Poisoned Love
Page 26
Thomas Horn, who was a student worker with Kristin back in August 2000, testified that Michael asked him to pull the evidence envelope for case #1591 and bring it to him. Kristin had done the toxicology tests in that case, screening for “drugs of abuse.” Michael gave him the key to the Balance Room, where, after some searching, Horn said he found the manila envelope in a large plastic bag.
A few days later, Horn said, he was asked to get that file again and couldn’t find it in the bag. That’s how he remembered the last time he’d seen it—in Michael’s office. He went back and found it there.
On August 31, Michael sent a blood sample from that case to the National Medical Services lab in Pennsylvania, his former employer, for analysis to see if it contained fentanyl. The results came back in early October.
After Greg’s death, Horn said, Lowe asked him to find the file again. By that time, Horn had boxed—in numerical order—all the envelopes that had been in the black bags. But the evidence envelope for case #1591, which had contained eight fentanyl patches, wasn’t in the box where it should have been. Those eight patches were among the fifteen that Lowe counted as missing in his audit.
Toxicologist Ray Gary testified that he’d seen yellow flowers that looked like roses in Michael’s gym bag in his office one day. The next day the same flowers showed up on Kristin’s desk.
Gary said he also saw a little wooden box on Kristin’s desk, and after noticing at least one flower-giving incident, figured the box was a gift from Michael. He opened it up when neither one of them was around and found at least twenty IOUs, with promises such as “a night out,” “a day of lovemaking,” and “a walk in the park.” There also was a key in the box. He saw the box on Kristin’s desk that Tuesday morning, right after Michael informed them of Greg’s death. It was gone the next day.
Frank Barnhart smiled at Kristin from the witness stand and referred to her as “my friend Kristin.” His answers often seemed evasive, as if he didn’t want to implicate the young woman he’d nicknamed “Lil Bandit.”
“You would agree, wouldn’t you, that she understands the workings of fentanyl?” Goldstein asked.
“She’s smart. Her major is chemistry or biochemistry,” Barnhart said. “I don’t really know what her experience was with fentanyl when she and I worked together at the Medical Examiner’s Office.”
Goldstein tried to pin Barnhart down, asking him whether he recalled telling an investigator that she “would have had full understanding of fentanyl.” But Barnhart would not be pinned. So, Goldstein made a point of questioning his credibility by implying that Barnhart had a conflict of interest and had neglected to disclose his ongoing friendship with Kristin to the prosecution. Goldstein noted that Barnhart had gone to a basketball game with Kristin and discussed fentanyl in connection with the case. He also got Barnhart to confirm that he’d had dinner with Kristin and her parents.
“Do you recall if this was before or after you had been requested by me to examine the gastric contents of Gregory de Villers?”
Barnhart said he didn’t remember. “I’m not trying to be evasive,” he said.
“No further questions,” Goldstein said dismissively.
Finally, Goldstein called his last witness, Ralph Rossum, to the stand.
Goldstein’s approach was far more confrontational and his voice much louder with Ralph than with any other witness. The prosecutor intentionally yelled at the professor to try to get him off his game. Ralph often responded in a manner that sounded as if he were trying to taunt Goldstein, implying that he had information that he was purposely withholding. And so, the feud, which had started with Ralph’s attacks against Goldstein in the media, continued.
Ralph started his testimony with a description of the Rossums’ last supper with Greg and Kristin in Balboa Park, saying that he and Constance observed “repeated instances of atypical behavior” from Greg, starting with the way he was “waxing eloquently” about the last surviving red rose in the apartment.
“It put us a bit on edge,” Ralph said.
Ralph’s testimony was generally parallel to what he said in media interviews, including his complaint that he’d never been interviewed by police about any of this.
That’s when Goldstein went on the attack. He was not going to let Ralph come into his courtroom and lie. “He’s not any better than us,” Goldstein thought.
Didn’t Ralph remember Jones’s call to his house in Claremont on the morning of November 7? Goldstein asked.
“I did not consider that an interview,” Ralph declared.
Goldstein read aloud portions of a transcript from Ralph’s recorded conversation with Jones to prove that Ralph’s recollections had changed dramatically, since he had initially described that Friday to Jones as “a very pleasant evening.”
Ralph countered haughtily that he’d assumed Jones was just a “campus security guard…a basic rent-a-cop.” He said he would have given a fuller version of the events if he’d known he was being formally interviewed and taped by a sworn peace officer.
Upon further questioning by Goldstein, Ralph acknowledged that he’d also turned down an interview with Agnew’s boss, Sergeant Howard Williams, in July.
“On the advice of counsel, I had been recommended not to respond,” Ralph said.
“On the advice of counsel?” Goldstein asked.
“Yes,” Ralph said.
“Did your counsel also advise you to talk to the press about—” Goldstein said.
Thompson jumped in. “Hold it, hold it,” he said.
The judge explained to Ralph that he didn’t have to discuss privileged discussions with his attorney and told Goldstein to ask him another question.
