In Clarke’s absence—growing in confidence daily and urged on by her Parkview supporters—Nancy installed herself in his office at Mallesons. Upon his return, she told him she was taking charge of her own defense. She—not Clarke and not King—would map out the strategy, just as she would determine tactics during the trial. She arrived at Mallesons every morning and soon tyrannized paralegals and clerical help. She spoke to Clarke as if he were a houseboy and, more than once, when irked by his disagreement with a position she took, she threw a coffee mug or paperweight at his head. Clarke found himself facing the double-edged sword familiar to criminal defense attorneys on all continents: money from heaven, client from hell.
She wasn’t much fun to live with, either. Her mother had moved in with her. Ira and Ryan visited. “There was so much tension,” Ira said. “I was walking on pins and needles the whole time,” Ryan said. “The only thing I ever asked her was, ‘What do you want for dinner?’”
On occasion, she would call Ryan into the kitchen and tell him to sit. Chain-smoking, she’d start to talk. Her major topic was how Rob had forced her to have sex. She could talk about that for hours as Ryan choked on the smoke.
He couldn’t quite manage empathy, but intermittently he felt stirrings of compassion for this baffling half sister toward whom—as he’d grown up almost fifteen years younger and a thousand miles away—he’d felt a younger brother’s admiration and affection. He didn’t know how she intended to testify at trial and he was grateful that it was none of his business. His role was to listen when she found herself wanting to talk, not to try to draw her out toward ground that could suddenly give way beneath the weight of her overwrought psyche.
His psychiatric training enabled him to listen to her in ways that others could not. “There was a great separation between what she said and how she said it,” he later remarked. “She’d talk on and on about how Rob raped her and beat her, but her demeanor wasn’t congruent with her subject. Professionally, I suppose you could call it blunted affect. There was never a lot of feeling in her voice. There was something almost ritualistic about the way she’d describe all that stuff.”
It was different with her mother. “She couldn’t talk about any of that,” Jean later said. “She could only talk about the present. If the conversation ever got close to anything to do with that night she would get into a hysterical state. She wouldn’t be able to walk or even stand up. It was clear to me that she was having flashbacks. One day we took the train to a flower market in Kowloon. It turned out to be more than she could handle. She was overcome with panic and we had to take a taxi back to the flat. In the taxi she suddenly said, ‘You know he raped me. A lot. For five or six years. I couldn’t say anything.’ Then she completely broke down, screaming and crying. When we got back she went straight to her room and closed the door and didn’t come out for hours. We never talked about it again.”
Simon Clarke explained to Nancy that Hong Kong’s legal system, by and large, remained based on English law. This would enable her to offer a defense of “provocation.” If the jury found that she had been “provoked (whether by things done or by things said or by both together) to lose [her] self-control,” they could convict her not of murder, but manslaughter. The difference was between a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment and a discretionary sentence imposed by the judge—perhaps ten years or less.
She said she wouldn’t do it. The only defense that could lead to acquittal was self-defense. She said she was going to plead self-defense. Clarke tried to explain why she shouldn’t. To acquit on self-defense, the jury would have to find that the amount of force Nancy had used was “reasonable in the circumstances.” Five skull-shattering blows with an eight-pound lead ornament—any one of them fatal in itself—could hardly be construed as reasonable, even if Rob had been punching and kicking her and chasing her around the bedroom demanding sex.
As the English Privy Council ruled in the 1971 case of Palmer v. The Queen: “If there is some relatively minor attack it would not be common sense to permit some action of retaliation which was wholly out of proportion to the necessities of the situation.”
But what if the attack had not been relatively minor? Nancy asked. What if she’d been fighting for her life? Suppose Rob had come at her with a weapon, intending to kill her? What if Rob had attacked her not with his bare hands, but with a potentially lethal club?
