Poisoned Love

by Caitlin Rother

  “She, too, is married, and the feelings between us are mutual, both very confused and both trying hard to find a solution,” he wrote.

  Despite Nicole’s mood swings and emotional issues, he told her, he’d thought he was happy with his wife. But then he met Kristin, who seemed much more compatible, and it “all just kind of happened.” They shared values, she liked the outdoors, and she even said she’d be willing to move to Australia with him. Now that he’d met Kristin, he wrote, he’d lost his “deep feelings for Nicole” and wasn’t sure if he could ever get them back. He was having a hard time pretending that everything was fine at home and wanted to talk to Nicole about it, but he knew she’d be tremendously upset.

  Three days later, Michael used his personal e-mail account to send Kristin a short note and some photos of his sister’s wedding.

  “Thinking of you and missing you already,” he wrote.

  By the following week, he and Kristin were professing their eternal love for each other.

  “I want nothing more than to give my all to you,” Michael wrote her on May 16. “My life, my love, my world.”

  “I’ll be thinking of you and all that the future has to offer,” Kristin wrote Michael on May 18. “I can’t wait for it to begin.”

  That same day, Kristin wrote an e-mail to her brother Brent, expressing regret that she hadn’t called off the wedding and that she’d let their parents convince her she was just having “cold feet.”

  “Mom and Dad encouraged me to go through with it and…they had invested so much time and money into the event by then, I guess I felt that I didn’t really have a choice,” she wrote. “Well, here I am a year later, and looking back, I wish I hadn’t gone through with it.”

  As she weighed the good and the bad aspects of staying with Greg, she said, it all boiled down to not wanting to disappoint her family. “And that is not a very good reason for staying married,” she wrote. Feeling “so torn apart inside,” Kristin asked Brent for his feedback. There was more to tell, she said, but that would come later. She never mentioned that she’d started an affair with her boss.

  Brent wrote back, offering his complete love and support for whatever decision she would ultimately make. He said he didn’t think she should stay with Greg just to avoid disappointing their parents.

  “Sure, no one wants this to happen, but if you are not happy, which is all that matters in this case, then it is justified,” he wrote.

  He also underscored how proud their parents were of her, constantly bragging about her accomplishments.

  “They want what is best for you and will no doubt act accordingly,” he wrote.

  Kristin told Brent how much she appreciated his support and thanked him for listening to her troubles. “Now I’m stuck with the heavy realization that I married the wrong person,” she wrote.

  A couple of days after Kristin and Greg’s first anniversary on June 5, Brent checked in with his sister by e-mail. He apologized for not calling but said he didn’t feel comfortable wishing them a happy anniversary after what she’d told him.

  Kristin wrote back and said she was “hanging in there.” She’d made a nice candlelight dinner for her and Greg and bought him a few gifts. “He didn’t even bring home a card,” she wrote. “But that’s okay, I guess, because he was sick.”

  Kristin wrote Brent again on August 9, letting him know that she’d discussed her marital problems with their parents over the weekend and they were very supportive. “I wish I knew what to do,” she wrote.

  A week later Kristin received a confirmation by e-mail that she’d used her Visa card to pay $60 for a two-month subscription to an apartment rental service.

  After the CAT conference in May, Michael and Kristin continued to express their feelings for each other in a consistent stream of greeting cards, letters, and e-mails, developing their own shorthand language for the powerful emotions they were experiencing. Both said they’d never felt this way about anyone else, repeatedly using dramatic words like always, forever, destiny, fate, adoration, and passion. They constantly talked about getting married to each other, having children, and growing old together.

  They often left the office for lunch, and on at least one occasion, came back with wet hair. One day they were gone for ninety minutes, and Kristin was seen eating lunch in the coffee room after she got back.

  On Friday, May 19, Kristin took Michael to the SDSU Chemistry Department picnic. She thanked him in an e-mail later that afternoon and said she wished she were better at articulating her feelings for him.

