Wife of HK banker planned murder, prosecutor says

HONG KONG (Reuters) – The widow of American banker Robert
Kissel planned to murder him “in cold blood” and there was no
basis for her to say she acted out of self-defense, prosecutors
told a Hong Kong court on Friday.

Summing up the prosecution’s case in a murder trial that
has riveted Hong Kong for almost three months, lawyer Peter
Chapman said the evidence showing that Nancy Kissel plotted to
kill her Merrill Lynch banker husband was “unassailable.”

Police found she had searched the Internet for information
on drugs and obtained sedatives from her doctors a few months
before the killing. She fed him those drugs in a milkshake she
prepared on November 2, 2003, and then clubbed him to death as
he laid drugged and unconscious in their bedroom, Chapman told
the High Court.

Dressed in her usual black attire, Nancy, who has been
charged with one count of murder, was expressionless in the
dock.

She has admitted to killing her husband but has pleaded not
guilty to murder. She has also denied having spiked the
milkshake that she made for him with a cocktail of
anti-depressants and hypnotic drugs.

During the trial, she told the court how she suffered her
husband’s physical and sexual abuse for years, who often flew
into cocaine and alcohol-fuelled rages.

She said she struck her husband five times on the right
side of his face with a metal statue after he hit her
repeatedly with a baseball bat, but added that she had no
recollection of what happened afterwards on the night of
November 2.

“COLD-BLOODED KILLING”

But Chapman said: “These were five fatal blows with
murderous intent … Self defense has no basis in this case.”

An autopsy found six types of sedatives in Kissel’s stomach
– evidence the defense has not contested. Detectives also
found that Nancy had gone to doctors a few months before the
killing complaining of insomnia and obtained four of those
drugs.

Chapman said the drugs were so strong that Kissel was
likely to have passed out and he could not have threatened
Nancy.

“Even if he was conscious when she struck him, his ability
to defend himself would have been impaired by the drugs. There
is no provocation in this case,” Chapman said.

“This meant that Nancy Kissel was able to take the ornament
from the kitchen and inflict the injuries on Robert Kissel as
he was lying down,” said the lawyer.

“These injuries (found on Robert) did not result from a
life and death struggle. There were no screams, there was no
baseball bat, there was no provocation. This was cold-blooded
killing.”

Chapman also said Nancy had been plotting to kill her
husband from as early as August 20, 2003, when she made
searches on the Internet using key words like “drug overdose.”

“The seed to kill her husband was planted firmly from
August 20 … to remove the obstacle in her life that Robert
Kissel had become,” Chapman said, adding that by that time, her
TV repairman lover in the United States had become “the man in
her life.”

During the trial Nancy admitted to the affair, which
happened between March and July 2003 when she fled to the
United States with their three children to escape the SARS
epidemic in Hong Kong.

If convicted of murder she could face life in jail.

Police found Robert Kissel’s body four days after his death
rolled up in a carpet in a storeroom in the luxury residential
estate where they lived with their children.

The case has shocked Hong Kong’s expatriate community since
the trial began in June.

The prosecution said earlier that Kissel had decided to
divorce his wife after discovering the affair and was going to
tell her that on the night that he was murdered.

The defense will sum up the case next Monday and a verdict
from the jury is expected by the end of next week.