Poisoned Love

by Caitlin Rother

  Petrachek said he hadn’t seen any e-mails from Kristin asking Michael about fentanyl or that mentioned harming or drugging Greg.

  Laurie Shriber, whose kids grew up playing with the de Villers boys in Palm Springs, testified that Bertrand had called her son at 1 A.M. on November 7 to tell him the sad news. Shriber said she was “truly beside” herself and wanted to hear what happened directly from Kristin, so she called her later that day.

  “She said he took an overdose of over-the-counter sleeping pills,” Shriber recalled.

  “Are you sure she said ‘over-the-counter sleeping pills’?” Goldstein asked.

  “She did not say ‘overdose,’” Shriber said, correcting herself. “She said ‘over-the-counter sleeping pills.’”

  Shriber said she was “uncomfortable with the conversation” because Greg wasn’t one to take drugs, not even Tylenol.

  John Knowlton, Vons’s corporate security manager, confirmed that his company’s computer records showed which items Kristin purchased on November 6, including the single rose.

  But on cross-examination by Eriksen, Knowlton acknowledged that Vons sold single roses in many different colors and their system didn’t identify the color at the register.

  “Is there any way possible you can investigate further and determine the color of that rose that was purchased in this transaction?” Eriksen asked.

  “No, sir.”

  Kristin got to spend her twenty-sixth birthday on trial for murder, listening to her first diary being read aloud by Detective Laurie Agnew, who noted that none of the entries mentioned Kristin’s drug use or the men she was e-mailing—Joe Rizzo, Dan Dewall and Michael Robertson.

  Goldstein asked Agnew to read the entry in which Kristin complained about Greg’s lack of support and his obsession with whether Michael was going to the SOFT conference in Milwaukee. Agnew also read the one in which Kristin complained about her mother’s guilt trip after Kristin tried to call off the wedding.

  The detective identified the torn-up items Michael threw away in the trash after police searched his apartment in Hillcrest, including a photo of him and Kristin’s Rottweiler puppy. Agnew read aloud one of the ripped letters, in which Kristin told Michael their souls had “melted together.”

  As Goldstein played the tape of Kristin’s police interview for the jury, Kristin cried and fidgeted in her chair. Afterward, Eriksen raised the same issues with Agnew that came up when the defense previously tried to get Thompson to throw out the tape. Agnew acknowledged that when she called Kristin to ask her to come down for an interview, she didn’t say they were looking at her as a suspect, nor did she tell Kristin that she might want to consider consulting an attorney. Agnew also acknowledged that she didn’t tell Kristin she was being videotaped during the interview, though she noticed that Kristin kept looking at the camera, which was in plain sight.

  Eriksen asked if Agnew ever thought to have Greg’s hands tested for the presence of rose petal residue. No, Agnew said. They did test the empty vial of fentanyl citrate for fingerprints, she said, but were unable to get an identifiable print. She also acknowledged that she found no evidence that Kristin would have benefited financially from Greg’s death.

  The defense attorney tried to punch through the motive the prosecution gave Kristin for murdering Greg by asking Agnew to confirm that early on Kristin had admitted to police many of the facts being used against her—her past use of clonazepam, oxycodone, and methamphetamine; her love for Michael; and her admission of Greg’s ultimatum. But Agnew maintained the prosecution’s position—that Kristin told police more half-truths than whole truths and only admitted to the incriminating facts of the case after being confronted with evidence she couldn’t deny.

  Eriksen and Goldstein used their questions to Agnew to argue the semantics and veracity of Kristin’s statements to police, whom she initially told that she had only a “drug history” and was having only an “emotional relationship” with Michael.

  Jerome de Villers was the prosecution’s last witness. His memory was better than it had been during the preliminary hearing, but he still seemed to have trouble recalling certain things. Goldstein had to tell him several times to listen to his questions more carefully. Loebig objected, saying the prosecutor was leading the witness.

