Trices Group Book Review Journal 
 
   
 
   
 
   
 
  
 Family Cursed, A 
by:McMurray, Kevin F.
 Publisher:  
Location:   
Copyright:2007 
Cover:   
Type:Paperback
  
   
 
reviewed by:   
 2/11/2008
 
Comment: Two brothers are murdered roughly two years apart. Both wealthy, 
  
 On 25 March 2008, Carlos Trujillo was arrested along with his cousin and charged with murdering Andrew Kissel in April 2006. The title of Kevin F. McMurray's book seems rather appropriate in describing the death of two brothers, Robert and Andrew Kissel, in unusual circumstances. The 25 March 2008 arrest seems to be an additional chapter of the book which could not be written in 2006.

Kevin F. McMurray's book, A FAMILY CURSED, examines the deaths of Robert and Andrew Kissel. Robert Kissel was killed by his wife in his Hong Kong apartment in November 2003. Nancy Kissel was convicted of what one doctor referred to as a "‘psychotic episode'" in which she poisoned Robert, smashed his head in with a blunt instrument, and left the body in bed for three days while she figured out how to get rid of it. (At the trial however, it was revealed that she had made arrangements to ship the body back to the United States. The arrangements took time). The media dubbed it the "Milk Shake Murder". Andrew Kissel's death was a bit more prosaic. He was found in the basement of the home he was in the processing of vacating, a court-ordered GPS locator bracelet on his ankle, hands and feet bound and a T-Shirt pulled over his head. He had died from multiple stab wounds. The most curious feature of his murder was the T-Shirt used as an execution hood.

McMurray examines Andrew Kissel's murder by introducing all the usual suspects, including Carlos Trujillo, the family chauffeur and handyman. Andrew's estranged wife, Hayley, was not too happy with the future victim herself. But the Greenwich Police Department, under whose jurisdiction the crime occurred, was stymied. McMurray singles the Greenwich Police Department out for special criticism, stating that the "Andrew Kissel case is presently in the hands of the Greenwich Police Department, a fact that doesn't bode well for a timely resolution of this murder mystery." Back in April 2006, the Greenwich Police Department seemed to subscribe to the theory that the murder of Andrew Kissel was a "suicide by hitman" since all the indicators were that Kissel knew his assailant. The motive was insurance money.

The Kissel brothers–"a family cursed"–appeared to have completely different personalities but wound up in essentially the same situations, ending in essentially the same results. It is an unusual story which McMurray relates in a matter-of-fact way. The majority of the book is		 
 
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 devoted to the death of Robert. Nancy was convicted of Robert's murder in Hong Kong and was sitting in a seven-by-seven-foot cell in the Tai Lam Institute for Women. She had received a life sentence.

The irony of the Kissel brothers' deaths is that we never get a real sense of why they died.

According to McMurray, Robert Kissel was in the way of an ongoing affair Nancy was having with a man in New Hampshire. Though she was apparently in constant contact with her lover up to the time of Robert's murder, subsequent events nullify any assumption that Robert's murder was the result of a plan to collect on a five million dollar life insurance policy on Robert's life. Part of wife Nancy's defense was that Robert had a cocaine problem and was at times abusive. It is a rather lingering motif surrounding the murder which author McMurray does not effectively address. If Robert Kissel was abusive, it was abusiveness which certainly does not justify a pre-planned murder. More importantly, McMurray presents sufficient facts to conclude that Robert Kissel was of a mind-set to divorce his wife. That fact alone denigrates Nancy's assertion that her husband was abusive. Spousal abusers are usually frightened, very insecure, clinging people.

Read McMurray's book as a factual report of the two murders. However, it is an oddly unsatisfying book. There is little offered to explain why the brothers Kissel ended their days on earth in such violent fashions		 
 
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