[apprehensive music]
* *
- Jennifer's a young mother.
She's fairly new to the country.
I'm sure there were some mornings she woke up
and thought to herself, you know,
"This is what the American dream looks like."
That's when her life changes forever.
[suspenseful music]
- You could tell that she had been stabbed
and had died some time ago.
- This is passion, this is the anger,
this is the fury of someone personally involved.
- The bite mark was discovered during the autopsy,
and they were able to actually recover some DNA evidence.
- They have him all wired to the polygraph.
They are watching the results.
They want to know, is this guy lying?
- This was a very, very big case.
People living in Taiwan,
people living in China all knew about it.
- I can remember her running out
and screaming in agony.
[woman screams]
- You couldn't really get a good read
on what the jury was thinking at the time.
Stabbing is such a personal
and intense way of killing someone.
- Here's a strong woman. Here's a victim.
Here's somebody who was trying to protect her family.
- The jury cried when they returned the verdict.
[woman wailing]
[suspenseful music]
* *
[melancholy piano music]
* *
- Orange County is a place that has
a lot of promise to it.
There's a lot of people living a very affluent lifestyle.
And there's a lot of people there looking
for that lifestyle.
This is what the American dream looks like.
[child giggles]
- Orange County is exciting.
A lot of activities regardless
if you want to be outdoors or indoors.
You've got theater. You've got restaurants.
There's just a ton of stuff here in this county to do.
- And there are a lot of immigrants from Asian nations.
- Orange County has a very significant Asian population.
They brought money here.
In addition, they brought the language, the culture.
narrator: The irresistible draw of the sun-kissed hills
qof Mission Viejo, California,
attracts people from around the world in droves.
- Mission Viejo was a beacon to people all over the world.
And that beacon said,
"This is what California looks like."
The residents of Mission Viejo were accustomed
to a lot of different things.
One thing they were not accustomed to
was seeing a body bag of one of their neighbors
carried off toward the coroner's truck.
* *
[ominous music]
- My name is Steve Shandrick.
In 1993, I was with the Orange County Sheriff's Department.
I was assigned to south patrol as a patrol deputy.
We got a call originally.
The call was of a man, hysterical.
There was a little bit of a language barrier,
but he was reporting that someone had been killed
in the apartment.
And that's really all that we had to go on at the time.
So we responded to the apartments.
As we were en route, you know,
a lot of stuff goes through your head.
We need to start coming up with a game plan.
How are we going to approach this situation?
When myself and the Mission Viejo deputy
started making our approach on foot,
and the man was at the top of the stairs, obviously frantic.
You couldn't really understand him.
And he kept pointing inside the apartment.
As you walked up the stairs,
there was a door to the left, and it was open.
He was pointing inside saying,
"They're dead. They're dead."
He'd been crying. His eyes were red.
And it's like, okay, well,
something obviously has gone on in this apartment.
We need to get up there now.
Myself and the other deputy that I arrived with,
we made our way up the stair.
That's when we decided we're gonna make entry.
Because the apartment door was open,
as we got to the top of the stairway,
we could actually look inside,
and we saw a female slumped over between the couch
and the coffee table in the living room.
That point we notified dispatch that we're making entry.
We have one female down.
You could tell that she had been stabbed
and had died some time ago.
* *
The last room that I had to clear was a child's room.
I could see the baby laying on his back,
partly covered by a blanket.
The child was suffocated, and it's just hard
to get that image out of your head.
I don't know of any officer or deputy
that, you know, it doesn't affect them
when they see a child injured or killed.
I mean, this is something that you can't unsee.
And I think what made it hard at the time for me also
is that I had a child, you know, not much older.
That really affects you to a certain degree.
At the time, as we were in there,
I still had no idea who the gentleman was
that we had taken off the stairwell.
Later on is when I actually found out
his name was Jim Peng.
narrator: Taiwanese telecommunications mogul
Jim Peng tells police that he had recently
relocated his girlfriend Jennifer Ji stateside
so that she and their son
could be afforded the opportunity
to live without the stigma that accompanies
unwed mothers in her native China.
- My name is Geoff Boucher.
In 1993, I was covering crime in Orange County, California.
Jim Peng is in the telecommunications industry.
He's a very successful businessman.
He's from Taiwan. He's in his fifties.
He's doing very, very well.
I mean, his value at one point,
upwards of $200 million.
Jennifer is 25. She's from Qingdao, China.
