Speaker 1: Step into the world of power, loyalty, and luck.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse.
Speaker 1: With family, canolis and spins mean everything. Now you want
Speaker 1: to get mixed up in the family business, Introducing The
Speaker 1: Godfather at champacasino dot com. Test your luck in the
Speaker 1: shadowy world of the Godfather slot.
Speaker 2: Someday I will call upon you to do a service
Speaker 2: for me.
Speaker 1: Play the Godfather now at chumpacasino dot com. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the Family vdW group.
Speaker 3: No perches necessary.
Speaker 4: If we were breveted by loss he terms and conditions eighteen plus.
Speaker 5: Hello, it is Ryan and we could all use an
Speaker 5: extra bright spot in our day, couldn't we just to
Speaker 5: make up for things like sitting in traffic, doing the dishes,
Speaker 5: counting or steps, you know, all the mundane stuff. That
Speaker 5: is why I'm such a big fan of Chumpa Casino.
Speaker 5: Chumpback Casino has all your favorite social casino style games
Speaker 5: you can play for free anytime anywhere with daily bonuses.
Speaker 5: That's your brighten your day, Lowe actually a lot, so
Speaker 5: sign up now at Chumbuck Casino dot com. That's by
Speaker 5: casino dot com.
Speaker 2: Bill Roguish wherever he be by Lost the terms conditions
Speaker 2: eighteen plus lost.
Speaker 6: You are now listening to True Murder, The most Shocking
Speaker 6: Killers in True Crime History and the authors that have
Speaker 6: written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every
Speaker 6: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 6: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 6: journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Speaker 7: Good Evening. This is your host Dan Zupanski for the
Speaker 7: program True Murder, The most Shocking Killers in True Crime
Speaker 7: History and the authors that have written about them. On
Speaker 7: November six, two and paramedics answered a call to find
Speaker 7: Christian Rossom. Christin Rossum, twenty four, sobbing. Her husband, Greg
Speaker 7: de Villers, wasn't breathing, and she claimed he had overdosed
Speaker 7: on drugs after learning she was leaving him. But family
Speaker 7: and friends who knew of Gregg's distaste for drugs weren't
Speaker 7: buying Kristin's story, particularly the idea that he would take
Speaker 7: his own life. The daughter of a well to do
Speaker 7: California family, Rossam was a brainy, blonde beauty whose talent
Speaker 7: for toxology had wonder a post at the San Diego
Speaker 7: County Medical Examiner's office, but her sweet smile masked a
Speaker 7: dark side. She developed a taste for methanphetamine in high school,
Speaker 7: and six months after her marriage to Greg, she'd begun
Speaker 7: seeking secret tryst with other men. At the time of
Speaker 7: her husband's death, Rossam was engaged in an illicit affair
Speaker 7: with her married boss. Investigators found that the medical Examiner's
Speaker 7: office was missing supplies of meth and fetanyl, the narcotic
Speaker 7: that had killed her husband. With each clue covered, another
Speaker 7: piece of Rossam's good girl facade fell away. What the
Speaker 7: world would eventually see was the true face of a
Speaker 7: murderer and the hands of justice. The book that we're
Speaker 7: going to be featuring this evening is called Poisoned Love,
Speaker 7: with my special guests, journalist and author Caitlyn Rother. Welcome
Speaker 7: back to the program, and thank you to agreeing. Thank
Speaker 7: you for agreeing to this interview. Kitlyn Rother. Good evening, Caitlyn, Oh,
Speaker 7: good evening. Thank you very much. I just introduced the
Speaker 7: the It did a little introduction about your book, and
Speaker 7: unfortunately I had you on mute. So oh okay, welcome
Speaker 7: to the program and thank you for agreeing to this interview. Okay,
Speaker 7: thank you. Let's start off with a little bit of
Speaker 7: background on the subject of this book, Poisoned Love, and
Speaker 7: that is Kristin Rossom, and tell us a little bit
Speaker 7: about Christian Rosam and the kind of family she grew
Speaker 7: up and where she grew up. Give us a little
Speaker 7: bit of that background before we get into this incredible tale.
Speaker 3: Okay, Kristin Rossam was. She grew up in southern California
Speaker 3: in a town called Claremont. Now, if you've ever seen
Speaker 3: the movie, I'm going to try to remember it now.
Speaker 3: It's a black and white movie that suddenly goes into colors.
Speaker 3: It's set in the fifties, right with town pleasant what's
Speaker 3: it called.
Speaker 7: I think it's Pleasantville.
Speaker 3: Was a Pleasantville, that's right, that's kind of I drove
Speaker 3: up to Claremont, and that's kind of what I felt like.
Speaker 3: It was this small, cloistered little town. You know, a
Speaker 3: lot of the people who live there work at the
Speaker 3: various universities, and so it's you know, probably very well educated,
Speaker 3: you know, relatively affluent community. So that's where she grew up.
Speaker 3: And her parents both have PhDs, and her father actually
Speaker 3: has a pretty a big reputation of his own it's
Speaker 3: a place called the Rose Institute. So he's a scholar
Speaker 3: as well and is friends with Scalia on the Supreme Court.
Speaker 3: So very conservative. So I think she basically grew up
Speaker 3: in a pretty, you know, small town with high standards,
Speaker 3: where she was expected to perform, and she became a
Speaker 3: perfectionist because she was trying so hard to I think,
Speaker 3: please her parents. So that's that's pretty much who she's,
Speaker 3: where she's come from, and that sort of sets you
Speaker 3: up for who she is and who she becomes.
Speaker 7: Now. Her mother's name is Constance, and her father's name
Speaker 7: is Ralph, and she has two brothers, Brent and Pierce.
Speaker 7: And so we'll get into all of that because every
Speaker 7: one of these characters is very crucial to this story
Speaker 7: as time goes on before the trial and with a
Speaker 7: subsequent trial as well. Now tell us about Kristin growing up,
Speaker 7: at least in grade school and then early high school.
Speaker 7: Was there any indication of any problems whatsoever? And what
Speaker 7: was the relationship like with her parents? And what was
Speaker 7: she like as a student? Was she popular? Was she accepted?
Speaker 7: Was she an achiever? What was her life characterized as
Speaker 7: she grew up and say, her early teens well.
Speaker 3: She basically my take on it is that she seemed,
Speaker 3: you know, like she was a ballet dancer, so she
Speaker 3: was very pretty, and she was really good at that,
Speaker 3: and she was very I think people thought that she
Speaker 3: had a pretty sunny personality, so people thought she was
Speaker 3: very sweet, and she did well in school. And then
Speaker 3: she got injured though when she was dancing ballet, and
Speaker 3: you know that does happen sure, and her father got relocated.
Speaker 3: He went back and forth, actually, you know, go to
Speaker 3: different jobs. And she was modeling actually when she was
Speaker 3: very young, and there were some headshots that I don't
Speaker 3: think I was able to get permission to use as
Speaker 3: a shame though, because they were in the court evidence
Speaker 3: and they were so cute. So she learned really early
Speaker 3: how to be an actress as well. So her her
Speaker 3: mother made it clear when she talked to the media
Speaker 3: that Kristin was not an actress. She was a pelly dancer.
Speaker 3: But you could tell from the modeling shots that she
Speaker 3: really was a good little actress. So she was very pretty.
Speaker 3: She worked, she worked for a model as a model
Speaker 3: for Marshall Fields and Sears and McDonald's and Montgomery Ward
Speaker 3: when she was real little and then you know, ballet
Speaker 3: dancers have often have body image issues because they need
Speaker 3: to be so thin. Well, she she became very self
Speaker 3: conscious apparently and thought she was fat, so she I
Speaker 3: think that's that also set her up for ending up
Speaker 3: as a teenager getting addicted to mass which is, I
Speaker 3: know you haven't quite gotten there yet, but I was
Speaker 3: just making it easier for you.
Speaker 7: Right now, What what point and under what circumstances did
Speaker 7: she go from the idyllic apple of her father and
Speaker 7: mother's eye to someone with at least some bumps in
Speaker 7: the road and some problems, And tell us about how
Speaker 7: the family or the parents had been particular handled this rebellion,
Speaker 7: we'll say, Well, I.
Speaker 3: Think my personal theory is that Kristen really wanted to
Speaker 3: be perfect, and so she started taking you know, laxatives
Speaker 3: and diet pills to make her self look even sinner.
Speaker 3: But basically, I don't know if it was a rebellion
Speaker 3: per se. I think she basically just decided that she
Speaker 3: would try mess mess amphetamine with a friend in the
Speaker 3: parking lot at homecoming, and she just really liked it
Speaker 3: so and once she started using it, she wanted to
Speaker 3: use it more. And I don't know if anyone listening
Speaker 3: has ever used math, and I certainly haven't, but I
Speaker 3: know from the information that I learned through writing this
Speaker 3: book that it produces a sense of euphoria that you
Speaker 3: could never achieve without using this drug. So, you know,
Speaker 3: she started using it because I think she probably also thought, oh,
Speaker 3: this will be cool because i'll be sin right. Plus
Speaker 3: she liked it so much and she could get a
Speaker 3: lot done. And then when you start using math, though,
Speaker 3: you need to use it more and more just to
Speaker 3: feel normal. And so she started, you know, and you
Speaker 3: don't sleep, so she would go for a long time
Speaker 3: without sleeping. I mean, that's what you do when you're
Speaker 3: on math. And her grades started to fail, which was
Speaker 3: very bizarre for her because she was such a perfect
Speaker 3: little student as well. So her parents. You know, they
Speaker 3: don't know anything about drugs. They that's the furthest thing
Speaker 3: that their background ever came from. You know, they actually
Speaker 3: met at a religious college, so they didn't even know
Speaker 3: what was going on. They didn't know what they were
Speaker 3: looking at. And but the brothers started noticing that something
Speaker 3: was different, and they were the ones that found a
Speaker 3: pipe and a small mirror. I guess she was probably
Speaker 3: snorting it and showed him to the mom and she
Speaker 3: didn't have any idea what this was about, which seems
Speaker 3: incredibly naive, but I.
Speaker 7: Guess that was it before the days of Google, right,
Speaker 7: So she had this drug poblem And how did the
Speaker 7: parents deal with this? Did they called Betty Ford? Was
Speaker 7: the very well.
