A WEALTHY American housewife whose trial for murder has gripped Hong Kong’s expatriate community was described yesterday as a cold-blooded killer who was unfaithful to her banker husband and then served him a drug-laced strawberry milkshake before battering him to death.

Nancy Kissel, dressed in her trademark black, sat impassively as Peter Chapman, summing up for the prosecution, reminded the jury of the sensational testimony that included alleged domestic violence, kinky sex, cocaine use and internet pornography.

The 41-year-old mother of three is charged with murdering her husband, Robert, in the luxury flat that they shared with their children and two maids in November 2003 while he was living in Hong Kong and working for Merrill Lynch, the American investment bank.

Dismissing defence arguments that Mrs Kissel fought back to protect herself when her husband attacked her with a baseball bat, the prosecutor said that she had carefully planned the killing.

The trial has lasted nearly three months and has made headlines daily as it has given a rare glimpse into the private world of wealthy expatriates in the former British colony that returned to Beijing rule in 1997.

Mrs Kissel stunned the court when she took the stand and said that she had dealt the fatal blows to her husband, but said that she was acting in self-defence. She wept as she gave her account of her husband’s death and has pleaded innocent to murder, which involves premeditation. Police found that she had searched the internet for information on drugs and obtained sedatives before the killing. She fed him those drugs in a milkshake on November 2, 2003, and then clubbed her husband to death as he lay unconscious in their bedroom, the prosecutor told the High Court. “These injuries inflicted on Robert Kissel were not the result of a life-or-death struggle,” Mr Chapman said. “There was no shouting, yelling, screaming.” A post-mortem examination found six types of sedatives in Mr Kissel’s stomach — evidence that the defence has not contested.

Mr Chapman said that the drugs were so strong that Mr Kissel was likely to have passed out and he could not have threatened his wife.

After the killing, Mrs Kissel allegedly rolled her husband's body in a carpet and had maintenance workers haul it away to rented storage space. The workers commented on a strong “fishy” smell from the carpet roll, which she said was stuffed with cushions. The prosecutor also mentioned an affair that Mrs Kissel admitted to having with Michael Del Priore, a repairman who lived in a trailer park near the couple’s holiday home in the northeastern US state of Vermont.

“Nancy Kissel didn’t want Robert Kissel alive any more. She wanted the children, but Michael Del Priore was the man in her life,” Mr Chapman said. The prosecutor repeated testimony by witnesses, who said that the victim was a loving, kind, soft-spoken husband.

Mrs Kissel has said her that unhappiness in her marriage drove her to seek comfort in an affair, and that her husband was an abusive workaholic who used cocaine, drank too much and forced her to have anal sex. She has testified that she cannot clearly remember what she did after her husband’s death.

A verdict is likely by the end of next week.

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