  The following Tuesday morning, Michael e-mailed Kristin to thank her for “dropping by,” apparently at his apartment. He said he’d intended to make her a cup of tea, but “one thing led to another….”

  The next morning he e-mailed Kristin to tell her he loved her. “I’ll tell you more slowly at lunch,” he wrote.

  The aftermath of their lovemaking must have been quite obvious to their coworkers, because Lloyd Amborn confronted Michael about “their conduct” that Thursday. Amborn said the other toxicologists were complaining that Michael was having an inappropriate relationship with their newest and youngest colleague. Michael denied that anything was going on, then e-mailed Kristin right after the meeting to warn her that Amborn planned to call her in that afternoon. Amborn, he wrote, had noticed the two of them “being a little too close” and told him that such behavior needed to stop.

  “I need a ‘Hi, it’s all going to be okay’ kinda hug, but I guess that would be inappropriate, hey?” Michael wrote.

  He also suggested that Kristin delete all his e-mails after reading them.

  “Any snoop can check your ‘inbox’ while you’re out if no one is around, and my e-mails to you may not be well received,” he wrote.

  After their respective meetings with Amborn, they stopped going to lunch together in the same car. But their coworkers still noticed that they were gone at the same time, often leaving and returning within five minutes of each other.

  The two lovers could not and would not stay away from each other during the week. Over the weekend, though, they had to.

  On Sunday, May 21, Michael wrote her a note from the nearby Ralph’s supermarket, where he often stopped at the computer café to send her weekend notes on his way to play Australian football.

  “At 9 A.M., my missing you has been officially upgraded to ‘intensely,’ soon to move to ‘unbearably,’” he wrote, fantasizing about the time they could be together on a Sunday morning so he could tell her in person.

  He wrote her again from Ralph’s the following Sunday afternoon at 2:30. Kristin was graduating that day, right about that time, and he wanted to let her know he was thinking of her.

  “Dear Adrenalin,” he called her, explaining that the nickname stemmed from the physical sensations she caused in him. He told her he wished he could be there to “cheer from the back row. I’m cheering on the inside.”

  Most of Kristin’s coworkers, including Michael, met Greg for the first and only time at a going-away party for a colleague at the 94th Aero Squadron restaurant in Kearny Mesa that spring.

  Throughout the summer, Michael and Kristin met after work at a place just blocks from each of their apartments in University City. They dubbed their meeting place “the Willows” for the trees that grew where Regents Road dead-ended near a path at Rose Canyon. It was a secret spot, where Kristin once instructed her beau to “bring your biggest muscles.” They would meet there for a walk, a talk, and who knows what else. They also met a number of times during the lunch hour for what they referred to as a “quickie breakie,” apparently at Michael’s apartment.

  Kristin initiated a secret game of treasure hunt in the office, where they left hidden gifts for each other, then sent directions by e-mail to find them.

  On June 12, Michael e-mailed Kristin to thank her for the card she’d hidden in his office. It reminded him of a game his grandparents played throughout their marriage of more than fifty years, in between stealing kisses,
flirting, holding hands, and finishing each other’s sentences. Their game, he explained, consisted of taking turns scribbling the word “shmily” in unexpected places for the other one to find—in the steam on the bathroom mirror, in the ashes in the fireplace, in the sugar and flour containers, and in the dew on the windows overlooking the patio, where his grandmother fed them “warm homemade pudding with blue food coloring.” Once, his grandmother even managed to write the word on the last sheet of a roll of toilet paper. After she developed breast cancer, his grandfather continued to display affection for his one true love by painting her bedroom yellow and taking her to church until she was too weak to get out of bed. He played the game until the very end, writing “shmily” on the pink ribbons of her funeral bouquet.

  “Although I couldn’t begin to fathom the depth of their love,” Michael wrote, “I had been privileged to witness its unmatched beauty.

  S-See

  H-How

  M-Much

  I-I

  L-Love

  Y-You.”

  On June 14, Michael directed Kristin to look under his desk for a box with a folded newspaper and a sheet of paper on top.