Speaker 3: Denial and let's hide it and stigma. You know, we
Speaker 3: don't want to have anybody to break our perfect image
Speaker 3: of our perfect family. That's basically what happened.
Speaker 7: So she was.
Speaker 3: Arrested finally and as a juvenile, so it wasn't on
Speaker 3: her record ultimately.
Speaker 7: But.
Speaker 3: She was you know, buying mass and had a party
Speaker 3: at the house and stuff went to from the house
Speaker 3: and and then Constance also found some white powder in
Speaker 3: the mailbox, and her daughter, you know, Kristen, lied about it.
Speaker 3: And then basically there was a police officer who ended
Speaker 3: up coming to the house because you know that Ralph
Speaker 3: went into her backpack and found found some her little
Speaker 3: stash box. So you know, they thought, well, we'll just
Speaker 3: get her, you know, get the police to talk to
Speaker 3: her because they didn't know what to do. And anyway,
Speaker 3: she she ended up getting in trouble. But and then
Speaker 3: there was a whole whole lot of controversy later. Was
Speaker 3: she really ill arrested? Was she not arrested? You know,
Speaker 3: did she have a record? Did she not have a record.
Speaker 3: And the thing about the parents is they wanted to
Speaker 3: do everything that they could to you know, make it
Speaker 3: seem like nothing was really wrong. So what they what
Speaker 3: they did? You know, if you're going to look at
Speaker 3: it purely from an addiction standpoint, they weren't. They didn't
Speaker 3: feel with it in the right way. They took her
Speaker 3: out of town to some meetings and hid it, you know.
Speaker 3: And just if you're going to teach your kid to
Speaker 3: lie and teach your kid to hide things, it's not
Speaker 3: surprising that that's what they do later on all by themselves.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's interesting that the mother's behavior seems to be
Speaker 7: pretty consistent all the way right to the very end.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and she you know, another example of doing you know,
Speaker 3: bad mentoring is you know, Kristin ended up. Well, I'm
Speaker 3: sure you're getting to this, but I just want to
Speaker 3: jump ahead from it. She was flunking out of her
Speaker 3: first year of college and you know, ran away, and
Speaker 3: later on, when she was applying to another college, her
Speaker 3: mother helped her fill out the application and basically left
Speaker 3: off the entire you know, failed semester at this other
Speaker 3: college when the application absolutely required that and required a
Speaker 3: signature under penalty of perjury. And her mom said, oh,
Speaker 3: let's just leave that off. So I mean again, you know,
Speaker 3: let's just hide all the bad stuff and pretend it
Speaker 3: didn't happen. That's that's not truthful, and it's actually an
Speaker 3: illegal thing to do.
Speaker 7: You know, Now, where where was this? Now she gets
Speaker 7: this intervention, by our intervention, but her mother interferes and
Speaker 7: and her helps her on her behalf fudging basically her
Speaker 7: education records so that.
Speaker 3: She can get into this further down the line.
Speaker 7: But okay, so let's let's just the pattern.
Speaker 3: It sort of starts early.
Speaker 7: You know, let's talk about what school she was going
Speaker 7: to and what year that is, so for our audience
Speaker 7: to know of give it a little a time frame,
Speaker 7: and what was that and where did she eventually at
Speaker 7: what point did she eventually meet Greg and under what circumstances?
Speaker 3: Okay, so now I'm going to have to actually look
Speaker 3: at my own book to tell me all these dates
Speaker 3: because it was a long time ago. I don't have
Speaker 3: all those things in mine.
Speaker 7: I think we're talking about two thousand just for our audience.
Speaker 3: Well, the murder was in two thousand.
Speaker 7: Right, so we've got to go back that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's in the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 7: So we'll say late nineties.
Speaker 3: Just yeah, well early early nineties is when they met.
Speaker 3: Okay or mid nineties. Sorry, I don't remember all these
Speaker 3: things anymore.
Speaker 7: Anyway, go on, Okay, So tell us what were the
Speaker 7: circumstances that she met Greg? What was it? What was
Speaker 7: before we get into his personality. Just tell us how
Speaker 7: they met and what were the circumstances in which they met.
Speaker 3: Just roughly, So, as I mentioned before, Kristen was on
Speaker 3: drugs when she was starting college. So she got clean
Speaker 3: they you know, after this whole high school thing. And
Speaker 3: this is a pattern for her throughout. So she would
Speaker 3: get clean and she'd relapse and binge. So she was
Speaker 3: a binge chooser. So she they trusted her again and
Speaker 3: they let her go stay in the dorms and she
Speaker 3: was failing out again. Not again, but she started failing
Speaker 3: out and they didn't really know what was going on.
Speaker 3: They came to pick her up Christmas vacation when she
Speaker 3: was at Redlands university and this is in southern California,
Speaker 3: and she wasn't there, so she had basically disappeared from
Speaker 3: campus and decided to go down to Mexico. So I
Speaker 3: live in San Diego, so that's the big city next
Speaker 3: to the Mexican border, and there on the other side
Speaker 3: of the border is a city called Tijuana. So that's
Speaker 3: where a lot of kids who will go to college
Speaker 3: down here, and even in high school, you can go
Speaker 3: down there and drink, you know, and you just walk
Speaker 3: over the pedestrian bridge essentially, and you can go down
Speaker 3: there and nobody.
Speaker 7: Will know, right.
Speaker 3: So that's essentially what she decided to do was take
Speaker 3: the I don't know how she got down there, but
Speaker 3: she somehow got down to an area right above the border,
Speaker 3: and then she started walking through the pedestrian area to
Speaker 3: walk over the bridge, and there's a turnstile right there
Speaker 3: where you it's one of those metal things which looks
Speaker 3: like two combs facing each other, and that's where she
Speaker 3: dropped her jacket and Greg bent over to pick it up.
Speaker 3: And Greg was going down there too. Greg was going
Speaker 3: to University of California, San Diego, and so was his
Speaker 3: brother Jerome, and they had his younger brother, Bertrand with him,
Speaker 3: who was underage, and they were going down to go party,
Speaker 3: and so was Kristin. Kristin was by herself, so they
Speaker 3: started chatting and they said, oh, you know, why don't
Speaker 3: you come down with us because she was by herself.
Speaker 3: So that's how they met and they had a great time,
Speaker 3: and I guess she basically said she didn't have anywhere
Speaker 3: to go, so Greg took her home and then she
Speaker 3: never left.
Speaker 7: Right now, let's go a little bit backwards for the
Speaker 7: background on Greg. But let's start off they did not
Speaker 7: share the same addiction whatsoever. And so tell us Greg
Speaker 7: and basically what he was like at that time when
Speaker 7: he met her, and she was this recovering addict. We'll
Speaker 7: say when brackets recovering. But what was Greg like? In college?
Speaker 3: Greg was a straight arrow and Greg was still in school,
Speaker 3: and so Kristen started going to college and Greg basically
Speaker 3: got her off drugs, so she was staying down there.
Speaker 3: She disappeared, her parents didn't know where she was, and
Speaker 3: basically Greg got her clean. So by the time she
Speaker 3: got back in contact with her parents and they came
Speaker 3: down and met Greg. They loved Greg because he was
Speaker 3: able to get her clean when they weren't able to
Speaker 3: do that right, So they were very happy with him
Speaker 3: and they called him, you know, their angel. So I'm sorry,
Speaker 3: I just found the day Greg met Kristen in late
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 7: Okay, thank you. The other thing too, is what we
Speaker 7: talk about is that they really liked Greg, and then
Speaker 7: we'll talk about how that seemed to change at at
Speaker 7: trial or at least through testimony. Yeah, that they liked
Speaker 7: this guy so much and trusted him so much and
Speaker 7: were thankful that they all and were very confident in
Speaker 7: their daughter. Now again, that they covered all their costs.
Speaker 7: There was talk of like seventy five thousand dollars in
Speaker 7: accumulated cost, so they were paying for most of the
Speaker 7: things that were at least helping out very very generously
Speaker 7: during that time that they were together.
Speaker 3: Yeah, helping with rant and everything. But they didn't know
Speaker 3: that she was living with him. So yeah, yeah, that
Speaker 3: little thing.
Speaker 7: When did they actually find out that they were living together, Well, it.
Speaker 3: Took her a little while because Kristen basically, I think,
Speaker 3: led them to believe that she had her own apartment
Speaker 3: and so they were helping her with her apartment. They
Speaker 3: didn't realize it was her and Greg's apartment, so it
Speaker 3: took a little while, but you know, that's kind of
Speaker 3: a hard thing to hide after when they come down
Speaker 3: to visit and that kind of thing.
Speaker 7: So do you think that that was a an issue
Speaker 7: or we will say that that attributed to her maybe
Speaker 7: considering marriage and being more comfortable with that.
Speaker 3: No. No, I think basically Greg wanted to marry her,
Speaker 3: and she wasn't really sure whether she wanted to marry Greg.
Speaker 3: And meanwhile, you know, she she had been cheating on
Speaker 3: Greg all the way along, and don't you know, I
Speaker 3: know of some things that I wasn't able to completely prove,
Speaker 3: but I didn't want to put it in the book.
Speaker 3: But I heard from people that she had been Dalliantis
Speaker 3: and there's some things, you know, with letters and emails
Speaker 3: and things that came out later that was clear that
Speaker 3: she was carrying on certain flirtations and more serious than
Speaker 3: than flirtations. And anyway, so she wasn't really sure what
Speaker 3: she wanted to do. But you know, she loved him.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure she was in love with him, but
Speaker 3: you know, he was very good to her.
Speaker 4: Right, and you can get lucky just about anywhere.
Speaker 2: It's your captains speaking. We've got clear runway and the
Speaker 2: weather's five. But we're just going to circle up here
Speaker 2: a while and get lucky. Oh no, nothing like that.
Speaker 2: It's just these cash prizes add up quick. So I
Speaker 2: suggest you sit back, keep your trade table up right,
Speaker 2: and start getting lucky.
Speaker 4: Pay for free at Lucky landslides dot com. Are you
Speaker 4: feeling lucky? No, we're just necessary void. We're prohibited by
Speaker 4: Law eighteen plus. Terms and conditions apply to see website
Speaker 4: for details.
Speaker 3: You know, I think she probably felt like she owed
Speaker 3: him something, so they finally, you know, she finally agreed,
Speaker 3: and partly, she said later she blamed her parents for this,
Speaker 3: that they basically were like, yeah, you should marry Greg.
