‘And he repents in thorns that sleeps in beds of roses.’
—Francis Quarles
ROSES WERE a recurring motif in Kristin Rossum’s short life as a free civilian. A ‘girly girl’ with feminine tastes, she had always loved the fragrant, spiralling flowers. On her wedding day her handsome groom pinned white rosebuds to his lapel. The same man gave her a bouquet of roses on her birthday, just days before he was murdered in their marital home. Kristin’s accomplished father became a director of the Rose Institute. And rose petals floated dreamily through the scenes of her favourite film.
Kristin Rossum was a little acorn in the shadow of a mighty oak and she was fighting to make her own life a success. Her father was a governmental scholar and adviser to former president Ronald Reagan. She, a former child model, graduated summa cum laude from San Diego State University. Her peers described the petite blonde as scholarly and sweet. It was not the full picture. She had first tried crystal meth in high school. Greg De Villers was a world-beating all-American boy. Not only was he the son of an internationally famous plastic surgeon, he was a biochemical expert by twenty-six. During his short time on earth he had also temporarily won the heart of the cheerleader. Greg was two years older than Kristin when the young Americans met in Tijuana—Mexico’s tourist-heavy party city. Theirs became a 5-year romance followed by the peel of wedding bells.
Greg ascended to the head of business development for a biotech company. While still enrolled in classes at San Diego’s University of California the lovers shared an off-campus apartment. Greg and Kristin revelled in their shared love of science and he helped her beat an amphetamine habit that had flourished into addiction. Later she said: ‘He was my angel because he saved me.’ They were starting to make good money and live comfortably.
Greg and Kristin’s wedding photo shows the young pair standing in front of a gazebo decorated with flowers. The groom, a head taller than his bride, was fresh faced and dapperly dressed. Both lovers were glowing with youth, health and vitality. Kristin wore white and carried a bouquet of white and pink flowers. But in a portrait meant for two there appears to be an unexpected intruder. On the skinny petite bride there appears an unmistakable and prominent baby bump. Perhaps that unexpected intruder in the wedding photo had hastened the 22-year-old bride to the altar. Perhaps it was another source of pressure that would put the marriage in decline.
Kristin would later pour dirt on her marriage when asked in court if she had considered leaving Greg because she had met someone else. She would say: ‘There were many reasons I was considering ending my marriage.’
BUT if in the good times Greg and Kristin had the world at their feet, then they had a kindred spirit on the other side of the planet. Like them, Melbourne lad Michael Robertson seemed to have it all: brains, brawn, looks, a loving marriage and a globe-trotting career proceeding at breakneck pace. No one could have foreseen that the perfect destinies of the trio would collide with colossally imperfect results.
Michael Robertson’s obvious promise had seen professors take him under their wing as he worked towards his PhD at university. He published papers on benzodiazepines and other compounds and worked at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, which analysed police evidence. But Dr Robertson always had his sights set on the United States and soon his mentors had got their young charge a placement there.
Dr Robertson won a coveted position in Pennsylvania at National Medical Services—an esteemed private lab that checks toxicology and pathology results for the FBI. From there he grabbed the chance of an even better job in California. By the turn of the millennium Dr Robertson, still in his early thirties, was the chief of the San Diego Toxicology Lab. There, in the temperate climes of Southern California, the good doctor set up his overseas nest. His wife Nicole lived with him in San Diego but would branch out from that base for her own business trips. Dr Robertson even managed to discover a small vestige of his Melbourne home within his adopted ‘SoCal’ lifestyle: he joined a west coast Aussie Rules footy team—the San Diego Lions. On field what he lacked in height he made up for in heart, and Dr Robertson regularly claimed the title of best and fairest. Because of his job his teammates dubbed him ‘Toxic Mick’.
At work Dr Robertson made another, entirely different, discovery. There he came across a toxicologist in her twenties called Kristin Rossum. She was attractive and complimentary. Both Rossum and Robertson were married—Kristin for less than a year—but each felt drawn to the other by an unstoppable force. The fit, driven and mousey-faced man who entered Rossum’s world was later described as a ‘big hunk of an Australian guy‘. Love blossomed among the cadavers of the San Diego morgue. The cheating toxicologists fell head over heels and then into bed.
Her favourite film, Kristin would readily share, was American Beauty—a story in which a married middle-aged worker drone senses escape from stifling suburbia in the prospect of an illicit affair. In the film, itself the name of a rose, depressing reality is leavened by fantasy scenes of falling rose petals. The protagonist seems to find some happiness in drug taking and bucking social rules and expectations. But by story’s end a major character is dead, having been murdered.
Rossum was still young but she was no longer a youth. As a young adult she was on the slippery slope towards middle-age and respectability. Perhaps, having married so young, she felt trapped. Perhaps, like her favourite cinematic fable, she felt she could transcend a predictable suburban life—or at least create vivid dream sequences—through a love affair laced with drug use.
Secret rendezvous and emails behind colleagues’ and spouses’ backs helped spice Rossum and Robertson’s already thrilling romance. ‘I love you, that’s all I wanted to say for now,’ Robertson emailed Rossum when no one was looking. ‘Those are the most precious three words I could hear from you. I love you too,’ Rossum replied.
