Deadly American Beauty (St. Martin's True Crime Library)

by John Glatt

  “I was shocked,” Bertrand would later testify. “I started crying.”

  Jerome said he would drive straight over to Thousand Oaks, twenty-five minutes away, but he was in such shock that his roommate Adam insisted on taking him.

  Greg’s mother was inconsolable, crying uncontrollably. Jerome was very scared for her, as he knew she had serious lung problems.

  “I was just trying to comfort her,” he said. “She was crying so hard that she was having a hard time breathing.”

  Bertrand remembers the three of them being very confused that night about what had happened to Greg. Jerome called his father in Monaco to tell him the tragic news, and Dr. de Villers said he would be on the next plane out to San Diego.

  They also kept calling Constance Rossum for updates, and she promised that her husband would call when he arrived in San Diego. They waited all night by the phone for his call, but it never came.

  Detective Sergeant Robert Jones of the University of California Police Department was in Escondido, home in bed, when he received a call from one of his patrol officers at the hospital, saying that there had been a suspicious death. He was told that although the deceased, Greg de Villers, had died of an apparent suicide, there were questions.

  “Some of the goings-on that morning just didn’t ring true to them,” the veteran detective would recall. “Call it sixth sense. Call it intuition. It didn’t feel right.”

  Detective Sergeant Jones immediately dressed in a tee-shirt and jeans and drove to the de Villerses’ apartment in La Jolla, arriving at 11:25 p.m. Waiting for him were Officers Edward Garcia, Scofield and Bill MacIntyre, who had just returned from the hospital.

  They quickly walked him through the death scene, briefing him on what little Kristin had told them.

  “And they showed me the bedroom,” he said. “They showed me the thirty rose petals on the floor, the wedding photograph. They showed me what they had found on the coffee table—the journal.”

  Det Sergeant Jones thumbed through Kristin’s journal, looking at highlights his officers pointed out. He carefully noted the passages where she had expressed discomfort in her marriage and that she had made a mistake. He then viewed the shredded note in the plastic Ziploc bag and the “Hi Sleepy” note. He was also shown newspaper clippings where Kristin had circled rental apartments.

  “So we took a look at it and tried to connect the dots,” said the detective, “to see if the story she was telling us was consistent to what we were seeing there on the scene.”

  During his thirty years as a police officer, the last twenty with the campus police, Det Jones had visited scores of death scenes. He knew there were just four ways a person can die—homicide, suicide, accidental and natural.

  “He was a young man with no indications of health problems,” said Det Jones. “No indication that it would be a natural death. Intuitively you can eliminate that. He didn’t fall off a ladder. A truck didn’t crash through the building and run him over. So you can pretty well eliminate the fact that it was an accident.”

  Det Sergeant Jones was then left with the only two alternatives, homicide or suicide.

  About twenty-five minutes after he arrived at the death scene, Kristin and Dr. Robertson turned up at the apartment. Jones met them in the outside hallway leading to the apartment. Kristin then entered, leaving Robertson outside in the hall. He remained there for the next two hours.

  Det Jones sat Kristin down in the living room and interviewed her. He noted that the Kristin before him looked totally different from the beautiful healthy-looking bride he had seen in the numerous wedding pictures all over the apartment walls.

  “She was in tears,” he remembered. “She looked disheveled. She looked haggard. She looked unhealthy. Very thin. She was a completely different-looking woman and was not what I expected to see.”

  Tearfully, Kristin recounted her version of the weekend’s events. She told how her parents had taken her and Greg out to dinner the previous Friday night, and how earlier that week he had given her some long-stemmed roses for her birthday. She admitted they had had marital differences, and that when she told Greg she was leaving, he had become very depressed. He had apparently taken some clonazepam and oxycodone, which, she thought, had long been thrown away.

  That morning, Kristin sobbed, Greg hadn’t been feeling well, so she had called in sick for him and then gone to work. After calling him a couple of times and not getting an answer, she came home at about 10:00 a.m. to check up on him. She claimed he was “fine” and “breathing,” so she had gone back to the ME’s office.

