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

  When Kristin’s youngest brother Pierce came in after washing his car, he was surprised to see Greg sitting on a couch, watching the ten-minute videotape, over and over again.

  “I said, ‘Come on, Greg, let’s play,’ ” Pierce remembered. “He said, ‘Come on. Let me watch this.’ ”

  A couple of weeks later, Kristin and Greg cancelled a long-planned camping trip with Jerome and Bertrand at the last minute, saying they couldn’t afford to go. But on September 2, they drove to Thousand Oaks for Greg’s mother’s birthday, and after going out for dinner, they stayed the night.

  Although the three de Villers brothers were now spread across California, they kept in close touch via telephone and e-mail. Greg talked to Jerome and Bertrand once or twice a week, always appearing positive about his marriage. He still talked enthusiastically of having kids with Kristin and moving to a large house one day. And they never realized his problems with Kristin until it was too late.

  Greg’s main topic of conversation was his new job at Orbigen and how well it was all going.

  “He was real excited about it,” said Jerome. “I kind of got the impression he thought he had a good chance to get in, start with a small company, and make it big.”

  On Saturday, September 9, Kristin began writing a personal journal, trying to make sense of her convoluted life by examining her innermost feelings. She described it as “a journey of self-discovery,” although it never once mentioned her affair with Robertson or her relapse into drugs. Later, prosecutors would claim the cliché-ridden journal was written solely for Greg’s benefit, as the beginning of an elaborate cover-up for the perfect murder.

  “I want to learn about myself,” she began in her neat, precise handwriting. “A deeper understanding of who I am...”

  Her life, she wrote, had been a “roller-coaster of highs and lows.” And now that she had come to rest in a “stable, secure” relationship, she questioned why she was still unfulfilled and feeling like a prisoner.

  “Why do I yearn for more?” she asked. “Am I seeking out a fairytale existence that just doesn’t happen in real life?” She mourned the loss of her carefree life and wondered how she had come, one year into her marriage, to such an unsettling turning point. Was she wrong to still be looking for the perfect “soul mate” who would offer pure romance and overwhelming passion?

  Voicing her regrets about ever marrying Greg, she blamed her mother for not taking her pre-wedding panic seriously and for failing to stop the wedding. Convinced that it was too late to break off the engagement, she had given up her dream of escape, ignoring her “inner voice.” She had yearned to hear her mother tell her not to marry Greg if she didn’t want to.

  “The wedding is about the bride and groom and not the efforts of the mother who planned the event. If I had been given the family support that I so desperately needed ... I wouldn’t be a wife. I wouldn’t have Greg in my life. I wouldn’t be struggling like I am now.”

  Fueled by crystal methamphetamine, Kristin Rossum spent much of September preparing for the upcoming SOFT conference and her long-anticipated weekend with Michael Robertson. But more importantly, she was determined to make a memorable debut in the world of international forensic toxicology, and practiced delivering her strychnine paper again and again.

  In the second week of September, Kristin submitted her travel request for flight and hotel reimbursement after it was approved by Dr. Robertson. Under the “Comments” section, her boss gave the official reasons why Kristin should attend the week-long Milwaukee conference with him.

  “As a forensic toxicologist, this is one of the most important conferences she can attend,” he wrote. “It will improve her knowledge and experience.”

  On September 12, Kristin and Michael bought two round-trip tickets to Milwaukee on TWA and made a reservation for a single room at the Inn Towne Hotel, a few miles away from the Hyatt Regency, the official conference hotel, as they didn’t want to be seen together by the other delegates. Later they would alter hotel receipts and be reimbursed for two rooms out of the ME’s budget.

  Dr. Robertson’s superior, Lloyd Amborn, had heard more gossip about an “improper relationship,” so once again he summoned the chief toxicologist into his office, asking if there was anything unprofessional going on.

  “He denied it,” said Amborn. “He felt the rumors were being caused by the fact that he was mentoring Kristin more closely than the other toxicologists because she was more professionally interested.”

