by John Glatt
At the end of his cross-examination, Goldstein questioned Kristin about her husband’s death, and the positions of her wedding picture and the rose petals. In his final salvo, Goldstein showed the jury that it was impossible for Kristin to have performed CPR while talking on the phone. And it would prove that she had reset the scene of Greg’s death after the 911 dispatcher had instructed her to move Greg’s body off the bed.
She admitted telling Det Agnew that she had seen the framed photograph just under the pillow on the bed.
“When you were doing CPR on Greg,” he asked, “after you pulled him off the bed, did you notice the wedding photo propped against the bottom of the dresser?”
“No,” she replied. “When I pulled back the covers, I remember seeing him on the bed with the photo there and the petals. I pulled him off, and the photo came off with him. I’m assuming that I just picked it up and set it aside when I was on 911. I don’t recall either way.”
Asked why she had never mentioned touching the photograph before, Rossum said that she hadn’t realized that it had been moved and propped up against the bed.
Goldstein wondered why she had told her father that Greg was clutching the photo in his hand. But Kristin denied ever saying that.
“When you pulled Greg’s body onto the floor,” Goldstein continued, “there were no rose petals in the bed, correct?”
“Not that I saw,” she replied.
“And the rose stem ended up right along the base of this dresser?” said the prosecutor, holding up a photo of the death scene for the jury to see.
“That’s where it was in the photo, yes.”
“How did the stem get there?”
“I don’t know,” she faltered.
“The rose petals were farther down, correct?”
“Yes.”
“As you look at [the photograph], the rose petals go along the side of the bed, correct?”
“That is true.”
“And the stem is up by the top of the dresser, correct?”
“Right. I don’t know how long it had been there.”
“I didn’t ask you how long it had been there.”
“Sorry.”
“When you called 911, were you using the cordless?”
“Yes, I was.”
“Thank you, nothing.further,” said Dan Goldstein, walking back to the prosecution table after almost a day and a half of dramatic cross-examination.
In his rebuttal, public defender Alex Loebig attempted to repair some of the damage done to his client by the prosecution. But it would be an almost impossible task.
In desperation, the defender showed Kristin three different photographs of herself and Greg. The first one was taken at Aaron Waldo’s wedding, a couple of weeks before Greg’s death. On seeing it, Kristin burst into tears, as Loebig asked her if she had already decided to kill Greg when it was taken.
“Absolutely not,” she sobbed.
He then showed her a picture taken the weekend before Halloween 2000.
“By that date,” asked her attorney, “had you reached an agreement with Michael Robertson that the two of you would kill your husband?”
“No, we did not,” she replied tearfully.
The third photograph was of the Prado birthday dinner, three days before Greg died. Loebig asked if she’d loved her husband when it was taken.
“I loved him very much,” she said, saying that she had also loved Michael Robertson.
“Did you, with or without Michael Robertson, kill your husband?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t hurt Greg,” she said as Loebig finished his rebuttal questions.
Dan Goldstein then stood up for re-cross, noting how emotional she had become at seeing the pictures again.
“It’s very hard, yes,” sobbed Rossum.
Goldstein now questioned her about the discrepancies of the times she said she had gone shopping at Vons, telling Jerome and Bertrand that she had gone between 3:00 and 5:00 p.m. with Robertson. Her Vons card later revealed that she had bought a single rose at 12:41 p.m.
“That was taken, like I said, out of context,” said Rossum, her voice faltering. “I lost my train of thought. I combined two ideas. So I never went to the store with Robertson.”
Suddenly Kristin announced that petals from the rose she had bought could not have been the ones found on Greg’s body, as she had purchased a yellow one.
“How do we know it was a yellow rose?” snapped the prosecutor.
“We don’t,” she was forced to admit.
Goldstein asked what had happened to the yellow rose. Kristin claimed she had given it to Robertson later that afternoon and it had never left her car.
