worked with Kristin at the Medical Examiner’s Office as an accounting clerk while he was attending law school but then moved to the East Coast to work for a law firm.
“I really can’t wait to see you, too,” he e-mailed Kristin on June 18, 1999, just two weeks after her wedding. He was coming to town that August and promised to call when he had a firm arrival date. “I was really worried you didn’t love me anymore.”
In mid-December, he wished her a Merry Christmas. “I miss you terribly and think of you all the time,” he wrote. “I am truly sorry we have grown apart over this time.”
By the spring of 2000, the tone of the e-mails had grown more urgent. Rizzo contacted Kristin on March 27, starting off a volley of increasingly intimate messages.
“Oh my God!” she replied. “I’ve been thinking about you so much lately…. So when are you going to be visiting? Miss you terribly.”
Rizzo must have taken Kristin’s welcoming reception to heart, because he invited her on an all-expenses-paid weekend in New York. “I am going to be all alone, and I thought immediately of you,” he wrote.
Kristin said such a trip might be hard to explain to her husband, “but, hey, a girl can dream, can’t she?”
Rizzo urged her to make it happen. “I don’t want to just imagine anymore,” he wrote.
Kristin seemed open to the idea, saying they’d have to give it “some serious consideration.”
Rizzo explained in some detail how he was getting physically excited at the prospect of seeing her again. “Those old feelings are back,” he said.
Dan Dewall, whom she’d met in a plant physiology class at SDSU, sent her several e-mails at the lab. One invited her to meet at “that park” around noon. Another recounted the contents of an e-mail he’d sent after they’d last seen each other, which he thought might have gotten lost in cyberspace: “I like you a lot, etc., etc., etc…. I promise that the next time you tell me you are tired, I will slow the pace and hold you a while so you can rest.”
In early March, a handsome, athletic Australian toxicologist named Michael Robertson started working as the lab’s unofficial manager, a title that would become official once his work visa issues were resolved. There was an immediate attraction between Kristin and her soon-to-be boss, a married man in his early thirties who came with a Ph.D. and an impressive resume.
She later wrote in her diary that she’d had a teenage fantasy about falling in love at first sight, knowing immediately that she’d found “the one.” Well, she wrote, she wasn’t sure if that’s what had happened, but when she and Michael made eye contact, “My legs got weak and my tummy was full of butterflies.”
Michael, who went by Mic or Robbo, had been offered the job of lab manager on December 1, 1999, but his visa issues were taking so long to resolve that he and Lloyd Amborn, the office administrator, negotiated a deal whereby Michael could start in early March as a “visitor.” That way, he could get familiar with how they did things in the lab until he could legally take over. In the meantime, Donald “Russ” Lowe continued as acting lab manager. Michael didn’t officially assume the position until June 12.
Michael had been a forensic toxicologist at National Medical Services (NMS) in Pennsylvania since April 1996, performing, supervising, and certifying toxicology test results that were going to be used in court. He also testified as an expert witness.
He testified, for example, in a highly publicized case involving several teenage boys who were charged with fatally drugging fifteen-year-old Samantha Reid of Lansing, Michigan, by putting gamma hydroxybutyrate—the date-rape drug known on the street as GHB, Liquid X, or Liquid Ecstasy—in her Mountain Dew. Reid’s death on January 17, 1999, led to the passage of the Hillory J. Farias and Samantha Reid Date-Rape Drug Prohibition Act of 2000, which added GHB to the list of drugs that are unlawful to manufacture, distribute, or dispense unless authorized by the federal government.
Michael started at NMS as a postdoctoral fellow and trainee, using the High Pressure Liquid Chromatograph, or HPLC, machine for toxicology testing. He also taught classes at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. He got the job at NMS after his teacher, Olaf Drummer, called the company head, Dr. Fredric Rieders, to recommend him for an internship. Rieders, who was originally from Austria, found the Australian toxicologist to be “a very bright young man” and hired him. Michael, Rieders said later, turned out to be “a great pleasure to work with.”
Michael had earned his doctorate in forensic medicine at Monash University in Melbourne in 1996, where he studied pharmacology and biochemistry on a graduate scholarship. From 1991 to 1996, he worked as a part-time scientist at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine in Melbourne, an agency with functions similar to an American coroner’s or medical examiner’s office, earning an annual stipend of $10,000.
His would-be employees in San Diego were impressed by his qualifications and experience. When he applied to San Diego in 1999, his resume listed fifteen published articles. The subjects ranged from the forensic investigation of drug-related fatal traffic accidents to the concentration of benzodiazepines, a class of drugs commonly known as tranquilizers, in the liquid surrounding the eyeball, the vitreous humor, which can be key in identifying toxic substances in the body.
Michael also had given a number of presentations at conferences in the United States, Europe, and Australia on topics such as date-rape drugs and how drugs can change in structure and concentration after a person dies. Clonazepam, one of the drugs found in Greg’s body, is a benzodiazepine and is classified as a date-rape drug.
Employees, such as Cathy Hamm, who had worked in the toxicology lab for more than fifteen years, were hopeful he would make some changes to improve the operation.
Michael seemed friendly, calling his new coworkers “mate.” He wasn’t a tall man, but he had a solid build and a nice smile. He quickly developed a schedule, outlining a division of work for getting things done in a more organized fashion.
“Initially, we were excited,” Hamm said. “He was pretty aggressive, presenting studies, like a mentor.”
But within a month of his arrival, the whole working environment had changed. When Kristin started her permanent job as a toxicologist in March 2000, it just so happened that the only open desk available was right in front of Michael’s office. The top half of his office door was made of glass, so the other lab workers could see what was going on inside, even if the door was closed.
It wasn’t long before Michael was spending what seemed like an inordinate amount of time in Kristin’s workspace near the HPLC machine, and she in his office. Although Hamm noticed that Michael and Kristin shared the habit of standing too close to other people, the two of them stood even closer to each other.
“When two people are attracted to each other, you can’t hide it,” Hamm said.
Hamm and the other toxicologists found their working environment more and more uncomfortable. Plus, there seemed to be some favoritism going on.
“It was just the way that they looked at each other,” she said.
The toxicologists who had worked there for years started to talk. Michael was going to be their boss as soon as his visa issues were resolved, and the close relationship between him and Kristin was already breeding resentment. It seemed that most of his attention was focused on her and whatever projects she was working on.
Kristin wrote in her diary that she never imagined
