by John Glatt
Suddenly, for the first time in the interview, Det Agnew stopped her colleague’s line of questioning, changing the topic to Kristin’s relapse into drugs. Robertson maintained that he had become suspicious the weekend before Greg’s death, and had searched her drawer and found some methamphetamine, which he disposed of.
On the Monday morning Greg died, Robinson said he had “dragged” Kristin to his office, telling her not even to try to deny she was doing drugs.
Detective Valle then said, “Take a gander,” and produced the love letters and cards pulled out of Robertson’s trash, asking why he had tried to dispose of them.
“In all honesty, I didn’t want them in the house,” admitted Dr. Robertson. “I’m not denying it. I did get rid of a couple of things.”
Then Dr. Robertson told the detectives that he had ended his relationship with Kristin, telling her he didn’t want any further contact.
Det Valle then asked whether he would tell police if he knew that Kristin had killed her husband.
“Absolutely,” replied Robertson.
“Why?” asked Valle.
“Because I lost my job,” replied Robertson. “I’ve lost my profession. I’m losing my wife. I want to get back with my wife. I don’t want to be a part of this. I had a relationship with Kristin, [but] this isn’t where I envision my life beginning in 2001—in the middle of a homicide investigation. I want it over and done with.”
Then Goldberg asked if his client could have his Dell Latitude laptop computer back, as he had two conferences coming up. Agnew refused, saying it had not been examined yet and they would need a court order to return it.
“We’ll look into it and see what we can do,” replied Valle.
The interview finished at 11:00 a.m., with Goldberg refusing to allow his client to take a polygraph test unless his demands for limiting the questions would be met.
“Polygraphs are used as a tool of interrogation,” said the lawyer. “They are not used to determine the truth.”
On January 26, Lloyd Amborn asked Donald Lowe to audit all drugs for analysis in the ME’s office for fentanyl and drugs of abuse. Amborn was shocked when Lowe discovered that there were eleven drug standards where whole vials of methamphetamine, amphetamine and cocaine were missing. Other drug samples that could not be accounted for were fentanyl and oxycodone, both of which had been discovered in Greg’s toxicology.
Further audits of the ME’s office during the next few months would reveal even more drugs to be missing.
“There were hundreds and hundreds of drugs stored in that office,” Det Agnew would later tell a reporter. “Of all of them, only meth and the three drugs found in Greg’s body were missing.”
Chapter 22
In Limbo
In late January 2001, Kristin Rossum found work as an assistant chemist with a small Sorrento Valley biotech company called TriLink BioTechnologies, which produced synthetic DNA for gene therapy research. Since her arrest, she had stayed off methamphetamine, putting on weight, getting a smart new hairstyle and regaining her former beauty. Interviewed by a panel of executives, including TriLink Production Manager Kelly Christianson, she made a good impression.
Kristin never mentioned her arrest, or admitted being fired from the ME’s office for drugs a month earlier. And TriLink never asked her to fill in an employment application, relying on her interview and the resume she supplied.
Kristin was hired for a full-time position on the spot. She would use the same equipment she had operated in the ME’s office.
“She was great,” said Christianson, who became her boss. “She was a quick learner. She was always on time [and] did her job very well. In my experience as a supervisor, she’s one of the best employees I’ve ever had.”
On Friday, February 9, San Diego Deputy DA Daniel Goldstein, who was now overseeing the homicide investigation, asked Frank Barnhart to personally examine Greg de Villers’ gastric contents. By coincidence, Barnhart ran into Kristin Rossum as they were standing in line for San Diego Padres tickets later that day. Kristin proudly told him about her new job at TriLink, inviting him to join her and her parents for dinner that night. Although he was actively working on the forensic toxicology side of the investigation for the sheriff’s office, Barnhart presumably didn’t see a conflict and agreed, enjoying a dinner with the Rossum family at a San Diego restaurant.
Now, trying to put her past behind her, Kristin developed a strict work routine. That was relatively easy at TriLink, where there were no illegal drugs to tempt her.
Feeling lonely, Kristin soon befriended Claire Becker, an English girl a year younger than she. Becker, who had started at TriLink three months earlier, was put in charge of training her, and they soon started lunching together and going out after work.
“As soon as we met, we basically became friends,” remembered Becker, who now lives in Great Yarmouth, England. “We became close very quickly. She said she didn’t feel very close to anyone, and we got along so well.”
Initially, Kristin never mentioned that she had been married, but soon after they started taking lunch together, Becker went to her apartment for the first time and saw her wedding picture on the mantelpiece.
“I asked her about it,” said Becker. “And she just went through the whole story.”
In floods of tears, Kristin explained how she had always seen Greg as more of a brother than a husband. Whenever she had tried to tell him this, he would say they could work it out and he couldn’t live without her.
“And then, when she got involved with Michael, she told [Greg] about that,” said Becker. “She told me that she was always very open and honest with him and let him know what was going on. And when she did say she was finally leaving, he committed suicide.”
Kristin also told her that she was the “prime suspect” for Greg’s murder, and under investigation by San Diego Homicide.
