Poisoned Love. Caitlin Rother
education ended with the eighth grade, and his mother’s with high school. Since his parents weren’t able to pay his tuition, he had to qualify for scholarships and work to make up the difference. In 1968, he graduated summa cum laude from Concordia College, a four-year liberal arts institution in Minnesota associated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
The first academic job listed on his ten-page curriculum vitae is instructor of behavioral sciences in the City Colleges of Chicago’s Department of Police Academy Services, where he started working in 1970. He earned his master’s degree from the University of Chicago in 1971, married Constance in 1972, and by 1973 had obtained his Ph.D. Over the course of his career, he held high-ranking academic and administrative positions in California, Louisiana, Iowa, Illinois, Virginia, and Tennessee.
In 2004 Ralph was still a professor of political philosophy and American constitutionalism at Claremont McKenna, where he also served as director of its Rose Institute of State and Local Government.
Ralph appears to have taken the academic community’s motto—“publish or perish”—to heart. In 2004, his curriculum vitae included seven books he wrote or coauthored, as well as dozens of articles and book chapters. A number of his writings focus on the jurisprudence of Antonin Scalia, a conservative Republican on the U.S. Supreme Court and a Reagan appointee. Ralph team-taught a class with Scalia at the University of Aix-Marseille III Law School in Aix-en-Provence, France.
Constance, who was raised in Indiana, was no slouch herself. She studied radio and television journalism as an undergraduate and journalism again in graduate school at Indiana University in Bloomington. She earned a master’s degree in management from Claremont Graduate University, where she went on to earn her Ph.D. in education and management.
With her background, Constance was able to straddle the worlds of academia and business, starting her own consulting firm, Management Directives, in 1991, after working twenty years in advertising, marketing/management, and consumer research for major companies, such as Procter & Gamble, United Airlines, McDonald’s, and the Marriott Corporation. She has taught at various public and private colleges, including Azusa Pacific University; the University of California, Riverside; and California State University at San Bernardino. She also has been involved with a New York–based group called the Leader to Leader Institute, which helps nonprofit groups perform effectively. She and her husband have coauthored books and articles on topics such as constitutional law.
By the time Kristin was nine or ten, she was taking her dance classes seriously. As the years went on, she split her after-school time between ballet and homework, earning straight A’s.
Her bent toward perfectionism also influenced her dancing. She wrote in her diary years later that at twelve or thirteen, she began to feel “hypercritical” of her abilities, her technique, and her own physical limitations. “I wanted so badly to be the best—the prima ballerina,” she wrote. “The girls with high arches, long legs, and a flexible back…[They] had physical traits I so desperately wanted.”
She’d just turned fourteen and was a freshman in high school when her talents had progressed enough to land her a coveted role in The Nutcracker with the Forum Dance Ensemble in neighboring Orange County. She was supposed to be an understudy, but when the star ballerina got sick, Kristin ended up with the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy, dancing with a professional cavalier from the Houston Ballet.
Her father drove her to and from rehearsals in Anaheim every afternoon, a thirty-two-mile drive each way. Kristin sensed that Ralph got a little frustrated when the hours-long sessions ran late, as they often did, but he remained supportive of her efforts. He felt a deep pride when he watched her dance. She had such a passion for it.
Kristin was popular at Claremont High School, where her dancing skills were well known among her classmates. Her fellow students thought Kristin, who always seemed to be smiling, had a sweet nature. She was the model student.
As a freshman, Kristin briefly dated a junior named Chris Elliott, the son of family friends who used to baby-sit her little brothers while Kristin was at ballet practice. Chris’s father also taught at Claremont McKenna. The two teenagers first met when Kristin was thirteen and Chris was seventeen. Chris was impressed that Kristin was such a high achiever, dancing even when she had a 102-degree fever and focusing so intensely on her ballet rather than just hanging out after school. All her friends were “bunheads,” as her mother called them—dancers who wore their hair up in a bun.
In 1991 Kristin auditioned for a spot in a prestigious summer program with the Boston Ballet. She got it and spent the summer back east.
That fall, Ralph took a job as president of Hampden-Sydney College, a private liberal arts school in southern Virginia. Kristin enrolled at an Episcopalian boarding school for girls about sixty miles away so she could dance with a troupe in Richmond. She and Chris wrote letters to each other while she was away. She took a bad fall that year, when a fellow dancer dropped her. She tore several ligaments and had to wear an ankle cast for nearly two months. She reinjured her leg a few months later, and by the time she healed, she’d lost the calluses on her toes that allowed her to go en pointe. She also developed a stress fracture that wouldn’t heal. She grew frustrated and quit.
Kristin began experimenting with drugs and alcohol around that time—mostly beer and marijuana, though she didn’t much care for pot because “it didn’t do anything.” She also developed a fondness for cigarettes and would turn to them again later in life when under stress.
Her father remembered Kristin leaving Claremont as a girl in 1991 and returning from Virginia as a woman, just before the start of her junior year in 1992.
Ralph returned to Claremont McKenna to teach constitutional law, and Constance transferred within Marriott to a job as director of marketing. The family was happy and healthy, and everything seemed to be going along swimmingly.
“Frankly, we thought we were blessed with three lovely children,” Constance said.
Although ballerinas typically are self-conscious about their bodies, Kristin, who usually weighed between 100 and 110 pounds, took this concern to a new level, often taking laxatives and diet pills to make her small frame look even smaller.
“For some reason, she thought she was fat,” Constance said. “I don’t understand that.”
After Kristin stopped dancing, Constance noticed a sadness in her daughter that she didn’t recognize.
“She just didn’t seem like our Kristin,” she said. “I thought it was the sixteen-year-old teenage angst…. Her grades were still very good.”
Kristin’s brothers also started noticing that something was different. She was exhibiting strange behavior and staying up late at night. One day they found a pipe and a small mirror in the house and showed them to Constance. Naïve and unaware that these items were drug paraphernalia, Constance had no clue what her daughter was up to.
Kristin had always excelled in school, so when she began turning in her homework late, her parents felt something must be wrong. When they asked what was going on, she told them everything was fine. She’d do better next time. Ralph encouraged Constance to give their daughter some space. Surely, her behavior would improve. But it didn’t. It got worse, and her parents grew increasingly anxious.
Kristin’s parents made a point of getting to know their children’s friends. What they didn’t know was that Kristin had forged a new relationship she knew her parents would never condone, a relationship with crystal methamphetamine.
Kristin’s close friend since the third grade had moved to England. So Kristin filled the void with a new set of friends, a more social group that liked to party. Before the big Home-coming game, a girlfriend pulled out a bindle of white powder while they were sitting in a car in the parking lot. The girl said it was speed and drew them some lines. Kristin inhaled the powder and felt a burning sensation. After the burn came a rush. She felt revved up. Positively euphoric.
She knew the stuff was illegal, but she liked it so much that she wanted to do it again. Only crystal meth wasn’t a very socially acceptable drug. Their other friends gave