Poisoned Love (33 page)

On cross-examination by Eriksen, Lowe acknowledged that theoretically, any toxicologist and just about any Medical Examiner’s employee could have had access to the drugs in the Balance Room. In fact, Lowe said, no drug audit had ever been done during the thirty-two years he’d worked at the Medical Examiner’s Office.

“So the checks and balances were relatively weak,” Eriksen asked.

“Yes,” Lowe said.

A story in the
Union-Tribune
that weekend expanded on Lowe’s testimony, calling the Medical Examiner’s Office “a virtual candy store for any employee tempted by drugs,” and noting that no county employee would comment outside of court about the lax security over drugs there. The nickname stuck, and some employees would refer to the office as “the candy store” for years to come.

Goldstein didn’t ask Blackbourne to offer any theories or conjecture about the autopsy results or cause of death. Essentially, all he wanted to hear from the chief medical examiner was essentially “dead guy died from fentanyl.” So, Blackbourne didn’t speculate how long it had been since Greg had gotten up to urinate, and he wouldn’t give a more specific estimate for the time of death.

Goldstein asked a number of questions to which Blackbourne replied, “I don’t know.” Blackbourne said he didn’t bring his notes with him to court, and he didn’t apologize for it.

Perhaps his most significant testimony was that he found a total of three needle punctures on the victim’s left arm, a point emphasized by the prosecution to show there was one extra needle puncture for which paramedics could not account.

Blackbourne also said there was a large bruise on the front of the victim’s right arm, with a large needle puncture mark in the middle of the bruise. He found one more needle puncture in the right groin area, where the emergency room doctor had drawn blood.

Greg’s liver was normal, he said, and, no, he did not have hepatitis.

Asked by Eriksen to explain why several different labs came up with varying levels of fentanyl in the blood, stomach contents, and urine, Blackbourne said it could have been because some tests were done later than others, so the samples could have evaporated or degraded. Also, he said, different testing techniques may have been used.

But Blackbourne said he could not explain how or when the fentanyl got into Greg’s body, or how much was administered. Only that it was a fatal dose.

“The blood levels are all extremely high,” he said.

On redirect by Goldstein, Blackbourne confirmed that the Medical Examiner’s Office had no set policy that private toxicology testing would be done on cases involving the deaths of employees or their spouses. Testing in the case of investigator Stan Berdan, for example, was done in-house after he died suddenly in 1999. And yes, Blackbourne said, Kristin was working in the toxicology lab when those tests were done.

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 defense’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.