Speaker 3: So I don't think it had anything to do with
Speaker 3: the living together things, because after a certain point, I
Speaker 3: think her parents just kind of had to deal with
Speaker 3: the fact that, you know, if this is a lesser
Speaker 3: of two evils in our you know, religious world, that
Speaker 3: at least she's clean when she's with Greg, and that's
Speaker 3: a that's a more important thing.
Speaker 7: Right now. You say they got together in ninety four,
Speaker 7: and we're talking about later in two thousand and so
Speaker 7: what was their relationship? Like you say, it seems that
Speaker 7: you found some that she was stepping out, maybe even
Speaker 7: early on. But tell us what from all other appearances,
Speaker 7: From what Constance and Ralph thought, and what Devilliers thought,
Speaker 7: or at least his mother thought, what exactly did they
Speaker 7: did the families, at least for the first few years,
Speaker 7: think that was was happening between the two in this relationship.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure what you mean. I mean, they were
Speaker 3: seeing each other.
Speaker 7: How did they seem to them? Yeah? How did how
Speaker 7: did the relationship seem to both families?
Speaker 3: Well, I think early on, I think they thought it
Speaker 3: was fine, right, But I don't think the parents really
Speaker 3: had a clue about and honestly, they see things. They
Speaker 3: saw things differently after the murders than they did at
Speaker 3: the time. I'm pretty sure of that. So, I mean,
Speaker 3: I think maybe the question you ask you, you're asking
Speaker 3: us what did they think was going on? But I
Speaker 3: don't think they thought it until later, That's my point.
Speaker 7: No, I know what you depict in the book is
Speaker 7: that it didn't It didn't happen overnight, this entire situation.
Speaker 7: So it seemed to be Greg.
Speaker 3: Finish college and you know, have do that sort of
Speaker 3: thing too.
Speaker 7: So now in terms of employment, which is very important,
Speaker 7: both of them did graduate from school, and where did
Speaker 7: they where were they both employed and what area, what
Speaker 7: profession were they employed in?
Speaker 3: Well, Greg was in biotech and he was more on
Speaker 3: the business side, and Kristin was at the Medical Examiner's
Speaker 3: office at the toxicology lab. So she had an internship
Speaker 3: when she was at San Diego State where she was
Speaker 3: a chemistry major, and she started there as an intern
Speaker 3: in which meant that she didn't have to go through
Speaker 3: a lot of the screenings that regular employees would have
Speaker 3: to go through. Meanings, she didn't take a drug test,
Speaker 3: they didn't go back and look and see if she
Speaker 3: had a record of any kind of criminal record. And
Speaker 3: as it came out later, you know, when she did
Speaker 3: apply later at the crime lab at the Sheriff's Department,
Speaker 3: she admitted that she had used maths, but she didn't
Speaker 3: have to admit it at the Medical Examiner's office because
Speaker 3: no one asked her.
Speaker 7: Right And what was what was her job like at
Speaker 7: the Medical Examiner's office and what was her what was
Speaker 7: her relationship with her other co workers and her employers,
Speaker 7: what was that like? Especially in the beginning.
Speaker 3: Well, when she started there as an intern, they thought
Speaker 3: she was a you know, very talented young student, which
Speaker 3: because she was still in school, and as she was
Speaker 3: doing better and better in school and staying clean, you know,
Speaker 3: she finally graduated summa cum laude, which actually she didn't
Speaker 3: earn because and my mother was a dean at the
Speaker 3: same school. So when I talked to her about this,
Speaker 3: I was like, really realized, and they didn't. I don't
Speaker 3: think the prosecutor really knew this at the time. But
Speaker 3: when you lie on your application like that, Number one,
Speaker 3: it's a problem. Number two, the fact that she had
Speaker 3: almost failed out of that first college that she never
Speaker 3: mentioned she wouldn't she didn't earn the summa cum laudie recognition,
Speaker 3: so they, you know, at the at her office, the
Speaker 3: job at the medical Exeminer's office, they didn't know that
Speaker 3: she hadn't earned all these honors. But she graduated with honors,
Speaker 3: and she moved into a full time job and she
Speaker 3: was working there and she got a mentor named Frank Barnhardt,
Speaker 3: who took her under his wing and really helped her.
Speaker 3: And she seemed to really do well with men. I
Speaker 3: think so, But over time, there was an Australian guy
Speaker 3: who came to work there as the head of the
Speaker 3: toxicology lab named Michael Robertson, and he really took an
Speaker 3: interest in her. Now, this was after she was already
Speaker 3: married and he was also married. And then her coworkers
Speaker 3: started sensing that something was going on between the two
Speaker 3: of them and decided must be having an affair. But
Speaker 3: when they were confronted, they both denied it. But they
Speaker 3: were right. They both they were having an affair. They
Speaker 3: would go out to lunch together and they would come
Speaker 3: back with wet hair. For example, they both lived actually
Speaker 3: pretty pretty nearby, so it wasn't that far for them
Speaker 3: to go in their lunch hour and come back, you know.
Speaker 3: And they lived near each other too in their married apartments.
Speaker 7: Right, let's just go back just a little bit, because
Speaker 7: I think we just skipped over Greg de Villiers just
Speaker 7: a little bit, and and sort of his family. We
Speaker 7: won't go too much into, you know, like we can
Speaker 7: explain that his father was really not a big part
Speaker 7: of his life. But tell us a little bit about
Speaker 7: tell us a little bit about the the Villiers family.
Speaker 3: Really family, really nice brothers, really close family, very good
Speaker 3: looking all of them and smart and good in school.
Speaker 3: The father was a surgeon who lived in Monaco, and
Speaker 3: the mother was also French, so they were both they
Speaker 3: were both French. That's where it's de Villers, but I
Speaker 3: think it was probably pronounced d Villier. I don't I
Speaker 3: don't know. I used to know French, but I actually
Speaker 3: should have asked them how to pronounce it. But the
Speaker 3: parents were divorced early on, and they the three boys
Speaker 3: grew up with with mom, so they were very close,
Speaker 3: and she was a massage therapist. And the three brothers
Speaker 3: were all really close, and Jerome was the middle brother
Speaker 3: and Bertron was the younger brother. And Jerome was living
Speaker 3: with Kristin and Greg for a while, and he kind
Speaker 3: of didn't really trust Kristin. There was some things that
Speaker 3: got went missing from the house and some jewelry that
Speaker 3: was stolen or went missing, and he just thought Kristin
Speaker 3: took it, so he, you know, he wasn't really big
Speaker 3: on Kristin, but Greg was so in love with her.
Speaker 7: In that scene was very demonstrative of his devotion to
Speaker 7: Kristin as well, because he did side with Kristin over
Speaker 7: that suspected theft, didn't he.
Speaker 3: That was his first mistake. Yeah, to bad, chris Teroon
Speaker 3: turned out to be right. But I guess love is blind,
Speaker 3: that's what they say, right.
Speaker 7: Absolutely. Now, when did when did if he did it all?
Speaker 7: Did Greg realize that Caitlin had not concluded kicked?
Speaker 3: Now, you're confusing me with Kristin. I didn't kill anybody.
Speaker 7: Oh, people do that a lot doing Oh my god.
Speaker 3: No, I've actually done it myself. I've I've been given
Speaker 3: a speech and I'll start talking about my own bio
Speaker 3: and then I'll start talking about her bio and I'll say,
Speaker 3: you know what, I'm actually confusing us. We have the
Speaker 3: same it's a it's we have almost the same initials.
Speaker 3: So it's the same about it.
Speaker 7: I apologize. So when did Greg, if he did at all?
Speaker 7: When did he realize that his bride, Kristen, had not
Speaker 7: completely kicked her habit. Yeah.
Speaker 3: The thing about addicts is that they do relapse, and
Speaker 3: you know, it's difficult to spit for some people, and
Speaker 3: many of them, whether you're an alcoholic or you're an addict,
Speaker 3: to stay clean. And when things get tough, people go
Speaker 3: back to their addiction. And so she started using again,
Speaker 3: and I think the theory. The running theory is basically
Speaker 3: that you know, things were getting difficult for her having
Speaker 3: these two lives. She's having an affair and she's you know, emailing,
Speaker 3: and she's having a secret affair at work too, So
Speaker 3: it's not not just because she's married, but because she's
Speaker 3: having an affair with her boss and everybody else's boss,
Speaker 3: and he's showing hers, you know, at least he's perceived
Speaker 3: to be showing her special treatment. And there's jealousy among
Speaker 3: the co workers, and you know, things are starting to
Speaker 3: get get hot in there for her, so she starts
Speaker 3: using drugs. Now she has access to drugs at work.
Speaker 3: Basically the I called it like a virtual candy store
Speaker 3: for someone with her background, because the county, you know,
Speaker 3: did not have good control over their drugs. Now, toxicologists
Speaker 3: that's what they do. You know, they go through tissue
Speaker 3: and blood and from a person who's been killed or
Speaker 3: who's died, and they try to figure out whether drugs
Speaker 3: were responsible and if so, how much of the drugs
Speaker 3: were in that person's body. And to do that, they
Speaker 3: use something called a standard, which is a little vile
Speaker 3: of synthetically manufactured drug and they do use some kind
Speaker 3: of fancy machinery to kind of figure out how much
Speaker 3: of that substance was in this was in this person's blood,
Speaker 3: and that's the kind of testing that she would do.
Speaker 3: So she had access to, you know, these drugs, and
Speaker 3: she also had access to recreational drugs which the investigators
Speaker 3: would collect at the death scenes, and they were not
Speaker 3: stored very well, so they didn't really have a good systems,
Speaker 3: and she had She had knowledge and access to all
Speaker 3: of these drugs. There was a log in the computer,
Speaker 3: and there were evidence envelopes, so she could just basically
Speaker 3: go into any of these envelopes. She could look in
Speaker 3: the computer and say, okay, so evidence case number blah
Speaker 3: blah blah, and here's the envelope and if I look inside,
Speaker 3: there's going to be white powder, which is generally mess
Speaker 3: most cases in because San Diego County was the mess
Speaker 3: capital of the world for a while, so lots of
Speaker 3: math in these envelopes, which for a meth addict, you know,
Speaker 3: is free, right, and no one's checking. So she started
Speaker 3: using meth. And in fact, they found a pipe in
Speaker 3: one of these machines that she was using, which has
Speaker 3: a vent just like you have on your stove. So
Speaker 3: they found a glass pipe, which she also must have
Speaker 3: taken from one of these evidence envelopes, a meth pipe,
Speaker 3: and she apparently was smoke in the medical Examiner's office
Speaker 3: at this event. That's what they think, because they found
Speaker 3: the pipe in one of the drawers of the machine
Speaker 3: with her DNA on it.
