Poisoned Love

by Caitlin Rother

  Kristin told Wagner that she and Greg “enjoyed an evening together” in their apartment on Saturday, consuming several gin and tonics. Greg got drunk, she said, threw up several times throughout the night, but “appeared to be in good spirits and complaint free for the majority” of the next day. On Sunday evening, the couple got into a “heated verbal marital dispute” and discussed a separation again. She said Greg told her he “couldn’t live without” her and appeared withdrawn and depressed.

  The timeline Kristin gave Wagner for Monday was pretty similar to what she told the campus police, although this time she said she came home around noon and that Greg was awake and joined her at the kitchen table for lunch, appearing “somnolent, with a mild slurring of his speech.” She also added that the clonazepam and oxycodone he told her he’d taken were originally prescribed to her five years earlier, and that Greg returned to bed, saying he would “sleep off their effects.” This time, she said, she returned from doing errands at 8:15, checked on Greg, and then took a forty-five-minute bath. When Wagner asked her about the rose petals, Kristin said she had no idea where they came from. She said Greg had given her two dozen red roses for her birthday, twelve days earlier, but she’d thrown out the last few the night before. No, she said, Greg had never attempted or talked about suicide.

  Wagner left the apartment thinking that Greg had killed himself. In her report, she wrote that the rose petals were fresh, but their origin “remains undetermined.”

  Jones left the apartment before Ralph and Kristin, but he decided not to go home. Something wasn’t adding up for him. So he went back to the station around 1:30 A.M., reviewed his notes, listened to the 911 tape, and started working up his report.

  A number of questions were gnawing at him.

  Kristin met the paramedics in the living room, holding a cordless phone whose cradle was in the kitchen, not the bedroom. Why would she go into the kitchen to pick up that phone when there was a princess phone on the floor right next to the bed? The rose petals were another unusual factor. He’d never seen rose petals at a suicide scene before. Also, if Greg had taken pills, why were there no empty containers?

  Finally, Kristin said she’d taken a long bath and a shower, yet the stopper was sitting on the ledge above the bathtub. The stopper was the kind that screwed in and pushed down to keep the water in, so why would she have unscrewed it all the way out after taking a bath? If she’d taken only a shower, and no bath, that would have sliced about forty-five minutes out of her timeline. And since Greg’s body showed signs of lividity, he had to have been dead for some time before Kristin called 911. Why hadn’t she called sooner?

  Chapter 9

  Jones was still at the station, mulling over these questions, when the sun rose on Tuesday morning, November 7. It was Election Day, and the presidential race between Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush would be decided.

  Jones called paramedic Sean Jordan first thing, around 7:15 A.M., and asked if he could estimate how long Greg had been down when he and the other paramedics arrived. Jordan said the body was warm, but Greg was “way gone.” Jones couldn’t remember later if he asked Jordan why the paramedics had taken Greg’s body to the hospital if they knew there was no real chance of reviving him.

  About fifteen minutes later, Jones called Ralph Rossum at his home in Claremont and got his permission to tape their conversation. He asked Ralph if he’d learned anything on the ride home with Kristin that would shed some light on what happened.

  Ralph, who’d barely gotten any sleep, stuttered and stammered his way through the conversation. He later would say that he felt rushed because he had to take his son to school. He told Jones that he, Constance, Kristin, and Greg had spent a “very pleasant evening” Friday night, celebrating Kristin and Greg’s birthdays, which were only a couple of weeks apart. He said they had a nice meal at the Prado in Balboa Park, then walked around the grounds, and talked about Thanksgiving. Kristin and Greg didn’t think they were going to be able to join the Rossums because they had plans to meet friends in Las Vegas. Ralph also mentioned that Greg and Kristin had had an argument over the weekend and that Greg had taken it hard.

  Greg “was down and apparently used some of his medicine that had been apparently, uh, to, uh, to Kristin’s knowledge, long since, uh, disposed of,” he told Jones, clarifying that he meant “the pharmacy bottles were themselves disposed of.” Greg, he said, had taken the drugs to “deal with the, uh, uh, depression and apparently took [some] maybe Sunday night. Um, she had called in to work on Monday morning that, uh, he wasn’t coming.”

