'I put on a brave face'

2005-08-10 11:40

Hong Kong - An American housewife on trial for allegedly drugging and murdering her husband in Hong Kong on Wednesday said she had planned to travel to the United States for breast enhancement surgery and liposuction to please her sexually demanding and abusive spouse.

Nancy Kissel said she scheduled the procedures in San Francisco in October 2003 - shortly before her wealthy banker husband, Robert, was killed - but cancelled them because they conflicted with her daughter's dance function.

"The breast surgery was very important to my husband," Kissel said.

Kissel, 41, is accused of making her husband a milkshake laced with drugs, then bludgeoning him to death during an argument on November 2 2003.

Kissel has admitted killing her 40-year-old husband, a New York native who worked at investment bank Merrill Lynch, but denies murder. She hasn't admitted drugging him.

Prosecutor Peter Chapman on Wednesday challenged Kissel's claims of abuse. Kissel has testified that her husband assaulted her and demanded oral and anal sex, leading her to consider suicide.

Chapman noted the Kissels attended public events in Hong Kong together a month before Robert Kissel's death, even posing with former US President George Bush at a dinner in his honour. Chapman showed the picture in court.

He also displayed a photograph showing what he described as a "happy, smiling, unmarked Mrs Kissel," on vacation in Canada just a day after she claimed her husband attacked her.

The prosecutor also noted that the family's maid said she didn't see the black eye Kissel claims her husband gave her.

Kissel, who has claimed that her husband abused alcohol and cocaine, said she was just putting on a brave face.

"Happiness on the outside has nothing to do with what you're feeling inside," Kissel testified.

The prosecution earlier portrayed Kissel as an unfaithful wife who secretly met with a lover while her spouse underwent back surgery. Kissel acknowledged the affair with an electrician in the northeastern US state of Vermont.

If convicted, Kissel, who was born in Minneapolis, faces up to life in prison.

- AP