After a three-month trial that had much of Hong Kong's expatriate community following its every turn, Kissel was sentenced to spend the rest of her life in prison for the murder of her husband after a seven-person jury returned its unanimous verdict Thursday evening.

The jury took only a few hours to reach its decision.

At 8.30pm, in High Court 33, a silent but packed courtroom heard the jury foreman read "Guilty" of murder as charged.

American Kissel, 41, a native of the state of Minnesota, did not react.

With the accused standing before him, Justice Michael Lunn pronounced: "As I am required to do so by law, I impose a sentence of life imprisonment upon you."

Murder carries a mandatory life sentence in Hong Kong.

Head bowed, Kissel - dressed in the same black attire she has worn throughout the trial - was led away by four officers of the Correctional Services Department.

She was not given a chance to embrace her mother, Jean McGlothlin, sitting closest to the dock.

Her lawyer, Alexander King, would not comment on whether Kissel will lodge an appeal.

The father of the deceased, William Kissel, said the unanimous decision cleared his son's name of the many allegations made against him and that Robert could now rest in peace.

"That's justice," he said. "All the allegations made in the court [about Robert] are false, untrue. And Robert, I pray, can now rest in peace and his children can go on with their lives in peace knowing their father loved them and they are his dear children."

McGlothlin, received embraces and words of support from her friends, including Nancy Nassberg and Renee Tanaka, both of whom testified in Nancy's defense.

Red-eyed and "a little stunned," but calm, McGlothlin addressed reporters, thanking them "for the respect you have shown me and my family. It's helped me enormously," she said.

"Right now, I'm just going to try and get by. Feet on the ground again."

Kissel's friend Geertuida Samra was in court to hear the end of the trial, but was not present for the verdict.

Samra had worked closely with the convicted murderer as president of the Parent Faculty Organisation of the elite Hong Kong International School, provided surety for her bail application and visited the accused while in Siu Lam psychiatric center after the murder.

Although she had not been told about Nancy's lover Michael Del Priore, nor any specific incidents of violence or abuse, she said in her testimony: "I never thought I should be curious about what happened. I trust her."

Justice Lunn finished his summary of the evidence and directions to the jury around 12.30pm. Eight hours later, the five men and two women of the jury returned without looking towards the accused.

Further details of the trial also emerged Thursday that, due to reporting restrictions in a jury trial, could not be revealed earlier.

Perhaps presaging her eventual fate, Kissel's bail was revoked mid-way through the trial, on August 11, although the jury was never told.

After she finished her testimony, the prosecution had suggested that her accusations against her husband and claims of memory loss were lies, and Justice Lunn requested a secret hearing without the presence of the public and the jury.

Since that moment, Kissel has not been seen in public.

Another controversy arose without the jury's knowledge when, mid-way through the prosecution case, the defense revealed that they had in their possession a baseball bat which had been removed from the crime scene by one of the solicitors on November 9 and would be submitted as a defense exhibit. The judge also ordered Thursday that trial transcripts in which the mystery bat was discussed will "be sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions for directions as he sees fit."

In relation to the baseball bat in his summary to the jury, the judge pointed out "we know nothing at all" as to why the defense lawyer chose to take the baseball bat, and keep it in his office until mid-way through the trial without producing it.

The judge ruled without the jury on July 22 that he would admit the bat as evidence since it was central to the defendant's case, but noted that it was astonishing that the defense notified the court only at that stage, given the "the significance of the baseball bat."

Kissel was charged with murdering her husband with a heavy metal ornament on the night of November 2, 2003. With no video footage or eye-witnesses, the prosecution relied on circumstantial evidence as to her state of mind and other activities in the months leading up to the murder as proof of premeditation.

In June and July, documents gathered via computer spyware and private detectives suggested that she began an affair with electrical repairman Del Priore in Vermont, who the prosecution suggested had provided "tacit encouragement" for the murder of Robert Kissel.

In August, an Internet search was made for drugs causing overdose. In late October, the accused was prescribed Rohypnol, the infamous "date rape" drug, followed by more prescriptions of sedatives and hypnotics.

The prosecution said these drugs were served to Robert Kissel, disguised in a pink milkshake, to render him defenseless as she bludgeoned him to death with five blows to the right hand side of the head, each one of them fatal, with a heavy metal ornament.

When the decomposing body was unwrapped from the carpet on November 7, 2003, the government pathologist said he found "massive spillage of brain substance" and that fractured bones from the skull and been pressed into the brain.

The jury unanimously accepted this as reliable evidence that Kissel had murdered her husband of 16 years with whom she had three children.

The eventual fate of the couple's three young children - Elaine, June and Reese - remains uncertain. They are currently in the custody of Robert Kissel's brother Andrew and his wife Hayley. But Andrew was recently indicted for financial fraud in the United States and his wife has filed for divorce.

Robert Kissel had been a top banker with both Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch working with corporate distressed debt in the Asia Pacific Region.