Bitter Harvest: A Woman's Fury, a Mother's Sacrifice (26 page)

26

C
eleste Walker had a long interview with Rod Smith and two Metro Squad members on Halloween. They watched the animated woman with the soft voice, and saw that she had a femininity and an effervescent manner so totally unlike Debora’s demeanor. Both women were talkers, however, and Celeste was not at all hesitant about going back over her life, her marriage, her husband’s suicide, and her relationship with Dr. Michael Farrar.

Wearing a long-sleeved white sweater and a gold charm on a long golden chain, Celeste was a very attractive woman. Her nervousness was revealed only by her frequent gestures: brushing back her shiny wedge-cut hair, sinking her chin into her hands, sighing, grimacing, and looking up at her questioners from lowered eyelids. She laughed often, although the laugh was more ironic than amused. She seemed surprised to find herself caught in the middle of this tumbling-down of lives. She did not deny her affair with Mike, and blushed only a little when she was asked to recall their first meeting, her attraction to him on the Peru trip, and, finally, the first time they had made love.

Celeste said she had kept a record of almost everything on her calendar at home. She asked for a calendar now, and tapped her fingernail on certain dates that she thought were important. She explained that she was aware early on in Peru that Debora did not like her. Debora’s eyes, Celeste said, slid over her as if she were invisible, and she always directed her hilarious stories to someone else, never to her.

Celeste’s memory and record keeping were very helpful in the police probe. If she didn’t always provide new information, she certainly verified information that Mike—and even Debora—had given them. Celeste knew the very day when Mike had first become ill, and the dates and symptoms of his subsequent relapses. She believed absolutely that Debora had been trying to poison him, although she hadn’t any idea with what—at least, not until Mike found the castor beans.

In a strange kind of way, Celeste was happy. She had lost her husband, a man she’d cared for but who had drained joy from her life. Now, she remained a woman in love, despite her sister’s misgivings about Mike and the tragedies on Canterbury Court. She obviously felt terrible about the way her husband had chosen to give up on life, and her voice dropped as she described finding him dead in the garage. She regretted the loss of Tim and Kelly Farrar, although she seemed oddly unconnected to that tragedy. Perhaps it was simply too much for her to deal with—so many catastrophes in such a short space in time.

Celeste told the investigators that Debora was crazy, nuts, bizarre. No, she had not seen her in the throes of a temper tantrum, but Mike had told her about them. And she had seen Mike come close to death for no explainable medical reason. The investigators hadn’t really expected that Celeste would have much good to say about Debora. She was “the other woman,” and she had no more liking for Debora than Debora had for her. But they saw that, if anything, Celeste was afraid of Debora. They also saw that she had no intention of walking away from Mike, especially not now, when he needed her.

She talked to the detectives for more than an hour, and then apologized, saying she had to leave to pick her sons up at school.

*  *  *

And then it was November, and the bright yellow and apricot-tinted leaves had blown away in the relentless Kansas wind. Now the hawks were visible again as they perched on bare, black limbs. They had been there all along, watching for vulnerable prey far below.

Everyone connected to the Farrar-Green case seemed to be in stasis. Debora and her parents still lived in the temporary apartment; Mike lived in his apartment in Merriam; and Lissa visited back and forth. She was practicing with the Missouri State Ballet almost every day. The adult members of the
Nutcracker
cast had taken her under their protection, too.

On November 1, the Metro Squad announced that its list of suspects in the arson murders on Canterbury Court had narrowed to persons close to the family who had access to the house. That pretty well eliminated strangers running through the yard at night, or some passing itinerant who happened to be a pyromaniac. Then, on November 3, the news from the Metro Squad was more electrifying. The press was told that the investigation had now isolated one suspect only. That person was not named.