The police had not found a club in the bedroom, but Clarke had. He’d found the baseball bat on the bedroom floor. Suppose Rob had used that as a weapon? Suppose he’d charged at her swinging the bat, shouting, “I’m going to kill you, you bitch!”? In that case, she would have been justified in defending herself with the statuette. Why had she hit him five times? She didn’t know, she couldn’t remember. Suppose the trauma of the attack had triggered a state of dissociative amnesia?
The Cleveland Clinic Web site—easily available to an experienced searcher such as Nancy—explains, “Dissociative amnesia occurs when a person blocks out certain information, usually associated with a stressful or traumatic event, leaving him or her unable to remember important personal information. With this disorder, the degree of memory loss goes beyond normal forgetfulness and includes gaps in memory for long periods of time or of memories involving the traumatic event.”
If Nancy had experienced dissociative amnesia, she wouldn’t be able to recall anything between Rob’s attack and, say, the arrival of the police at the apartment. Why had she kept the body in the bedroom for two and a half days? Why had she rolled it up in a carpet? Why hadn’t she simply called the police as soon as she realized Rob was dead to tell them that her husband had just tried to kill her but that she’d apparently killed him in self-defense?
Simple: she couldn’t remember anything that had happened. She’d been in a state of dissociative amnesia.
Once she was free on bail, Nancy could have had her children flown to Hong Kong at any time. She’d chosen not to. She’d said it would have been too much of an emotional strain for her. She had not written to them since November, and she had never talked to them by phone. Now, as her trial approached, she shut them completely out of her life. She told her mother she did not want to receive any more letters from the children, nor photographs of them, nor news about them. She was sure they’d be fine with Andrew and Hayley. She had herself to worry about.
How fine the children actually were as Andrew and Hayley’s troubled marriage staggered toward dissolution was unclear. Hayley, who had filed for divorce in February, said they were thriving, despite the worsening domestic chaos. Jane wasn’t so sure, particularly after a phone call in which Hayley said (according to notes Jane made at the time of the call), “I hate to say it, but every time I see Rob’s kids now, I see Andrew in them. I hate to take it out on them, but I can’t help it.”
Hayley’s filing seemed to have driven Andrew past some personal point of no return. He would bring a bottle of scotch into his Hanrock office in Stamford and spend hours forging and falsely notarizing the documents needed to obtain fraudulent loans. Then he would decide it was party time and nobody would see him for days.
He’d invested in an off-Broadway show called Pieces (of Ass). It consisted of “a series of original monologues from a rotating cast of beautiful women,” a press release said. “These pieces aim to go beneath the beautiful façade and examine the concept of ‘hot chick angst.’” Andrew developed a personal interest in the subject, and in a number of the actresses from the show.
On Friday, May 20, he used the private jet to fly a group of actresses and business associates to Miami, where they boarded the Special K’s. Although he was already shopping for a bigger yacht, Andrew made the most of the $3.6 million ninety-three-footer—“kicking off his drinking binges at 11 a.m. and cavorting with a bevy of actresses,” as the New York Post reported.
The party ended Sunday night when Hayley, at the end of a long day with the five children, called the yacht. Andrew had assured her that only male business asso
ciates were aboard—ostensibly to analyze opportunities in Florida real estate—but a woman answered. She wasn’t sober. Hayley wasn’t pleased. She hung up and sent Jane an e-mail that said: “GOD, I HATE YOUR BROTHER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Sorry, just had to vent.”
