Nearly two years ago, Tonya, a mother and yoga instructor in the suburbs of Atlanta, was left in a state of disbelief when she learned her fiancé, a respected medical doctor, had paid to have her killed.
The couple shared a seven-year-old daughter and were engaged to be married, with a nearly four-carat diamond ring, appraised at roughly $100,000, as apparent proof of Dr. James Wan’s commitment to the relationship.
But although they presented a happy face to the world, Wan had a dark side that his patients never saw — the heavy drinking, compulsive gambling, and abusive behavior inside the home.
In May 2022, Tonya was at Wan’s bedside in the hospital, after he broke his ankles in a mishap at a school event for their daughter, when a nurse pulled her aside and told her she had visitors waiting to speak with her in the hospital’s chapel.
The visitors, she learned, were FBI agents, and the news they shared would permanently upend life for Tonya and her daughter: Wan had made more than $25,000 in payments over the dark web to hire a hitman to kill her.
Tonya, a mother and yoga instructor in the suburbs of Atlanta, is breaking her silence after her fiancé, Dr. James Wan, tried to hire a hitman to have her killed
Tonya shared a daughter, born in 2016, with Wan, and the two were engaged to be married when he hired a hitman to kill her
Last week, Wan, 52, was sentenced to more than seven years in federal prison after admitting to masterminding the plot to have his 37-year-old fiancée killed.
In an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, Tonya is breaking her silence about the ordeal, and revealing for the first time what might have motivated the twisted murder scheme.
She has requested that her last name be withheld, due to ongoing fears for her safety, and that of her daughter, after her name, address and photos were plastered across a dark web marketplace for hired killers.
An attorney for Wan, who declined to comment following his October guilty plea, has not responded to further requests for comment from DailyMail.com.
‘He’s hidden behind his white coat and gotten away with so many things,’ Tonya said of Wan, speaking in her home in the upscale Atlanta suburb of Duluth.
‘Never judge a book by its cover. You have no idea the hell I’ve been through — just because he’s wearing scrubs and he’s a doctor does not mean he’s a good person.’
How red flags emerged in a fairytale romance
Tonya first met Wan around 2014, when she was working at a resort on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, where the Georgia doctor frequently visited to try his luck at the casinos.
At first they were just friends, and then they began dating long distance. Both had children from prior relationships, and Tonya wanted to take it slow before moving to anything serious.
‘He was a gentleman. He was nice. I never saw him get mean,’ she recalls of their early relationship. ‘That’s why I originally fell for him, he was very nice. But he also has a very dark side to him.’
After two years of seeing each other long distance, Tonya agreed to move to Georgia to start a new life with Wan.
Although there were plenty of good times — the vacations, the presents, the nice dinners out — Tonya says she soon began to see warning signs in Wan’s behavior.
‘It got to where I noticed all the trips that we took were around casinos or alcohol,’ she says. When she proposed other vacations, like a ski trip, he always found reasons not to go, she recalled.
When their daughter was born in 2016, she hoped that fatherhood would encourage Wan to shape up and take responsibility. In the event, she says, it did not.
On Labor Day weekend in 2017, the couple were on a vacation in North Carolina, visiting a casino in the Blue Ridge Mountains, when Tonya says Wan flew out of control.
Tonya first met Wan around 2014, when she was working at a resort on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, where the Georgia doctor frequently visited to try his luck at the casinos
Tonya says that when their daughter was born in 2016, she hoped that fatherhood would encourage Wan to shape up and take responsibility
Tonya’s daughter, now seven, still does not know that her father pleaded guilty to attempting to have her mother murdered. The family is seen together at Disneyland
Tonya says Wan had a ‘dark side’ and was a heavy drinker and compulsive gambler
‘I didn’t even want to take that trip,’ recalls Tonya of the vacation at Harrah’s Cherokee Casino Resort in far western North Carolina.
‘We were in therapy. And I said, “No, because every time you say it’s gonna be different, it’s never different. You always get really drunk. You throw away lots of money, and you’re toxic. You don’t know how to walk away.”‘
But after months of debate, Tonya relented and agreed to the trip, on the condition that Wan would agree to leave the casino at a set time. But when it came time to leave, she says, he first refused, and then exploded in anger.
Instead of driving back to their hotel, just across the street from the casino, Wan, who had been drinking heavily, turned the other way and began driving up the side of a mountain, she says.
‘I just immediately had a bad feeling,’ she recalls. She begged to be let out of the car, but says Wan ranted and screamed, and then abruptly jerked the wheel to the left, sending the car flying off the road down a steep embankment.
