Court Hears More of Love Story That Led to Slayings : Trial: Businessman Tseng Peng testifies about letters to the mistress his wife is accused of killing.

A stoic Li-Yun (Lisa) Peng sat quietly during her preliminary hearing Thursday while her husband of 21 years testified about the love letters, gifts and bank account he gave to the mistress Peng is accused of killing.

Taiwanese businessman Tseng (Jim) Peng, 51, showed extreme reluctance to a line of questioning about his relationship with the victim, Ranbing Jennifer Ji, 25, who had conceived Peng’s son.

Lisa Peng, 44, is charged with fatally stabbing Ji and suffocating Ji’s 5-month-old son, Kevin, last summer in Ji’s Mission Viejo apartment.

On matters of money and romance, Jim Peng repeatedly has told the court, “I don’t remember.”

But that changed Thursday when Lisa Peng’s attorney, Marshall M. Schulman, produced copies of Jim Peng’s love letters to Ji. They told of a budding romance between the two, who met at a resort bar in China in 1990.

“It’s time for a temporary goodby again,” Jim Peng once wrote. “Although time goes by so fast when we’re together . . . every minute, every second. It feels like life is so fulfilled.”

The letter continued: “Please, none of your frowned eyebrow spoiling your lovely smile and singing lightly, I just called to say I love you, OK?”

The letter ended, “My heart is with you.”

Schulman: “You were in love with her at that time right?

“Not yet,” Peng said.

During previous testimony, Peng said he met Ji in October, 1990, at a hotel bar during an electronics convention. At the time, Peng, a wealthy businessman, owned San Diego-based Ranger Electronics. Ranger had three factories in Taiwan and manufactured transceivers in Malaysia and China.

The next morning, Ji called Peng at his hotel, he said. And, that evening one of Peng’s associates invited Ji and a female companion to attend a dinner hosted by Ranger. At the time, Ji was earning about $85 a month working as a restaurant hostess.

In photographs, Ji was a tall, young beauty and Peng was older and much shorter.

They met again in the following December, and Peng hired Ji to work for his company in Shanghai, China, the next month. He paid her $129 a month.

He also opened a personal account for her at a Hong Kong bank with a check for $300, he said in court. After Ji left Ranger Communications after a disagreement with another employee, Peng hired her to help run a new venture, the J and J Co., which bought electrical parts.

The two became intimate in May, 1991. She became pregnant the following summer. He moved her to Mission Viejo where he would visit her while on business trips.

The Pengs also maintained a home in Rancho Santa Margarita.

The preliminary hearing continues today.