Kristin Rossum, it seemed to Robertson, was an adorable American girl. But in a reality unclouded by lust she was simply bad, drug-mad and dangerous to know. Her close proximity to chemicals and drugs had seen her return to a methylamphetamine addiction and speed habit that she peppered with other drugs lifted from work. Her boss—her lover—would hardly object, even if he knew.
The participants in the secret affair either cared less over time about maintaining secrecy or were so caught up in their own little world that they imagined they were fooling everyone. Rossum’s artificial confidence and perceived superiority would have been boosted by the amphetamines and other drugs she was raiding from work. Robertson’s state of mind was less understandable. ‘Just wanted to quickly tell you I love you and that I’ll tell you more slowly at lunch,’ the doctor would email his mistress. ‘Thank you for giving my week such a lovely start,’ Rossum emailed back. ‘I can smell you all around me and it’s wonderful. You light up my life. I love you with all my heart and can’t wait until lunch.’ ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘we were meant to be together.’
As the facade that they were simply co-workers was less cautiously maintained, Rossum and Robertson’s affair became an open rumour among colleagues. Robertson would send Kristin flowers. The pair would go for weekends away under the auspices of work. When at work both would disappear at lunchtime and then both return freshly showered. It would not take a roomful of scientists long to figure out what was going on. ‘I just wanted to leave a great big hug and kiss for you in cyber space. Have a good night. I miss you already and can’t wait to see you tomorrow morning. I love you. See you in my dreams,’ she emailed. ‘My dreams were sweeter, thanks,’ he replied. ‘They were full of you. Your smiles, dancing, laughing. I’ll keep dreaming them with the hope that soon my dreams will be our reality.’
By mid-2000 Kristin Rossum had become infatuated with Robertson. Her husband Greg De Villers was beginning to suspect all was not well with his marriage, and his wife soon confirmed his worst fears. Rossum later recalled:
I felt I was in love [with Dr Robertson]. I loved him very much. It was very romantic, very exciting, very passionate. I told [Greg] that I had developed very strong feelings for someone that I worked with and he was obviously very upset and very angry. I told him who it was. He demanded that I give him his phone number, which I did. And he called and told him expressly never to talk to, not to have any inappropriate contact with, his wife. [To] Stay away from me. He was absolutely irate during that phone call.
But there would be no prising the lovers apart. In fact, they would step out together, to the bewilderment of colleagues, at the biggest event on the American toxicology calendar. That year the annual week-long American Society of Forensic Toxicologists conference—or ‘SOFT’ in toxic jargon—was held in Milwaukee. At the toxicological catch-up for the great and the good, eyebrows were raised that Dr Robertson had brought along a junior colleague—Rossum. ‘She was being introduced and shown to a lot of the more influential people in the toxicology world,’ an attendee said, ‘the more established scientists in our society. She was being given a first-hand introduction to most of those people. How she did it I don’t know. Riding on the coat tails of Michael Robertson maybe …’
Rossum, presumably elated with a head full of speed, and Robertson, his sense of propriety lost in the giddiness Kristin made him feel, even cornered a mutual associate to tell him the good news of their blossoming romance. Their revelation was made to LA toxicologist Dan Anderson at conference drinks held in a Milwaukee museum. The man being made an unwilling conspirator in their affair resented the position he was being put in. Anderson knew both lovers separately and he further resented them press-ganging him at a professional gathering of his peers.
Anderson later testified that he had heard rumours his two friends had got together behind the backs of their spouses but said he did not remember the exact conversation where the lovers confirmed the gossip.
MR ANDERSON: I don’t remember the specifics of the conversation other than myself I know how I felt about it. And I relayed that to them, not necessarily condoning it at all.
PROSECUTOR: They stated in front of you that they were involved in a romantic relationship together, despite the fact that they were both married. Is that right?
PROSECUTOR: And when they told that to you, how did you respond?
MR ANDERSON: Basically telling them that I didn’t necessarily approve of it and that it’s not fair to the spouses on each side and they should be told.
PROSECUTOR: Who should be told?
MR ANDERSON: The spouses. The respective spouses. I got the impression that Michael had already told Nicole. I don’t know necessarily about Kristin telling her spouse.
PROSECUTOR: Was this an emotional conversation?
MR ANDERSON: It became emotional on Kristin’s side, yes.
PROSECUTOR: Tell us what you mean.
MR ANDERSON: Just for the fact that I stated my opinion. I basically wanted to walk away. We were in a reception-type atmosphere with a lot of other colleagues around. She started tearing up. I remember saying, ‘Don’t do this to me’. I kind of wanted to walk away. She followed me around a little bit. Basically I didn’t want to go on with it any more.
Rossum and Robertson stayed at a hotel offsite so they could continue their extracurricular cavorting away from home without prompting too great a scandal. But there was an even more ominous connection to their presence at the conference. The friend they put in a pickle, Dan Anderson, had recently had some of his new research—about a drug called fentanyl—published in a journal that was handed out to all toxicology’s stellar attendees at the conference.
