Long Buzz of Peng Murder Case

Wearing an elegant business suit with her jet-black hair neatly tied back, Lisa Peng doesn’t look like a celebrity murder suspect as she sits quietly in a Santa Ana courtroom.

But nearly eight years after she allegedly killed her husband’s mistress and the woman’s baby in Mission Viejo, Peng’s case continues to captivate many Chinese Americans in Southern California.

Now at trial a third time, with its soap opera story line and allegations of police misconduct, it is rather like the O.J. Simpson and JonBenet Ramsey cases rolled into one for the Chinese-language press. Those newspapers continue to follow the trial breathlessly even as interest from the mainstream media has waned.

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

It’s 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 director 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.”

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

On Monday, defense lawyer John Barnett introduced his star witness--renowned forensic scientist Dr. Henry Lee, the expert whose testimony about the Los Angeles Police Department’s handling of blood evidence helped secure Simpson’s acquittal.

It’s all great fodder for local Chinese-language newspapers, in which the trial shares space with tense U.S.-Chinese political relations. It was also 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 killings took place in a Mission Viejo apartment that communications mogul Tseng “Jim” Peng rented for Ji. According to prosecutors, Lisa Peng confronted her husband’s mistress in the apartment in 1993, grabbed a kitchen knife and stabbed her 18 times. She then allegedly smothered the infant Jim Peng had fathered with Ji.

Jim Peng told sheriff’s deputies that he found his mistress’ body lying 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, 10-2, in favor of a conviction. The next year, an Orange County jury convicted Peng of both killings and the wealthy Taiwanese national 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 slain.)

Defense attorney Barnett is arguing that Peng’s husband killed his lover of three years 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 Ji and her 5-month-old son, Kevin, were slain 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 with his radio communications empire. His company, Ranger Communications, now has operations in Asia, National City and Las Vegas.

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

In a preliminary hearing in 1994, Jim Peng testified that he met Ji in 1990 while at a convention in China and offered her a job. In 1992, he said, the couple became romantically involved. Their son was born in March 1993.

Jim Peng said he paid the rent on Ji’s apartment in Mission Viejo, which was only a few blocks from the Aliso Viejo home he and his wife shared when in California on business.

According to court documents, Lisa Peng once discovered Ji’s clothing at the California home. She slashed them to pieces with scissors. Molko contends that Lisa Peng confronted Ji at the Mission Viejo apartment and slashed her to death with a kitchen knife.

The allegations touched a nerve among many Taiwanese women, who view women in mainland China as easy targets for their wealthy husbands. It was only in the 1980s that improved relations between the two governments enabled Taiwanese businessmen to begin investing in China.

“You have to be very careful with your husbands and the ladies in mainland China,” said Lin of the Santa Ana senior center.

USC professor Stanley Rosen, who has studied the relationship between Taiwan and China, said he is not surprised by the interest in the case.

“It’s something people [in Taiwan] can identify with because it’s a phenomenon: businessmen starting second families in China or Hong Kong,” he said.

The case is expected to go to the jury next month.

Times staff writer Mai Tran contributed to this report.