"It's Pink, Honey, Just the Way You Like It"

HONG KONG, September 1 -- A life of housemaids, black-tie balls and country homes that ended with a senior Merrill Lynch banker lying beaten to death on his bedroom floor produced a guilty verdict Thursday night and a life sentence for his 41-year-old American wife.

A seven-member jury here found Nancy Ann Kissel guilty in the murder of her husband, Robert Peter Kissel, on Nov. 12, 2003.   Prosecutors accused Ms. Kissel of giving her husband a pink milkshake laced with powerful sleep medications, crushing his skull by beating him with a lead ornament, then trying to cover up the crime by wrapping his body in a carpet and stuffing bloody evidence into moving boxes.

The prosecution charged that Ms. Kissel had served her husband a milkshake laced with Rohypnol, the date-rape drug, and three other sleep-inducing medications, all found in his stomach in an autopsy.

Ms. Kissel had flown with the children to Vermont in the spring of 2003, fleeing an outbreak of SARS in Hong Kong.  There she had an affair with a stereo repairman.  Phone records showed that she was in daily contact by phone with the repairman in Vermont after the murder and made preparations to fly to San Francisco for previously planned minor surgery.

"She had a better way out of the marriage," said William Kissel, the dead man's father.  "You put drugs in your husband's milkshake and you kill him."

The mandatory sentence for murder in Hong Kong is life in prison, and Justice Michael Lunn handed down the sentence immediately after the jury's verdict.  Hong Kong's prisons have a reputation for being spartan, but safe.

From The New York Times, September 2, 2005.