Fentanyl is a synthetic drug that is significantly more powerful than morphine. It is typically used in patches to manage chronic pain. Many people who have had surgery would be aware what a powerful opiate morphine is. But where morphine can be like a comforting blanket against pain, in bigger quantities fentanyl can be like a crushing load that shuts down pain and then all other human bodily functions. It was the drug Russian special forces used before storming the Moscow theatre where Chechen rebels held more than 700 captives for three days. It is believed responsible for almost all of the more than 100 civilian deaths.
Mr Anderson’s research about death by fentanyl would have piqued a number of attendees’ interest:
Fentanyl is a potent, short-acting narcotic analgesic widely used as a surgical anaesthetic and for the control of pain when administered in the form of a transdermal patch, which enables it to be readily absorbed through the skin, and subsequently distributed throughout the body. Pharmacologically Fentanyl acts on the central nervous system, causing analgesia, sedation, severe respiratory depression, muscle rigidity, seizures, coma and hypertension. On a weight for weight basis Fentanyl is fifty to 100 times more potent than morphine, and should be considered to have a potential for abuse.
According to Rossum, as her marriage disintegrated her husband threatened to expose her drug use and her affair with her boss. Such a revelation could have ruined both lovers’ stellar careers. But the stakes were particularly high for Robertson. He would have faced accusations that, as chief toxicologist, he turned a blind eye to his mistress stealing drugs from their public-sector workplace.
WHEN GREG De Villers bought his wife a bouquet of roses for her birthday on 25 October 2000, he would not have known he only had days to live. On 6 November De Villers was at the marital home when his heart stopped and he stopped breathing. He was only twenty-six. Six months into Rossum’s affair with Robertson, her youthful but inconvenient husband was dead.
Rossum called authorities from her apartment, screaming that her husband had stopped breathing while resting in bed. She was crying so hard the 911 emergency dispatcher had found it almost impossible to instruct her over the phone on how to attempt CPR.
Paramedics arrived to find the blonde weeping and hovering over her husband’s corpse begging to know why he had committed suicide. If the death scene was to be believed—and it seems, at least initially, it was—then the betrayed husband had discovered his wife’s affair and taken his own life. He had poisoned himself and lay on his bed to die. His and Kristin’s wedding photo was propped near his head. And the document purportedly explaining the motive behind his suicide—a crumpled-up love letter from Robertson to Kristin—was conveniently close by, explaining all. Rossum’s journal was open to a passage explaining she ‘made a mistake’ marrying De Villers.
The scenario had the downside for Rossum of instantly putting her lover in the picture. In another view, however, it neutralised a badly kept secret that was highly relevant and suspicious.
In addition to all this precise, detailed, romantic preparation, the suicide victim had apparently done something else. It would seem he had extravagantly decorated his death bed with rose petals—in exactly the manner a speed-addled brain might conceive a suicidal heterosexual male would do. ‘I pulled back the covers and I saw that there were red rose petals everywhere, all over his chest,’ Kristin Rossum said. ‘And he had a photograph of our wedding day up by his head near the pillow.’
Campus police who had jurisdiction over the death scene followed the prompts laid out for them and concluded the incident was a heartbroken suicide. In the aftermath of her husband’s death, Kristin Rossum said:
If I had committed this crime to cover up the affair and the drug usage, why would the first thing out of my mouth be ‘Yes, I had an affair’ and ‘Yes, I’ve been having a drug problem’? I think Greg was depressed and so upset with life that he took his whole life, and he did so in such a way that could have put blame on me and Michael Robertson. I don’t know how intentional that was, but that’s the outcome of it. And it could very well have been his plan to really hurt me in a way that he felt I hurt him by in a sense saying, ‘If I can’t have her, nobody will.’
De Villers had been poisoned, but for six months the suicide theory reigned and in the meantime everything was going in its favour. At the morgue an autopsy was performed on De Villers’ body and his blood screened for some, but not all, toxins. De Villers’ altruism in life conspired against him in death—as an organ donor most of his body parts were removed and rushed to awaiting recipients.
Greg De Villers was duly buried. His family grieved and tried to get on with life while refusing to relinquish their sense of injustice at having lost their Greg so young and in such suspect circumstances. The cuckold’s corpse was still warm when the dead man’s widow and her lover re-instigated their affair. Robertson slept overnight with the widow at the murder scene. It seemed, at this point, if there were a killer or killers involved they had gotten away with murder.
But blood is thicker than slaughter and tests of the dead man’s blood would speak truth from beyond the grave. De Villers had standard medication in his system, according to test results sent to campus police. But the analysis also revealed the presence of other toxins that could not be identified. Experts were called in for a new analysis of the blood samples and campus police handed the De Villers case to San Diego Police, who were far less credulous about the heartbreak hara-kiri theory.
The new blood tests revealed the presence of fentanyl in the dead man’s system. Had it been a drug like heroin, available on the street, some theories would have remained open. But fentanyl, typically used for terminal cancer patients and others in extreme pain, was a doctors’ drug—a substance typically obtainable only by health professionals. The strong meds in his system were meant to obscure the presence of fentanyl. It had almost worked but not quite. In the weeks after the death, Rossum and Robertson were both fired from their jobs at the lab because of all the stolen drugs.
