Poisoned Love (52 page)

“I was angry and obsessed with finding the truth, so much so that I stayed up at night thinking and questioning everything over and over again. For months…I could not sleep or I would wake up in the middle the night…. I missed several weeks of work in lost productivity…. I became reclusive and tended toward social avoidance…. I shut people out. I became paranoid that the Rossums were plotting against my family. I was worried that someone might harm me, Bert, my mom, and girlfriend. At times I felt like I was being watched or followed. I even worried about my phones being tapped. My entire perspective on life changed. It became hard to trust anyone.”

Jerome said he felt some closure to see Kristin going to prison, but it wouldn’t bring back his brother.

“My family is still struggling and hurt. I don’t understand why this happened to us. I do not want this to happen to anyone else. I want justice for Greg, and I want Kristin behind bars for the rest of her life. She is a danger to society.”

Finally, in a thick French accent, Marie described the pain of her loss by drawing parallels between Greg’s death and the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

“By an act of terrorism so brutal and unthinkable, [Kristin] caused damage that cannot be rebuilt. Our beliefs were shattered; our hopes have been torn apart,” she said.

“[Greg] treated life as a gift…always caring for people he loved. Greg paid the ultimate price for his goodness, because Kristin Rossum’s poor choices and irresponsible judgments led to his murder. He could not save someone drowning in turbulent waters mainly because this person was only thinking about surviving herself. As in most cases, the spouse is the last one to know his spouse was cheating on him, and often parents, who think they know their children, are the last to recognize the truth about their children’s involvement with drugs.”

The de Villers family would never be able to forget the image of Greg dying in bed, she said, and would be “forever shaken by [Kristin’s] cold disrespect of life. She played a dangerous game with feelings and perpetually tried to cover up her secrets.”

Marie said she wanted Kristin to receive the maximum penalty, because only then would “human justice…be levied.”

As expected, Judge Thompson sentenced Kristin to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He denied Kristin’s request to go free on $1.25 million bail while her appeals were pending, saying she’d exhibited tendencies to run away and remain incommunicado for periods of time. And, at long last, he lifted the gag order.

Immediately following the sentencing, Eriksen walked down the hallway to file papers to start the appeal process.

Goldstein, Hendren, and Agnew held a brief press conference in the Hall of Justice next door, which was attended by at least one Australian journalist, whose focus was the future for Michael Robertson and his possible extradition.

Agnew, Hendren, and Goldstein confirmed that Michael was still under investigation in the murder of Greg de Villers, but they said they couldn’t comment further.

“We’re happy to see that justice was done in this case,” Goldstein said. “[A life sentence] is the next best thing in the justice system that we can do. We can’t bring Greg de Villers back.”

Goldstein said they were pleased that Kristin took the stand because they knew they’d “get incriminating evidence that way.” He also credited Jerome for his role in the case.

“Jerome de Villers is a good human being,” he said. “He knew his brother better than anybody else…. He got the ball rolling.”

As for the Rossums, he said, he didn’t blame them for not seeking a more aggressive drug treatment program for Kristin.

“There’s no other blame to allocate other than to the defendant,” he said.

During the investigation and trial, he said, the Rossums were just trying to protect their daughter. There was nothing unique about a murderer’s parents distorting the truth, he said, because “no one ever wants to believe their child is guilty.”

“I see them also as victims of the defendant’s narcissism,” Goldstein said. “She was lying to them, too.”

As Loebig walked back to his office after the hearing, he said Kristin was fearful of going to prison. After the verdict, her mood was “emotional but not irrational.” She’d turned out to be more resilient than he would have anticipated.

“Her life is pretty much turned upside down,” he said.

Loebig said he told her to “keep the faith” because convictions do get overturned. Personally, though, he said he would’ve liked to see Michael Robertson charged and the two of them tried together. In fact, he said, he’d still like to see Michael indicted.

In talking with jurors after the verdict, Loebig said he got the impression that they came to a guilty verdict because they simply didn’t believe Kristin was telling the truth. A couple of them said that if Michael had also been on trial, they would have found him guilty as well.