  At noon she returned home for lunch and he had some soup. She said he told her he had taken the pills. She went back to work thinking he was okay, and checking up on him once more in the middle of the afternoon.

  “She came home after work and found him breathing and sleeping,” said Det Sergeant Jones. “Then she gave him a kiss and wrote the ‘Hi Sleepy’ note and she left.”

  Kristin said that she came home again about 8:00 p.m. and found Greg sleeping and breathing normally. She had then taken a long bath and shower and come out of the bathroom an hour later to go to bed.

  “That’s when she discovered him not breathing,” said Jones. “That’s when she dialed 911. That was her story.”

  Jones then began searching the apartment for evidence to verify Kristin’s account. Kristin watched him like a hawk, concerned that he might discover her stash of crystal methamphetamine, hidden in a drawer in the kitchen, under some towels. Det Jones and the other investigators would never find it. Instead he found an empty soup can, consistent with her story of Greg’s having had soup at lunchtime.

  Jones went into the bathroom and noticed that the bath/ shower stopper was unscrewed and on the shelf. He immediately wondered why anyone would go to the trouble of unscrewing the water stopper after taking a bath.

  “Well, that was the Columbo clue for me,” Jones would explain. “An indicator. Something that didn’t make sense.”

  Although the rose petals on the floor were “bizarre,” the detective didn’t discount that as beyond the realms of possibility. He noted the other evidence of suicide—the journal, the “Hi Sleepy” note and the shredded love letter from her boyfriend.

  “Yes, he had reason to be depressed and upset and despondent, maybe to the degree that he would commit suicide,” Jones reasoned. “On the other hand, it could clearly be the way you stage a suicide.”

  Soon after Jones completed his initial interview with Kristin at about midnight, Professor Rossum arrived from Claremont. He had first gone to Scripps Memorial Hospital, where he was told by a social worker that Greg had just died. Then he had driven to Kristin’s apartment to take her back to Claremont.

  “He was shocked,” said Det Jones, “but he was supportive and he was helpful.”

  A few minutes after her father arrived, the ME’s death investigator, Angie Wagner, walked in from the hospital. There she had viewed Greg’s body, ninety minutes after he had been certified dead. He was still lying on a plastic backboard on a gurney, a sheet covering him from the neck down.

  “Removal of the sheet revealed a well-developed, well-nourished body that was cooling to the touch,” she would later write in her official report. “[It] was enveloped in early rigor mortis with incomplete dorsal lividity.”

  She noted that the body was clothed in pajama bottoms, which had been cut by doctors. An endotracheal tube was protruding from Greg’s mouth, with a pink-tinged frothy liquid on his chin, and an IV of saline solution still hooked up to his arm.

  She also noted a needle puncture wound on each arm, the right one still exuding blood onto the bedding.

  “No obvious trauma was noted,” she wrote, “or foul play suspected.”

  Wagner saw Kristin and Dr. Robertson almost daily in the ME’s office, but knew nothing of their relationship.

  At five minutes past midnight on Tuesday morning, Greg’s body was bagged to be transported to the medical examiner’s office.


  At 1:00 a.m., Investigator Wagner climbed the flight of stairs at 8150 Regents Road, where she was met by Dr. Robertson, still waiting in the hallway outside the apartment. She walked in and introduced herself to Det Jones, showing her identification badge. And then, with the detective and Professor Rossum present, interviewed Kristin Rossum.

  When Wagner asked her about the rose petals, Kristin said she did not know where they had come from, as there were no fresh roses in the house.

  “Her response was that she hadn’t had roses in the house for some time,” the investigator duly noted. “All the roses that Greg had given her recently she had either thrown away or they were dried by now.”

