Hong Kong convicts American Kissel of murder

HONG KONG — A Hong Kong jury Friday convicted American 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 into the killing of Robert Kissel, a senior executive at Merrill Lynch, after her 2005 murder conviction was quashed due 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 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-defence 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 $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 aff

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