Speaker 7: That's what I found incredible that that you had access
Speaker 7: to that information, that there was a hooded exhaust and
Speaker 7: I could just picture it so well, look all indications
Speaker 7: that you were smoking right at work.
Speaker 3: And right well, no one saw her, so they can't
Speaker 3: say for sure, but why else would you keep a
Speaker 3: pipe in the drawer of the machine at work? I mean,
Speaker 3: anyone will find it, right of course.
Speaker 7: I want to ask one question too, because this is
Speaker 7: something I didn't know. I didn't know of this drug.
Speaker 7: And well, I'll just ask you what it is and
Speaker 7: then we'll talk about the drug and its importance to
Speaker 7: this story letter. Okay, what for our audience is what
Speaker 7: is sentanel?
Speaker 3: Okay? Have you ever had your wisdom teeth out?
Speaker 7: Yes?
Speaker 3: Okay, So they hooked you up with an IV And
Speaker 3: this is the analogy I think most people can relate to.
Speaker 3: They basically ask you to count backwards from one hundred.
Speaker 3: You're at one hundred, ninety nine, ninety eight, and you
Speaker 3: are on top of the world, and you couldn't be
Speaker 3: happier in every is amazing, and then by ninety seven
Speaker 3: you're basically out. That's spentanyl.
Speaker 7: It's one hundred times more potent than morphine.
Speaker 3: Right, it's a hundred times more powerful than morphine. And
Speaker 3: there do you ever watch Nurse Jackie?
Speaker 7: Yes?
Speaker 3: Okay, so you see how some people use drugs recreationally
Speaker 3: in a hospital who work there. Well, if you use
Speaker 3: Sentinel recreationally and you use a syringe and you'll overdose
Speaker 3: by accident, you will be found with the syringe generally
Speaker 3: in your arm or right next to your arm, because
Speaker 3: it is so powerful and so fast acting. So that's
Speaker 3: important and it'll be more important later.
Speaker 7: Absolutely. Now we hesitated to say that Michael Robertson too
Speaker 7: is a married man, right, he's having some problems in
Speaker 7: his relationship and for whatever reason. But and then talk
Speaker 7: about more about what exactly characterized the illicit affair, Like
Speaker 7: she is telling people and some people that it's just
Speaker 7: at an emotional relationship, but what what are these people
Speaker 7: actually doing? How far are they going in this illicit room.
Speaker 3: We're having sex. They're having plenty of sex, and I
Speaker 3: don't know I have plenty, But they're having sex, and
Speaker 3: they're emailing each other and giving each other cards and
Speaker 3: books and things with like I want to spend the rest,
Speaker 3: you know, I want to have babies with you. I
Speaker 3: love you, I love you. And then she's she's emailing
Speaker 3: her boss secretly, who's just working, you know, five feet
Speaker 3: away from her, and they're, you know, thinking that this
Speaker 3: is nobody's going to know, right, And then she's emailing
Speaker 3: her husband about what are we having for dinner? And
Speaker 3: what movie? What video do you want to get tonight?
Speaker 3: So she's and I have the emails too where you
Speaker 3: can look at the times, and she's literally like firing
Speaker 3: off an email one to the next, right, Yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 3: And they're also like leaving each other little notes in
Speaker 3: you know, special secret boxes, and it's it's really gushy.
Speaker 3: It's really really like sappy, sweet emails and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: Then they go on a conference together and he helps
Speaker 3: her with this paper and she gets she tells Greg that,
Speaker 3: you know, oh, it's for my professional advancement. Meanwhile, they're
Speaker 3: having sex, you know, and out of town.
Speaker 7: And Greg wasn't. Greg wasn't so trusting or just willing
Speaker 7: to go along with whatever she said in terms of
Speaker 7: this relationship. Right, So he did have a pretty good inkling,
Speaker 7: or at least he had his suspicions about Michael Robertson
Speaker 7: and this relationship and this trip that they were going
Speaker 7: on together.
Speaker 3: Right, he knew that. He actually called Michael Robertson at
Speaker 3: one point and told him to stop, you know, and
Speaker 3: leave her alone. I think he found one of her letters.
Speaker 3: I found a letter, and he was going through her stuff,
Speaker 3: and that actually for that, that's actually kind of a
Speaker 3: normal thing to do. If you've ever lived with an
Speaker 3: addict or an alcoholic and you see them acting strangely,
Speaker 3: you think they're using drugs again or they're hiding something
Speaker 3: from you, and you end up going and looking through
Speaker 3: their stuff. And I'm speaking from personal experience that happened
Speaker 3: to you know, I lived my husband was an alcoholic,
Speaker 3: and that's what happens, and it makes you crazy. So
Speaker 3: is they start acting strange, you start getting crazy too,
Speaker 3: and then you start like looking through their stuff, and
Speaker 3: then that's how he ends up finding things, And that's
Speaker 3: how he I'm assuming that's why he found the letter.
Speaker 7: Now, what is his reaction to all of this? What
Speaker 7: does he you know, he's a sort of a mild
Speaker 7: mannered guy's according to his friends, he's sort of an
Speaker 7: even keel He's the only time anybody's really seen him
Speaker 7: really get angry is about the issue with his father
Speaker 7: and the father coming to the wedding. But really, how
Speaker 7: does he react? What does he try to do to
Speaker 7: Kristin or say to Kristin? What does he try to
Speaker 7: do for his relationship?
Speaker 3: This is this is always kind of a little bit
Speaker 3: of a sticking point for me. This is basically the
Speaker 3: point where the prosecution says, this is Kristen's motive. Okay,
Speaker 3: this never really made much sense to me, so I'm
Speaker 3: just gonna be honest about that. But she admitted after
Speaker 3: the fact that or she claimed after the fact that
Speaker 3: that she said she was going to leave and you
Speaker 3: know that he needed to or she was going to
Speaker 3: find another apartment, and and and he threatened, he threatened her.
Speaker 3: He said, I'm gonna I'm going to report this affair
Speaker 3: that you're having with your boss, and I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 3: going to tell your work that you're using myth. And
Speaker 3: so that's what she told the police after Greg was dead,
Speaker 3: that that that that was the argument that they had,
Speaker 3: And the problem that I have with that is that, Okay, well,
Speaker 3: then she told the police that she was using meth,
Speaker 3: and she told the police and you know, admitted to
Speaker 3: the police that she was having this affair. So I
Speaker 3: don't know. I think basically the thing is that she
Speaker 3: was on myth and so nothing that she did was rational.
Speaker 3: I think that's and she's a liar, that's what she's playing.
Speaker 7: But that's wanted to do that. It would make more
Speaker 7: sense if he wanted to do that, he would have
Speaker 7: done that and then done what she then theorized he
Speaker 7: did as well.
Speaker 3: So I don't know what really happened, but that's what
Speaker 3: she told police happened.
Speaker 7: So definitely he was aware of this, he thought it
Speaker 7: and it for all accounts, he thought that there was
Speaker 7: something definitely seriously wrong, yes, with this relationship.
Speaker 3: And then so did Michael Robertson, because Michael Robertson was
Speaker 3: going through her desk as well, and he found some
Speaker 3: you know, bindles of meth or what was left of math,
Speaker 3: and you know, he didn't report it, and that ultimately
Speaker 3: got him fired and her too. So and that was
Speaker 3: way before she was ever arrested for anything.
Speaker 7: Now take us back to the eventful day that and
Speaker 7: again a lot of this is because there was no witnesses.
Speaker 7: But tell us what, you know, what she reported to
Speaker 7: police and when she reported to police. Let's go back
Speaker 7: to that faithful day. Start off in the morning.
Speaker 3: Do you want her story or do you want what
Speaker 3: actually happened?
Speaker 7: Well, first we need to hear her story, I think,
Speaker 7: and then of course.
Speaker 3: Oh, you know, I don't even know if I can
Speaker 3: keep the two apart at this point, but I do
Speaker 3: my best. I mean, then there was well there's a
Speaker 3: lot of let me just let me just tell it
Speaker 3: the way I can tell it, tell it best, because
Speaker 3: I think the way that they figured it out is interesting,
Speaker 3: and that's based on the evidence. So he didn't show
Speaker 3: up for work, Okay, So she she calls into his voicemail.
Speaker 3: This is voicemail that only he would answer, So that's
Speaker 3: a that's a problem. But she calls in reporting that
Speaker 3: he's not going to be coming into work that morning.
Speaker 3: This is Monday morning, and you know, his boss is
Speaker 3: wondering where Greg is, and he's calling Kristen's apartment trying
Speaker 3: to find Greg. And when he does end up catching
Speaker 3: Kristen a couple of times, Christen says, Oh, he's sleeping,
Speaker 3: you know, and I can't talk. I'm going to go.
Speaker 3: And this is in the evening. So according to Kristin,
Speaker 3: you know, he Greg was in bed because he had
Speaker 3: been depressed that she was leaving him and he had
Speaker 3: been drugging himself. Okay, over the weekend they'd had a
Speaker 3: big fight that Saturday night. So they had that fight
Speaker 3: where he threatened her on Thursday, and then Friday he
Speaker 3: went to work.
Speaker 4: And with the Lucky land Slots, you can get lucky
Speaker 4: just about anywhere.
Speaker 2: This is your captain speaking. We've got clear runway and
Speaker 2: the weather's five. But we're just going to circle up
Speaker 2: here a while and get lucky. Oh no, nothing like that.
Speaker 2: It's just these cash prizes add up quick. So I
Speaker 2: suggest you sit back, keep your trade table up right,
Speaker 2: and start getting lucky.
Speaker 4: Pay for free at Lucky landslots dot com. Are you
Speaker 4: feeling lucky? No purcha, just necessary void. We're prohibited by
Speaker 4: Law eighteen plus. Terms and conditions apply. See website for details.
