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Austin Chiu

The father of the banker killed by milkshake murderer Nancy Kissel hopes a court's dismissal yesterday of her appeal against her murder conviction will end the saga and allow him to enjoy life as a "very lucky" grandfather.
"I do hope this is the end of Nancy's litany of lies and character slander of [his son] Robert [Kissel] to justify her evil action," William Kissel told the South China Morning Post.
The Court of Appeal ruled that the guilty verdict passed unanimously by a nine-member jury was "neither unsafe nor unsatisfactory".
The jury was entitled to reject her plea of diminished responsibility after hearing the whole of the evidence, Mr Justice Wally Yeung Chun-kuen wrote in a 64-page judgment.
Solicitor Colin Cohen, representing Nancy Kissel, said her legal team felt an appeal to the Court of Final Appeal was "very likely to be considered".
Kissel was jailed for life for the second time following a retrial held in 2011 after the jury found her guilty of feeding her Merrill Lynch banker husband a drug-laced milkshake before bludgeoning him to death with a lead ornament at their Parkview flat in Tai Tam.
During the appeal in October, her lawyers had contended that there should not have been a retrial as the public had been affected by unfair evidence in the original one - which led the Court of Final Appeal to order a retrial.
They also contended the conviction was flawed by prosecution mistakes and the jury was wrong to reject the defence of diminished responsibility when three psychiatrists and one psychologist supported such a defence and the prosecution cited no expert evidence to contradict it. In the judgment, Yeung wrote it was up to the jury to decide on the facts whether to accept Kissel's case of provocation or diminished responsibility.
"The jury had clearly rejected the defence case and accepted the prosecution case that it was a planned murder," Yeung said.
Talking about his grandchildren, William Kissel said: "Robert's children are happy, well- adjusted, thoughtful teenagers."
He said his daughter Jane Clayton, who has custody of the three children, and her husband, Richard, had done a "most remarkable job" in blending their children with Robert's, filling the family with "happiness, friends and activities".


Milkshake murderer Nancy Kissel loses latest appeal against conviction

Nancy Kissel in a prison van as she arrives in High Court for a retrial in 2011. Photo: Dickson Lee

Ira Keeshin, Nancy Kissel's father, appears at High Court in Admiralty in October. Photo: Sam Tsang

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