He married Tracey in June 2006. She was the blonde whose picture had appeared alongside his in the Chinese magazine. He continued to operate his one-man business, installing home security systems. He and Tracey lived together in the stationary mobile home that Peter Chapman had called a trailer. It sat on a hill, just down the road from the dog track. He saw his daughter on alternate weekends.
Every day during the spring and summer of 2006, the mailman would bring a new letter from Nancy. Most were at least five pages long, packed on both sides with her handwritten words and ellipses. She wrote as if she still didn’t know there was already a new woman in Michael’s life. In letter after letter, she’d spin out detailed fantasies of the life together she and Michael would share as soon as her appeal set her free. Many of the fantasies involved rain. A surprising number involved washing dishes, with the lovers’ hands coming together among the pie plates and cereal bowls in the hot, soapy water. They all ended with her drifting off to sleep after making love as Michael murmured, “I’ll never leave you, baby doll…I’ll always be here for you…You’ll always be safe in my arms.”
She told him she’d begun to study the Bible. She’d also taught herself to play the guitar, and at night she would perform the new love songs she was writing about Michael for the twelve other lifers in her maximum-security ward. She said their response was gratifying, especially considering that none of them understood English.
Her mother still came to visit, as did a few remaining Parkview friends. Rob’s former colleague from Goldman Sachs continued to pay her legal fees and continued to insist on anonymity. A man wanted to make a movie about her life. Although no hearing of her appeal would be held until 2008, she was sure it would prove successful. Once she was freed, she planned to travel the world, establishing retreats for battered women. “In the mountains, where it’s peaceful,” she wrote. She was sure that Michael would want to travel with her. She knew they’d make a great team.
Michael and Tracey would read the letters together and shake their heads. But as time went on, the letters began to rankle Tracey, and there got to be too many to keep in the trailer, so Michael boxed them up and took them to a locker he’d rented at a storage facility located on the side of the road that led to Brattleboro.
He started to put off reading the new ones as they arrived. Then he stopped reading them altogether. Eventually he stopped even opening them, just tossing them in a carton instead and taking the carton to the storage locker when it was filled.
At the start of September 2006—almost a year to the day after Nancy’s conviction—Michael wrote to the superintendent of the Tai Lam Centre for Women, 110 Tai Lam Chung Road, New Territories, Hong Kong, and asked him to stop sending her letters.
For Del Priore, at least, there was such a thing as enough.
In order to protect their privacy, the first names of the three children of Robert and Nancy Kissel have been changed, as has Jane Kissel’s married name.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
MANY PEOPLE PERSONALLY CONNECTED TO AND IN SOME cases deeply affected by the murders of Robert and Andrew Kissel sought to help me understand the complex and destructive dynamic of the extended Kissel family.
I am especially indebted to those family members who shared their recollections, insights, and feelings at no small personal cost in terms of heartache. I would like to thank in particular Bill Kissel, Ira Keeshin, Jean McGlothlin, Hayley Kissel, and Brooks (Ryan) Keeshin for their candor and their trust.
I would also like to thank, in particular, Frank Shea and Bryna O’Shea for their patience in the face of my persistent and no doubt annoying questions about myriad details.
Michael Del Priore spoke to me at length and shared with me hundreds of Nancy Kissel’s letters to him, for which I am grateful.
Michael Paradise, Cris Parker, Charlie Dolan, Carol Horton, Susan Povich, Lee Smith, Doug Darrow, and Liz and John La Cause were particularly generous with their time and recollections, and I thank them.
In addition, I’d like to express gratitude to those individuals, both in Hong Kong and elsewhere, who spoke to me on the condition that their identities not be disclosed.
I remain blessed by the confidence and enthusiastic support of Simon & Schuster publisher and executive vice president David Rosenthal and my exceptionally gifted editor, Kerri Kolen. Amy Ryan’s copy-editing and fact checking were superb. Elisa Rivlin and Emily Remes provided legal counsel in the most supportive manner imaginable.
The least of my debt to Dennis Holahan arises from his extraordinary labors as my lawyer and agent. More important, he is as caring, unselfish, and inspirational a friend as any man could hope to have.
Finally, the one person whom I don’t even know how to start to thank is Nancy Doherty, the best editor I’ve ever worked with and, for so many years, so much more. This is the ninth of my books over which Nancy has waved her editorial wand and, as always, she has helped me to make it several orders of magnitude better than I could have made it myself. Her eye is unerring, her ear pitch-perfect, her surgical skills superb, and her insights both original and profound. I don’t know what I’d do without her.
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