Toxicologist Suspected of Poisoning Her Husband

A former toxicologist at the county medical examiner’s office was arrested Monday on suspicion of murdering her husband, after tests showed a potentially lethal drug in his system of the kind reported missing from the office, officials said.

Gregory DeVillers, 27, an employee at a biotechnology firm in San Diego, was found dead last November in the apartment he shared with his wife, Kristin Rossum, 24, at UC San Diego.

After interviewing Rossum, campus police believed the death was a suicidal overdose. But after complaints from DeVillers’ family that the death was suspicious, San Diego city police opened a murder investigation.

Toxicology tests on DeVillers’ body were sent to an outside lab to determine the cause of death. Results from those tests led to the arrest, Lt. Ray Sigwalt said.

Rossum and her boss at the medical examiner’s office, toxicologist Michael D. Robertson, 30, were fired shortly after the police investigation began. Sigwalt said the investigation includes Robertson, a native of Australia.

DeVillers is the son of Yves DeVillers, coauthor of a book on liposuction. Rossum is the daughter of a government professor at Claremont College.