Читать книгу Poisoned Love - Caitlin Rother - Страница 12

During the next six months, Greg and Kristin seemed happy. As a wedding gift, Greg’s family paid for them to honeymoon at Whistler-Blackcomb Mountains, a vacation area north of Vancouver. The newlyweds started talking about having children.

“Mom, I’m going off birth control,” Constance recalled Kristin telling her, “and what happens will happen.”

Greg had already come up with a name for the baby if they had a girl: Isabelle. Constance suggested Marie Isabelle, after Greg’s mother.

But the marital bliss didn’t last long.

In January 2000, Kristin started complaining to Constance during their phone conversations and shopping trips that Greg was getting more clingy and controlling, and that she felt like a bird in a cage. Kristin wrote in her diary about one such shopping excursion in La Jolla, where she and Constance engaged in some heart-to-heart “mother-daughter bonding.” She wrote that she never felt very close to her mother, but she was trying to get closer. It was a very emotional afternoon.

One night, when her parents came down to San Diego to visit, Kristin showed up alone, saying she’d left Greg home in bed because he wasn’t feeling well.

“He seemed…not robust,” Constance said, “though he’d never really been robust.”

At one point, Constance said, Greg wondered if he might have chronic fatigue syndrome. However, he never mentioned any such thing to his own family, who thought he was quite healthy.

None of the negative sentiments Kristin confided to Constance showed up in the e-mails she regularly exchanged with Greg. Oftentimes, Greg would make a suggestion and ask her what she wanted to do for lunch, dinner, or the weekend. He didn’t dictate what they were doing. In turn, she would often ask him to make decisions for them.

On January 14, 2000, for example, she told him she’d picked up her transcript from SDSU and was excited to learn she was graduating summa cum laude with distinction in chemistry. She suggested going out for a celebratory beer or renting some movies, but asked him to choose their activities for the evening. She ended with, “Let me know the plans. Love you with all my heart, Wifey.”

It was apparent from the e-mails that Greg liked to spend his spare time with her and to plan different activities for them. And it appeared to be mutual. Kristin seemed to be trying hard to please him as well.

“I’m going to go to the grocery store this afternoon. Any requests?” she wrote on February 22. “…Your wish is my command.”

Kristin made lunches and tins of biscotti for Greg to take to work, often checking with him about what he wanted to eat for dinner and offering him a choice of entrees. She obviously liked to cook them nice meals, anything from salmon to stir-fried chicken, sun-dried tomato cream pasta with steamed artichokes, shrimp, pork tenderloin, or steak.

Frequently, they’d discuss renting a video or two to watch the same night. American Beauty was one of Kristin’s favorites, and she’d seen it three or four times. Greg liked basic guy movies, but he also enjoyed more thoughtful films, such as A River Runs Through it, Legends of the Fall, or Shakespeare in Love.

The e-mails they exchanged rarely had sexual overtones, although Kristin and Greg often said “I love you” and gave each other pet names like “Mr. Big,” “Sweetie,” “Dolling,” “Gregie,” “Wifey, “Bunny Kristin,” and “Kristinie.”

But, in general, the gist of most of their messages was pretty mundane. They discussed emptying the dishwasher, dropping off the rent check, getting the car fixed, or planning a trip to visit the in-laws. The only notable exception was a series of quick notes that Kristin started on February 2, sending Greg a “giant, wet, slobbery kiss” and telling him she loved him. Greg said he didn’t usually like those wet kisses, but by e-mail, it wasn’t that bad. Kristin offered a “soft, tender, gentle” kiss instead, and Greg said he especially liked those kinds of kisses.

Like best friends, they shared their good news with each other and celebrated one another’s successes. While Kristin was waiting to hear whether she’d get a permanent job as a county toxicologist, she explored other career options, including the Navy’s engineering officer program. But on March 1, Kristin got her dream job. She sent an e-mail to Greg—written in capital letters with two lines of exclamation points—to tell him how excited she was to get a job offer as a permanent toxicologist at the Medical Examiner’s Office.

“Yippee for me!” Kristin wrote.

“See, you are the best!” Greg replied.

A letter from Lloyd Amborn said her new job would officially start March 17, as long as she passed a law enforcement background investigation and a medical screening. The starting annual salary was $32,448, with a 3 percent raise scheduled to go into effect in July. If county officials ever did that background check, they wouldn’t have had access to her arrest in 1994 because she was under eighteen when it happened.

On May 22, when Greg was winding down at Pharmingen, Kristin wished him a good day in his last week before starting his new job at Orbigen.

“I’m so proud of you,” she wrote.

Many of Greg’s e-mails supported Constance’s claim that he was not in the best of health. He repeatedly mentioned feeling tired and sluggish, having a hard time getting out of bed, and being plagued by headaches.