Goldstein asked whether Frank Eaton, his investigator, had asked Ralph a week ago for any information that “might shed light on this case.” “Yes,” Ralph said, “and that, interestingly, occurred only one hour prior to a scheduled interview that you had with CBS News where you knew you were going to be asked that question.”
Goldstein asked if Ralph had given Eaton all the information Ralph had been disseminating to the media.
“No. I said we would save it for the appropriate time,” Ralph said. “Apparently, this is it.”
After the lunch break, Ralph testified that Kristin told him Greg obtained the fentanyl from boxes in his father’s medical storage area in Ventura County, which they visited in September 2000. Kristin told him that Greg said he was going to dispose of the fentanyl “and that was the last she saw of it.” Ralph said he had photos from the unit taken during that trip, though he acknowledged that none specifically showed any fentanyl.
Goldstein asked if Ralph had mentioned any of this to the police sergeant or to the DA’s investigator. No, Ralph said.
“I told [Eaton] there was information about fentanyl that would come out at the appropriate time,” Ralph said.
Goldstein had had enough of Ralph’s snappy retorts.
“Do you think this is a game?” he snarled.
“No,” Ralph replied.
At the end of the hearing, Judge Thompson took up the defense’s request to throw out Kristin’s videotaped police interview.
Eriksen argued that Kristin was considered a suspect at that time and was being interrogated by two detectives who had not read her Miranda rights to her. At some point during the interview, Eriksen said, Agnew adopted a more accusatory tone, and to him, that amounted to Kristin being in a “custodial situation,” where she didn’t feel she could get up and leave.
Goldstein countered that the detectives’ initial questions were extremely open-ended. He acknowledged that Kristin became more upset as the interview progressed, but that didn’t stop her from answering the questions. She was never placed under arrest, he said, and she was told at least twice that she was free to go, which she finally chose to do.
“Clearly, there is nothing to indicate the statement was anything but voluntary,” Goldstein said.
Thompson agreed and overruled the d
efense’s objection to the interview. He ruled there were sufficient facts to hold Kristin over for trial.
The Rossums, followed by reporters, filed out of the courtroom and cast their own spin on the proceedings.
“We’re very disappointed but not in any way surprised,” Ralph said. He explained that all the prosecutors had to do was establish probable cause that a crime had been committed and put their “cards on the table.” He summed up the four-day hearing as “heavy-handed prosecutorial action” and predicted that the prosecutor’s house of cards was going to fall.
Constance chimed in, offering a new reason for why Kristin stayed so long in the apartment even when she was so unhappy: She was scared of Greg’s temper. He was acting so obsessively with Kristin that it had risen to the level of emotional abuse.
“It’s a cycle of abuse,” she said, referring to the domestic violence that Greg’s mother described in her divorce papers. “Women stay too long.”
Ralph said they’d asked Kristin if Greg was beating her, and she’d said no. Nonetheless, Constance said, “We were afraid he would go berserk.”
Asked whether their daughter could be lying to them, Constance was quick to respond. “No,” she declared.
Ralph agreed, describing how upset Kristin was when she called him from the hospital on the night of Greg’s death, how she sobbed uncontrollably all the way home that night. Anyone could hear the anguish in her voice on the 911 tape, he said.
“Kristin’s ability was as a ballet dancer, not as an actress,” he said.
Chapter 15
Chris Elliott, Kristin’s friend who had finished medical school in New York by the time the preliminary hearing had ended, felt bad for Kristin and her family. He’d written the Rossums a letter sympathizing with their situation. He just couldn’t see Kristin as a killer.
“Obviously, something weird happened, but if you ask me, ‘Do I think Kristin could be capable of murder?’ the answer is no,” he said, even with factors such as methamphetamine in the picture. “Could it push her over the edge? No, I don’t think so.”
When he first heard that Greg had died, he sent Kristin a letter saying he was sorry for her loss. Later, when he learned Kristin had been accused of murder, his first thought was, “Are you kidding me?”
He remembered how nurturing she was to her little brothers, the people she cared about. He wondered if maybe she used drugs because she was insecure or wanted to be a part of something. Maybe to lose weight. A lot of things could have happened to her in the five years since he’d last seen her.
Kristin wrote him back from jail, describing how unreal her life was and how grateful she was for support from her family and friends. Elliott sent her several books from Amazon.com: The Road Less Traveled, because the first sentence reads, “Life is difficult”; The Artist’s Way, because he saw it as a primer for regaining creativity through adversity; and Naked, because it made him laugh out loud.
“I can’t really promise you that she’s innocent, but I’m not afraid of her. I’d still hang out with her,” he said. “A lot of people do drugs, and they’re not murderers.”
District Attorney Paul Pfingst, who was running for reelection in the March 2002 primary, announced on November 9, 2001 that he would not seek the death penalty against Kristin. Instead, he decided to go for the lesser sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Pfingst would not explain his reasoning, which only encouraged speculation by Kristin’s attorneys and the legal community, which was watching the high-profile case closely.
