Sex, Drugs, Affair Highlighted In 'American Beauty' Trial

SAN DIEGO -- A toxicologist gave her husband an obscure drug to kill him because he was about to expose her methamphetamine use and affair with her supervisor, a prosecutor told jurors Tuesday in the young woman's murder trial.

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Prosecutor Laying Out Interesting Case

Deputy District Attorney Dan Goldstein said Kristin Rossum, 25, killed Gregory de Villers with the help of her Australia-born lover, Michael Robertson.

"Michael Robertson will never be in this courtroom," Goldstein told the seven men and five women. "He protected her in every way, including trying to cover up this homicide."

In court papers, Goldstein referred to Robertson, the chief toxicologist at the San Diego County Medical Examiner's Office at the time, as an "unindicted co-conspirator."

Robertson moved back to Australia after de Villers' death on Nov. 6, 2000.

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Goldstein said Rossum (pictured, right) killed her 26-year-old spouse by stealing and apparently injecting him with fentanyl.

In addition to the fentanyl, the painkiller Oxycodone and the sedative Clonazepam were found in de Villers' system. No syringes or fentanyl patches were near his body, but there were three needle marks on his arm, authorities said.

"Greg de Villers was going to reveal her stealing methamphetamine and having an affair and she wasn't going to let him do it," the prosecutor said.

When questioned by police, Rossum denied using drugs and denied the affair with Robertson, Goldstein said.

He said de Villers detested drugs and was the one responsible for getting his wife of 17 months off meth.

De Villers' death was first reported as a suicide, but Rossum was arrested eight months later and charged with his murder.

"He had no reason to take his own life," Goldstein told the jury.

Rossum used the "tools of her trade" in the county Medical Examiner's Office to poison her spouse, the prosecutor said.

The trial -- expected to last three to four weeks -- reads like a murder mystery with sex, drugs, affairs and more, Goldstein told the jury.

"All roads are going to lead to the defendant's guilt," the prosecutor said.

Rossum grew up in a well-to-do family in Los Angeles, the prosecutor said, and was the "apple of her father's eye" until she turned to drugs in the 1990s. Her drug use "started to cause enormous stress in her family," Goldstein said.

Ralph Rossum is a college professor who worked for the Reagan administration in the 1980s. Constance Rossum is also a professional woman, Goldstein said. Both worked to shield their daughter from trouble, the prosecutor said.

"To Kristin Rossum and the Rossum family, image is everything," Goldstein said.

The defendant ran away from home and was not in college after graduating from high school, the prosecutor said.

"We had a horrendous time," Constance Rossum wrote.

"Where did we go wrong? How do we explain this to anybody?" Ralph Rossum wrote of his daughter's problems before she met Greg de Villers.

Kristin Rossum moved to San Diego and tried to get a job with the Sheriff's Department but was rejected because of her past drug use, the prosecutor said.

But the county Medical Examiner's Office failed to do a background check on Rossum and she was hired, Goldstein said.

In March 2000, the defendant began her affair with Robertson, the prosecutor said.

He displayed a number of affectionate e-mails written between Rossum and Robertson.

"I love you with all I have to give," Rossum wrote Robertson.

"All I want to do is spend the rest of my life with you," Robertson wrote back.

"When I see you, I see my future," Rossum wrote in another e-mail to Robertson.

Prosecutors allege Rossum staged an "American Beauty" suicide scene to make it look as though her husband took his life.

Paramedics testified at a preliminary hearing last year that rose petals were found around the victim's body. De Villers also was clutching his wedding photo, witnesses testified.

Authorities reportedly learned the movie is one of Rossum's favorite films.

The weekend he died, Rossum told de Villers she was leaving him, according to preliminary hearing testimony.