Nancy Kissel - Cheating wife beat Merrill Lynch banker to death

Cheating wife beat banker to death, jury told

Albert Wong. The Standard.June 8, 2005


Nancy Kissel, pictured leaving court, allegedly drugged her husband's milkshake. AP

A Merrill Lynch investment banker was slain by his unfaithful wife in an act of cold-blooded premeditation, a prosecutor told the High Court Tuesday as opening arguments began in the murder trial of Nancy Kissel.

Acting for personal gain, she drugged Robert Kissel's milkshake with sedatives, dealt a series of fatal blows to the right side of his head with a heavy metal ornament, and then attempted a cover-up in the days following his death on November 2, 2003, the High Court heard.

Senior Assistant Director of Public Prosecutions Peter Chapman opened the trial of Kissel, 40, to the seven-member jury, outlining the deterioration of the couple's marriage, her infidelity, and the breakdown of trust between the two. In the months leading up to the discovery of the banker's body near their luxurious Park View residence in Tai Tam, he had placed his wife under surveillance and friends and family were aware of their troubles, Chapman said.

The death of the prominent American banker, who held top positions at both Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch during his six years in Hong Kong, and the subsequent indictment of his wife for his murder, shocked the territory's expatriate and banking community.

The two sweethearts married in the United States in 1989 and arrived here in 1997 with their three children.

Nancy Kissel worked as a volunteer at their school, Hong Kong International School.

But the happy scene was, as she told a friend in an e-mail, a sham masquerading as "the best marriage in the universe.''

Instead, according to the prosecutor, she embarked on an affair with a television repairman in the United States, while her husband was working in Hong Kong in the midst of the SARS outbreak.

In order to convince the jury of the defendant's guilt, Chapman will present intimate love letters and e-mails between Nancy Kissel and her alleged lover as evidence. Photographs and surveillance video recordings of the two illicit lovers, made by a private detective, will also be introduced along with statements from friends, family, neighbors, domestic helpers and Merrill Lynch office staff who may have witnessed the marital deterioration.

Correspondence between Robert Kissel and the law firm of Hampton, Winter and Glynn will also be used to try and prove that he was discussing divorce and custody arrangements for their children.

Chapman will also try to demonstrate that Nancy Kissel was the primary beneficiary of her husband's will and life insurance policies.

The deceased held two life insurance policies in Hong Kong worth a total of US$1.75 million (HK$13.7 million) as well as a personal insurance policy from the United States with a face value of about US$5 million.

There was a lot at stake. In 2003, the banker's annual income was US$175,000 not including the US$5.9 million he had amassed in bonuses in his three years with Merrill Lynch.

``The marriage was apparently a stable one,'' said Chapman, until 2002, when Robert Kissel's sister, Jane Clayton, noticed her sister-in-law had become distant during a family skiing trip.

According to e-mail correspondence, Nancy Kissel's long-time friend, Bryna O'Shea, also thought she no longer talked about her husband during their conversations.

In January 2003, without his wife's knowledge, the banker installed ``E-Blaster'' spyware software in her Sony Vaio laptop computer that tracked her e-mails and sent reports to a Hotmail account read by himself.

According to Chapman, Nancy Kissel began her affair with TV repairman Michael del Priore while she and her children were in Vermont evading the SARS outbreak.

Robert Kissel remained in Hong Kong to continue his work and he hired a New York private investigation company, Alpha Group, to spy on his wife and confirm her infidelity.

The surveillance reports, photographs and video recordings will be used as evidence. He also discovered love letters from del Priore in which he had said to Nancy, ``I love it when you call my name, it makes me melt.''

By July 28, the banker contacted Sharon Ser, a senior partner at Hampton, Winter and Glynn, to inquire about divorce proceedings, and custody of their children.

By late September, he had twice told the New York private investigator that he feared for his safety and suspected his wife of trying to poison him.

The investigator advised him to report to the police with blood and urine samples. ``Robert Kissel, unfortunately, did not heed that advice,'' said Chapman, because he felt guilty for suspecting his wife.

