Poisoned Love Read online

  “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

  Detective Sergeant Bob Jones

  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 20

  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.
<
br />   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.