Poisoned Love

by Caitlin Rother

  On redirect, Loebig tried to show that Kristin had not disrespected Greg’s memory by throwing away his things as Jerome had testified. Loebig produced a police photo taken during the search on January 4, 2001, proving that several pictures featuring Greg were still on the mantle. Another police photo showed Greg’s clothes were still hanging in the closet. Kristin testified that she didn’t give away any of his clothes until she moved to the studio apartment in Golden Hill in April 2001. She also testified that Greg was the one who had thrown away his Nike sandals—because the straps were broken.

  She said she’d called Armando Garcia on her home phone because she couldn’t make an international call on her new cell phone. She’d tried.

  Asked again about the statement she made to Teddy Maya about being driven around in a trunk in Mexico, Kristin admitted that she did, in fact, tell him “some cockamamie story” like that.

  “It was an easy way to make me feel less guilty about running out on him, because I had hurt him so badly,” she said.

  She said she’d never used Greg’s iMac computer at home because all of her disks were formatted to use a different type of computer, but he had used her work computer the night before they went shopping for Halloween costumes.

  Kristin contended that Greg said he couldn’t live without her and went to bed for the weekend after she told him about her feelings for Michael during the summer—the same behavior he’d exhibited the weekend before he died.

  Loebig asked Kristin straight out whether she’d made any agreement with Michael to kill Greg.

  “Absolutely not,” she said.

  “Did you, with or without Michael Robertson, kill your husband?”

  “I wouldn’t hurt Greg,” she said.

  Goldstein still had more questions. “Have you ever staged a suicide before?” he asked.

  When she said no, he brought up the razor-blade incident in 1993, asking her if that didn’t fit the description.

  “I was acting out as a teenager,” she replied. “I was feeling so guilty for what I was putting my parents through that I believe I said something like, ‘You would be better off without me.’”

  But then, she said, “I realized how stupid I was being…. And then I couldn’t go through with it even if I wanted to. So call it a feigned attempt; call [it]—I don’t know what.”

  “You knew that you weren’t going to kill yourself, correct?”

  “I felt like I wanted to.”

  Goldstein asked if her mother had called her a slut and told her she was worthless. Kristin said she didn’t recall her mother’s specific words, “just that very hurtful things were said.”

  On redirect, Loebig revealed the big surprise he’d saved for last: new information about the rose Kristin bought at Vons the day Greg died. The rose that she bought on November 6, he asked, “What color was that?”

  “Yellow with peach tipping,” Kristin said.

  Goldstein followed up, asking her to go over one more time what happened to the rose petals she found on Greg’s chest in bed. She said they “came off with him when [she] pulled him off the bed” to the floor, because “they were fresh and had weight to them.”

  Goldstein asked if she’d ever told Detective Agnew that she’d bought a yellow rose at Vons. No, Kristin said.

  In fact, she never told Agnew she’d bought a rose at all, did she? No, Kristin said.

  “How do we know it was a yellow rose?” Goldstein asked.

  “We don’t,” Kristin said. “…I know that.”

  Loebig objected, saying Goldstein was being argumentative. Thompson struck both the question and Kristin’s answer.

  Kristin said she’d bought the rose to give to Michael that afternoon because they’d been arguing all day. In their “little lingo” for roses, she said, yellow stood for friendship.

  Chapter 20

  With the Rossums’ testimony over, the prosecution started calling its rebuttal witnesses to dispute or clarify new points of evidence presented by the defense.

  First up was Sergeant Howard Williams, Detective Agnew’s boss, to show that the Rossums had, in fact, been given the opportunity to talk to police about information they thought could help their daughter. Williams said he left a message at the Rossums’ house in Claremont on July 16, 2001, after Kristin’s arraignment, saying he wanted to hear anything they thought might help the investigation. He said Ralph returned his call, but informed him they’d been advised by counsel not to speak to the police.

