A Montgomery County jury convicted two men in a ‘murder-for-hire’ plot that targeted a Feasterville mother

On what would have been Ebony Pack’s 32nd birthday, two men were convicted of orchestrating and carrying out a plot to kill her.

Chong Ling Dan, 50, and Ricky Vance, 54, were both found guilty Monday of first-degree murder and conspiracy in the death of Pack, 30, who was gunned down as she was stopped at a red light in Lansdale in November 2020.

Prosecutors, led by Assistant District Attorney Brianna Ringwood, argued that Dan enlisted Vance and a third man, Terrence Marche, to attack Pack in an act of revenge: Pack was dating Jasmine Stokes, Dan’s ex-girlfriend who had stolen $9,000 from him.

Both Dan and Vance sat in silence as the jury read its verdict to Montgomery County Court Judge William Carpenter. But dozens of Pack’s supporters, including her mother, Rhonda Pack-Terry, broke out in spontaneous cheers. Most of them wore green, Pack’s favorite color, as a good-luck charm.

“You can’t mess with a child of God and get away with it,” Pack-Terry said afterward of her daughter, a nurse who cared for COVID-19 patients. “Ebony has justice now, and she can rest in peace. The detectives told me in the beginning that they would get these two guys, and they carried it through to the end.”

Attorneys for Dan and Vance declined to comment after the verdict was read.

Ringwood, speaking with her co-counsel, Assistant District Attorney Lindsey Mills, said the convictions were a powerful, emotional victory for Pack’s family, who had dedicated two years of their time to seeking justice for her.

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

“Ebony Pack was collateral damage in Chong Ling Dan’s mission to seek revenge and retribution on his ex-girlfriend,” Ringwood said. “She was completely not involved in any of that relationship, and today, on her birthday, for her family to have finally seen justice after waiting so long really, I think, meant a lot to them.”

Marche, 48, is a longtime friend of Dan’s, and recruited Vance to aid in the plot to ambush Pack, prosecutors said. The two men stalked Pack for 13 miles on the night of the murder, following her from her home in Feasterville to Lansdale, where Stokes lives, according to prosecutors.

When Pack stopped at a red light at East Hancock Street and Church Lane, Vance pulled his Cadillac alongside her car, and Marche, seated in the passenger seat, riddled her car with bullets, hitting Pack eight times, prosecutors said. She was pronounced dead at the scene by medics.

Vance attempted to mask his car using a fake, temporary license plate from Delaware, authorities alleged. But his car’s distinct features, notably a license-plate holder bearing the number of the dealership from which he leased the car, led police to him.

Cell phone records showed that Vance and Marche communicated frequently after the shooting, calls and texts that only increased as police closed in on them.

» READ MORE: Arrest warrant is issued for the alleged gunman in a Bucks County nurse’s murder

That was clear evidence, prosecutors asserted, of the conspiracy between the two men.

“You would basically have an event in the investigation, and you can almost watch the cell phones react to that,” Mills said. “And I think trying to pull all that together was really critical.”

Dan’s attorney, Brian McMonagle, argued that there was no direct evidence that his client was involved in the murder. He didn’t know Vance or Pack, McMonagle said, and was charged only on “theories and innuendos.”

But the link between the two defendants, according to prosecutors, was Marche, the alleged gunman. Marche has been missing since April 2021, when grand jury subpoenas were first issued in the case. He was last seen boarding a plane to Honduras, where he planned to meet Dan, who had been there for several weeks.

Ringwood said Monday that there is still an active warrant out for his arrest on murder and related offenses.

Vance’s attorney, John I. McMahon, told jurors that Marche set up his client by asking to borrow his car, and that Vance had nothing to do with Pack’s murder.

But the seven men and five women on the jury convicted both Dan and Vance after five hours of deliberation.

Carpenter deferred their sentencing to a later date, but both face life in prison for their first-degree murder convictions.