On the updated 48 Hours show that aired in February 2003, the Rossums complained that Kristin’s defense attorneys had been disorganized and careless in presenting the case at trial.
“The prosecution went on for a total of seven and a half hours of closing arguments,” Ralph said. “That was offset on the defense side by a meager one and a half-hour presentation.”
After the trial, Kristin’s friend and mentor, Frank Barnhart, communicated with Constance and Ralph Rossum by e-mail and wrote a number of letters to Kristin in prison.
He encouraged Kristin’s parents not to rush through the appeal process simply because their daughter was behind bars. He suggested they take their time and do it right, proceeding with great caution.
“It’s not like you get a lot of chances,” he recalled saying while he was being deposed in February 2003 in the de Villers family’s wrongful death lawsuit.
The Rossums told Barnhart in no uncertain terms that they believed the verdict was wrong, he said. They still firmly believed that Kristin was innocent, the victim of her husband’s suicide.
In his letters to Kristin, Barnhart shared parts of the Bible with her, primarily Romans, chapters 1–12. Even though she was in prison, he still considered her a friend.
Part of Barnhart believed that if Kristin was guilty, Michael must have been involved as well. Sometimes the whole scenario looked to him as if it had been really well thought out, and other times, the exact opposite. But if it was a premeditated crime, he figured the best way to try to ensure they got away with it would be to try to control the toxicology testing.
“And when that gets taken away from you, you lose that trump card,” Barnhart said.
If he could go back in time, Barnhart said, he wouldn’t have agreed to get involved in the testing of Greg’s remains. In fact, he wished he’d said he “wouldn’t touch that with a ten-foot cattle prod.”
In the end, Barnhart said, this case was a summation of so many tragedies. A young man who had a good future was dead. An incredibly brilliant young lady took drugs, he said, went down “some wrong roads,” and sacrificed her own future. Both families were victims, too. The de Villers family had lost a son and a brother, and Kristin’s family had lost a daughter and a sister.
Chapter 22
On April 7, 2003, attorney John Gomez flew into the airport at Fresno, spent the night, and then drove the next morning to the women’s prison in Chowchilla, about forty-five minutes north, to take Kristin’s deposition in the civil case. Gomez worked for McClellan & Associates, which represented the de Villers family. Deborah McCarthy, the county’s attorney, arrived separately, to ask her own questions.
Gomez was familiar with prisons. When he was in his early thirties and right out of Yale Law School, he’d mentored a male inmate in the California Youth Authority’s Volunteers in the parole program at the coed facility in Camarillo. Later, in his career as an assistant U.S. attorney, he frequented federal prisons to interview witnesses.
Gomez spent less than an hour in the video arraignment room with Kristin, her attorney Walter Tribbey, McCarthy, a court reporter, and two prison guards.
Kristin wore her hair in a ponytail, a shirt with long blue sleeves and a white torso, a pair of jeans, and dark blue, prison-issued tennis shoes with no laces. She’d even put on a little lipstick for the occasion. Gomez figured it was a rare pleasure for her these days to be the center of attention. She seemed happy to have visitors, including Gomez, a tall man in his late thirties with dark hair and a kind face. He noticed that her hands were small, like a child’s, and her waist seemed tiny. She was “five-foot nothing,” and definitely not physically threatening. The skin on her face looked like it would be soft and warm if he touched it. She had a sweet way about her, a contradiction that struck him as odd given the circumstances. He felt puzzled by it, but even if he weren’t married, he knew he’d be scared to be in a relationship with her. He wondered what had happened in her life to make her do something like poison her husband. She was so intelligent, so animated, and so attractive. She was an enchantress. What a waste, he thought.
Gomez was prepared for Kristin to take the Fifth Amendment on every question he and McCarthy asked. And he was right. Kristin’s voice was composed, and she used dramatic pauses for effect. She knew what she was doing. Nonetheless, he felt compassionate toward her and wondered if she would stay and eat with the lawyers. He knew that any kind of diversion was a big deal for a prisoner. He thought she would even try to come to the civil trial if she could, just to get out the confined space for a while.
McCarthy went first. “Have you taken any medications or is there any reason that you can’t give me your best testimony here this morning?” she asked.
“No,” Kristin replied.
“What I want to talk about first is the extent of your knowledge of Gregory’s relationship with his father, okay?”
“All right,” Kristin said.
“Now, I’ve—there’s been some testimony in this case that the relationship between Gregory and his father was a poor one, so what I want to ask you about this morning is what firsthand knowledge you have of that relationship.”
Kristin’s attorney began his first of many interjections. “I’m going to advise her not to answer that on the grounds of self-incrimination,” Tribbey said.
Tribbey and McCarthy debated the extent to which Kristin could assert her Fifth Amendment privilege. McCarthy felt Kristin should answer because she’d already testified about these topics during the criminal trial.
Tribbey disagreed, saying he didn’t want to open the door to incriminating areas, so he was going to continue to advise Kristin not to answer McCarthy’s questions. McCarthy asked them, anyway, to put them on the record.
