Poisoned Love

by Caitlin Rother

  Finally, Loebig asked Constance about Greg’s resume. He noted that there was no mention of his two years in junior college and asked Constance, as a college professor, whether it was a common practice to omit “a subpar year” in school.

  Hendren objected. “Speculation, relevance,” he said.

  Thompson sustained the objection.

  Loebig continued, asking Constance whether in her experience on various academic acceptance committees such omissions were common.

  “You want to put your best foot forward,” Constance said.

  “And maybe leave out some of the weaker things?” Loebig asked.

  “Like grade point average, for example,” Constance said.

  On cross-examination, Hendren pointed out for the jury that Constance made a career of marketing, advertising, and promotions. He also got her to acknowledge that, yes, she understood the importance of giving accurate information to the national media, because it was disseminated to millions of people.

  Hendren walked Constance through the argument she and Ralph had with Kristin in 1993 over the drugs in her backpack. Constance reluctantly admitted that her daughter was not honest or trustworthy when she was on drugs. For example, when Constance found a plastic bag of white powder in their mailbox, she said Kristin told her she didn’t know where it came from.

  “So she lied to you again?” Hendren asked.

  Loebig objected, and Thompson told Hendren to restate the question. Constance acknowledged that no one else in the house but Kristin was using drugs at the time.

  Constance also acknowledged that she and her husband “got physical” with Kristin that day in 1993.

  “[Ralph] hit her on the upper arm about four or five times, correct?” Hendren asked.

  “You will have to ask him that question,” Constance replied.

  “You know that he hit her, correct?”

  “He grabbed her arm as she was attempting to run away,” she said.

  “At the time the police came, she had pronounced bruising to her upper arm, right?”

  “Yes, as he tried to restrain her.”

  Constance admitted that she slapped Kristin in the face but said it was only because Kristin had tried to hit her first. Yes, Constance said, she was very angry with her daughter and worried. She said she didn’t “go around generally slapping people.”

  “That’s because your daughter was out of control at that time, right?”

  “She did things we could not handle,” Constance said.

  “She lied to you, right?”

  “About the meth.”

  “She deceived you, correct?”

  “About the use of meth.”

  “About where she was going, who she was hanging out with, what kind of things were in her containers like her backpack, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You were so upset with your daughter, Mrs. Rossum, that you actually called her a slut and said she was worthless, correct?”

  Constance said she didn’t recall saying that, regardless of what was stated in the police report that Hendren showed her. It made no sense, she said, because she didn’t equate meth use with the word “slut.”

  “So you didn’t call her a slut?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t say she was worthless?”

  “I don’t believe so. Doesn’t make sense.”

  Then, further contradicting the police report, Constance said Kristin did not try to cut herself with a knife in the kitchen. Kristin ran upstairs and locked herself in the bathroom, she said, “called herself worthless and [said] how sorry she was and that we’d be better off without her.”

  “Did she try to do anything in the bathroom?”

  “I understand that she said, ‘Perhaps I’ll slit my wrists,’ but she didn’t…. There were no marks.”

  Hendren showed Constance her own statement to Officer Larry Horowitz in April 1993, which again contradicted her testimony.

  “It says, ‘I don’t know if Kristin told you, but she tried to cut her wrists with the knife first,’” Hendren said.

  “No, I didn’t say that,” Constance said.

  “The sentence goes on…‘then some razor blades,’” Hendren said. “Did you say that part, that she tried to cut herself with a razor blade?”

  “I understood when she went to the bathroom that she had some razor blades there. But she didn’t do it. You can look at her wrists, hold them up to the light. There’s nothing there.”

  If Kristin’s cuts had been bad enough, she said, she would have taken her daughter to the hospital.

  “The officer is wrong with that as well?”

  “It could be.”

  Constance said she didn’t recall making one other statement quoted in the police report: “I was afraid of what would happen if we had taken her to a hospital. We don’t know who to go to or what to do.” She said the statement didn’t make sense.

  Hendren asked if it was fair to say that Constance knew that if she took Kristin to the hospital for an attempted suicide, that it “wouldn’t look good, would have a bad appearance.”

  “Appearance means diddly if you have a child who is hurt,” Constance said. “That’s why I called the police in the first place.”

  Hendren moved on to Kristin’s other misdeeds, such as stealing her mother’s credit cards and personal checks, to establish a pattern of thievery to support her drug habit.

  Asked whether she ever checked Kristin into a residential drug rehabilitation facility, Constance restated her efforts to call the Betty Ford Center and counselors but acknowledged that she never enrolled Kristin in any formal program. Instead, she said, Ralph took Kristin to a twelve-step family group.

  When they discussed Kristin’s second brush with Officer Larry Horowitz in 1994, Constance again denied that Horowitz arrested Kristin that afternoon, even after being shown the police report that contradicted her testimony.

  If Kristin wasn’t under arrest, Hendren asked, under what authority could Horowitz handcuff her and take her to the police department?

  “I don’t know,” Constance replied.

