A wealthy American banker was drugged with a spiked strawberry milkshake and then bludgeoned to death by his wife, a court in Hong Kong heard on Wednesday, at the start of one of the most talked-about murder cases in the territory’s recent history.
Prosecutors accused Nancy Kissel of murdering her husband Robert on the day he was planning to discuss divorce proceedings after he suspected her of having an affair with a TV repairman while they were separated during the Sars crisis.
Mrs Kissel has pleaded not guilty.
Mr Kissel was a prominent member of Hong Kong’s expatriate community and was a senior executive for the investment bank Merrill Lynch.
Peter Chapman, the prosecuting counsel, told the jury that Mrs Kissel drugged her husband on or around November 2 2003 by ”lacing a milkshake with a cocktail of sedative drugs …”.
She then allegedly used a heavy ornament to beat him to death, transported his body to a nearby warehouse and tried to cover her tracks.
The day after the killing, she wrote e-mails to cancel appointments and explain her husband’s absence from work.
”My husband is not well,” she said in one e-mail to a friend, according to the prosecution. ”I need to take care of something. Sorry, I will be in touch soon.”
Chapman said this was a cover-up.
”Mr Kissel was far from unwell,” he said.
Police recovered the body several days later, wrapped in a carpet and plastic sheets at an underground storeroom rented by the couple.
Chapman suggested Mrs Kissel was motivated by a fear of divorce and a desire to secure life insurance payments. He said she also told police that she had been assaulted by her husband on the day of his death.
On the day he was killed, her husband told friends that he would discuss a legal separation on the grounds of infidelity.
The jury heard that during the Sars crisis in early 2003, Mrs Kissel had been evacuated to the US, where she had an affair with a TV repairman.
But Mr Kissel remained suspicious even after she returned to Hong Kong. He installed software on her computers so that all of her e-mails were copied to him. One message from her alleged lover, Michael del Priore, was read out in court. ”I love you when you call my name. It makes me melt,” it said.
Four months before his death, Mr Kissel consulted a lawyer about divorce and custody of the children. But he ignored legal advice to change his will, in which his wife was one of the main beneficiaries.
In September 2003, Mr Kissel also confided in a New York-based private detective — whom he had hired to spy on his wife — his fears that she was trying to poison him. The investigator advised him to report to the police with blood and urine samples.
”Unfortunately, he did not heed that advice,” Chapman said, ”because he felt guilty for suspecting his wife.”
The couple married in the United States in 1989 and arrived in Hong Kong in 1997 with their three children.
On the outside, they appeared to have an enviable lifestyle. Mrs Kissel worked as a volunteer at Hong Kong International School, where the children studied. Her husband’s career was successful enough for him to be headhunted from Goldman Sachs. The family lived in the luxury Parkview residential complex
But in an e-mail to a friend, Kissel said the relationship was a sham masquerading as the best marriage in the universe. – Guardian Unlimited Â