“Are you going to follow your attorney’s instruction?” she asked Kristin.
“I am,” Kristin said.
McCarthy asked about Greg’s salary at Orbigen, contending that financial questions were relevant because they would affect the amount the jury might decide to award in damages. Kristin took the Fifth again.
Tribbey did allow Kristin to answer a couple of questions about Greg’s education and his job and salary history before Orbigen.
“Do you have any knowledge that Gregory intended to pursue a degree beyond a bachelor’s of science?” McCarthy asked.
“Yes,” Kristin replied. “He was considering an advanced degree of some sort. Nothing concrete, just thinking toward the future. He was considering that as a possibility.”
Kristin also asserted her Fifth Amendment privilege when asked about Greg’s possible plans for supporting his mother, why Yves didn’t attend the wedding, whether Yves was in Claremont the day of the wedding, how many times Kristin met with Yves during her relationship with Greg, her duties as a student worker at the Medical Examiner’s Office, and the disclosure of her drug history on her job application to the Sheriff’s Department.
“Having disclosed that information to the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department, did you have any concern in, I believe, August of ’99, that that information would, in turn, be conveyed to the Medical Examiner’s Office?”
Tribbey told Kristin not to answer that, and not to discuss her relationship with Michael Robertson or her denial of it to Lloyd Amborn.
McCarthy warned that she might be back to ask more questions if the judge ruled that Kristin could not assert the privilege. Then, it was Gomez’s turn.
“Is it true that you were told that among the conditions for your employment were that you would be subject to a preemployment drug test?” Gomez asked.
Tribbey told Kristin not to answer that, so she took the Fifth again. But like McCarthy, Gomez proceeded to ask his questions for the record.
“At that time in March 2000, were you using methamphetamines such that a drug screen would have shown?” he asked.
Tribbey pointed out that it’s improper to call a witness, knowing she is going to assert the privilege, “just for purposes of making
them do that in front of the jury or in front of a judge.”
Gomez asked a number of other questions, all of which Kristin refused to answer. Had she communicated with Michael Robertson since she’d been in prison? Before Greg’s death, had she and Michael discussed giving Greg fentanyl? Was Michael aware that she had given Greg fentanyl? Had he assisted her in any way in administering fentanyl to Greg?
Tribbey instructed Kristin not to answer questions about her assets, including potential book, movie, or other deals that might come out of the case.
The deposition was over after Kristin refused to answer McCarthy’s last few questions about Yves’s medical practice in Thousand Oaks, her knowledge of Greg’s drug use, and his access to fentanyl.
The next day Gomez felt a bit sad as he thought about Kristin spending the rest of her life in that place. But he couldn’t forget what Marie de Villers had told him. Greg had been the rock of the family, and the pain of losing him was never going to go away. It was like losing a finger, she said. She had to learn to live without it.
Marie de Villers died on August 16, 2003, at the Los Robles Hospital & Medical Center in Thousand Oaks, finally succumbing to the respiratory ailments she’d lived with her entire life.
Her health had been getting progressively worse in recent years. One night in 1998, Jerome came home after being out with his buddies and didn’t check his answering machine messages until the next morning. After discovering that Marie had called to tell him she wasn’t well and wanted him to take her to the hospital, Jerome immediately called her line, but it was busy. He rushed over to her house, but she wasn’t there. She was in the hospital. The doctor said they’d found Marie unconscious in her car in the hospital parking lot, with her head on the horn. Knowing she was about to pass out, she’d figured out a way to call for help. She was never the same after that and had to remain on medication so that she could breathe. After Greg’s death, she seemed even weaker.
“Marie was a strong person emotionally; she was a frail person physically,” said Craig McClellan, her lead civil attorney. “She had definite beliefs, and she worried to death about her kids. I mean they were the main thing in her life.”
Originally, the civil lawsuit had been filed on behalf of Greg’s parents and his estate. Because of some legal technicalities, Greg’s brothers had to decide whether they wanted to continue to pursue the lawsuit after their mother’s death. They did, and in forging ahead, they stepped into her shoes as the representative of Greg’s estate so they would be able to collect punitive damages from the “survival action” portion of the lawsuit. That portion covers the period of time that Greg was being harmed up until he died.
The standard to win a conviction in criminal court is “beyond a reasonable doubt.” In civil court, the standard is lower: all that is required is a “preponderance of evidence, which boils down to more likely than not,” McClellan said. He said he wasn’t sure why the District Attorney’s Office had not charged Michael in Greg’s death but acknowledged that perhaps the evidence wasn’t strong enough to win a criminal conviction.
Since McClellan opened his private practice in 1987, he and his firm had won more than sixty-eight verdicts and settlements of $1 million or more in personal injury and product liability cases against companies such as Honda, Ford, and Porsche. McClellan, a snappy dresser with bright blue eyes, exuded a deep calm that reflected confidence and experience. He and his easygoing style were a contrast to Gomez, who emanated an ambitious energy and a desire to win. Gomez joined the firm in 2000, after working four years as a federal prosecutor. Together, they billed themselves as trial attorneys who would rather fight than settle a case. The firm was renamed McClellan & Gomez after the departure of Cindy Lane, the attorney who had worked intently on the forensic details of the de Villers case when the trial was scheduled to begin in October 2003. The civil trial was delayed indefinitely until Kristin’s criminal appeal could be decided. If her conviction was overturned, McClellan would have to reprove her guilt.
