Bitter Harvest: A Woman's Fury, a Mother's Sacrifice (28 page)

Part 3

And fire and ice within me fight
Beneath the suffocating night.

—A. E. HOUSMAN

30

S
uspected arson, murder, and poisoning and the Debora-Mike-Celeste triangle made the case going into a pretrial hearing a barn-burner. It was a case any criminal defense attorney or prosecutor would be eager to try, and one any reporter would fight to cover. But reporters had been given the barest tidbits of information. Debora’s pretrial hearing would be open to the press and public, but would be held in a very small courtroom and seats would be at a premium. Morrison planned to present a startling item of evidence to Judge Peter Ruddick; the press could see and hear it, but would be forbidden to tape or film it before trial—that is, of course, if the Green case did go to trial.

Long before the preliminary hearing, court officials began preparing for the mass of reporters, producers, and writers expected to descend on the Johnson County Courthouse. Judge Ruddick asked for help from a specialist from the Kansas Supreme Court to keep track of the media and arrange the courtroom seating. Ron Keefover served as the Supreme Court’s education and information officer. He had experience in keeping a lid on Kansas trials that sparked national attention. The Debora Green trial promised to be the biggest thing to hit Olathe, and Ruddick needed Keefover. They both intended to keep it from becoming a circus.

Ironically, it had been another marital quartet murder that had demanded the most of Ron Keefover. In 1985, the Reverend Thomas Bird of Emporia stood trial for the murder of his wife, who was first thought to have perished in a car accident,
and
his mistress was charged with the shooting death of her husband. Mrs. Bird’s car had plunged off a bridge and Kansas State Trooper John Rule had become suspicious about the accident. Convicted, Thomas Bird and his lover became the subjects of a book and miniseries called
By Murder Ordained
.

Johnson County’s biggest trial to date had been that of serial killer Richard Grissom, Jr. In a face-off with Kevin Moriarty, Paul Morrison had won a conviction. During that trial, which ended on November 4, 1990, a hundred people or more had stood in line every morning, waiting to get into the courtroom. And, as at all sensational trials, there were outbursts of temper when reporters or others with reserved seats were allowed into the courtroom before people who had been in line for hours.

This time, Keefover advised Judge Ruddick to set up an “overflow room” with closed-circuit television sets and chairs for sixty people. The room, one floor below Ruddick’s third-floor courtroom, would double as a press room. There would be no still cameras or interviews on the third floor. This technique had worked remarkably well in many high-profile trials, beginning with Ted Bundy’s first trial in Miami, Florida, in the summer of 1979. Technology and the psychology of trial watchers had come to little Olathe in 1996.

Press credentials alone were not enough to get you into the Green preliminary hearing; what mattered was that your name was on Ron Keefover’s list. He was a friendly, laidback man, but he believed in organization. There would be no “musical chair” seating at the Green hearing.

During the preliminary—or show cause—hearing, Paul Morrison and Rick Guinn would have to convince Judge Ruddick that they had enough evidence to move on to trial. And Dennis Moore and Kevin Moriarty would fight to suggest that the wrong person had been arrested, that Debora Green was an innocent and grieving mother unjustly accused of arson and murder.

The hearing was scheduled for the last week in January 1996, and Olathe was icy cold—normal weather for natives, shocking to reporters who had flown in from more moderate climates. It was too cold and dry for Santa Fe Street, the main east—west thoroughfare that ran between the new and the old in Olathe, even to be slippery. The snow only feathered over Santa Fe. But there were drifts left by earlier storms around the parking strips of all the streets near the Johnson County Courthouse; the piles of old snow were four feet high and iced over. Navigating the diagonal sidewalks that led to the steps of the courthouse without the sense that noses, ears, and even lungs were actually freezing was a challenge. And, then, once you were through the many doors of the building, heat trapped in the outer lobby made coats unbearable.

Reporters, clutching their credentials but still nervous lest they might not find their names on Ron Keefover’s list, jogged down long corridors and snagged elevators headed for Judge Ruddick’s courtroom. There were only three rows of twenty seats, room for sixty people, in the courtroom. They were comfortable, theater-like seats, but the media and the fascinated spectators who had lined up to get in would not have cared if they had to sit on cement blocks. Witnesses were excluded from the courtroom before they gave their testimony, but as the week progressed, many of them would return after testifying to watch the rest of the case unfold. Paul Morrison was dealing with a mostly circumstantial case and he had predicted that “there won’t be many surprises left” after the preliminary hearing.

The courtroom was modern and almost sumptuous. Everything was curved: the shining wood in front of the jurors’ box; the tables where the prosecutors would sit on the left and where Debora Green and her defense team would sit on the right. Even the judge’s “bench” was curved. Ruddick, who looked too young and too benign to be a judge, was both—but courthouse regulars knew that he was very, very good at his job.

A television camera was mounted on “sticks” in front of the empty jury box; the cameraman of the day would distribute the film in a pool to Kansas City television stations. There would be no jury, of course, during this preliminary hearing. And it might prove difficult to select a jury if the case proceeded to trial. Every television station in the greater Kansas City area planned to feature the Green hearing at the top of the news at noon, at five, and at ten P.M.

Even with a press pass, it was not easy to get into the courtroom. Johnson County deputies searched purses and briefcases, and everyone had to pass through a metal detector. Every trip down the hall to the phone or the restroom meant another search and another slow walk through the scanner.

Tony Rizzo of the Kansas City
Star
and Andy Hoffman of the Olathe
Daily News
were in the courtroom. Mark Lorber, a producer from Hollywood, attended, and there were at least a dozen women who were about Debora’s age. Some of them said they had known her; one woman was eager to tell the rest of the gallery that she and Debora had been “very close” and often played tennis together. Others were there because this case mesmerized them.