She'd grown up in a coastal Chinese city.
She was one of three children.
She had been university trained.
She was ambitious.
She's living in this apartment complex
with the tennis courts and the pool
and really nice landscaping,
and it's very different than the life
she's accustomed to.
This is a new world for her.
She's looking for a new life in a new place,
and she's here in Orange County, California,
surrounded by really the sun-dappled affluence
and comfort of the upper class.
And she finds herself probably dreaming a lot
about the life that her son's going to live.
When she looks down on him and sees him in the crib,
she's probably thinking about
what California is going to do for him,
what Orange County is going to do for him.
The bills are being paid by her lover
and the father of her child.
And that's Jim Peng. He's a very wealthy guy.
It must've been startling for her some mornings
when she woke up and realized
how close she was to the American dream.
narrator: But that dream has been shattered
less than one year after Jennifer
arrived in Mission Viejo.
And the way she was killed
tells police a lot about the killer.
- Stabbing is such a personal
and intense way of killing someone.
You're within arm's distance, you're feeling the knife,
you know, as someone's stabbing them.
You know, there had to have been crying out in pain.
There had to have been some kind of a struggle.
There was a lot of anger involved.
- When police find a crime scene like this,
there's a couple of general determinations
they try to make.
One is if this is a crime of property
or if this is a crime of passion
or if this is something else.
- Just by looking around, it didn't look like
there was any robbery involved.
Didn't look like there was any kind of ransacking
of the apartment.
So in my mind, I'm thinking, "Okay, well,
the suspect's probably someone that she let in."
It means that the victim knew the killer.
[dramatic music]
- Who did she know?
It's a woman who knew very few people
in Orange County in California.
- But one of them would have been her best friend Nina.
In this particular photograph, Nina's new husband, Bob,
is seen in sort of a cozy, familiar position
with Jennifer.
Is that the catalyst for what's happened?
Is this husband a possibility as a suspect?
[ominous music]
* *
[atmospheric music]
narrator: Jet-setting telecommunications executive
Jim Peng is still grappling with the shocking end
to his May-December romance with Jennifer Ji
in the OC enclave of Mission Viejo.
Even detectives find the murder
of this quiet-mannered immigrant mother
and her son, Kevin, difficult to comprehend.
[ominous music]
- You could tell that she had been stabbed.
Lividity had started setting in.
And lividity is when the blood starts to pool
at the lower extremities.
And it doesn't occur for some time after death.
So she obviously had been stabbed
and had died some time ago.
There was absolutely no forced entry into the apartment.
The weird thing about the situation is,
there wasn't a lot of stuff out of place.
It wasn't like the apartment was ransacked,
everything looked pretty much intact.
It was a lot of blood.
A lot of dried blood on the ground
and on the cushions.
You know, just on the floor in general.
It was probably someone that she knew
that she let in the apartment,
which is very common for murders.
You have some sort of connection there somewhere
with the suspect.
Didn't rule out that Jim was involved.
- So investigators, they bring in Jim Peng.
What Jim Peng gives them is an alibi.
His alibi is he was out of the country.
He was traveling.
He had been in Asia for business.
He presents a scenario where he's gone to the apartment,
which he pays for,
and that's when his life changes forever
because he's greeted by the brutality of this crime scene.
[suspenseful music]
narrator: Detectives are able to confirm Jim's alibi.
Leaving them to question just who was Jennifer Ji?
- I'm Shiru Hong.
I was a freelance interpreter back in the '90s.
When China was going through cultural revolution,
it was sealed off from the rest of the world.
So we didn't know much about what was going on in China.
Ji Ranbing, or Jennifer Ji, was born the second year
the cultural revolution started.
What that tells me is that in her childhood
she probably went through some hardship,
but by the time the cultural revolution ended,
she was young enough to be able to get back to school,
and she eventually graduated from college.
She was tall, she was beautiful, ambitious,
and she got a job at a place called the Dynasty Hotel
as, like, a PR manager,
and that's where she met Jim Peng.
There was one day the hotel was having
some kind of performance outdoors,
and people were all out there in the courtyard watching.
Jennifer is very tall.
And Jim was maybe 5'6".
So Jennifer was blocking him.
And he said, you know, "Excuse me, can you move?
'Cause I can't see." That's how they met.
And they started talking.
- So from that chance meeting in 1990 at a hotel in China,
their friendship turned into a romance,
and then she finds herself pregnant.
