After Greg returned from Monaco in the fall of 1993, he started classes at the University of California, San Diego, where his grades were less than stellar.
During his first quarter, he earned an F in organic chemistry, a D in a European Renaissance humanities class, and a C in physics, which gave him a D grade point average for the quarter. The next quarter, he did slightly better, raising his average to a C by earning a B+ in an introduction to acting class. In the spring of 1994, he continued to struggle with organic chemistry and physics.
Jerome joined him at UCSD that fall, and they shared a two-bedroom apartment in the La Jolla Del Sol complex with a third roommate, Chris Wren.
Greg and his father did not get along, and over the years, their relationship grew progressively stormier, until Greg and he became estranged.
Yves had a way of causing mental turmoil, which made communication with his sons difficult, so Greg—and sometimes Jerome—felt it was easier to live independently with little or no contact with him. Yves said he believed the conflict between him and Greg developed “because he was too young for the kind of responsibilities his mother gave him and the resentment she could not completely hide.”
But others saw it differently, saying that Greg resented Yves for not helping their mother more financially. Then, later, when Greg said he couldn’t afford to pay for college and wanted to take a break, Yves told him to stay in school and assured him that he would cover the costs, but the money never came. Yves denied this version of events but did not elaborate.
Memories differ on the breaking point for Greg and his father. Jerome remembered it coming during a family trip to Mammoth, when Greg left abruptly and returned to San Diego. Yves remembered that Greg left abruptly one year because he wanted to go home to try to make money selling vitamins, a job Yves didn’t think was worthy of him, but he said that wasn’t the breaking point for him and his son. He did not elaborate.
Greg withdrew from classes at UCSD partway through the quarter in October 1994 and started working at Rush Legal Services. The firm offered an array of copying, researching, process serving, notary, delivery, and other services.
Greg returned to classes at UCSD in the fall of 1995, about nine months after meeting Kristin. By the following summer, he was able to focus his energies on just one organic chemistry course, and his grades began to improve. He earned a B+ in that course, and by the winter quarter of 1997, he was earning all A’s and B’s. In his last quarter before graduating in 1997, he brought his grade point average up to a 3.85 even while taking biomedicine/cancer and developmental neurobiology.
After Bertrand graduated high school in 1997, he came to San Diego for the summer. He lived in Solana Beach, a small coastal town just north of San Diego, where he learned to surf with his brothers. Greg got Bertrand a job at Rush Legal, delivering subpoenas for the firm in the northern part of the county. Later that summer, Bertrand was transferred to the downtown office where Greg worked. He left to start classes at UCLA that fall.
“I always felt a strong tie to my brothers,” Bertrand said. “We were always there for each other.”
The brothers remained close, even when they lived apart. Jerome transferred to the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1995, and after graduation, he worked as a hotel valet until he could decide what to do next. Greg called him almost every day, encouraging Jerome to do more with his life.
“More than my parents, he was there to help me out, and I remember he had a real influence on me,” Jerome said. “Greg could always figure something out.”
Before staying out late drinking, for example, Jerome would stop and think about what he was doing, not wanting to worry Greg.
“In a sense, he helped keep me in check without really saying anything,” Jerome said. “I wouldn’t want him to be disappointed. I just thought he had it together.”
In between visits, the brothers stayed in touch by phone. But like most young men, their conversations didn’t delve much into the personal realm. Mostly, they discussed movies or the fishing, camping, hiking, or snowboard trips they took together on a regular basis. Intimate feelings and relationship issues just didn’t come up.
Chapter 5
One activity that Greg and Kristin both viewed as important was spending time with family. As their relationship progressed, their two families began to integrate.
The couple often spent time with Marie de Villers or went on camping, hiking, or skiing trips with Jerome, Bertrand, and the occasional friend Greg had known since high school. In turn, Kristin frequently took Greg to her parents’ house, where he would play video games with her youngest brother, Pierce, or hit the golf course with Pierce and her other brother, Brent, followed by dinner with her parents.
When Bertrand was still in high school, he started playing soccer more seriously and joined a traveling squad that competed regionally with teams such as Claremont’s. He even played for a while on Brent’s team in Claremont. At practice one afternoon during his senior year, he remembers Brent mentioning that his sister was dating Bertrand’s brother. Bertrand, who never felt like he fit in with all the rich kids on that team, didn’t play on it for long, so he and Brent never got that close.
The Rossums invited Greg and Marie to their house for Thanksgiving dinner, and in subsequent years, Greg’s brothers came, too. Everyone seemed to get along well. Ralph and Constance thought it would be good for Greg if they could reunite him with his estranged father. But Greg wasn’t interested.
Once she got clean, Kristin was able to focus on her schoolwork. And it paid off.
She started off slowly, taking only two courses her first semester at SDSU, in the fall of 1995, while she continued to work with Greg at Rush Legal. On her application to the Medical Examiner’s Office two years later, she stretched the time she’d worked at Rush, claiming she’d started in June 1994 and worked as assistant office manager through December 1995.
Kristin earned a B+ in probability and an A in the principles of physics that semester. By the spring of 1996, she was taking a full load, earning an A in chemistry, an A-in philosophy, a B+ in biology, and a B-in physics. That summer she took two more courses, getting an A in calculus and an A-in oral communication.
Kristin impressed her chemistry professors at SDSU as being one of their best and brightest. Professor Dale Chatfield, chairman of the Chemistry Department, had Kristin in several of his classes.
“She excelled at everything she did,” he recalled. “She was really a perfectionist, as far as I can tell.”
When she worked in groups of three, he noticed that she “took over and told everyone else what to do,” which he attributed to her higher level of experience. Nonetheless, he noted, she still got along well with the other students. She was meticulous and thorough.
Kristin studied forensics, which included such topics as how to identify mysterious white powders at crime scenes. This was not an uncommon sight at crime scenes in San Diego County at the time, when the region was known as the meth capital of the world.
In forensics classes, Chatfield explained, “You’re trying to recreate any evidence you can from the scene of a crime. So you go into a place. You collect fingerprints. You collect dust. Sherlock Holmes business.”
Kristin was also in Professor Bill Tong’s chemistry lab.
“She was one of the best students we’ve ever seen,” said Tong, who served as a mentor to Kristin.
From the fall of 1996 until she finished her coursework about three years later, Kristin earned almost all A’s or A-’s. When she was awarded her bachelor’s degree with a distinction in chemistry on December 29, 1999, her transcript showed a cumulative grade point average of 3.83. That average would have been lower if the Redlands coursework had been included as required. An average of 3.8 is required to graduate summa cum laude from SDSU.
Greg’s academic performance at UCSD wasn’t nearly as good as Kristin’s.