  On cross-examination by Eriksen, Williams admitted that he never tried to contact the Rossums before Kristin was arrested, even after learning they were the last people other than Kristin to see Greg alive.

  The next witness was Theodore “Teddy” Maya, who had become an associate at a law firm and looked very uncomfortable testifying as a prosecution witness in his former girlfriend’s murder trial.

  Maya testified that Kristin didn’t look like herself when they met at the motel in Redlands on Christmas night in 1994. She left the next morning without saying good-bye, he said, while he was in the shower. Some weeks later, he said, she called him and “said she had been kidnapped and taken [to Mexico]…I believe at gunpoint in the trunk of a car.”

  On cross-examination, Maya said Kristin admitted to using speed. He said he didn’t buy the kidnapping story, and he’d thought they’d been dating each other exclusively.

  The next witness was Officer Larry Horowitz, who had since left the police department in Claremont for the one in Arcadia. Since Horowitz was the officer who wrote the police reports about Kristin’s brushes with the law as a teenager, Hendren asked Horowitz to recount the events and observations for the record and to repeat the comments that Constance made to him—including the ones about the knife and razor blades that she tried to deny on the stand.

  Horowitz also made it clear that Constance was present and watching as he arrested and handcuffed Kristin, put her in his squad car, and drove her away to the station in January 1994. Hendren asked if Horowitz ever told Constance that Kristin was not under arrest or suggested that to her in some way. No, Horowitz said.

  On cross, Eriksen asked Horowitz if he had taped his interview with Kristin. No, Horowitz said, he took notes. Had Horowitz explained to the Rossums that Kristin’s trip to the station would not represent a formal arrest for future purposes? No, he said. Had he let them know that he wasn’t bringing her to Juvenile Hall? Horowitz said that was implied when they picked her up at the police station.

  On redirect, Hendren asked Horowitz if Kristin, Constance, and Ralph had all said that Kristin cut her wrists, not that she tried to cut them, and also if both Constance and Ralph mentioned that Kristin had used a knife. Horowitz answered yes to both questions.

  Next, Hendren called Marie de Villers to the stand for just two questions, one of which was to confirm that Greg was her son. The second one had to do with the claims of domestic violence by Yves against Marie, to which Kristin had referred during her testimony.

  “Did your husband—ex-husband—Mr. Yves de Villers, ever in any way, shape, or form hit you or injure you or make domestic violence upon you in any way?” Hendren asked.

  “Never,” Marie said.

  Eriksen said he had no questions for Marie.

  After Marie stepped down, Thompson explained to the jurors that they had heard all the evidence in the case. The law required him to meet with the attorneys for an hour or so after lunch to discuss jury instructions, which he would deliver that afternoon. Closing arguments were to begin the next morning, and he expected the case to go to the jury by the end of the week, though he would let the panel decide if it wanted to deliberate on Friday afternoon. Since Monday was a court holiday, deliberations would continue the following Tuesday.

  Midway through Kristin’s testimony, Eriksen could feel himself getting sick, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. He’d been so busy with the case, he’d forgotten to get a flu shot. And now, with his immune system strained by the long hou
rs and stress of the trial, he’d gone and caught a nasty flu bug.

  He and Loebig discussed asking the judge for a delay in their closing argument so Eriksen could give the statement he’d worked so long to prepare, but Loebig wanted to move ahead. He thought Thompson might not allow a delay because there were two defense attorneys. The jurors had been coming every day for a month, and Loebig didn’t think it was a good idea to make them wait for the defense’s closing; they might feel irritated or inconvenienced. And finally, he thought the jury might view a delay caused by Eriksen’s absence as an indication that he had no confidence in the defense’s case.

  Eriksen didn’t argue. His nose and eyes were running, and he couldn’t even think straight. Before going home to collapse, he stayed late at the office to finish typing up the ten single-spaced pages of information he’d been planning to relay to the jury. And he left it up to Loebig to do the rest.

