two brothers. both living the good life, but here's the strange part. both died the same terrible way. >> it's like a horror movie. >> what are the chances brothers would both be murdered by different people almost three years and 8,000 miles apart? >> as soon as they got through the door, they knew there was a dead body. >> one had marriage troubles. >> she wanted a loving husband and that fell away and then nothing. >> the other, money troubles. >> how much did he sting the building for? >> but who killed him and why. >> the courtroom was dead

silence. everyone's jaws dropped. >> money and murder mixed in a deadly concoction. >> thanks for joining us, i'm lester holt. you may have heard of the kissel brothers, their story told in books and a movie. in a terrible coincidence, both brothers were murdered but not in a single crime. killed in different times and different places and by different people. here is dennis murphy. >> they were known in their old enabled as the kissel brothers. two new jersey boys raised in the burbs born to achieve. robert working to heights in international banking, andrew by working it. >> to be honest with you, i didn't and frankly couldn't imagine someone in our building would steal from us. >> oceans and aspirations would

separate the two. robert, his wife nancy and three was children would live jet lagged but privileged lives of ex-paths in hong kong. >> you find out husbands are never at home, even ones that don't travel. >> andrew and his family would find themselves ensconced in greenwich, connecticut. their lives played out in monopoly game board fashion. robert clubbed with a statue, andrew stabbed in the chest. bloody corpses found in basements thousands of miles away and years apart. >> it is unbelievable. it is like out of a movie really. it is like a horror movie. >> more on the strange deaths of the brothers. a final chapter in the killing of andrew, and in hong kong, after seven years in prison, nancy kissel goes on trial a second time.

>> she had moments when she couldn't move on, and was crying and just stopped, the whole courtroom stopped. >> now the second verdict is in, will she be set free? >> there was a gasp in the courtroom. >> but we're getting ahead of ourselves. let's go back in time to where this story really begins. in that new jersey suburb with danny williams, a boyhood friend who knew them both way back when. >> andrew and robert were two different people. >> robert was the outgoing one. andrew a different cat all together. >> people he was a little bit shy, more shy than robert. >> did andy have to work harder as being liked or likeable than rob? did it come more easily to rob? >> i think that's exactly right. i think it did come easily for rob. he was more approachable. >> different as they were temperament, they shared a gift for math. >> i remember going to a yankee

game with robert. he brought a pad, wrote all the stats down, who has runs batted in. andy the same. >> both had careers in business. andy first out of the box was a retail car accessory shop. it was a bust. >> i think he wanted it so bad, but the customers weren't coming in, you know. i think it lasted maybe a year and a half. >> always the more cautious younger brother, rob set out on a more conventional path to success, college, then business school. >> i think rob was more studious, understood that it took a great deal of hard work to succeed, and i think andrew was in a rush. >> college buddy michael paradise says he was struck by rob's methodical approach to everything. studies, sports, dating. >> attractive, funny, smart, had a great future ahead of him. athletic. you can go down the list and check them off. >> and the woman who would

become his fiancee' was a fun loving restaurant manager from new york city, nancy. rob's college friend was there at the beginning. in 1987, when rob and nancy both in their 20s met and made sparks during a club med vacation in the caribbean. >> she was artistic, she was funny, she was friendly, she was outgoing. and she seemed to love rob incredibly. >> in just a few years, the handsome young couple was married and starting a family in the big city. rob with his knack for tracking baseball stats was a natural at the real thing. wall street banking. by the mid 1990s, he was well into a career that would make him millions. but new york neighbor says rob never lost his down to earth style. >> he wasn't flamboyant. i think what he was interested in was making that career, you know, going up that ladder as an investment banker.

he was in new york, doing fine. he would have done fine and continued, but this is the step, you deal with distressed companies i think he was a career guy. >> and wasn't afraid of flaunting it. the new york neighbor recalls one caddy remark from the banker's wife. >> one day she was wearing this great beaver coat. i said nancy, this is a great coat. she said it is a great coat, but you'll never be able to afford it. >> is that what she said? >> i looked at her and thought what a strange thing to say to somebody. >> you're giving her a compliment and getting something up side the head.