- Back in the '90s, Jennifer had to hide her pregnancy.
Her family had no idea,
and she couldn't let people know she was pregnant.
For a single woman who's not married to be pregnant,
you bring shame not just to your family,
to your family name, to your ancestors.
Like what we say, you know,
the ancestors would be turning in their graves.
It was very serious.
- The prospect of being a single mom with a child
born out of wedlock is a tough prospect
for Jennifer to consider in China.
There seems to be one clear course,
one direction that she should move.
If her son's going to have a chance to have a good future,
it's probably going to be in the United States.
So that propels her toward Southern California.
Jennifer was eager to find a life that was exciting
and as bright as she was.
And she brought all that with her
when she got off the plane in Southern California.
narrator: But Jennifer's escape to Orange County
and picture-perfect new beginning
has come to an abrupt end.
Police wonder if perhaps neighbors in the complex
saw or heard anything that could provide some insight.
- Jennifer's neighbors, you know,
were trying to process how this could happen.
They were searching through their mind for clues
that they might've seen indications.
No one heard anything.
The fact that no one saw anything,
it does kind of go against expectations.
Investigators, they don't have a lot to work on.
They have the crime scene. They have no murder weapon.
And they also don't really have any accounts from witnesses
that are going to get them any closer
to determining what happened inside that apartment.
* *
narrator: With no leads from neighbors
and no signs of forced entry,
investigators think it's possible
Jennifer may have known her killer.
Police turn to the person who knew her best,
her closest friend, Nina.
- There's not a lot of familiar or friendly faces
that they have in their life,
but one of them would have been her best friend, Nina.
Jennifer, when she first arrived in the United States,
one of the first things that happened to her
was she found a friend.
Jim and Jennifer stopped at a Chinese restaurant
in Orange County.
And one of the people that worked there was Nina.
And she and Jennifer would become friends,
to the point that Jennifer
would be part of Nina's wedding party.
Among the photos that investigators found
that in Jennifer's apartment were related to this wedding,
they saw one of Nina's new husband alone in a shot
in a frame with Jennifer.
In this particular photograph, Nina's new husband, Bob,
is seen in sort of a cozy,
familiar position with Jennifer.
And just on that simple fact, they decide to look into
the dynamic between Bob and Jennifer.
That simple thing led them to ask,
"Is this suggest that there's a relationship here?
"Is this wedding--is that the catalyst for what's happened?
Is this husband a possibility as a suspect?"
They have to go down that road because if they don't,
it could compromise the investigation.
Is this suggesting an illicit
or a secret relationship of some kind
as the motive for this crime?
[ominous music]
* *
narrator: Before her tragic murder,
Jennifer Ji was settling into her new OC life
as jet-setting millionaire Jim Peng's girlfriend.
Jennifer was also becoming fast friends
with locals like Nina and Bob Wadley.
A cozy snapshot of Jennifer and Bob
from his recent wedding to Nina had detectives wondering
if Jennifer had gotten too close for comfort
with Nina's new well-heeled husband.
- The photograph of Jennifer leads investigators to Bob.
Bob is the husband of Nina.
They go and they interview him.
He's a pilot, and his itineraries were
taking him out of Orange County,
quickly eliminating him as a suspect.
Nina, there's nothing about her
that screams "murder suspect,"
but investigators can't just rely on assumptions like that,
and they began sizing her up.
They do that work, and they're pretty quick to dismiss
Nina as a viable suspect.
The circle of people around Jennifer was a small one.
And with Nina and Bob eliminated as suspects,
it's getting smaller.
* *
narrator: As another lead dries up,
investigators still can't shake the notion
that Jennifer's killer is probably someone close to her.
- My name is Robert Molko, and in the 1990s,
I was a prosecutor in Orange County, California.
Somebody stabbed 18 times is a sign of passion.
Very clear sign of passion. Very easy case to resolve.
This is not a mobster.
This is not an execution by a cartel.
It was a middle-class very nice neighborhood
of apartments in Mission Viejo, suburban community.
There was no sign of forced entry.
She had a child,
would not have let anybody in that she did not know.
This is most probably some kind of domestic type of situation.
It's the very first thing you think of.
* *
She was someone who had come from mainland China,
did not know very many people.
narrator: Just days after the murder,
police return to the most obvious suspect,
Jennifer's boyfriend and father of her child,
Jim Peng.