Everyone wanted to see Dr. Debora Green, who had been invisible to the public for two months. It was rumored that her husband, Dr. Michael Farrar, would testify against her, and that his alleged mistress, Celeste Walker, would testify too.

And then, suddenly, Debora emerged from a room beyond the jury box, accompanied by Ellen Ryan. She wore a white sweater that was clearly too large for her over a pink turtleneck top and a pleated white skirt. She had obviously lost twenty pounds or more since her arrest. Without seeming even to glance at the spectators in the room, she moved quickly to her chair at the defense table. She had a faintly clumsy, almost masculine stride.

Once she took her seat, Debora looked only forward. She had to have been aware that every pair of eyes behind her was focused on her, but she never looked around to check out the gallery. Her hair was probably her best feature; chestnut brown and gleaming, it fell naturally into thick waves. She wore makeup, but very subtle makeup—a touch of eye shadow, a little lip gloss. Pearl stud earrings were her only jewelry.

Like most defendants, Debora had a yellow legal pad on the table in front of her, and she clutched a pen as if she planned to take notes. Her expression was alert, even wary, but she didn’t look worried. Ellen Ryan, sitting close beside her—for moral support only; she was not a criminal lawyer—
did
look worried, and she often glanced anxiously at Debora. The male attorneys, on both sides, looked businesslike.

No one outside the inner sanctum of the district attorney’s office and the Metro Squad knew for sure what evidence the State of Kansas might have against Dr. Debora Green. Ninety days after the fire that killed two of her children, the rest of the world was about to find out. There was a good chance they would also get some idea of what Dennis Moore and Kevin Moriarty would counter with in her defense.

The proceedings began with Paul Morrison asking Judge Ruddick if he might make an opening statement. He would not be talking to a jury; in this phase he had only the judge to convince. And, for the first time, step by step, in perfect chronological order, Judge Ruddick and the court watchers learned of the events that led up to the catastrophic inferno on Canterbury Court. In his deep calm voice, Morrison described the strange fire that happened on West Sixty-first Terrace after Dr. Michael Farrar left Debora Green the first time, and after he had reneged on the deal to buy 7517 Canterbury Court and on a reconciliation.

“Within a couple of days after that, Judge,” Morrison said, “their house in Kansas City, Missouri, burned, suffering severe damage, and it burned just a few minutes after Debora Green left one day with the children while Dr. Farrar was at work. Well, now the family had nowhere to go and that sort of forced a reconciliation. They moved in with him. And as part of that they went ahead and bought that house on Canterbury Court in Prairie Village.”

Morrison went on to explain that the couple had made an attempt to be happy together. But that attempt was short-lived. Michael Farrar wanted a divorce.

“After he told her that,” Morrison said, “Dr. Michael Farrar and others will document for this court a series of very bizarre, very obsessive, strange behavior by Dr. Debora Green…. [She] began to drink very heavily…. She began to make threats—mainly threats to commit suicide, but at times threats against other people, specifically Dr. Farrar. Sometimes, she would lay in bed for days and refuse to get up, causing a lot of problems within the family, particularly with the kids. The kids were scared. Dr. Farrar was scared.”

Morrison told about the time Debora had hidden in her own home and pretended to be calling her husband from someplace else. Those in the gallery stared at the back of Debora’s head, obviously curious about her reactions to Morrison’s accusations. But those who could see her face in profile saw that her expression never changed. Morrison might as well have been talking about someone else.

“In early August, Dr. Michael Farrar began to get sick,” Morrison said. “And it wasn’t just a minor illness, Judge.” He related the symptoms of Mike’s illness and the doctors’ puzzlement over what could be wrong with their colleague. “He was hospitalized for several days,” Morrison said. “He got better…. He went home. He ate food prepared by Debora Green. He got sick again…. He was eventually released on September eleventh after three fairly long hospitalizations, and the doctors could not figure out what was wrong with him—finally diagnosed him as having some sort of a tropical sprue syndrome because they’ll tell you that they really couldn’t figure out what else it could have been….”

Debora continued to look straight ahead, watching Morrison as he spoke.

“The bizarre behavior continued,” Morrison said. “It got so bad, Judge, that Michael Farrar on September 25, 1995, attempted to have his wife committed involuntarily to a mental institution….”

When Morrison said that Mike had found castor beans in his wife’s purse at about this time, reporters began to scribble furiously. What did castor beans have to do with the deadly fire? The few newspaper reports that mentioned castor beans and ricin had been tantalizingly brief.

Paul Morrison then described the strange night when the Prairie Village police had taken Debora to the KU Medical Center. She had been quite cooperative with her acquaintance, Dr. Pam McCoy—until Dr. Farrar had arrived. “As soon as he walked in that room, Pam McCoy will tell you that Debora Green turned around, spun around, assumed some kind of assaultive posture toward him,
spit
at him, screamed at him, ‘You fuckhole…. You will get those kids over our dead bodies!’”

Morrison moved next to the night of October 23—24. He detailed all the pages, the phone calls, the arguments as Mike phoned Debora first from Celeste Walker’s home, and then from his apartment. “He gets home, he calls her back. They have a heated conversation between … eleven-forty-five and probably five minutes until twelve. In that heated conversation, he will tell you that Debora Green was drunk, and that made him mad. He will tell you that he was angry because of the fact that the neighbors had complained to him about what had been going on over in his house during his absence. He was tired of dealing with the drunkenness of Debora Green. She wasn’t taking care of the house. He was worried about the kids.

“And he said to her, ‘I think you’re poisoning me. I think you’re poisoning me, you’re drunk, you’re abusive, you’re not taking care of those kids, people are threatening to call SRS. Get your act together.’”