Bitter Harvest: A Woman's Fury, a Mother's Sacrifice (31 page)

“Yes, I do remember that,” Mike answered.

“That was a lie, wasn’t it?”

“It was a lie, yes.”

“And we’ve established that your sexual involvement with Celeste Walker began, in fact, almost two months prior to September 5. Isn’t that correct? On July eighth?”

“That is correct.”

“Did you ever tell John Walker that you were having sex with his wife?”

“Of course not.”

“You were at that time living a lie, weren’t you, Dr. Farrar? … You weren’t being honest with, certainly, Debora Green … [about] your relationship with Celeste Walker, were you?”

“That’s correct.”

Morrison sat, poised to object. Moore was close to exhausting this line of questioning. Mike had admitted several times now that he had chosen not to tell the police how long he and Celeste had been lovers, and Moore was beating it into the ground.

“Did you and Celeste Walker talk about what story you should tell the police as far as to when your sexual relationship began, if they ever asked?”

“We discussed it. I don’t think we phrased it quite like that.”

“Well, I’m sure you didn’t,” Moore said, with just a trace of sarcasm in his voice. “You didn’t say, ‘We’re going to conspire and lie to the police,’ did you?”

“No.”

“But you did, in fact, talk about what you would tell the police—and what you were going to tell the police was not the truth, was it?”

“Well, it wasn’t quite the truth.”

Morrison objected. The questions from the defense were becoming convoluted; he wanted to be sure just what Moore was asking about. Judge Ruddick admonished Moore to confine his question to the date the affair between Mike and Celeste began.

Mike admitted that they had hoped to portray their affair as beginning after Dr. John Walker’s death. Neither of them had known how pervasive, how
invasive
, a murder probe is. In sudden, violent, deliberately planned murders, everyone around the dead is eventually pulled into the vortex of the investigation. Moore was going for something. What? Was he looking for a motive? To make Mike out to be a liar about everything? Probably.

Moore tried once again to link Tim to the poisonings and to the fire. He seemed to be planting the possibility that Tim might have been the instigator of both crimes, and a device to draw attention away from Debora.

Finally, Moore finished.

Paul Morrison had only two points to make on redirect. First, he wanted to be sure Judge Ruddick understood that although Mike was first hospitalized on August 18, his symptoms had begun a full week before. Second, he asked Mike questions that pointed up the fact that it didn’t matter who had
cooked
the allegedly poisonous meals; what mattered was who had
served
them.

Finally, after almost five grueling hours on the witness stand, Mike was allowed to step down. Some in the gallery complained that he hadn’t been emotional enough for their taste; they would have felt better if he had cried on the stand. He had admitted to being unfaithful at the end of his marriage; but on the other hand, the marriage sounded like something out of a madhouse. One man in the gallery whispered, “Who would blame him?” and got a sharp look from the woman sitting next to him.

34

M
onday, January 29, was a very long day in court. The State put on a succession of witnesses who would verify its premise that Debora was a woman whose behavior made her the prime suspect not only in the fiery deaths of her own children, but in the repeated poisoning of her husband. Sergeant Wes Jordan and Officer Kyle Shipps testified about the night of September 25, 1995, when they saw Debora highly intoxicated, and her family distraught and weeping. Shipps had taken her to the KU Medical Center ER, and waited with Mike while she was examined. Later, he’d had to go out and look for her when she walked away against medical advice.

Mike had given Shipps a plastic bag containing several packets of seeds, vials of potassium chloride, iodine, and some syringes; Shipps kept the bag in his possession until he returned to the Prairie Village Police Department at six the next morning. He had marked the police evidence bags with his initials. He identified his mark on evidence exhibits 6-B, 6-C, and 6-D. Shipps had also taken a statement from Mike in the waiting room of the KU Medical Center.

Paul Morrison asked Officer Shipps about Debora’s behavior after she was found walking toward Prairie Village in the early hours of the morning. “What was her mood—was she calm?”

“Very sporadic between calm and irate.”

“Why don’t you tell the judge some of the physical behavior that you witnessed from Debora Green while she was sitting in that waiting room?”

“At times,” Shipps said, “Dr. Green would become very upset with how long the process was taking …. Committals in general take quite a bit of time.”

“What would she do when she became frustrated?”

“She beat her fists against her head. She bit her hands, and she banged her head against the wall.” Shipps said that Debora had then begun to yell “very loudly” and call her husband the same vulgar names she had used before: “asshole” and “fuckhole.”

Leighann Stahl, the assistant manager of the Earl May Garden Center, testified next, about her encounter with the woman she had identified as Dr. Debora Green. The woman was memorable to Stahl because she had come in to pick up a large order for out-of-planting-season seeds.

