Shownotes Transcript
Hey everybody, this is Tina again with Good Nurse, Bad Nurse. Welcome back to the show. Today's bad nurse story is the kind that lingers in your mind long after you hear it. It's tragic. It's calculating, deeply unsettling. I mean, not just because of what happened, but because of how it happened. It's just the details of it. This is a story I had never heard of, and I'm kind of shocked because it happened in the early 2000s.
Maybe that's why, but it's literally everywhere. I'd say really the, probably the reason that I hadn't heard of it, maybe it didn't come across my Google searches, is that she is not a nurse. And so, as you know, the good nurse and bad nurse stories don't necessarily have to be nurses. Many of them are, but someone in the healthcare field. So having said that,
If you're interested in learning more about this, all you have to do is Google her name. There's actually a snapped episode about her. We're talking about Kristen Rossum. She was a toxicologist from California, and she used her knowledge of poisons and her access to lethal drugs to commit a horrible, horrible crime. So let's go back a little bit. Kristen Rossum was born in 1976 in Memphis, Tennessee.
But she grew up in the sunny suburbs of Claremont, California. She was the oldest of three. She was raised in a seemingly well-to-do academic household. Her father, Ralph Wasson, was a political science professor, and her mother worked in academia as well. She was smart, driven, and always seemed to be on track for success. But like many high achievers, she also had a secret side.
By the time she was in her late teens, apparently her family had moved from California all the way across the country to Virginia. And while there, her parents enrolled her in a private school, and she started experimenting with different things, methamphetamines and other substances.
And so she went from being a promising student to someone spiraling into addiction. And that is until I guess she moved back to California. And she, while in Tijuana, Mexico, met a man by the name of Gregory DeVillers. Now, he was everything that she wasn't at the moment. He was grounded. He was supportive, deeply kind. They met in 1995 during a weekend trip, as I said, to Tijuana.
and made an immediate connection, he helped her get clean and encouraged her to focus on studying and getting back into school and just stood by her through her recovery, which I think is amazing. Eventually, she was able to enroll in San Diego State University and graduated summa cum laude with a degree in chemistry.
So that is a huge leap from where she was. And it sounds like she owed that all to this man that she met, who became her husband. She also landed a prestigious job as a toxicologist at the San Diego County Medical Examiner's Office. I mean, that sounds just like a dream job to me for someone who has a degree in chemistry and
It sounds like everything was going her way. So they got married in June of 1999 after dating for about five years. Greg, meanwhile, worked in biotech and was known by his friends as being upbeat and full of life. Everyone described him as generous and optimistic and just a guy who truly believed in second chances, even when it came at a cost to himself. So
He'd helped Kristen build a life, but behind closed doors, things were starting to fall apart. Kristen had started an affair with her boss, Dr. Michael Robertson, a man she worked with directly at the medical examiner's office. She had also relapsed into meth use, and Greg had found out about both those things, and he was pretty much done at this point. Now,
A couple of different accounts. One account does say that he approached her, confronted her about it, and gave her an ultimatum. And he even said that if she didn't straighten things up, he was going to go to report the affair and her drug use to her place of work. So, yeah.
Obviously, her whole life is going to blow up at this point.
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And his friends and family say, you know, he wasn't angry. He was just really hurt. And he just really wanted her to stop the behavior that she was doing. And it's not like she was trying to leave him. So he's just saying, let's make this work. Let's move forward. But obviously you have to stop this behavior.
So remember, she did work in forensic toxicology. Her job was literally to understand how people die, often through overdose or poisoning. She knew the science and she had access to the drugs. So apparently made a decision and made it coldly and with precision. So on November the 6th, 2000, she dialed 911 and said,
that she had come home to find her husband unresponsive. What first responders found was shocking. His body was lying on the bed,
And in one account that I read said that he was on the floor because the 911 operator had told her to put him on the floor so that she could do compressions. Sometimes, you know, when you're looking at this information, these details get kind of mixed up. It probably makes more sense that she would have helped him to the floor to do compressions or that someone trying to do compressions would need a hard surface. But apparently when...
the first responders found him, he was surrounded by red rose petals that looked like they were scattered purposely across the sheets and the floor. And that's where the movie American Beauty, Interspector, now I actually never saw the movie American Beauty. I never had a desire to watch it. I just, it wasn't something that appealed to me at the time. But
It was it was it's 1999. So this is right before this happened. It was an extremely popular movie. And I'm not even going to name the person that's in it. But the scene with like the person and the laying there with no clothes and the rose petals, you can't get away from. If you were alive during that time, you were going to you're going to see that image. So I am fully aware of what they're talking about, even though I never watched the movie, never even came close to watching the movie.