Speaker 3: Then Saturday, they had another fight and he apparently you know,
Speaker 3: was drinking and drank a lot and ended up just
Speaker 3: staying in bed. And according to her, he was taking
Speaker 3: these drugs that she had in the apartment that she
Speaker 3: used to use to come down from meth many years ago,
Speaker 3: but of course, you know, she hadn't used him in years.
Speaker 3: And they'd also moved several times, so who takes these
Speaker 3: old drugs and moved several times anyway, And then that morning,
Speaker 3: according to her, he was, you know, still in bed,
Speaker 3: still drugged and groggy from taking these drugs and hiding
Speaker 3: in bed and being depressed. That was her story. So
Speaker 3: she goes to work and she's a mess, and her
Speaker 3: coworkers see her talking to Michael Robertson through the glass
Speaker 3: pane in his door becas the door's closed, and they
Speaker 3: see them having this emotional conversation, so they don't know
Speaker 3: what's going on. And what Kristen says is that they
Speaker 3: were you know, I don't even to be honest, who
Speaker 3: knows what they were really talking about, because we don't know.
Speaker 3: But she was, you know, clearly distraught, clearly a mess,
Speaker 3: and she's going back and forth between the medical Examiner's
Speaker 3: office and back to home, supposedly to check on Greg. Well,
Speaker 3: either to check on Greg or to keep drugging Greg.
Speaker 3: We don't know, right, And this is part of the thing,
Speaker 3: is that the prosecution could not prove how she actually
Speaker 3: killed Greg because there was so much ventoyl in his
Speaker 3: body that they they couldn't prove exactly how the drugs
Speaker 3: got into his body. So anyway, so she's going back
Speaker 3: and forth between home and work, and she I don't
Speaker 3: know if I want to give all this away, if
Speaker 3: people might want to read the book, is the only
Speaker 3: thing because this is part of the surprise. But there's
Speaker 3: something that she does that gets she gets caught by
Speaker 3: using her Vond's card, and I'm not going to mention
Speaker 3: what it is because that's kind of a nice surprise
Speaker 3: in the book and which which she never tells anybody about.
Speaker 3: But she said that they had lunch together, supposedly, and
Speaker 3: she made him some soup. So so then she goes
Speaker 3: back to the office and you know, does some work,
Speaker 3: and then she leaves again. So she's going back and
Speaker 3: forth and back and forth, and then she says she's
Speaker 3: gonna go out, you know, shopping for a little while,
Speaker 3: and then she comes back again and she says, well,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna take a bath, and I take a shower,
Speaker 3: and then I come out of the shower and I
Speaker 3: find Greg. He's been sweeping all day, but now he's
Speaker 3: cold and pale and not breathing. And that's when she
Speaker 3: calls nine one one.
Speaker 7: Right, And we'll get into that too, because that's a
Speaker 7: big bone of contention at the trial too. That's very
Speaker 7: interesting testimony at trial, that nine call. So this she
Speaker 7: calls the police, the police are called, our police come
Speaker 7: to the crime scene. How does it proceed from there?
Speaker 7: What does it look like to police? How do they
Speaker 7: what does she say, how does she react, and what's
Speaker 7: the what's the response.
Speaker 3: With Okay, so the first thing that I need to
Speaker 3: preface all this is this is the campus police that
Speaker 3: respond because they're living and married, you know, in student
Speaker 3: housing graduate student housing, so they're off campus, but they're
Speaker 3: in campus owned housing. So what that means is when
Speaker 3: you call nine one one, you don't get the San
Speaker 3: Diego Police Department, you get the UCSD campus police, and
Speaker 3: they are not trained to process a homicide scene. So
Speaker 3: that's the first thing that happens. So they respond and
Speaker 3: and the paramedics respond, and the paramedics walk into the
Speaker 3: apartment and they see Kristen on the phone on one
Speaker 3: of these cordless phones in the living room. Okay, now
Speaker 3: she's been on the phone with the nine to one
Speaker 3: to one dispatcher doing supposedly doing CPR on Greg, counting
Speaker 3: and breathing into the phone, and the dispatcher is walking
Speaker 3: her through that. Well, guess what, the body of Greg
Speaker 3: is in the bedroom. So if she's really doing CPR
Speaker 3: on Greg, why is she in the living room when
Speaker 3: Greg's body is in the bedroom. So that's number one thing. Now.
Speaker 3: I don't even know if the paramedics knew that when
Speaker 3: they walked in, but they're like, well, where's Greg? So
Speaker 3: she takes him in there and they find him on
Speaker 3: the floor and he's got red rose petals kind of
Speaker 3: scattered over him and around him, and their wedding picture
Speaker 3: is perched on the floor against a chest of drawers,
Speaker 3: kind of like near his head as if he might
Speaker 3: kind of be looking at it.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 3: But that's kind of strange because you know, she was
Speaker 3: when she called nine one one, he was in bed
Speaker 3: and she had to move him onto the floor in
Speaker 3: order to do CPR, because that's what the dispatcher told
Speaker 3: her to do. So what they would later find the
Speaker 3: investigators and not the campus police but the San Diego
Speaker 3: Police once the case was transferred over, and we can
Speaker 3: go through that if you want later, but they found
Speaker 3: these red streaks on the sheets of that were left
Speaker 3: apparently by her brushing, you know, briskly brushing the red
Speaker 3: rose pedals which were scattered over him onto the floor,
Speaker 3: so that the petals. Basically was recreating this staged scene
Speaker 3: which she had put in the bed first, but she
Speaker 3: didn't realize that she was going to have to move him,
Speaker 3: so then she had to recreate the suicide scene basically
Speaker 3: to make it look like Greg did this to himself
Speaker 3: on the floor, so that when the paramedics came they
Speaker 3: would say, oh wow, look at all these road pedals.
Speaker 7: And what was the tie to American Beauty because a
Speaker 7: lot of people have seen that, you know, well, there's.
Speaker 3: A scene in American Beauty where there are these red
Speaker 3: rose pedals which kind of float down from the bedroom
Speaker 3: ceiling and there is a red rose called the American Beauty.
Speaker 3: So it's this was one of her favorite movies, and
Speaker 3: that's actually the name of the Rose of the Red Rose.
Speaker 7: Yeah. I thought it was interesting. That's her favorite movie.
Speaker 3: So yeah, well she and again, you know, the town
Speaker 3: in that movie was sort of similar to Claremont. Also,
Speaker 3: I thought that all suburban you know, things are different
Speaker 3: on the inside than they seem on the outside, which
Speaker 3: was her whole family.
Speaker 7: Now, I thought one of the more interesting things, and
Speaker 7: it seems like right out of a you know, a
Speaker 7: CSI episode, is how the medical of course, she's working
Speaker 7: at the medical examiners. How does it because she's part
Speaker 7: of the extended family there and they like her so much,
Speaker 7: how do things sort of get handled by that medical
Speaker 7: examiner's office that would be a little bit differently than
Speaker 7: it would handle it right else.
Speaker 3: Because she worked there, she was able to call up
Speaker 3: the medical examiner himself and say, oh, you know, mister Blackbourne,
Speaker 3: would you please do the autopsy on my husband he
Speaker 3: committed suicide, and will you come in specially and do this.
Speaker 3: So he did, and coincidentally, or perhaps not coincidentally, she
Speaker 3: and Greg had about two weeks earlier gone to the
Speaker 3: DMV and he had decided to become an organ donor,
Speaker 3: right and she was there and she was the witness
Speaker 3: and she signed the papers, so we all know that
Speaker 3: she knew that he was an organ donor. So when
Speaker 3: he was at the hospital and they couldn't revive him,
Speaker 3: she went ahead and donated his organs. So by the
Speaker 3: time they did the autopsy, he had no more organs,
Speaker 3: which is actually one of the things that they need
Speaker 3: when they're processing a homicide is the autopsy. They need
Speaker 3: to be able to you know, for example, look at
Speaker 3: the eyes and the vitreous I think it's called the
Speaker 3: vitreous humor where they's a liquid in the eye and
Speaker 3: they can use that to figure out what drugs are
Speaker 3: in the body. So basically, and also sentinel I didn't
Speaker 3: mention this before, but fentanel comes in several forms and
Speaker 3: that she had and she had access to it in
Speaker 3: different forms at work that other people would not have
Speaker 3: access to. So number one those standards that I mentioned
Speaker 3: the synthetic manufactured drugs that she would use in testing.
Speaker 3: There was a little vial of fentanyl in the office
Speaker 3: that she actually logged in. There's her name was on
Speaker 3: the log and the vial was empty, so that was missing.
Speaker 3: And then there were sentinel patches at the medical Examder's
Speaker 3: office which were in those evidence envelopes I mentioned, there
Speaker 3: were fifteen of those patches missing also when they later
Speaker 3: did an audit. Now, because in an organ donation situation
Speaker 3: they also take away the skin, nobody later after the
Speaker 3: fact was able to figure out, you know, was there
Speaker 3: any adhesive, for example, from fentanyl patches that she might
Speaker 3: have stolen from work and used on Greg in order
Speaker 3: to give the fentinyl level to the incredible height that
Speaker 3: it was in his body. But the way she got
Speaker 3: caught was partly because the fentanyl was missing from the
Speaker 3: medical Examiner's office once they did the audit. And secondly,
Speaker 3: even though they screwed up the autopsy, they were at
Speaker 3: least smart enough to do the toxicology tests out of
Speaker 3: the office. So because her boyfriend, you know, was the
Speaker 3: toxicology boss, they did not test for fentanyl in the
Speaker 3: medical Examiner's office, and she knew that, and her boss
Speaker 3: knew that because it was I guess they considered it
Speaker 3: to be to you know, rarely use that it would
Speaker 3: ever turn up, and it was costly. So they had
Speaker 3: that vile of fentanyl because they were planning to institute
Speaker 3: that test, but at that time they did not test
Speaker 3: for it, so she probably thought, well, they won't even
Speaker 3: know because they won't test his blood for fentanyl. They
Speaker 3: won't even figure it out even if they try. So
Speaker 3: she wasn't anticipating that they were going to send it
Speaker 3: out to a private lab. And her old friend Frank Barnhardt,
Speaker 3: who had moved over to the crime lab, he was
Speaker 3: in charge of everything, and so he sent it out
Speaker 3: to the private lab and then when he got the
Speaker 3: test back, he was like, holy shit, it was fentanyl.
