The popular guy met his match surrounded by girls who on a Club Med cruise

Robert Kissel dropped a chilling hint to his closest childhood friend about five months before he died that his outwardly perfect marriage was in trouble.

After tracking down Daniel Williams through the internet, Kissel sent him several happy family pictures. Wife Nancy was in none of them, although Mr Williams had been at their wedding.

'Rob sent pictures of himself on the beach, one of his three kids, as well as one of his daughter on the beach,' Mr Williams said. 'I suspect he may have known that his marriage was in trouble then as Nancy was in none of the pictures.'

Friends like Mr Williams and Kissel's first girlfriend, Carol Japngie, have painted a picture of an attractive man who liked girls, displayed leadership qualities and had a tendency to be controlling. He had tried drugs but hated them, to the extent he would react angrily if he saw anyone using them.

They also told of a 'fun' couple who met on a Club Med singles cruise to the Caribbean in 1987 and then started to raise a family in New York while enjoying an active social life with friends, giving no hint of the tragedy that was to follow. Nancy was remembered before their marriage as - like many of her friends - a 'sexually social, flirtatious' young woman who wore her naturally brown hair in a blonde bob.

As the nightmarish sequence of events unfolded in court, Ms Japngie recalled her own relationship with Robert Kissel, saying: 'I remember saying to my mum afterwards that if I had married him, he wouldn't be dead now.'

Years before, Robert Kissel had made it very clear to her that they would never have married, however. Even after their romance blossomed into a sexual one on the ski slopes of Vermont, he told her: 'We can't be serious because you aren't Jewish,' which she understood.