>> but if nancy could be fast with a buck and barb, he was quick to wave his finger at her. remembers one incident between the couple. >> we would be in the neighborhood, ring the buzzer to see if they were home. we would go up and walk in on them, and it was obvious they had just had an argument. >> obvious how? >> tension. nancy would look at me and roll her eyes and say money. >> she had a lot of clothes, a lot of shoes, a lot of nice stuff. >> another friend, hillary agrees that nancy liked to strut her husband's success, but she says nancy also liked to share her good fortune, buying unexpected gifts for others. though she does admit now and then a sudden unpleasant streak would show itself. >> she was one of those people who had the ability to basically cut someone out of their lives completely, entirely, absolutely, as if they no longer existed, without what appeared to me to be much of a reason

whatsoever. >> but was that on/off switch a quirk or a shadow of something more troubling? it depends who you ask. one thing is certain, though. given time and just the right circumstances, nancy kissel, a fun loving live wire would give all that thought they knew her the shock of their lives. >> friends and family of andrew were also in a shock. >> how much did he sting the building for. >> 4.7 million. >> when "deadly concoction" continues. in florida we had more suntans... last season was the gulf's in alabama we had more beautiful blooms... in mississippi we had more good times... in louisiana we had more fun on the water. last season we broke all kinds of records on the gulf. this year we are out to do even better... and now is a great time to start. our beatches are even more relaxing... the fishing's great. so pick your favorite spot on the gulf...

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currencies were in freefall, cash strapped industries were eager to sell off assets for nickels on the dollar. rob kissel's bosses at goldman, sachs, the investment bank, wanted him there to pick up the fallen fruit. >> rob was just excited. this was an opportunity. so it was like he was just excited about getting the offer. >> rob, nancy, and their two children, a three-year-old and an infant packed up their stuff, said good-bye to friends and family. the new yorkers were about to become american expatriates, and wealthy ones at that. it was good-bye new york, hello hong kong. this was their new home, a sprawling $20,000 a month apartment in parkview towers. they fit right into the life-style where banker husbands like rob earned millions of dollars a year but worked 16 hours a day, and wives like nancy filled time with children and charity work. they had begun their great life adventure.

there was so much hong kong to explore. a glamorous city of 7 million people with business on its mind. but it was also asia. culturally alien for some westerners. after a long day, the kissel's could retreat to parkview towers, like america under glass. >> it is like disneyworld, kept green areas, pools, waterfalls, restaurants, tennis, driving range. >> so it has all the resort amenities? >> it does. the tragedy is you can live at parkview and not have to leave. >> this american lived there at the time. she never met the kissels there, but understands the initial giddiness they would have felt in the shiny new world of limos, world class shopping, and endless pampering. she also knows the darker side of the adventure. >> what you find out is the husbands are never home, even ones that don't travel.

they leave early in the morning, and come home late at night. >> so the woman is isolated in many cases? >> yes, the women and children are isolated. >> so there is only so much you can do shopping and being with the kids. >> i think americans measure themselves on work ethic. things get done and you have a lot of idol time. categorically that can go two ways. you can really enjoy it or feel the isolation. >> but friends say nancy kissel seemed to make the best of it. >> you only know what people show to you, but as she related to me she loved it there. a fabulous life, great apartment, she played tense, she started a business.

she had friends. she enjoyed it. >> close friend hillary reshard vacationed with them in those years. if the move halfway around the world put stress on the kissel marriage, she says nancy didn't let on. quite the opposite. >> she would speak on at great length about how wonderful and passionate her relationship with rob remained. >> she talked about rob in bed. >> she did. >> and things were okay? >> she and rob were a hot ticket? >> things were okay. >> but a former neighbor saw them on a home leave visit in 2000, little more than two years into their time in hong kong and something had changed. >> i couldn't connect to rob. he would working really hard, he was tired. that would be the best thing. i didn't get a sense of joy when i saw him. >> no wonder she saw fatigue. the two to three year hong kong stint was turning into a multi year slog of meetings, deals,

