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Hong Kong ‘milkshake murderer’ found guilty

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Summary from BBC news March 25, 2011

An American woman has been found guilty of killing her husband in Hong Kong by drugging his milkshake and beating him to death.

Nancy Kissel pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 2003 and was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2008 – but the judge ordered a retrial because of “procedural flaws”.

Prosecutors say that Kissel gave her husband – senior banker Robert Kissel, 40 –  a strawberry milkshake laced with sedatives before beating him to death with a statuette.

She then tried to dispose of his body by rolling it up in a carpet and putting it in a storage room at the Parkview apartment complex in Hong Kong.

Her defence said that she was the victim of a violent and abusive marriage and that Robert Kissel abused alcohol and drugs.

In 2008 she lost a claim that she had been acting in self defence after her husband threatened her with a baseball bat.

Kissel stood to gain $18 million in life insurance payouts after her husband’s death, which fuelled accusations by the prosecution that Mrs Kissel planned the murder to be with her new lover, a TV repairman in the US.

The trial has captivated audiences in Hong Kong, inspiring a book and a film.

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