Murders of Merrill Banker, Brother Echo in Tale of Empty Lives

Dec. 14 -- The big treat in a murder mystery is the suspense you experience before finding out, at the bitter end, who did the heinous deed.

Joe McGinniss, the bestselling author of ``Fatal Vision,'' couldn't cash in on that form of surprise in his latest book, which recounts the grisly murder of Merrill Lynch & Co. banker Robert Kissel in Hong Kong. News stories about the 2003 slaying had already made clear that his shopaholic wife did it.

Yet there's no lack of tension in this account of Robert and Nancy Kissel and their life of empty abundance. ``Never Enough'' takes you on a journey through a weird, real-life tale of how people with too much money and too little soul can wind up the stuff of supermarket tabloid headlines.

The couple met on a nudist beach in the Turks and Caicos Islands and married in 1989. By 1997, they were moving from New York to Hong Kong for Robert's job with Goldman Sachs & Co. They had three children, two live-in domestic workers, a Mercedes, a Porsche and enough designer clothes to fill a small-town department store.

When the Asian currency crisis hit days after the couple arrived in Hong Kong, Rob Kissel seized the opportunity to attain superstar status, using his skill as a distressed-debt specialist to make money from the corporate casualties. Merrill Lynch hired him away from Goldman in 2000.

Rolled in Carpet

In 2003, Kissel's blond, beautiful wife drugged her husband, bludgeoned him with a lead statuette and rolled him up in the bedroom carpet. A Hong Kong jury found her guilty of murder, and the judge sentenced her to life in prison. Less than three years after Rob's death, his brother, Andrew Kissel, was found slain at his home in Greenwich, Connecticut.

``Never Enough'' pivots on the intertwining dysfunctional relationships that led up to the two murders. This is what makes the book worth reading.

Rob Kissel could never satisfy his demanding father. Nancy Kissel was alienated, living 8,000 miles (13,000 kilometers) from home in an expat community that seemed to value display of expensive goods above all else. She shopped to try to feel better. Even as her husband lay dead in the bedroom, she visited a warehouse for designer clothing.

At trial, Nancy Kissel admitted she killed her husband but said he was verbally and physically abusive and that she had killed him in self-defense. McGinniss cites conversations in which Nancy Kissel tells her lover, a stereo-system installer, that Rob did drugs and beat her. Her appeal will be heard in Hong Kong this coming April.

Fatal Stabbing

Nancy Kissel was already in a Hong Kong prison on April 3, 2006, when her brother-in-law Andrew, a real-estate developer, was found stabbed to death in his Greenwich home. At the time, Andrew was facing federal fraud charges for allegedly filing for $6.4 million in bank loans and construction loans, according to court documents. Though lots of people might have had motives to harm him, the case remains unsolved.

``Never Enough'' would have been more satisfying had it told more about the police leads and potentially murderous intent of the people in Andrew's life. Though the book is plugged by the publisher as the ``harrowing true story'' of the two brothers' murders, it's mostly about the Hong Kong Kissels.

The other downside is that McGinniss writes in the mass- market, short-sentence style that appeals to a broad audience. It sells books. It can also get grating.

That said, this is a great read that leaves you with lots to mull over about how rich people can deceive themselves. Rob Kissel ``couldn't understand'' that the more he earned, the less happy his wife was, McGinniss writes. Yet when his father-in-law asked Rob how much money would be ``enough,'' the answer provided a key as to why he and Nancy had a bond in the first place.

``There is no such thing as enough,'' the banker said.

``Never Enough'' is from Simon & Schuster (358 pages, $25).

(Susan Antilla is a columnist for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.)