and travel. along the way in 2000, merrill lynch wood him from goldman, sachs making him the top man in southeast asia. he was doing the family proud. and he wasn't the only one. brother andrew was on a roll with his investment firm, buying and managing commercial properties around new york. andrew now married to wife hayley wolff kissel, former ski champion and stock analyst, bought a co-op apartment on the upper east side, made it the showplace of the building. >> i knew him to be somebody involved in real estate transactions. >> fellow apartment owner peter chamberlain says neighbors were so taken by him, they tapped him to be the building treasurer. he could break into the mutual piggy bank with no questions asked. >> is that unusual? >> yes. that is highly improper. >> as a fellow board member, chamberlain could eyeball some of the books. a little quick math told him the

numbers there weren't adding up. he says he confronted the other board members and andrew kissel. a faceoff he lost. >> what did you think at the end of that little bit of accounting? what did you think was going on? >> to be honest with you, i didn't and frankly couldn't imagine that someone in our building would steal from us. >> but someone was stealing with both hands. eventually, the rest of the board caught on and demanded answers from its treasurer. but if kissel was a financial whiz, it seems he was also a master of the con. >> how much did he sting the building for? >> the number that gets floated around on paper, 4.7 million. >> you might think that explosive discovery would land him in jail. but that didn't happen. somehow from somewhere he came up with the cash and paid back the missing millions. in return, he was allowed to leave unpunished. >> there are stories people

witnessed him on the cameras sliding out the service elevator down to the basement and running down 74th street to second avenue when the whole building became aware of the problems. >> and where does a disgraced millionaire go? greenwich, connecticut, of course, home to big money. but instead of contemplating his misdeeds, in 2003, andrew kissel was dreaming up more schemes, playing more dirty monopoly with other people's money. he wasn't the only kissel in crisis mode either. halfway around the world in hong kong, his younger brother was worrying about a killer pandemic and his family's safety. sadly, it seems rob kissel was sweating over the wrong assassin. >> i said rob, i think nancy is trying to kill you. >> ♪ lord, you got no reason

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andrew kissel, lucky to be only spanked by the apartment neighbors he swindled, continued to buy residential and commercial properties all over wealthy connecticut. it was about then worrying news was coming out of asia. the airborne killer sars put the region on high alert, including hong kong where rob and his family lived. there was no question rob had to get nancy and the now three kids out of asia. so he sent them to the kissel family ski house in vermont. rob the dutiful breadwinner elected to stay in hong kong, one of those fateful decisions. >> he first approached me june of 2003. >> frank shay is a former new york city police detective turned private investigator. during the separation from his family, rob got that funny feeling, one that tells you your spouse is doing something she shouldn't. >> he wanted the confirmation. he was pretty convinced it was going on, but he wanted the

evidence. >> he hired shay's investigators to surveil his wife. he called him in hong kong to report what they were seeing in real time. >> this gentleman arrived in a van, parked on a dirt road and snuck into the house. i told rob what was going on. >> same time, on-going as we're talking. that gentleman was michael del fiore, a local tv installer. on the phone, kissel took the news stoically, hung up, immediately called his wife. minutes later, there was a stir in the vermont house. >> the male came out of the house, got in his van and drove off. so rob called me back at my house, told me that he had spoken to nancy to not to let her know the house was watched. >> she quickly returned to her husband in hong kong to presumably work on the marriage. any hope he had for the couple was wiped away by summer, 2003

when he got a call from his client rob. the banker was telling the detective something unsettling. >> he would come home and have a two finger scotch, but the scotch was making him feel much different than he normally felt. would make him feel woozy, disoriented. not something he was used to. >> the former cop's instinct kicked in. shea urged rob to rush a sample to the lab for testing, he realized his friend might not do it, so he decided to do something extraordinary. he would pay a visit in hong kong to spell it out. >> you wanted to see what was going ob here? >> i wanted to sit down and tell him what i thought. >> i sat down with rob kissel, looked him across the table at the china club, i said rob, i think nancy is trying to kill you. >> how do you react to that kind

of thing? the marriage may be on the rocks but she's killing me? >> he took in my statement. he didn't say that he bought it 100%, but he really was concerned about his safety. he even said he thought about moving out until it was cleared up. i told him let's go get tested now. >> still, the urgency of it all seemed lost on rob. before he knew it, it was halloween weekend, the end of one month, the beginning of another. rob kissel never did send that sample out for testing, but he had made a decision. he was convinced his marriage had broken down and he was going to ask his wife for a divorce. in fact, friends of the couple say they intended to talk about the split on that sunday in november. we know rob kissel spent the day with his three kids he was crazy about. at one point, his daughter gave him a pink milk shake, mixed up by her mom, a secret recipe she called it in the spirit of halloween.