  “Remove the sheet of paper (I need it) and remove the newspaper. The contents are just for you just because!” Michael wrote.

  Kristin replied, “It seems as if you know me so well and can anticipate my feelings without fail…. Everything I ever imagined in a lifelong companion, husband, best friend is present in you.”

  On June 20, Dr. Blackbourne asked Michael to meet with him and a police detective, Terry Torgeson, about a case the Medical Examiner’s Office had handled five years earlier. The office had determined the cause of death to be Versed, a sedative in the benzodiazepine family, but Torgeson had recently gotten a tip that fentanyl was the true cause of the woman’s death. So, another investigation was conducted. Michael sent the woman’s blood samples to National Medical Services, his former employer, and it came back positive for Versed and a significant amount of fentanyl. The Medical Examiner’s Office had missed the fentanyl because its toxicology lab didn’t test for it.

  Even while Kristin was engulfed by emotion for Michael, she also seemed to need the same level of affection from Greg. She continued to tell her husband she loved him and seemed to get frustrated and upset when he pulled away. At the same time, she was also trying to please Michael, constantly reminding him that he was the most important person in her life.

  On June 5, her first wedding anniversary with Greg, she sent Michael a hug and kiss through cyberspace. “I LOVE YOU!!!” she wrote. “See you in my dreams.”

  In an e-mail on June 20, Kristin wrote to Greg, “What? No ‘I love you’??? You must be busy.”

  Greg apologized by e-mail nine minutes later and told her the words she wanted to hear.

  On June 26, Kristin e-mailed Greg to tell him that Michael had an extra ticket to the Natalie Merchant concert for the following night. She said his wife ended up not being able to go and suggested he take a coworker. She said they had a raffle, and she won. She’d like to go if he didn’t mind.

  “Let me know what you think so that he can give it to the runner-up if you don’t want me to go, okay?” she wrote.

  There was no such raffle.

  That same day Michael and Kristin had lunch together. After lunch he asked Kristin if she was up for submitting a paper to the Society of Forensic Toxicologists and presenting it at a conference in Milwaukee in October. He’d been sending her copies of e-mails he’d sent to a toxicologist from SOFT, discussing the possibility of presenting a strychnine case the San Diego lab had worked on. He’d finally gotten the go-ahead.

  It was a huge career opportunity for Kristin, and Michael wanted to help her with it. Later that day, before they both left the office to go home to their respective spouses, he e-mailed her to say how beautiful she looked reading at her desk.

  Kristin obviously felt torn and confused by her two relationships. The next day she messaged Greg twice, trying to connect with him. She said he looked “really tired” that morning, and she was wondering how he was feeling. “I guess you must be pretty busy,” she wrote. “You never seem to have time to respond to my e-mails.”

  She tried messaging him again the day after that, first thing. “I’m sorry that I haven’t been able to make you happier,” she wrote. “I feel so lousy and empty inside, very alone.” She said she missed him and had for a long time. They should use an upcoming trip to Mammoth “as a chance to escape and reconnect,” she said, and asked him what he thought of her idea.

  He agreed, asking her what time she’d gotten to the lab. Apparently, they’d had an emotional conversation that morning, and she’d left the apartment upset. She replied that she stopped at Starbucks on her way to work, taking time to let the tears pass and to compose herself. She asked how he was feeling, but he didn’t answer. Two hours later, her tone grew more insistent. She found it difficult to concentrate at work with so much on her mind. Why wasn’t he answering her?

  “Are we going to be alright? I miss our closeness. I miss you,” she wrote, urging him to respond.

  “I’m okay, I guess,” he replied finally, saying they could talk when they got home.

  Kristin e-mailed him again that afternoon, telling him she loved him and that she hoped he’d enjoyed his lunch. She said she was thinking of him, signing off by using her pet nickname “Wifey.”

