Nancy Kissel, 'Milkshake Murderer,' Wants Appeal To Overturn Hong Kong Conviction

An American woman twice convicted in Hong Kong of killing her investment-banker husband is now seeking an appeal, MSNBC reported.

Nancy Kissel, 48, was handed a life sentence last March after a jury found her guilty of drugging Robert Kissel with a sedative-laced strawberry milkshake and bludgeoning him to death with a lead ornament.

During the trial -- which newspapers dubbed the "Milkshake Murder" -- Kissel denied the charge of murder, but pled guilty to a charge of manslaughter for causing her husband's death.

Legal counsel for Kissel originally said she was not going to appeal the conviction and hoped to serve her sentence in the U.S., but a court official told the AFP on Friday that the mother of three filed an application to appeal.

With the 28-day deadline to file for appeal already passed, the native of Adrian, Mich., must be given court permission to try to overturn the conviction.

"No date has been set for the hearing," a court spokesperson told the AFP.

Kissel was first convicted and sentenced in 2005, but Hong Kong's Court of Final Appeal cited legal errors and threw out the conviction in February 2010, the Wall Street Journal reported. A retrial began in January 2011 and ended two months later.

Kissel testified that her husband physically and sexually abused her and that she acted in self-defense when she killed him in 2003.

Police discovered the body of Robert Kissel, wrapped in a carpet in a storeroom near his home, on Nov. 6, 2003, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Prosecutors pointed out that Kissel may have had financial motivation for killing her husband, who was an executive for investment bank Merrill Lynch. They argued she could have made $18 million from his death and that she planned to take up with a TV repairman, with whom she admitted to having an affair in the U.S.