it seemed at the time a cute gesture, but not that significant. he had to have had so much on his mind that afternoon, the impending divorce, the possible loss of his children, and on top of it all, a critical conference call at home later that evening. it was so important that a colleague phoned him to talk about strategy for the meeting. hong kong reporter albert wong says the colleague thought rob sounded like he was on another planet. >> it was bizarre. >> groggy, out of it, not making sense? >> exactly. >> maybe stress was finally taking its toll on rob kissel. or maybe something else was afoot. maybe the goblins of halloween had one more trick to play. coming up. did a wife's secret recipe milkshake lead to another secret hidden in the basement. >> as soon as they opened the door, they knew there was a dead body in there. >> when "deadly concoction" continues. not ec-o.

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>> here is what is happening. an anonymous tip has led to the arrest of two men suspected for deadly shooting ins tulsa, oklahoma. two of the victims remain in critical condition. and long time newsman mike wallace has died at the age of 63. now back to "deadly concoction." feng shui. for thousands of years, many believe there's a life force that blows around us like wind and water. interrupted at your peril. take one of the most prominent skyscrapers on the hong kong

skyline, the bank of china. very bad feng shui because the building with sharp edges like glass daggers brings the force inside. bad luck comes in and near it. it is not clear if he cared for that, but he was focused on the bank of china. >> in 2003, this was a huge market. talking billions of u.s. dollars. >> albert wong is a reporter in hong kong. >> it was competing with merrill-lynch, goldman, sachs all the big ones. >> on the first sunday after halloween, 2003, a close friend and colleague of rob's called to discuss an important conference call on the bank of china deal later that night. he said kissel sounded sleepy, out of sorts. >> not making sense? >> exactly. >> at first, the friend didn't make much of it. when kissel missed the

conference call that night and was a no show at the office the next day, the friend called nancy kissel. she told him she and rob were dealing with family issues. but as days passed, the friend suspected something more sinister at play, and filed a missing person's report. police inspectors later knocked on mrs. kissel's door. she let them in and explained her husband had walked out on her after a fight. >> they didn't suspect anything until they go into the bedroom. and he says then that it is a gut feeling just from experience. >> meanwhile, another team of inspectors was investigating reports of a strange smell coming from the kissel storage unit. the police eventually asked mrs. kissel for the keys. after some hesitation, she handed them over. >> as soon as they got to the door, the smell was so overwhelming, they knew straight away there was a dead body in there. >> they found the missing husband? >> right. >> 40-year-old robert kissel had

been rolled inside a carpet, padded with pillows and towels to contain the stench. within hours, his wife was under arrest. the city of dazzling lights was lit up brighter by the juiciest story to hit hong kong in years. nancy kissel, fancy wife of a banker charged with murder. the ex-pats savored each morsel of the story. the body found in a carp pet whispers about a million being shake in the final days of robert kissel. yet it would take nearly two years before she would stand trial for the death of her husband. when she finally did, it would be hong kong's drama of the year. the prosecution outlining the case against nancy kissel in classic strokes. a calculating wife in love with another man, hungry for her husband's millions. unwilling to put up with a messy divorce.

before she killed him, prosecutors said, nancy kissel had looked on the internet for drugs to kill her husband. >> it was a cold-blooded killing, simple as that. >> they laid out the last hours of rob kissel in grisly detail. they said nancy knew her husband was about to ask for a divorce, so she launched a preemptive strike. she blended a pharmacy of drugs into a pink colored milkshake, gave it to one of her daughters to serve to daddy. >> this is known as date rape drug. >> right. >> is that what we're talking about? knocks you out, can't remember details. >> exactly. >> prosecutors said hours after drinking that shake, he got into his pajamas, staggered toward his bed and collapsed unconscious. then said the prosecutor, nancy pounced. a family heirloom. >> she bludgeoned him five