Speaker 3: So they weren't expecting it because she never had mentioned
Speaker 3: fentanyl to anybody. She had said, oh, no, these drugs
Speaker 3: that I had in the house that he was taking,
Speaker 3: you know, were these other drugs, Glennaza, pamin OxyContin. But
Speaker 3: there was no She never mentioned fentanyl. And there was
Speaker 3: nothing that they found in the trash can in the house,
Speaker 3: any of those little bins that you haven't around the house.
Speaker 3: There were no containers, no syringes, no trace of how
Speaker 3: that stuff got into his body. And the fact of
Speaker 3: the matter is that they had campus belief who responded
Speaker 3: and Dane didn't go through their actual household trash which
Speaker 3: was out on the balcony, he found a can of
Speaker 3: an empty came a soup on the top of the
Speaker 3: trash can, and that's as far as he looked. He's like, oh,
Speaker 3: I guess she was telling the truth that they had
Speaker 3: soup for lunch and that was all. You know, that's
Speaker 3: I'm sure that's where the syringe or whatever she used
Speaker 3: was must have been in that trash can.
Speaker 7: When they did the actual autopsy and did all the
Speaker 7: testing necessary to produce a result of how he actually died,
Speaker 7: what did they find in terms of there was totally
Speaker 7: contradictory to her story that he was awake, he had
Speaker 7: some soup. Tell us what their conclusions were that how
Speaker 7: long he had been out in his state during the
Speaker 7: day right.
Speaker 3: Well, according to her, and you know her story that
Speaker 3: he was up having lunch, that didn't jibe with the
Speaker 3: way the drug works. Essentially, he had a tremendously high
Speaker 3: amount of sentinel in his body. Now, the one thing
Speaker 3: that the prosecution didn't go into, which I learned later
Speaker 3: after death, the amount of ventanyl, those those measurements actually rise,
Speaker 3: which did not help their case that they had mentioned it.
Speaker 3: But it's possible that the reason it seemed so high
Speaker 3: was because it goes up in the in the for
Speaker 3: some reason, and when the you know, in the blood
Speaker 3: after death, it looks higher than it actually is. But
Speaker 3: even so it was still very high. And and I
Speaker 3: forgot your question. Sorry, what was your question?
Speaker 7: Oh jeez, got there too. Were both went on a tangent.
Speaker 7: Oh no, I think what it was was the.
Speaker 3: I know, I know how long? How did we know
Speaker 3: that it wasn't?
Speaker 7: Okay? Yeah?
Speaker 3: What was it?
Speaker 7: What was the condition compared?
Speaker 3: He had bronchol bronchial pneumonia in his lungs, which means
Speaker 3: that they were pretty full of fluid. And the thing
Speaker 3: about sentinel is that you know, it's great when you're
Speaker 3: having your wisdom teeth out and you have that euphoria,
Speaker 3: but if you have too much of it, it stops
Speaker 3: you from breathing, and it basically you're shoot, you're I
Speaker 3: think you're basically drowning in your own fluid. And he
Speaker 3: also had six to twelve hours you know, worth of
Speaker 3: urine in his bladder, so that means he hadn't gotten up.
Speaker 3: And I think the nine one one call was around
Speaker 3: nine o'clock, so there's no way he could have been
Speaker 3: having soup because there was so much ventyl in his body.
Speaker 3: What they figured is, you know, he must there must
Speaker 3: have been multiple administrations of ventanyl, So maybe the patches,
Speaker 3: maybe syringe maybe orally maybe they really maybe she fed
Speaker 3: him something, you know, in bed, but orally it kind
Speaker 3: of degrades. So in order to get that much into
Speaker 3: your system, it seems that she must have She probably
Speaker 3: would have given him a shot or patches, but they
Speaker 3: didn't really know, and they said they didn't have to
Speaker 3: prove that. It's just, you know, they had the blood,
Speaker 3: they had the missing ventanyl, and.
Speaker 7: What wasn't their talk of a third injection site and
Speaker 7: two being accounted for by.
Speaker 3: However, however, in the appeal, I don't know if we're
Speaker 3: going to have time to get to the appeal, but
Speaker 3: the whole thing about the sentinel question is fascinating to
Speaker 3: me because this appeal questions all of this. According to
Speaker 3: the appeal, which she got some traction on a year
Speaker 3: or so ago, and it's still pending it. The AG's
Speaker 3: office ended up winning the last round, but her her
Speaker 3: attorney's still trying to fight this. But anyway, the defense
Speaker 3: expert that they found after she was sentenced she's been
Speaker 3: in prison for all these years. Later basically are saying,
Speaker 3: you know what, this ventinal argument that the prosecution had
Speaker 3: doesn't make any sense because if it's so fast acting
Speaker 3: and so powerful, and yet there was six to twelve
Speaker 3: hours worth of urine and bronchial pneumonia, how how did
Speaker 3: he last that long? Did he? How did those levels
Speaker 3: get so high? That doesn't really make sense. So they're wondering.
Speaker 3: The defense is saying, well, it sounds like it's possible
Speaker 3: that those autopsy specimens were contaminated after deaths. So I mean,
Speaker 3: I thought that was pretty interesting. Frankly.
Speaker 7: Yeah, So all they have to do is.
Speaker 3: Test for metabolites to see whether he had the sentinel
Speaker 3: in his body before he died or not, because if
Speaker 3: there are metabolites, then he was poisoned with it, and
Speaker 3: if there are no metabolites, then those those specimens were contaminated.
Speaker 3: So that's that was pretty interesting.
Speaker 7: Now we're we would have to have a two hour program,
Speaker 7: but I know we're here really would because we've really
Speaker 7: got to tell people too. This is really such a comprehensive.
Speaker 7: It takes you, Like I have mentioned in the email
Speaker 7: to you, it really takes you into the entire case.
Speaker 7: A lot of books they're very exhaustive and comprehensive, but
Speaker 7: not about everything. And this book has everything and the
Speaker 7: trial a lot of times I got to say, even myself,
Speaker 7: you read them in and the trial is almost a
Speaker 7: foregone conclusion. There's really no surprises. And I really like
Speaker 7: the way you captured the trial in this book. But
Speaker 7: this trial is fascinating, It really is. It's a really
Speaker 7: fascinating CSI type trial that you really captured here. Thank you. Now,
Speaker 7: what's interesting too is people really normally don't get bail
Speaker 7: when they're up on charges like this and before. And
Speaker 7: another thing that I think we've got to get the
Speaker 7: audience to understand too, is this Michael Robertson character. Now,
Speaker 7: Michael Robertson was also right after when Kristen was at
Speaker 7: the hospital with Greg tell us about Michael Robertson and
Speaker 7: what the police reported and witnesses noted about Michael Robertson
Speaker 7: and his behavior.
Speaker 3: Well, he shows up because she called him. He shows
Speaker 3: up and starts comforting her and you know, says that
Speaker 3: he's your boss. But they seemed I think a little
Speaker 3: bit more of a couple to some of the nurses
Speaker 3: who were watching. So he was very comforting, right, And
Speaker 3: then they started finding out some things that he did,
Speaker 3: you know, and I don't I don't normally say who
Speaker 3: I think is guilty and who isn't guilty, but I
Speaker 3: have to be honest. I didn't find anything, any smoking
Speaker 3: gun that shows for sure that he definitely was involved.
Speaker 3: But they both they both said that they were together
Speaker 3: between three and five o'clock the day that that Greg
Speaker 3: was lying there in bed nearby together. So there's speculation
Speaker 3: by some people. And he is still technically under investigation
Speaker 3: for participating in this murder. And I don't know if
Speaker 3: you know this here at least in California, that conspiracy
Speaker 3: to murder is the same under the law as murder.
Speaker 3: So if he was at all involved or helped her
Speaker 3: in any way, then he's guilty of murder as well.
Speaker 3: But he went back to Australia, and you know, his
Speaker 3: mother had cancer, and so you know, they they tried
Speaker 3: to to continue with the investigation. He's still technically under investigation,
Speaker 3: and I know that they would still some day like
Speaker 3: to charge him with something.
Speaker 7: Did the authorities want him back or did they not
Speaker 7: want him to leave?
Speaker 3: Well, the thing was that she wasn't arrested yet, and
Speaker 3: I guess, you know, they weren't ready, so maybe they
Speaker 3: just didn't, you know, they couldn't really arrest him. They
Speaker 3: were still trying to put the case together against her,
Speaker 3: but they were never able to prove enough to file
Speaker 3: charges against him. But I know they think that he
Speaker 3: was involved, and they called him an unindicted co conspirator.
Speaker 7: And despite him being such a great friend of Kristen
Speaker 7: and her boss and her confidant, he didn't hang around
Speaker 7: for any more comforting so.
Speaker 3: He went back to Australia and high tailed it.
Speaker 7: Yeah. Interesting.
Speaker 3: Well, I guess you know I would too if I were.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think that was the best movie made in
Speaker 7: light of nothing.
Speaker 3: I'm coming back here anytime ever, because they'll probably be
Speaker 3: arrested and questioned and you know, and they'll try to
Speaker 3: charge them with something.
Speaker 7: Yeah. Absolutely. I thought it was interesting too that they
Speaker 7: you know, they didn't have an easy time because the
Speaker 7: bail was quite high, but she was bailed out for
Speaker 7: a certain period of time.
Speaker 3: As well, and then she was on forty eight hours
Speaker 3: and they invited the producer into their home that night
Speaker 3: and they were drinking champagne, which I think some people
Speaker 3: really really rubbed them the wrong way that she was
Speaker 3: celebrating and toasting. You know, she's out on you know,
Speaker 3: bail for murder.
Speaker 7: Right, So now this trial is this this.
Speaker 4: Wait, the Lucky land slots. You can get lucky just
Speaker 4: about anywhere.
Speaker 2: This is your captain speaking. We've got clear runway and
Speaker 2: the weather's five. But we're just going to circle up
Speaker 2: here a while and get lucky. Oh no, nothing like that.
Speaker 2: It's just these cash prizes add up quick. So I
Speaker 2: suggest you sit back, keep your trade table up right,
Speaker 2: and start getting lucky.
Speaker 4: Play for free at lucky landslips dot com. Are you
Speaker 4: feeling lucky? No purchasiness A Sari voydwer prohibited my law
Speaker 4: eighteen plus terms and conditions. Applying the website for detail.