“I hope my head is not pounding by the end of the day, though! Still feeling achy and sore in my muscles! I just need to get more rest,” he wrote on April 24.

Greg’s ailments continued throughout the summer. “I did not feel well this morning,” he wrote Kristin on the morning of July 7. “Feeling a little dizzy with a bad headache and also just feeling sick. It was something that seemed to hit me yesterday evening.”

Nonetheless, Greg usually tried to rally after work so he could go with Kristin to swing dance lessons or yoga class or to watch her take a ballet class.

At the same time Kristin was sending her husband these e-mails, she was also corresponding with other men.

Joe Rizzo had worked with Kristin at the Medical Examiner’s Office as an accounting clerk while he was attending law school but then moved to the East Coast to work for a law firm.

“I really can’t wait to see you, too,” he e-mailed Kristin on June 18, 1999, just two weeks after her wedding. He was coming to town that August and promised to call when he had a firm arrival date. “I was really worried you didn’t love me anymore.”

In mid-December, he wished her a Merry Christmas. “I miss you terribly and think of you all the time,” he wrote. “I am truly sorry we have grown apart over this time.”

By the spring of 2000, the tone of the e-mails had grown more urgent. Rizzo contacted Kristin on March 27, starting off a volley of increasingly intimate messages.

“Oh my God!” she replied. “I’ve been thinking about you so much lately…. So when are you going to be visiting? Miss you terribly.”

Rizzo must have taken Kristin’s welcoming reception to heart, because he invited her on an all-expenses-paid weekend in New York. “I am going to be all alone, and I thought immediately of you,” he wrote.

Kristin said such a trip might be hard to explain to her husband, “but, hey, a girl can dream, can’t she?”

Rizzo urged her to make it happen. “I don’t want to just imagine anymore,” he wrote.

Kristin seemed open to the idea, saying they’d have to give it “some serious consideration.”

Rizzo explained in some detail how he was getting physically excited at the prospect of seeing her again. “Those old feelings are back,” he said.

Dan Dewall, whom she’d met in a plant physiology class at SDSU, sent her several e-mails at the lab. One invited her to meet at “that park” around noon. Another recounted the contents of an e-mail he’d sent after they’d last seen each other, which he thought might have gotten lost in cyberspace: “I like you a lot, etc., etc., etc…. I promise that the next time you tell me you are tired, I will slow the pace and hold you a while so you can rest.”

In early March, a handsome, athletic Australian toxicologist named Michael Robertson started working as the lab’s unofficial manager, a title that would become official once his work visa issues were resolved. There was an immediate attraction between Kristin and her soon-to-be boss, a married man in his early thirties who came with a Ph.D. and an impressive resume.

She later wrote in her diary that she’d had a teenage fantasy about falling in love at first sight, knowing immediately that she’d found “the one.” Well, she wrote, she wasn’t sure if that’s what had happened, but when she and Michael made eye contact, “My legs got weak and my tummy was full of butterflies.”

Michael, who went by Mic or Robbo, had been offered the job of lab manager on December 1, 1999, but his visa issues were taking so long to resolve that he and Lloyd Amborn, the office administrator, negotiated a deal whereby Michael could start in early March as a “visitor.” That way, he could get familiar with how they did things in the lab until he could legally take over. In the meantime, Donald “Russ” Lowe continued as acting lab manager. Michael didn’t officially assume the position until June 12.

Michael had been a forensic toxicologist at National Medical Services (NMS) in Pennsylvania since April 1996, performing, supervising, and certifying toxicology test results that were going to be used in court. He also testified as an expert witness.

He testified, for example, in a highly publicized case involving several teenage boys who were charged with fatally drugging fifteen-year-old Samantha Reid of Lansing, Michigan, by putting gamma hydroxybutyrate—the date-rape drug known on the street as GHB, Liquid X, or Liquid Ecstasy—in her Mountain Dew. Reid’s death on January 17, 1999, led to the passage of the Hillory J. Farias and Samantha Reid Date-Rape Drug Prohibition Act of 2000, which added GHB to the list of drugs that are unlawful to manufacture, distribute, or dispense unless authorized by the federal government.

Michael started at NMS as a postdoctoral fellow and trainee, using the High Pressure Liquid Chromatograph, or HPLC, machine for toxicology testing. He also taught classes at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. He got the job at NMS after his teacher, Olaf Drummer, called the company head, Dr. Fredric Rieders, to recommend him for an internship. Rieders, who was originally from Austria, found the Australian toxicologist to be “a very bright young man” and hired him. Michael, Rieders said later, turned out to be “a great pleasure to work with.”

