Woman Guilty in O.C. Love-Triangle Case

A love-triangle murder case that captivated an audience on both sides of the Pacific came to a dramatic close Thursday when a jury convicted Li-Yun “Lisa” Peng of killing her wealthy husband’s young lover and the woman’s infant son.

Peng, 46, whose first trial ended with a hung jury last fall, cradled her head and sobbed uncontrollably as verdicts were read in the hushed courtroom. The mother and sister of victim Ranbing “Jennifer” Ji held hands, at first holding back emotion and then bursting into tears as the courtroom cleared.

The Orange County Superior Court jury deliberated five days before finding Peng guilty of second-degree murder in the fatal stabbing of Ji, 25, and guilty of first-degree murder in the suffocation of 5-month-old Kevin Ji, who was fathered by the defendant’s husband. She also was convicted of the special circumstance allegation of multiple murder.

Peng, a Taiwanese national, could face up to life in prison without possibility of parole. A sentencing date will be set Monday.

The Peng case was closely watched in Asia and became a real-life soap opera for Southern California Chinese immigrants, seized by its racy brew of sexual politics and international wealth. Chinese-language media flocked to the trial and a Hong Kong director made a movie about the case in 1994.

One juror summed up the case’s screenplay flavor: “It was filled with everything. It was filled with love, jealousy, hate, wealth--everything.”

Ji was found dead Aug. 18, 1993, on the sofa in her Mission Viejo apartment. She had been stabbed 18 times. Kevin lay dead in his crib with a T-shirt stuffed in his mouth.

Prosecutors argued in the two-month trial that Peng ambushed Ji with a knife in a jealous rage over the three-year affair between Ji and Peng’s businessman husband, Tseng “Jim” Peng, 53. Authorities alleged that Lisa Peng killed the child to remove a potential rival for the Pengs’ multimillion-dollar electronics empire.

The defense sought to turn the tables by contending that Jim Peng committed the murders out of fear that Ji was about to end their relationship. But jurors said they quickly dismissed that scenario because of evidence that Jim Peng was en route from his home in Asia at the time authorities said the killings took place.

Instead, jurors said they concluded that Lisa Peng visited Ji that night to discuss the affair, but the confrontation escalated violently. “Somehow it got out of control,” said one juror.

Even as they convicted Lisa Peng, several jurors said they sympathized with the jilted wife as much as with her victim.

“We could understand both sides,” said one juror, a housewife who declined to give her name. “Jim Peng had a midlife crisis. That’s when Jennifer came into his life. We felt very sorry for Lisa. We do at this moment.”

Jurors heaped much of the blame for the mess on Jim Peng, who refused to travel from his home in Taiwan to testify for the prosecution at the two trials.

“There’s a lot of people who got hurt in this thing,” said juror Paul Foster, 45, a Rancho Santa Margarita truck driver. “Mrs. Peng will be paying for her husband’s mistakes.”

Jim Peng was “very quiet” and unemotional when told of the verdict, said a family friend who telephoned him with the news. “That is his way,” said Robert Marmorstone, who lives in Irvine and has known the Pengs for 19 years.

Marmorstone had yet to deliver the news to the couple’s two sons, ages 18 and 22, who attend separate schools in Southern California. “It’s a sad ending,” he said.

After the verdicts, Lisa Peng could be heard wailing from a holding cell area out of view of the courtroom.

“She’s not very good,” her attorney, Marshall M. Schulman, said later outside court.

Schulman said he planned to study whether the law stipulates that Judge John J. Ryan must sentence Lisa Peng to a life term without chance for parole. “I certainly don’t believe that life without parole is appropriate in this case,” Schulman said.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Molko, who prosecuted both trials, said that the verdict was just and that he hoped the outcome would help the stricken families end their “lingering, slow pain.”

Jurors said they lacked evidence proving Lisa Peng planned to kill when she showed up at Ji’s house. But they concluded that the child’s slaying required premeditation, and decided that Jim Peng would not have killed his own son.

“It took a lot of time to kill the baby under these circumstances,” Molko said.

The guilty verdicts brought relief to Ji’s mother, Xiang Lan Liu, and sister, Jacqueline Ji, who live in mainland China but moved temporarily near the courthouse during the trial.

“I think all the Americans should trust their justice system because the system serves them,” said Jacqueline Ji.

Lisa Peng’s mother and two sisters, who live in Taiwan, remained stoic as the verdicts were announced.

Peng’s first trial ended in September when the jury deadlocked 10 to 2 in favor of conviction, after a week of deliberations.

The retrial lacked the media sizzle accompanying the first trial, which saw two dozen journalists for Chinese-language outlets jostling for even minor daily developments. The judge in that trial banned cameras from the courtroom after a photographer approached a juror during a break.

The retrial attracted half as many journalists as the first. Ryan, who presided over the retrial, took the unusual step of keeping jurors’ identities secret, though he allowed cameras in the courtroom.

This time fireworks were limited largely to caustic exchanges between the opposing lawyers. And in a good-natured gesture after the verdict, Ryan posed for a picture for the photographers from Chinese-language media who followed the trial but had been barred from photographing him.

In both trials, the prosecutor said Lisa Peng seethed with jealousy over her husband’s love affair with the former restaurant hostess. Jim Peng met Ji during a business trip to mainland China. Molko said Lisa Peng also feared that Ji and Kevin would eventually cut into her share of the Pengs’ electronics empire. From their home in Taiwan, the Pengs ran Ranger Communications, a giant electronics company that manufactures CB radios at operations in San Diego, Europe and throughout Asia.

“You’ve got hate, vengeance, anger, greed, the inheritance issue,” Molko told jurors at the trial’s end. “And you know from the evidence, she’s determined not to divorce.”

Molko said Lisa Peng, who had warned Ji to stay away from her husband, ambushed Ji during a prearranged meeting. Peng, who lived with her husband in Taiwan, was staying at a separate home the couple owned in Rancho Santa Margarita, just four miles from Ji’s apartment.

“There was an execution--or two,” Molko said.

The murder weapon was never found and there were no eyewitnesses. But prosecutors got a boost when DNA tests linked Peng’s saliva to a bite mark on Ji’s arm. Schulman conceded that Peng bit Ji during a confrontation, but not that she killed Ji.

Schulman blamed the tycoon husband for the murders. Schulman argued that Jim Peng was afraid Ji would call off the affair and might seek child support and a share of a business in which she and Jim Peng once were involved. Schulman said Jim Peng never loved his son Kevin and had tried to persuade Ji to abort her pregnancy.

Schulman said the apartment showed no signs of struggle, indicating that Ji trusted her attacker. While prosecutors said Jim Peng was flying from Asia at that time of the killing, Schulman disputed the time of death.

Schulman said Jim Peng sought to implicate his wife by giving police evidence, such as a button found outside Ji’s apartment. “He’s got rid of Jennifer. He’s got rid of the child. And now he wants to get rid of Lisa Peng,” Schulman said in his closing remarks.

Jim Peng and Ji met in mainland China in 1990 and began the affair soon after. Ji, who worked for Ranger Communication for a time, became pregnant and moved into the apartment Jim Peng kept for her in Mission Viejo.