Over successive months detectives began to put Rossum in the frame as her husband’s killer and their enquiries extended to her boss and lover Robertson. He was questioned soon after De Villers’ demise and said that, on the morning of the death, Ms Rossum had come to work and told him her husband was groggy after taking some of her prescription pills because he could not sleep.
He said he raised with her his recent discovery that she had resumed her use of methamphetamines and told her to go home because she was upset. Ms Rossum had come back to work after lunch but he had told her to take the afternoon off because she was still upset, Robertson said. He said he arranged to meet her near her apartment at 4 p.m. that day where they discussed their relationship and talked for more than an hour before Robertson had to leave for a 5.30 p.m. marriage-counselling session with his wife.
Robertson said he next heard from Ms Rossum about 10 o’clock that night—she had been at a hospital and something had happened to her husband. He had gone to the hospital and stayed with her for several hours before taking her back to her apartment, he said.
Police found a book at Robertson’s apartment entitled 52 Invitations to Great Sex in which Rossum had written: ‘Well, sweetheart, together we’ll enjoy a lifetime of passion.’ Officers also found a card containing loose rose petals. A detective had seen Robertson throw something in a rubbish bin one night and retrieved a collection of letters. In the recovered letters Rossum told how now that her husband was dead and Robertson had split from his wife, she was very much in love with him and believed they would get married soon and ‘live happily ever after’. When questioned, Robertson denied that he was withholding evidence or trying to protect Rossum. ‘In all honesty, I did not want them in the house,’ he said. ‘I did get rid of a couple of things. The search warrant had come and gone. I did not want them in the house … I would tell you if I had any knowledge … because I have lost my job, lost my profession, lost my wife … I wanted to get back with my wife … I admit I had a relationship with Kristin Rossum.’
Robertson told police he had spent up to four nights with Ms Rossum in her apartment immediately after Greg De Villers had died. He had been comforting her, he said, but claimed they had not had sex. The murder of an innocent man, it seemed in Robertson’s view, had all been a terribly inconvenient detour from his carefully laid career plans. ‘This is not where I envisioned my life would be at the beginning of 2001 … involved in a homicide investigation,’ he said.
At the end of his second police interrogation, which lasted two hours, Robertson was asked to take a lie detector test. He refused. Not long afterwards he left America and returned to Australia.
EIGHT months after Greg De Villers’ purported suicide, Kristin Rossum was charged with his murder. Authorities allege she slipped her husband disabling drugs, then injected him with a fatal dose of fentanyl stolen from her workplace. They alleged she then dummied up the death scene in a weird homage to her favourite film. Robertson was named during her trial as an unindicted co-conspirator. Police were still building a case on him but he had not been charged with anything.
Rossum pleaded not guilty and maintained that she had nothing to do with her husband’s death. She ran her own defence and prosecutors complained to the judge that she was flirting with the jury. But if the pretty blonde was incorporating her feminine wiles in her special advocacy, she was less impressive once she was on the stand. She was prickly and a little too clever, and under tough cross-examination her evasion and special pleading were brought crashing down.
PROSECUTOR: When you first had intercourse with Michael Robertson did you consider getting a divorce at that point? There was no physical impediment was there?
ROSSUM: There was no physical barrier, no. Emotional, yes.
PROSECUTOR: And throughout the summer of 2000 you and Robertson were having not just an emotional affair, you were having a sexual affair, correct?
ROSSUM: Yes.
PROSECUTOR: By the way, where did you go to have your affair? Where did you go? Did you go to your house? Where did you go?
ROSSUM: No, we never went to my house actually.
ROSSUM: Well, prior to the SOFT conference I believe there were only a few occasions. Because both of us at that point in time were living at home with our spouses. So Michael’s house when Nicole was on business trips. Prosecutor:You have been writing as of early May had you not that Robertson was your destiny and you wanted to have children with him. Is that correct?
ROSSUM: We were certainly beginning to get romantically involved. Prosecutor:When you say beginning, you were saying ‘I love you’ to him, weren’t you?
ROSSUM: Yes. We were very emotional, yes.
PROSECUTOR: And he was saying ‘I love you’ to you, yes?
ROSSUM: Yes.
PROSECUTOR: And you guys were starting to talk about an enduring relationship, right?
ROSSUM: Yes.
PROSECUTOR: And there were words mentioned as you saw in these emails like destiny, correct?
ROSSUM: Yes.
PROSECUTOR: Soul mate?
ROSSUM: Yes.
PROSECUTOR: And by the end of October you guys knew you were going to be with each other, correct?
ROSSUM: We were certainly very hopeful.
PROSECUTOR: But you still didn’t leave the marriage. Is that true?
ROSSUM: I was scheduled to leave the next weekend.
PROSECUTOR: But you didn’t, did you? You never left, did you?
ROSSUM: I didn’t have a chance to.