Although Becker never got to meet Dr. Robertson, Kristin would constantly talk about how much she loved him, and their plans for the future.
“Her lawyer told her to cool the relationship, but she didn’t,” Becker said. “She used to tell me how Michael would park a few blocks away from her house and then try and sneak in without being seen, in case they were being watched, which they were. But they couldn’t stop seeing each other.”
Dr. Robertson was using his contacts in forensic toxicology to look for a new job, and went for several job interviews in San Francisco. He spent a lot of his spare time playing Australian football with the San Diego Lions. He now took precautions with his love letters and presents to Kristin’s mailing them to TriLink instead of her apartment.
But if Dr. Robertson was trying to be discreet, Kristin made no secret of their affair at TriLink, placing a stuffed kangaroo toy he had given her on her desk.
Kristin often talked of marrying Robertson and having his kids and settling down, either in San Francisco or his home town of Melbourne, Australia.
“She seemed very proud of him,” said Becker. “She never tried to keep it a secret, and would tell other people at work too. Some of them even went out to dinner with her and Michael on occasion.”
Kristin also told Claire about her problems with methamphetamine.
“She never seemed like a druggie,” said Claire. “Or ever under the influence when I saw her.”
Kristin regularly socialized with her boss Kelly Christianson and a small group of other female colleagues. They would often take in happy hour at a local Mexican restaurant called El Torito after work, and Kristin was always sociable and in good spirits.
That April, Kristin moved into a new apartment at 831 26th Street, in downtown San Diego. She moved Greg’s remaining clothes to her parents’ house in Claremont, and later donated them to a church bazaar.
She also joined TriLink’s softball team, playing every Friday through the summer and becoming close friends with Jessica Vanella, who was leader of the company’s HPLC group. At one of the first Friday softball games, Jessica’s m
other Kathy met Kristin and liked her a lot.
“It was after the game, and everybody was excited,” remembered Kathy. “And this little voice in the crowd asked everybody to please not swear. And it was Kristin.”
It became a Friday night ritual for everyone to go out after the game to dinner, and Kristin always came along, sometimes bringing Michael Robertson.
“We went bowling,” said Jessica. “We went to the movies [and] several times as friends to a downtown club.”
By May, Dr. Robertson returned to Australia, abandoning Kristin to her fate. He had been unable to find a new job because of his notoriety in his field, and his work visa was contingent upon him working at the ME’s office.
Detectives returned his passport, as his mother was dying of breast cancer. “[They] had seized my passport in a search warrant,” he later explained. “When I said I was going back to Australia, they basically handed it back to me.”
Kristin was heartbroken when Robertson left, crying on Claire Becker’s shoulder.
“I knew she was vexed,” she said. “Kristin had only told me that Michael was engaged, but not that they were actually married.”
After Robertson returned to Melbourne, Kristin began socializing even more. She also found a new boyfriend, who began appearing at various functions with her.
But if Kristin was trying to put the homicide investigation behind her, Det Laurie Agnew was working harder than ever. She and her team were now relentlessly interviewing everyone from Kristin’s past, examining her and Robertson’s computer hard disks and obtaining deleted e-mails from their Internet servers, methodically building up murder case against her.
At the beginning of April, Kristin’s replacement at the ME’s office, Tina Martinez, was searching for a filter in the HPLC room, when she came across a small glass pipe, hidden in a box. Not knowing what it was, she left it there. But two days later, when Martinez found a manila evidence envelope out of place on a cabinet, she told her supervisor Cathy Hamm.
“The envelope was kind of rolled up and put in the box,” remembered Hamm. “One end had been completely cut off.”
Looking inside, Hamm discovered a collection of glass pipes, some of which were broken, and a small piece of foil.
Police forensics would later determine that the pipes contained traces of Kristin’s DNA on one end and methamphetamine on the other.
Homicide detectives were so determined to bring Kristin to justice that money was no object in the murder investigation. San Diego police forensic expert Randy Gibson worked six weeks with a special computer program to digitally reconstruct Robertson’s love letter, which Kristin had shredded after Greg had found it. And Robert Petrachek spent almost three-and-a-half months gleaning evidence from a battery of computers used by Kristin, Greg and Dr. Robertson.
That spring, Kristin was asked to come to Homicide for a second interview and to take a polygraph test. She told her grief counselor, who urged her to get a lawyer, so she hired San Diego attorney Michael Pancer.
“It was a horrible reality check to actually seek a lawyer,” she wrote in her journal. “It really hit home the gravity of the entire situation.”
At the last minute, on the advice of her new attorney, Kristin cancelled the interview with Det Agnew and stopped communicating with her.
“I wanted to just go down to the interview without an attorney,” she wrote. “I was afraid of how getting a lawyer would look. Is it really to my benefit or does it imply that I have something to hide?”
For the next few months, detectives kept Rossum on a long lead, and they did not pressure her further. But they continued watching her.
Every once in a while Kristin would drop her gregarious façade, breaking down in helpless frustration.
“She would cry a lot about it and it always seemed to be on her mind,” said Claire Becker. “I would always ask her about the latest news and what was going on with the case. Underneath she was worried just because it took so long, as they were questioning her evidence. She didn’t know what was going on, and she just had to wait it out.”