“We had been arguing,” she explained. “I wanted to make peace. Yellow stands for friendship in our little lingo.”
Then Goldstein revealed to the jury how Kristin had dialed 91 I from her San Diego hotel room a couple of days after she had learned that investigators had proof she had purchased the rose.
“You were having a panic attack because you found out that we discovered you purchased a rose on November 6 at 12:41 p.m., correct?” asked the prosecutor.
“That had nothing to do with it,” she replied meekly.
At that point, Alex Loebig had exhausted his questions, and after four days of testimony, Kristin Rossum was excused from the witness stand. Then the defense rested their case and Judge Thompson called a recess for lunch.
In the brief afternoon session, Dan Goldstein called four additional witnesses for the People, including Kristin’s old boyfriend Teddy Maya. When he arrived at court and was waiting on a bench outside Judge Thompson’s courtroom, he saw Kristin for the first time since she had abandoned him at the Redlands hotel room seven years earlier.
“She kind of smiled at me,” he remembered. “We didn’t speak.”
Officer Laurence Horowitz, the Claremont policeman who had arrested Kristin for possession in January 1994, after being called in by her parents, also testified. Constance Rossum had told the court that her daughter had never been arrested, so Goldstein had called Horowitz to prove that she had been.
“I’m the guy that put her in handcuffs,” he said later. “Took her down to the station, had her fingerprinted, had her photographed. She was arrested and processed like any other minor.”
The final witness of the trial was Greg’s mother Marie de Villers. A defense investigator had unearthed the de Villerses’ divorce papers to try to show that there was a history of domestic violence in the family. Now the prosecution had no alternative but to head it off.
Looking emotional and frail, she slowly walked across the court and entered the witness box. But Deputy DA Dave Hendren had just one question.
“I don’t want to keep you up there and make this hard for you,” he said sympathetically. “Did your ex-husband, Mr. Yves de Villers, ever, in any way, shape or form, hit you or injure you or make domestic violence upon you in any way?”
“Never,” she replied resolutely, and was excused from the stand.
Then Judge Thompson addressed the jury, telling them that they had now heard all the testimony, and closing arguments would take place the next day. By Thursday they would start deliberations to decide Kristin Rossum’s fate.
Later that afternoon in an empty courtroom, prosecutor Dave Hendren requested that Judge Thompson instruct the jury on conspiracy, despite the defense’s objections. And he laid out the part that prosecutors believed Michael Robertson had played in the murder.
“It is the People’s position,” Hendren told the judge, “that Michael Robertson is an uncharged, unindicted co-conspirator in this case.”
He said jurors could conclude that Robertson may have administered the lethal dose of fentanyl to Greg de Villers.
“If he did so,” Hendren continued, “it’s the People’s contention that he did so in conjunction with Ms. Rossum as part of a conspiracy to kill her husband. They both had the same motive.”
According to the deputy DA, Dr.
Robertson had a vast knowledge of the drug, with thirty-seven articles and a PowerPoint presentation on his computer. He also shared a motive with Rossum, as they were both involved in a “secret relationship” outside their marriages. But although Hendren believed there was “abundant evidence” to establish a conspiracy between the two, Dr. Robertson remained uncharged in the murder.
Judge Thompson agreed, overruling the defense objections and finding that there was sufficient evidence to suggest a conspiracy.
An hour later, the jury was unexpectedly called back into the courtroom to hear further testimony from Marie de Villers. A private investigator for the Rossum family had tracked down Dr. and Mrs. de Villers’ divorce papers, which directly contradicted Greg’s mother’s testimony. The prosecution claimed never to have been told about its existence, and Loebig did not want to impeach “the poor woman” for perjury. But both sides agreed she should be recalled to wrap up the case properly.
So the jurors were reseated and Alex Loebig continued his cross-examination of Marie de Villers, by reading a part of the 1981 divorce, which she had signed.