When questioned a second time around,
it's clear there's another side to Jim
investigators have yet to unveil.
As investigators are talking to Jim Peng
about Jennifer and the baby,
it doesn't add up as far as his time.
Where is he all the time? What's he occupied with?
Well, that's when Jim Peng says,
"You know, I do have a lot going on."
All of a sudden Jim Peng drop this bombshell that,
"Oh, by the way, I'm married and my wife and two kids
live just in the next city up."
So his entire relationship
with Jennifer and their newborn
is a second life for him.
This is a guy that's leading two different lives.
In the span of maybe 7 or 8 miles,
you have two different women who both have Jim Peng
as the father of their children.
But neither of these women know fully what's going on.
- The little light would've gone off in my head
that Jim Peng just had dropped a bombshell on 'em.
And this was kind of the break in the case
that I think that they were looking for.
* *
Now they had motive.
They had someone they could go and interview
and they had a possible suspect.
And I think that was a huge break in the case.
- So investigators are taking all this information
in from Jim Peng.
He has this lover. He also has a wife.
That tells investigators that there's a very good chance
that the strongest motive is going to belong to someone
who wants this relationship to end.
The question they have is if that person is Jim Peng
or if it's somebody else.
Narrator: The revelation of Jim Peng's
duplicitous double life
sets off alarm bells for police.
- Jim Peng was conflicted.
A married man who had two teenagers and a wife,
multi-million dollar empire.
Does he break off the relationship?
And really the story of this case is,
he had created a situation
that he did not know how to get out of.
* *
narrator: Investigators know that desperate times
can sometimes call for desperate measures.
The question is, how desperate was Jim Peng?
- Jim Peng is a man that knows how to figure things out.
He's figured out business in two different continents
and made a success in both.
And he thinks he's got this figured out.
He's got two different lives that he's built.
He's got one apartment with a newborn son
and a young lover, half his age.
He's got another home-- a beautiful home
with a wife of two decades and two sons
who are each in private schools
in Orange County, California.
For him, the question is just how long
he can keep things going at equilibrium.
Investigators want to know why that equilibrium changed.
So investigators are very interested
in hooking Jim Peng up to a polygraph machine.
- Polygraph is instrumental in that it just helps the case.
They have him sitting there all wired to the machine.
They start asking the questions
that they really want answered the most.
Were you there? Did you do it?
Do you know who did it?
[tense music]
* *
[ominous music]
* *
[suspenseful music]
* *
narrator: Married Orange County tech titan Jim Peng
swears he's an innocent man
and had nothing to do with the murders
of girlfriend Jennifer Ji and their infant son, Kevin.
Detectives watch carefully as he takes a polygraph test
to prove it.
- One thing the polygraph, you know,
in my experience-- or proves valuable
is even though it's not admissible
in court as evidence,
it kind of gives an investigator a good idea
if someone is lying.
It's still a good indicator that, okay,
we need to continue down a line of interview
that we might have a suspect here.
- Jim Peng's polygraph test comes back
and the needle says, "Jim Peng's telling the truth."
narrator: With Jim off the hook
as their primary suspect,
investigators shift their focus
to the other woman in Jim's life.
- It had to be somebody she let in.
Who did she know?
It's a woman who knew very few people
in Orange County in California.
Jim's wife Lisa Peng was in Orange County,
just a few miles away in the house
that Jim Peng had purchased.
narrator: Detectives already know
that Jim Peng's home with wife, Lisa,
was within minutes of the crime scene.
But what did she know about her husband's
secret second family?
- Investigators have a lot of questions for Lisa Peng.
They go to talk to her at her home with Jim Peng.
One of the things that they want to see is her reaction
when they tell her who the murder victim is.
They're watching her carefully at that point.
She shows no surprise to the fact
that her husband was having an affair.
And in fact, if anything, her reaction
is one of resignation and acknowledgement.
* *
narrator: Infidelity is a dirty little secret
not foreign to Orange County.
Lisa had hoped that the vows she exchanged
with her husband, Jim,
would protect the sanctity of their marriage.
* *
- When Taiwan opened up to allow Taiwanese businessmen
to go to China to invest,
hundreds and hundreds of them
went to take advantage of the cheap labor.
And Jim Peng was one of the very first ones.
And almost all of them take up a mistress in China.
It's a trophy
so you can show off how successful you are.
- It's a scenario that's familiar
to people in the community.
