Twice in just over five years Hong Kong's highest courts have had to rule on conflicting accounts of Nancy Kissel's family life: was her husband a high-flying banker betrayed by the mother of his three children or was he a violent and abusive husband who cruelly mistreated his long-suffering wife?
On Friday, after the benefit of a retrial, Nancy Kissel was again found guilty of murdering her husband, her protestations of diminished responsibility failing to convince a jury for the second time despite the reappraisal of her grim and sordid tale of private misery.
Once again, a jury had heard tales of infidelity, homosexuality, drug use, violence, sodomy and greed, and was unmoved. Once again a trial ended with Nancy Kissel deprived of her freedom, her children, and a life of privilege, this time probably forever. The Kissel children - Elaine, June and Reis, who live in the United States - have sued their mother for the wrongful death of their father, who now lies buried in New Jersey.
The children's suit was filed in 2006, soon after their mother was first convicted of murder and automatically jailed for life; their action probably represents the severance of all links between Kissel and her children. That same year, a US court awarded custody of the two girls and the boy to Jane Clayton, Robert Kissel's sister.
The torment of the past seven years, five of them in prison and including a stint in the Siu Lam Psychiatric Centre, is deeply etched into Nancy Kissel's face. People who once knew a beautiful and cheerful woman say her charm and physical strength are gone, and they now see someone who is frail and gaunt, pale and bony. Five years ago, she weighed 54kg, now she weighs barely 38kg. During her retrial she spoke slowly and softly and needed the help of a Correctional Services Department officer to walk into the defendant's dock.
The object of her desire
More typically grist for the mills of fiction, the Kissel tragedy has made its way into at least two works of non-fiction - Never Enough and A Family Cursed - and at least one movie 'inspired by actual events'.