A Hong Kong jury yesterday convicted US housewife Nancy Kissel of murder over the 2003 killing of her banker husband, in a retrial of a lurid case dubbed the “Milkshake Murder.”
The Michigan-born mother-of-three won a new hearing last year on the killing of Robert Kissel, a senior executive at Merrill Lynch, after her 2005 murder conviction was quashed owing to legal errors at the first trial.
“It is the decision of the court that [Kissel] be sentenced to imprisonment for life,” judge Andrew Macrae said, after a nine-member jury unanimously found her guilty of murder for a second time.
The jury of seven women and two men, which started deliberations on Thursday, was tasked with deciding whether Kissel should be convicted of murder for the second time or the lesser charge of manslaughter.
Kissel was convicted of drugging her husband with a sedative-laced strawberry milkshake before beating him to death with a lead ornament, but she maintained she acted in self-defense against an abusive, drug-addicted spouse.
She was handed a life sentence in 2005 for murder after her claims were rejected, but Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal overturned the conviction last February, citing legal errors, and ordered a fresh hearing.
The trial had 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.
The prosecutors accused the 46-year-old Nancy 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 told jurors that Robert Kissel had a cocktail of drugs in his system and was lying face down during the attack at the couple’s luxury apartment.
At the first hearing, prosecutors argued that Kissel stood to gain up to US$18 million from the death of her wealthy husband, saying she planned to run away with a TV repairman with whom she admitted having an affair in the US.
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.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
IN PURSUIT: Israel’s defense minister said the revenge attacks by Israeli settlers would make it difficult for security forces to find those responsible for the 14-year-old’s death Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday condemned the “heinous murder” of an Israeli teenager in the occupied West Bank as attacks on Palestinian villages intensified following news of his death. After Benjamin Achimeir, 14, was reported missing near Ramallah on Friday, hundreds of Jewish settlers backed by Israeli forces raided nearby Palestinian villages, torching vehicles and homes, leaving at least one villager dead and dozens wounded. The attacks escalated in several villages on Saturday after Achimeir’s body was found near the Malachi Hashalom outpost. Agence France-Presse correspondents saw smoke rising from burned houses and fields. Mayor Amin Abu Alyah, of the