But for Lisa Peng, it's one that she thought
her husband would never be part of.
narrator: Lisa tells detectives
she helped build Jim's company
a world away from Orange County.
His frequent business trips to Shanghai
had left him open to temptation.
- The new factory was in Shanghai.
And she, for whatever reason--
but she packed and unpacked his suitcases.
- There was a little t-shirt,
obviously a woman's size t-shirt.
Definitely not Jim's size.
And he said, "Oh, I don't know.
Maybe the hotel laundry service got it mixed up or something."
That's how it started.
She started wondering what's going on.
But until that point, she had no idea.
Lisa quit her job as well to help Jim.
So she considers herself the reason
why Jim became so successful.
She's very instrumental, and she contributed a lot.
I think that's why she was so upset that later on
that Jim was being unfaithful to her.
narrator: Lisa closes the interview with describing
how she discovered Jim's affair
had migrated to the States
along with their business and new home.
- One time in the nice house
that they owned in Mission Viejo,
Lisa comes from Taiwan, and Jim Peng's not here.
But she goes into the master bedroom,
and she finds women's underwear in the bed
and a set of women's clothes in the closet.
She proceeded to take scissors and cut all those clothes up.
* *
- That night, Jim came home with Jennifer,
and they opened the door, and they saw Lisa there.
And then Lisa said to Jennifer,
"What are you doing in my house?"
And then Jennifer said, "Well, it may be your house now,
but don't be so sure it will always be your house."
That got her very upset because she just thought
that you're the one who broke my family.
You should be sorry. You should be apologetic.
Why'd he have to do this?
And Jennifer just ignored her.
And just told her, "I'm never gonna give up."
Lisa Peng and Jennifer Ji had so much in common.
They're both very strong women.
And that's why there's conflict.
narrator: Detectives now see Lisa Peng
as a woman with a possible motive.
And several months after the interview,
they may have uncovered enough evidence
to tie her to the scene of the crime.
- The 18 stab wounds is not the kind of killing
that somebody you hire.
This is somebody who was personally involved.
And on top of that, there was a mark on the left upper arm
that looked like a bite mark.
- The bite mark was discovered during the autopsy.
And during the autopsy,
they were able to actually recover some DNA evidence.
- There was saliva.
And it was known at the time that saliva contains DNA.
- The DNA that is extracted from this wound
on the left arm of Jennifer, yields DNA evidence.
And that DNA evidence technology in 1990s
was sufficiently advanced
that it proved to be a major break in this case.
Investigators have been hungry for any sort of clue,
any sort of signpost that's going to point them
in the right direction.
And now they learn something
that will change the course of the investigation.
[dramatic music]
- They were speaking in Chinese,
thinking that no one was going to understand
what they're saying.
- "So it's your problem. It's not my problem.
But I'm the one who's gonna get locked up."
- You couldn't really get a good read
on what the jury was thinking.
- I can remember her running out of the court room
and screaming.
[woman screams]
[ominous music]
* *
narrator: Lisa Peng's police interview
leaves no doubt she had plenty of motive
to kill her tech mogul husband's mistress
and infant son.
But will a DNA test provide OC sheriff investigators
what they need to close in on their prime suspect?
- Investigators have taken DNA through saliva swabs
from all the people that they've been talking to.
And they run those results against the extracted DNA
from the victim's body.
The DNA result comes back and the result says
that the person that bit Jennifer
was Jim Peng's wife of two decades, Lisa Peng.
That mark on the arm, the DNA in that wound,
does suggest that Lisa Peng has not been telling the truth
about her whereabouts during the crime.
Now, you can walk that through logically and say
the person that bit her
must have been the person that killed her.
Well, that may be true,
but you have to prove it in a court of law.
[suspenseful music]
- You had motive. You had DNA evidence.
So Lisa was arrested for the murder of Jennifer
and for Kevin.
I think there was enough evidence and the situation,
whether it was for revenge,
I think they had a good suspect in custody.
And I was happy to see it.
- When Orange County sheriff's investigators
arrest Lisa Peng,
She denies that she's committed the crime.
She denies that the scenario is anything like
what they're describing. She maintains her innocence.
And to the investigators' surprise, so does Jim Peng.
The same man that walked in and found that crime scene,
now has been told who police believe is responsible for it,
and his first reaction and strongest reaction is,
"It wasn't her."
