English: The milkshake murderess: Nancy Kissel[13,714]

On November 2, 2003,  Nancy incapacitated her husband  Robert Kissel (an investment banker) by serving him a strawberry milkshake full of sedatives before bludgeoning him to death with a heavy metal sculpture.  She was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison in September 1, 2005. The Court of Final Appeal overturned the conviction and ordered a retrial on February 11, 2010. Sentenced to life in prison on March 25, 2011, as of this date she is still incarcerated,  however, she is scheduled to be released on 23 August 2016.

The Nancy Kissel murder case (officially called the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region v. Nancy Ann Kissel) was a highly publicized criminal trial held in the High Court of Hong Kong, where Nancy Kissel was convicted of the murder of her husband, investment banker Robert, in their apartment on November 2, 2003.  The case was better known as the "milkshake murder" because Kissel was alleged to have incapacitated her husband by serving him a strawberry milkshake full of sedatives before bludgeoning him to death.  It was the highest profile murder of an expatriate in Hong Kong's history, and the court room hearing was packed. Kissel was at first convicted of murder in 2005 and was handed a mandatory life sentence, (13 years 9 months). The Court of Final Appeal overturned the conviction in February 2010, citing legal errors, and ordered a retrial that began on January 12, 2011. On March 25, 2011, she was again found guilty of her husband's murder by a nine-member jury and sentenced to life in prison, the time she had already served prior to the appeal was applied to her current life sentence, making her eligible for release upon the completion of the remaining ordered imprisonment period.

The background:
Robert and Nancy Kissel married in New York in 1989 where Alison Gertz was her maid of honor. The couple arrived in Hong Kong in 1997 with their three children and resided at the Hong Kong Parkview. The children attended Hong Kong International School. Robert was a vice president in Goldman Sachs' Asian special situations group. Merrill Lynch hired him from Goldman in 2000 to head its distressed assets business in Asia outside Japan.

The murder:
On a return trip to the United States in mid-2003, Nancy met and had an affair with Michael Del Priore, the twice-married electrical repairman who had rewired the Kissel home in Vermont. They remained in frequent telephone communication during the days and months prior to and immediately following the murder. Robert was suspicious of Nancy's infidelity and had hired New York private detective Frank Shea, president of Alpha Group Investigations based in New York and Boca Raton, Florida, to spy on his wife, and also secretly installed spyware on her computer. She claims to have had some violent disagreements with her husband, and says that her husband claimed to have initiated proceedings for divorce and for the custody of their children.

Nancy then drugged her husband by having their six-year-old daughter give him a strawberry milkshake laced with a cocktail of powerful sedatives. When it had taken effect and the children were out of the apartment, she bludgeoned him to death. She then rolled up his body in a carpet and had it placed in their storeroom in the Parkview complex. After her arrest, Nancy admitted to killing her husband in self-defense, claiming that she had been in an unhappy marriage and was the victim of domestic violence. She claimed her husband had subjected her to rape and sodomy over a five-year period. She attempted to portray Robert as a work-crazed and controlling husband who had succumbed to habitual and regular cocaine and alcohol abuse.

The trial began in June 2005 at Hong Kong's High Court with the prosecution alleging that she murdered her husband and she pleading not guilty. She admitted under cross examination that she had bludgeoned her husband to death, but claimed it was in self-defense after an argument about divorce had escalated, leading him to sexually attack her, and then, when she resisted, to swing at her with a baseball bat. She claimed memory loss, testifying she had no knowledge of how she inflicted five head wounds with a heavy metal sculpture. She admitted to using Stilnox, one of the sedatives found in her husband's body, to doctor a bottle of whiskey when they were living in Vermont in the hope that it would make her husband less aggressive toward their children, but she admitted it had had no effect on him. Regardless of that, she admitted to trying the same thing in Hong Kong but testified that when she saw the sediment it left at the bottom of the bottle, she poured out the drugged liquor, bought a new bottle and used it to partially fill up the old one, and then "never thought about it again." The Kissels' neighbor, Andrew Tanzer, testified he had become drowsy and then unconscious after sampling the strawberry milkshake. Kissel admitted making it for one of her children and a visiting child, but denied drugging it, stating she would never harm her children or anyone else's.

The jury verdict:
The case against Nancy Kissel was brought before Justice Michael Lunn. At the end of the trial, lasting 65 days, the jury of five men and two women decided on her guilt unanimously after eight hours of deliberation. On September 1, 2005, Nancy Kissel was found guilty by the jury and sentenced to life in prison. She appealed her conviction, and in April 2008 returned to court, the appeal was rejected. Kissel then lodged an appeal with the Court of Final Appeal of Hong Kong on 12 January 2010. The case was before a five-judge panel led by then-Chief Justice Andrew Li, on January 21. The defense argued that the prosecution had improperly used evidence, including hearsay, and that the original jury instructions were problematic. But, on February 11, 2010, the Court of Final Appeal quashed the conviction and ordered a retrial, citing prosecution use of inadmissible evidence. Kissel was permitted to seek bail, but ultimately chose not to apply.

The second indictment and trial:
Kissel was re-indicted on a single count of murder on March 2, 2010, with the retrial due to start on January 10, 2011. According to the defense, Robert Kissel told his wife on the night of November 2, 2003, that he was filing for divorce, saying that the decision was final, and that she was unfit to care for her children. Defense also alleged she had long suffered from provocation, physical and sexual abuse long before that night. Nancy Kissel pleaded not guilty to murder, but guilty to manslaughter on the basis of diminished responsibility and provocation. Kissel admitted to having an extramarital relationship with a TV repairman, and prosecution alleged that she planned to run away with her lover in the United States after her husband's death, and that she stood to inherit her husband's estate worth US $18 million. On March 25, 2011, after hearing evidence from over 50 prosecution and defense witnesses over ten weeks, the jury of seven women and two men unanimously found Kissel guilty as charged. She was sentenced to life imprisonment.

As always, be safe !

Bird

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