At 9.22 p.m., she called the emergency services to say that her husband wasn’t breathing. They raced to the scene to find Greg lying on the floor as the emergency operator had told Kristin to put him there in order to do CPR. His torso was sprinkled with red rose petals and others were scattered on the carpet in a scene reminiscent of the film American Beauty. Although the paramedics made heroic attempts to revive the 26-year-old, they could not restart his heart.
Questioned by police, Kristin said that she’d told Greg she was leaving him and that he’d later admitted to taking some painkillers and sedatives. She’d come home at teatime and he was warm and breathing, but, at 9.20 p.m., she said that she’d found him dead. She added that he must have sprinkled the rose petals on and around his own body, that they were from a bunch he’d bought her earlier that month. Detectives also found one of the couple’s wedding photos under Greg’s pillow, and she said that he must have put it there – but these aren’t the kind of feminine gestures a no-nonsense young man like Greg would typically make.
Detectives later read Kristin’s diary, in which she revealed that she believed she’d married too young and wanted to leave Greg. It was obvious from her writing that she was the type to sprinkle rose petals around and she was always demanding that Greg send little notes and similar proofs of his love. They gained the impression that the diary had been written for others to read, that it didn’t represent the truth.
Suspicion
As the police investigated further, their suspicions grew. Tests showed that Greg had been dead for some time before Kristin called for medical help, so why hadn’t she found him sooner? She said that he’d committed suicide but everyone who knew Greg testified that he wasn’t the type to take his own life. He’d also hated prescription drugs of any kind.
They spoke to Michael, who admitted sadly that Kristin was using crystal meth again. Her bosses now moved her into an administrative role as she was no longer a suitable candidate to work with drugs. Shortly afterwards, to no one’s surprise, she and Michael were fired.
On 4th January 2001, detectives searched Kristin’s house and found meth and drug paraphernalia. She was also under the influence of the drug. To her surprise, she was arrested for using and possession, but was soon bailed.
A murder charge
Shortly afterwards, tests revealed that Greg had died of the drug fentanyl, a controlled substance that Kristin had access to at work and which she was very familiar with. That summer, the police arrested her for his murder and she was jailed until her family posted $1.25 million bail.
Her trial opened in October 2002. By now, investigators had found that she’d bought a rose on the day her husband died, although they couldn’t ascertain if it was a red rose or one of a different colour. She’d also spent money on lingerie, doubtless to impress Michael. It was odd behaviour for a young wife whose husband was alone at home feeling so unwell.
Greg’s relatives testified that he hadn’t been suicidal and that he’d hated prescription medication. He wasn’t even much of a drinker, so to have taken an overdose of a controlled drug would have been completely out of character for him.
A toxicologist from the Medical Examiner’s Office took the stand and said that Kristin had had access to fentanyl, the drug that killed Greg, and that fifteen fentanyl patches had gone missing from the office. Amphetamines and meth were also missing.
The hospital had found a large amount of urine in Greg’s bladder, indicating that he’d been semi-conscious or unconscious for six or more hours, yet Kristin had said that he’d spoken to her after 5 p.m.. There had been lividity in his lower body, suggesting that he might have been unconscious or dead for an hour to an hour and a half before the paramedics arrived. They had also discovered an unaccounted-for needle mark on Greg’s arm, surrounded by a large bruise.
On 31st October, Kristin took the stand. She painted her childhood in rosy terms but started to cry when asked about her drug use and her flight to Mexico.
She said that Greg had fetched himself a drink of what she thought was water on the night before he died and that, the next morning, he’d been slurring his words. She’d called in sick for him and visited at lunchtime, then popped out to buy soup for them both. She’d bought a single rose at the same time. She and Greg had chatted as they ate the soup and she claimed that he’d admitted taking some of her prescription medication as he was upset.
Kristin continued with her version of events, stating that she’d gone back to work and spent most of the afternoon with Michael. After work, she’d returned home for a while before going shopping. On her return, she’d kissed Greg on the forehead then had a long bath, lasting almost an hour, and had done some work. When she next looked in on her husband he was cold and dead so she had called the emergency services.
When cross-examined, Kristin admitted telling a TV interviewer that Greg might have deliberately taken an overdose in order to frame her. She admitted keeping her drugs at work because Greg didn’t trust her and often searched their house.
She said that she’d bought a yellow rose, surrounded by little flowers, on the day of her husband’s death, planning to give it to her lover, Michael.
Guilty
The jury deliberated for only eight hours before finding her guilty, whereupon Kristin Rossum cried so hard that she came close to hyperventilating. She was sent to Las Colinas detention centre, where she continued to protest her innocence and vowed to appeal. On 12th December 2002, she was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. She was subsequently moved to Chowchilla Women’s Prison in California.
Kristin became a janitor in the jail and then a cleaner, a far cry from her work as a toxicologist. By mid-2004, she was allowed to work in the prison yard.
