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