The jury found Rossum guilty. She was convicted of murdering Greg De Villers—the man she had stood next to in front of the floral gazebo on their wedding day and whom she had vowed to support for better or worse. The intention had been to make the death look like suicide by an overdose of prescription pills. But a fentanyl expert later said he had never seen such a high dose of the potent rare substance—about seven times that considered potentially fatal. Police found ten milligrams and fifteen patches of the toxic painkiller missing from the lab where Rossum and Robertson worked.
Rossum was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. She is unlikely ever to be released. But she is still fortunate not to get a steeper penalty. California has the death sentence and Rossum was charged with first degree murder with special circumstances. That meant it was possible the state could have given her a lethal injection similar to the one she administered her husband.
Rossum had dodged the death penalty but it was still a very hefty period in a tough female prison where the pretty petite murderess would be treated either as a bottom of the food chain weakling or as Christmas come early for the penitentiary lesbians. Justice, of a kind, then, was seemingly served.
And for most Americans and other followers of the public record on the Rose Petal murder, that is where this particularly morbid, bizarre and—particularly for the De Villers family—tragic story comes to an end.
It is an ending, though, only if one ignores the small outstanding matter of the good doctor. But that, too, is no ending. Describing what happened next to Robertson, or rather what didn’t, ties up loose ends but still does not provide an entirely satisfactory finish to the tawdry tale.
BODIES, particularly young ones robbed of life before their time, have a way of attracting scrutiny, and when scrutiny is applied it can illuminate all sorts of dark corners. When Greg De Villers’ death started to be investigated as a murder the truth of Rossum’s drug abuse and theft, as well as the affair between herself and the boss of the lab, was dragged out into the withering light.
By the time Rossum was arrested and charged, Robertson was gone. He was rapidly over his American adventure—the place he had spent most of his professional life. He had also rapidly got over the new love of his life and, after a speedy return to Australia, was snugly back in the comfort and safety of his native country. Rossum had never been short on male attention but the two main men in her life were either dead or fled and her future company was looking decidedly female.
Robertson maintains he did not flee the United States. He was interviewed twice by San Diego Police and he left America before Rossum was charged. But he said his homecoming in May 2001 was to help care for his mother who was battling cancer.
Except for a few minor ripples still reaching him from the San Diego murder, life in Melbourne has been good for Dr Robertson. He was fired in America for knowing about, yet failing to stop, his mistress stealing amphetamines from the lab he headed. But in Melbourne he continued to work in the field and is even the owner of a business—Independent Forensic Consulting. He lives in the wealthy, leafy inner eastern suburb of Armadale.
The good doctor refuses to say whether he has a new relationship. But property and company documents show that he co-owns the premises where his business is located with a woman who is also listed as living at his home address. He says he does not phone or write to the one-time love of his life, Kristin Rossum, now doing serious time in the United States. He is still lean and fit and has all the privileges of a regular citizen. But was his involvement in Greg De Villers’ death more than a failure to supervise his mistress’s access to drugs at their workplace? And could a man ever not know about his lover’s plans to kill her husband so the pair could be together?
The following is the never-prosecuted prosecution case against Michael Robertson.
GREG DE Villers was murdered in early November 2000. The previous month Robertson had been pressuring Rossum to leave her husband for good. He emailed her: ‘Missing you has been officially upgraded to intensely. Soon to move to unbearable. One day soon being with you at 9 a.m. on a Sunday morning and being able to tell you myself.’
She replied: ‘It seems as if you know me so well and you can anticipate my feelings without fail. There’s all the little things that add up to mean so much. I love you Michael. Everything I ever imagined wanting in a life-long companion, husband, best friend is present in you. When I see you I see my future.’ He wrote: ‘If what I did today was special, get ready for a life of specialness. Most of all I’ve got to see a little of who you are. All I want to do is spend the rest of my life with you.’
At Rossum’s trial the prosecution argued the murderess had not acted alone and Robertson was her co-conspirator in the killing. It beggars belief that one party to this torrid all-consuming affair could not know anything of Rossum’s plot. It is hard to fathom that the secret lovers had each not discussed the future of their relationship and canvassed the small problem of their spouses and what to do with them.
Rossum and Robertson said they had been together on the day of the murder. De Villers was killed during the afternoon of the 6th. Both told police they had met that afternoon at one of their favourite secret rendezvous spots they had dubbed ‘The Willows’—under some trees near a disused railway track. Lawyers running the civil case for the family of the dead man postulated that Robertson might even have been present when De Villers was killed. They suggested that a messy syringe mark on the deceased could have resulted from a struggle by the dead man to resist the fatal drugs being forced on him. ‘Kristin will not admit to her involvement,’ the lawyer said. ‘Mr Robertson has refused to answer questions. So we can’t say for sure whether there was a struggle or there wasn’t a struggle. We simply know that he was administered this drug inconsistent with his will.’