Asked if he thought Kristin had lied to him, Loebig said, “Who knows?”

He said he didn’t think Kristin would try to hurt herself in prison.

“She’s intelligent enough to look at the half-full glass,” he said, and the first thing she planned to do once she got to state prison was to explore the educational programs.

San Diego CityBEAT,
a local alternative weekly paper, described the outcome of Kristin’s sentencing hearing as follows: “Convicted killer-tweaker-hottie Kristin Rossum, who’s just twenty-six, learned that she’ll be spending the rest of her life in prison alongside all manner of scary, nasty women.”

After Kristin’s notoriety had died down at Las Colinas, she was moved out of protective custody in the A-2 housing unit and into the B unit, where three inmates shared each cell and slept in a triple-bunk bed. Because Kristin was about to be moved to the state prison system, jail officials saw no point in providing special protection to her anymore.

Inmates in the B unit, where she spent six days before being transferred to the women’s prison in Chowchilla, were woken up at 4:30 each morning by a deputy’s voice over a loudspeaker and ate their meals in a large dining room of picnic tables. Here, those in for the most serious crimes received the most respect—and Kristin certainly got her share. Corporal Erika Frierson heard that inmates were asking Kristin for her autograph.

“Here they brag about their charges and their case,” Frierson said.

Kristin volunteered to do cleaning, sweeping, and mopping, which gave her special privileges to shower alone between the three regular shifts—8 to 10
A.M
., 1 to 4
P.M
., and 7 to 9
P.M
. Frierson said some inmates—and she thought this was Rossum’s motivation—sought these privileges to get attention. The shower areas, which are hung with partial curtains, are visible to the deputies who monitor the B unit from their station in a centrally located glass room, and also to the inmates, who can watch through their cell door windows.

“Long showers for some inmates are a big thing,” Frierson said.

Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, one of the largest women’s prisons in the United States, is about four miles off the freeway on a two-lane road surrounded by almond groves. CCWF, as it’s called within the prison system, is also right across the street from another women’s prison, Valley State Prison for Women. CCWF was built in 1990 to house about two thousand inmates. But by 2004 the prison’s population had grown by nearly sixteen hundred inmates, and it housed more than it was designed to hold. All the women on California’s death row, of which there were fourteen when Kristin arrived, were housed separately from the rest of the population.

Kristin was first taken to the reception center at CCWF, where she was held and evaluated for a couple of months.

Unless her conviction was overturned, Kristin would spend the rest of her life being identified by a series of numbers. As inmate W97094, she slept in the upper bunk of Bed #3 in Room 2 of a one-story cinder-block building called 516.

She shared her cell—a room 18 by 19.4 feet—with seven other high-security prisoners who had committed similar crimes. The dormlike room had two sinks, a toilet, and a shower, where inmates’ feet, necks, and heads were always visible to guards watching over them.

The CCWF staff members were well aware that Kristin was coming. “We knew when we received her that she was high notoriety,” prison spokesman Greg Schoonard said soon after she arrived. “We have not had any problems with Ms. Rossum.”

With no chance for parole, Kristin was placed in a highly restrictive unit and would be confined there for the next five years. The only educational or vocational training she could receive in that time would be through the mail because she wasn’t allowed to leave the unit, even to attend classes.

“It’s going to be difficult for Kristin Rossum. She’s obviously a very intelligent person,” Schoonard said. “I mean, what kind of education program can a prison offer someone who already has a bachelor’s of science degree?”

It isn’t common for women to come to prison with such degrees, he said, but Kristin could certainly pursue a second one through the prison’s Education Department. She, like the other inmates, had access to a full law library as well as a general library of books and magazines; any new books had to be sent directly from the vendor. The same went for television sets, which had to be made of clear plastic so the inmate couldn’t hide any drugs in them. Kristin was not allowed access to the Internet, and she would never be allowed conjugal visits—even if she got married.