Michael had earned his doctorate in forensic medicine at Monash University in Melbourne in 1996, where he studied pharmacology and biochemistry on a graduate scholarship. From 1991 to 1996, he worked as a part-time scientist at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine in Melbourne, an agency with functions similar to an American coroner’s or medical examiner’s office, earning an annual stipend of $10,000.

His would-be employees in San Diego were impressed by his qualifications and experience. When he applied to San Diego in 1999, his resume listed fifteen published articles. The subjects ranged from the forensic investigation of drug-related fatal traffic accidents to the concentration of benzodiazepines, a class of drugs commonly known as tranquilizers, in the liquid surrounding the eyeball, the vitreous humor, which can be key in identifying toxic substances in the body.

Michael also had given a number of presentations at conferences in the United States, Europe, and Australia on topics such as date-rape drugs and how drugs can change in structure and concentration after a person dies. Clonazepam, one of the drugs found in Greg’s body, is a benzodiazepine and is classified as a date-rape drug.

Employees, such as Cathy Hamm, who had worked in the toxicology lab for more than fifteen years, were hopeful he would make some changes to improve the operation.

Michael seemed friendly, calling his new coworkers “mate.” He wasn’t a tall man, but he had a solid build and a nice smile. He quickly developed a schedule, outlining a division of work for getting things done in a more organized fashion.

“Initially, we were excited,” Hamm said. “He was pretty aggressive, presenting studies, like a mentor.”

But within a month of his arrival, the whole working environment had changed. When Kristin started her permanent job as a toxicologist in March 2000, it just so happened that the only open desk available was right in front of Michael’s office. The top half of his office door was made of glass, so the other lab workers could see what was going on inside, even if the door was closed.

It wasn’t long before Michael was spending what seemed like an inordinate amount of time in Kristin’s workspace near the HPLC machine, and she in his office. Although Hamm noticed that Michael and Kristin shared the habit of standing too close to other people, the two of them stood even closer to each other.

“When two people are attracted to each other, you can’t hide it,” Hamm said.

Hamm and the other toxicologists found their working environment more and more uncomfortable. Plus, there seemed to be some favoritism going on.

“It was just the way that they looked at each other,” she said.

The toxicologists who had worked there for years started to talk. Michael was going to be their boss as soon as his visa issues were resolved, and the close relationship between him and Kristin was already breeding resentment. It seemed that most of his attention was focused on her and whatever projects she was working on.

Kristin wrote in her diary that she never imagined she would develop such deep feelings for a married man, especially so soon after she’d gotten married herself, but it was out of her control. She wasn’t getting what she needed emotionally from Greg, and Michael felt the same way about his relationship with his wife, Nicole.

Kristin and Michael quickly developed a close bond of friendship, sharing their feelings, their frustrations, and their dreams with each other. They soon realized they were kindred spirits, both in marriages with partners who did not share their values, beliefs, goals, or interests. She and Michael, she wrote, were “inspired by art and love reading, [and] we share a passion for music.” They also realized they had something else in common that was very dear to Kristin: They were both “die-hard romantics.”

“We just shared so many philosophies on what it means to have a good life; what is important in life; basic, fundamental ideals,” Kristin wrote as she traced back her feelings months later. She described Michael as “witty, charming, intelligent, and handsome,” saying she admired him and was inspired by him and his professional accomplishments. He made her feel thrilled to go to work.

“I realized that I really loved him and was truly in love with him,” she wrote.

And the feeling was mutual.

Michael already had a history of extramarital flirtations, at least one of which led to an affair. When he first started working in San Diego, a woman from Pennsylvania frequently used to call the lab. He would speak to her in low tones so no one else could hear. She and Michael communicated by e-mail at least through March 2000.

The woman sent Michael an e-mail on March 17, saying she wished she had more photos of the two of them. She wrote that she could look at photos of him all day and wished she could hang one up at work, but then everyone would know about them. She said she’d even take one to work on a Saturday so she could look at it, but she never worked alone. She added that she would try to call him from work one morning when no one else was around, because the weekends were rough when she couldn’t talk to him. It drove her crazy, particularly if she was at home without enough to do.

“Am I pathetic or what,” she wrote. “You probably think I’m crazy and obsessed.”

On March 27, she sent Michael another e-mail, thanking him for writing her every day while she was in the hospital, even when she wasn’t there to receive his notes. She had just reread all of his recent e-mails and realized she’d missed a “get well” card from him.

“Some days I don’t know which is worse, the pain in my side from the operation or the pain in my heart from missing you so much,” she wrote.

Michael told some of his friends about his extramarital activities, but others knew nothing about them and thought he was happily married.

Dan Anderson, a fellow toxicologist at the Los Angeles County Department of Coroner, fell into the latter group. He and Michael were both members of the Society of Forensic Toxicologists (SOFT), an organization formed in 1970 for the “express purpose of promoting understanding and goodwill” among professionals in their shared field. The two men first met in 1996 at a SOFT conference in Denver.