Of all the professions, it seems an accomplished forensic toxicologist is uniquely placed at the crossroads of criminality, law enforcement, chemistry and biology to be able to plot the perfect murder. Dr Robertson would not have been the only toxicologist with a working knowledge of fentanyl but he had taken Mr Anderson’s research paper on death by fentanyl from the conference and filed it neatly away. The Australian had an extensive collection of reading material on fentanyl, some of it about the drug’s ability to be detected in the post-mortem process. Dr Robertson also had a PowerPoint presentation that included a slide called ‘The Crooked Criminalist’. It was about a crooked toxicologist who had stolen some fentanyl patches.
Whether or not Robertson was present at the death, he was intricately involved with the aftermath. After De Villers was discovered lifeless his wife rushed to the hospital as the dead man was conveyed there by ambulance. Rossum beat her victim there and the first person she called—even before the ambulance carrying her husband had arrived—was her lover. Either it was a call for support or Robertson was aware of the plot.
The inappropriate overlap between the San Diego-based toxicologists’ affair, the murder of a toxicologist’s husband and their role as public investigators into causes of death in San Diego—and the potential for the process to be corrupted—became starkly apparent in the hours after De Villers’ death.
The San Diego Deputy District Attorney, David Hendren, said Robertson would have been the backup person operating the high-pressure liquid chromatography machine that was used to test for some of the chemicals found in De Villers’ system. ‘There was also the fact that Michael Robertson apparently looked at the stomach contents of Greg De Villers,’ Mr Hendren said, ‘and yet he was specifically told by his boss not to, and to stay away from the case.’
The De Villers family lawyer, John Gomez, raised similar concerns. ‘As the manager of the toxicology lab he knew that the lab where Gregory’s autopsy most likely would take place didn’t test for fentanyl,’ he said. ‘He knew that he would be the person who made the call on the cause of death. He later went back to the crime scene, back to the apartment where Gregory was murdered. And that very evening, 2 o’clock in the morning after it’s all done, he goes back to their place of employment. Logs in under her account and under his account and starts cleaning up, deleting emails, trying to hide the tracks.’
The relationship between Rossum and Robertson continued after the inconvenient husband was laid to rest. Neither of the pair, it seemed, felt it necessary to take a pause in their sexual trysts to mark the passing of an innocent man they had made a cuckold. But after the police interviewed Rossum several times and Robertson himself had twice been grilled, Robertson flew back to Melbourne ending at once his American sojourn and his all-consuming romance with Rossum.
Since his return to Australia the case, and the interest by US authorities and the media, is more of a constant annoyance to Robertson than a threat to his way of life. ‘I feel more uncertain now than I did a few months ago,’ Robertson said from the safety of Australia not long after Rossum was found guilty. ‘Certainly they [the prosecution] have had a free run, and what hurts is that’s what my friends and family and professional colleagues read and I have no opportunity to defend that picture.’
Soon after Rossum’s arrest in June 2001, Robertson was spurred by his fear of the death penalty to seek legal advice. ‘That was a fairly scary concept, but I was always confident that I would ultimately be exonerated or found to have played no role in it,’ he said.
Robertson said friends joked he was a walking advertisement for the negative consequences of an extra-marital affair. He complained De Villers’ death and the spotlight on him had affected him professionally and personally. He said the situation was made worse because his mother was being treated for cancer. ‘From a personal perspective, it’s been a roller-coaster ride,’ he said. ‘It’s akin to spending your life with a doona thrown over your shoulders—you constantly have that weight, you can’t discard it. Some days it feels lighter than others, but it’s not gone. For the past two years, every time my phone rings I wonder what it might be, who it might be. But I remain confident in the knowledge of what I know.’
Robertson is intelligent enough not to hide from the media. He understands what a refusal to comment by a suspected murder plotter looks like in the press. He also does not want to be captured by a photographer skulking guiltily behind drawn venetians. Instead he grants interviews, filled with caveats about legal and other constraints, where he might talk for ten minutes but actually says very little.
When Michael Robertson returns your call he is soft-spoken and mild mannered. He comes over as a respectable gentleman. Asking him about involvement in sexual affairs and murder plots feels about as appropriate as discussing the finer points of bestiality with your rabbi—especially as Robertson politely bats away enquiries.
Throw into the mix the Stockholm syndrome–type gratitude that journalists inevitably feel towards chequered but available sources, and it is not hard to see how Robertson’s media approach has yielded good results for him. His first interview—a front page story—was headlined LIVING HELL. It was a story not about the grieving De Villers parents but about the good doctor’s legal limbo. He was pictured enjoying the good life at a nice bayside cafe. In another interview the charmed correspondent signed off wishing the murder suspect the best of luck.
Robertson attempts to explain his way around the drugs missing from the lab he ran. ‘It does not surprise me that drug records don’t match drug inventory,’ Robertson has said. ‘It’s been my experience, having visited many labs and speaking to people since this has occurred, that the systems aren’t perfect.’
Robertson said he had not tried to cover up his relationship with Rossum. Several friends and colleagues were aware of it, as was his now-estranged wife, he said. ‘My only regret is that I had an extra-marital affair. I had an extra-marital relationship, but that was my only crime—if that was a crime.’ He said he was shocked by Rossum’s conviction. ‘I still don’t know how she could have had anything to do with his death and I hope it isn’t a case of an innocent person being convicted,’ he said. ‘Having said that, I believe in fair punishment for a crime. If she did do it, then she should be punished.’