  Ralph explained that Kristin thought someone else would check Greg’s line for the message. He repeated essentially the same timeline Kristin had given Jones the night before, but with one notable addition.

  “They had this, uh, argument and, uh, whether Greg was, um, aware of, um, the amount or he was, was taking or the potency of this or who knows, uh, uh, whether was accidental or, or intentional, she doesn’t have the, the slightest clue,” he said.

  After they’d finished their brief conversation, Jones spoke to Kristin. He asked how she was, then had her go over some details again, such as where the rose petals came from. A red flag went up for him when she began her response with “to be honest with you,” followed by the claim that she saw the petals for the first time when she pulled back the bedcovers. Kristin gave Jones permission to reenter her apartment so he could take another look around.

  Jones and one of his investigators arrived there within the hour, this time with a video camera. They recorded the contents of each room, even though some items had been moved and others removed.

  Jones looked closely at the fitted bed sheet and saw some horizontal red streaks across the middle of the bed, about a foot from the edge. They seemed to be the result of a swiping motion.

  Then, trying to corroborate Kristin’s claim that she’d had some soup with Greg at lunchtime, he went out on the balcony and started digging through one of the two thirty-gallon trash bins. The can was right there, near the top of the heap, so he stopped digging.

  At 8:24 A.M., Constance called Orbigen to notify them of Greg’s death. She dialed the same number Kristin had used to call in sick for Greg and got his voice mail again.

  “This message is for Chris Gruenwald,” she said, referring to Stefan Gruenwald’s son. “Uh, Chris, this is Kristin de Villers’s mother. Uh, and we have very sad news. Greg died last night. He had a reaction to, uh, some medication he was taking, and Kristin is with us now in Claremont.”

  She left her home phone number and asked him to give her a call.

  Four vials of Greg’s blood, drawn in the Emergency Room the night before, were collected that morning from the hospital by James Buckley, a Medical Examiner’s investigator. Buckley hand-delivered them to the morgue and put them in a refrigerator in the autopsy exam room.

  At 6:30 A.M., toxicologist Jim Fogacci called Frank Barnhart over at the sheriff’s crime lab to tell him what happened. Fogacci asked Barnhart to call him back on his cell phone so he could talk more freely outside, away from prying ears.

  Dr. Harry Bonnell, the deputy chief medical examiner, also spoke with Barnhart and faxed him Angie Wagner’s investigative report. As the pathologist on the case, Bonnell had already given the go-ahead on the organ and tissue donation. He examined Greg’s body before it was wheeled next door to the organ and tissue bank, which was attached to the Medical Examiner’s Office. Bonnell had a photo taken of the large bruise he noticed on Greg’s right arm.

  At the morning meeting in which the division heads typically went over the cases they’d be handling that day, Michael summarized the investigative report on Greg’s death, describing it as an apparent suicide. It was unusual for Michael to present a case, and some of his coworkers thought he seemed a little out of sorts. The group’s general consensus was that an autopsy was warranted since Greg was young and died so suddenly.

  Following office policy for autopsies of employees’ rel
atives, Bonnell was planning to do Greg’s at UCSD Medical Center to avoid any conflict of interest. But later that morning, Bonnell learned that his boss, Dr. Brian Blackbourne, the chief medical examiner, was coming in on his day off to do the procedure. Kristin had specially requested that Blackbourne handle it, and he had agreed.

  After the meeting, Michael called his staff into his office and told them that Kristin’s husband had passed away. The toxicologists took the news with disbelief.

  “What do you mean, he passed away?” one of them asked.

  “It looks like it might be a suicide,” Michael replied, explaining that drugs may have been involved.

  After the meeting, toxicologists Cathy Hamm and Ray Gary were discussing the situation, and in light of Kristin and Michael’s affair, the suggestion of foul play came up.

  “What do you think?” Gary asked.

  Hamm initially dismissed the idea. But when Hamm called her defense attorney friend to tell her the news, the first thing out of her friend’s mouth was, “Do you think she killed him?”