Curious media buffs in the Kansas City area were getting their news in slivers, just enough to keep them at bay. On November 8, the Metro Squad finally acknowledged that it was investigating more than the arson. Members of the squad were also looking into the possibility that Dr. Michael Farrar had been poisoned at least three times, and that he had come close to death in one of his hospitalizations. Friends who had known the Farrar-Greens were aghast at the news. Strangers who had long considered life in Prairie Village all that anyone might hope for shook their heads in bewilderment.

*  *  *

Debora was devoting almost all her time to Lissa. She sat for hours in a darkened theater in Kansas City, Missouri, while Lissa rehearsed the part of Clara. She fussed over Lissa’s hair, making sure it was just right for a fledgling ballerina. Lissa loved her costume, and she looked like a professional dancer, only in miniature. Debora watched avidly, caught up in the music and her child’s talent.

Flo Klenklen, the Missouri State Ballet School administrator, told reporters that Lissa was one of the youngest ballet students ever to be cast as Clara. She felt that Lissa had the strength and drive to become a professional dancer. “She is not timid when it comes to things she’s interested in,” Klenklen said. “To excel in ballet, you can’t be shy.”

Both Debora’s daughters should have been dancing in
The Nutcracker
—Lissa as the star, and Kelly as an angel. Debora did not comment on that, but neighbors and passersby noticed that several times she had shown up outside the burned-out wreck that had once been her home. One Sunday, she came with Ellen Ryan. Waiting television crews filled Debora in a bright yellow rough-weather jacket and pants, as if to ward off the least smudge of soot from her clothing. What was she thinking?

Ellen said she knew what Debora was thinking. “She asked me to take her back inside the house. She said she could never accept that Tim and Kelly were dead unless she saw where they had been found. So I took her, and I led her around by the hand. I showed her where Tim’s body had fallen onto the beams holding up the living room floor, and I took her into the kitchen and told her that we couldn’t get up to Kelly’s room anymore, but that that was where Kelly had been found, in her own bed.”

According to Ellen, the whole scene had been surreal. Dennis Moore, who had not yet acknowledged that he was representing Debora in anything more than her divorce from Mike, came along with Ellen and Debora. Moore had brought a wine expert to put a price on Mike’s wine collection.
Mike
and his divorce attorney, Norman Beal, were also there. All the men were in the comparatively undamaged basement level of the house.

“They were tasting wine downstairs,” Ellen remembered, rolling her eyes. “And Deb and I were walking through the upstairs part of the house, where it looked as though an explosion had hit it. It was like something out of a Fellini movie. She was sobbing, just hanging on to me, sobbing, frightened, confused …”

Debora apparently accepted finally that her children
were
dead. Once, however, she went to a soccer game in which Tim’s team played, she sat on the sidelines, and wept. She was an odd, lonely figure. No one rushed over to comfort her, not at her blackened house or at the soccer match. She had become a pariah, someone to be whispered about. No one wanted to talk to her; she was a little frightening. She had only her daughter, her parents, and her lawyer.

Ellen kept running into facets of the case that either puzzled or angered her. Now, when it was far too late, she heard about all the suspicions that people in the medical community or at Pembroke Hill School or in the neighborhood had had about Debora’s fitness as a mother. “All they had to do was pick up a phone,” she said vehemently, “if they were concerned. Why didn’t someone report Debora—
if
they thought there was child abuse going on? Nobody did. They just gossiped about it. Maybe a tragedy could have been averted—but no one wanted to get involved.”

Not one of the gossips
had
called. Mike was the only one who had tried to get help for Debora and for his family. He had called the Prairie Village police to help him commit his drunken, abusive wife. She had checked herself out of Menninger’s within a few days. And, despite Mike’s belief that his call would raise red flags, no one had reported Debora to child protection authorities.

“I wanted the children,” Mike said fervently, “but I was told I could not get them away from her—that a father wouldn’t have much of a chance of winning custody.” And Debora had seemed so much better after Menninger’s that Mike dared to hope they could share in raising their children, even if they were divorced. But she had hidden her anger so well. Now, Tim and Kelly were gone, and no amount of finger-pointing was going to change that.