  It was pretty unusual for an attorney to call in sick for a closing, and it was also unusual for there to be two attorneys on a case, so it was even more rare for those two phenomena to coincide. Eriksen apologized to the Rossums right before the verdict, but he said later that the fact that Loebig’s closing argument was shorter than they would have liked seemed to bother them more than Eriksen’s absence.

  Once Eriksen recovered, he felt terrible about not being able to be there to finish the job that he’d started.

  “I’d put so much into the trial and the case and then was unavailable at the attorney’s time to shine,” he said.

  The jury was excused while Judge Thompson listened to what attorneys from both sides had to say about which instructions the panel should be given. Goldstein did not participate in the discussion so that he could put the finishing touches on his closing argument back in his office. Loebig announced that Eriksen had gone home sick.

  Hendren argued that the jury should hear a series of instructions concerning conspiracies.

  “It’s the people’s position that Michael Robertson is an uncharged, unindicted coconspirator in this case,” he said. “Theoretically, some of the jurors could conclude that Michael Robertson may have administered the lethal amount of fentanyl to the victim. If he did so, it’s the people’s contention that he did so in conjunction with Ms. Rossum as part of a conspiracy to kill her husband. They both had the same motive.”

  Loebig strongly objected, but Thompson said there was “sufficient evidence to suggest that a conspiracy could be presumed.”

  While the discussion was going on, Hendren spoke to Goldstein on the phone in the courtroom about a matter that had come up over the lunch break. Goldstein was so angry, he was about ready to dismiss the case, and he could be heard yelling on the other end of the phone. Thompson said he’d better come over to the courthouse.

  Once Goldstein arrived, Thompson explained for the record that the court had just received a date-stamped copy of Marie de Villers’s divorce papers from 1981, which “completely contradicted” her brief testimony that Yves had never physically abused her. Kristin’s attorneys wanted a chance to present this information to the jury before the panel got its instructions. Thompson said he’d allow both sides to argue their positions.

  Goldstein now regretted that they’d called Marie to testify. He’d made his career out of prosecuting domestic violence cases, and he knew victims often recanted. Now that he was about to leave the District Attorney’s Office to become a judge, the irony was not lost on him that the last witness he would ever call to the stand was a woman who claimed abuse and then recanted.

  Goldstein told Thompson that Eriksen and Loebig were the most honest defense attorneys he’d ever dealt with, but they’d never turned over Marie’s divorce papers as part of discovery.

  “He had his chance to cross[-examine] her, and they rested,” Goldstein said. “[Loebig]’s been an attorney for twenty-five years. Why give him a chance to reopen?”

  Loebig said he was led to believe that Marie wasn’t going to be called as a witness, so he didn’t bring the divorce papers with him for the prosecution to examine.

  “When she was called, we were surprised,” he said. Loebig had reviewed the documents during the lunch hour to confirm that they contradicted her testimony and then notified the court.

  “I had no intention of impeaching this poor woman,” Loebig said, but he also had no idea she would say what she did. “I have never seen such clear evidence of perjury in such short testimony.” He noted that no one wanted the jury to consider such evidence, which he called “poison to the system.”

  Thompson said it would be “naïve to conclude” that statements made in petitions to obtain restraining orders “are always completely accurate.” It was possible, he said, that her attorney typed up the petition, and she, still new to this country and its language, just signed it.

  The judge gave the attorneys a choice: the defense could recall Marie and question her about her testimony, both sides could stipulate that she signed court papers stating that the abuse occurred, or they could strike her testimony. The attorneys agreed on the first option.

  With Eriksen home sick, Loebig asked Thompson if it would be okay for the court to recess after Goldstein’s closing argument on Wednesday, and then if Eriksen was feeling better on Thursday, he could deliver the closing, which the two defense attorneys had intended to split. If Eriksen was still sick, Loebig said he would do the entire closing on Thursday as scheduled.