“We drummed around a little bit in Denver, and we became friends,” Anderson said. “He was a really nice guy.”

While Anderson and Michael were on a bus, Michael told him how he’d met the love of his life in Australia—his wife, Nicole—who came with him to the United States. Anderson got the feeling that they were married after only a few months of knowing each other. Nicole worked as an auditor of medical research.

The two men met up at another five-day SOFT conference in October 1999. This one was held at a resort in Puerto Rico, so both of their wives came along and made it a vacation. Cocktails were expensive, so Anderson and his wife invited a bunch of friends, including Michael and Nicole, to party in their room. They bought a blender, a few cases of beer, and fixings for banana daiquiris at Wal-Mart, filled their bathtub with ice and spent most of the time partying. They would lie by the pool or play volleyball during the day and go out to restaurants at night, piling far too many people into their rental car.

Anderson thought that Nicole, whom he described as about five-feet-five-inches and sandy blond, was a pretty girl with a bubbly personality. She and Michael were affectionate with each other and seemed happy together, although Michael did confide in Anderson that she was very insecure and constantly needed reaffirmation of his feelings for her.

While they were in Puerto Rico, Michael told Anderson he was getting ready to leave Pennsylvania and was hopeful after interviewing for a job in San Diego.

The next month Anderson attended a California Association of Toxicologists (CAT) conference at a hotel on Shelter Island in San Diego. He saw an attractive blond girl working at the registration table and asked a colleague who she was. He was told that she was Kristin Rossum, a student worker at the local Medical Examiner’s Office who was helping out toxicologists Russ Lowe and Cathy Hamm, the conference hosts.

Anderson gave a talk that afternoon titled “Basic Drugs: Extractions, Methods and New Drugs.” The day’s agenda also included a presentation on services offered by the poison control system.

Anderson didn’t actually meet Kristin until the state toxicologists’ conference in May 2000, which was held at the Holiday Inn in North Hollywood. Kristin came with Michael, her new boss, who gave a talk on the pharmacology of rave drugs entitled “Why all the RAVE?”

During his presentation, Michael described the history, street names, effects, and chemical makeup of drugs such as ecstasy, methamphetamine, mushrooms, LSD, GHB, ketamine, also known as Special K, and the date-rape drugs Rohypnol and clonazepam.

He said methamphetamine was first made in 1919 from amphetamine and was currently available for the treatment of obesity. It was used in World War II by the military to keep the soldiers alert in the United States, Japan, and Germany. Hitler was reported to be a meth abuser.

In 1997, he said, 4.4 percent of high school seniors had used crystal meth, compared to 2.7 percent in 1990. He said the drug caused symptoms such as dilated pupils, constriction of blood vessels, hypothermia, and hot and clammy skin.

Anderson hosted the conference. And because he knew that Michael was temporarily working without pay at his new job, Anderson invited Michael a month or two in advance to share a hotel room. Initially, Michael had accepted, but when Anderson saw him the first day, Michael said he didn’t need the room after all.

That night a group of toxicologists went to dinner at Universal CityWalk, near Universal Studios in Hollywood. Anderson sat between Kristin and Michael at the bar but didn’t notice anything going on. Later that night, two female colleagues told Anderson they noticed an obvious attraction between Kristin and Michael. They saw her flirting and giving him the eye.

Anderson was in denial about it at first and didn’t put it all together until later. “I think they were sleeping together at that conference,” he said.

Based on e-mails that Michael sent right after the conference to a friend in Australia and shortly thereafter to Kristin, Anderson appeared to be correct.

On Tuesday, May 9, Michael wrote to a female friend asking for advice. Yes, he said, he knew he was married, but he’d met a woman in the lab who’d swept him off his feet, calling it “déjà vu again.”

“She, too, is married, and the feelings between us are mutual, both very confused and both trying hard to find a solution,” he wrote.

Despite Nicole’s mood swings and emotional issues, he told her, he’d thought he was happy with his wife. But then he met Kristin, who seemed much more compatible, and it “all just kind of happened.” They shared values, she liked the outdoors, and she even said she’d be willing to move to Australia with him. Now that he’d met Kristin, he wrote, he’d lost his “deep feelings for Nicole” and wasn’t sure if he could ever get them back. He was having a hard time pretending that everything was fine at home and wanted to talk to Nicole about it, but he knew she’d be tremendously upset.

Three days later, Michael used his personal e-mail account to send Kristin a short note and some photos of his sister’s wedding.

“Thinking of you and missing you already,” he wrote.

By the following week, he and Kristin were professing their eternal love for each other.

“I want nothing more than to give my all to you,” Michael wrote her on May 16. “My life, my love, my world.”

