O.C. Slaying Finds International Spotlight : Courts: Trial opens for a Taiwanese national accused of killing her husband’s mistress and the woman’s infant son.

A Mission Viejo murder case that has spellbound many local Chinese Americans and inspired a movie with its jet-set trappings of international wealth and marital betrayal goes to trial in Orange County this week with an audience looking on an ocean away.

Jury selection begins today in the trial of Li-Yun (Lisa) Peng, 45, a Taiwanese national accused of killing her millionaire husband’s young mistress and the woman’s infant son in an act of jealous rage that could land her in prison for life.

“A lot of people will be watching this trial in mainland China and Taiwan and Hong Kong,” said Esther Hsiao, who has covered the case for the Chinese Daily News, a San Gabriel Valley newspaper whose stories also appear in a Taiwan affiliate.

“People compare it with the O.J. Simpson case. Both cases involve two victims and involve DNA evidence. It’s sort of a family tragedy,” Hsiao said.

The case has been a staple of Southern California’s Chinese-language newspapers, which have assiduously covered even the tiniest developments. It also is followed with interest in Taiwan, where the husband, Tseng (Jim) Peng, is a prominent businessman and the Pengs lived when they were not staying in Orange County’s Rancho Santa Margarita community.

And, a well-known Hong Kong film director used the case last year as the basis for a gory murder mystery called “Lover’s Lover.”

The tawdry real-life tale has irresistible movie-script elements: the philandering tycoon and beautiful Chinese mistress who bore their son, a brutal double slaying and, finally, criminal proceedings against the betrayed wife based mainly on DNA evidence.

To many observers, the Peng case also has served as a polarizing morality tale about what can happen when wealthy businessmen from Taiwan, Hong Kong and the United States find mistresses in impoverished mainland China by waving around money and, sometimes, the promise of a ticket out.

“A lot of Taiwanese businessmen go to China mainland to do investments, and get mistresses,” said Kuo Yun, a spokesman for the Taiwanese government in Los Angeles. The trend, which has been reported heavily in the Taiwanese press, has angered many homemakers whose husbands are drawn to the mainland as China has opened its doors to outside investors during the past decade, he said.

“They find out it’s heaven for men. They spend only $200 to $1,000 and they have a mistress,” said Jessie Shaw, an Alhambra divorce lawyer who grew up in Taiwan. Shaw said she has represented clients on all sides of the equation--the jilted wives, the businessmen husbands starting over with Chinese brides and even the young brides when things went sour. “It broke up a lot of families,” she said.

As a result of these sexual politics, Shaw said the local Chinese American community is sharply divided on whom to blame in the Peng case--Lisa Peng, her husband or the slain lover, Ranbing (Jennifer) Ji, 25.

“We are closely watching this,” she said.

During Municipal Court hearings in Laguna Niguel last year, groups of women drove from Los Angeles and San Diego bearing placards in support of Lisa Peng, who has pleaded not guilty to double murder charges. While many grieve for the victim, Lisa Peng remains a sympathetic figure to many women in the Chinese immigrant community.

Ji died in her Mission Viejo apartment on Aug. 18, 1993, after being stabbed 18 times. Her 5-month-old son, Kevin, was found in his crib, suffocated with a shirt stuffed in his mouth.

Prosecutors Robert Molko and Dennis Bauer would not discuss the case on the eve of the trial, but they are expected to rely primarily on DNA evidence linking Lisa Peng’s saliva to a bite mark found on the left arm of Jennifer Ji.

Orange County Superior Court Judge Kathleen E. O’Leary rejected strenuous efforts by the Peng’s defense attorneys to block use of the scientific evidence on grounds that it is unreliable.

Prosecutors also won the right to use a secretly taped conversation between Lisa Peng and her husband, during which she admitted biting the victim on the night of the murders and said Ji fell on her own knife.

Defense lawyer Marshall Schulman declined to discuss the case.

Absent from the trial will be Lisa Peng’s husband, who heads San Diego-based Ranger Communications, a manufacturer of citizen’s band radios with factories in Taiwan, Malaysia and Asia. Jim Peng, 52, is overseas and has refused to return to testify, authorities said. He testified reluctantly at his wife’s preliminary hearing last year, airing in public his three-year secret affair with Ji.