There was a feeling of foreboding in the air in the early weeks of November, more palpable than the chill of an early winter. The Metro Squad had announced that there was only one suspect. Now the case had either to be dropped or it had to move ahead.

27

M
ike had enjoyed only a few weeks of moderately good health. But after the fatal fire, his condition declined again. Debora had always maintained that his illness was all in his mind, that he was overreacting to every little symptom; he hadn’t been really ill in the first place, not with anything anyone could diagnose.
She
was the one who had been under so much stress that she had actually vomited up blood, if only a minute amount.

In November, sensing something was wrong, Mike asked for an echocardiogram to see what was happening in his chest. The test showed he had a severely leaking mitral valve, caused by a bacterial infection of the heart. His physicians had feared this might happen. Once again
Strep viridans
showed up in his blood culture. Mike was hospitalized with endocarditis just before Thanksgiving, scheduled for surgery to insert a Groshong catheter into his subclavian vein so that he could receive intravenous antibiotics at home.

Two days before his surgery, Gary Dirks, the forensic chemist from the Johnson County Criminalistics Lab, received a vial of Mike’s blood from Gary Baker. Dirks locked it in the evidence freezer and kept it there until he was instructed to mail it to the FBI laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, in early December. He sent it, along with a packet of castor beans, to Dr. Drew Richardson. Dirks also sent samples of Mike’s blood to forensic serologists at the U.S. Naval Academy. He printed the Johnson County Lab number on the sealed evidence: L-95-2941.

Although she was not aware of it, Debora’s activities were being closely monitored in the week before Thanksgiving. She spent some of her time on the Kansas side of the state line in Johnson County, but she was living south of the river, in Missouri; Lissa’s dance rehearsals at the Missouri State Ballet took place in Kansas City, Missouri. Ellen Ryan practiced in Missouri, too.

The Prairie Village police, the Metro Squad, and D.A. Paul Morrison and Rick Guinn were convinced that there was only one logical suspect in the deaths of Tim and Kelly Farrar. And that suspect was Debora Green. They also believed that she had poisoned her estranged husband, either to prevent him from leaving her or to keep him from being with another woman. With all the physical evidence they had gathered, with the circumstantial evidence that had evolved from the enormous number of interviews the Metro Squad had conducted, the case had come down to a scenario like the Greek myth of Medea. Medea’s husband, Jason, had left her for another woman; and to punish him for his treachery, she killed their beloved children. It was the harshest revenge she could mete out to him.

To investigators, it appeared that Debora had done the same thing. She had set a fire with the deliberate intention of killing her own children. Her last phone call before the fire roared had been to the man she both hated and wanted: her husband. He was leaving her for another woman. Worst of all he had shouted at her that she was an unfit mother, that people were talking about her and threatening to call the authorities. She was in danger of losing her children, her beautiful house—everything that gave her life meaning. And, investigators believed, she had destroyed it all in a vengeful rage.

All the men and women who had been working on the arson murders and the suspected poisonings for four weeks had come to a consensus: their prime suspect—their
only
suspect—was Debora Green. Despite her IQ and her vast knowledge of so many subjects, the investigative teams were convinced she had made a number of clumsy errors as she set out to destroy what she loved most.

“We felt good about going for an arrest,” Gary Baker said. “Because Paul Morrison was so confident. He wouldn’t have ordered the arrest warrant if he hadn’t felt he could get a conviction.”

“He was with us all the way,” Rod Smith agreed. “All the police departments in Johnson County believed in Morrison. He and Rick were there every day, evaluating, planning strategy. If he said it was time to move in and arrest her, then it was time.”

