'This Was As Cogent A Case Of Murder As Might Be Imagined'

Nancy Kissel, who admitted drugging her wealthy husband, Robert, a senior executive working for Merrill Lynch in Hong Kong, and then beating him to death with a metal ornament, has lost her appeal against the life sentence she received in 2005.

The Kissels, who were married in 1989, moved to Hong Kong when Mr Kissel's job at Goldman Sachs took him there. He went to work for Merrill in 2000. The marriage is said to have gone sour in the early 2000s, and the banker subsequently discovered that his wife had had an affair with a TV repairman after she had returned to the US for a short break. After he asked for a divorce in 2003, he was murdered.

Mrs Kissel admitted during her original trial that she killed her husband, but claimed that he was an abusive workaholic, who snorted cocaine and often forced her to indulge in unnatural sex acts. After the murder, she attempted to cover up the banker's murder by rolling up his body in a carpet and getting some local help to dump it in a storage area close to the couple's luxury apartment. The banker's body was discovered by police four days after his death.

Refusing Mrs Kissels request for a more lenient sentence, the appeals judges in Hong Kong said: 'This is as cogent a case of murder as might be imagined'. The case may now go to The Court of Final Appeal.

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