Alison Leigh Cowan wrote in The New York Times that the children “have endured nearly as much tragedy in their short lives as the waifs of the Lemony Snicket stories.”
During the first week of October, even as his lawyer was trying to negotiate a plea bargain on the federal charges, Andrew was indicted in New York on charges of grand larceny, forgery, and falsifying business records in relation to the $4 million he’d stolen from his co-op. In order to turn himself in for arraignment on the New York charges, Andrew had to get permission from federal authorities to leave his house in Greenwich. Because he was already wearing an electronic surveillance device, he was released on minimal bail on October 6, but the grand larceny count alone carried a penalty of up to twenty-five years in prison. The New York Times said he looked “dazed” at his court appearance.
Jane’s lawyer, Randy Mastro, of Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, said the new charges against Andrew made it “even more apparent that these three children who’ve been through so much need to be in a stable supportive environment, and that’s what Jane Kissel [Chandler] and her family offer.” Nathan Dershowitz replied that the new charges had been expected and should not affect Hayley’s attempt to maintain custody.
Nancy didn’t write to her children, but she wrote about them in a manner that suggested she actually still knew how they were. She did not, because she continued to refuse letters from them, photos of them, or news about them, explaining to her mother that the emotional toll of such communications would interfere with her ability to work on her appeal.
In October, she sent a letter to Judge Preminger of Surrogate’s Court urging that Jane not be given custody of the children. “I have been overwhelmed by Hayley’s unconditional love, support, and her exceptional skills as a devoted mother,” Nancy wrote from Tai Lam. “The fact of the matter is my children are not in harm’s way emotionally or physically right now. Children understand love. They don’t understand change. Loving families don’t turn on each other. They support one another.” She added that Jane was only after the trust fund money.
Judge Preminger was bemused. On October 17, noting that Nancy was “the lone voice for that position and would seem to have forfeited my belief in her good judgment based on the actions she was convicted of” and that in his will Rob had said he wanted Jane to raise the children if Nancy was unable to do so, the judge granted custody to Jane.
Outside court, with her husband, Richard, by her side, Jane tearfully said she was “thrilled.” Bill, who had flown up from Florida for the hearing, said, “Robert’s children can now go and have a wonderful life.” Hayley was not present in court. Nathan Dershowitz said she would have no comment.
34. ANDREW
ALTHOUGH SHE’D FILED FOR DIVORCE A YEAR EARLIER, Hayley and her children continued to live with Andrew in their rented estate at 10 Dairy Road in the Greenwich backcountry through February.
On February 28, 2006, her divorce lawyer filed a motion in Connecticut State Superior Court in Stamford, seeking to have Andrew evicted. The motion charged Andrew with having forged Hayley’s signature on a $2 million promissory note, as well as on a document that transferred ownership of their house in Stratton from her to him. The motion also said Andrew “has resumed drinking alcohol, consumes alcohol on the property, and has been belligerent and argumentative especially when intoxicated including in the company of the minor children.” Appended medical records showed that at various times Andrew had been diagnosed as suffering from alcohol dependence, bipolar disorder, cocaine abuse, impulse control disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and antisocial personality disorder.
He’d also stopped paying the $15,000 per month rent for the Green-which house. The owners had begun eviction proceedings, and Andrew and Hayley had promised to vacate the house by April 1. Hayley’s father bought her a $2 million house two miles away. Andrew would be going to a different sort of house. He was due to be sentenced on the federal bank fraud charges on April 6, and prosecutors estimated that he’d be given ten years. He’d also changed his plea to guilty on the state charges in New York related to his theft from the co-op and faced sentencing for that crime in May.
Hayley didn’t call movers until Friday, March 31. When she did, she said she wanted everything cleared from the house the next day. The owner of the moving company went to the house to give an estimate. There was a lot to be moved. Three trucks would be needed. He couldn’t understand why Hayley had waited so long to make arrangements and why she was suddenly in such a hurry to get out of the house.
The next day as the movers packed and hauled, they could hear Hayley and Andrew screaming at each other. The worst fight seemed to involve Andrew’s demand that Hayley leave at least a bed behind, so he could stay in the house over the weekend. Federal marshals were due to take him to White Plains, New York, on Monday for sentencing. From that point forward, the United States government would decide where he’d live. Hayley finally agreed to leave a bed, a nightstand, and a chair. The movers said they’d come back Monday morning to get them. Andrew said he’d be waiting for them at 8:00 a.m.
Hayley had not spoken to Bill for almost two years. Nor had she let Rob’s children speak to him when he phoned. Nonetheless, Hayley called Bill in Florida on Saturday to warn him that Andrew might be suicidal. She left a message that said, “I moved out of the house last night and Andrew stayed behind. I’m afraid he might do something stupid with his life.” Bill got the message but did not contact his sole surviving son.
At 6:00 p.m. Sunday, Carlos Trujillo, a Colombian handyman who’d worked for Andrew for years, stopped by the house to say good-bye and to wish his old boss luck at the upcoming sentencing. The men from JB Moving arrived at 8:30 the next morning, but found the black metal gate at the end of the driveway locked. When they phoned the house, there was no answer. They called their office in Stamford and asked what to do. The office manager called Hayley. She gave him the security code that would open the gate.
