Sept. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Nancy Kissel, on trial in Hong Kong for killing her Merrill Lynch & Co. investment banker husband, was today sentenced to life in prison for his murder.

A jury of five men and two women told Hong Kong's High Court of the decision after eight hours of deliberations. The verdict was unanimous.

Nancy Kissel, 41, had pleaded not guilty to murder. Defense lawyer Alexander King said in his closing remarks on Aug. 29 that Kissel wasn't guilty as the killing was in self-defense and wasn't premeditated. The prosecution said Kissel drugged her millionaire husband on Nov. 2, 2003, by lacing a milkshake with sedatives and then beat him to death with a metal ornament.

``Robert Kissel, I pray, can now rest in peace,'' William Kissel, 77, the father of the deceased, said after the verdict. ``The children can go on with their lives in peace knowing that their father loved them.''

Nancy Kissel, under cross-examination by Prosecutor Peter Chapman on Aug. 4, admitted that she killed her husband. She said the pair had a fight about getting a divorce and the custody of their three children. She said she defended herself with the metal ornament when Robert Kissel came at her, swinging a baseball bat and threatening to kill her.

Resolution

``I'm still a little stunned,'' Jean McGloughlin, Nancy Kissel's mother, said after the verdict. ``I'm right now going to try to get my feet on the ground.''

The body of Robert Kissel was found wrapped in a carpet five days later in a storeroom near the couple's Tai Tam apartment, according to a police report at the time.

Kissel said during the hearing that she had no recollection of how her husband died and what she did in the following few days.

The Kissels were married in 1989 in the U.S. and moved to Hong Kong in 1998. Merrill Lynch hired Robert Kissel from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in 2000 to head its distressed assets business in Asia outside Japan. He was a vice president in Goldman's Asian special situations group, helping the firm become one of the biggest investors in bad debt in the region.

Degree

Robert Kissel was educated at the University of Rochester's College of Engineering and had a master of business administration degree from the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University. He worked as a vice president, research, for Lazard Freres & Co. from 1992 to 1997.

Nancy Kissel worked as a volunteer at Hong Kong International School, which her two daughters attended, and she had her own photography business.

The value of Robert Kissel's estates amounted to about $18 million, made up of stocks, life insurance polices, cash and real estate, according to Jane Clayton, Robert Kissel's younger sister, who gave evidence in June as a prosecution witness. Nancy Kissel is the beneficiary of Robert Kissel's will and life insurance policies, prosecution evidence showed.

Robert Kissel wanted a divorce because he suspected his wife of having an affair, the prosecution's Chapman told the court.

Affairs

Kissel admitted she had an affair with a television repairman, Michael del Priore, who lived in a trailer park near the Kissels' holiday home in Vermont in the U.S., when she stayed with her children there during the severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak in Hong Kong in 2003.

Nancy Kissel's affair with del Priore was a ``catalyst'' for the series of events leading to the death of Robert Kissel, Chapman alleged. Nancy Kissel killed her husband possibly with del Priore's ``tacit encouragement'' and he regarded Kissel as a ``potential gold mine,'' Chapman said.

Kissel admitted, when shown phone records, that she spoke with del Priore in the days after her husband was killed. She said she couldn't remember the content of the calls.

Nancy Kissel embarked on a cover-up of the killing over the next few days, lying to her father, maids and friends about the whereabouts of Robert Kissel, Chapman said. Meanwhile, she had taken steps to remove the bloodstained items in the master bedroom and had the body removed to the storeroom, the prosecutor said.

Defense lawyer King said Kissel's claim of memory loss was a genuine one. The trauma of what had happened had led to a ``mental meltdown'' resulting in ``bizarre behavior'' in the following few days, King said, in reference to the prosecution's allegation of a cover-up.

Deception

Kissel was detained at Siu Lam Psychiatric Center for about a year after her husband's death until November 2004, when she was free on bail.

The prosecutor alleged the fight that led to Robert Kissel's death was a deception created by Nancy Kissel and ``just did not happen.'' Kissel had ``rendered her husband defenseless'' by drugging him, using her daughter to deliver a drug-laced milkshake to him because he already suspected her of trying to poison him two months before he was killed.

Nancy Kissel inflicted ``five grouped, accurate blows'' to the right side of the head of her husband and any one of the blows could have proved fatal, Chapman said.

Chapman alleged that Kissel searched the Internet for ``overdose on sleeping pills'' in late August 2003 and stocked up on drugs a week before she allegedly laced the milkshake with sedatives. Four of the six drugs found in Robert Kissel's stomach content after he died were prescribed to Nancy Kissel by two doctors, the prosecutor said. Nancy Kissel denied she drugged her husband before bludgeoning him to death.

Abuse

Nancy Kissel had given evidence she was the victim of ``five years of humiliating, degrading sexual abuse and violence'' at the hands of Robert Kissel, who abused cocaine, sleeping pills, painkillers and alcohol.

``No one appeared to notice the effect of five years of abuse on Nancy Kissel and asked about this,'' Chapman said in his closing remarks on Aug. 26, 2005. ``The reason is that the claims of years of the abuse and violence never happened.''

The case is HKSAR v. Nancy Ann Kissel, case no. HCCC113/2004 in the Court of First Instance of the High Court.

To contact the reporter on this story: Clare Cheung in Hong Kong at scheung4@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: September 1, 2005 09:08 EDT