While Robertson has said he has had no direct contact with Rossum since he returned to Australia, a co-worker of Rossum’s, Claire Becker, said that Kristin, on the day she was arrested, had passed her a stuffed kangaroo and card to hang on to for her. Kristin said her lover in Melbourne had sent them to her.
Both lovers used to constantly pledge their undying love for each other but the cold cuckold changed all that, at least for one party. After Greg De Villers’ death his widow portrayed him as an increasingly controlling and obsessive husband. Robertson, in her eyes, was the opposite—ambitious, charismatic and intelligent. Rossum said she still loved Robertson ‘very much’. Robertson, asked if he still loved her, needed to give a longer answer. ‘She’s someone that I care for, but a lot of damage has taken place through all this.’
In 2003 he reheated his shtick of doing an interview without saying anything. He claimed he could not answer specific questions about the case. ‘I want to avoid saying anything that may be misinterpreted or misrepresented by anyone, not necessarily yourself or the media,’ he said. ‘And given all of that I am unwilling at this stage to make any comments regarding this case. And as frustrating as it is it is the situation that I find myself [in].’
The truth is, as an uncharged suspect, there are no legal constraints on Robertson speaking about himself. He is as free as a bird to speak—and, if innocent, would be smart to clarify outstanding questions on the case. ‘I really would like to be able to say more … And if my circumstance does change I may at some future stage be more than willing to comment on the turn of events that have unfolded over the last few years.’
His American lawyer, Michael Gardiner, complained on Robertson’s behalf about his legal limbo, his living hell and other hardships. ‘He is effectively excluded from this country because the authorities have indicated that they might arrest him if he came back here to defend himself. Meanwhile they have tried Kristin Rossum’s criminal case and done so pointing to the empty chair that Michael Robertson would be filling the whole time,’ Mr Gardiner said. ‘Calling him an “unindicted coconspirator” and never giving him an opportunity to come and defend himself.’ But, when given an opportunity to defend himself and explain it all in the court of public opinion, Robertson consistently declines. In reality he has had chance after chance to comment. There is no legal double bind preventing him. It is simply a choice he makes for reasons only he can know and we can only guess.
During the civil deposition process Robertson shied away from answering questions put by the De Villers family lawyer. Instead, whenever questions got pointed, Robertson availed himself of the American right to exercise the Fifth Amendment. ‘The Fifth’ allows witnesses to refuse to answer a question because the response could provide self-incriminating evidence of an illegal act.
LAWYER: Is it correct, sir, that you began working at the Medical Examiner’s office in April of 2000?
DR ROBERTSON: That sounds approximately the right date. I don’t have the exact date I began employment there but that’s right. April of 2000 sounds approximately correct.
LAWYER: And you were hired as the manager of the toxicology lab?
LAWYER: And Kristin Rossum was already working there at the time?
DR ROBERTSON: She was, yes.
LAWYER: Sir, as manager of the toxicology lab was it your responsibility to supervise Kristin Rossum?
LAWYER FOR DR ROBERTSON: Michael, assert the fifth at this point.
DR ROBERTSON: Yeah … I have been given counsel advice and given that I will assert my rights under the Fifth Amendment in response to that question.
A court found Rossum guilty of her husband’s murder. On the most generous possible reading for Robertson the murderess was on what lawyers call ‘a frolic of her own’—that the killing was a misread gift to her lover that he condemned when he learnt of it (except that he continued the affair after his mistress became a widow). If guilty of nothing else (and authorities believe that highly unlikely) the soft-spoken, mild-mannered toxicologist is certainly guilty of a lack of chivalry. He left the love of his life blowing in the wind in a state that enforces the death penalty after she had killed to be with him. He never called and he never wrote. They were meant to be together, he had said. But when the chips were down he vanished.
Friends who believe Robertson innocent of any involvement in the murder admire him for being very handsome and very charming. Detractors who believe him involved regard the same qualities as having helped him dodge any consequences.
LAWYER: While you were manager of the toxicology lab, sir, you knew, did you not, that there was a mandatory policy against the use of illegal drugs by employees in the toxicology lab.
LAWYER FOR DR ROBERTSON: Objection. Assumes facts not in evidence.
LAWYER: Please answer the question.
DR ROBERTSON: Again I assert my right under the Fifth Amendment and refuse to answer that question.
…
LAWYER: Is it correct, sir, that you knew that Kristin Rossum was using illegal drugs while she was under your supervision?’
LAWYER FOR DR ROBERTSON: Same answer …
DR ROBERTSON: Again I’ll take the fifth and refuse to answer that question.
The De Villers family’s civil action resulted in a court awarding the grieving clan a massive $147 million civil payout. Robertson—though fingered from the proceeding’s outset—had consistently and successfully exercised his privilege against self-incrimination. Kristin Rossum was held three-quarters responsible for Mr De Villers’ death in the civil judgement. Her employer, the San Diego county, was held one-quarter responsible.
LAWYER: When you left the office on the sixth after 3 p.m. with her did you go by the apartment for the purpose of administering the final dose of fentanyl to the body of Greg De Villers?
