HONG KONG — American housewife Nancy Kissel, twice convicted over the 2003 killing of her banker husband, is seeking an appeal in the lurid case dubbed the “Milkshake Murder,” a court official said Friday.
Kissel, 48, was given a life sentence in March last year after a retrial in which jurors heard that she drugged her husband with a sedative-laced strawberry drink before beating him to death with a lead ornament.
The trial gripped the former British colony, shining a spotlight on Hong Kong’s elite expatriate community, and featuring sensational allegations of a heady mix of adultery, violence, spying, greed and enormous wealth.
Kissel’s counsel originally said she would not appeal and was seeking a transfer to serve her sentence in the US, but a court spokeswoman said she has recently filed an application seeking to overturn the conviction.
“No date has been set for the hearing,” the spokeswoman said. Kissel is required to obtain the court’s permission first as the 28-day deadline for her to file the appeal has lapsed.
Her lawyer could not be reached for comment.
The Michigan-born mother-of-three was first convicted of murder and handed a life sentence in 2005, but Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal overturned the conviction in February 2010 — citing legal errors — and ordered a fresh hearing.
Kissel admitted she killed her husband Robert Kissel, a senior executive at the US investment bank Merrill Lynch, but maintained she acted in self-defense against an abusive spouse who subjected her to physical and sexual abuse.
Prosecutors accused Kissel of rolling up her husband’s body in a carpet and covering his head with plastic, leaving it in the bedroom for days before hiring workmen to carry it to a storeroom.
They also argued that Kissel stood to gain up to $18 million from the death of her wealthy husband, saying she had planned to run away with a TV repairman with whom she admitted having an affair in the US.