*  *  *

Dennis Moore and Ellen Ryan had told Morrison that if an arrest was coming down, they preferred not to have Debora picked up; instead, they would bring her in to surrender. However, the police and the district attorney’s office saw a gaping flaw in that plan. They trusted Moore and Ryan, but they had no idea what Debora might do if she knew she was going to be arrested. They had seen her be cooperative and accommodating; and they had seen her so angry that she was completely out of control. If she
knew
she was being charged with the murders of two of her children, there was no telling what she might do. In fact, there would be four charges listed on the arrest warrant: aggravated arson, murder, and two counts of attempted murder (against Lissa and her father, Mike Farrar.)

Debora had been overtly suicidal in the past. If she had a warning of what was coming, she might choose to kill herself rather than turn herself in. Or she might run—and take Lissa with her. The authorities’ biggest fear was that she would include Lissa in her plans to avoid arrest. They believed she had meant Lissa to die on the night of the fire, and they were afraid she now might kill Lissa in a suicide-murder plan.

No, they did not dare give Debora time to formulate a plan that might end in disaster. They kept in constant touch with those who cared for Lissa. They wanted to know where she was at all times. And, if at all possible, they did not want Lissa to witness her mother’s arrest.

Wednesday, November 22, 1995, was the thirty-second anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. It was also the day of the
Nutcracker
dress rehearsal at the Midland Theater in Kansas City, Missouri. The detectives trailing Debora knew that they would find her at the theater that afternoon and they planned to arrest her there. They knew she would not miss seeing Lissa dance the part of Clara in her diaphanous white costume, her dark hair pulled back and caught up with shiny ribbons.

Unknown to the arrest squad, Channel 41, the NBC affiliate in Kansas City, had also staked out the Midland. The word was that someone had leaked them the information that an arrest was coming down. But it may have been that the reporters, knowing that the suspect list was down to one, were just keeping close track of police activity. Earlier in the afternoon, cameramen had filmed Lissa, Debora, and a relative as they walked into the theater. Debora then drove away alone.

Gary Baker and Trish Campbell were stationed inside the theater, while Rod Smith and Greg Burnetta waited in the parking lot outside. The squad set up to arrest Debora did not want to involve Lissa in that scene. They would approach Debora only when they were sure Lissa was safely onstage. A half-dozen cars from the Kansas City, Missouri, police Fugitive Apprehension Unit were parked where they could watch cars in the parking lot.

It was November and it was dark when the officers spotted Debora’s car approaching. As she pulled in and parked, they saw an older couple with her. Instantly the car was surrounded; Smith and Burnetta told her she was under arrest. At that moment, Debora’s face was a study in fleeting, unreadable emotions. She barely changed expression, but her eyes, caught by Channel 41’s cameras, looked trapped.

“She was nonchalant,” Smith recalled. “She didn’t break down or anything.”

It was a great scoop for Channel 41, and misinformed people said that its cameramen had gotten the footage because District Attorney Paul Morrison’s wife worked there. It wasn’t true. Morrison was handling everything by the book. And Joyce Morrison didn’t work for Channel 41; she was an assignment editor for Channel 5. Her husband had not breathed a word about the upcoming arrest. “My wife wouldn’t speak to me when I got home,” Morrison recalled with a wry grin. “Things were pretty frosty around my house for a while. Channel 41 was a
competitor
. But I couldn’t even tell
Joyce
before it happened.”

Debora was wearing a long-sleeved black dress with an unflattering round neckline when she was arrested. Her hair was very short. If not for the enormity of the crimes she was accused of, it would have been easy for an observer to feel sorry for this plain, stoic woman, who would not see her daughter dance after all.

Debora asked the officers what would happen to her car, and she kept repeating that she had to get in touch with Ellen Ryan. She was taken to the Jackson County, Missouri, jail where she was booked, fingerprinted, and photographed. She was given a jail uniform that resembled the “scrubs” she had worn in her days as a physician, only it was far too large for her and mismatched: the top was blue and the pants were gray. And as a final ignominy, she was handcuffed to other prisoners and led past media cameras.