  At the end of the day, after the jury had been excused and the courtroom had mostly cleared out, Goldstein broached a subject with Thompson that had been troubling him for days. The judge didn’t realize that a reporter or two were still lingering in the back of the courtroom.

  Throughout his opening statement and during witness testimony, Goldstein said, Kristin had been making comments such as “I didn’t do that” and “No, I didn’t.” It irked him, to say the least.

  “Your Honor, I have been fairly patient during this trial about the defendant’s conduct in this courtroom,” he said. “In twelve or thirteen years experience in doing cases, I’ve had very few defendants chipping at me during opening statement. I think defense counsel noted it. I don’t know if Your Honor did.”

  “I did,” Thompson replied.

  “It’s been going on throughout this trial,” Goldstein continued. “This last witness, the defendant became actively engaged with during examination, shaking her head, saying, ‘No.’ It’s audible now. I realize she’s going to take the stand. She’s entitled to her own defense. I don’t object to that. My witnesses have not gone up and directed anything at her personally. They have been instructed not to do it. She’s interfering with the court process. She’s done this throughout the trial. I ask the court, even though this is our last witness, to tell her to stop, knock it off. This is the victim’s brother who is on the stand, who doesn’t deserve this type of conduct.”

  Loebig tried to deflect Goldstein’s allegations. “Your Honor, I’m going to accept that in absolute good faith. But I was sitting next to her. While I was busy writing, I didn’t observe much other than her reacting to some degree and trying to communicate with me, so I trust the court’s judgment.”

  “Anything further?” Thompson asked.

  “No,” Goldstein said.

  “All right,” Thompson said definitively, looking straight at Kristin. “Don’t do it again.”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” Kristin said.

  “You are smiling at jurors,” Thompson told her. “It’s absolute bullshit. I think it’s really hurting you. I don’t think they’re buying it for a second. It’s up to you. You are to have no contact with any witnesses one way or the other.”

  As Thompson started walking toward his chambers, Kristin stood up defiantly, hands on her hips, her mouth agape, and started crying. She turned to Loebig, touched her hands to her chest, and said something like, “I didn’t do anything.”

  Thompson could not believe Kristin would even try to deny the inappropriate behavior. He’d seen her smiling at jurors, and he’d seen her shaking her head or mouthing “No” at them while witnesses were testifying. He’d never seen such a conscious and improper effort to manipulate a jury, but it fit with the testimony about the behaviors Kristin had exhibited throughout much of her life. And now that she’d made him angry by trying to avoid responsibility for her actions, he was going to put a stop to it.

  “Don’t sit there and tell me you are not doing it,” Thompson exclaimed. “I’m not a fucking idiot.”

  Kristin didn’t say another word.

  The judge stormed out of the courtroom and was barely in his chambers before he heard his outburst being reported on the radio. It was all over the television news that night and again in the morning. The broadcasters couldn’t repeat the expletives, but they made it clear that he’d thrown curse words at the defendant.

  The next morning, before the bailiff let the jury back into the courtroom, Thompson apologized for his language, but not for the admonition he felt that Kristin and her parents, who were about to testify, needed to hear.

  “Before we get started today, I think it’s appropriate for me to address my comm
ents of yesterday,” Thompson said. “I want to apologize for the use of the words for those who were present at that time. I will not apologize for the message that was delivered. The activity that was alluded to was taking place, and it needs to stop.”

  Looking over at the defense table, Thompson said, “I frankly didn’t think your client was getting it when I admonished her at the beginning of the trial. I think yesterday she got the point. That was my only intention. To the extent anyone was offended by the language that was used, I apologize. But, as I said, I will not apologize for the message.”

  With that, he told the bailiff to let the jury in for the morning session.

  “Got a count? Roll ’em.”

  Jerome testified that he went over to Kristin’s apartment after Greg’s memorial service on November 12 and noticed that all of the photographs of Greg had been taken down. He also didn’t see any of Greg’s clothing around. But he was most upset by the sight of Greg’s sandals in the trash outside. This seemed strange, Jerome said, because Kristin seemed to be in such a hurry to leave her parents’ house on November 7 so she could return to the apartment and be close to Greg’s things.

