“A true-crime thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat. This first-time author has done a brilliant job of capturing the inner workings of a female killer…someone who uses her cunning ways to commit murder.”
—Aphrodite Jones, New York Times best-selling crime author
“Caitlin Rother has written a gripping and chilling book. A tawdry and twisted story of sex and drugs, deception and murder. And here’s the scariest part—it’s all true.”
—Tom Murray, producer for Pretty Poison, Court TV’s documentary on the Rossum case
“Absorbing and impeccably researched, Poisoned Love is classic California noir, a story of passion and betrayal and death, with a beautiful, scheming adulteress at the center of the web.”
—John Taylor, author of The Count and The Confession: A True Mystery.
“Poisoned Love chillingly illustrates how Kristin Rossum and others refused to accept responsibility for their behavior and choices. Caitlin Rother paints a portrait of the culture that raised Kristin, hired her, was lured by her beauty, and now must share in the dire consequences.”
—Kevin Barry, producer for The Kristin Rossum Story on Oprah Winfrey’s Oxygen Network.
“Poisoned Love is a concise and riveting account of one of the most challenging but fascinating investigations of my police career. Reading Rother’s book brought back the many exhausting hours, effort, and stress I lived and breathed for close to two years in bringing this case to trial. Time’s passage sometimes changes a person’s convictions. Poisoned Love reaffirms my belief that justice was served.”
—Laurie Agnew, San Diego Police Department homicide detective
“A riveting and detailed view of a cold, calculated homicide romantically staged as a suicide. Rother gives us an insightful account of how a pretty, scheming and conniving young woman who, despite her intelligence, falls to the scourge of drugs and methodically destroys several lives. I couldn’t put it down and I already knew the story well.”
—Bob Petrachek, Regional Computer Forensic Laboratory examiner
“An exciting page-turner from a first-rate reporter.”
—M. William Phelps, author of Every Move You Make
POISONED LOVE
CAITLIN ROTHER
PINNACLE BOOKS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com
CAST OF CHARACTERS
ROSSUM FAMILY
Kristin Rossum, oldest child
Ralph Rossum, father
Constance Rossum, mother
Brent Rossum, middle child
Pierce Rossum, youngest child
DE VILLERS FAMILY
Greg T. de Villers, oldest brother and Kristin’s husband
Jerome T. de Villers, middle brother
Bertrand T. de Villers, youngest brother
Yves T. de Villers, father
Marie T. de Villers, mother
SAN DIEGO POLICE DEPARTMENT
Detective Laurie Agnew, lead detective on the case
Sergeant Howard Williams, Agnew’s boss
Detective Jimmy Valle
Detective Felix Zavala
Detective Lynn Rydalch
Detective George “Randy” Alldredge
UCSD CAMPUS POLICE
Officer Edward “Scott” Garcia
Officer Bill MacIntyre
Officer Karen Scofield
PROSECUTION TEAM
Deputy District Attorney Dan Goldstein
Deputy District Attorney Dave Hendren
Frank Eaton, investigator
Meredith Dent, paralegal
District Attorney Paul Pfingst
DEFENSE ATTORNEYS
Deputy Public Defender Alex Loebig, Kristin’s criminal attorney
Deputy Public Defender Vic Eriksen, Kristin’s criminal attorney
Michael Pancer, private attorney
Gretchen von Helms, fill-in attorney for Pancer
JUDGES
Superior Court Judge John Thompson, criminal trial judge
Superior Court Judge John S. Meyer, civil trial judge
REGIONAL COMPUTER FORENSIC LABORATORY
Bob Petrachek, examiner
MEDICAL EXAMINER’S OFFICE
Dr. Brian Blackbourne, chief medical examiner
Lloyd Amborn, office administrator
Michael Robertson, Kristin’s married lover and boss in toxicology lab
Donald “Russ” Lowe, toxicologist, did drug audits
Angie Wagner, investigator on Greg’s case
Frank Barnhart, Kristin’s friend and mentor, later changed
jobs to sheriff’s crime lab
Cathy Hamm, toxicologist
Ray Gary, toxicologist
