3rd Trial in ’93 Killings Still Holds Audience

Lisa Peng sits quietly in a Santa Ana courtroom, her demeanor giving no hint that her imprisonment has captivated Southern California’s Chinese American community.

The 8-year-old case, with its soap-opera story line and allegations of police misconduct, is rather like the O.J. Simpson and JonBenet Ramsey cases rolled into one for the Chinese-language press, which continues to follow the trial breathlessly, even as interest from the mainstream media has waned.

Peng, a wealthy Taiwanese national, is accused of stabbing to death her tycoon husband’s Chinese mistress and smothering the woman’s infant son in his crib in Mission Viejo in 1993.

It is a story that has made Peng a sympathetic figure to some Taiwanese women, who for years have seen their wealthy husbands meet, even marry, women they encounter on business trips to mainland China.

“I have 100% sympathy for her,” said Donna Lin, a Taiwanese immigrant and head of the Asian American Senior Citizens Service Center in Santa Ana. “Whatever happened, whoever did it, was wrong. Of course I hope she’s innocent.”

Some Chinese Americans, however, side with the victim, 25-year-old Ranbing “Jennifer” Ji, and can’t believe it has taken so long for justice to be done in the case.

On Monday, defense lawyer John Barnett introduced his star witness: renowned criminalist Dr. Henry Lee, whose testimony about the Los Angeles Police Department’s handling of blood evidence helped lead to Simpson’s acquittal.

It’s all great fodder for local Chinese-language newspapers, where the trial shares space with the tense relations between the United States and China. It also was the basis for a 1994 Chinese film and the subject of a book that reportedly sold 50,000 copies in China.

“One day I did not come to this trial; I covered another case,” said San-Yan Emma Wang, a reporter for the Los Angeles-based Chinese Daily News. “Some readers called to complain. . . . It doesn’t matter where I go, people always ask me, ‘Who did it?’ ”

The murders took place in a Mission Viejo apartment that communications mogul Tseng “Jim” Peng had rented for Ji. According to prosecutors, Lisa Peng confronted her in the apartment in 1993, grabbed a kitchen knife and stabbed her 18 times. She then allegedly smothered the infant that Jim Peng had fathered with Ji.

Jim Peng told sheriff’s deputies that he found his mistress’ body on a couch in the apartment. His son was found with a sock in his mouth, wearing only a diaper.

Lisa Peng’s first trial resulted in a mistrial in 1995 after jurors deadlocked 10 to 2 in favor of conviction. The next year, an Orange County jury convicted Peng of both murders and she was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

In 1999, a state appeals court overturned the conviction, criticizing sheriff’s detectives for a nine-hour interview in which Peng repeatedly asked for an attorney. The appeals court also barred prosecutors from using Peng’s secretly recorded admission to her husband that she bit Ji during an argument. (Ji suffered a bite wound shortly before she was killed.)

Defense attorney Barnett says Peng’s husband killed his lover because she was squeezing him for $1.1 million in cash and real estate to settle potential child support and palimony claims.

Lee testified Monday that a bloody handprint found in Ji’s apartment was from a large hand--evidence that Barnett said shows that Jim Peng was the killer.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Bob Molko contends that forensic evidence shows that Ji and her 5-month-old son, Kevin, were killed long before Jim Peng arrived in Southern California on a flight from Asia. Jim Peng, as with past trials, would not travel to Orange County to testify against his wife.

Jim Peng, according to testimony, amassed a fortune through his radio communications empire. His company, Ranger Communications, has operations in Asia, National City and Las Vegas.

Jim Peng has stood by his wife during her seven years of incarceration and believes that she is innocent, said John Gladych, an attorney representing Jim Peng in a civil lawsuit filed by Ji’s survivors. Jim and Lisa Peng still are married.

The allegations touched a nerve among Taiwanese women, who view women in mainland China as easy targets for their wealthy husbands.

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Times staff writer Mai Tran contributed to this story.