  Wagner then investigated the bedroom, taking pictures of the death scene. She viewed the “numerous fresh rose petals” on the carpet to the right of the bed, along with the stem and sepals. On a nightstand by the bed there was an opened aspirin bottle, with about fifty tablets still in it, and a plastic cup containing “a clear odorless liquid consistent with water,” which she sniffed. In the bathroom she discovered a near-empty bottle of prescribed Histinex cough syrup, dated 2/6/1999, which she put into an evidence envelope for later testing by the ME’s office.

  In the midst of her 2002 murder trial, Kristin Rossum takes a lunch recess with her mother, Constance. (AP Photo/Denis Poroy)

  Greg de Villers—son, husband, murder victim. (Yves T. de Villers)

  Kristin’s Australian lover, Michael Robertson, who was also her boss and chief toxicologist at the San Diego Medical Examiner’s Office. The San Diego Police murder investigation into Robertson remains ongoing. (Melbourne Herald Sun)

  The Mexican border, which Kristin Rossum would regularly cross to score methamphetamine from her dealer. (John Glatt)

  The turnstiles at the San Ysidro border crossing, where Kristin first bumped into Greg de Villers. (John Glatt)

  Tijuana’s La Revoluciòn main drag, where Kristin and Greg went drinking and dancing the night they met. (John Glatt)

  The prestigious San Diego State University, where Kristin was viewed as one of the best students. (John Glatt)

  The Chemistry Science Lab at SDSU, where Kristin studied to become one of the university’s top students in her chosen subject. (John Glatt)

  The apartment complex where Kristin lived with Greg for more than five years. (John Glatt)

  The top floor balcony of the La Jolla Del Sol apartment where Greg died of a massive Fentanyl overdose on November 6, 2000. (John Glatt)

  USCD Campus Detective Robert Jones, the first policeman on the scene to investigate Greg de Villers’ death. (John Glatt)

  Detective Jones’ drawing of the murder scene at La Jolla Del Sol.

  The San Diego County Courthouse became a media circus during Kristin’s high-profile murder trial in late 2002. (John Glatt)

  Deputy District Attorney Dave Hendren, who helped prosecute Kristin Rossum for the murder of her husband. (John Glatt)

  Attorney Alex Loebig, who defended Kristin Rossum at her murder trial. (John Glatt)

  Greg’s mother, Marie de Villers, flanked by her sons Jerome (left) and Bertrand (right), leaves the courthouse on October 31, 2002. (AP Photo/ Lenny Ignelzi)

  Kristin’s heartbroken parents, Constance and Ralph Rossum, leave the courthouse after their daughter was sentenced to life without parole on December 12, 2002. (AP Photo/ Denis Poroy)

  Beautiful convicted killer Kristin Rossum. (AP Photo/ Denis Poroy)

  “No additional prescription medications, illicit drugs or suicide note was located at the residence,” she wrote.

  At 1:40 a.m., Det Jones and Angela Wagner left the apartment, leaving Kristin, her father and Dr. Robertson there alone. But as Jones drove home to Escondido, he felt that there were many unanswered questions surrounding Greg’s death. He decided to return the following morning to continue his investigation.

  “I left there that morning not being completely satisfied that it was suicide,” he remembered. “Nor did I leave there thinking it was a homicide. There were questions. It was an equivocal death, and that means we’re uncertain.”

  At 2:30 a.m., Professor Rossum drove Kristin back to Claremont, after telling her she couldn’t stay the night in the apartment. Throughout the two-hour journey, he tried to console her as she kept bursting into tears, sobbing: “I have lost my Greggy. I have lost my best friend.”

  She also told him what had happened that evening, saying that the petals were on Greg’s chest under the cover, and he was “clutching” the wedding photo in his hands.

  Later he would describe her as looking “terrible,” saying her face was “puffy” and her eyes “swollen.”

  They arrived back in Claremont at 4:15 and went straight to bed. At this point Kristin had every reason to feel confident that the police and medical investigators had accepted Greg’s death as a suicide. It would now be only a matter of days until she and Dr. Robertson could finally be together and fulfill their destiny.