In late October, he e-mailed his brother, Andrew Kissel, and a friend about his intention to talk about divorce with his wife on November 2 - the same day prosecutors say he died.

On November 3, his wife e-mailed a friend she was supposed to meet for coffee, saying, ``My husband's not well, I need to take care of things.''

Chapman said, ``By this time, [Robert Kissel] was far from unwell.'' He was dead.

Chapman will try and show that the banker was murdered the day before.

Robert Kissel, 40, was a former Asia-Pacific managing director of Merrill Lynch's Global Principal Investment. He was hired from Goldman Sachs Group in 2000 to head the US investment bank's distressed assets business in Asia outside Japan.

Chapman will finish his opening remarks today and the prosecution case is expected to last five to six weeks. The trial is expected to end in mid-August.

albert.wong@singtaonewscorp.com

http://www.thestandard.com.hk/stdn/std/Fro...e/GF08Aa01.html

It just goes to show, it is not always the man that is unfaithful..........some women are too

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This post has been edited by Jingle: 09 June 2005 - 10:18 AM

Unfortunate for her that they didn't live in Thailand. Then of course he would have commited suicide by drinking poison and knocking himself on the head with a heavy object. Case closed, widow gets the cash.

'Doped, bludgeoned, then wrapped in rug'

Albert Wong. June 9, 2005. The Standard

The fingerprints of Nancy Kissel, accused of murdering her husband, Robert, were found on the sticky side of tape used to seal boxes containing blood-stained items, the High Court was told Wednesday.

Senior assistant director of public prosecutions Peter Chapman told the seven-member jury that when police officers conducted a thorough search of the Kissel apartment in Parkview on November 8, they found four boxes containing bedding, tissues, pillows and the clothing belonging to both Robert and Nancy Kissel - all of which were stained with blood.

Forensic scientists later confirmed the DNA of the blood matched that of Robert Kissel, a former Merrill Lynch banker, and that his wife's left thumb print had been found on the tape used to seal the boxes, Chapman said.

Nancy Kissel denies the murder charge.

The prosecution also said the post mortem confirmed that Kissel had been drugged and was probably defenseless when bludgeoned to death with a heavy metal ornament.

In outlining how the police came to suspect the wife, Chapman used graphic photos to reveal the extent of the injuries inflicted on the banker.

When storeroom 15112 in block 15 of Parkview was opened, there was ``a strong smell of a decomposing body,'' Chapman said.

Inside the room, police found a rolled-up carpet which, from its wrapping and packaging, aroused suspicion. The carpet was sent to forensics.

A managing director at Merrill Lynch, Anthony Hung, confirmed the corpse found in the carpet was that of Robert Kissel.

When the body was unwrapped from the rug and the sleeping bag, the deceased was wearing a white T-shirt and underpants - clothes which the family's domestic helpers said he normally wore in bed.

According to the prosecution, the pathologist confirmed there were severe lacerations to the right side of the head which resulted in ``massive spillage of brain substance.''

Lab tests found five types of hypnotics and anti-depressants in Kissel's stomach and liver, which would have impaired consciousness during the attack, Chapman said. No sign of defensive injury was found on the body, and the chemist found ``insignificantly low'' amounts of alcohol, he said.

Police searching the residence found blood stains and specks on items in the master bedroom, where the defendant is accused of inflicting the fatal blows.

Among the blood-stained items found in the sealed boxes was a metal ornament comprising of two figurines on a metal base, believed to have been the murder weapon.

The two figurines had been detached from the base ``as a result of the force required'' to bludgeon the victim, Chapman said. When attached, the ornament could be used ``like a hammer head.''

Nancy Kissel was arrested at 2.41am on November 7 after having been taken to Ruttonjee Hospital for a check up. She was diagnosed to be suffering from emotional distress and was trembling, crying and unable to talk.

Doctors found abrasions on her lip, chest and knees. Her palms were red and there was bruising on her forearms and shoulders.

