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28 March 2024

Woman seeks freedom in 'milkshake murder'

Published
By AFP

An American woman who won a retrial over the killing of her banker husband in what was dubbed the "milkshake murder" will ask a Hong Kong court on Monday to dismiss the charges and set her free.

Nancy Kissel was convicted of drugging Robert Kissel, a senior investment banker at Merrill Lynch, with a sedatives-laced strawberry milkshake before bludgeoning him to death in 2003 in one of Hong Kong's most infamous killings.

The mother-of-three was handed a life sentence in 2005 but the southern Chinese city's Court of Final Appeal overturned the conviction in February, citing legal errors at her first trial, and ordered a fresh hearing.

Kissel's legal team was expected to argue Monday that intense media publicity surrounding the case would doom her chances of getting a fair hearing at a retrial scheduled for January.

Kissel's barrister declined to comment on the hearing.

"We don't want to create any more publicity in this case so I cannot discuss the details with you," he told AFP.

If a High Court judge agrees with Kissel's argument, she could ultimately be set free, barring a successful appeal by prosecutors.

The Michigan-born woman's original trial featured a heady mix of adultery, violence, spying, greed and enormous wealth, gripping the former British colony and inspiring books and films.

Gruesome details emerged in the three-month hearing, including evidence she rolled up her husband's body in a carpet and left it in the bedroom of their luxury apartment for days before hiring workmen to carry it to a storeroom.

Prosecutors said Kissel stood to gain up to $18 million in insurance payouts from the death of her wealthy husband.

The prosecution also argued that she wanted to run away with a TV repairman with whom she admitted having an affair in the United States.

Kissel admitted from the witness box that she killed her husband but said she was acting in self-defence after he attacked her with a baseball bat on the night of the killing.

In her appeal before the city's highest court in January this year, Kissel's defence team argued that prosecutors had adduced inadmissible evidence during the original trial.

Robert Kissel's family suffered a further tragedy in 2006, when his brother Andrew was found murdered in his house in Connecticut, bound and with multiple stab wounds. He was reportedly about to plead guilty to bank fraud charges.