Loebig and Eriksen speculated that Pfingst’s decision stemmed from three factors: Kristin was a young woman with no record; this was a circumstantial case; and the alleged act was not nearly as heinous as those in previous local death penalty cases.
“I think it was a deliberate and fair consideration,” Loebig said. “For all parties concerned, they made the right choice.”
Ralph and Constance said this decision would help the defense attorneys focus all their attention on the murder trial without the distraction of a subsequent trial on whether Kristin should get a death sentence.
“It’s also good because it means that jurors who may be riding the fence can’t split the difference by saying I’ll vote to convict, but not on the [death penalty],” Ralph said.
Rick Hogrefe, the head of TriLink, was delighted and relieved.
“Thank God,” Hogrefe said. “I fully expected this from the beginning. This case is already, in my eyes, so weak. If they went for the death penalty, I think no jury would even consider it.”
Others in the legal community speculated privately that it could be difficult to obtain a conviction and a death sentence in San Diego against such a pretty, young, educated white woman from a relatively affluent family. Some suggested that Pfingst did not want to take a risk on such a big case during an election year.
Goldstein explained later that he had recommended Pfingst go with the lesser sentence because Kristin didn’t have a criminal record, and “the murder, though terrible, [wa]sn’t egregious in the sense of maiming, torture,” or multiple killings. Plus, he said, her meth use would be viewed as a mitigating factor, and juries had a more difficult time putting women to death. After all, he said, life without parole was a “pretty severe punishment.” Goldstein, who was also running in the March primary for a judge’s seat, said Pfingst had never used the death penalty as a political tool. Plus, he said, Pfingst never would have overruled him, because that would have forced his removal as prosecutor.
Pfingst, a Republican who had been in office for eight years, had unseated an incumbent of twenty-four years after winning a nationally recognized murder case he prosecuted against California Highway Patrol Officer Craig Peyer. But his honeymoon was long over, and he was in a tough race against three challengers, including an openly gay judge named Bonnie Dumanis, a Democrat who went on to win the seat in November 2002.
San Diego was not the conservative military town it used to be. The electorate—and jury pool—had evolved, although the city still had its share of conservative thinkers who weren’t giving up their small-town mindset without a fight.
San Diego County, which had a population of 2.8 million, had grown up since the days when its economy depended largely on the defense and tourism industries. Although the military remained a major presence in the region, the burgeoning biotech and high-tech industries had helped to diversify it economically and politically. Meanwhile, the region’s racial makeup shifted as the minority communities continued to grow. Changes in urban areas of the region were mirrored in the makeup of the San Diego City Council, where politically conservative Republicans no longer represented a majority. The suburban and rural unincorporated areas, however, were still voting for a full slate of white Republicans on the county Board of Supervisors.
At the time that Pfingst announced his decision in Kristin’s case, he was under fire from many of his own prosecutors, who had registered a no-confidence vote in his leadership. During his tenure, one of his top prosecutors was convicted of fraud for conducting a real-estate business out of the DA’s Office. An internal investigation was sparked after a jailhouse informant and his wife said a DA investigator allowed them to have late-night sex—and take nude photos—for two years in the office in exchange for the informant’s testimony against gang members accused of killing a police officer. Pfingst’s office was also accused of botching a high-profile murder case involving the stabbing of a twelve-year-old girl, and Pfingst himself was accused of being anti-Semitic and of being unethical for failing to prosecute political corruption more aggressively. Pfingst denied all the allegations, saying he’d fallen victim to “the most sleazy and vile” campaign in the county’s history.
The Rossums weren’t able to pull together the bond package before Christmas as they’d hoped. It wasn’t until the afternoon of January 4, 2002, that Constance, Ralph, and their youngest son, Pierce, came to Las Colinas to take Kristin home in their silver Mercedes.
The Rossums tried to downplay their affluence and touted their humble beginnings to the media. But they were able to put up a $1.25 million bail bond, which meant they were out a nonrefundable deposit, which constituted up to 10 percent of the total amount paid to the bail bondsman.
They explained that the bond had been backed by cash, stocks, bonds, and three homes—theirs and both of Kristin’s grandmothers’—as well as by their sons’ investment accounts. They said seventeen friends also pledged money market funds, stocks, and bonds. Because the bail was so high, Loebig said the Rossums were able to work out a lower deposit fee, something closer to $80,000 than $125,000.
Ralph told reporters that the family didn’t think Kristin was a flight risk but said, “If she were to flee, it would ruin Constance and me financially.”
Kristin’s boss, Rick Hogrefe, was by far the most generous contributor to the defense fund. “Without Hogrefe, we wouldn’t be here today,” Ralph said.
Putting a good face on Kristin’s future, Ralph said she’d already asked to order graduate exams in chemistry and physics because she wanted to get a Ph.D. and run a lab. But until the trial was resolved and she was acquitted, those plans would have to be placed on hold.
Ralph said his daughter was a victim of malicious prosecution, something that would never happen in Los Angeles. But in San Diego, he said, the Police Department and District Attorney’s Office seemed prone to glom on to facts, even when faced with information to the contrary, picking and choosing from among the evidence.