Blood samples revealed she was suffering from muscle injuries, the result of vigorous exercise.

The prosecution alleges this was due to ``the considerable effort in wrapping the body with the carpet - and placing the body in the rug.''

Mrs Kissel said that she had been assaulted by her drunken husband on November 2 when she had refused to have sex with him.

Mr Kissel's sister, Jane Clayton, was the first to give evidence Wednesday and confirmed that Nancy Kissel is named as the primary beneficiary in her brother's will.

When asked to confirm that the woman in the dock and in the pictures was Nancy Kissel, she was visibly distressed and close to tears.

She estimated the value of Robert Kissel's estate to be around US$18 million (HK$140.4 million), including stocks, cash, life insurance and real estate.

Clayton said she had been aware of the marital deterioration but ``Robbie thought if he tried harder he could fix things up and make everything better.''

The trial continues today.

albert.wong@singtaonewscorp.com

Top banker drugged and murdered by his wife




AN AMERICAN housewife was jailed for life yesterday after being found guilty of murdering her wealthy husband by drugging him and beating him to death in their luxury apartment.

Nancy Kissel, 41, dressed in black, as she had been throughout the three-month trial, was stoic as the seven-member jury delivered its verdict on the death of her husband, Robert.

Dozens of witnesses had given evidence in one of Hong Kong's longest and most high-profile murder trials. The testimony, involving allegations of abusive sex, adultery, cocaine use and other sordid goings-on in the private life of a wealthy foreign couple, fascinated people in the former British colony.

Kissel was accused by the prosecution of drugging her husband with a milkshake spiked with sedatives before smashing in his skull with a metal ornament in the couple's flat in 2003. Prosecutors described her as a cold-blooded killer who had murdered her husband, a leading investment banker at Merrill Lynch, as he prepared to divorce her and seek custody of their three children.

Mr Kissel, 40, from New York, was furious that his wife had had an affair with a labourer who lived in a caravan park near the couple's holiday home in the US state of Vermont, they said. But defence lawyers argued that Mr Kissel was an abusive workaholic who snorted cocaine and often forcefully performed a sex act on his wife, driving her to seek comfort from a lover. They claimed Kissel had killed her husband in self defence as he was attacking her with a baseball bat during an argument.

The prosecution said she had tried to cover up the killing by rolling up her husband's body in a rug and having it hauled away to a storage locker rented by the couple.
But the defence argued that the trauma of the fight had caused her to have a mental breakdown, and that explained her behaviour in the days after the killing.

After the verdict, Mrs Kissel's mother, Jean McGlothlin, would only say: "Right now, I'm just going to try and get by. Feet on the ground again."

The victim's father, William Kissel, was thrilled with the jury's unanimous decision.

"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.

"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."

Kissel's lawyer, Alexander King, would not say whether she would appeal.

LINK

The story is not over, she did appeal....

Axel, on Sep 9 2005, 03:47 PM, said:

Well, everybody appeals.
I mean every lawyer...

Actually, I would not have known anything about this story, would I not have stolen a SCMP last week in an airport coffee shop.

To bring it down to size: "a leading investment banker at Merrill Lynch, who's
wife had had an affair with a labourer who lived in a caravan park, because her husband was an abusive workaholic who snorted cocaine and often forcefully performed a sex act on her, was killed by the wife who had tried to cover up the killing by rolling up her husband's body in a rug and having it hauled away to a storage locker rented by the couple".

I say, we know not even half of the story, so for the time being I feel sorry for the rug she used.

Sorry Nancy, you fcuked up...

Axel, on Sep 10 2005, 12:39 AM, said:

I think that summarizes it well, Axel.
But she still has plenty of money.
For her lawyers and others.
So, as you said, the story is not over...

Bluecat, on 10 September 2005 - 01:51 AM, said:

Nancy Kissel Wins Appeal in Hong Kong - Conviction Overturned...
http://www.orientexp...ion-overturned/

http://www.orientexp...ion-overturned/

There is another thread in the HongKong section about the same topic, it shuld be merged.