But those rose petals, yeah, they're iconic. In the movie, Lester Burnham, played by a very popular actor, is going through a midlife crisis. He becomes obsessed with his teenage daughter's friend, played by Meena Savari. And there are several dreamlike sequences where she's covered in rose petals symbolizing desire, fantasy, and unattainable perfection. So...
Kristen apparently loved that movie, and it was reportedly one of her favorite movies. So there's some people that have made, I guess, some speculations about why she would have done this. Maybe she was, you know, recreating this visually and somehow dramatizing the moment in order to kind of
detach herself from what was going on. I don't know. It seems very bizarre. You know, some people say, well, it was to try to make it look like he was, he had staged this, was doing it, you know, to take his life in this dramatic way. His friends and family all thought that was crazy and that there's no way that that was something he would do. But the fact was that he was dead and the toxicology report showed that he had died from a fentanyl overdose.
So we've talked about fentanyl before on this podcast. It's not just any opioid. It's up to 100 times more potent than morphine and 50 times more potent than heroin. Medically, it's used for intense pain. I mean, post-op.
patients, terminal cancer patients, but the window between a therapeutic dose and a fatal dose can be quite small. And in Greg's case, the amount in his system was more than seven times the lethal threshold. So Kristen had access to fentanyl.
through her job. And investigators later discovered that fentanyl was missing from the lab's inventory. She'd also been caught on surveillance purchasing, you guessed it, a single red rose earlier that same day. So when it came to trial,
Kristen's defense team argued that Greg had taken his own life, but the evidence and the staging painted a very different picture. Friends testified that Greg was not depressed. In fact, he had just returned from a family gathering and had been making plans for the future.
He was actively trying to help Kristen turn her life around, even in those final days. In 2002, she was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. She filed several appeals, one of which centered around whether her defense failed to test for fentanyl metabolites,
that could have indicated how the drug was administered, but none were successful. Kristen Rossum is currently serving her sentence at the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla.
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Today's Good Nurse story, I'm so excited to tell you about. This is the inspiring story of Najah Bazzi. She's a nurse from Michigan whose compassion and dedication have transformed lives through her nonprofit organization, Zaman International. Najah Bazzi, a critical care and transcultural nurse, was deeply moved by the plight of a refugee family she encountered during her work.
So witnessing the family's struggle with poverty and illness, she realized the profound impact that socioeconomic factors have on health. This experience ignited a passion in her to address the root causes of poverty and its effect on vulnerable populations. In 2004, Najah founded Zaman International, a nonprofit organization based in Dearborn, Michigan.
Her mission is to break the cycle of poverty by providing basic needs assistance and empowering marginalized women and children through education and vocational training. The organization offers a range of services, including food and...
clothing distribution, literacy programs, and job skills training. Under Najjar's leadership, Zaman International has grown significantly, serving over 3 million people across 20 countries. The organization's holistic approach addresses both immediate needs and
and long-term solutions, helping individuals achieve self-reliance and dignity. Najah's work has garnered national recognition. She was named one of USA Today's Women of the Year in 2023 and has received numerous awards for her humanitarian efforts. Her story exemplifies how nurses can extend their care beyond the bedside in addressing systemic issues and advocating for social justice.
I just love that story so much. So proud of her and all of that. All the things that she's done.
And that wraps up another episode of Good Nurse, Bad Nurse. Thank you guys so much for stopping by to listen to my stories. And if you'd like to reach out to me, you can send me an email at tina at goodnursebadnurse.com. You can find us on the web at Good Nurse, Bad Nurse. And we're on social media as well. Look forward to hearing from you. Oh, I always have to remind you before we go, even if you're a bad girl or a bad boy, be a good nurse.
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