Speaker 7: Case catches the national media's attention, doesn't it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there was. There was a lot of media coverage,
Speaker 3: and that's They've done a number of TV documentaries and
Speaker 3: in fact, I'm going to be interviewed for another one
Speaker 3: that's going to be on the Investigation Discovery Channel, and
Speaker 3: I'm going to have to basically reread my book to
Speaker 3: make sure.
Speaker 7: Well, I'll be watching because I'm a huge fan. I
Speaker 7: see a couple of the authors that I've interviewed here
Speaker 7: on the program, and it's a very very interesting in fact,
Speaker 7: that we had spoken about mister Gardner and I just saw,
Speaker 7: oh yeah, yeah, it's John i'ment out in July. Wow,
Speaker 7: there's quite the character there. Wow, he's a pretty rare bird.
Speaker 3: Well, I have a lot of exclusive stuff. That case
Speaker 3: was covered heavily, heavily, heavily in the media, but I
Speaker 3: managed to get a whole lot of information that wasn't
Speaker 3: covered by the newspapers or on TV. So that'll be
Speaker 3: a good one for you.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that'd be very exciting. I'm very interested in reading that.
Speaker 7: That's great, And that's.
Speaker 3: One of those things that you know, people don't really
Speaker 3: want to know about sexual predators, and frankly, I didn't
Speaker 3: really want to know either. So that was a pretty
Speaker 3: eye opening experience for me to learn, because that's the
Speaker 3: way our whole society is. It's like, this is such
Speaker 3: a horrible thing, we don't want to know about it.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think there's a certain I know that I
Speaker 7: wrote a book about it, particularly heinous, despicable character, and
Speaker 7: a lot of people are hesitant so you see a
Speaker 7: lot of true crime. It covers a gambit, you know,
Speaker 7: but less people are probably interested in the details of
Speaker 7: Jeffrey Dahmer and some of these guys than a book
Speaker 7: like this. It just seems very much like what we
Speaker 7: watch in fiction anyway, you know, you know, elicit affairs
Speaker 7: and drug.
Speaker 3: Use attractive and there's de sultry and betrayal and drugs
Speaker 3: and sex and yeah.
Speaker 7: Reading and good reading, thank you. Yeah. So this trial
Speaker 7: now basically, well we'll just go a little bit longer,
Speaker 7: just a few more minutes, because I wanted just to
Speaker 7: basically outline the trial just a bit in terms of
Speaker 7: just the strategy. What did the defense, what was their summary,
Speaker 7: what were they going to try to prove happened? And
Speaker 7: then what was Kristin's role in all of this? And
Speaker 7: then you can tell us about the prosecution.
Speaker 3: Well, the defense claimed that he basically did it himself,
Speaker 3: just like Kristin said, you know, he must have. You know,
Speaker 3: there were two cups, plastic cups of clear liquid, which
Speaker 3: again nobody collected because they didn't process the scene properly,
Speaker 3: and so that all went away. That was the only
Speaker 3: thing that the defense could come up with that is
Speaker 3: of a method of you know, administration of getting into
Speaker 3: his body, because there there were no syringes or containers
Speaker 3: or patches or rappers of any kind in the apartment.
Speaker 3: So that's all that they and you know, he must
Speaker 3: have drink it himself. He staged. You know, he basically
Speaker 3: put these red rose pedals over his own body and
Speaker 3: this wedding picture, which was, according to Kristen, underneath the pillow,
Speaker 3: she said at one point. In another point she said,
Speaker 3: oh no, he was holding it in his hand. So
Speaker 3: she changed her story a couple times. So so think
Speaker 3: about this though, So just double's advocate. Now she's she's
Speaker 3: not there, Right's she's either in the shower taking a
Speaker 3: bath and a shower who does that? Yes, and or
Speaker 3: she's out or whoever, whatever happened, However he did it
Speaker 3: right to get that much ventanyl into his body when
Speaker 3: she's not there, and then there's no way to figure
Speaker 3: out how he got it in his body. You can't
Speaker 3: do it by drinking alone, because they, as they explained
Speaker 3: in the trial, it degrades like by fifty percent and
Speaker 3: there's just like no, there's just no way you could
Speaker 3: get that much into your body and to have those
Speaker 3: levels that they found her in his blood. But that
Speaker 3: was this defensive story that he basically put all these
Speaker 3: red rose pedals over himself, then pulled the covers up
Speaker 3: and you know, and then put the picture there, lay
Speaker 3: down and died, which it just it doesn't really make
Speaker 3: a whole lot of sense given the way that sentinel works.
Speaker 7: Now, the prosecution outline that this this woman, well maybe
Speaker 7: you can tell us go ahead.
Speaker 3: But basically there argue they they argued that there were
Speaker 3: multiple forms of administration for the reasons. I just stated
Speaker 3: that there's no way that he could have gotten that
Speaker 3: much sentinel into his body by ingestion alone. And you know,
Speaker 3: I guess what they're saying is, well, maybe she took
Speaker 3: that that standard, and you know, they went into how
Speaker 3: you can get the sentinel into into an adjustable form,
Speaker 3: So you know, you could take the gel that's in
Speaker 3: the patches and squeeze it out, or you can put
Speaker 3: it in the soup perhaps, or take that vial which
Speaker 3: is like as much as a Sweet and Low pack
Speaker 3: it and would kill like ten people and put that
Speaker 3: in the water. So that's kind of what they're saying
Speaker 3: that he you know, the defense is saying, well, he
Speaker 3: drank it, and the prosecution is saying, well, it seems
Speaker 3: as though there were multiple administrations because it's just the
Speaker 3: level so high, and we can't tell because the skin
Speaker 3: is gone, whether he had patches on. And there seems
Speaker 3: to be an extra puncture wound from the syringe that
Speaker 3: the paramitics couldn't account for. And I know you asked
Speaker 3: me about that later and I didn't get to that,
Speaker 3: but in the appeal they found they mentioned that the
Speaker 3: defense mentioned that there was one extra syringe puncture wound
Speaker 3: that couldn't be accounted for. But apparently there was a
Speaker 3: like a paramedic who was not supposed to be starting
Speaker 3: an ivy or something, and so when she was on
Speaker 3: the stand, she said she didn't, but she had told
Speaker 3: a detective that she did. So I think that that
Speaker 3: might account for that last syringe hole.
Speaker 7: Who knows, sure? Sure now the prosecution. What I found
Speaker 7: interesting is this is I've covered a couple books. I
Speaker 7: think was Amanda Lambs actually Love Lies. It was actually
Speaker 7: and the same type of strategy was employed in that
Speaker 7: they did computer searches and phone searches, and even though
Speaker 7: it was highly circumstantial, they still put together this incredible tale.
Speaker 7: And then the other part I found it very interesting too,
Speaker 7: is that Kristen was quite clever in that she left
Speaker 7: a diary out that seemed to be staged, that seemed
Speaker 7: to be just for the benefit of people that might
Speaker 7: find that. But really, despite her intentions to do sort
Speaker 7: of plant information, the prosecution basically went through the investigators
Speaker 7: and got all kinds of incredible emails and information. It
Speaker 7: really didn't make her look good at all.
Speaker 3: And plus she light on the stand, and the prosecutor
Speaker 3: kept showing that she was lying on the stand, And
Speaker 3: then when the defense character witnesses would get on, the
Speaker 3: prosecution would say, would it make any difference if you
Speaker 3: found out that she had lied about this, this, this, this,
Speaker 3: and this in terms of you thinking that she was,
Speaker 3: you know, still the same good character. And they basically said,
Speaker 3: it wouldn't make any difference to me whether I found
Speaker 3: out that she had made all these lies. So they
Speaker 3: also destroyed all the defenses character witnesses as well by
Speaker 3: making them look like they would say anything just to
Speaker 3: get her off.
Speaker 7: Yeah. I almost felt bad for Kristen's mother desperately trying
Speaker 7: to get on the stand and do some good for
Speaker 7: her daughter. But really, you really, no matter what how
Speaker 7: smart she is or was, it just really couldn't work right.
Speaker 7: So very very interesting family in denial very interesting too.
Speaker 7: And and you know the thing is too, every the
Speaker 7: entire families are dragged into this too, even and Pierce
Speaker 7: and everybody. You know, all these families destroyed and all
Speaker 7: these relationships and.
Speaker 3: It's all because of methamphetamine. Yeah, because she she had
Speaker 3: three relationships. She had one with Greg, she had one
Speaker 3: with Michael Robertson, and she had one with methamphetamine. And
Speaker 3: methamphetamine one, yeah, that's the one she picked. And that's
Speaker 3: what destroyed her life.
Speaker 7: And what do you think was because it really didn't
Speaker 7: provide a great motive. It really wasn't insurance money. What
Speaker 7: was her motive just to get out of this relationship?
Speaker 3: Well, she was, like I said, she's on mes and
Speaker 3: so she's not thinking rationally. So people try to figure out, well,
Speaker 3: why did she do this? And my answer always is
Speaker 3: people on meth are not thinking rationally, so you can
Speaker 3: try to figure it out as much as you want.
Speaker 3: But she thought this was a good idea, apparently, to
Speaker 3: put red rose petals over his body and make it
Speaker 3: look like he did it himself, because that's what she
Speaker 3: must have been thinking when she was on math. You know.
Speaker 3: But if you ask most men, is that something you
Speaker 3: would ever do to yourself? Put red rose petals over
Speaker 3: your body? I mean, that was really not something that
Speaker 3: the jury bought, you know.
Speaker 7: Yeah, And you know, this is an incredible story as well,
Speaker 7: in that the dogged police work after the fact. Like
Speaker 7: I say, the campus police just they were inexperienced, and
Speaker 7: so you could see how she could manipulate them and
Speaker 7: they could make their obvious errors. But you know, the
Speaker 7: police went and dug in and really got the goods
Speaker 7: on this woman because of course, because of the the
Speaker 7: who she is, and she's going to have a pretty
Speaker 7: good defense. So, like you say, there's still a little
Speaker 7: bit of hope if she's getting an appeal court to
Speaker 7: still listen to this thing a bunch of years later.