  On cross-examination, Loebig tried to establish that Kristin looked healthy and drug free when Jerome saw her at Aaron Wallo’s wedding several weeks before Greg’s death. He also tried to show that Greg had not been open with his family or friends about his marital problems or how upset he was about them, but rather had been doing his best to pretend everything was fine.

  Jerome said he wasn’t surprised when Greg said at the wedding that he wanted to buy a house. Kristin had mentioned wanting a dog, and an apartment wasn’t the place for one. But Jerome said he was surprised when Greg said he was thinking of having kids.

  “And isn’t it true that Kristin Rossum, when she was seated at that table and heard Greg say he wanted kids, said, ‘I’m not ready now’?” Loebig asked.

  “She didn’t say it like that,” Jerome said. “It was after that. I talked to her. She said, ‘I’m not ready to have kids.’”

  The first Jerome said he heard of any marital problems was on November 7 at the Rossums’ house, when Kristin mentioned that Greg had been upset because she wouldn’t stop seeing a “past relationship.”

  “Greg had never mentioned anything at all about a trial separation or a suggestion by Kristin they separate and live in different residences?” Loebig asked.

  “No,” Jerome said.

  “Do you remember stating at the preliminary hearing, ‘My brother was taken by her. He was always defending her. I’m not sure if he was in love—addicted or really in love with her. He stopped hanging out with Chris and I. It was only the two of them’?”

  Jerome said he couldn’t remember saying that but acknowledged that the transcript said he did.

  On redirect, Goldstein steered the focus back to Kristin’s efforts to hide her affair and renewed meth use. No, Jerome said, Kristin never admitted to having an affair with Michael Robertson or to using drugs again.

  “I actually asked her if she was using drugs because it was pretty obvious to me that she was using something,” Jerome said. “She told me she was skinny because of ephedrine…. I think it’s a weight loss medication.”

  Loebig tried to get Jerome to say that Kristin wasn’t trying all that hard to hide her drug use. But Jerome didn’t bite.

  “Did you know, from your study in biology, that ephedrine is a precursor to amphetamine or methamphetamine?”

  “No,” Jerome said.

  Chapter 18

  Kristin’s defense attorneys started putting on their case on October 29, day eleven of the trial. They led off with Douglas O’Dell, the UCSD police officer who videotaped the apartment with Jones the morning after Greg died and then tried to call Orbigen to retrieve a copy of the voice mail Kristin said she’d left the day before.

  By presenting evidence that Greg’s number seemed to be the first one the public would try at Orbigen, Eriksen characterized Kristin’s call to Greg’s voice mail as an innocent mistake, not the sinister act portrayed by the prosecution. Stefan Gruenwald later said that the public would actually reach Terry Huang if they called Orbigen’s main number.

  Next up was Bob Sutton, the autopsy room supervisor who was in charge of watching over the refrigerated blood, urine, and stomach specimens before they were hand delivered to Frank Barnhart at the sheriff’s crime lab to send out for toxicology testing.

  Eriksen used Sutton to establish that security over those samples was just as lax during the thirty-six hours they sat in his refrigerator as it had been over the drugs stored in the toxicology lab.

  “Who had access to the contents of that refrigerator?” Eriksen asked.

  “Anybody that would have a key to the building,” Sutton said.

  “So virtually anybody that worked there in some capacity above, say, student worker, who were issued keys in connection with their employment, could have gotten into that refrigerator and into the contents. Is that correct?”

  “They could have, yes,” Sutton said.

  Eriksen was implying that anyone—including Kristin or Michael—could have snuck in, possibly at night, and spiked the samples with a lethal amount of drugs other than fentanyl to throw off the toxicology tests, but that no one did.

  On cross-examination, Hendren tried to protect his chain of evidence from taint and asked Sutton to run through the steps he’d taken to track the whereabouts of the samples. Sutton described where he’d placed them in the refrigerator and said he saw no indication they’d been moved or opened.

