murder because Dan was abusive. Mills likened Pack to “collateral damage” in their ongoing feud.

» READ MORE: A nurse and mother was shot and killed at a Lansdale intersection. Months later, her family and police still seek answers.

During a confrontation at a gas station in Manayunk in August 2020, Dan threatened Stokes over $9,000 she owed him. He also said he was “gonna fix [Pack]” and that he “had something for her.”

But Dan’s attorney, Guy Sciolla, said Monday that Stokes could not be trusted. She had given multiple, contradictory statements to police, one as recently as Saturday, Sciolla said.

“There is an evolution of lies here, and the trail is something you’ll have to figure out,” said Sciolla.

For one, he said, Stokes was still dating Dan in secret, meeting up for sex with him just weeks before Pack’s murder. She falsely led detectives to Dan as the suspect in Pack’s murder out of anger that he had moved on to a new woman, according to Sciolla.

Beyond that, Sciolla said his client had absolutely no motive to kill Pack, whom he had never met.

“Why would you kill someone else if you’re mad at her?” Sciolla said. “You will not hear one piece of evidence over the next few days that will connect Chong Ling Dan to a ‘murder-for-hire plot.’”

On the night of her murder, Pack was on her way to visit Stokes, making the trek from her house in Feasterville. But, prosecutors said, she was being followed closely by Vance and another man, Terrance Marche.

At the intersection of East Hancock Street and Church Road in Lansdale, Vance pulled his Cadillac alongside Pack’s vehicle, and Marche fired at least 10 shots from the passenger seat, according to prosecutors. Pack succumbed to her wounds not long after at Abington-Lansdale Hospital.

» READ MORE: Philadelphia man charged in death of nurse and mother, Montgomery County DA says

The two men fled, prosecutors said, and despite efforts by Vance to disguise his vehicle using a fake, temporary license plate, investigators caught up to him. The Cadillac’s distinctive license-plate holder allowed them to trace the car to the dealership where he leased it, and, later, to Vance, they wrote in court filings.

Cell phone records showed that all three men were together at a home in Mt. Airy in the hours before and after the murder, Mills said.

Vance’s attorney, John I. McMahon Jr., disputed this version of events. While it’s true that Vance leased the Cadillac, McMahon said, he wasn’t behind its wheel on the night of Pack’s murder. Instead, Vance had lent the car to Marche, a longtime friend.

“Mr. Vance didn’t think Mr. Marche was taking his vehicle for nefarious reasons,” McMahon said. “Whatever may have been going on between Terry Marche and whoever else, it didn’t involve Ricky Vance.”

The only other person who can shed light on that car ride is nowhere to be found.

Marche’s whereabouts remain a mystery, nearly two years later. He was last seen boarding a flight to Honduras with Dan not long after Vance was arrested, prosecutors said. Days later, Dan returned without Marche, and told Marche’s girlfriend that he wouldn’t be returning.

» READ MORE: A Philly man ordered to face trial in Montgomery County over a murder-for-hire plot

Pack left behind two daughters. Pack became a nurse, her family told The Inquirer, because of her love of helping people, and doubled down on that vocation during the COVID-19 pandemic, working with elderly patients bedridden by the virus.

At the time of her death, Pack was in the process of opening her own home-aid business, a longtime dream of hers.

The trial before Montgomery County Court Judge William Carpenter is expected to last through the week.