Speaker 3: Percently, I think the appeal raised some interesting issues about
Speaker 3: the way sentinel works, and because the appeal basically says
Speaker 3: that neither the defense nor the prosecution theory makes any
Speaker 3: sense if you look at how Fentanel works, which you know,
Speaker 3: I think that's pretty an interesting theory based on what
Speaker 3: I've learned, and all they have to do is test
Speaker 3: the test the blood again, and the AG's office, you know,
Speaker 3: basically filed something. And then they and they one and
Speaker 3: so the two of the three judges who had said yes,
Speaker 3: you know, well there was there was a three to
Speaker 3: zero unanimous decision initially with the Ninth Circuit, and two
Speaker 3: of them changed their minds later, and but the one
Speaker 3: was wrote a twenty eight page minority opinion. So Kristen's
Speaker 3: attorney thinks, well, this woman was so impassioned about how
Speaker 3: much she really thought that this testing should be done
Speaker 3: that they appealed it to the two an eleven judge
Speaker 3: on bank panel so that they could get a larger
Speaker 3: portion of the Ninth Circuit to review this. And I
Speaker 3: don't know where that is right now. I haven't heard anything,
Speaker 3: so it's probably still pending. But I think that's pretty
Speaker 3: much the last point. And I guess they could always
Speaker 3: take it to the Supreme Court, but that's about all.
Speaker 7: She's going to exhaust all those possibilities, that's for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she's already exhausted her state appeal. So this is
Speaker 3: the federal system.
Speaker 7: Now, so yeah, yeah, likely it won't work, But you
Speaker 7: never know.
Speaker 3: I have to do is test the All they'd have
Speaker 3: to do is do the test, you know, and they
Speaker 3: could just say, well, there's the metabolite end of conversation.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't know. It seems like why not?
Speaker 7: To me? That's incredible. Now this was was this your
Speaker 7: first book, Caitlin?
Speaker 3: This is my first book, which is why I don't
Speaker 3: remember all those dates anymore.
Speaker 7: And four it's a great it's a great start to
Speaker 7: watch a true crime writing career, that's for sure.
Speaker 3: When I updated it, so the the audition that just
Speaker 3: came out in December is an updated edition with twenty
Speaker 3: new pages all about the appeal and the outcome of
Speaker 3: the wrongful death lawsuit, which we didn't talk about, but
Speaker 3: the Deviller's family filed against Kristen and the Medical Examiner's
Speaker 3: office for not taking you know more, not having better
Speaker 3: security and monitoring over all those drugs that were lying
Speaker 3: around which he stold to use to kill her husband.
Speaker 7: Of course, well that office, that office needed to be
Speaker 7: tightened up. Anyway. You can get a hundred times the
Speaker 7: potency of more, and no one knows where it is,
Speaker 7: and anybody can anybody with a key can get it.
Speaker 3: Well, they didn't even need a key. That was the
Speaker 3: part part of the thing.
Speaker 7: So don't tell the junkies where this address is. Good God,
Speaker 7: my god. Anyway, Also, we were going to speak about
Speaker 7: another book, Naked Addiction. Maybe you can briefly talk about
Speaker 7: that and if you're interested, well, okay.
Speaker 3: The only problem is that you can only get it
Speaker 3: really as an ebook unless you want to write me directly.
Speaker 3: I have some in my closet that I can sell,
Speaker 3: but it looks like the publisher is going under, so
Speaker 3: we can talk about it because it still is available.
Speaker 3: I don't know if I'll ever see the royalties, but
Speaker 3: it is It's my first and only novel so far.
Speaker 3: I have just written another one has a spin off.
Speaker 3: It's not out yet, but it's about very similar themes,
Speaker 3: drugs and sex and murder over in the beach area,
Speaker 3: right nearby where this story of poison Love happened. So
Speaker 3: it's where I grew up. It's La Jolla, California, and
Speaker 3: it's a community in San Diego, and it's a lot
Speaker 3: of wealthy people, and it's right on the beach, and
Speaker 3: it's a you know, pretty wealthy community where you know,
Speaker 3: doctors and real estate developers and lawyers and rich people live.
Speaker 3: I'm not rich and my family wasn't rich, but we've
Speaker 3: ended up finding a good deal in a house when
Speaker 3: I was young. So it's basically about my hometown. And
Speaker 3: so is you know, poison Love. And it took me
Speaker 3: seventeen years to get published. So it's really my passion
Speaker 3: is I really love fiction writing, and that's actually how
Speaker 3: I got into true crime thrillers is learning to write
Speaker 3: fiction first that now you know, narrative nonfiction became a
Speaker 3: way to get published. So I had to get my
Speaker 3: nonfiction published first before I could get my novel published
Speaker 3: because it's very difficult to get fiction published if you're
Speaker 3: completely unpublished. So it's basically a story about you know,
Speaker 3: drugs and sex and murder at the beach, and there's
Speaker 3: a lot of I learned a lot from covering this poison,
Speaker 3: this Christen Rossam case, which I was able to update
Speaker 3: that novel when I finally got it published, along with
Speaker 3: some help from Michael Connolly, the best selling crime novels.
Speaker 3: Ye gave me a critiquet very very nice. Many good
Speaker 3: guy gave me a nice blurb too, So yeah.
Speaker 7: If you get a good review from him. That really
Speaker 7: really helps.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've read pretty much every book he's ever written.
Speaker 3: He's one of my heroes, and he's such a nice
Speaker 3: guy too.
Speaker 7: I have to say, yeah, that's interesting too. Not that
Speaker 7: they help from me, but I'm really glad that you
Speaker 7: had to do true crime, you were forced to do
Speaker 7: truth down here, because I think I think both your
Speaker 7: your fictional novels will be very interesting in your true
Speaker 7: crime because I think obviously it's very obvious that you
Speaker 7: have that that skill that that usually fictional authors have,
Speaker 7: and that especially in the trial, you've employed that because
Speaker 7: the trial can be kind of dry, and I know
Speaker 7: that's from including in my book as well, but this
Speaker 7: is really this is really a very exciting trial, and
Speaker 7: you've brought all that excitement out in the book itself,
Speaker 7: and so I applied to you, know that.
Speaker 3: The other thing I have to tell you about Poison
Speaker 3: Love is that was my actually my very first trial
Speaker 3: that I covered from beginning to end. So yeah, my
Speaker 3: first book, my first trial. I mean, I did cover
Speaker 3: a very short trial for the Heaven's Gate cult, remember them,
Speaker 3: the ones I ended at mass suicide in San Diego. Sure,
Speaker 3: that was like a two or three day probate trial.
Speaker 3: But other than that, this Kristin Rossam trial was my
Speaker 3: first first trial that I covered from beginning to end. Well,
Speaker 3: then I wrote a book about it because.
Speaker 7: Yeah, well it's such a complicated it's such a complicated
Speaker 7: trial and there's so many major issues that I think, yeah,
Speaker 7: you could see that you learned quite a bit with
Speaker 7: this one trial. It's quite a long trial too, and
Speaker 7: very involved.
Speaker 3: So so my book Naked Addiction, we were going to
Speaker 3: just mention I didn't really say what. I sort of
Speaker 3: said what it was about, but I just wanted to
Speaker 3: add it's it's got a detect live in it, and
Speaker 3: it's a mail detective. So it's my first book, and
Speaker 3: I wrote it from a man's point of view, which
Speaker 3: was quite a challenge. I had to have my male
Speaker 3: friends and writer friends read it to make sure that
Speaker 3: I got the voice right. So basically, he's investigating a
Speaker 3: series of murders which happened in Laoya, where I was mentioning,
Speaker 3: and the neighboring community of Pacific Beach, which is not
Speaker 3: as upscale but it's right next door, and so two
Speaker 3: beach community communities and they've you know, he's investigating a
Speaker 3: possible drug ring and escort service. And these people all
Speaker 3: seem to hang out together and they're young in their twenties,
Speaker 3: and they hang out in this bar where his sister
Speaker 3: hangs out. And then his sister goes missing, so he
Speaker 3: starts thinking that maybe she's going to be she's going
Speaker 3: to turn out to be a victim of the same
Speaker 3: killer because there's these women who are getting killed in there.
Speaker 3: They go to the same beauty schools for entrepreneurs, so
Speaker 3: there's no school that really exists. Like that's so I
Speaker 3: made it up. But basically if you look at you know,
Speaker 3: those the shows that you see on TV, those reality shows,
Speaker 3: well it's take that except make them into entrepreneurs.
Speaker 7: So I see, so they're not just hair stars, celebrity
Speaker 7: and prentice almost something. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So anyway, there's two victims from the school and the
Speaker 3: and then his sister goes missing, and then then there's
Speaker 3: another murder too. So anyway, I am seventeen years to
Speaker 3: get published. It's my baby, and I hope people will
Speaker 3: read that one as well.
Speaker 7: Well. Thank god for ebooks, So yeah, still available.
Speaker 3: People can email me if they want to get a
Speaker 3: signed copy on paper.
Speaker 7: There you go, see Rottner at flashcot net. There you go,
Speaker 7: and as well, how many two crime books have you
Speaker 7: got under your belt? Now?
Speaker 3: Well, that John Gardner book will be my eighth book.
Speaker 3: I think that that makes six.
Speaker 7: Yeah, great, that's fantastic.
Speaker 3: Thank you. Well, working on another one too.
Speaker 7: So okay you mean beyond do you mean beyond John Gardner?
Speaker 7: You got another one as well?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I have like three books going at once.
Speaker 3: You know, we don't even have time to talk about this,
Speaker 3: and we'll talk about it next.
Speaker 7: Time, yes, absolutely, next time. Yeah. Well, you've always been
Speaker 7: a great guest and it's very fun having you on
Speaker 7: and talking about another incredible read here, Poison Love. For
Speaker 7: those who have been listening, you've been listening to Caitlin Rother,
Speaker 7: author of Poison Love, American Beauty, American Killer and also
Speaker 7: look for an ebook only unfortunately Naked Addiction.
Speaker 3: They want to write me, they can get a paperback.
Speaker 7: Yes, and say that one more time.
Speaker 3: That address for them, Well, they can go to my
Speaker 3: website Kaitlinrother dot com or they can email me see
Speaker 3: Rother at flash dot net at fs and Frank F
Speaker 3: l a s h dot net.
Speaker 7: Got it? Well, thank you very much, Caitlin, it's always
Speaker 7: a pleasure and you have a good evening
Speaker 3: You too, good Night, bye bye.