- At that point in time, Jim Peng said,
"May I have a moment with her
before you take her to booking?"
* *
Jim Peng went in there
and started to speak to Lisa in Mandarin Chinese.
[person speaking Mandarin]
- There's really no expectation of privacy.
You're in an interview room. It was being recorded.
* *
They were speaking in Chinese thinking that
no one's gonna be able to translate that
or no one's gonna understand what they're saying.
- The investigators, not knowing what's going on at all,
come in and says, "Look, we're running out of time.
You gotta finish this."
narrator: After separating the couple,
sheriff's investigators must wait to see
if the heated exchange reveals any hidden truths
about Jennifer's murder.
- They had the translators come in afterwards
and give them their interpretation
of what was said between Jim and Lisa.
- Interpreting that audio recording,
the whole time Lisa was just telling Jim,
"You're the one who started it. It's you.
You're the one who cause us to come to this point."
And Lisa was just saying, "It's you.
"If you didn't get involved with Jennifer,
"we'll still be a happy family.
"So it's your problem. It's not my problem.
But I'm the one who's gonna get locked up."
[ominous music]
* *
- The bombshell that is when he asked her,
"Why did you kill her? Why did you stab her?"
And she said, "It was self-defense."
[woman screaming]
And then he questioned her, "Eighteen times?"
"Well, she fell on the knife."
- He said, "She fell on the knife?
But why so many cuts?"
We never got the answer
because the investigators, not knowing what was being said,
said, "We gotta go."
- That was, I think, the huge break in the case
where she incriminated herself.
* *
narrator: Armed with the transcripts
from Lisa and Jim's recorded conversation,
prosecutors have what they need
to charge Lisa Peng with double murder.
* *
- It's important to know that Jim Peng
had been ordered to show up at the preliminary hearing.
In court with cross-examination,
he testified for seven days.
I put the defense on notice
that should he refuse to come back,
We will use his testimony at the preliminary hearing
during the trial.
And I assumed he wouldn't be back
because what he felt is, "I created this problem.
"I know how to fix the problem.
I'll disappear, and I'll never come back."
Jim Peng never testified.
Never came back to this country for any of the trials.
* *
- In August 1995, Lisa Peng finds herself in court.
She's on trial.
- He discovers Jennifer Ji dead
on the sofa.
And he can't find Kevin.
He can't find the baby.
The evidence will show that the defendant had--
after she had killed the baby--
had covered him up with a pillow and a blanket.
- The first trial, when I testified,
it's always emotional whenever there's kids involved.
There's quite a time lapse
between when the case actually occurred
and when it went to trial.
So it brought back a lot of memories.
This was a unique case.
- It was a setup, showing her premeditation and deliberation.
- Lisa was always very calm, very in control, very composed.
* *
When they talk about what happened,
how, you know, Jim met Jennifer,
like, she'd act like she couldn't care less.
But if there is testimony that pointed fingers at her
and said that she is the one who killed them,
then she would break down.
[Lisa crying]
[person speaking Mandarin]
- We're gonna take a 5-minute recess.
- When you're up testifying,
you're basically telling your story to the jury.
So they're the ones that you focus on most.
You couldn't really get a good read
on what the jury was thinking at the time.
- Deliberations, if you've tried enough cases,
they can drive you crazy.
You're never sure what a jury's gonna do.
Even if you have a strong case,
all it takes is one juror to hang a jury.
[ominous music]
* *
[suspenseful music]
* *
- This is not the first time
that DNA's been admitted in any case.
We've been doing this for 3 or 4 years.
People are just not aware of that.
The public's not aware of that.
Maybe this will help them focus on the issue.
narrator: More than two years after the 1993 slayings,
Jim Peng's wife, Lisa,
goes on trial for the murders of his mistress,
Jennifer Ji, and their baby son, Kevin.
And the evidence against her is compelling.
After being faced with the DNA,
she had to say she'd been to the apartment.
Although she never admitted doing that to the police.
But in the Chinese conversation with her husband
right before she was taken to be booked,
he asked, "When did you go there?"
The three words are "bong wan ma."
We had three interpreters.
One for the defendant, one for the witness,
and one in the audience.
And they disagreed as to what it meant.
- In Chinese, there are no tenses.
So sometimes-- it's not like in English.
It's very clear you're talking about something in the past,
you're talking about something in the present,
you're talking about something in the future.
In Chinese, it kind of depends.