Jane replied the next morning, asking Hayley if she was all right. Hayley replied:
I am okay. He is just such an awful pathetic person. I just fucking hate him, his I am the King attitude, his value system (or lack thereof), his anger, his meanness. I JUST HATE HIM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HE WILL NEVER BE A GOOD, RESPONSIBLE PERSON. I just can’t believe how he can so readily shirk his responsibility to his family…HE IS HORRIBLE, JUST HORRIBLE AND I HATE HIS FUCKING GUTS. Do you know last night in bed I could actually see myself pummeling him to death and just enjoying the sensation of each and every shot and then this morning as I pulled out of the garage to go to spin class all I wanted to do was crash into his Ferraris. He put this stupid pole in the garage so that I would know where to stop my car when I pulled into the garage because you know how incompetent I am that I can’t even park my car. Do you know I intentionally bang into the thing every time I park as an act of defiance…I HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTTTTTTEEEEEEEEE HHHHHIIIIIMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
That was enough for Jane. She wasn’t going to leave Rob’s children in a madhouse. She told Andrew she wanted custody of the children. He said she couldn’t have it. They accused each other of caring more about the trust fund than the children. Jane said she’d sue for custody if she had to. Andrew said, “I can’t believe you’re doing this to me. I’ll fight you.” Then Hayley chimed in. She told Jane that Andrew was essentially bankrupt and that she’d be left with nothing after the divorce. But the trust fund could help her maintain her standard of living. “If I keep the kids,” she said, “it may not be the best thing for them, but at least I won’t be on the street. I’m not going to let the Kissels take anything more from me. I’ve given enough. I’m going to do what’s best for myself.” Bill called from Florida to tell Hayley she was “a money-grubbing bitch.”
It was just the Kissels being Kissels.
The Trial
30. JUNE 7–JULY 30
THE TRIAL BEGAN ON TUESDAY, JUNE 7, 2005, IN THE COURT of First Instance in room 33 of the High Court Building on Queensway in Central. The presiding judge was Mr. Justice Michael Lunn, Q.C., a Cambridge-educated fifty-five-year-old Zimbabwean. He’d been in private practice in Hong Kong for more than twenty years before being appointed to the bench in 2003. Lunn was highly regarded, known in particular for his courtesy and personal warmth. “Old school, first class, a gentleman,” a Hong Kong journalist said. The prosecutor was the experienced Peter Chapman. He was a large man who exuded self-confidence without arrogance. Juries liked him, and so did Mr. Justice Lunn.
Alexander King had proven himself to be one of Hong Kong’s most skillful barristers, but as do many highly successful, wealthy defense attorneys, he had attracted his share of criticism. One observer called him a “mountebank.” His style was to dazzle, even if, on occasion, it risked a loss of dignity. If Nancy was determined to pursue a strategy of self-defense, King had a better chance than most of selling it.
“Chapman versus King: it’s a battle of heavyweight champions,” a Hong Kong barrister said. “And only one of them will be standing at the end.”
The courtroom was so small that spectators in the sixty public seats would almost be able to hear lawyers, witnesses, and even Mr. Justice Lunn breathe between sentences. The inadequacy of the air-conditioning assured that the breaths would be hot. The first week of June had been exceedingly steamy even by Hong Kong standards. Thunderstorms rolled across the island with regularity. Daytime temperatures reached the mid-nineties, with humidity near 100 percent. There was little cooling at night.
Even with pretrial publicity prohibited in Hong Kong, the expat community was in a tizzy. “We have a female who is accused of murdering her husband, a leading member of Hong Kong’s financial community,” University of Hong Kong professor of criminal law Simon Young Ngai-man told Barclay Crawford of the South China Morning Post. “They are members of the elite, upper crust of the expat society and we are getting a glimpse inside their private world, finding out intimate details of their lives.”
One spectator, requesting anonymity, told the Post, “There has never been a trial like this in Hong Kong. It’s like it has been scripted for a movie, but the story is one you wouldn’t believe.” Another newspaper article said, “For Hong Kong expatriates, the Kissel murder trial [is] the OJ Simpson murder trial and the Michael Jackson child abuse drama rolled into one…a lurid drama…a wild American soap opera transplanted to Asia.”
Bill Kissel was among the spectators. He had come to bear witness. He intended to stay to the end. Nancy’s mother Jean also attended. She and Nancy continued to live in the apartment in Pok Fu Lam. The prosecution had tried and failed to have Nancy’s bail revoked before the start of the trial. Jean and Bill did not speak to each other and avoided eye contact. Just as at Rob and Nancy’s wedding sixteen years earlier, they sat on opposite sides of the aisle.