“In the past [Dr. de Villers] has, on many occasions, beat me with a closed fist and police reports have been made. After he beat me, [he] sent me to a doctor for treatment, and I had black-and-blue marks all over. I’m afraid of him, and he’s stated he will break my teeth and mouth and will make me an ugly person.”
Although Marie de Villers agreed that she had signed it, she said she could not remember ever saying those words.
Chapter 29
Guilty
On Wednesday, November 6, 2002, the second anniversary of Greg de Villers’ death, the People of California demanded his young wife serve the maximum sentence—life without parole—for his murder. As he had in his cross-examination of Rossum, prosecutor Dan Goldstein pulled no punches in his closing argument.
“On our road to truth is two families,” he told the jury. “The de Villers family and the Rossum family. This is not the Hatfields and McCoys. This has nothing to do with any quarrel that exists between Rossum and de Villers. Both families have suffered at the hands of the defendant and her narcissism and her self-centered behavior.”
Accusing Rossum of “playing God” by murdering her husband, Goldstein said it was irrelevant whether she had injected him with fentanyl, used patches, or had given it to him orally.
“Who knows?” said the prosecutor. “She’s the expert. He didn’t just die and fade away. He was murdered.”
Reminding the jurors it was the anniversary of Greg’s death, Goldstein said that his final hours had to have been harrowing.
“Greg’s lungs filling up with liquid is unpleasant,” he said. “Greg’s bladder filling up with urine. Greg having shallow respirations. Greg not being able to get to a phone and call 911. Greg not being able to merely pick up that Princess phone right next to his bed while his bosses are calling.
“He doesn’t answer the phone because he’s comatose. There are drugs in his system killing him ... he’s dying.”
Then Goldstein dramatically pointed to an empty chair behind the defendant’s table.
“Robertson is sitting in that chair right there,” he thundered. “He is an integral part of this homicide. He and the defendant are involved in a conspiracy. They are working together. They want Greg dead.”
Refuting any of the Rossum family’s theories that Greg had committed suicide, Goldstein said it would be “bizarre” and “not reasonable” for him to be sitting at home all day, self-administering fentanyl.
“Remember what both Dr. Stanley and the defense expert, Dr. Wallace, said: ‘We have never seen this much fentanyl in a human being.’ ”
Calling him an ambitious, goal-oriented young man who despised drugs, Goldstein said Greg had discovered that his wife of seventeen months had relapsed into drugs, five years after he’d helped her quit. He’d also suspected that Kristin was having an affair with Michael Robertson and had given her an ultimatum: either she quit her job or he would expose her history of drugs.
“There’s an ultimatum, and she’s stressed out of her mind,” he said. “One of the critical factors of methamphetamine abuse is that people get paranoid. They get violent. They act rashly. Pour a little methamphetamine on a love affair that’s going to be turned in, you have a disaster that’s about ready to happen.”
He also drew the jury’s attention to the fact that a large amount of fentanyl was missing from the ME’s office, and Kristin had been the last person to log it in. He accused her of viewing the ME’s office as a “candy store,” and using “these tools of her trade” to murder her husband.
“Look at the drugs that are involved in this case,” he said. “Oxycodone, clonazepam and fentanyl. They are missing from the medical examiner’s office. They happen to be inside her husband’s body. Soma, methamphetamine. Who takes those two drugs? The defendant. Coincidence? No. Theft.”
Goldstein then told the jury not to be taken in by Kristin Rossum’s beauty, intelligence or the fact that she’d graduated summa cum laude. He said even he found it hard to believe that somebody who looks like her could be a murderess.
“It’s pretty basic,” he said. “Either she poisoned him or she didn’t. It wasn’t a cry for help.”
At the end of his dramatic closing argument, Dan Goldstein described Rossum as “manipulative” and a “habitual liar,” who had conspired with her lover to murder her husband.
