Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - This Cheating Wife is in BIG Trouble - The Kirstin Rossom Story

Episode Date: March 9, 2026

She had no loyalty at all.--In November 2000, Kristin Rossum, a toxicologist at the San Diego County Medical Examiner’s Office, murdered her 26-year-old husband, Gregory de Villers, by administering a lethal dose of drugsstolen from her workplace. After finding him dead in their La Jolla apartment, she staged the scene to resemble her favorite movie, American Beauty, by sprinkling red rose petals over his body. Prosecutors argued that Rossum killed de Villers to prevent him from exposing her relapse into drug addiction and her illicit affair with her boss, Michael Robertson.

Imagine having a wife as terrible as this woman. Now, the woman's name is Kristen, and Kristen is 19 when this story starts, and she's going to college in California. But here's the thing about Kristen. She's really into drugs, particularly meth. And because of that, she has lots of problems in school. She skips a lot of classes. She starts failing her courses, and she's constantly fighting with her parents over all of this. But Kristen doesn't seem to care. And one day in 1995, she decides that she's had enough of college and enough of trying to please her parents.

And she drops out. Then she heads to Tijuana, Mexico, probably to party and buy drugs. And that is where she meets this guy, Greg. Greg is also a college student, and he's vacationing in Tijuana with his brothers. So Kristen and Greg, they meet and they start talking and they hit it off, and over time, Kristen starts to think, Greg got a foin. And Greg thinks Kristen is foin right back. And soon they start dating.

And it's not long before Kristen moves in with Greg. And as they continue to spend more and more time together, Greg inevitably finds out that Kristen is addicted to meth. Now, at this point, he could leave her, but that's not what he does. He really loves Kristen. So he stays. He's going to try and help her. And he fully commits to that.

He monitors her, he supports her, he even encourages her to enroll back in college, this time in San Diego. And she does. And a few months go by. And slowly, because of Greg's support, Kristen starts to get better and she gets fully sober. And years go by. And it's now 1999. And Kristen, it's still doing well. In fact, she actually graduates with honors, with a degree in biochemistry, and she's able to get a job as a forensic toxicologist at the San Diego County Medical Examiner's Office, which is a great job for her.

That same year, they get married, and so things seem to be going really well for them. However, then all that starts to fall apart, because after only a few months of marriage, Kristen starts to feel, trapped. I mean, she thinks Greg is just too clingy, but instead of asking for more space or whatever, she starts smashing with other guys. Specifically, she sleeps with two of her coworkers. But then, it gets even worse, because in the year 2000, she gets a new boss, this guy, Michael. And Kristen and Michael, they start working together and pretty quickly, Kristen starts thinking Michael, kind of fine. And he's really into her too. And so they start smashing, which is terrible. Not only is Kristen married, but Michael is also married. But whatever, they don't seem to care. They're going to keep this

affair going. And here's where the story starts to get dark. At her job at the medical examiner's office, Kristen is in charge of the logbook, where they log some of the evidence that's sent to them. Sometimes that evidence will be drugs, sometimes that evidence will be meth. specifically. So Kristen is around this meth all day, and eventually she becomes tempted to take some. And ultimately, she does. And then, of course, she does it again and again and again. And before long, she has fully relapsed. Now, inevitably, Michael ends up finding out about all this. I mean, he's her boss. Of course he finds out. And he knows that if he reports her to the higher ups, she'll get fired. And he doesn't want that. he wants to keep working with her and, you know, keep smashing. And so he stays quiet. Now, at this point,

Kristen is living a total double life. She's getting high at work and cheating with Michael, but then she'll go home to Greg every night pretending like everything is okay. And like, she can't keep this up. So after a while, she finally decides to go to Greg and she says that she wants a separation. And poor Greg, he's devastated. I mean, why is she doing this to him? He spent years helping her get sober and now she's doing this. And so he starts investigating. And he's trying to figure out what's really going on with his wife. And that is when he finds a glass pipe with some of her things. So he knows she's using again. He also finds a crumpled up love letter from Michael to Kristen. So now he knows she's having an affair. And all, he knows she's having an affair. This pisses Greg off. I mean, not only that, but he's worried about Kristen too. I mean, she's an addict who now has unrestricted access to drugs at work. This can only go wrong. So he goes to Kristen and he gives her an ultimatum. You either quit your job or I'll report you and Michael to your supervisors. And this scares the shit out of Kristen. I mean, she doesn't want to quit

her job. That would cut off her access to all that meth. But, on the other hand, if Greg snitches on her, she'll lose everything. I mean, her job, her reputation, plus Michael would probably get fired too. And she isn't about to let that happen. So she comes up with an insane plan to silence Greg. She's going to drug him and make it look like he unalived himself. So she gets to work on this plan. First, she steals some drugs, oxycodone and clonazepam from evidence.

Then one night she slips the drugs into Greg's drink. Or maybe she puts them into his food. No one really knows the details of that aren't exactly public. But unknowingly, Greg consumes whatever she put it in. Then he passes out. Then, I guess, to make absolutely sure that he doesn't survive, Kristen places fentanyl patches on his arm, which are normally used to treat pain,

but in this case, she's trying to overdose him. and unfortunately, it works. Greg doesn't survive. After that, Kristen lays him up on her bed, and she sets up their wedding photo and pages from her diary around him. She even places that love letter from Michael to her that he found nearby. Then, she throws a bunch of rose petals over him to make it look like that scene from that movie American Beauty with all the rose petals. I guess she's trying to make it look like Greg found out about her affair, then he got so depressed that he decided to take his own life. So I'm not really sure what the rose petals are for. Regardless, after that, she calls 911, and she reports that she just found her

husband and he's not breathing. So pretty quickly, paramedics arrive. And Kristen tells them that Greg must have overdosed on pills that she had lying around the house and that he put the rose petals around himself as a final romantic gesture. And it sounds crazy, but as of now, there's no reason for anyone to suspect that Kristen is actually the one behind his death. Until. Until some members of Greg's family start feeling like, something isn't right about all this. I mean, Greg isn't known to use drugs.

In fact, he was scared of drugs, so why would he suddenly take a bunch of pills? And the first autopsy they did confirmed that he had oxycodone and clinozapam in his system. But the family pushes for a... second autopsy. So a second autopsy gets done. And that is when they find large amounts of fentanyl in his system. And large amounts of fentanyl, it isn't something most people casually have access to. It would have had to have come from a medical or evidence facility. Like the one Kristen works in. So now police are suspicious of Kristen. And as they investigate more,

they find out about her recent meth relapse and that she's been smearly. smashing with her boss Michael. So both Kristen and Michael are fired from the lab. And later, bam, Kristen is arrested. Here's her mugshot. And so ultimately she goes to trial and she's found guilty and she gets sentenced to life in prison. Meanwhile, they were never actually able to find any evidence that Michael was linked to the murder. So he was never charged with anything and therefore he was never convicted.