“I’ll be thinking of you and all that the future has to offer,” Kristin wrote Michael on May 18. “I can’t wait for it to begin.”

That same day, Kristin wrote an e-mail to her brother Brent, expressing regret that she hadn’t called off the wedding and that she’d let their parents convince her she was just having “cold feet.”

“Mom and Dad encouraged me to go through with it and…they had invested so much time and money into the event by then, I guess I felt that I didn’t really have a choice,” she wrote. “Well, here I am a year later, and looking back, I wish I hadn’t gone through with it.”

As she weighed the good and the bad aspects of staying with Greg, she said, it all boiled down to not wanting to disappoint her family. “And that is not a very good reason for staying married,” she wrote. Feeling “so torn apart inside,” Kristin asked Brent for his feedback. There was more to tell, she said, but that would come later. She never mentioned that she’d started an affair with her boss.

Brent wrote back, offering his complete love and support for whatever decision she would ultimately make. He said he didn’t think she should stay with Greg just to avoid disappointing their parents.

“Sure, no one wants this to happen, but if you are not happy, which is all that matters in this case, then it is justified,” he wrote.

He also underscored how proud their parents were of her, constantly bragging about her accomplishments.

“They want what is best for you and will no doubt act accordingly,” he wrote.

Kristin told Brent how much she appreciated his support and thanked him for listening to her troubles. “Now I’m stuck with the heavy realization that I married the wrong person,” she wrote.

A couple of days after Kristin and Greg’s first anniversary on June 5, Brent checked in with his sister by e-mail. He apologized for not calling but said he didn’t feel comfortable wishing them a happy anniversary after what she’d told him.

Kristin wrote back and said she was “hanging in there.” She’d made a nice candlelight dinner for her and Greg and bought him a few gifts. “He didn’t even bring home a card,” she wrote. “But that’s okay, I guess, because he was sick.”

Kristin wrote Brent again on August 9, letting him know that she’d discussed her marital problems with their parents over the weekend and they were very supportive. “I wish I knew what to do,” she wrote.

A week later Kristin received a confirmation by e-mail that she’d used her Visa card to pay $60 for a two-month subscription to an apartment rental service.

After the CAT conference in May, Michael and Kristin continued to express their feelings for each other in a consistent stream of greeting cards, letters, and e-mails, developing their own shorthand language for the powerful emotions they were experiencing. Both said they’d never felt this way about anyone else, repeatedly using dramatic words like always, forever, destiny, fate, adoration, and passion. They constantly talked about getting married to each other, having children, and growing old together.

They often left the office for lunch, and on at least one occasion, came back with wet hair. One day they were gone for ninety minutes, and Kristin was seen eating lunch in the coffee room after she got back.

On Friday, May 19, Kristin took Michael to the SDSU Chemistry Department picnic. She thanked him in an e-mail later that afternoon and said she wished she were better at articulating her feelings for him.

The following Tuesday morning, Michael e-mailed Kristin to thank her for “dropping by,” apparently at his apartment. He said he’d intended to make her a cup of tea, but “one thing led to another….”

The next morning he e-mailed Kristin to tell her he loved her. “I’ll tell you more slowly at lunch,” he wrote.

The aftermath of their lovemaking must have been quite obvious to their coworkers, because Lloyd Amborn confronted Michael about “their conduct” that Thursday. Amborn said the other toxicologists were complaining that Michael was having an inappropriate relationship with their newest and youngest colleague. Michael denied that anything was going on, then e-mailed Kristin right after the meeting to warn her that Amborn planned to call her in that afternoon. Amborn, he wrote, had noticed the two of them “being a little too close” and told him that such behavior needed to stop.

“I need a ‘Hi, it’s all going to be okay’ kinda hug, but I guess that would be inappropriate, hey?” Michael wrote.

He also suggested that Kristin delete all his e-mails after reading them.

“Any snoop can check your ‘inbox’ while you’re out if no one is around, and my e-mails to you may not be well received,” he wrote.

After their respective meetings with Amborn, they stopped going to lunch together in the same car. But their coworkers still noticed that they were gone at the same time, often leaving and returning within five minutes of each other.

The two lovers could not and would not stay away from each other during the week. Over the weekend, though, they had to.

On Sunday, May 21, Michael wrote her a note from the nearby Ralph’s supermarket, where he often stopped at the computer café to send her weekend notes on his way to play Australian football.

“At 9 A.M., my missing you has been officially upgraded to ‘intensely,’ soon to move to ‘unbearably,’” he wrote, fantasizing about the time they could be together on a Sunday morning so he could tell her in person.

He wrote her again from Ralph’s the following Sunday afternoon at 2:30. Kristin was graduating that day, right about that time, and he wanted to let her know he was thinking of her.

