US citizen Nancy Kissel who was found guilty on two occasions of the “milkshake murder” of her millionaire husband in Hong Kong has applied to appeal against her conviction, a news report said on Friday.
The 47-year-old has filed an application to appeal against her conviction for murder in March, the South China Morning Post said.
She has also withdrawn an application to serve out her life sentence in the United States, the report said.
The application is the latest episode in the saga of Kissel who has insisted throughout she acted in self-defence when she bludgeoned Robert Kissel, a banker with Merrill Lynch and Co, to death in November 2003.
She was jailed for life in 2005, but the conviction was overturned in January 2010 by Hong Kong's highest court after Kissel's lawyers argued she had been improperly cross-examined and hearsay evidence was admitted at her trial.
In the retrial in February and March 2011, the court heard she had delivered at least five blows to her husband's head after giving him a strawberry milkshake laced with a cocktail of sedatives.
She then tried to conceal the body by wrapping it in a carpet and asking workmen to carry the carpet into a storeroom where it was found days later by police, the court was told.
The prosecution argued the mother-of-three had murdered her husband to avoid a messy divorce after he discovered she was having an affair with a television repairman in the United States.
Her defence lawyers said she was suffering from mental illness at the time of the killing and had been provoked after years of abuse from her husband.
The report said the latest application was for an “out of time” appeal as the court sets a time limit for appeal applications to within 28 days after conviction.
The case, which inspired a film and a book, attracted much attention in the local media, which was fascinated with the idea of sex, money and murder in Hong Kong's wealthy expatriate community. - Sapa-dpa