An enraged Robert Kissel threatened to kill his wife Nancy with a baseball bat before she hit him with a metal ornament and then lost her memory of what happened next, Nancy Kissel testified in the High Court.

Testifying for the third day Wednesday, Kissel, who is accused of murdering her husband, told the court that the Merrill Lynch banker had repeated several times: ''I'm going to f****** kill you,'' on the night of the alleged murder.

She said her husband wielded a baseball bat and came at her in the master bedroom, while she held up a metal ornament, the alleged murder weapon, in front of her face - and then - a memory blank, the High Court heard.

Kissel, 41, recounted a fight in the couple's Parkview residence on November 2, 2003, the night the prosecution alleges she murdered her husband.

Speaking quietly, the trembling defendant described how an argument about divorce and her spitting in his face unleashed a furious struggle in which the pair exchanged blows, with the banker wielding the baseball bat against his wife holding the heavy metal ornament.

After the accused landed a blow to her husband's head, ''he kept saying: 'I'm going to kill you, you bitch,''' said the accused.

Her last image of the struggle was of herself ``sitting on the floor, next to the bed.''

The struggle that Kissel described to the court allegedly took place hours after the prosecution said she served her husband a milkshake laced with sedatives that left him lying unconscious at the foot of the bed as she bludgeoned him to death.

His decomposing body was found in a storeroom at their residential complex on November 7, wrapped in a rug. An autopsy report indicated the body contained huge amounts of sedatives. Kissel has denied the murder charge and is on bail.

She said Wednesday she could not remember what happened on Saturday, November 1, and that her recollection of Sunday, November 2, was ``patchy.''

Before the fight, she told the court, she remembered that her neighbor Andrew Tanzer and his daughter had visited in the afternoon. The children wanted ice cream but they decided to make ``sundaes.''

All the children present helped, with the girls in charge of peeling the bananas and the son in charge of breaking up the cookies, she said. Since it had been Halloween, they decided on adding red food coloring to make a ``Halloweeny'' milkshake.

Her husband came in a couple of times and ``rolled his eyes at the chaos that was going on in the kitchen'' she said.

The girls then took glasses of milkshake to their fathers.

``I have a vague recollection of talking to Andrew Tanzer,'' she said, but she did not know whether it was to say hello or goodbye.

Later, Robert Kissel and then his son both drank the remainder of the milkshake from the blender.

While she was still in the kitchen, she heard her husband talking to her.

``He said: `I'm filing for divorce and I'm taking the kids,''' Kissel told the court. The deceased complained she was not listening to him as he had done many times before and said: ``I have filed for divorce and I'm taking the kids. It's a done deal. I've talked to the lawyers.''

The accused said: ``He said I wasn't fit to take care of the kids.''

At this point, the accused said Robert Kissel was standing in the hallway at the door to their bedroom, leaning on a baseball bat.

He began throwing the bat from one hand to the other. He said he wanted it ``for protection'' because he thought she would get angry.

As she went down the hallway to confront him, she picked up the statue. ``I started questioning him ... and said: `What do you mean you've filed, taking the kids, and told people I'm sick?''' she told the court.

She then started waving her finger at him again, which she said he hated. He slapped it away once, twice, but on the third time, he grabbed her hand, according to the accused.

``He wouldn't let go so I spat in his face. He hit me across the mouth and I fell down and dropped the statue.

``He pulled me into the room, threw me onto the bed and started to have sex with me, and I started to struggle with him. He wouldn't let go and I started kicking him and he wouldn't let up. We ended up on the floor ... I started to crawl away.

``He started to grab my ankles and pull me and wouldn't let go. I knew what he was trying to do. He said: `I'm not finished with you yet.'

``He wouldn't stop. I just wanted him to stop. He wouldn't let go. I was on the floor and I reached for the statue and I swung it back, I didn't even look. I felt that I hit something, and he let go. I turned around and I looked at him. He was sitting by the closet and I saw that he was bleeding.

``I tried to help him up and he wouldn't let me. He pulled himself up on the bed and just sat there and I just, I just kept looking at him.

``He sat on the bed and touched his head with his hand and saw that it was bleeding.''

At that point, Kissel said, he said he was going to kill her. ``He grabbed the bat and came at me. He hit me on the leg with the bat, on my knee.''

Consequently, much ``swinging'' ensued with the bat striking the ornament. The banker allegedly pushed the accused up against the cabinet while ``he kept saying: `I'm going to kill you, you bitch.'''

Kissel said: ``He had the bat in his hands, and came down on me as I was holding the statue in front of my face.'' At this point, the defendant paused, still shaking. Then: ``I don't remember,'' she said.

``Can you tell us anymore about this fight?'' asked her counsel, Alexander King, SC. She did not reply.

King pointed out she was later captured on closed circuit TV going to the car park of the residential complex at 2am the next day [Monday, November 3]. She said: ``I got in my car and I drove down the hill. I don't know where I went. I just remember being in my car.'' The prosecution alleges Kissel bought a rug at a furniture store, Tequila Kola, but she said she remembered nothing of that day.

King noted the prosecution had offered evidence of ``cleaning'' in the master bedroom after the alleged murder. ``What recollection do you have of doing that?'' he asked.

``I don't remember,'' she said.

``Are you able to tell us when you had the first realization that your husband was dead?'' he asked.

``I started to remember things, just images, kind of pieces of things that didn't really make sense to me and they just kind of came back in little pieces,'' she said.

Those fragments of memory came back, ``maybe six months or so later in Siu Lam (psychiatric center). The first month I was there I don't really remember much.

``I started to remember things, of where I was, in January, because I remember the holiday, which is when I was able to be let out of where I was and I don't have a clear memory of the beginning when I was there.''

On November 3, ``at the time, did you know he was dead?'' asked King. ``No, I don't remember,'' she said.

Kissel continues her testimony today before Justice Michael Lunn and a jury. albert.wong@singtaonewscorp.com