  As the conference drew nearer, Greg de Villers became increasingly uncomfortable about his wife going, suspecting that Michael Robertson would be there. Again, Kristin assured him it was just an “emotional attachment,” and nothing for him to worry about.

  “He told me I was not to go,” Rossum would later testify. “He voiced repeated concern about it for several months.”

  But Kristin paid little heed to Greg’s wishes, sometimes accusing him of trying to control her. On September 20, in preparation for the conference, she visited Planned Parenthood. She also gave her boss a book on sexual positions, entitled, 52 Invitations to Grrreat Sex, to make their love life a little more adventurous.

  “Well Sweetheart,” she wrote on the inside cover, “together we will enjoy a lifetime of passion. This is just the beginning. I love you, Kristin.”

  The following day, she made the first of many trips to Tijuana to buy an assortment of drugs at a pharmacy, including Soma and an amphetamine substitute called Asenlix. A doctor at the pharmacy wrote her a prescription for the drugs, no questions asked, citing “obesity,” although Kristin was underweight.

  Soon afterwards, Kristin pondered in her journal why she needed amphetamines to control her body, noting her ongoing inner conflict between logic and unattainable ideals. “I guess that my belief is that it is within my power to control the shape of my body,” she wrote.

  Unhappy about her physical appearance, she went on to complain that her “bottom” was a little rounder than it once had been, and that her inner thighs “jiggle a bit too much,” her stomach could be flatter and her arms better toned. She concluded that she was unhappy with her body because it wasn’t perfect, even though she knew that perfection was “imaginary.” She felt that she would be more empowered if she were taller and also wanted “big, full pouty lips.”

  Straining to conform to the feminine ideal, Kristin believed that she would finally attain “inner-peace” only after she repaired all her physical flaws to achieve the “perfect body.”

  In mid-September, Professor Ralph Rossum conducted a judicial seminar in San Diego, and his wife, Constance, and son, Pierce, rode down with him. While Pierce went off to play a round of golf with Greg, Constance met her daughter for lunch in downtown La Jolla, before they went shopping in a nearby mall.

  “She wanted to talk about Greg,” her mother later testified. “She was definitely leaving.”

  According to her mother, Kristin wanted Greg to suffer as little pain as possible, as his mother was sick. But Constance told her that she couldn’t stay with Greg just to spare his mother’s feelings.

  “I wanted her to leave him,” she said. “[I] said, ‘We can move you out today.’ ”

  “Mom, I’m his whole life,” Kristin told her. “I’ve been with him for five years. I can’t say, ‘Goodbye, have a nice life.’ ”

  Kristin said that she had already started looking for an affordable apartment, and planned to leave in early November, in time for the holidays.

  The following night, Kristin pondered the “very emotional” lunch in her journal, saying that she had made an effort to connect with her mother and that they had engaged in a little mother-daughter bonding.

  “I have never felt particularly close to my mom,” she wrote. “It always seemed to me that she rarely was able to just be herself.”

  Accusing her mother of always carefully presenting the image of “the perpetual hostess,” Kristin observed that she seldom revealed the “real person beneath the faç
ade.”

  Kristin was also engrossed in Mitch Albom’s heart-tugging bestseller Tuesdays With Morrie, about the life lessons he learned from his dying professor. Apparently it had prompted her to think about life, death and the bigger picture. But she also wrote passages about her marriage, apparently designed to be read by Greg sometime in the future.

  “I feel for Greg and what my doubts are doing to him,” she wrote. And she now admitted that it was unfair of her to have committed to a marriage without first dealing with her issues.

  A few days later she questioned why she was not in love with Greg, although he tried so hard to please her.

  “He must be frustrated,” she concluded. “It’s difficult when one person loves the other more, when it’s uneven.”

  A day later, she became nostalgic for her old boyfriend, Teddy Maya, whom she’d abandoned and robbed six years earlier.

