Women in different prisons in China have been in the news lately, from a Chinese model jailed for drug use to a beauty queen caught smuggling cocaine and a transgender woman sexually assaulted in a male prison.
The latest to one to make the new was in the headlines in 2005 for the death of her husband. Nancy Kissel made a fresh legal challenge to her life imprisonment term, citing the special circumstances related to her case, reported South China Morning Post.
Kissel, an American woman, is serving her term at the Tai Lam Centre for Women for the death of her husband, Robert, a Merrill Lynch investment banker, in 2003. She was found in 2005 guilty of murder for bludgeoning Robert to death at their apartment in Tai Tam.
First, Nancy incapacitated Robert by giving him milkshake laced with drug, earning her the nickname “milkshake murderer.” She then bludgeoned him to death using a lead ornament. She ordered workmen to bring Henry’s corpse to the storeroom, wrapped in an old oriental rug.
She admitted during the trial that she killed Robert to escape their messy divorce so she could be with her lover, Michael Del Prioer, a TV repairman who lived in a trailer park in Vermont.
Her defense lawyer, Alexander King, cited Nancy’s mental state at the time the crime was committed. Before the murder, King said that Robert, who used cocaine and hooked on gay porn, forced Nancy into anal sex and assaulted her physically for five years.
He cited the woman’s guilt and remorse for the murder of Robert as grounds to change her sentence to a more definite one than an indeterminate sentence.
Nancy sought a transfer to a U.S. prison under a reciprocal agreement which permits the transfer of prisoners between the U.S. and Hong Kong. She attempted to serve her term in an American facility a few years ago but her request was rejected. The lawyer said Nancy is no longer a danger to society and unlikely to repeat her offense.
In 2014, Nancy told Bloomberg, “I can’t spend my time explaining the unexplainable. I’d rather try to seek a peaceful heart.” Nancy met Robert while vacationing at Club Med in the Caribbean. They got married in 1989.