‘All I could think of is just, stay awake, stay awake, you know, don’t hit your head and get out of the car. And that’s what I did,’ says Tonya. She yelled for Wan to get out of the car, but says he refused, telling her to leave him behind.
‘I was like no, we have a daughter, get out,’ she said. ‘So I drag him out of the car. I don’t know how, but I drag him up the mountain, and as soon as we get to the top, the car explodes.’
Photos of the aftermath show the twisted, burnt out wreckage of the vehicle. Wan was arrested on suspicion of DUI, but the case was dropped years later, says Tonya, after the arresting officer left the department and could not be found to testify.
Police records confirm Wan’s arrest in Jackson County on September 2, 2017. The Jackson County Sheriff’s Department did not respond to a request for more information about the case.
Wreckage is seen after Wan drove their car off a mountain road in North Carolina. Tonya says he was enraged after she begged him to leave a casino, and drove off the road
Photos of the aftermath show the twisted, burnt out wreckage of the vehicle. Wan was arrested on suspicion of DUI, but the case was dropped years later
Although the couple walked away from the crash with cuts and bruises, the psychological impact was long-lasting for Tonya, who sought professional help for PTSD.
To this day, Tonya says she isn’t sure whether Wan intended to kill them both in a crash, or simply made a drunken miscalculation in his anger at being forced to leave the casino.
‘He purposely jerked the wheel. What his intentions were, I do not know,’ she says. ‘I don’t know what he thought.’
Wan hatches his murder-for-hire plot
After the 2017 crash in North Carolina, Tonya says that Wan quit drinking for about a year, and began regularly attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.
She hoped that it marked a new page in their life together, but eventually he began to slip back into his old ways, she said.
His drinking spurred arguments that turned to screaming matches, she says, adding that Wan would sometimes throw objects around their home. (Tonya says that Wan did not hit her, however.)
Although she contemplated leaving, she says that Wan used his status as the family breadwinner to keep her under his thumb.
‘He would be like “Okay, well, how you gonna pay for a car now? How are you going to do this? How you gonna pay for a lawyer?”‘ she says.
Over the years, the Duluth Police Department responded to their home multiple times on domestic complaints, but did not arrest Wan, a department spokesman told DailyMail.com.
Tonya believes that Wan’s status as a medical doctor helped him avoid arrest.
‘The very last time [the police] were called out, they were like “Okay, y’all two just separate for the night,”‘ says Tonya.
‘I could tell by the way they were talking to me, they were looking at me like I’m the problem, because he’s in a doctor suit,’ she added. ‘But that’s not the case.’
A police spokesman said in a statement: ‘After reviewing the calls, reports, and body camera footage, it was determined that there was insufficient evidence to establish probable cause for the arrest of Mr. James Wan.’
‘The handling of these calls by the Duluth Police Department was in accordance with policy,’ he added.
Over the years, the Duluth Police Department responded to their home multiple times on domestic complaints, but did not arrest Wan
Tonya and James Wan are seen with their daughter, who is now seven years old
By early 2022, there were other strains on the relationship. Wan had recently suffered heavy financial losses trading risky stock options and cryptocurrency, says Tonya.
She also says she became aware through that he was drinking in the workplace, through his messages with co-workers on a shared iPad in the home.
Wan, an internal medicine specialist, had long been lucratively employed at a Vein Clinics of America location in Lawrenceville.
Tonya says that she began contacting Wan’s co-workers, who she suspected of participating in or enabling his alleged on-the-job drinking, threatening to report him to the medical board and HR if he didn’t seek professional help for alcoholism.
‘I had the swallow my pride moment, like I no longer can help and control this man. And have him act right and not put other people’s lives in danger. I now need help and I went to them for help, and they just dismissed the whole thing,’ she said of her entreaties to his colleagues.
The conflict escalated, with one of Wan’s female co-worker seeking a restraining order accusing Tonya of stalking, which she denied.
Tonya believes that Wan’s fears he would expose his workplace drinking may have been the motive for seeking to have her killed.
She also shared records with DailyMail.com showing that on April 20, 2022, days after Wan first sought a hitman, he increased his State Farm insurance coverage of her diamond engagement ring, appraised at $100,000.