Interview
In June 2009, I interviewed crime writer Caitlin Rother, who sat through almost all of Kristin Rossum’s court appearances and subsequently wrote a book about the case, Poisoned Love.
So what does Caitlin think Kristin’s motive was for killing her husband?
‘I’ve never publicly stated whether I believed she was guilty or not,’ says the Pulitzer-prize nominated journalist, ‘but the prosecutor argued that she wanted to prevent her husband from telling her superiors at the San Diego County Medical Examiner’s Office that she was having an affair with her boss, Michael Robertson, and also was doing methamphetamines again. As it turned out, she lost her beloved job, and her access to free meth in the lab was cut off, because they were both fired seven months before she was arrested. He went back to Australia before police were able to charge him, and she ultimately lost contact with him as well.’
Caitlin Rother has a degree in Psychology, so does she believe that Kristin was suffering from a personality disorder? ‘To my knowledge, she was never diagnosed with one, but her personality traits and behaviours definitely fit the definition of a narcissist, which is common for killers.’
I then asked what Caitlin believed were Kristin’s reasons for agreeing to give a television interview when her trial was pending. ‘I think that she and her parents were hoping that 48 Hours, which I think got the only interviews, would serve as an advocate for her and that such a show would generate sympathy for her in the public arena. The detective pointed out to me that if you watch closely when she cries, you don’t see any tears.’
Caitlin contributed to a documentary about the Kristin Rossum case, Women Who Kill, which is frequently shown on American TV. She was able to bring her own understanding of addiction and substance abuse (an alcoholic relative committed suicide) to aid her understanding of Kristin’s descent.
Kristin refused to meet Caitlin whilst the latter was researching the case but has she been in touch since? The investigative journalist says not. ‘I don’t think she’d ever tell me anything, although I guess she could conceivably say something after her federal appeal is exhausted. It may already be, but I have no way to check because I don’t know if/where it was filed.’ Caitlin doesn’t b
elieve that Kristin will ever admit her guilt: ‘I’d say, not a chance.’
Asked for any final comments on what was a terrible waste of two young lives, Caitlin replied, ‘Kristin had three relationships: one with her husband, whom she claimed to love but not be in love with; one with her married lover, Michael Robertson, with whom she was passionately in love and with whom she wanted to have children; and one with methamphetamine. In the end, she chose the meth over the two living partners, and by doing so, cost Greg his life, cost herself her career, devastated two families, and ruined Michael Robertson’s career.’
25 Bruce Moilanen
This medical technician insured his wife for a significant sum, after which she had a near-fatal accident followed by a fatal one…
An impoverished childhood
Bruce was born on 29th March 1955 to Huldah and Wiljo Moilanen in a small outpost called Mass City in Michigan. Huldah would later attest that her husband was an alcoholic, but others said that her viewpoint was tainted by bitterness at the couple’s late divorce. Bruce was their fourth child and there was a fifteen-year gap between himself and his oldest brother. One of his brothers would later go to jail for sexually assaulting a child.
The family had very little money and were regarded by many of the locals as slightly odd but Bruce had a talent for fixing cars and, after he left school, he took a course in auto-mechanics and worked in various car repair shops.
Medical training
Unsure which career path he wanted to take, Bruce went to Northern Michigan University in Marquette and trained as an emergency medical technician, but afterwards returned to car repair work, setting up his own business. He would often switch between one career and another, or even run two or three businesses at once.
Whilst skiing at a local resort, he met an excellent skier called Judy and they began dating. On 24th June 1978, they married. Judy was working at Marquette General Hospital as an administrative assistant and, by 1980, Bruce was working there too. He operated a mobile scanning machine, which he often took to a nearby hospital. Staff there assumed that he was single as he flirted outrageously and asked several of the nurses out.
Later, Bruce also set up a kennels, but he was seen to kick one dog and was very strict with the others. As a result, many of the locals were unwilling to board their animals with him.
A near-fatal accident
In autumn 1991, Judy and Bruce were doing some repairs on their home. Judy was standing on the patio and Bruce went up to the roof to do some work near the chimney. Seconds later, an 85 lb chimney block fell from the roof and hit Judy a glancing blow, the incident being witnessed by the couple’s three-year-old daughter, Elise. Judy was concussed and had to be taken to the Emergency Room to have her head stitched, after which she spent four days in hospital. On her release, she had to wear a neck collar for several weeks. Medics agreed that, if she’d been standing slightly closer to the house, the blow would have proved fatal – the block had gone on to make a large hole in the patio.
An unexpected fire
Later that autumn, Judy and her daughter were asleep in the house when Bruce left to go hunting. She woke up to find smoke filling the rooms and found that he had carelessly dumped the smouldering ashes from the woodstove so that they set the woodpile on fire. Fortunately, she was able to extinguish the small fire before the basement caught alight.
Shortly afterwards, she confided in friends that she and Bruce were having marital problems and were going for counselling. He was in debt and they had to sell their vehicles in order to pay their bills.