  Hendren then switched his focus to Michael’s unusual behavior the morning after Greg died. Michael was typically happy-go-lucky and joking around, Sutton said, but that morning he was “very serious and just seemed fidgety.” He’d never seen Michael that way before.

  “How many times, from the time Mr. Robertson started up until November 7, did you see Michael Robertson present a case?” Hendren asked.

  “None,” Sutton said.

  “So the very first time that you ever saw Mr. Robertson present a case at a meeting was on November 7, the day after Mr. de Villers died, with Mr. de Villers’s case?”

  “Correct.”

  Next, Eriksen called Jean Wilson, a realtor from Del Mar, a small coastal town just north of La Jolla. Eriksen called Wilson to back up Ralph and Constance’s story that they were so worried about Greg’s bizarre behavior during dinner at the Prado that they went out the next morning to look for a condominium for Kristin. But Wilson’s testimony seemed to help the prosecution’s case more than Kristin’s.

  Wilson testified that the Rossums walked into her office and “said that they were looking for a property, probably a town house…perhaps a semiretirement home for them.” They asked what coastal properties were available, and she gave them listings for several small cities to the north.

  Eriksen asked Wilson whether the Rossums told her they were looking for a place for their daughter or that she would live there until they retired. No, she said, they didn’t.

  On cross-examination, Goldstein asked what kind of mood the Rossums were in that day.

  They seemed to be “very relaxed” and enjoying themselves in Del Mar, she said. “[It] seemed like life was very pleasant for them.”

  “One of the reasons why they said they wanted to move down here was to be closer to their daughter. Is that correct?” Goldstein asked.

  “Their daughter and son-in-law,” Wilson said.

  “They specifically said and their son-in-law, is that correct?”

  “Yes, they did.”

  On redirect, Eriksen asked Wilson whether she showed the Rossums any properties. No, she said, they took the listings, and she assumed they would drive around and look at them on their own. She left them a message the following week but didn’t get a response until a week after that. Constance called to say she was sorry, but they’d decided not to relocate after all because their “son-in-law had died unexpectedly.”
/>
  Kelly Christianson, Kristin’s supervisor in the Oligo group lab at TriLink, had attended the preliminary hearing and sat with the Rossums. Now, called as a witness for the defense, she smiled when Eriksen asked if she knew Kristin, whom she described in glowing terms.

  Christianson said she was among those who interviewed the young toxicologist and decided that based on her resume and their first impressions, they would hire her right away to run the HPLC machine and do other lab work. Kristin, she said, was friendly to everyone and always upbeat. When Kristin’s coworkers talked about getting rid of a particularly annoying colleague, Kristin was the one who urged them to give him another chance.

  Eriksen asked Christianson the same series of questions he would ask most, if not all, the character witnesses who would testify in Kristin’s defense. Had she seen Kristin lose her temper, act violently, or talk about hurting anybody? No, Christianson replied.

  On cross-examination, Christianson acknowledged that Kristin didn’t mention during her interview that she was fired from the Medical Examiner’s Office.

  “She indicated to you or suggested to you that she quit the Medical Examiner’s Office?” Hendren asked.

  “I guess so, yeah. I don’t know.”

  “Did she put on her resume that she had been fired from the Medical Examiner’s Office?”

  “I doubt it, but I don’t recall.”

  “How did you know that she wasn’t telling you the truth…?”

  “Because I now know why she left,” she said.

  “How do you know?”

  “What the newspapers say.”

  “Is that how you found out?”

  “I think so first, yeah.”

  Hendren then ran her through a long series of questions concerning all the other things Kristin had neglected to tell her or had lied about during the six months they worked together and later, when Christianson visited her in jail. The cumulative effect of the questions and answers was an impression that Christianson knew very little about the true Kristin Rossum. Hendren and Goldstein would use the same tactic with the other character witnesses.