A receipt shows Wan’s transaction to obtain $8,000 in Bitcoin on April 18, 2022, when he sent the first transaction to attemt to hire a hitman
On April 20, 2022, days after Wan first sought a hitman, he increased his State Farm insurance coverage of her diamond engagement ring (above), which was appraised at $100,000
Prosecutors say that on April 18, 2022 Wan accessed a dark web marketplace from his cell phone and submitted an order to have a hitman murder Tonya, providing her name, address, Facebook account, license plate, and car description.
In the order, Wan stated: ‘Can take wallet phone and car. Shoot and go. Or take car.’
Wan then tried to transfer about $8,000 worth of Bitcoin to the dark web marketplace as a 50 percent down-payment on the hit — but the funds apparently went to the wrong crypto wallet and were lost.
In a chat with the marketplace administrator two days later, Wan learned of his mistake and wrote: ‘Damn. I guess I lost $8k. I’m sending $8k to escrow now.’
Wan sent another Bitcoin payment worth $8,000 to the marketplace, and the marketplace administrator confirmed receipt and asked him whether he wanted the murder done as an ‘accident or normal shooting.’
Prosecutors say that Wan responded: ‘accident is better.’
‘What was the most shocking to me was the fact that he never told them to even make sure our daughter was not in the car with be before doing it,’ said Tonya.
‘Our daughter would have been strapped into her car seat while watching her mommy bleed out and die.’
Then on April 29, 2022, Wan sent another $8,000 worth of Bitcoin to the dark web marketplace escrow account and posted a message to the forum asking for a status update on the hit.
‘How soon should work be done? I have submitted an Order and curious how quickly it should be carried out? Is there a way I can find out any progress? If there is anyone in my location?’ he wrote.
After the dollar value of Bitcoin dropped, Wan sent about $1,200 worth of the cryptocurrency to the escrow account on May 10, 2022 to keep it fully funded, according to court filings.
Altogether, the transfers in furtherance of the plot totaled more than $25,000.
FBI foils the plot and saves Tonya from harm
Prosecutors say the FBI received a tip about the murder plot from a private citizen who was passively monitoring posts on the dark web forum, but was not involved in operating the marketplace or communicating directly with Wan.
When agents tracked down Wan, he was hospitalized after breaking his ankles while going down an inflatable slide at his daughter’s school carnival.
With Tonya at his bedside, they hatched a plan to have a nurse bring her to the hospital’s chapel, where they could warn her about the plot.
As she walked into the chapel full of FBI men, badges on full display, Tonya had no inkling of what they could want with her.
‘You’re a victim, I’m going to tell you that,’ one of the agents said immediately.
‘Oh god, ok,’ replied Tonya.
The FBI agent continued: ‘We received information from many different sources, and some of those sources are in Georgia, that someone has attempted to have you killed, ok? We call it murder for hire. And we have brought proof, because sometimes it’s hard for people to believe.’
‘We have a suspect in that, and that suspect is sitting up in that room,’ the agent said. ‘I just want you to digest that for a second. We have a duty to warn you that was located, that there was money exchanged, and that’s why we’re here.’
The agents showed Tonya messages that Wan had posted on the dark web forum with her photos and information, seeking a hitman to kill her. She readily agreed to collect her daughter and move to an FBI safe house, temporarily.
‘For the most part, I was embarrassed. I was embarrassed that I had given up my whole entire life and moved up here with him,’ she recalls thinking after learning of the plot.
Most difficult of all for Tonya, who has no nearby family to lean on, has been the abrupt transition to single motherhood
As Wan’s plea agreement and sentencing have played out, Tonya has remained fearful for her own safety and that of her daughter.
Even today, she takes elaborate security precautions at home, which she prefers not to discuss publicly.
Most difficult of all for Tonya, who has no nearby family to lean on, has been the abrupt transition to single motherhood.
She still has not shared the full story of Wan’s crime with their daughter, who believes that he is away receiving treatment for his drinking and anger problems.
‘I never wanted her to be mad at her dad. You know, I’ve never wanted that for her. I wanted to protect his name, like as a father his image in her head,’ says Tonya.
She still allows the young girl to speak with Wan in prison over video chat, and grapples with what exactly to tell her when the time comes.
For his part, Wan appears to be coming to terms with the severity of his crime only gradually.
At his January 18 sentencing, the judge rebuked Wan for not apologizing directly to Tonya, who appeared in court for her victim impact statement to be read.
‘I’m really sorry that you are in this position,’ Wan wrote to Tonya in an electronic message from prison on January 22, days after receiving a prison sentence of seven years and three months.
He added: ‘I see now that I have hurt you beyond repair. I hope you find someone who can treat you well.’