times. each could have been fatal. >> what happened next was a hasty coverup. >> at first she went on a mysterious drive at two a.m. then she went to a popular turnture store and bought new rugs, pillows, cheats, and rope and bags. eventually he wrapped him up in the rug and had it taken to a storage room. . the defense started it's case with a bizarre star witness. it was nancy's job to tell her

side of the story. she took the stand, steadying herself on a railing as she got towards the witness chair. then in a whisper she turned the tables and put her dead husband rob on trial. she described in minute details what she said was an abusive, perverted marriage. how at night her husband did a jekyll and hyde, with coke and scotch until he smashed. how he forced her into humiliating rough sex. >> her self esteem was probably nothing. >> liz says her friend was crying out for help, finding temporary solace with a lover in vermont. >> she wanted a loving husband and she had that and that fell away, then she had nothing. >> but for all her sordid testimony, her testimony was spotty at best. she remembered her husband threatened her, striking him five times with a lead statue, though, that was a complete blur. >> you try to pick a fight by

mentioning divorce, he says supposedly i am taking the kids and going and he's holding a baseball bat. then eventually through a lot of shouting, she gets dragged into the bedroom. >> violent fight under way. >> right. and she goes blank. >> on cross examination, the prosecutor cut to the chase. >> mrs. kissel, there's one thing we have to get over and done with. you do, of course, accept you killed your husband? and she said yes. >> gasps in the courtroom. >> gasps in the courtroom. >> in the end, after three hs ot buy nancy's claims of abuse or her argument of self defense. its unanimous verdict, guilty. nancy kissel would spend the rest of her life in a chinese prison. rob's friends in new york couldn't spare her much sympathy. >> the legacy she leaves the children is she murdered their father and said he was a terrible person. >> the children were sent to live with their uncle andrew in

his connecticut mansion where everyone hoped their healing could begin. but by then, he may have been too preoccupied with something else. there was yet another storm heading towards the kissel family. it was shakespearean, almost biblical, what was about to happen to the surviving brother, surviving but not for very long. separated by almost three years and 8,000 miles, a second kissel brother is murdered. >> body of andrew michael kissel was found in the residence. >> when "dateline" continues. het in the middle of nowhere, is always headed somewhere. to give it a sense of direction, at&t created a mobile asset solution to protect and track everything. so every piece of equipment knows where it is, how it's doing or where it goes next. ♪ this is the bell on the cat. [ male announcer ] it's a network of possibilities -- helping you do what you do... even better.

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his younger brother rob, andrew kissel was in a funk. friend and theater producer ryan howie said not even a booze cruise on his yacht could cheer him up. >> parts of the trip andrew would be crying. you could tell he was deeply troubled and saddened. >> everyone assumed his grief was over the family's great tragedy. rob killed by his wife, the children left behind. but maybe the tears were for himself. it seems andrew's crooked monopoly game was catching up with him. he was about to draw the go directly to jail card. as his family was sitting through a traumatic trial in hong kong, andrew kissel was making headlines back home, here.

in the summer of 2005, they arrested him, charging him with defrauding banks in a massive loan scheme. if convicted of all charges, andrew kissel could have spent the rest of his life in a federal slammer, not a rosy prospect for the guardian of his brother's late children, who were heirs to the estate estimated at $18 million. and there was another worry for the children behind the stately walls of kissel manner. war had been declared. andrew and his wife hayley were splitting up in ugly fashion. e-mails obtained by "dateline" show her venting about her husband. i just hate him, she writes. he will never be a good, responsible person. it goes on to say do you know last night in bed i could actually see myself pommelling him to death and enjoying the sensation of each and every shot.