“That crime scene was staged,” said the prosecutor, staring straight at Rossum. “The numerous lies that the defendant made about her husband’s death, her drug use, her affairs, and the staging of that homicide scene are tantamount to a confession. The defendant is guilty of murder. That’s what this case is about.”
The following morning, Alex Loebig delivered his closing address to the jury. His co-defender Victor Eriksen was unable to attend, as he was at home with the flu. The genial public defender began by telling the jury that in life, things weren’t “black and white,” as the prosecutor had presented them.
“We are not here to judge her sex life against ours or anyone else’s,” he declared. “And by and large, that’s not the essence of this case.”
Telling the jury that “passion does not translate into violence,” Loebig said that Rossum had no motive to kill her husband, as she was trying to walk out of the marriage. He also noted that security at the ME’s office was so bad that any one of the fifty-six other employees could have taken the drugs.
Then, risking alienating the jury, he brought up Marie de Villers’ divorce petition, which the Rossums’ investigator had unearthed, saying that it had played a part in Greg’s make-up. He suggested that if true and Dr. de Villers had been violent, the jury should judge both defense and prosecution witnesses by the same standards.
At the end of his final address to the jury, Loebig told them that it was a circumstantial case and there was reasonable doubt.
“I know that there’s a lot of evidence in front of you,” he said. “Look at it as carefully and at as much length as you need to.”
In his rebuttal, prosecutor Dave Hendren applauded Jerome de Villers for his relentless fight to bring Kristin Rossum to justice, saying that she may well have gotten away with murder, using the “perfect poison,” if Jerome had not been so diligent.
“[He] loved his brother and knew it didn’t make sense,” said Hendren. “Fortunately, you had a demand for the first time to send those tox samples out. Without those, Greg de Villers would not get justice.”
The prosecutor then catalogued all the points the jury would have to believe in order to acquit Rossum: they would have to decide that her testimony was credible, even though she had repeatedly lied to police, family and friends, and had contradicted herself on numerous occasions. That Greg de Villers, who despised all drugs, was capable of taking them to kill himself, and had then hidden all the evidence of pill bottles, syringes or fentanyl patch wrappers. That there was another employee at the ME’s office
who had stolen all the drugs from the laboratory. And finally that someone else, who was infatuated with roses like Kristin Rossum, had sprinkled red rose petals over Greg’s chest while he was comatose.
Hendren then appealed to the jury not to judge the case on sympathy or pity, or let Kristin Rossum’s pretty looks enter into their decision.
“You say, ‘Wow, that’s a pretty girl,’ ” he said. “She doesn’t look like a murderer. She looks nice. Probably loves her mom, dad. They probably love her. Greg de Villers loved his mom,” and indicating Kristin, “he loved her.”
Greg could not be in the courtroom to tell them what happened, Hendren said, but his body, containing fentanyl, was “crying out for justice.”
“We are asking, on behalf of Greg de Villers, on behalf of his family, on behalf of his community, to hold this woman accountable for what she did to take his life away.”
Judge Thompson then sent the twelve jurors out to start their deliberations, to decide whether Kristin Rossum was innocent or guilty. The grueling trial had lasted a month from jury selection to closing arguments, and the five-woman /seven-man panel had plenty to discuss.
After two hours’ deliberation on Thursday afternoon, the jurors were sent home with the judge’s instructions not to discuss the case, or look at the coverage on television or newspapers. They returned to the jury room on Friday, where they deliberated for another three hours before going off for a long Veteran’s Day weekend. Judge Thompson ordered them to resume on Tuesday.
On Sunday, November 10, The San Diego Union-Tribune carried a front-page story asking why Michael Robertson had not also been charged with murder.
“A key player in the love triangle involving Kristin Rossum and her dead husband has been conspicuously absent from the courtroom,” wrote Caitlin Rother, who had covered the story from the beginning. “The jury has deliberated over parts of two days without reaching a verdict, and testimony ended without any clarification about Robertson’s absence.”