The Nancy Kissel case is over. The papers having wrung every bit of juicy newsprint out if they could, are now free to go back to their normal pursuits. As for Nancy, well she probably needs to take up reading and become friendly with the prison matron…..she is going to be there a long, long, time:
A Hong Kong jury Thursday convicted an American of murdering her wealthy investment banker husband by drugging him with a milkshake laced with sedatives
and beating him to death in the couple’s luxury apartment.
Nancy Kissel — dressed in black, as she has been throughout the trial — was expressionless as the seven-member jury returned the verdict in the November 2003 death of her husband, Robert, of New York. The conviction carries a mandatory life sentence. Defense lawyer Alexander King, who argued that his client killed her husband in self-defense and was the victim of abusive sex, refused to say whether she would appeal.
The verdict in what became known as the “Milkshake Murder” trial came after dozens of witnesses spent nearly three months testifying in one of Hong Kong’s
longest and most high-profile murder trials. The often sensational testimony about abusive sex, adultery, cocaine and money gave the public a rare peek inside the private life of a wealthy foreign couple.
Robert Kissel’s father, William, said he was thrilled by the verdict. “It’s a 65-day trial and it’s unanimous. That’s justice,” he said. “All the allegations made in the court (about Robert) are false, untrue,” William Kissel added. “And Robert, I pray, can now rest in peace and his children can go on with their lives in peace knowing their father loved them and they are his dear children.”
Nancy Kissel’s mother, Jean McGlothlin, said: “Right now, I’m just going to try and get by.”The prosecution portrayed the 41-year-old defendant as a cold-blooded killer who murdered her husband — a top investment banker at Merrill Lynch — as he prepared to divorce her and seek custody of their three children. Robert Kissel, 40, was furious that his wife had an affair with a repairman who lived in a trailer park near the couple’s vacation home in Vermont, the prosecution said.But the defense argued that the husband was an abusive workaholic who snorted cocaine and often forcefully sodomized his wife, driving her to seek comfort from a lover. It said Nancy Kissel, who was born in Adrian, Michigan, and also lived in Minneapolis, killed her husband in self-defense as he was attacking her with a baseball bat during an argument.The prosecution said she tried to cover up the crime by rolling up her husband’s body in a rug and having it hauled away to a storage locker rented by thecouple.Nancy Kissel testified that she couldn’t clearly remember what happened following her husband’s death. Investigators found his body in the storage locker two days after the killing.
She definitely will not be playing golf in Florida………..