>> that's just one of them. >> michael was the court appointed lawyer for the children. >> there was a pattern of and if it's your own children it's in a bad situation, but these children didn't need to be in the environment. >> there was a pattern of behavior there that clearly indicated a very stressful home, and that clearly indicated i think to any reasoned person that the interest of the children weren't served by being in that home. >> andrew's sister jane agreed. she petitioned for and was granted custody of the three children. she went so far as to make andrew and hayley's feud a matter of public record. andrew in retaliation left a message on his sister's answering machine. >> jane, it is your ex-brother, you're famous, on the front page of "the new york times." you should get it as you are

quoted and we are going to bury you, jane. >> but kissel was in no position to threaten anyone. he eventually cut a deal with federal prosecutors that included prison time. meantime, he was home under house arrest, ticking off the days, watching tv with an ankle >> i moved to los angeles so i would not hear much, but i would ask how andrew was doing and i would hear good, he's days, watching tv with an ankle bracelet. >> and i would hear good, he's happy he's home, he's resigned to his fate. >> problem was, fate wasn't resigned to andrew kissel's plan. in april, days before he was due in federal court to confess his crimes, karma made a house call. andrew kissel was alone in the mansion. his wife hayley and their two kids had moved out that friday, forced to leave after andrew stopped paying rent.

movers were coming to clear out the rest of the furniture after the weekend. but when they arrived early monday morning, april 3rd, 2006, they made a ghastly discovery in the basement. >> body of andrew michael kissel was found dead within his residence at 10 dairy road. >> according to police whoever murdered andrew kissel pulled his shirt over his head and stabbed him multiple times. a second kissel brother dead, victim of foul play. he was 46 years old. for awhile, it seemed police were intent on quickly nabbing a suspect. there was even an amateur detective theory floated that had a weird appealing logic to it, that andrew hired someone to do him in. even his friend, brian howie, says he loved his own children, two daughters, enough to pull off one last con, insurance fraud. a policy that would pay off for murder, but not suicide. >> if there was insurance money involved or whatever insurance,

he loved the children, and if he was going away a significant amount of time, money mattered in his world, so he wanted to see they were taken care of. >> but instead of a high profile investigation, there was silence. for a time, police weren't saying much of anything about andrew kissel, though others were. the chilling coincidence of two brothers killed several years apart was too eery for the rest of the world to ignore. the lives and deaths of andrew and rob spawned articles and books. >> you treat this like a business plan. >> andrew turned into a tv movie. the two mr. kissels. >> what have you done? >> i made us money, hayley. >> the truth was, it was more bizarre than hollywood could imagine, and it was far from over. in 2008, police arrested andrew kissel's chauffeur. >> carlos, did you kill andrew kissel? >> and his cousin leonard. both insisted they didn't kill

the real estate developer, but leonard pled guilty to manslaughter and conspiracy to commit murder. in march, carlos, the driver, pled guilty to attempted murder under something called the alfred doctrine. it means he recognizes the state has enough evidence for a jury to convict him, even though he maintains his innocence. still unanswered, did andrew kissel in fact pay to have someone kill him? the mystery may never be solved. and the sad tale of two brothers may never be over. a half world away, the hong kong justice system had second thoughts about the first kissel case. in a move that stunned many people, the court of final appeal overturned nancy kissel's murder conviction, saying her 2005 trial had been flawed. her supporters were on hand for the decision. >> she's elated. she's elated. >> hong kong was about to give nancy kissel a new trial, and another chance to tell a jury

about robert kissel, about their marriage, and her version of what happened that terrible night at parkview towers. coming up -- nancy kissel on the stand. a courtroom on edge. >> she completely just was screaming, screaming at the top of her lungs. the courtroom was dead sigh tent. everyone's jaws dropped. >> when "deadly concoction" continues. 4 the progress. we're paying for all spill related clean-up costs. bp findings supports independent scientists studying the gulf's environment. thousands of environmental samples have been tested and all beaches and waters are open. and the tourists are back. i was born here, i'm still here and so is bp. that's good morning, veggie style.

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nancy kissel, a wealthy banker's wife beams healthy environment in old photographs. these days when the camera catches her, it is hard to find a trace of the woman who was. >> she's very, very thin. about 84 pounds. she looks about 5'5", 5'6" to me. that's obviously a dangerous weight for a woman of that height.