  Goldstein asked Thompson if he could be excused to get back to polishing up his closing, so he could be “artful.” Thompson jokingly said that Goldstein had plenty of time to work on it.

  “Shit, damn near eighteen hours,” Thompson said, laughing.

  After the break, Marie was recalled to the stand, and Loebig showed her the divorce papers she’d filed, with her signature, in 1981. She said she recognized her signature but said she did not remember making the statement about Yves hitting her in the face. And that was that.

  Thompson read the jury its instructions, then excused the panel until the morning.

  Afterward, Marie told her civil attorney, Craig McClellan, that Yves never hit her and that she never told her divorce attorney that he did.

  Goldstein gave his closing argument on November 6, two years to the day after Greg died in the couple’s apartment. The prosecutor reviewed the timeline of the events leading up to Greg’s death, summarized the prosecution’s most incriminating evidence against Kristin, and then tried to punch holes through her explanations, one by one.

  First of all, he said, there aren’t always two sides to every story, but the truth always makes sense.

  “Either Greg de Villers killed himself or he was murdered,” he said. “There is no ambiguity,…it wasn’t a cry for help,” and Greg wasn’t trying to frame Kristin.

  The defense, he said, portrayed Greg’s behavior as bizarre and as a motive for suicide, but in reality it was just the opposite. Greg was a regular, steady, nice guy who worked really hard, came home to his wife, and didn’t do drugs. Kristin, on the other hand, had a history of doing drugs, lying, stealing, and cheating on the men in her life, behavior the defense used as an explanation for her conduct, when, in fact, it was illegal, immoral, and led to murder.

  Kristin Rossum, he said, destroyed two families, the Medical Examiner’s Office, and “a great guy” named Greg de Villers.

  “Both families have suffered at the hands of the defendant and her narcissism and her self-centered behavior,” he said.

  Goldstein did not try to describe a specific scenario for how Kristin poisoned Greg, suggesting only that she could have administered the fentanyl by using patches or a syringe or hiding it in something he ate or drank.

  “Who knows,” he said. “She’s the expert. He didn’t just die and fade away…. The defendant chose to play God.”

  Flashing Greg’s photo up on the screen, the prosecutor described the young man’s death as untimely and most unpleasant. On this day two years ago, he said, Greg was breathing s
hallowly, and his bladder and lungs were filling up with fluid. He was so drugged that he couldn’t even reach down to pick up the phone right next to his bed. Meanwhile, in Michael Robertson’s office, Kristin was crying and “they’re talking about what she’s doing to Greg de Villers…. She’s stressed out of her mind. Her world is collapsing.” Kristin and Michael left the office and were unaccounted for for at least two hours that afternoon.

  Goldstein spun around and pointed to the empty chair behind Kristin and her attorneys, saying Michael Robertson might as well be sitting there because he and Kristin were working together and they wanted Greg dead.

  The truth makes sense, he said, but Kristin’s story doesn’t. Kristin’s motive for killing Greg was to prevent him from exposing her affair and her drug use. And, if that didn’t seem like a strong enough motive for murder, he said to the jury, “I’d ask you—when is a motive good enough for murder?…There’s never a good reason to kill…. This is the oldest one in the book—killing for love…killing for drugs.”

  Kristin lied to the police about her drug use and her affair, he said, she and her boyfriend hid evidence, and she used the tools of her trade as a toxicologist to kill Greg. The drugs she used recreationally and to murder her husband were later found missing from the Medical Examiner’s Office.

  “Coincidence?” he asked. “No, theft.”

  Goldstein said Kristin’s parents were “pretty good people…[who] did a lot for their daughter,” but at points during the trial, “it would be fair to say they have been untruthful.”

  Kristin uses stimulants as a crutch when she gets into trouble, he said. She manipulates people and situations, she’s deceitful, and she staged her own suicide as a teenager. She picks at her knuckles until they bleed and pulls her own nails off.

  “That’s the power of methamphetamine,” he said.