The movers backed their truck to the front door, then got out and rang the bell. No one answered, but they found that the door was unlocked. Calling out repeatedly, they entered the house and set to work. No one seemed to be home, but the movers knew they were supposed to load the few pieces of furniture from the bedroom and anything else that had not been moved on Saturday.
One of them went down to check the basement. He found Andrew. His body lay on the floor in a huge pool of blood. His hands and feet were bound with plastic flexcuffs and a T-shirt was pulled over his head. He’d been stabbed many times in the back.
“This was not a random act,” Greenwich police chief James Walters told the media the next day. “We believe Mr. Kissel was the intended target.” He said Andrew’s BlackBerry cell phone and e-mail device had been taken. He added that the absence of signs of forced entry indicated that Andrew had probably known his killer, or killers. Suspicion immediately focused on Carlos Trujillo, the Colombian houseboy and the last person known to have seen Andrew alive.
Bill expressed a different point of view. “Andrew did bad things,” he told the press. “He took money from a lot of people. He was killed in an extremely vengeful, angry way. If somebody just wanted to kill him they only had to put a bullet in his head, not tie him up and stab him to death with a shirt over his head. And someone got in there in a very narrow timeline. Someone had to know something.” Then he talked about Hayley. “She’s driven by money,” he said. “She’s not a nice person.” Was he suggesting that Hayley might have been involved in Andrew’s killing? “You can’t rule it out,” Bill said.
On the day of Andrew’s burial service in Lodi, New Jersey, Bill had guards posted at the entrance to the cemetery. They were instructed to prevent Hayley from entering, if she tried. She didn’t.
There were only seventeen people at the graveside service on a gray and drizzly April afternoon. Only Jane had come primarily to mourn the passing of Andrew. Bill told the rabbi who conducted the service to speak only about Andrew’s childhood. “Once h
e grew up, he turned bad,” Bill said. “There’s nothing good to say about him as a man.”
A week later, the e-mail in which Hayley told Jane she had fantasized about killing Andrew with her bare hands was leaked to the press. Hayley’s lawyer, Nathan Dershowitz, said he believed Bill and Jane had arranged the leak.
“Things between my client and the Kissels have been rocky,” he said, “and that family is feeling very guilty about what happened with Andrew and not being available to provide him with the emotional support he needed.”
Dershowitz called attention to the message Hayley left for Bill only a day and a half before Andrew was killed. “Andrew was despondent and she was reaching out to his family hoping that they would reach out to Andrew and help him. What’s shocking is that his family, particularly Bill, never responded and never tried.” He said Bill must have had “a sense of guilt…for not helping his own son in the first place. All Hayley was doing was letting them know this guy’s alone, he is having trouble, help him. And no one from his family ever did.”
In regard to Hayley, a few days later the Greenwich chief of police said, “We wish she could be more cooperative.” The chief “would not discuss whether she was a suspect,” the Associated Press reported.
There was never an implication that Hayley herself had committed the murder—though she was a strong, athletic woman with a fierce temper, whose rabid anger at her husband two days before he was killed had badly unnerved the movers she’d called to the house—but police seemed interested in pursuing the possibility that she’d hired the killer or killers.
But not a shred of evidence that Hayley had been involved was ever found, and suspicion remained focused on Trujillo. He was interviewed repeatedly by police, as were members of his extended family. He voluntarily took a polygraph examination. Chief Walters announced that he had failed it. For months, the police made it seem that Trujillo’s arrest was imminent. Then they backed off. Eventually they fell silent. Bill denounced them in the press, calling them “Keystone Kops.” He continued to tell friends that the police should question Hayley more aggressively. “What does Hayley know and is hiding from the police?” Bill wrote in an e-mail to an acquaintance.
Time passed. Rumors swirled. The Greenwich police did not seek help from state or federal investigators. The focus of the investigation shifted to former business partners of Andrew’s, whom he had swindled. The list was long. Particular attention was paid to an olive oil importing venture that had linked Andrew to businessmen in Sicily. But the Greenwich police department was not about to start messing around in Palermo or Catania.
After sparking an initial flurry of sensational headlines, the story of the unsolved murder of an unloved con man who’d been about to start serving a long prison sentence lost its grip on the public imagination. Only tabloid television continued to pay attention.
In midsummer, Hayley watched a Nancy Grace show that was devoted largely to the question of whether she might have been involved. Afterward, she sent a long e-mail to an acquaintance:
It was surreal watching a TV show where the topic of discussion was whether or not I murdered my husband. Hate is a word that is thrown around pretty loosely and my e-mails are no different from what many women write when they are unhappy.
My god, two months after he took in three kids, and after we discussed that he would have to help me or at least support me emotionally so I could do the job, he goes off and has an affair. I couldn’t believe that this is where my life ended up as I sat and watched in horror.