“Dear Adrenalin,” he called her, explaining that the nickname stemmed from the physical sensations she caused in him. He told her he wished he could be there to “cheer from the back row. I’m cheering on the inside.”

Most of Kristin’s coworkers, including Michael, met Greg for the first and only time at a going-away party for a colleague at the 94^th Aero Squadron restaurant in Kearny Mesa that spring.

Throughout the summer, Michael and Kristin met after work at a place just blocks from each of their apartments in University City. They dubbed their meeting place “the Willows” for the trees that grew where Regents Road dead-ended near a path at Rose Canyon. It was a secret spot, where Kristin once instructed her beau to “bring your biggest muscles.” They would meet there for a walk, a talk, and who knows what else. They also met a number of times during the lunch hour for what they referred to as a “quickie breakie,” apparently at Michael’s apartment.

Kristin initiated a secret game of treasure hunt in the office, where they left hidden gifts for each other, then sent directions by e-mail to find them.

On June 12, Michael e-mailed Kristin to thank her for the card she’d hidden in his office. It reminded him of a game his grandparents played throughout their marriage of more than fifty years, in between stealing kisses, flirting, holding hands, and finishing each other’s sentences. Their game, he explained, consisted of taking turns scribbling the word “shmily” in unexpected places for the other one to find—in the steam on the bathroom mirror, in the ashes in the fireplace, in the sugar and flour containers, and in the dew on the windows overlooking the patio, where his grandmother fed them “warm homemade pudding with blue food coloring.” Once, his grandmother even managed to write the word on the last sheet of a roll of toilet paper. After she developed breast cancer, his grandfather continued to display affection for his one true love by painting her bedroom yellow and taking her to church until she was too weak to get out of bed. He played the game until the very end, writing “shmily” on the pink ribbons of her funeral bouquet.

“Although I couldn’t begin to fathom the depth of their love,” Michael wrote, “I had been privileged to witness its unmatched beauty.

S-See

H-How

M-Much

I-I

L-Love

Y-You.”

On June 14, Michael directed Kristin to look under his desk for a box with a folded newspaper and a sheet of paper on top.

“Remove the sheet of paper (I need it) and remove the newspaper. The contents are just for you just because!” Michael wrote.

Kristin replied, “It seems as if you know me so well and can anticipate my feelings without fail…. Everything I ever imagined in a lifelong companion, husband, best friend is present in you.”

On June 20, Dr. Blackbourne asked Michael to meet with him and a police detective, Terry Torgeson, about a case the Medical Examiner’s Office had handled five years earlier. The office had determined the cause of death to be Versed, a sedative in the benzodiazepine family, but Torgeson had recently gotten a tip that fentanyl was the true cause of the woman’s death. So, another investigation was conducted. Michael sent the woman’s blood samples to National Medical Services, his former employer, and it came back positive for Versed and a significant amount of fentanyl. The Medical Examiner’s Office had missed the fentanyl because its toxicology lab didn’t test for it.

Even while Kristin was engulfed by emotion for Michael, she also seemed to need the same level of affection from Greg. She continued to tell her husband she loved him and seemed to get frustrated and upset when he pulled away. At the same time, she was also trying to please Michael, constantly reminding him that he was the most important person in her life.

On June 5, her first wedding anniversary with Greg, she sent Michael a hug and kiss through cyberspace. “I LOVE YOU!!!” she wrote. “See you in my dreams.”

In an e-mail on June 20, Kristin wrote to Greg, “What? No ‘I love you’??? You must be busy.”

Greg apologized by e-mail nine minutes later and told her the words she wanted to hear.

On June 26, Kristin e-mailed Greg to tell him that Michael had an extra ticket to the Natalie Merchant concert for the following night. She said his wife ended up not being able to go and suggested he take a coworker. She said they had a raffle, and she won. She’d like to go if he didn’t mind.

“Let me know what you think so that he can give it to the runner-up if you don’t want me to go, okay?” she wrote.

There was no such raffle.

That same day Michael and Kristin had lunch together. After lunch he asked Kristin if she was up for submitting a paper to the Society of Forensic Toxicologists and presenting it at a conference in Milwaukee in October. He’d been sending her copies of e-mails he’d sent to a toxicologist from SOFT, discussing the possibility of presenting a strychnine case the San Diego lab had worked on. He’d finally gotten the go-ahead.

It was a huge career opportunity for Kristin, and Michael wanted to help her with it. Later that day, before they both left the office to go home to their respective spouses, he e-mailed her to say how beautiful she looked reading at her desk.

Kristin obviously felt torn and confused by her two relationships. The next day she messaged Greg twice, trying to connect with him. She said he looked “really tired” that morning, and she was wondering how he was feeling. “I guess you must be pretty busy,” she wrote. “You never seem to have time to respond to my e-mails.”