LAWYER FOR DR ROBERTSON: Same answer …
DR ROBERTSON: Again I’ll take the fifth and refuse to answer that question.
As far as American authorities are concerned, Robertson is still a suspect. In 2003 a dispatch from San Diego—a detective and prosecutor—landed in Melbourne to interview Robertson. They were assisted in their visit by the head of the Victorian Homicide Squad. US officials continued to classify Robertson as a suspect in the murder plot and publicly discuss how they believe he was involved in De Villers’ death. San Diego Police say they are still investigating him as a suspect but he remains uncharged. Nevertheless legal machinations among the surviving players in the bizarre love triangle continued.
LAWYER: Is it correct, Dr Robertson, that you helped Kristin Rossum plan the death of her husband?
LAWYER FOR DR ROBERTSON: Same answer …
DR ROBERTSON: Again I’ll take the fifth and refuse to answer that question.
There was a final twist in late 2009 when Rossum, now in her thirties, launched a last-ditch jailhouse appeal against her sentence. It contained some surprising elements—not least of which was a complete about face on her previous public support for Robertson’s claims of innocence.
Rossum’s revelation was that Robertson tampered with the evidence that led to her conviction. As part of the new legal ploy she was pushing for scientific tests that could implicate Robertson in relation to handling the autopsy specimens of his lover’s murdered husband. Rossum wanted her dead husband’s autopsy specimens retested. They were handled by Robertson before they underwent toxicology tests and, she claims, contaminated in the lab. Her brief before the US Court of Appeal asked for the tests, alleging her trial lawyers failed to perform them.
‘The specimens were left unattended for 36 hours before being sent out, and at least one person inspected the specimens during that time,’ the brief says. According to the court file, Robertson had inspected those specimens some time on 8 November, telling workers at the time their contents appeared red in colour, according to the court file.
It seems Rossum was seeking to establish reasonable doubt by claiming that Robertson framed her in the aftermath of her husband’s death. It is unclear whether this storyline assumed a suicide was dummied up in the lab to look like a homicide or whether Rossum is suggesting Robertson killed her husband then framed her for it. But either way it is hard to attribute a rational motive to Robertson in such a scenario. A man who successfully kills his lover’s husband only to have his lover locked away for life has not quite thought things through. Rossum’s claims are interesting, though, for the allegation of Robertson’s involvement in meddling with the autopsy. Rossum might be angry at her beau’s sudden flight. She might be of the view: I went to jail for life for my lover and all I got was this lousy stuffed kangaroo. They say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. But there might yet be some clues and half-truths in the jailbird’s latest ploy.
When contacted about the appeal the good doctor batted away the development with his usual aplomb. ‘Look, I’ve stepped away from it as much as [is] emotionally and physically possible and am getting on with things, so I haven’t been following any of that,’ Robertson said. ‘I’m getting on with life.’ He said he was trying to turn a page on that grisly part of his life but refused to say when he was last contacted by police. He said he ‘absolutely’ was not in contact with Rossum any more and she did not write or phone him. ‘I’m getting on with life. I’m moving on, so there is no contact in any way, shape or form,’ he said.
AND SO, in an unsatisfactory way, the Rose Petal murder was solved. A family mourned and a killer was imprisoned. But, for all that has been settled, two things remain a constant irritant to those with more than a passing interest in the case—the petals and the good doctor. It is highly possible that the petals on the death bed, combined with Kristin Rossum’s publicly declared love of American Beauty, are what got her convicted of murder. It may be anathema to the scientific instincts of toxicologists but juries can hang a conviction on one small thing that speaks to them rather than a hundred points of evidence that are objectively provable. The roses that appeared and reappeared throughout Kristin Rossum’s life eventually put her away. She will forever be known as the rose petal killer but just why Rossum cast rose petals on the bed of her victim is likely never to be fully understood. We might never know if it made some sort of twisted sense in her drug-addled mind as a tribute to her victim. Maybe it was intended to beautify or sanitise her otherwise senseless and cruel act. Or perhaps it was the sick signature touch of a potentially much more mentally disturbed individual who so quickly turned to murder when divorce would have sufficed.
Rossum cast some accidental light on the petals when she was still pretending her husband killed himself: the petals cast around Greg De Villers’ death bed were from the only surviving rose in the bunch Greg had given her on her birthday. (In reality, as the record on her supermarket discount card showed, Rossum had bought cough medicine and a single rose the morning of the murder.) But Rossum said: ‘I think he was just making a statement that he knew our relationship was over.’
As for Dr Michael Robertson, he continues his work and gets on with his life. No one, least of all his peers or medical authorities, seems particularly concerned with this state of affairs. In the meantime the good doctor will go about his business and try to cope with the living hell of being a completely free citizen despite an unquantifiable involvement in the successful plot to murder an innocent man.
LAWYER: The Medical Examiner did the toxicology work that you would make sure … was diagnosed as an overdose.
LAWYER FOR DR ROBERTSON: Same answer …
DR ROBERTSON: I’ll take the fifth and refuse to answer that question.