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| China-Japan-Koreas | |
| Verdict expected in Hong Kong 'milkshake murder' trial | |
| 2005-08-28 | |
| Nothing like a bit of scandal to break up a Sunday afternoon. Hong Kong is awaiting a verdict this week in the murder trial of an American housewife which has fascinated the public with its titillating mix of sex, violence, greed and betrayal in the expatriate community. In one of the Chinese territory's longest running and most sensational murder trials, Nancy Ann Kissel is accused of bludgeoning her wealthy banker husband to death after drugging him with a spiked strawberry milkshake. Kissel has denied the premeditated murder of her husband Robert, although she has admitted killing him during a blazing domestic row. Her defence team will continue its summing up on Monday before the jury is asked to come to a verdict sometime later in the week. The case has captivated Hong Kong where murders, though not uncommon, are rare within the wealthy expatriate community, which is often viewed as above the law. People reportedly queued for more than an hour before the court opened on Friday and some had to leave after the judge said he could only tolerate 10 people standing near the entrance. During the three-month hearing the five-man, two-woman jury was told Kissel, 41, laced her husband's milkshake with a cocktail of sedatives before attacking him with a lead ornament in November 2003. The court heard the 40-year old Merrill Lynch investment banker was prone to bouts of abusive behaviour and that during one such episode, as he attacked his wife with a baseball bat after trying to force her into having anal sex, she struck out. In the most sensational day of the trial, Kissel was asked by prosecuting barrister Peter Chapman if she accepted she had killed her husband in the fight. "Yes," she replied. The banker's body was wrapped in old carpets and dumped in the storage room of their luxury apartment block. It was found by removal men called to collect the carpets. Forensic tests showed the deceased had suffered at least five potentially fatal blows to the head with a heavy object. His stomach also contained at least four different sedatives. Kissel denied stashing the body and claims to have blanked out and have no knowledge of events after the fatal fight. In his summing up last week, Chapman painted Kissel as a vengeful wife who fabricated claims about her husband's inhumanity in an effort to clear her name of the "cold-blooded killing". Kissel said her husband had ruthlessly forced her into "not natural" sex acts and had been a regular user of cocaine since they met during their college years in New York. Chapman said Kissel had constructed a tissue of lies in a bid to end their marriage so she could be with her lover, electrician Michael del Priore, back in the United States. Kissel admitted having the affair; most notably she and her lover met for regular trysts during an extended holiday in Vermont when she and the children fled Hong Kong to escape the deadly Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak in the spring of 2003. She denied, however, that she murdered her husband to claim his 18 million US dollars life insurance payouts.
In her wire-rim glasses, sombre black clothes and modestly tied hair, Kissel has presented herself as a loving mother and wife. Free on bail and escorted to and from court by her elderly mother, she said she loved her husband too much to want to kill him. In one emotional session, she broke down in tears as she confessed her continued love for him. | |
| Posted by:Zhang Fei |