  Lloyd Amborn learned about Greg’s death at 8:15 A.M., when he arrived at the Medical Examiner’s Office after voting. As the office administrator, he spoke to Blackbourne from home, and they agreed that the autopsy should be done at UCSD. They also decided that the toxicology testing should be done by a private lab. Barnhart called and offered to handle the tests that Blackbourne ordered based on Kristin’s suicide story: a blood alcohol level and a general screening for drugs of abuse, clonazepam, and aspirin.

  When Amborn told Michael about the decision to have a private lab do the toxicology testing, a momentary look of shock crossed Michael’s face, but it passed. Michael said he understood why that was appropriate in this case.

  Amborn also told Michael not to let anyone touch the stomach contents, blood, or tissue specimens, which would be stored in the refrigerator for the next thirty-six hours, until they could be sent out for toxicology testing. Barnhart had Wednesday off and couldn’t take them at the sheriff’s crime lab until Thursday. Michael was familiar with the sheriff’s crime lab because he’d gone over there after the SOFT conference to discuss the idea of merging the Medical Examiner’s and sheriff’s toxicology operations, a move he thought could be mutually beneficial.

  Around 11 A.M., Michael e-mailed a thank-you to Angie Wagner for hopping on the case the night before. “I’m sure Kristin appreciated you expediting things and helping her out,” he wrote.

  Michael called Barnhart at 11:14 A.M. and tried to tell him which drugs the toxicology tests should be looking for, such as strychnine and cyanide. He also said he wanted to be notified of the results.

  But Barnhart said he was going to follow protocol. Blackbourne had already ordered the tests he thought were necessary, he told Michael, and Barnhart would give the results straight to Blackbourne. If the chief medical examiner chose to show them to Michael, that was his business. Michael didn’t push the issue.

  The two of them briefly discussed how Kristin was handling things. Michael said she was pretty broken up and was staying with her parents.

  Greg’s heart, corneas, and some of his bones, joints, and skin from his back and legs had already been harvested by the time Blackbourne started his seventy-minute autopsy at 3:30 P.M. He found half an ounce of “soft white material” and 3 1/3 ounces of bloody fluid in Greg’s stomach. He found heavy congestion in his lungs and 550 milliliters of urine in his bladder, which meant that Greg hadn’t gotten out of bed to urinate in quite some time.

  The bruise near his right elbow measured 2 ½ by 2 inches and had a needle mark in the middle of it. Inside, Blackbourne could see that the artery had been punctured. Twice. He noted one other puncture wound on the right arm from the intravenous line and two needle marks on the left elbow. Blackbourne also noted that Greg hadn’t shaved in three or four days.

  Later that day, Michael went to the autopsy room and asked Bob Sutton, who was in charge of that area, if he would show him Greg’s stomach contents. Michael looked at the cup and remarked that the contents were red, as if they contained cough syrup.

  The de Villers family got up early and drove to the Rossums’ house in Claremont that morning, arriving around 9:00. They noticed that Kristin looked very skinny and had scabs on her face. No one had gotten much sleep, but the two families sat down and talked about making arrangements for Greg’s body and a memorial service. Everyone was on edge.

  Kristin said she wanted to cremate Greg’s body in the next few days. Marie cried as they discussed it, though she seemed to think cremation was a nice idea. Marie said Yves was coming to town and might want to see the body, but Kristin said she didn’t want to delay the cremation. Jerome thought that was weird. He sensed that Kristin wasn’t telling them everything.

  Outside, in the courtyard, Jerome tried to get more information from Kristin about what happened the night before. Kristin told him that Greg had been upset because she “wouldn’t stop seeing a past relationship” and that he must have taken some medication.

  Jerome kept asking, “What do you mean?” trying to get her to be more specific. But when he pressed her for details, Kristin would start crying. She never mentioned anything about the rose petals.

  Finally, her mother came and took her into the house, away from Jerome’s probing. Jerome felt that Kristin and her mother were doing whatever they could to escape the conflict brewing between him and Kristin. Jerome went back inside and was talking to his mother when Constance came over to them. She said she couldn’t believe that Greg would kill himself out of anger. Jerome was so upset by her remark that he walked out the front door and closed it behind him. Hard.