“What did she say [they were for]?” Morrison asked.

“She said they were for a school project.”

“And how old was this person?”

“Probably, I don’t know—mid-forties maybe.”

“Skinny, heavyset, fat, medium build?”

“Medium build, a little bit heavyset, perhaps.”

“Light or dark hair? Medium hair?”

“Kind of medium dark.”

“Hair long? Hair short?”

“About chin level.”

“If you saw that individual again, would you able to recognize her?”

“I feel pretty confident I would.”

“Is that individual in the courtroom today?”

“Yes.”

“Would you point her out for us, please?”

Leighann Stahl pointed to Debora, and Kevin Moriarty rose to object, calling the identification “a charade.” He went on, “They’ve shown her pictures of this individual previously. It is noted in the report she was not able to identify our client in those photos. They’ve shown her photos. Why in the world would she not be able to identify our client today? This is ridiculous!”

“Judge,” Morrison countered, “I’m going to try to maintain a non-editorial and appropriate commentary during my response to that. But, for the record, this witness was shown a photo lineup back in early October, at which time she picked out a photograph of the defendant—but stated, ‘Because of the hair being different, I’m not sure that’s her—’ And she has been shown no other photographs since then, Judge. And I play my IDs straight up.”

Judge Ruddick overruled Moriarty’s objection.

The cash-register tape was entered into evidence: ten packages of garden seeds at $1.29 each. There were no other sales of that many packages on the tape. Although the tape did not specify what kind of seeds had been purchased, Stahl remembered the sale. Castor beans were poison, and castor beans-were out of season.

Moriarty worked hard to shake Stahl’s testimony. She did not remember the exact day the investigators from the Metro Squad had come to interview her. It might have been late October or early November.

“The police report … stated they made contacts with individuals on the thirtieth of October, 1995,” Moriarty said. “So it’s at least consistent with your time frame?”

“Yes.”

Stahl admitted that when the police first got in touch with her she had not remembered the sale, but as she forced herself to to back, she had recalled the woman who wanted castor beans. On the second police contact—from Officer John Walter—she did remember.

“What does John Walter look like?” Moriarty asked.

“He was tall, he had short hair, he was medium build—not at all heavyset,” Stahl answered, correctly.

“Were you asked to give a description of the person purchasing those seeds?”

“Yes.”

“And if I were to say that description that was given was somebody between the late thirties to early forties, five foot three to five foot five, 160 to 170 pounds, dark hair, top-of-the-shoulder-length hair, loosely curled on top—would that be consistent with what you told police officers that day?”

“Probably, yes.”

Stahl was a good witness and she could not be shaken. She knew all the markings on her cash register receipts. She knew that a “z” signified her store out of all the Earl May stores. She had not seen any news about the fire in Prairie Village
or
a picture of Debora until after she had picked her out of the photo laydown.

“I saw her arrested on TV,” she said.

“Have you sold any other castor beans in lots of one or greater in the month of August of 1995 that you recall?”

“Not in August … ”

“How many seeds are in each envelope?” Moriarty asked.

“I would estimate maybe fifteen.”

“Have you ever seen a castor bean?”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell us what they look like?”

“They look—I don’t know. I think they look like a chili bean—”

“If I were to say,” Moriarty offered, “they were light brown, about the size of a dime, and had brown spots on it, would that be about right—darker brown spots?”

“I would almost consider them a purple spot, rather than brown—yes.”

“Are you familiar with the plant?”

“Yes.”

“I would assume that this plant is like any other plant—that it could grow indoors?”

“I suppose it would be possible.”

“Is there any reason why it would not be possible?”

“It would be difficult,” Stahl said, “to put it in a pot that would stay upright because of the large height of the plant. You’d have to have a very large pot.”

“Aside from that?”

“Possible light requirements, but—”

“I don’t have anything additional,” Kevin Moriarty cut in. “Thank you.”

The gallery was left to wonder if Tim had intended to grow castor-bean plants for a school project. His mother had bought enough seeds to grow 300 plants—plants that would have grown higher than the ceiling of his room. Had his mother purchased Gro-Lights, too, for this strange experiment? Or had she bought those seeds to grind them up and release the deadly poison at their center?

Kansas hearings and trials are brisk and efficient, totally unlike the endless delays and ponderous day upon day of testimony from single witnesses that have come to be regarded as standard in California pretrial hearings and trials. On this, the first day of the State of Kansas’s show-cause hearing, four important witnesses, including Mike, had finished their testimony by late afternoon. Morrison called the last witness of the day: Velma Farrar, Mike’s mother.