  Kristin admitted she had treated him “horribly,” writing that he was her “first real love.” Now she wanted to write him a letter of apology. She felt the need to own up to her past because she was tired of running away.

  But although she obtained Maya’s address from Melissa Prager, she would never put pen to paper.

  Chapter 13

  The SOFT Conference

  On Tuesday, September 26, three days before the SOFT conference, the lovers’ eight-page conference application landed on Lloyd Amborn’s desk, and he immediately called his chief toxicologist into his office for the third time to explain himself.

  “It was for the two of them to attend the conference,” he remembered. “I wanted to talk to him about it.”

  Once again, Dr. Robertson denied that his relationship with Kristin was anything but professional, insisting that the strychnine paper she would present at the conference would be a vital part of her toxicologist training. Without proof that Robertson was lying, Amborn had little choice but to reluctantly sign the application.

  In the days leading up to the Milwaukee conference, Greg de Villers began exploring job opportunities for Kristin at Orbigen, to get her away from Michael Robertson. He told Dr. Gruenwald that his wife was unhappy at the ME’s office and wanted to switch jobs. But although Orbigen had a vacancy, the biotech company did not employ chemists. So Greg asked him to let him know if he heard of any suitable new jobs for Kristin through his network of contacts.

  Most nights, Kristin wrote in her journal, which she would then casually leave lying around in the kitchen, sending Greg a clear message about how she felt about him trying to prevent her going to Milwaukee.

  Although she was nervous about delivering her fifteen-minute talk, she wrote, her main problem was Greg’s attitude, as he was “obsessed” about whether Dr. Robertson would be there. Then she laid a red herring for her husband, writing that her boss was probably not attending anyway, although she knew he would definitely be there.

  She then accused him of not understanding her, asking what they had together if he didn’t trust her, and questioning if their relationship was beyond repair.

  By Friday, September 29, three days before the start of the conference, Greg de Villers had resigned himself to Kristin attending. He wrote her an e-mail giving an 800 number where she could call him during her week away.

  “Good luck again on your practice talk,” he said. “Give me a call to let me know how it went. Love you, Greg.”

  On Saturday morning, Greg drove Kristin to San Diego International Airport and left her at the terminal. She removed her wedding ring before meeting up with Dr. Robertson by the gate. The two lovers then boarded the airplane, sitting next to each other for the six-hour flight. It was late afternoon when they arrived and caught a taxi to the Inn Towne Hotel, where they spent the rest of the evening.

  On Sunday they had a free day and officially checked in at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, where they were given a registration package. Among the materials it contained was an eight-page article on fentanyl, written by Robertson’s friend, Dr. Daniel Anderson, entitled, “25 Deaths on Fentanyl.” A few days later, Dr. Robertson and Kristin would attend a presentation at the conference on fentanyl overdoses resulting in unintentional death or suicide.

  On Monday—the first day of the conference—Dr. Robertson chaired a four-hour afternoon workshop titled, “Benzodiazepines: Pharmacology and Analytical Challenges,” while Kristin attended another workshop. Later, they left the conference to spend the evening together.

  At 7:00 the next morning, Kristin took part in a Six Kilometer Fun Run and, after finishing, she and Robertson saw her old friend, Frank Barnhart, who had initially hired her at the San Diego ME’s office and had unsuccessfully tried to get her a job at the San Diego Sheriff’s Department, where he now worked. He chatted briefly to his “Li‘l Bandit,” and they would bump into each other frequently over the course of the conference.

  That night, at a welcoming reception at the Milwaukee County Museum, Dr. Robertson introduced Kristin to all his colleagues, but they were both careful not to appear as a couple. Dressed in a sexy but tasteful dress, Kristin flirted with all the male toxicologists and made quite an impression.

  “Obviously the older men were taken with her,” said Dr. Anderson. “[Kristin’s] a cute little thing, and she has the body and she has the looks. She was looking up to all these people and basically brown-nosing them all. But a lot of people were pretty upset because of the way she acted.”

