But about seven months ago, something apparently went drastically wrong. Authorities now say Rossum, whom co-workers at biotech company TriLink Biotechnologies describe as “incredibly sweet and lovely,” poisoned DeVillers last November with a painkiller she allegedly stole from the San Diego County medical examiner’s office. (She was fired from her job there soon after the murder investigation.) When DeVillers was found, rose petals had been spread around his body on the couple’s bed in a scene eerily reminiscent of the film, “American Beauty.” Police say Rossum told investigators the film was her favorite. Accused of killing her husband in cold blood, Rossum is not expected to be allowed bail and faces possible execution. She pleaded not guilty at her arraignment on Monday.
Police say Rossum told them that on Nov. 5 DeVillers had taken OxyContin, a drug she had brought home from Mexico to help bring her down from her crystal meth high, and had gone to sleep. He continued to sleep through most of the next day. After she found him cold and pale at about 9 p.m. on Nov. 6, Rossum called 911, and DeVillers was later declared dead at Scripps Memorial Hospital. While there, according to a police report, Rossum told a social worker that she and DeVillers had been arguing during the past weekend and that she was addicted to crystal meth. Still, authorities at the time believed he had died from a suicidal overdose.
Later, Gregory’s brother, Jerome DeVillers, 25, complained that the death was suspicious, and the San Diego police opened a murder investigation. When toxicology tests on DeVillers’ body were sent to an outside lab, it was determined that the cause of death was acute intoxication with the highly toxic drug Fentanyl, among other things, says San Diego Police Capt. Ron Newman. The toxicology test results are what led to Rossum’s arrest this past week, he says. (Fentanyl is a drug to which medical-examiner employees have access.)
After DeVillers death, Rossum had authorized her husband’s organs to be removed for transplantation and sections of his skin be stripped away for use in grafts for burn victims. Both actions, court documents now suggest, made it more difficult to determine the cause of death. To make matters more complicated, Rossum allegedly had been involved in a love affair with her former boss, Michael Robertson, who also worked in the medical examiner’s office. Prosecutors suspect Rossum and Robertson may have planned DeVillers’ death together after her husband allegedly threatened to expose their affair-and her drug use-to superiors at the medical examiner’s office. When Rossum was fired from that job, Robertson, 31, a forensic toxicologist, was also let go for failing to inform his superiors of her drug problem, according to several reports. He has since returned to his native Australia. “[His] extradition is definitely a possibility,” says San Diego Police Lt. Ray Stigwalt.
Rossum’s current boss, TriLink president Rick Hogrefe, says he was not aware of Rossum’s previous termination or of any allegations of drug use when his company hired her four months ago. He had even talked to her about her management potential. “She’s just too smart to have done something that points an arrow at herself so brightly,” he says. “It just doesn’t fit. And we saw absolutely no sign of drug abuse.” On the day of her arrest, Hogrefe says, Rossum walked in to TriLink’s production manager’s office in tears and told him she had to go home to take care of some personal matters. “My production manager told me she looked very upset. She was crying,” says Hogrefe. “The very last thing she told our production manager was, ‘No matter what you hear about me, I’m not a bad person.’”
The murder charges that have been filed could send Rossum to her own death by lethal injection. The poisoning allegation-a so-called special circumstance-allows prosecutors to seek either Rossum’s execution or a lesser sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. When Rossum appeared briefly in court last Wednesday, she cried throughout the short hearing.
After the court proceeding last week, Rossum’s father said his daughter was innocent. “You are making a victim of our daughter, who lost a husband,” he told reporters. “She does not have it in her to commit these charges. These charges are devastating.”