Velma Farrar, a retired grade school teacher, was old enough to have a forty-year-old son, but she scarcely looked it. Tall, with her brown hair perfectly coiffed, she had the figure of a much younger woman. It would be an easy bet that Velma and her daughter-in-law had little in common except for having each given birth to one son and two daughters. Mike said that they had made an effort to get along, but never at the same time.

Morrison asked Velma the names of her children.

“Michael Farrar … Vicki Farrar, and Karen Beal,” she replied.

Both her daughters were married; Velma and William Farrar had been married for forty-two years. They lived, she testified, “North of the river.”

“First of all,” Morrison began, “did you receive a telephone call on September twenty-fifth of last year to help with some child care?”

“Yes …. I was in bed reading …. It was between eight o’clock or nine o’clock or so.”

“Who was on the phone?”

“Michael …. He told us he needed help and that he needed us immediately.”

“Did he say why?”

“He told us that he was going to have Debbie committed against her will.”

“What was his demeanor like when he called you?”

“He was crying …. He was very upset.”

Velma said that she and Bill had gone to take care of Tim, Lissa, and Kelly and spent the night in their son’s home. By the time they got there, Debora and Mike had already left; Karen Beal was with the children. A doctor had called from the hospital to talk to Tim. “I took the telephone up to him,” Velma said.

She had not heard the conversation. Tim mostly said, “Yes,” “No,” or “What?” “He was answering questions,” Velma said. That would have been the call from Dr. Pam McCoy, trying to determine how Debora had been behaving lately.

“I’m going to change gears now,” Morrison said, “if I might. Did you read anything that was laying [
sic
] on the counter in the kitchen of that home that night?”

“Yes, I read a letter that was laying there,” she answered.

“Was that a letter that was machine made, if you will, or printed on a machine?”

“No, it was written on stationery like you pick up in a hotel or motel ….”

“Did you recognize the handwriting?”

“Yes I did … it was Debbie’s.”

Velma had read the letter. “I cannot remember all of it, but the letter was supposedly from a friend. It said, ‘To Dr. Farrar,’ and it was signed, ‘From a friend.’ And the letter was trying to convince Mike that he should not divorce Debbie.”

“And do you remember any specific lines in it?”

“One of the things that this person—this friend—had written was that the children would not have a chance to be BOTARs or escorts. This person who wrote this letter was on one of the committees who helped select the people for this—that they normally did not take children from broken homes ….”

Velma remembered another of the letter’s arguments against divorce. “It said that it was probably a midlife crisis and that more romantic times would follow.” She had found the letter odd, but that night everything was odd. She had left it on the kitchen counter.

Dennis Moore cross-examined Mike’s mother. “Had Mike told you prior to this time that he and Debbie were having marital problems?”

“I did not know before that night. Is that what you’re asking me?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“No,” Velma said. “I did not know about this.”

“So Mike had never called you prior to September twenty-fifth when you were there that evening, when you found this letter, and told you that he and Debbie were having problems?”

“He told us on the phone that they were having problems.”

“But that was the night of September twenty-fifth? Prior to that night, had he ever told you that he told Debbie that he wanted to divorce her?”

“No. But my parents were very, very ill. You know, they both have since died. And—”

Moore interrupted and Paul Morrison asked that Mrs. Farrar be allowed to finish her answer.

“Go ahead,” Judge Ruddick said, smiling at Velma.

“And they were protecting me because I was spending most of my time with my father. Both of my parents died within—well, twelve weeks.”

“Mrs. Farrar,” Dennis Moore asked, “did Mike tell you that after his return from his trip to Peru … he was having an affair with another woman?”

“No, he did not.”

“I believe you indicated that you told one of the police officers that Debbie had a very bad temper. Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“But you also told the police officers that she never touched the children in anger. Is that correct?”

“Not that I know of. She never touched them that I knew of.”

Velma Farrar was excused. Although she had kept her dignity on the witness stand, it was obvious that she was humiliated and grieving, caught up in this tragedy, which had erupted so ferociously without warning. She had expected to lose her aged parents; she had never dreamed she would lose two of her grandchildren.

It was almost five P.M. The streets outside the Johnson County Courthouse were dark and snow threatened. Some of the reporters and spectators on their way home pondered what a bad year 1995 had been for the Farrar and Jones families and those close to them: divorce, suicide, cancer, murder, fire, poisoning. Mike had lost two grandparents and two children within three months, and had nearly died himself. Debora’s mother was ill but was trying to stand beside her daughter nevertheless. And Debora herself was accused of crimes almost impossible to comprehend.