Hong Kong court rejects "milkshake murderess" appeal

HONG KONG (Reuters) - A Hong Kong court on Monday dismissed an appeal by American housewife Nancy Kissel who was jailed for life for murder after feeding her husband a sedative-spiked milkshake and clubbing him to death.

Kissel had admitted killing her husband Robert, a high-flying banker at Merrill Lynch, on November 2, 2003, but pleaded not guilty to murder, a charge which requires premeditation.

But a seven-person jury unanimously found the "milkshake murderess," as she came to be known, guilty after a three-month trial in 2005.

In the appeal, launched in April, her lawyers argued that she had been provoked into the killing, had acted out of self-defense and that the original judge had misdirected the jury while presenting his case summary before the verdict.

Her family said it would take the case to the Court of Final Appeal, Hong Kong's RTHK radio said.

After cracking her husband's skull several times with a statuette, Kissel tried to dispose of his body by rolling it up in a carpet and putting it into a storage room, but the stench soon gave her away.

The sensational case inspired a crime book, "Never Enough," which painted an unflattering portrait of Kissel as a cold-blooded killer, who wanted to grab her husband's money and flee to the United States to be with her TV repairman lover.

The Kissel family suffered a fresh tragedy in 2006 when Robert's brother, Andrew, a property mogul charged with fraud, was found stabbed to death in his Connecticut home.

(Reporting by John Ruwitch; Editing by Nick Macfie)