She tried messaging him again the day after that, first thing. “I’m sorry that I haven’t been able to make you happier,” she wrote. “I feel so lousy and empty inside, very alone.” She said she missed him and had for a long time. They should use an upcoming trip to Mammoth “as a chance to escape and reconnect,” she said, and asked him what he thought of her idea.

He agreed, asking her what time she’d gotten to the lab. Apparently, they’d had an emotional conversation that morning, and she’d left the apartment upset. She replied that she stopped at Starbucks on her way to work, taking time to let the tears pass and to compose herself. She asked how he was feeling, but he didn’t answer. Two hours later, her tone grew more insistent. She found it difficult to concentrate at work with so much on her mind. Why wasn’t he answering her?

“Are we going to be alright? I miss our closeness. I miss you,” she wrote, urging him to respond.

“I’m okay, I guess,” he replied finally, saying they could talk when they got home.

Kristin e-mailed him again that afternoon, telling him she loved him and that she hoped he’d enjoyed his lunch. She said she was thinking of him, signing off by using her pet nickname “Wifey.”

The couple did go on the de Villers brothers’ annual summer camping trip to Mammoth over the Fourth of July holiday. Jerome’s girlfriend, Jacinta Jarrell, known as J.J., went along, too. Greg’s brothers thought Kristin seemed more needy than usual on that trip. Jerome and Greg went off hiking for two and a half hours, and when they came back, the brothers said Kristin was upset and crying because he’d been gone for so long.

Meanwhile, back in San Diego, Michael was having a difficult time dealing with the thought of Kristin vacationing with Greg. It was most difficult at night, when he wondered what she was doing, what she was thinking. So, he wrote her e-mails every day to tell her that she was on his mind. He reread the notes she’d written to him, perfumed with her scent, and replayed memories of their time together. He missed her like crazy and was counting the days until her return.

On July 4, she’d been gone for five days and just as many long nights. He was rereading some of her e-mails, trying to warm his heart, when the phone rang. It was Kristin. Her call raised his spirits so much that he wrote to her about it afterwards: “A well-tuned orchestra playing a waltz could never sound so wonderful, the voice that induces the growth of a smile, the feelings of love, of warmth, and of so many” other feelings he couldn’t even describe.

Greg found one of Michael’s love letters in the apartment in June or July. Furious, he made Kristin give him Michael’s home phone number and called him around 9 or 10 that night.

Michael and Nicole were in bed when the phone rang. Michael picked it up, but Nicole could hear Greg shouting into the receiver. Michael’s face went gray, and he took the phone into the next room.

“Stay the hell away from my wife,” Greg told him.

Michael had told Nicole that he was attracted to someone in the office. But even after the phone call, Michael told her the same story that Kristin told Greg: The two of them were having an emotional relationship, but they weren’t physically involved.

However, the e-mails the two lovers exchanged reflected a connection that was all encompassing.

“You are my love, my perfect match, the one I see beside me at the altar, at home, holding my children, waking beside me in the morning, and kissing good night,” Michael wrote on July 23.

Later that summer, Kristin told student worker Tom Horn she wasn’t happy in her marriage and wasn’t sure her husband was the right man for her. She asked Horn if he knew of any apartments available in Mission Hills, but she said nothing about having an affair with their boss.

For the first time ever, Greg told his brothers that he and Kristin were going to have to back out of plans to go to Mammoth over Labor Day. They didn’t have the money for it. Greg apologized to nonfamily members that he and Kristin had to cancel at the last minute because of their work schedules. He was working at a start-up company, he explained, and it was a bad time to take time off. Kristin also had a work project that needed her full attention through September.

In August or September, Greg’s high school friend Bill Leger came to San Diego with his fiancée and went to the zoo with his parents. They invited Kristin and Greg to come along, and the two couples made plans to get together over Thanksgiving for a ski trip to Tahoe. Sometime after that, Leger and Greg talked on the phone about the ski trip, and Greg told him he was thinking about buying a house. The lease for their apartment was about to expire, and it was the last one that the university would renew since he wasn’t a UCSD student anymore. By the end of the year, he told Leger, he and Kristin should be completely out of debt.

Kristin saw her friend Melissa Prager once in March 2000 and several times over the summer. The March rendezvous was at Miracles Café in Encinitas, where Prager was excited to spend some alone time with her friend for the first time since she’d met Greg. But Greg showed up, too.

Finally, in August, Kristin came alone. She and Prager had dinner in La Jolla and watched the sunset together, and Kristin said she’d been taking ballet lessons again. She seemed more relaxed, clearheaded, and healthy than Prager had ever seen her. Kristin glowed as she talked about this guy she’d met at work. Michael was her boss, she said, and he appreciated and respected her for her mind, her beauty, and her true spirit.