  Chapter 17

  Autopsy

  At 6:15 a.m. Tuesday morning, Robert Sutton, the San Diego Medical Examiner’s autopsy room supervisor, arrived at work. Every morning his first task was to take the bodies that had come in overnight out of the refrigerator and prepare them for processing. Greg de Villers’ body was lying on a rolling table in the refrigerator, and Sutton weighed it before leaving it in the examining room.

  An hour later, Detective Bob Jones called Professor Rossum in Claremont for permission to revisit the apartment and take photographs and videos of the death scene. He had also made notes from his interviews the previous night and listened to the 911 tape.

  “I started thinking about what I had seen,” he would testify. “I had some unanswered questions.”

  Prof. Rossum was already up, after just two hours’ sleep, preparing his son Pierce for school, when Constance handed him the telephone, saying, “Darling, it’s Bob Jones from the San Diego Police Department.”

  Then, after getting permission to tape the call, Det Sergeant Jones asked if the professor had learned anything new from his daughter that might assist his inquiries, adding that he was mainly calling to see how Kristin was doing.

  The detective then asked about the previous Friday night, when they had taken Greg and Kristin out for their birthday dinner.

  Rossum said they had “a very pleasant evening” and “a nice meal,” never mentioning Greg’s alleged outbursts that night. Det Jones asked him about his remarking on the remaining rose Greg had bought for Kristin’s birthday, and Rossum told him how his wife had commented on how beautiful it was. He made no mention of Greg “waxing poetically” about the rose and becoming emotional. Then Kristin came on the line, giving permission for police to gain access to the apartment to gather evidence.

  At 8:30 a.m., Jones and two of his detectives returned to the La Jolla del Sol apartment, borrowing a key from the manager. Det Jones was concerned that during the seven hours since he had been there, evidence might have been removed and the death scene tampered with. But on a cursory look, he decided that everything seemed to be as he had left it, except that Kristin’s journal had been removed and there was a new glass of water on the kitchen counter.

  He and his officers then spent two-and-a-quarter hours taking photographs and videotaping the death scene. They measured the red streaks on the bed and made careful notes, taking the “Hi Sleepy” note and shredded love letter in the Ziploc bag. But they never removed any of the cups or the trash from the apartment for further analysis.

  After the three officers left, Kristin Rossum was free to return to the apartment to resume her life.

  Dr. Michael Robertson also rose early that Tuesday morning. He arrived at the ME’s office at 7:00 a.m. and called toxicologists Donald Lowe and Ray Gary into his office. There he informed them that Greg de Villers had committed suicide the previous evening, by taking an overdose of drugs. Lowe was immediately suspicious, knowing the rumors that the chief toxicologist was having an affair with Kris
tin. But he kept quiet and let Robertson do the talking.

  Later that morning, Robertson would summon all the toxicologists into his office to tell them the sad news. He appeared uncharacteristically emotional as he asked them to support Kristin in her hour of need.

  Then the chief toxicologist went to his morning meeting to discuss the new cases that had been brought into the ME’s office and whether cases they should be autopsied or not. One of the first on the agenda was Greg de Villers’. Also at the meeting was Chief Deputy Medical Examiner Dr. Harry Bonnell, Chief Investigator Cal Vine and Autopsy Room Supervisor Robert Sutton.

  Dr. Robertson chaired the meeting, summarizing Angie Wagner’s official report on Greg de Villers’ death, which she had written up the night before.

  “He appeared a little uneasy,” Sutton would later testify. “More uneasy than normal.”

  Dr. Robertson told the meeting he had been in the emergency room with Kristin, and it was agreed that Greg’s body would be autopsied that afternoon at UCSD Medical Center in Hillcrest, in line with office policy involving the death of an employee family member.

  At 8:15 a.m., Lloyd Amborn, who oversaw the day-to-day administrative running of the San Diego Medical Examiners’ Office, heard of Greg de Villers’ death when he arrived at work. Remembering the persistent rumors of an improper relationship between Kristin and Dr. Robertson, Amborn decided to take special measures.