Based on Michael’s statements to police and evidence presented during Kristin’s criminal trial, McClellan offered his theories on the events leading up to Greg’s murder. Essentially, he contended that the county failed to take certain measures, which made it possible for Michael and Kristin to kill Greg.
First, McClellan said, the county allowed one of its managers to have an affair with a subordinate.
“They had a relationship that was mixed with sex and drugs,” which resulted in a lack of supervision and drugs being stolen from the office, he said. Kristin stole the drugs, he said, but Michael probably helped her to “keep her happy…. to keep the love machine going…. He encouraged her to leave her husband and spend the holidays with [him].” Greg wasn’t going anywhere, he said, so with Michael’s expert knowledge and Kristin’s own research, “they decide to get rid of him, and no one will notice the difference.”
McClellan believed that Michael had to know that Kristin was smoking meth in the HPLC room and that all those drugs were missing, especially the fentanyl patches. Michael found meth in her desk, and surely, being an expert in illicit drugs, he would have recognized its effects on her.
McClellan also believed that Kristin began putting drugs in Greg’s food or drinks a few days before he died. He said Michael and Kristin were probably discussing “how to do someone in,” at least in general terms, while they were at the SOFT conference in early October 2000. And when Kristin called Michael at 9:02 P.M. Sunday night, November 5, he said, it was to tell him that she’d given Greg enough of the drug mixture to knock him out. It’s possible, he said, that Kristin, with or without Michael’s help, put fentanyl patches all over Greg and removed them before she called 911. But he believed that it was Michael, the more experienced toxicologist of the two, who administered the fatal dose of fentanyl by injection, taking the drug paraphernalia—vials, wrappers, syringes, or whatever—with him.
Kristin never mentioned fentanyl to the authorities, he said, because she knew the Medical Examiner’s Office didn’t test for the drug, and she didn’t think they’d detect it in Greg’s body. Michael gave interviews to police and hung around San Diego until May 2001 because he didn’t think the authorities had enough evidence to prove he was involved. Plus, Michael thought they would believe his story.
McClellan said the county was at fault for allowing the love affair to continue even after Amborn confronted Michael about the rumors several times; failing to follow federal laws that regulate the safekeeping, inventory, and security of controlled substances by agencies or individuals to protect the public from the risk of injury; not doing background checks on its employees; failing to impose a policy requiring sister agencies to share personnel information—such as Kristin’s self-admitted drug history and arrest; neglecting to keep track of illicit drugs and to ensure they were locked away properly; and putting a known drug user in charge of the log of drug standard vials used in toxicology testing.
“The county knew or should have known what was going on,” McClellan said.
McClellan predicted that Kristin would attend the civil trial to try to convince the new jury that the previous jury was wrong. As for Michael, he said, he didn’t have to come back for the trial and probably wouldn’t, especially if he was scared he could be arrested.
Michael Robertson’s civil attorney in San Diego said Kristin’s criminal case and the allegations made against his client during her trial had effectively prevented Michael from returning to the United States to pursue his former career in forensic toxicology or even to take a vacation. In the summer of 2004, the attorney, Michael Gardiner, said his client was working in a related field in Australia, but he would not be more specific.
“I wouldn’t want to come to a country that has told me they were going to arrest me,” Gardiner said. “They’ve gone down to Australia to continue to investigate him…. [Goldstein]has said that prosecuting Michael was a priority…. They’ve put him in a legal limbo. They won’t clear him.
They won’t say they’re not going to prosecute him, but they don’t do it, prosecute him or clear him. I think they should clear him.”
The case “has forever changed his life, and it’s made it impossible to pursue the livelihood, the dreams, and the career that he built during his entire professional life,” Gardiner said. “He’s been punished all right.”
In September 2004, nearly two years after Kristin’s conviction, District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis “respectfully declined” to be interviewed about Gardiner’s claims. However, a Dumanis spokesman said the San Diego Police Department still had the case and had not officially asked the DA’s office to begin the prosecution process against Michael Robertson.
“That just proves what I’ve said all along, they’re keeping him in legal limbo,” Gardiner responded when he heard the news. “They refuse to make a decision, in order to punish him without trying him.”
Gardiner dismissed McClellan’s theory outlining Michael’s involvement in Greg’s death as “an absolutely remarkable, preposterous work of fiction. I don’t think it passes the smell test. I have a lot of trouble imagining that a jury will buy that Michael was involved in this.”
Asked to explain why Michael Robertson would try to protect Kristin after Greg died, Gardiner said, “I think that the relationship itself is enough to explain frankly anything that needs explaining. If he’s guilty of anything, he’s guilty of having an affair with Kristin Rossum, and I think that’s as far as it goes.”
Poisoned Love Page 42