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Dateline has reported on some of the country's most heartbreaking family tragedies, and Charlie Tan's is one of the most gruesome in recent memory. The circumstances under which he murdered his father, Liang "Jim" Tan, not only made national headlines but left Rochester reeling with questions regarding justice, family, and the justice system's fine points.
This timeline details the events from the beginning of the crime in 2015 up to the court hearing and sentencing results. In plain facts and an honest account, it maps each milestone as it happened. From the initial shots to the court rulings years later, Dateline's Charlie Tan timeline is a measure of how one case can be turned upside down when new information comes to light.
Here is a complete timeline of the murder of Charlie Tan’s father, revisited on Dateline
February 2015 – The Pittsford shooting that shook everybody
It was a tragedy when Charlie Tan, then 19 years old, killed his dad, Jim Tan, on February 5, 2015, in Pittsford, New York, in their family home. In his subsequent court documents, Charlie entered through the back door, proceeded to his dad's office on the second floor, and took three fatal shots while his dad sat at his office desk. Later, as per The Cornell Daily Sun, in an affidavit, Charlie said,
"I entered my parent’s home through the back door, walked upstairs turned into my father’s office and shot my father three times as he was sitting at his desk. I knew I had killed him"
Police officers responding to the call came to the residence and found Jim Tan dead, and Charlie was followed from evidence linked with the weapon. The firearm used had been bought with a straw purchase, a detail which would later become the focal point of the federal case. Dateline framed the background as an emotionally pivotal moment, which appeared to have precipitated more questions than it provided answers.
2015 – 2016 – Murder charges, trial, and mistrial
In the months following the shooting, Charlie Tan was formally charged with second-degree murder. His Monroe County trial garnered a lot of media attention, much of which was a result of the unusual situation and influenced the community's perception of the family.
The judge ordered a mistrial after the trial ended in a hung jury in 2016. The jurors being deadlocked over a verdict led the trial to highlight the challenge in convicting one guilty when circumstances are shrouded in allegations of domestic violence and the disintegration of the family. A judge later dropped the murder indictment, citing that there was insufficient evidence to retry the case.
To others, it was one of the most sensationalized Dateline moments, of how a serious indictment could end in dismissal.
November 2018 – Federal guilty plea
While murder charges were dropped at the state level, federal officials charged Charlie Tan with a violation of the firearms law. His friend Whitney Knickerbocker had bought the shotgun used in the attack on behalf of Charlie. Prosecutors charge that Charlie had the gun bought for him knowing that he was not legally allowed to buy it himself.
In November 2018, Charlie pleaded to three federal counts of carrying weapons. The plea was for the acquisition of the gun under fraud and use in the shooting that resulted in murder. He was sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment in a federal prison and three years of supervised release. Dateline and the local news covered the conviction as some sort of closure, but it still left many questions unanswered about the actual murder.
November 2019 – Affidavit admission
Charlie Tan surprised everyone by submitting an affidavit in November 2019 as a motion either to have his federal sentence reduced or reversed. In the first public admission, he admitted to having fired the shots at his father and talked of the act being spontaneous and one born out of living in fear all these years. As per The Cornell Daily Sun, he said,
"They advised me not to admit that I shot my father. They were the legal experts, and so I accepted that strategy, even though I knew what I had done was wrong"
He also wrote,
"I remember spending my sixth or seventh birthday in a women’s shelter and feeling relieved to be there because anything was better than being at home with all the fighting and abuse"
The affidavit was meant to advance his legal claim that his lawyers did not bring his complete personal background before the court, including abuse and allegations of mental illness, during the original sentencing. The confession was a news-breaker in that it constituted the most powerful evidence yet regarding what transpired in the Pittsford residence in February 2015.
Dateline referred to the affidavit as a twist in the case, but one that came decades too late.
May 2022 - Judge denies reduction of sentence
In May 2022, Charlie Tan's request for a commuted sentence had finally made it to the federal court. The judge, upon reconsideration, agreed that Charlie Tan's defense attorneys indeed brought up the abuse and mental illness issue at the time of sentencing, and that the 20-year sentence was warranted under federal guidelines. The petition was hence denied, and Charlie had to serve out his prison sentence.
The decision shut one of the final open books in the court proceedings. Dateline's coverage revealed the finality of the verdict; Tan would be kept behind bars, according to the initial verdict.
The Dateline timeline of the Charlie Tan case follows the way one tragedy became years of complex legal back-and-forth. From the first shooting of 2015 to the final verdict of 2022, every turn revealed new facets of the family, the law, and the boundaries of the justice system.
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Ultimately, Charlie Tan remains a story drawn up time and again every time words like justice, family drama, and trial verdict are mentioned. Events such as this for Dateline bring it all back into perspective on how dramatically, within just a few moments, so many lives can be transformed.
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