  The LA toxicologist saw her as ambitious and manipulative, desperately trying to establish herself among the “inner-circle” without paying her dues.

  While Robertson and Rossum were sipping cocktails at the reception, Frank Barnhart came over and grabbed her left hand, showing a colleague that she was not wearing a wedding ring.

  Later, while they were milling around at the buffet dinner, Dr. Robertson and Kristin suddenly announced to Dr. Anderson and a couple of other friends that they were now a couple. Apparently seeking acceptance, they explained that they were in love, but both in unhappy marriages.

  “I’d heard the rumors, so I wasn’t totally surprised,” said Anderson. “But I certainly didn’t give them my blessing, because I knew Michael’s wife and I liked her a lot. I thought he was crazy for getting involved at all, because Nicole would divorce him.”

  Anderson told them straight off that he didn’t approve of their relationship, as it was unfair to their respective spouses. He then walked to another part of the reception hall, but Kristin followed him.

  “She started tearing up,” he said. “I remember saying, ‘Don’t do this to me.’ ”

  Then Kristin burst into tears, telling Anderson how much she and Michael valued him as a friend and respected him as a toxicologist.

  “She’s crying, but I didn’t want to make a scene,” he said. “I basically wanted to end the conversation there. I wasn’t going to condone it, so there was nothing really left to talk about.”

  Out of loyalty to Nicole, he tried to avoid them for the rest of the conference.

  But a couple of days later, Dr. Anderson saw Kristin deliver her talk on “Death by Strychnine—A Case for Post-mortem Redistribution.”

  “Strychnine, a potent and naturally occurring alkaloid, has been attributed to many cases of death due to toxicity,” she began nervously. “Strychnine is a very lipophilic and rapidly acting toxin producing post-synaptic inhibition of the central inhibitory neurotransmitter glycine, resulting in central nervous system stimulation, convulsions, and death.”

  Her presentation was not received well by her audience, and at one point, one of SOFT’s most senior members stood up and challenged her, which was unprecedented in conference history.

  “He basically ripped her a new one,” said Dr. Anderson. “I mean, she presented the paper, but it sounded like Michael’s words coming out of her mouth.”

  Humiliated, Kristin left the stage and burst into tears, as Dr. Robertson tried to comfort her. But Dr. Anderson and many of his other colleagues laughed, feeling she had gotten her just rewards.
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br />   “It served her right,” he said, “because she was riding on the coattails of somebody that had a name so she would be introduced to all the bigwigs, while the rest of us actually had to create our own names. I mean, there’s no such thing as an easy in, and all of a sudden she has one because of him. I don’t think so.”

  Kristin and Dr. Robertson returned to San Diego on Saturday, going off to their respective homes. After spending a full week together, they were more in love than ever, and Kristin now resolved to separate herself from Greg—by whatever means necessary, prosecutors would later argue.

  During the week Kristin was away in Milwaukee, Greg de Villers worked late every night at Orbigen, so he wouldn’t have to return to an empty apartment. Tortured by suspicions that his wife was with Dr. Robertson, he put in such long hours that Dr. Gruenwald asked him if there was anything wrong.

  “He said his wife was at a conference,” remembered Dr. Gruenwald, “so he has some time and he doesn’t want to go home.”

  Greg was also looking to his future, asking Dr. Gruenwald if Orbigen would sponsor him through law school to become a patent lawyer. Gruenwald told him to wait a year or two until the new company was more established, and then they would happily do so.

  From the minute Greg collected Kristin from San Diego Airport, the arguments started. Kristin was more in love than ever with Robertson, and no longer bothered to put up a false front with her anxious husband. So, on her mother’s advice, she asked him for a trial separation, maintaining that Robertson was not a factor in her wanting out of the marriage.

  “He was very upset, as anyone would be,” Kristin would later testify. “I had been trying throughout the year to help him understand that this wasn’t just about Michael Robertson. I wanted him to realize that it would be best for us long-term.”