Hong Kong ‘Milkshake Murderer’ Served Her Husband Drug-Laced Milkshakes
And then bludgeoned him to death
By midnight on November 6, 2003, Hong Kong police were investigating a storage room at the posh Parkview apartments complex. They spotted a suspiciously hefty rolled carpet tied with string and bound with adhesive tape. When the police unrolled it, they found what they expected — a dead body. The police knew immediately that the victim had been dead quite a while; the smell emanating from the decomposing body was too strong to be a recent death.
The police’s investigation had been prompted by calls from David Noh, a vice president in Merrill Lynch’s Hong Kong office. He reported his colleague and close friend, Robert Kissel, had been missing for four days.
Within hours of Noh’s call, police went to Robert Kissel’s apartment for investigation. They interviewed Robert’s wife, Nancy Kissel. They asked her about her husband’s whereabouts and had an inquiry into a police report she had filed that morning. In her report, she stated that her husband had beaten her over the past weekend.
Later that evening, the police interviewed the apartment’s maintenance staff and learned that Nancy Kissel had called the management office the day before and requested a carpet moved to her storeroom. The staff said that it was unusually heavy and that it had taken a team of four workmen to move it. Nancy Kissel had said nothing about the storage room, thus the police became suspicious and immediately applied for a search warrant to enter the storage room.
Two hours after Robert Kissel’s body being found, police arrested Nancy Kissel and she was charged with murdering her husband.
Road to Becoming a Financial Elite
Nancy and Robert Kissel began dating in 1987 and were married in 1989. While Robert was studying full-time master’s degree in finance from New York University, Nancy, who holds a bachelor’s degree in business and a Masters in design, worked three part-time catering jobs to support him. This highly educated and refined lady deviated from her own career goals to help her husband further his ambitions.
Robert’s wishes came true. He got a job in Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and was assigned to the Hong Kong office. Then in 2000, he hopped to Merrill Lynch, where he was promoted to managing director and head of the investment bank’s Global Principal Investments Division for Asia-Pacific.
The Kissels lived in the Hong Kong exclusive community where they enjoyed the luxury American lifestyles. Despite their wealth, the Kissels were not living in bliss, Robert was on-call to company 24/7 and Nancy was lonely at heart.
Spying Wife’s Personal Email
In 2003, the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) which was similar to today’s COVID epidemic, had struck Hong Kong. While Ms. Kissel and the children had been evacuated to the US, her workaholic husband stayed on for his jobs. They decided to take their children to the family’s vacation home near Stratton Mountain, Vermont.
As the epidemic worsened, it was uncertain when it would be safe to return to Hong Kong. Nancy ordered a home theatre system, figuring that she and her children would be staying at the vacation house for an indefinite duration. The man who sold the equipment sent his brother, Michael Del Priore, to install it for them.
Michael Del Priore, a young and well-built TV repairman who lived in a trailer park in Vermont, kept in touch with Nancy after completing the installation. They talked in depth and Nancy confided in him about her troubles. Their friendship soon turned into romance, and Nancy later admitted to having sex with him three times in her Vermont house.
By the end of the summer, the SARS epidemic had subsided, and Nancy returned to Hong Kong with her children. She kept close contact with Del Priore, calling him frequently. Robert suspected his wife was cheating on him, so he hired a private investigator and installed spy software which monitored her Internet use and copied all her emails to him.
“It’s really hard to talk to you on the phone, but you have to know that I think about you constantly, not being able to talk to you really drives me crazy. Honey, I love you.”
“I love you when you call my name. It makes me melt.”
More and more love messages between the adulterers were disclosed, and some were even erotic, such as discussing sex positions.
It cut Mr. Kissel to the heart that he couldn’t take it anymore. He consulted with his lawyer about divorce and child custody. However, he ignored the legal advice and maintained his will in which he left an estate estimated at USD $18 million to his wife.
The Homemade Pink Milkshake
Forensic tests found traces of four sedative drugs in Robert Kissel’s stomach. Prosecutors said Ms. Kissel had drugged her husband with a spiked strawberry milkshake, before cracking his skull with a heavy statuette.
The Kissels’ neighbor, Andrew Tanzer, testified he had a visit to Kissels’ apartment with his 7-year-old daughter for a play date on November 2, 2003. He was chit-chatting with Mr. Kissel. Meanwhile, the Kissels’ 6-year-old daughter brought out two glasses of homemade strawberry milkshake, one for Tanzer and the other for her father. Tanzer became drowsy and then unconscious after being home at 4 pm. He described the milkshake as “reddish in color, strawberry flavoring…. heavy, sweet, thickened, tasting of bananas and crushed cookies.” Nancy Kissel told Tanzer that it was “a secret recipe” and that the color was to match the spirit of Halloween that had just passed.
Mrs. Kissel was accused of drugging her husband with the pink milkshake spiked with sedatives to render him defenceless, then beating him to death. The prosecutors suggested that she was motivated by a fear of divorce and a desire to secure life insurance payments.
However, Nancy Kissel, who pleaded not guilty to murder charges, told a very different story in court.
Forced Anal Sex for Years of Humiliation
Nancy Kissel’s defence team argued that she was the victim of her violent husband. According to her testimony, her marriage had been deteriorating due to her husband’s growing dependency on cocaine and alcohol. As he became successful in his career, he became more and more physically and emotionally abusive.
With the birth of the first child, Nancy began to gain weight and her breasts sagged. Robert didn’t find her attractive anymore, and he developed a fetish for anal sex. Nancy believed that her husband no longer wanted to see her face during sex. Whenever she refused his demands, he would beat her and force entry on her. His violent penetration often caused her bleeding. This took serious tolls on both her physical and mental health.
“He made me feel like a whore …… I was no longer being like a wife or mother and all that was left between us was sexual violence and a money deal the next morning!”
Nancy Kissel had admitted manslaughter but denied deliberately killing her husband. On the night of November 2, Robert Kissel told her that he had filed for divorce. When she questioned her husband, he was irritated and threatened her with a baseball bat. “I’m going to kill you, bitch!” The couple struggled fiercely, and just then, in her defence, she smashed his head with the metal statuette.
The Verdict
What undermined the defendant’s credibility was her claim that she could not recall what happened in the days following her husband’s death. With respect to all the events between November 2 and 7, she offered similar replies: “I don’t remember” or “I have no recollection”, though a surveillance camera at her apartment building captured her carrying a large object wrapped in a carpet out of the building after her husband’s death.
After a marathon three-month trial, the jury of five men and two women decided on her guilt unanimously. On September 1, 2005, Nancy Kissel was sentenced to life imprisonment. She appealed her conviction, her lawyer arguing that the prosecution had used improper evidence, including hearsay. Besides, there were problems with the original jury instructions. Nancy pleaded her case before Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal. The court allowed the appeal and ordered a retrial.
On March 25, 2011, after months of the retrial, the jury of seven women and two men unanimously found Nancy Kissel guilty of murder and she was again sentenced to life in prison. When she heard the verdict, she looked dazed and her body shook back and forth.
“I have finally fallen into the black hole, a hole so deep that I truly believe I am worthless. I have lost my soul!”
This was written in Nancy’s diary three months before she killed her husband. Unless she was so deliberate that she used the diary as a tool to defend herself in the future court, she had no readers here, only herself, and what she said was from the bottom of her heart.
She had been the most vulnerable woman, but also the most dangerous one.