  Moving on to Kristin’s grades at Redlands before she ran away, Constance admitted that her daughter had a bad fall semester, earning a 1.67 grade point average. Although she said Greg’s resume was incomplete because it didn’t include his junior college years, she said Kristin’s low grades at Redlands didn’t have to be factored into her cumulative grade point average at SDSU because her credits weren’t transferred. So, that’s why she didn’t list them on Kristin’s SDSU application.

  Until then, Goldstein had not known it was Constance who’d filled out Kristin’s application, purposely omitting the previous coursework, which the form said was required, even if the courses weren’t completed. He was shocked and befuddled at how arrogant the Rossums were, that they felt that they could “just do anything.”

  After discovering that Kristin had run away from Redlands, Constance said she never told police that she and Ralph were worried that Kristin was depressed and might try to kill herself. But again, Hendren had a police report that indicated otherwise.

  Constance acknowledged that Kristin had problems with her and their relationship while she was using drugs. Kristin wanted to make her own decisions, do things her way, while Constance felt she knew better, especially when it came to the friends Kristin chose for herself.

  “And she thought you were controlling and manipulative, right?” Hendren asked.

  “You will have to ask her,” Constance said. “I don’t know.”

  Hendren went over Constance’s earlier testimony about Kristin’s false claims, including the one that she was living with a girl in Point Loma when she was truly living with Greg.

  “Now, as far as your daughter’s honesty and when she tells you the truth, if you don’t approve, she doesn’t like to tell you the truth, isn’t that fair to say?”

  “No,” Constance said.

  Asked if Kristin ever told her a
bout the affair with Michael in the eight months before she was arrested for drugs in January 2001, Constance said no.

  “I wouldn’t tell my mother if I were having an affair,” she said.

  Moving on to Constance’s various comments to the media, Hendren asked about her interview with Good Housekeeping. Constance admitted telling the national women’s magazine that Greg “realized he was going to be buried in debt, because the money from us wasn’t going to be there.” Asked if she knew how much Kristin spent on drugs in 2000, Constance said no.

  Constance also admitted telling the magazine that Greg had hepatitis B, “because his eyes and things were rejected.” But, no, she said, she didn’t recall hearing Dr. Blackbourne testify during the preliminary hearing that Greg didn’t have hepatitis B, and, no, she didn’t try to verify that Greg had the disease before she mentioned it to the magazine.

  Loebig objected, saying Hendren was badgering the witness. Thompson overruled the objection, so Hendren continued, getting Constance to admit that she also suggested to the magazine that Greg had either used infected needles or slept with someone else to contract the disease.

  “It wasn’t true, was it?” Hendren asked.

  “I thought so at the time or I would not have said it,” she said.

  Hendren showed Constance a series of photos from the last supper they had with Greg the Friday night before his death and noted that she, Kristin, and Ralph were all smiling. Asked to explain the discrepancy between the mood reflected in the photos and her testimony about that night, Constance responded that they had tried to make it a pleasant evening.

  Asked to respond to the real estate agent’s description of her and Ralph’s mood the next day, Constance said she would have described it as more subdued. And no, she admitted, she wasn’t so concerned about Greg’s behavior that she needed to call Kristin to check on her in the days after the dinner. Nor did she try to insist that Kristin stay in a hotel for her safety.

  On redirect, Loebig asked Constance where she got the information that Greg had hepatitis B. Initially, she said, from the discovery papers. But she admitted that she’d learned in the last few days that she was wrong.

  Brent Rossum, who was twenty-three, testified that Kristin’s e-mails, starting in May 2000, were the first he heard about unhappiness in his sister’s new marriage. He said he kept those e-mails to himself until after Greg’s death.

  When the de Villers family came to the Rossums’ house after Greg died, he said, it was Greg’s family who wanted Greg cremated.

  “Our family’s position was it’s going to be Kristin’s decision and the de Villerses’ decision. I think the general consensus after that meeting was that he would be cremated.”

  Under cross-examination by Goldstein, Brent said he drove Kristin back to her apartment that night and stayed with her while she called Greg’s friends to let them know he’d died.

  “I was on the couch and heard every phone call,” he said. “It was awful.”

  In the months before Greg died, he said, he remembered Greg acting more insecure about his relationship with Kristin. But he said Kristin never mentioned her affair until January 2001.

  “We were all in the kitchen,” he said. “She told my family about it. We were very displeased with her.”

  Marguerite Zandstra, Constance’s sister and Kristin’s godmother, flew in from Crown Point, Indiana, and was dead set on testifying. But, overcome with nerves, her performance proved far less effective than the defense had hoped.

  Zandstra said she babysat Kristin when Constance’s family lived in the Chicago area and saw them on holidays regularly after that. Zandstra and her mother went to California right around Kristin’s twentieth birthday, when coincidentally, they learned Kristin had just gotten engaged.

  Zandra said she was excited to meet Greg, but he ended up getting sick, taking something, and going to sleep. So, she didn’t meet him until the day before the wedding, when he told her that if his father showed up at the reception, he’d “kill him.”

  The next time she saw him was in August 2000 at the Rossums’ twenty-eighth wedding anniversary party, where Greg played a videotape of Kristin dancing The Nutcracker over and over, probably for a good half hour.