The jury-selection process was brief. After Mr. Justice Lunn said the trial would last two to three months, a number of prospective jurors sought to be excused, citing employment commitments, inadequate English, and, in one case, anti-Semitism. Nonetheless, a jury of five men and two women—all Chinese—was impaneled within a day.
One of Hong Kong’s highest-profile barristers, expat Kevin “The Ego” Egan, did not expect them to be sympathetic to Nancy. “Juries here are stone-faced, pragmatic, and with their feet on the ground,” he said. “To win this case, you’d need a bunch of cuckoos from Connecticut and neurotics from New York.”
Peter Chapman’s opening statement was focused, not flamboyant. He said Nancy had rendered Rob unconscious by “lacing a milkshake with a cocktail of sedative drugs” and had then struck “a series of powerful and fatal blows” with the lead statuette. By grasping the figurines of the two little girls, Chapman said, Nancy had been able to use the ornament “like a hammerhead,” causing “massive spillage of brain substance.”
The “five types of hypnotic and sedative drugs” that were found in Rob’s stomach and liver matched five of the six drugs Nancy had obtained by prescription in the weeks leading up to the murder. “Insignificantly low” amounts of alcohol had been found, contradicting Nancy’s story that Rob had attacked her while drunk, while the absence of any defensive injuries indicated he’d been unable even to try to protect himself.
Chapman described how Nancy had attempted to dispose of Rob’s body. He pointed out that she’d also tried to hide the broken and bloodied ornament by placing it at the bottom of one of the sealed packing cartons that she’d sent to the storeroom with the body. Then she’d concocted a story about Rob vanishing into the night after having beaten her up. Her motive was simple, Chapman said: to cash in on Rob’s $18 million to $20 million estate—the total varied depending on the method used to value assets—before he was able to divorce her. She’d hoped to use the money to fund a new life with “the man in her life,” Michael Del Priore.
Alexander King chose not to make an opening statement. He didn’t want to commit to a position before seeing how the prosecution developed its case. Chapman began to present evidence. The first week’s witnesses included Rob’s sister Jane (“Nancy argued a lot, I was very careful when I was with her”), Scotty the Clown (“She was a very caring parent, very easy to deal with…She got things done”), and Rocco Gatta, who described his surveillance in Vermont.
An unexpected witness was Dr. Daniel Wu of Adventist Hospital, who told the court he had treated Rob for a “boxer’s fracture” of his right little finger in September 1999. Rob said he’d broken the finger punching a wall. Chapman knew the defense would try to portray Rob as uncontrollably violent, and he wanted to deal with the broken finger early on.
Details of Rob’s will were revealed. In March 1998, he had directed that if he predece
ased her, all his assets should go to Nancy.
Weekend press coverage was predictably breathless. In The Sunday Telegraph of London, Simon Parry wrote of “a trial that has captivated the former British colony and horrified its wealthy expatriates.” He wrote that “Hong Kong is enthralled by the saga of ‘White Mischief’ in the expatriate compounds where wealthy foreigners are pampered by Filipina maids and Chinese staff.” And he quoted a Chinese reporter as saying, “For us, this case is a throwback to the colonial era. It has all the ingredients our readers are most interested in: sex, murder, gweilos—and lots and lots of money.”
South Africa’s News24 struck the same theme, citing the trial’s “heady brew of sex, power, greed, betrayal, jealousy and, above all in this cash-obsessed town, money…[that] has shone a tantalizing light into the usually closed world of Hong Kong’s wealthy expats.”
Chinese papers emphasized love letters from Del Priore that investigators found hidden in Nancy’s bureau after the murder.
Min was on the stand for two and a half days during the second week. She said Nancy “could not forgive” and “if you made a mistake, she would hate you.” On cross-examination, she said she’d often seen a baseball bat in the bedroom while cleaning. Andrew Tanzer and his wife talked about the effects of the milk shake. Frank Shea meticulously described his every contact with Rob, and Robin Egerton told the jury of Rob’s decision to file for divorce.
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