Last appeal bid rejected in HK 'Milkshake Murder'

HONG KONG (AP) — Hong Kong's top court on Thursday rejected a final bid for an appeal by an American convicted of drugging her wealthy banker husband and bashing him to death.

A three-judge panel at the Court of Final Appeal dismissed Nancy Kissel's application.

Kissel was convicted twice for the 2003 murder of her husband, Robert Kissel, who worked for Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs. The case, dubbed the "Milkshake Murder," grabbed world headlines with its lurid tale of the breakdown of a wealthy expatriate marriage in the southern Chinese financial hub.

She was sentenced to life in 2012, matching the result of an earlier trial that was overturned.

Prosecutors said that Kissel, a native of Adrian, Michigan, gave her husband a sedative-laced milkshake and then bludgeoned him with a metal ornament before wrapping his body up in a carpet.

The defense had argued she was suffering from clinical depression and was acting under diminished responsibility.