Unaware of what had happened to her mother, Lissa danced wonderfully onstage with the Missouri State Ballet company. Her father hadn’t been able to come to the dress rehearsal. Mike lay in the recovery room at North Kansas City Hospital after his surgery to implant the Groshong catheter.

Now, while his estranged wife was being arrested, Mike slept a drugged sleep. He had survived the strain on his heart, and doctors were cautiously optimistic that he had made it—at least this time. But now they knew that the septic shock had left behind deadly bacteria, which could attach to any organ in the body. Mike was far from being out of the woods. He almost certainly faced more surgery to repair the leaking mitral valve in his heart.

He learned only later that his wife had been formally accused of poisoning him as well as of killing their children. Mike had suspected her for some time. But could prosecutors prove the charge? If his condition was, in fact, due to castor-bean poisoning, it might be possible that advanced forensic techniques could isolate antibodies developed after ricin poisoning from the blood samples he had given.

When the news broke that Dr. Debora Green had been arrested and charged with murder, arson, and two counts of attempted murder, Paul Morrison gave a press conference. Reporters, voracious for details, went away unsatisfied. Without tipping the investigation’s conclusion about the motive for murder, the Johnson County D.A. would say only, “It’s a domestic situation and that’s where I’m going to leave it.” Asked whether he would seek the death penalty, he shook his head and said it was too early to speculate.

Morrison spoke of the dilemma that he and the investigators had faced. First of all, in every case they had to be sure the public was safe and that the suspect or suspects didn’t flee. But balanced against that consideration was another: they could not make an arrest before they had enough evidence to feel confident of winning a conviction. If they jumped the gun, they would surely lose. Morrison did not say what an agony waiting had been for everyone who had worked around the clock while the public was clamoring for an arrest. But finally, on the day before Thanksgiving, 1995, Morrison, Rick Guinn, the Metro Squad, and the Prairie Village detectives had agreed that they had enough evidence for a conviction. What that evidence was, the press would have to guess.

*  *  *

Debora’s parents had been present at her arrest. And Mike’s sisters, Karen Beal and Vicki Farrar, were at the theater to help break the news to Lissa—but they told her that her mother would be in jail for just a little while. Actually, Debora would stay in the Jackson County Jail for at least thirty-six hours. Jackson County did not hold hearings on Thanksgiving. The courts were closed.

Debora later described her terror at being arrested. “Michael planned it that way,” she insisted. “He got together with the district attorney and they planned to arrest me at Lissa’s ballet theater—right before Thanksgiving.”

She said she was horrified at being thrown into a crowded jail cell full of women unlike any she had seen since the days when she was an intern in the ER. She did not mention her children or the fire. She spoke only of what
she
had to endure.

Debora was locked in a square cage that had been designed to hold eight women. She counted fifty prisoners. “It was so crowded, and there were no mattresses on the iron bunks—just the wire and the metal edge. If you sat on the ‘bed,’ you would get deep marks on your legs. When we tried to sleep, three of us would lie down on one bunk on the bare wire. But they never turned off the lights. They would feed us whenever they felt like it. Once, they fed us at two A.M. All we ever got was bologna sandwiches and water.”

Debora was often given to hyperbole. But no one could argue that the Jackson County Jail would not seem like a descent into the bowels of hell for a woman who had so recently resided in an eighteen-room mansion with a four-car garage. Debora had dreaded even a minor stepdown in her lifestyle if Mike left her. Indeed, loss of face, loss of prestige for herself and her children, and having to live in a less grand house were the reasons she gave for fighting the divorce.

Now, on Thanksgiving Eve, as Lissa danced at the Midland Theater and Mike slowly came to in North Kansas City Hospital, Debora sat amid the cacophony of jail: the shrill voices and sometimes maniacal laughter of her fellow prisoners; the sound of the omnipresent television set turned to peak volume. She had always hated noise, and now she was surrounded by it, enveloped in it.