Dr. Harry Bonnell, pathologist
Bob Sutton, manager of autopsy exam room
KRISTIN’S FRIENDS/ADVOCATES
Melissa Prager, high school friend
Chris Elliott, friend
Rick Hogrefe, head of TriLink Biotechnologies
Kelly Christianson, Kristin’s lab manager at TriLink
Claire Becker, Kristin’s coworker at TriLink
Jessica Vanella, Kristin’s coworker at TriLink
Kathy Vanella, Jessica’s mother, took Kristin in before trial
GREG’S FRIENDS/ADVOCATES
Bill Leger, high school friend
Aaron Wallo, high school friend
Christian Colantoni, high school friend
Stefan Gruenwald, his boss at Orbigen
Terry Huang, office manager at Orbigen
MICHAEL’S ASSOCIATES
Nicole Robertson, Michael’s wife
Dan Anderson, supervising toxicologist in Los Angeles
County coroner’s office
Chuck Goldberg, Michael’s criminal attorney
ATTORNEYS FOR APPEAL
Lynda Romero, Kristin’s criminal appellate attorney Deputy Attorney
General Niki Shaffer, state’s appellate attorney
ATTORNEYS IN CIVIL CASE
Craig McClellan, de Villers family’s attorney
John Gomez, de Villers family’s attorney
Cindy Lane, de Villers family’s attorney
Michael Gardiner, Michael Robertson’s attorney
Walter Tribbey, Kristin’s attorney
Deborah McCarthy, attorney for San Diego County
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Acknowledgments
Author’s Note
Photographic Insert
Chapter 1
It was a Monday morning, November 6, 2000, when Stefan Gruenwald pulled up to the building his small biotech company shared with three others. He was surprised to see that his licensing manager wasn’t at his desk, making calls.
Typically, Greg de Villers had already started his day by the time his boss arrived. He was a dependable guy. Meticulous, diligent, and a team player to boot. Gruenwald had known Greg since he’d hired him several years earlier at another biotech company. After Gruenwald left to start his own business, he lured Greg away to work for him.
Greg was one of only eight employees at Orbigen, so it didn’t take long for Gruenwald to
poke his head in each office to ask if anyone had seen Greg that morning. They hadn’t. Greg was rarely late, and when he was, he always called to let Gruenwald know. He’d never missed a day of work without calling.
Gruenwald wondered if Greg was having car problems. Maybe he’d broken down somewhere. Greg had no cell phone, so around 10:10 A.M., Gruenwald called the apartment in the San Diego neighborhood of University City, where Greg lived with Kristin Rossum, his pretty, petite, blond wife of seventeen months. He let it ring for a while. But no one picked up.
Although Greg tended not to socialize with his coworkers after hours, he did drink a Coke or a beer with them at the occasional TGIF gatherings, and Gruenwald had worked with him long enough to feel that he knew Greg pretty well. Greg had good manners and was liked by his colleagues, who thought he was a nice guy and a bit of a health nut. He’d gone on a fishing trip with them to Mexico once but said he was anxious to get home to Kristin rather than go out for drinks on the way back. She, his two brothers, and the small circle of close friends he’d made over the years were the people with whom he liked to spend his spare time.
Greg wasn’t the kind of outgoing guy who got noticed in a crowd for his strong personality. He was more of an easygoing, middle-of-the-road kind of guy, a little on the shy side around new people and somewhat soft-spoken. Kristin, on the other hand, had more of an allure, especially when it came to men. Greg really seemed to be in love with her, always rushing home to eat one of her special dinners and watch a video. The only time Gruenwald had seen Greg stay late at the office was the week in early October, when Kristin went to a conference in Milwaukee. Kristin worked as a toxicologist at the San Diego County Medical Examiner’s Office, where she conducted tests to determine what drugs may have caused suspicious or sudden deaths.