“She was definitely in love with him,” Prager said. “You could see it in her eyes.”

Kristin told Prager that she wanted to tell Greg about the affair but didn’t know how to break it to him. Their relationship was so fragile. Kristin said she was terrified that Greg would get depressed and upset if she tried to talk to him about her feelings, but she knew she had to.

Kristin said she and Michael were both confused about what to do with their respective marriages, but she was thinking she should go to counseling with Greg or spend some time away from him so she could decide whether she ultimately wanted to stay married.

Sometime after Prager moved to the Bay Area in September, Kristin called to say that she’d told Greg about the affair, but he wanted her to stay and try to work things out.

As always, Prager encouraged Kristin to follow her heart. “I could never understand why she didn’t want to get a divorce,” she said.

Kristin asked if the studio at the Pragers’ house in Encinitas was available. Prager said Kristin also asked if she would consider moving down to San Diego so they could share an apartment together.

On September 21, Kristin took a trip to Tijuana, where she saw Dr. Victor M. Martinez. He wrote her a prescription in Spanish for Somacid, a muscle relaxant that many American doctors won’t prescribe because it can be addictive. He also wrote her a prescription for a drug called Asenlix in Mexico and Clobenzorex in the United States, a diet pill that metabolizes like amphetamine, or speed. The drug literature says it’s not intended for people with drug or alcohol addictions.

Kristin later admitted that by taking the diet pills, she had gone into relapse. “Relapse” is a therapeutic term that encompasses the problems, thoughts, and actions that lead recovering addicts to begin taking their drug of choice again. This combination of factors works in a chain reaction, similar to a line of dominos falling, one at a time, until the last one knocks the addict down.

The week before Kristin and Michael left for the October SOFT conference, they each submitted travel request and expense forms to the office administrator, Lloyd Amborn, with the estimated cost of their trip. Amborn said nothing of their plans to leave San Diego on Saturday, September 30, two days before the conference started, and to return from Milwaukee on Saturday, October 7, the day after it ended. Each made a notation that personal time would be included in the trip.

Sometime before the trip, Amborn confronted Michael about the rumored affair for the third time, and Michael continued to deny it. So, Amborn approved the expense forms for meals, separate hotel rooms for Kristin and Michael, airline tickets, a shuttle, and registration, which cost taxpayers a total of $2,691. It’s unclear whether Amborn knew until afterwards that the two of them planned to stay at the Inn Towne Hotel, a different hotel from the one hosting the conference, the Hyatt Regency.

On September 22, Kristin e-mailed her old friend, Frank Barnhart, at the sheriff’s crime lab. She told him how busy it had been over at the “house of death” and asked if he still intended to attend the conference. She told him that she and Michael were going to arrive on Saturday, and that she was scheduled to give a fifteen-minute presentation on a strychnine death case the following Friday.

“I’m petrified, but I’ll get over it,” she wrote, signing the note with the nickname he’d given her, “Lil Bandit.”

Barnhart could not believe that the county was paying to send her to an out-of-town conference. In the twenty-nine years he worked there, he couldn’t think of a single time they’d paid for him to do that. He teased her about that over the phone, so she e-mailed him to ask if he still loved her. Yes, he wrote back, he did. Barnhart didn’t understand why Kristin was going to Milwaukee on Saturday, since the conference wouldn’t really get going until late Sunday or early Monday morning.

That same day Greg e-mailed Kristin with some suggestions on how to use computer graphics to help illustrate the chemical structure of strychnine for her presentation. He seemed eager to help make it easier for her since she’d worked so hard on it. A week later—the day before she was to leave on her trip—Greg e-mailed her with an 800 number she could use to call home while she was away. He wished her luck on her “practice talk” and asked her to call and let him know how it went.

Before Michael left for the trip, he and Nicole decided to separate. On October 5, Nicole wrote him a letter to mark the start of their separation, which began the day he left for the SOFT conference. Assuming that he’d be feeling a similar sense of loss, she told him she knew what he’d be going through during his week away.

After speaking with his sister the previous week, she told him she now understood that he had modeled their marriage on his parents’ and his behavior on his father’s. As Nicole saw it, their marriage would be destroyed if he did not come to terms with a few things. Just like his father, Michael seemed unable to commit to his wife. He didn’t know how to be in love over the long term because he was always chasing “the spark of falling in love.” And he didn’t know how to be loyal except to people who fed his self-esteem, such as “the needy women in the background.”

Nicole said she didn’t feel he was being manipulative or nasty, it was just learned behavior, and bad behavior at that. But if he didn’t deal with these issues, they would haunt him forever. The separation would be difficult for both of them, she said, but she was hopeful their relationship could survive.