  On cross-examination, Zandstra acknowledged that she knew Greg only from meeting him on three separate days. She admitted telling a defense investigator that Greg had “a very wimpy handshake,” was immature, and “didn’t act like a man.” She said it was odd that Greg, “being a man,” didn’t know how to shoot a gun better. And she also confirmed that she’d told the investigator “it was strange that Greg acted like it was his wedding day rather than Kristin’s.”

  “You’ve talked to your sister extensively about your niece’s situation here and the things that have happened, right?” Hendren asked.

  “Correct,” Zandra said.

  The next day Eriksen called Dr. Mark Wallace, a pain management expert who had treated patients with fentanyl, to try to show that Greg must have known he was drinking the fentanyl because it has a bitter taste.

  Wallace explained that he prescribed fentanyl in patches or in a newer form, which came packed in 2 grams of sugar and was placed between the teeth and cheek so it dissolved. Some of the drug flowed into the bloodstream through the cheek, and some was swallowed, he said, a method that allowed twice as much of the drug to be absorbed than other forms of ingestion. Contradicting the testimony by prosecution witness Dr. Stanley, Wallace said the fentanyl comes in this sugary form because it is “very bad tasting” and bitter on its own.

  “Have you ever read or heard from any source at all that fentanyl does not have a bitter taste?” Eriksen asked.

  “No, I have not,” Wallace said.

  On cross-examination, Goldstein said that “obviously, ‘bitter’ is a subjective word. Let me ask you, how bitter is fentanyl?” Wallace said he didn’t know.

  Goldstein asked if the taste could be masked by alcohol, a salty soup, cough syrup, or cold medicine. Wallace said he didn’t know about alcohol, but he thought the bitterness “probably could” be masked by soup or cough syrup.

  Goldstein tried to get Wallace to agree with Stanley that the amount of fentanyl in Greg’s body was so high that it must have been taken in more forms than just orally, because it isn’t absorbed effectively in the stomach. But Wallace said he couldn’t comment on that because it wasn’t his area of specialty.

  “All I can say is that the blood levels are very, very high. Very high. The stomach contents, I’m a little confused. With the concentrations in the stomach, I would expect them to be higher if it was ingested.”

  But Wallace did agree with Stanley on one point. He’d never seen a level as high as in Greg’s blood.

  Kristin’s youngest brother, Pierce, testified that besides Kristin, he’d spent more time with Greg than anyone else in his family. They’d gone golfing several times a year, and sometimes Pierce had gone hiking and camping with Greg and Kristin. He’d also seen them at least once a month during visits in Claremont or San Diego.

  Pierce said Greg used to play video games with him and let Kristin “do her own thing.” But about five months after the wedding, he said, Greg’s behavior changed.

  “He stopped playing video games, stopped…talking with the family,” he said. “Just became overprotective of Kristin and very clingy.”

  He said Greg would follow Kristin from room to room, “wouldn’t let her have her own space,” and wouldn’t play with Pierce unless Kristin was included. He said he, too, saw Greg repeatedly watch The Nutcracker videotape during the Rossums’ anniversary party. As Greg acted more and more like this, he said, Kristin would get annoyed, and she and Greg would argue.

  “Did she ever talk to you about that?”

  “No, she didn’t,” Pierce said. “But you could notice. You could tell.”

  The last time he saw Greg was in Claremont two weeks before he died.

  “I tried to get in a bit of conversation with hi
m, and he would kind of turn away. Kind of made me feel bad, I guess. He plays with me all this time before, and then he doesn’t.”

  On cross-examination by Goldstein, Pierce acknowledged that Greg was not the only one who wanted to watch Kristin dance The Nutcracker. The Rossums liked to watch the videotape at Christmastime, too.

  Ralph took the stand next. He appeared tired, with dark circles under his eyes, and was thin in the face. His jacket hung loosely on him, as if he had lost weight since he’d purchased it.

  Ralph and Constance testified almost as if they were the same person, often using the very same words and phrases, the same observations and points of detail.

  More so during this trial than most others in his courtroom, Thompson tried to put himself in the shoes of the defendant’s parents, empathizing with what they must be going through. He thought it must be very difficult for the Rossums to watch their pretty, bright, and talented daughter on trial for murder, wondering what they might have done wrong or differently to avoid such an outcome. To him, this was a classic example of how meth use could destroy a person’s life.

  Questioned by Loebig, Ralph explained that after he and Constance realized Kristin had a drug problem, a woman from the Betty Ford Center came to their house to discuss doing an intervention, but they decided against that option because Kristin was no longer denying her drug use. So, that’s why they picked the eight-week family group program Ralph took her to in Chino.

  After Kristin met up with Greg, Ralph said, he and Constance moved Kristin and some furniture into the apartment in Point Loma. They were dismayed to find out some time later that Kristin was still living with Greg.

  “I consider myself a devout Episcopalian, and I don’t approve of premarital sex,” Ralph said.

  But since Greg had helped her get off drugs, he said, he and Constance figured this was a better alternative than Kristin’s life before she met Greg. They were able to persuade the young couple to delay getting married until they’d finished school, and then Kristin expressed reservations to him right before the wedding.