Really it’s a sad story. The Kissels are rich, or used to be, so it’s tempting to savor the elaborate murders and betrayals the family has endured as a long lost episode of Knots Landing. But five young kids have lost their fathers, and paterfamilias William Kissel, 78, has lived through the killings of two of his three children. Hong Kong financier Robert Kissel, 40, was drugged and then bludgeoned to death by his wife Nancy in 2003, and now the other Kissel son, Andrew, a 46-year-old real estate developer, is dead after being stabbed at his rented mansion in Greenwich, Conn. “I haven’t read the Book of Job yet, but I’m about to,” William Kissel told the New York Times on April 3, the day Andrew’s corpse was found. Andrew Kissel once lived quite well–his 80-ft. Lazzara yacht has been valued at $2.8 million–but he was also, according to his estranged wife and other accusers, a drinker, a thief and a liar. The Greenwich police department isn’t saying much yet, which is understandable since its officers should be busy speaking to the many victims whom Kissel defrauded over the years. Last week he was set to admit in federal court that he had cheated financial companies out of millions of dollars. According to the Times, Kissel forged documents to pretend that he owned properties so that he could borrow against them. He also admitted pilfering millions of dollars from a Manhattan apartment building on whose board he once served. Kissel made good on that debt, paying the building back $4.7 million, which included interest. But he still had to face fraud charges in the case from the Manhattan district attorney. When Andrew’s wife Hayley Wolff Kissel filed for divorce in February 2005, she found herself among an assortment of creditors vying for the couple’s assets. She charged in court papers that her husband shielded $111,000 from the sale of his classic-car collection by requesting that the checks be cut to a former employee. Obtaining her share of the couple’s assets “has been time-consuming, expensive, and frustrating,” Hayley Kissel said in a motion filed a few weeks ago. Authorities had confined Andrew to the couple’s home, but she said in the motion that he “had been belligerent, especially while intoxicated” and that he had been drinking in front of their daughters, ages 9 and 6. She also noted that her once high-flying husband was seeking alimony from her. The Kissels were in the process of moving from the Greenwich home the weekend Andrew was murdered. Their landlord, Jean Wurtz, had filed a lawsuit saying the couple hadn’t paid the $14,300 rent for six months; the Kissels had subsequently agreed to move out by March 31. The movers didn’t actually arrive until the next day. According to the Times, the Kissels bickered in front of them. Monday morning, when the J.B. Moving employees went back to finish the job, they found Andrew’s body in the blood-spattered basement. His hands and feet were bound, and his T shirt had been pulled over his head. There were no signs the killer or killers had to force their way in, police say.