Gruenwald met Kristin at a company Christmas party before she and Greg were married in June 1999, and they’d all gone out for drinks afterwards. She seemed nice. A little flirtatious, but funny, outgoing, and very intelligent. She and Greg seemed to get along well, and they looked good together. Recently, Greg had asked Gruenwald to keep an ear out for a new job for Kristin. He’d also talked about having Orbigen help him go to law school so he could become a patent attorney for the company. In a year or two, once Orbigen got off the ground, Gruenwald told him, “We can definitely do that.”
When Greg still hadn’t shown up by eleven o’clock, office manager Terry Huang was getting concerned as well. Nearly three hours late without calling—it was so unlike Greg. Huang tried reaching him at his apartment around 11:15 but got no answer. It just rang and rang. Huang and Gruenwald shared their unease a few hours later and tried calling Greg again from Huang’s office. Still no response.
By this point, Gruenwald was worried enough to wonder whether he should go over there. Greg lived only ten minutes away. But he got lost in his work and never made it out of the office.
By 5 P.M., Gruenwald figured Greg must’ve had a family emergency. The previous week, he’d worked a half day on Thursday so he could deal with a family problem, and he left a little early on Friday to meet up with his in-laws. Maybe the problem had gotten out of hand. Greg also hadn’t been feeling well the week before. The previous Monday morning, he came to the office feeling crummy and told a coworker that he’d thrown up after drinking only a couple of beers that weekend. Not to mention he seemed unusually agitated all week. Especially on Friday.
At 5:40 P.M., Huang and Gruenwald huddled together and tried calling Greg again on the speakerphone. There was still no answer. They were quite befuddled.
Huang tried once more around 7 P.M., just before leaving the office, and this time Kristin picked up. He asked to speak to Greg, but Kristin said he was sleeping. Huang asked if everything was all right, because Greg hadn’t come to work that day. Kristin said she’d phoned Orbigen that morning and left a message saying Greg wasn’t feeling well and wouldn’t be coming in. Didn’t they get it? She apologized if no one received the message. Kristin thanked him for calling and hung up.
The call left Huang feeling uneasy. He sensed a strange edge to Kristin’s voice. She seemed unresponsive, like she wanted to get off the phone. He wondered why she wouldn’t let him talk to Greg. Why, if Greg was home all day, didn’t he pick up the phone? And why didn’t anyone at Orbigen get the message Kristin said she left?
Gruenwald called Greg’s apartment once more as well, around 9:30 P.M. A frazzled Kristin answered on the first ring. She was crying, and he could hardly understand her.
“Greg isn’t feeling well, and the ambulance is here. I really can’t talk,” she said. “I’ll call you back.”
Gruenwald waited until 1 A.M. to hear back from her. Still troubled, he finally gave up and went to bed.
Paramedic Sean Jordan and his assistant, April Butler, had just finished a quick dinner at Rubio’s, a fish taco restaurant, when they got a call at 9:23 P.M.: young male down, not breathing and no pulse. They were only a mile or two from the address on Regents Road. With the ambulance siren blaring and red lights flashing, they sped down Torrey Pines Road and arrived three minutes later.
The University of California, San Diego (UCSD) had purchased the La Jolla Del Sol complex about a year earlier as off-campus housing, so the 911 call went first to the campus police dispatch center.
“My husband is not breathing,” Kristin told the dispatcher.
The UCSD dispatcher transferred Kristin to the city of San Diego’s fire-medical dispatcher, who stayed on the phone with her until the paramedics were inside her apartment. The Del Sol security guard was also alerted about the 911 call, so he’d already opened the gate for Jordan and Butler by the time they pulled up to the red-tiled driveway.