An inmate with a sentence of “life without [parole] is considered an escape risk,” Schoonard said. “That’s the reason we establish a very high custody level for them.”

Kristin was initially assigned to a job as a porter—a prison term for janitor.

“It gives her something to do, although it’s probably not what she’s used to doing,” Schoonard said. “…They really have to come up with a way to look at their life and find something positive to do with it, despite their circumstances.”

Someday, he said, she might get a clerical or secretarial position, though there weren’t as many of those available. She also could be assigned to do kitchen cleanup, serve food, or join the yard crew, which maintained the grounds.

“We’re not going to have her working in the lab here, that’s for sure,” he said.

By May 2004 Kristin had been assigned to yard crew. Her disciplinary history included what one prison spokeswoman characterized as “a list of small-time infractions.” Because of privacy laws, prison officials said they were unable to discuss anything more about Kristin’s behavior, health, or other activities—including whether she was attending Narcotics Anonymous meetings, which are held twice a week in California prisons.

Nearly three months after the sentencing, the investigation into Michael’s possible involvement in Greg’s murder was in high gear, so Hendren and Agnew flew to Melbourne with the hopes of interviewing Michael, his friends, and colleagues.

They met up with Detective Inspector Chris Enright of the Victoria state police’s homicide unit, who was helping them try to gather enough evidence to charge Michael and start extradition proceedings. Hendren and Agnew interviewed a dozen of Michael’s friends, family members, and former coworkers and also explored his training as a toxicologist at various local institutions.

But Michael wouldn’t talk to Hendren and Agnew, referring them to his attorney. He also put out the word that he’d rather his friends remain tight-lipped, so the investigators weren’t able to get enough information to charge him.

At the time, Agnew and Hendren would not comment on the pending investigation, but Enright said Michael was working in Rowville, a suburb of Melbourne “for some food company or company that analyzes chemical components or testing for food or consumables…nothing to do with toxicology or medical issues.”

By the fall of 2004, Agnew said Michael and Nicole had divorced in 2001. When she and Hendren went to Australia, she said, Michael was working in a lab, but not in a director’s position. She speculated that no reputable lab would hire him with the allegations still hanging over his head. Neither she nor Hendren would comment further.

In April 2003, Jerome de Villers was recognized at the Citizens of Courage luncheon, which the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office put on at the U.S. Grant Hotel for about two hundred people. Originally billed as a luncheon for crime victims, the event had been renamed by the new district attorney, Bonnie Dumanis.

Listed first among the seven recipients on the program, Jerome was given an award for seeking justice for his brother’s murder.

“Trying to figure out what happened to Greg consumed my life for a long time,” Jerome said as he accepted the award. “It still does.”

While Kristin was getting used to her new accommodations and the de Villers family was trying to move on with their lives, the case took an unexpected twist.

John Varnell was talking to his friends at Sunny’s Donuts in Chula Vista one morning, when Kristin’s case came up in conversation. Varnell is the first to admit that his memory for dates and times isn’t so great, but when he retold the story in early 2004, he initially said he thought the conversation had occurred right after Kristin was sentenced. After several attempts to remember a more exact date, he couldn’t really say for sure.

The
Union-Tribune
ran a foot-tall photo of Kristin on the front of the local section the day after her sentencing, with a headline that read “Rossum Gets Life” in big, black capital letters. The photo featured Kristin with her wrists handcuffed in front and linked to a thick silver chain around her waist, being led to the sheriff’s cruiser by Thompson’s bailiff, Frank Cordle. She looked pale, her eyes cast down at the sidewalk. Part of Yves’s statement from the sentencing was quoted in big letters above the headline: “You show no remorse and asked no repentance for any of your actions.”

Varnell hadn’t been following the case in the newspaper or on TV, but he said he probably saw Kristin’s picture that day. He remembered talking with his friends about the case one morning and then walking out of the donut shop behind a young blond woman who resembled Kristin. The woman was about twenty-six, slender, and cute and wore a ponytail, just as Kristin had during the trial. He told her she looked like the young woman in the paper. She said she’d heard that before.