Finally, all the pressure of the investigation, and the possibility that she would be arrested for Greg’s murder, proved too much for Kristin. Soon after Robertson left, she relapsed into methamphetamine again in order to cope.
On Sunday, June 24, as Det Laurie Agnew and her team prepared the search warrant for Kristin’s imminent arrest, she made her final trip to Tijuana to buy methamphetamine.
Chapter 23
Arrest
On Monday, June 25, after having Claire Becker hide some of Robertson’s love letters and her koala bear, Kristin Rossum returned to her Golden Hill apartment, where police were waiting. After reading Kristin her rights, they arrested her on suspicion of murdering her husband. Suspecting she was high on drugs, detectives took her downtown to police headquarters, where samples were taken of her urine and blood, which were later found to contain methamphetamine.
Investigators also served a search warrant on her apartment, where they found a mega pocket torch, used for smoking meth; her address book, containing four phone numbers for her drug dealer Armando; and the latest installments of her writings in a blue notebook entitled “Meditation Journal.”
The following morning, as Kristin woke up in a holding cell at Las Colinas Women’s Detention Facility in Santee, her arrest made the front page of the Metro section of The San Diego Union-Tribune, under the headline “Ex-County Toxicologist Faces Charges in Death of Husband.” In the article, San Diego Police Homicide Lieutenant Ray Sigwalt said that Rossum and Dr. Robertson had been having an affair, and, although he was back in Australia, Robertson too was considered a possible suspect in the death of Greg de Villers and could be brought back to America for further questioning.
“The sheer nature of the death was suspicious,” Lieutenant Sigwalt said. “There was no [suicide] note. Rose petals were sprinkled on his body in bed. Most men don’t do those sorts of things.”
Lieutenant Sigwalt also noted that Kristin had told investigators that American Beauty was her favorite movie.
Although police sealed Greg’s autopsy report after Kristin’s arrest, refusing to name what poison had killed Greg, sources close to the investigation told a reporter it was fentanyl, and that investigators believed Kristin had stolen it from work.
On Wednesday morning, twenty-four-year-old Kristin Rossum appeared in court for the first time since her arrest. The previous day, her lawyer, Michael Pancer, was notified that the district attorney was considering adding a special circumstance allegation in his charges, which would allow the prosecution to request the death penalty.
A tearful Rossum was led into San Diego Superior Court in bright orange prison garb and handcuffs. Her shocked parents were in the public gallery, which was packed with reporters.
At the hearing, the prosecution officially filed a felony complaint, charging Kristin Rossum with one count of first-degree murder of Gregory de Villers by the administration of poison.
The only time she spoke at the hearing was when Judge David Szumowski asked if she agreed with her attorney’s request to delay her arraignment.
“I do, Your Honor,” she sobbed inaudibly.
The judge then postponed the arraignment until the following Monday, when Rossum would have to enter a plea. He ordered her held without bail.
Outside the courthouse at 200 West Broadway, an emotional Professor Rossum gave his first interview to reporters, calling the charges against Kristin “devastating.”
“[The authorities] are making a victim of our daughter, who lost a husband,” he said defiantly. “She does not have it in her to commit these charges.”
Jerome de Villers also spoke to reporters that day, saying his late brother knew that Kristin had a problem with drugs before they married, and believed he was rescuing her.
“Then something happened,” he said. “I don’t have all the pieces to the puzzle ... I hope the truth will come out.”
By n
ow the story was gathering momentum in the press, and going national. It had all the ingredients to get the headline writers excited: murder, a love triangle and, best of all, what one magazine photo editor would call. “The most beautiful potential murderess in living memory.”
On Thursday Kristin’s bosses at TriLink stood by her, saying they were holding her job open. Describing Kristin as “a rising star” in the biotech company, TriLink president Rick Hogrefe said he had never seen any indication that she was on drugs.
“It is a shockingly sad story,” he told The San Diego Union-Tribune. “From our side, it doesn’t fit.”
But Orbigen’s general manager Terry Huang told the newspaper how he had been suspicious when Greg hadn’t called on the day he died.
On Thursday, seventy-two hours after Kristin’s arrest, her father gave an exclusive interview to Los Angeles Times reporter Tipton Blush, proclaiming his daughter’s innocence. He accused prosecutors of trying his daughter in the media, vowing to set things straight, as her husband had committed suicide.
“We were astonished at how many factual matters were wrong,” he said. “I know that she is innocent.”
Professor Rossum said he had known that homicide detectives had been investigating Greg’s death for months, but he never believed anything would come of it.
“It struck me always as absurd,” he scoffed, “that a bright toxicologist would do something that would incriminate her.”
Lawyer Michael Pancer’s partner, Gretchen von Helms, also joined the fray, adding that prosecutors were trying to make it seem like “this creepy Hollywood thing.” There was no motive, she said.
But Deputy DA Dan Goldstein had the last word in the article, saying that investigators had left no stone unturned by using outside agencies to test Greg’s toxicology.