Investigators Probe Several Angles In Ex-Real Estate Developer’s Murder

It began as a typical Monday morning. Workers from JB Moving Services arrived at the elegant house in Greenwich, Conn., to finish a job they had begun Saturday for Andrew Kissel, 46, a formerly high-flying real estate developer facing serious legal jeopardy.In fact, he was due in court this week to plead guilty to multiple charges of financial fraud,according to press reports.When the crew arrived at the job site between 8 a.m. and 8:30 a.m., they discovered Kissel’s lifeless body in the basement.The movers recognized him at once, a manager who requested anonymity said. He was wearing the same clothes they had seen him in just two days before, but now he was lying in a pool of blood, his hands and feet bound, and his face covered with a T-shirt or a pillowcase.The contents of the rented mansion on Dairy Road were being packed up for temporary storage while Kissel’s exwife, Hayley Kissel, from whom Kissel was recently estranged, figured out what to do with them. The couple was heard arguing Saturday, the moving company manager said.Greenwich police said Kissel’s murder appeared to have been planned. There were no signs of forced entry into the house, the Greenwich police chief, James Walters, said at a press conference yesterday.”This was not a random act,” Mr. Walters said. “We do believe that Mr. Kissel was the intended target of this assault.”Kissel was last seen alive by an acquaintance the day before he was found dead, Greenwich police said.Andrew Kissel’s death came three years after his brother, Robert Kissel, a successful investment banker, was bludgeoned to death by his wife, Nancy Kissel, in their Hong Kong apartment. The case, which drew international attention, became known as the “milkshake murder” because Nancy Kissel laced her husband’s milkshake with a sedative before beating him to death.An associate medical examiner for the state of Connecticut, Dr. Frank Evangelista, yesterday ruled the death a homicide caused by multiple stab wounds. The murder scene – in the basement of the house – was so bloody that one JB Moving Services employee said it looked as if the man’s head had been “smashed into the wall,” the moving company manager said.“They were so shook up they called the dispatcher,” the manager said.Police were combing the spacious property yesterday, including draining Kissel’s swimming pool in a search for evidence, and did not expect to complete their search until this afternoon.As of yesterday afternoon, no one had been arrested, but police said they had questioned Hayley Kissel.“Andrew did bad things,” his father, William Kissel, told the Associated Press yesterday. “He took money from a lot of people. He was killed in an extremely vengeful, angry way.”He also said, “Someone got in there in a very narrow timeline. Someone had to know something.”At the time of his death, Mr. Kissel faced both state and federal criminal charges.The Manhattan district attorney’s office charged him with bilking $3.9 million from his former residence, a cooperative at 200 E. 74th St., where he was the treasurer. He is alleged to have stolen as much as $3.9 million from the building’s repair fund between 1996 and 2002.The real estate lawyer for the cooperative since 1994, Aaron Shmulewitz, said Kissel was living in his 10th floor Upper East Side apartment until February 2003, when the theft from the cooperative became evident. At that point, Kissel moved out of the 28-story post-war cooperative to Connecticut, Mr. Shmulewitz, who works for the firm Belkin Burden Wenig & Goldman LLP, said.Kissel “had wrongly taken funds from the cooperative” and used them for his own good, Mr. Shmulewitz said. In part, Kissel “took out a mortgage against the building,” he said. Kissel paid almost $5 million in restitution, Mr. Shmulewitz said, and signed a civil settlement with the co-op in late October 2003, the district attorney’s office said.At the federal level, Kissel was charged with real estate fraud. He is alleged to have repeatedly mortgaged the same 2.24-acre parcel of land in Greenwich, even though he portrayed the property as being held free and clear. Prosecutors say that scheme, which allowed him to take out loans worth $6.4 million, required Kissel to file forged bank statements with the Greenwich town clerk. Mr. Kissel was scheduled to plead guilty to those federal charges this week, according to news reports.Kissel also faced a number of civil lawsuits. Kissel’s attorney, Philip Russell, did not return repeated telephone calls seeking comment. Until the Christmas season in 2005 – near the time of Nancy Kissel’s conviction – Andrew and Hayley Kissel had custody of his dead brother Robert’s three children, according to the court-appointed attorney in New York who represented the children, Michael Collesano.At that time, Mr. Collesano said Robert’s sister, Jane Clayton, who lives near Seattle, was granted guardianship of the children based on Mr.Collesano’s recommendation. Given Kissel’s “financial troubles, it was clearly obvious to me that it wasn’t the place for the children to be,” Mr. Collesano said.Three current and two former Dairy Road neighbors said they did not know Kissel or his family personally, but one woman living across the street said the family kept to itself. In addition to the Connecticut and Manhattan residences, Kissel and his estranged wife maintained a house in Vermont. When a reporter called the residence and to leave a message for Hayley Kissel, a woman said no and abruptly hung up.

Investigators Probe Several Angles In Ex-Real Estate Developer’s Murder

Investigators Probe Several Angles In Ex-Real Estate Developer’s Murder

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