  At one point, Brent, Bertrand, and Kristin were talking about whether Kristin should return to her apartment. She wanted to go back that day. Brent offered to stay with her, but Kristin refused.

  “Why don’t you stay with your friend Mike?” Brent asked Kristin.

  “Oh no,” she said. “That would be inappropriate. He’s my boss.”

  Later, in the car, Bertrand told Jerome and Marie about the conversation. Jerome couldn’t understand why Kristin would want to rush back to sleep in the same bed in which her husband had just died. And her reaction to Brent’s suggestion about staying with her boss—what was that all about? Jerome said he was going to drive down to San Diego the next morning and start trying to get some answers.

  Doug Frost, who worked at the San Diego Tissue Bank, called Kristin at 9:00 that night and asked her a list of forty-six questions about Greg’s social, medical, and drug history. He was doing this after the bones and tissues were harvested, to ensure they were healthy before they were implanted into another human being. Opiate use, for example, precludes tissue donation because it’s a high-risk behavior associated with contracting HIV or hepatitis.

  Frost asked whether Greg had ever used non-prescribed drugs or other substances, such as cocaine, heroin, crystal meth, marijuana, steroids, or inhalants. Kristin said yes, marijuana. How much? Very little, she said. How many times? Three or four, she said.

  Did Greg drink alcohol? Yes, she said, beer. How often did he drink? Two to three times a week. Did Greg take any medications on a regular basis? No, Kristin said. Had he injected drugs for a nonmedical reason in the past five years or had sex with anyone who had in the past twelve months? No. Was there anything else she thought he should know from a medical or behavioral standpoint about the death? No.

  Kristin had talked to Melissa Prager about coming up to the Bay Area for a visit around her birthday. When Kristin called her on November 8, Prager was expecting to hear about arrival and departure times for the trip.

  “Greg is gone,” Kristin said.

  At first, Prager didn’t understand. “Where’d he go?” she asked.

  “No, he’s not with us anymore,” Kristin said.

  “What happened?”

  Kristin started bawling. Prager couldn’t understand half of what she was saying, but she got the gist of it: Greg had tak
en some “old medication” and died. Kristin felt traumatized. When the 911 dispatcher told her to put him on the floor to start CPR, she had to hold his lifeless body in her hands. Kristin said she didn’t know whether Greg had taken the pills on purpose. Prager couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

  On Wednesday Jerome left his apartment in Thousand Oaks around 5:30 or 6 A.M. As he was driving south, he called his and Greg’s old roommate, Chris Wren, who had moved to Huntington Beach, to tell him Greg had died. Jerome said he was going down to San Diego to try to get to the bottom of what happened, and Wren asked if he could come along. Maybe he could help ask questions. So Jerome picked him up on the way.

  As they were entering the city limits around 8 A.M., Jerome called the San Diego Police Department and asked to speak to a detective about his brother’s death. They put him through to Detective Laurie Agnew, and she agreed to see him. He and Wren arrived at the station about half an hour later, and Agnew met with them in the lobby for twenty to thirty minutes. As Jerome relayed his concerns and suspicions, she took notes and said she would check out what he was saying. The two of them probably spoke half a dozen more times that day as each of them proceeded with their own independent investigations.

  Jerome and Wren tried to look at Greg’s medical records at Scripps Memorial Hospital, but the staff wouldn’t release them. Jerome called Agnew to see if she could help, and she told him the autopsy was done at UCSD Medical Center. But when he and Wren went there to pick up a copy of the autopsy report, they were told autopsies weren’t performed there.

  Blocked at every turn, Jerome called Agnew again for help. She suggested he talk to Dr. Brian Blackbourne at the Medical Examiner’s Office. Perhaps he could provide better information. So Jerome and Wren drove to the office in Kearny Mesa, where Blackbourne met with them in the conference room. Jerome, suspicious of the doctor’s true allegiances, secretly taped their conversation.