Milkshake murder case in court

2005-06-12 10:15

Hong Kong - The trial of an American woman accused of bludgeoning her wealthy banker husband to death is gripping Hong Kong with its heady brew of sex, power, greed, betrayal, jealousy and, above all in this cash-obsessed town, money.

Nancy Ann Kissel is accused of spiking her husband Robert Kissel's strawberry milkshake with sedatives before beating him repeatedly about the head with a metal ornament and then hiding the body in a rolled-up carpet.

The trial has shone a tantalising light into the usually closed world of Hong Kong's wealthy expats.

From day one prosecutors portrayed Nancy Kissel, now 40, as a philandering schemer who stood to gain more than $5m in insurance pay-outs from the death of her husband.

The US couple had arrived in Hong Kong with their three children six years ago and set up home in the exclusive Parkview community favoured by US expats.

The body of Robert Kissel, 40, senior investment banker with Merrill Lynch, was found in the rug in a storeroom at the housing complex in November 2003.

Prosecuting barrister Peter Chapman said removal men were alerted to the corpse by a stench they described as being "similar to salted fish".

The seven-person jury was told that prior to his death, Kissel had hired private detectives to spy on his wife because he had discovered she had been having an affair with a TV repairman back home in the US.

The court heard he had also gathered evidence from spyware software he'd placed on his wife's computers, which had yielded erotic e-mail exchanges between her and a man named Michael del Priore.

Prosecutors claimed the accused had regular trysts with her lover during a four-month spell when she had moved the children back to Vermont to escape the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak in the spring of 2003.

The day Robert Kissel was murdered, prosecutors said he had resolved to confront his wife about the deterioration of their marriage. He had spoken to divorce lawyers months earlier, the court heard.

Carpets

According to the prosecution, he had also told hired surveillance men that he feared for his life as he thought his wife was slowly poisoning him.

On November 2, Nancy Kissel served her husband and neighbour Andrew Tanzer two large glasses of pink milkshake. Tanzer asked what was in it, to which the accused replied: "A secret recipe."

Later, the court was told, Tanzer's wife said her husband looked red-faced and tired. A colleague who had spoken to Kissel later in the day said the banker sounded incoherent and tired.

That night Nancy Kissel murdered her husband, the court was told, and hatched a plan to cover it up by buying two new carpets and hiding the body in an old rug.

Kissel's body was found by removal men hired by Nancy Kissel to dump the old rug.

Government labs discovered four types of hypnotics and an anti-depressant in the stomach of the deceased, the court heard.

Nancy Kissel, who is free on bail, denies the charge.

- AFP