Blood And Money

"48 Hours" Looks At The Killing Of Two Brothers Thousands Of Miles Apart

(CBS)  After Robert was missing for four days, the police went to the Kissel apartment to investigate. When they searched the family storage unit, they found boxes of bloody items and a rolled up carpet. Inside the carpet was Robert's body, bludgeoned to death.

Very quickly, police investigators focused on the only person they believe could have done it: Robert’s wife, Nancy. Within hours she was arrested and charged with murder.

As police were building their case against Nancy, the Tanzers remembered how strange Andrew felt the night he returned from the Kissels.

Tanzer had no memory of anything and wondered what was in that milkshake. "I felt like I had been drugged," he says. "I just immediately thought maybe Robert Kissel was also drugged. So I contacted the police, and I said 'Do an autopsy.'"

In fact, an autopsy would reveal five different drugs in Robert’s system, including rohypnol, known as the "date rape drug." Investigators discovered that Nancy had kept Robert’s body in her bedroom for two days.

The day after Robert was killed, security cameras caught Nancy returning home, after spending thousands of dollars on new furniture and new rugs

At the time of her arrest, Nancy was so distraught that instead of prison, she was held in the maximum security ward of a local hospital, where friend Trudy Samra was allowed to see her. Trudy says Nancy was bruised and unable to walk. "Like, almost like she was grabbed, you know, very forcibly by someone," Trudy recalls. "I thought, 'My God, she’s been in a terrible fight.'"

Nancy was in custody, Robert was dead and Andrew Kissel offered to take his brother’s son and two daughters – now worth millions – back to Connecticut. But, no one guessed the heartache that was still to come.

With their father dead, and their mother in prison in Hong Kong, Robert and Nancy’s children flew back to the U.S. and ultimately found a home with their uncle Andrew and his family but their lives were about to get turned upside down once again.

Andrew’s friend, Brian Howie says Andrew was devastated by his brother’s death and began to spend vast amounts of money. Andrew was trying to buy his happiness, like indulging in extravagant parties on his yacht.

But where was the money coming from? While Robert had played by the rules, Andrew was taking shortcuts. And he began years earlier when he and his family were living in New York City in a high rise co-op. Andrew was the building’s treasurer.

Peter Chamberlain, new to the board of directors, was puzzled by some of Andrew’s reports. "No one could account for how a hallway project could cost $2 million or a million dollars. All the receipts, all the bills, all the contracts were in Andrew Kissel’s possession," he says.

So was a lot of the building’s money. An investigation revealed that Andrew had secretly transferred funds into his own accounts. He was caught red-handed.

To avoid legal action, Andrew agreed to pay back what he owed, which was by this time nearly $4 million. Chamberlain says people wondered where Andrew would come up with the money.

For Andrew, the answer was simple: another scam in another state, Connecticut. He moved his family to Greenwich, where he had been buying and developing expensive homes as investments.

Nancy Walkley, a title search attorney, had processed some of the mortgage applications Andrew submitted to develop multi-million dollar properties. In 2005, while reviewing routine paperwork, she noticed something fishy about the signatures. "The 'A' in the Andrew looked very similar to the 'A' in the first name of the gentleman who signed that Astoria Federal Mortgage," she explains.

A quick check with the bank confirmed her fear: it appeared that Andrew had forged a bank executive’s signature, indicating a $5.5 million mortgage was paid off when it wasn’t.