Jim Peng met Ji at a resort bar in October, 1990, while in mainland China for an electronics convention, according to the earlier court testimony. Peng later hired Ji, who at the time working as a restaurant hostess for $85 a month, to work for his company in Shanghai, China, for $129 a month. Jim Peng testified that he opened a personal bank account for her in Hong Kong. Ji left Ranger after a disagreement with another employee and Jim Peng hired her to help run a new venture.

The two became intimate in May, 1991, and Ji became pregnant the following summer. Jim Peng moved her to Mission Viejo, where he visited Ji on business trips to California.

Jim and Lisa Peng, with two teen-age sons in Southern California schools at the time, also kept a house in Rancho Santa Margarita. Lisa Peng once discovered Ji’s clothes in the home and cut them to pieces with scissors, according to court papers.

Lisa Peng later told police she confronted Ji numerous times over the affair, but she denied the killing.

Lisa Peng was in Orange County at the time of the slayings while her husband was en route from Taiwan, prosecutors have said. Upon arriving, Jim Peng went to Ji’s apartment but got no answer, he testified during the preliminary hearing. He testified that when he returned later, the door was unlocked. Inside he found Ji’s bloodied body slumped on a couch. A burp rag was on her shoulder and a baby bottle lay nearby, according to court records. The baby was later found by sheriff’s investigators under a blanket in the crib, police said.

Lisa Peng, whose saliva was linked to the bite mark on Ji’s arm through DNA testing, was arrested Jan. 8, 1994. In a conversation secretly taped by police before her booking, Lisa Peng told her husband that she went to Ji’s apartment that night and bit the mistress when Ji attacked her with a knife, according to a transcript of the conversation that will be used in the trial. Lisa Peng told her husband that Ji “did it herself. . . . She fell down.”

Lisa Peng’s last words to her husband that night were, “Don’t say anything, I won’t admit,” according to a transcript of the conversation.

The murder trial, expected to last six to eight weeks, opens amid renewed attention and strongly held opinions.

Many immigrants from mainland China tend to sympathize most with the victim, who came from Quindoa, China, and they resent her portrayal as a gold digger, said Shaw and others who followed the case.

Other observers say the case illustrates the corrupting influences on China of foreign money. Still others criticize Jim Peng for creating the mess.

“He brought a woman over here and it’s so open. That’s why people in the Chinese community here say he’s so stupid,” said Louis Chang, past president of the Irvine-based South Coast Chinese Cultural Assn. “They blame him more than they blame her.”

Ji’s parents, who live in China, have filed a lawsuit against Jim Peng, claiming he should have known their extramarital relationship would lead to violence. The suit is pending in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana and seeks $2 million in damages.

The film “Lover’s Lover,” subtitled in English and now on the shelves of some Southern California video stores, sides with the character modeled after Lisa Peng. The character, accused of killing her husband’s mistress after being tied by DNA to a bite mark on the victim, screams that she is innocent as she is dragged into jail. A private detective for the family theorizes on a host of possible suspects--including the jailed wife, her businessman husband and a spurned former lover.

In the end, the wife is cleared following a similar stabbing involving bite marks--the victim is a technician at the DNA lab--while the defendant is securely behind bars. The viewer is left in the end to pick the real killer from the parade of other possible suspects.

The real-life case promises plenty of intrigue for many immigrants still unfamiliar with the legal system here, observers say.

“They want to know how the American justice system works,” said Jane Wu, who has covered the case for the Los Angeles edition of the Hong Kong-based Sing Tao newspaper chain.

“It’s like a soap opera,” Wu said. “Up to now, it’s still a mystery.”

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Casting Peng

Here are the players in the Peng Murder trial, which begins today with jury selection in Santa Ana:

Defendant: Li-Yun (Lisa) Peng. Taiwanese national, 45, accused of fatally stabbing her wealthy husband’s mistress and suffocating the woman’s 5-month-old child. If convicted of two counts of murder, faces up to life in prison with no parole.

Victims: Ranbing (Jennifer) Ji, 25, and her 5-month-old son, Kevin. Once a restaurant hostess in mainland China, Ji became entangled in an affair with businessman Tseng Peng and moved to Mission Viejo, just three miles from Peng’s Orange County home.

Husband: Tseng (Jim) Peng. Wealthy head of San Diego-based radio manufacturer, 52, with factories in Taiwan, China and Malaysia. He and wife kept homes in Taiwan and Rancho Santa Margarita. Out of country and will not testify in trial.

Source: Times reports