A sudden death
On 29th November 1992, Judy, by now aged 35, took her dogs for a walk in the Michigan woods. One of the animals returned home without her and friends mounted a search; they found her body, shot through the chest. It seemed like a tragic hunting accident, but police were sceptical as Bruce showed no emotion when they broke the news to him and he remained emotionless when viewing the body of his dead wife. He explained this to them by saying that, as he worked in the operating room at the hospital, he saw dead bodies all the time. When asked where he had been on the afternoon when Judy was shot, he immediately listed lots of places and times.
Detectives became even more suspicious when they found out that Bruce would benefit to the tune of $330,000 under an ‘accidental death’ insurance clause. He had been taking out policies on his wife for some time.
They talked to his colleagues and supervisors at the hospital and found out that he repeatedly showed up late for work and that he often absconded to a different part of the building to chat up various women. He claimed to be having an affair with one married woman but she wanted nothing to do with him.
Detectives also found out that Bruce Moilanen regularly filed insurance claims. Indeed, he had done so after Judy was hit by the chimney block as the block had damaged their patio. They examined his finances and found that neither his car repair business nor the kennels were in profit, and that he had several overdrafts.
They asked him to take a lie detector test but he said that he had to look after his little daughter and didn’t have the time. Determined detectives arranged for him to have a polygraph at a later date but he cancelled again. He also cancelled further lie detector tests, explaining that he was on medication to help him sleep so his responses would be poor. In the same time frame, he wrote an inappropriate love letter to a married woman and suggested that he take her husband on a hunting trip: frightened for her own safety and that of her spouse, she contacted the police. Bruce had written that he was ready to get married again, yet Judy had only been dead for ten weeks…
In March, he handed in his notice at work. The hospital was relieved as he had been such a poor employee – one of the reasons that they’d kept him on was because his wife Judy had been such a wonderful worker. They told him not to work out his notice, that his resignation was effective immediately. At a loose end, Bruce began to declare his affection for various local women, all of whom regarded him as a somewhat frightening pest.
Lie detector
On 23rd April, Bruce finally took a polygraph test. Detectives also showed him one of the inappropriate letters he’d written to a married woman. To their surprise, his eyes filled with tears. They told him that they believed he’d shot his wife and asked if it was an accident or deliberate. ‘I probably shouldn’t say without an attorney,’ Bruce replied. A few minutes later he confessed to shooting Judy, saying that she was going to leave him and take half of everything. He complained that she’d worked long hours and wasn’t a good cook, that he’d had to take care of the house. His tone was self-pitying and he showed no remorse.
Bruce added that he’d bought the gun from a stranger, crept into the woods and shot his wife, then torched the firearm. He was taken to the local jail, where he attempted to hang himself with a sheet.
His daughter was handed over to relatives and, to their concern, she told them that Daddy had pushed a big brick onto Mummy. Court officials decided she was too young to testify, so she didn’t have to take the stand.
Escape
A few days later, Bruce cleaned his cell and his door was unlocked for him to hand the jail’s duty officer his bag of rubbish, but when the officer unlocked the door, Bruce threw pepper into his eyes and fled. He ran to a local park and was recaptured there twenty-five minutes later and returned to jail.
Meanwhile, detectives continued to look into the Moilanens’ finances and found that Bruce had let his insurance policy lapse but had continued to pay for his wife’s policy. He had also lied to them when he said that their daughter, Elise, was the beneficiary.
They put a chimney block on the edge of the roof and did the kind of roof repairs Bruce had done, watching to see if the block would dislodge. It didn’t. Even when they jumped up and down, the block remained in place.
Bruce’s trial, which lasted for eight days in December 1993, was virtually a foregone conclusion and, after slightly less than seven hours of deliberation, the jury
found him guilty of first-degree premeditated murder. He showed no emotion. On 21st January 1994 he was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
26 Chante Mallard
Though she was a nurse’s aide, Chante’s behaviour was that of a sociopath when she hit a man with her car.
Daddy’s girl
Chante was born on the 22nd June 1976 to Dorothy and James Mallard. The couple already had two sons and lived in Fort Worth, Texas. James worked for a truck firm whilst Dorothy was a housewife, and their lives revolved around the local Baptist Church. James doted on little Chante, a quiet child who showed a talent for music. By her teens, she was teaching Bible classes to younger children and, after graduation, she did a part-time nursing course.
At nineteen, Chante’s parents helped her to buy her first house but she got into debt and they agreed to bail her out. As she moved through her early- to mid-twenties, she became more of a party girl. She used drugs on a regular basis and increasingly had a problem with substance abuse.
An appalling act
On 26th October 2001, the 25-year-old nursing home attendant drove home after a night out during which she had taken Ecstasy, smoked marijuana and drunk alcohol with friends at a Fort Worth nightclub. She hit 37-year-old Gregory Biggs and he catapulted partway through her windscreen and stuck there. Chante had enough medical knowledge to save him but instead she drove home, with the former bricklayer still trapped inside her vehicle, moaning and begging for help.
Doctors Who Kill Page 18