So whether she went at dusk or whether she went at night,
that's a huge deal.
Jennifer was determined to have died,
like, in the early morning hours,
which means five, six hours.
Seems like a lot of time.
But if you translate that as "I went at night,
I could have gone at 9:00 or 10:00," then,
you know, that's only two hours between the time I went
and the time Jennifer passed away.
Jennifer's grieving family,
who flew into the country for the trial,
holds onto hope for justice.
- I can still to this day remember
I warned the mother that we were about to
get into the bad part-- the crime scene.
And she said she wanted to sit there.
And even though the pictures were not that close to them,
I can remember her running out of the courtroom
and screaming-- howling would be the word--
in agony.
I can still sense it.
This is, what, 20 years later?
Through the double doors,
she was in the hallway screaming
and howling about in pain,
that we had to take a break inside the jury room.
I mean, it's painful for me to talk--
I'm reliving this, and I'm not enjoying it.
It's something you never forget.
narrator: It's been two years since the secret relationship
between Jim Peng and Jennifer Ji
ended in murderous revenge.
Now will a jury's deliberation for justice
hinge on their feelings toward Jim's wife and mistress?
- The jury hung 10-2 for guilt.
Lisa was betrayed by her husband.
He committed adultery.
He betrayed her and her family.
I felt sorry for Lisa Peng.
The jury cried when they returned the verdict.
Emotion takes over.
It doesn't matter how much evidence you have,
there's always emotion that jurors react to.
And if you can't overcome that emotional reaction,
you have a hung jury.
- I thought for sure there was enough evidence.
I thought for sure it was going to be a guilty verdict.
Any time you have a mistrial for a murder case,
you know, it's gonna automatically be appealed,
and it's going to have a second trial.
narrator: A second trial in 1996 gives a different jury
a chance to honor the memory of Jennifer
and her son, Kevin.
- There's a lot of interest in this case.
There's the usual coverage
from Southern California outlets,
but there's more than that.
There's also the international media coverage.
- This case was treated by the Asian population,
the Asian newspapers, like the OJ Simpson trial.
[tense music]
The second trial got reassigned
to a different judge,
but there wasn't much different about the trial itself.
Same lawyers on both sides.
When you try a case a second time,
what you have is prior testimony
of all the witnesses you're calling.
So you have more information
that's being brought in in the second trial.
Verdict is guilty.
- She was given life without parole in prison
for second-degree murder.
[Lisa crying]
In one way I was happy for it.
It was like, "Okay, at least she's gonna be
going to prison for the rest of her life."
Eventually, that was even overturned on an appeal.
That was the hardest part,
when it was overturned on appeal.
I thought to myself at the time, it's like,
"How many times does this have to be tried in court?"
- We had to have a new trial.
The third one, the jury came back hung.
- Bob Molko, he decided at this point,
probably the safest and best thing to do
is go for a plea bargain.
- She was released, and I think she promised
she'll never enter the United States again.
narrator: In June of 2001, honoring the plea deal,
Lisa is deported to Taiwan
and is never to set foot on American soil again.
A bittersweet result for Jennifer Ji's family.
- She is on her way back to Taiwan.
And this is a situation
that leaves a lot of people frustrated.
They were hoping for a very different outcome.
- I had mixed feelings about Lisa Peng.
She had been wronged by her husband,
but she was responsible for this.
That was eight years of my life.
I have no clue where Lisa Peng is.
And frankly, I don't care.
- Honestly, I think it's an empty victory for him.
From a DA's perspective, it's still a win.
Not the win they were looking for,
not the win that I think most people expected.
I think she got off extremely easy.
- It's easy when looking at this case
to get caught up in the fate of Lisa,
but what about the possible life that Kevin could have had?
He would have been 28 years old now.
Jennifer would have seen him grow up.
[dramatic music]
- It's something that's always gonna haunt you,
especially as an investigator, you know,
as the first person on the scene.
This brings up a lot of memories.
It makes me extremely sad.
- Jennifer Ji, who had a college education.
Who had a great future in front of her.
She was smart. She was talented.
I can't imagine, you know, losing a child.
It must have been devastating to the parents.
- Lisa Peng's family knows what she did.
So she's not walking up with her head high
that she did the right thing.
It's awful, but you need finality.
Accountability is-- she was held accountable.
She admitted her guilt. She did it.
That gives the victim's family some satisfaction.
[somber music]
* *