Balconies with gray railings lined the mocha-colored buildings of Del Sol, which blended into the sea of residential towers in north University City, a densely populated neighborhood of college students and young professionals who worked at UCSD or the biotech, high-tech, and finance companies nearby. The area, dubbed “the Golden Triangle” because it was contained by three intersecting freeways, had grown up first around the university and then, during the late 1970s, around University Towne Center, a shopping mall. Apartment or condo complexes sprang up and filled up, followed by office and medical buildings, restaurants, bars, and gyms, until virtually every lot was developed. Many of the local professors, doctors, lawyers, and real estate developers lived a couple of miles to the west in the older and more affluent coastal community of La Jolla.
Jordan and Butler carried their gear up the stairs to the second-floor apartment, where they found Kristin standing in the living room, crying and talking to the dispatcher on a cordless phone. She motioned them to the bedroom, where Greg was lying on the floor, flat on his back and framed by an unmade queen-size bed to the left, a chest of three long drawers to the right, and a taller six-drawer bureau above his head. His slim, six-foot, 160-pound body was dressed in pajama bottoms and a T-shirt. His skin was pale, and his lips were blue around the edges. Red rose petals were scattered on the carpet around his upper torso, with a single stem and stamen lying between his head, the bureau, and a princess phone. Jordan started setting up next to Greg’s left arm. Butler tripped over the comforter as she squeezed into position between Greg’s head and the bureau, setting aside an unframed wedding photo of the couple, which had been propped up against the base of the bureau, as if someone had positioned it just so.
Greg looked a little nervous in the photo. He smiled for the camera with a quiet contentment, all dressed up in his tuxedo and striped cravat, his dark brown hair slicked back and his blue eyes shining. Kristin looked radiant, her shiny blond locks pulled up under a white-flowered tiara and a veil trailing down her back. She wore a string of pearls with her white dress, which had short lace sleeves that covered her shoulders, and she held a bouquet of pink and white flowers tied with bows of ribbon. They both seemed so very happy as Greg declared his supreme devotion to her in front of their friends and family.
In all the commotion, the wedding photo got moved to the top of the chest on Greg’s right side, next to a blue plastic cup of clear, odorless liquid that looked like water. An open bottle of aspirin that contained about a quarter of its original two hundred tablets sat atop the bureau behind Butler. And a yellow cup, also containing clear, odorless liquid, rested on a nightstand on the opposite side of the bed.
Several campus police officers arrived just before paramedic Joe Preciado rode up on a fire engine and joined Butler and Jordan in trying to resuscitate Greg. Apart from the fact that their twenty-six-year-old patient looked too young and healthy to have a heart attack from natural causes, something else seemed odd to Preciado. Initially, he thought the red blotches on the beige carpet were smudges of wet blood. But when he kneeled down on Greg’s right side, the smudges moved. He was dumbfounded. What were red rose petals doing all over the floor?
It was a scene right out of that movie American Beauty, where Kevin Spacey is lying on his back in bed, fantasizing in a dreamlike state, and red rose petals slowly float down from the ceiling and cover his body.
Jordan checked for a pulse but found none. Greg felt warm to the touch, as if he’d recently taken his last breath. Jordan took a quick scan of the bedroom, looking for clues to explain what Greg might have taken. But he saw no prescription pill vials, no syringes, no sign of illegal drug use, nothing that looked out of place, and no suicide note. He and Preciado asked Kristin if her husband had any medical problems or was taking any medications.
“Not that I know of,” she told them, though at one point she brought out a bottle of Vicodin from the bathroom.
Greg’s pupils were fixed and dilated, but Jordan was determined to make every effort to bring him back. Jordan intubated Greg, then Butler hooked up the breathing bag and rhythmically squeezed air into his lungs. The heart monitor registered a flat line. With Greg’s heart refusing to pump blood through his veins, Preciado tried but found it virtually impossible to get a needle into Greg’s right arm. Jordan had more luck with the other arm, though he had to try a couple times before he got the needle in.
Jordan tried everything in his drug box that might get Greg’s heart beating again. Atropine. Epinephrine. A pure sugar substance usually given to diabetics. And finally, 2 mg of Narcan, which reverses the effects of opiates, just in case Greg had overdosed on one. But nothing worked.