>> debra mao has been following the latest in the saga. >> her hair used to be blonde, now she's a brunette. didn't used to wear glasses, now almost never seen without glasses. >> it may be hard for many to sympathies. after all, nancy kissel admitted killing the man she once loved. and yet she and her supporters believe her 2005 trial condemned her to life in a 7 x 7 foot chinese cell had been unfair. >> primarily because of hearsay evidence they thought had been introduced, greatly prejudiced jurors against nancy kissel. >> then last year, something remarkable happened. hong kong's court of final appeal agreed with nancy kissel. the justices overturned her conviction to the delight of family and friends. >> i think justice has been served. >> and the jce it began in january of this year, with officers leading the

frail defendant into court. it soon became clear to reporters that nancy kissel's faltering appearance mirrored something more troubling. >> most of the time, she was sort of sitting, rocking like this in her chair, wrapped up in a shawl, reading her bible. >> when the judge finally asked how she pleaded, nancy seemed out of it. >> she stood there, looking like a deer in the headlights. she wasn't moving or whatever. and said i don't understand, i don't understand. >> after prodding from her lawyers, she pled guilty, not to murder but to manslaughter, a lesser charge. the prosecution promptly rejected her plea. it wanted jurors to see nancy as the calculating wife that wanted everything except a messy divorce. >> prosecution's case has always been she intended to kill him. >> the prosecution said nancy

was guilty of nothing less than cold-blooded murder. it resurrected the gory details from the first trial. the drugged milkshake, the lead statue, the bloody death. >> this case is emotionally unsettling. it's disturbing to reporters who heard it for the first time, it is disturbing to reporters who heard it for the fifth time. it's a disturbing case. >> in her first trial, her lawyers argued she killed rob in self defense. this time around they claimed something called diminished responsibility. through psychiatric experts, they tried to show nancy was a battered woman. the argument was she was in the throws of a major depression the night she killed her husband. as she listened to the testimony, nancy would sometimes break out in tears. >> sometimes audibly, sometimes just sort of to herself. and she is surrounded by three corrections officers who are constantly, you know, either holding her hand or rubbing her

shoulders or trying to keep her calm. >> but tears wouldn't be enough to convince the jury. to do that, nancy would have to take the stand. over the course of five days, she retold her story of abuse at the hands of rob kissel. when the prosecutor challenged her testimony, nancy kissel lost it. >> she completely just was screaming, screaming at the top of her lungs, and it seemed like she was having a flashback. she was pointing at the floor saying he's there, he's there. he wouldn't stop. the courtroom was dead silent. everyone, everyone's jaws dropped. >> after almost two months of testimony that dissected the state of nancy kissel's mind that terrible night, both sides rested their cases. jurors now had two options. they could find nancy guilty of murder or if they believed she

had been mentally damaged when she killed rob kissel, they could find her guilty of the lesser charge, manslaughter. in that case, the judge could take into account the time she had already served, and in effect let her walk out of the courtroom a free woman. in march, after ten and a half hours of deliberations, the jury returned with its verdict. >> and the judge says is it unanimous, and they say yes, it's unanimous. and the judge says what is it? >> for the second time in more than five years, a hong kong jury found nancy kissel guilty of murder. >> there was a gasp in the courtroom, mainly from family and supporters, and people who may have thought after hearing the evidence that it was going to be manslaughter. >> and with the same verdict came the same sentence. life in prison for nancy kissel. afterwards, her mother spoke to nbc news.

>> i think for the moment, she is probably somewhat relieved that this ordeal is over. >> nancy's lawyers have told "dateline" that instead of appealing her conviction, she decided to petition for a transfer to a u.s. prison to serve out her sentence. >> the fact that she has been found guilty of murder doesn't amount to a complete story. we'll never know the truth of this case. it just won't be known. >> even if we did, it certainly wouldn't satisfy the bigger question here, the one about robert and andrew. how is it that two brothers so different in so many important ways could both end up discovered in basements in such grisly fashion. >> the childhood friend from new jersey doesn't know. >> a quiet guy, guy that wants a yacht, runs a ponzi scheme to

get it. >> and he didn't have to do it that way. he was a great salesman, could have done it on a legitimate basis. maybe he wanted it fast. maybe he needed it fast. >> some people would say the old adage, money is the root of all evil. >> right. maybe the pursuit of money is the root of all evil. >> it's natural for us to want to take the sting out of chaos. murder, cruel fate with bumper sticker wisdom. well, maybe the chinese who have been at the proverb business for centuries have the one that applies to the brothers kissel. it goes "good luck seldom comes in pairs, but bad things never walk alone." >> there's more on this story