I always believed that Bill gave Elaine cancer (I believe that stress breaks down the immune system—another reason why I divorced AK). I feel like they are the insidious cancer. I guess in the end for deciding to divorce Andrew, I will be better off than Elaine, who died at a young age, but it sure feels like crap now.
There will be a time that I will look back at this period with some clarity and I hope that I will have greater self-esteem, perhaps be less trusting and less willing to sacrifice my own happiness. I will certainly feel like a survivor and you know what—my girls and I will have a relationship that is so incredibly solid, that is built around mutual respect, love, an appreciation for our collective inner strength and for the bond that was created through this adversity. My kids will be fine because they have a wonderful support system both through friends and family, I will impart good values in them, and they know they are loved and respected; I just need to convince them that they are safe.
Back to Nancy Grace, I also enjoyed her command of the law and Andrew’s legal entanglements when she stated that, with his death, I now get all the money because he never pleaded. Okay well let’s see, there are about $25 million of liens on all his assets, liens in place thru judicial order all part and parcel to civil cases. Do they just vanish?
And my personal favorite is when people call him a millionaire…He could’ve been a millionaire. The jerk had great instincts in real estate and was very smart. That is what I’ll never understand. He could’ve made a really nice living and he had two beautiful kids and a wife he loved. Why couldn’t he be happy with that? It should have been a perfectly fulfilling life…
Throughout the summer, Bill remained isolated in his mansion on the grounds of a Florida country club. His seventy-ninth birthday arrived. He e-mailed an acquaintance:
It is so hard to get Robert’s murder, and then Andrew’s out of my mind, and the poor children.
I am going to sleep. It is 8:45 PM, and I am exhausted. I wake up at 2 or 3 in the morning, and there it is: Robert and Andrew…
More months passed. The Greenwich police reported no progress in their investigation. On the first anniversary of Andrew’s death, Bill told the Stamford Advocate, “The police have hunkered down and closed the investigation. It’s going nowhere.”
In May 2007, both Chief Walters and his assistant chief announced their resignations. Walters had served only four years as chief and they’d been turbulent. The department had faced charges of racism in hiring and promotions, twice Walters had received votes of no confidence from his force, and he’d been reprimanded by Greenwich officials for granting special privileges to Diana Ross during her forty-eight hours in a Greenwich jail cell that had followed her arrest on drunken driving charges.
When asked if he had any regrets about unsolved cases, Walters mentioned the 1984 strangling of a thirteen-year-old boy. “That’s really the only case that still bothers me,” he said. He expressed no regret about having failed to find whoever murdered Andrew Kissel.
Television commentators remarked that while Greenwich police were quick to pounce on anyone found waterskiing after sunset, the town was a great place in which to get away with murder.
Hayley lost her hedge fund job as a result of the brouhaha surrounding Andrew’s murder, and she couldn’t find a new one. Eventually, she started working part-time for her father. She appeared in civil courts frequently as she battled creditors for any scant funds that could be salvaged from Andrew’s estate. She resisted attempts by banks to foreclose on the house at Stratton Mountain. She broke off all contact with Rob’s three children, but poured much time and energy into helping her own two daughters maintain equilibrium. Hayley told friends she had a new boyfriend who treated her well, but socially she kept a low profile.
She sent an e-mail to an acquaintance in the spring, saying Andrew might not have been murdered if Bill and Jane had not ignored his cries for help.
Perhaps if Andrew’s family had come to his rescue…No, instead they all turned their collective backs and let him rot. Nary a visit. And what do I hear after the fact, “I always thought that when Andrew got out he could live with me and I would help him.” Perhaps something that could have been shared in the months leading to his conviction. But no, revisionist history is so much more, well downright easier to deal with. Heck!
I don’t know—if your son was under house arrest, heading to jail for 8 years and had extensive emotional problems, you were in your 70’s, wo
uld you rise above it all and try one last time? Make a heroic attempt—haul your tush on that 21/2 hour plane ride and knock on the door and just steamroll your way in? “Goddamnit Andrew, it’s time we put this behind. You’ve done bad things and you deserve what is coming but heck I am your dad and I may have done some things wrong but you are my son, my only remaining son.”…you just get on the plane and if you don’t get past the door you just write it off and know that in your heart you tried. That’s what you do for your kids and you do it for things far more trivial than this…
No, but Bill spent his summer in HK mourning the only son who ever mattered, retrospectively of course. The good son. The one he was so close to. Who achieved greatness when he moved to HK (as measured in wealth)…
And then it was even more enjoyable to turn his rage on me. I don’t know—lose one son, losing a second that you would likely never see again because he was going away for 8 years or so. Try and make amends, heal the wounds that have been festering. Nah.
Festering was what the Kissels did instead of breathing.
35. MICHAEL
IN HINSDALE, NEW HAMPSHIRE, 166 MILES NORTHEAST OF Greenwich, Michael Del Priore was keeping a low profile, too. He refused all requests for interviews and turned down a $25,000 offer from the National Enquirer to tell his story.
No one from Interpol ever came calling. There was insufficient evidence for extradition. He was never charged with any crime.