New Trial Underway in Love-Triangle Slayings

A new trial for a Taiwanese woman accused of two 1993 love-triangle killings opened Wednesday with familiar arguments but little sign of the international media frenzy that surrounded the mistrial last fall.

The prosecutor alleged that Li-Yun “Lisa” Peng, 46, was consumed by jealousy and greed when she stabbed her millionaire husband’s lover, Ranbing “Jennifer” Ji, and killed the 5-month-old boy he had fathered.

Lisa Peng’s frustration over the extramarital affair “turned to hate, vengeance and greed,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Molko said during his opening statements in Orange County Superior Court. “She decided to eliminate Jennifer and Kevin.”

But the defense attorney told jurors that the real killer was the defendant’s husband, Tseng “Jim” Peng, the head of an international electronics firm based in Taiwan. Defense lawyer Marshall Schulman said Ji and Lisa Peng were “both” victims of the philandering husband’s selfishness.

“This is a case about greed, business and the viciousness of one of the most sadistic individuals that ever lived,” Schulman said. He contended that police “had the killer in their hands, and they let him go.”

Ji was found dead in her Mission Viejo apartment on Aug. 18, 1993. She had been stabbed 18 times, and her son, Kevin, had been suffocated in his crib.

A highly publicized trial ended in September when the jury deadlocked 10 to 2 in favor of conviction. The new trial is scheduled to last until mid-May.

The scene Wednesday was much calmer than that at the first trial, which was aggressively covered by about two dozen journalists, mainly for Chinese-language news organizations in California and abroad.

As the second trial got underway, Molko told jurors that Lisa Peng was consumed by jealousy over her husband’s affair and feared that the child could threaten her share of the multimillion-dollar electronics empire called Ranger Communications. Lisa Peng was in Orange County at the time of the slayings, and DNA tests linked her saliva to a bite mark found on Ji’s arm.

Molko said Lisa Peng incriminated herself when she was taped telling her husband at the time of her arrest that “I won’t admit” to the killings. Authorities said Jim Peng could not be the killer because he was on a flight from Asia at the time. Jim Peng, who lives in Taiwan, has refused to come to the United States to testify.

But Schulman said that the time of death was uncertain and that Jim Peng had time to kill Ji and the child after his arrival.

The defense lawyer said Jim Peng feared a breakup with his mistress because she would seek child support and a share of a separate business in which she had been involved.