  The couple did go on the de Villers brothers’ annual summer camping trip to Mammoth over the Fourth of July holiday. Jerome’s girlfriend, Jacinta Jarrell, known as J.J., went along, too. Greg’s brothers thought Kristin seemed more needy than usual on that trip. Jerome and Greg went off hiking for two and a half hours, and when they came back, the brothers said Kristin was upset and crying because he’d been gone for so long.

  Meanwhile, back in San Diego, Michael was having a difficult time dealing with the thought of Kristin vacationing with Greg. It was most difficult at night, when he wondered what she was doing, what she was thinking. So, he wrote her e-mails every day to tell her that she was on his mind. He reread the notes she’d written to him, perfumed with her scent, and replayed memories of their time together. He missed her like crazy and was counting the days until her return.

  On July 4, she’d been gone for five days and just as many long nights. He was rereading some of her e-mails, trying to warm his heart, when the phone rang. It was Kristin. Her call raised his spirits so much that he wrote to her about it afterwards: “A well-tuned orchestra playing a waltz could never sound so wonderful, the voice that induces the growth of a smile, the feelings of love, of warmth, and of so many” other feelings he couldn’t even describe.

  Greg found one of Michael’s love letters in the apartment in June or July. Furious, he made Kristin give him Michael’s home phone number and called him around 9 or 10 that night.

  Michael and Nicole were in bed when the phone rang. Michael picked it up, but Nicole could hear Greg shouting into the receiver. Michael’s face went gray, and he took the phone into the next room.

  “Stay the hell away from my wife,” Greg told him.

  Michael had told Nicole that he was attracted to someone in the office. But even after the phone call, Michael told her the same story that Kristin told Greg: The two of them were having an emotional relationship, but they weren’t physically involved.

  However, the e-mails the two lovers exchanged reflected a connection that was all encompassing.

  “You are my love, my perfect match, the one I see beside me at the altar, at home, holding my children, waking beside me in the morning, and kissing good night,” Michael wrote on July 23.

  Later that summer, Kristin told student worker Tom Horn she wasn’t happy in her marriage and wasn’t sure her husband was the right man for her. She asked Horn if he knew of any apartments available in Mission Hills, but she said nothing about having an affair with their boss.

  For the first time ever, Greg told his brothers that he and Kristin were g
oing to have to back out of plans to go to Mammoth over Labor Day. They didn’t have the money for it. Greg apologized to nonfamily members that he and Kristin had to cancel at the last minute because of their work schedules. He was working at a start-up company, he explained, and it was a bad time to take time off. Kristin also had a work project that needed her full attention through September.

  In August or September, Greg’s high school friend Bill Leger came to San Diego with his fiancée and went to the zoo with his parents. They invited Kristin and Greg to come along, and the two couples made plans to get together over Thanksgiving for a ski trip to Tahoe. Sometime after that, Leger and Greg talked on the phone about the ski trip, and Greg told him he was thinking about buying a house. The lease for their apartment was about to expire, and it was the last one that the university would renew since he wasn’t a UCSD student anymore. By the end of the year, he told Leger, he and Kristin should be completely out of debt.

  Kristin saw her friend Melissa Prager once in March 2000 and several times over the summer. The March rendezvous was at Miracles Café in Encinitas, where Prager was excited to spend some alone time with her friend for the first time since she’d met Greg. But Greg showed up, too.

  Finally, in August, Kristin came alone. She and Prager had dinner in La Jolla and watched the sunset together, and Kristin said she’d been taking ballet lessons again. She seemed more relaxed, clearheaded, and healthy than Prager had ever seen her. Kristin glowed as she talked about this guy she’d met at work. Michael was her boss, she said, and he appreciated and respected her for her mind, her beauty, and her true spirit.

  “She was definitely in love with him,” Prager said. “You could see it in her eyes.”

  Kristin told Prager that she wanted to tell Greg about the affair but didn’t know how to break it to him. Their relationship was so fragile. Kristin said she was terrified that Greg would get depressed and upset if she tried to talk to him about her feelings, but she knew she had to.