Debora Green Part II

 

Kate Farrar's account

Kate Farrar was interviewed by investigators on October 26. She stated that on the night in question she had woken up to find the fire already burning. Seeing smoke seeping into her room, she opened the bedroom door and called to her brother, then closed the door and placed the hang-up 9-1-1 call that alerted police. She then crawled out of her bedroom window to escape the fire.

Kate reported to police that when she called to her mother after escaping onto the garage roof, Green had been "terribly upset" and called to Kate to jump into her arms. Though Green missed catching her daughter when she did jump, Kate was not hurt. When the two ran into Farrar minutes later, Kate said that Farrar had been accusatory toward Green and Green had been crying and worried about her missing children.

According to Kate, Farrar had moved out of the family home and spurned Green's desire for an amicable separation. Kate stressed that she loved and respected her mother and that all of the children had had good relationships with her, but that she was angry at her father for upsetting her mother by leaving. Pressed, she acknowledged that her mother had begun to drink large quantities of alcohol. She denied that she had ever seen matches in the house and expressed surprise that Tim had not escaped by the same route she had, which was via a bedroom window onto the roof.

Investigation

Fire investigation

The Eastern Kansas Multi-Agency Task Force was called to conduct an arson investigation on the Prairie Village house on October 24. Staffed by fire investigators and search teams from throughout the area, they focused on determining the origin and cause of the fire, searching through debris for usable evidence and interviewing witnesses. A dog trained to detect the scent of fire accelerants was brought in to assist in searching the house.

The investigators ruled out common causes of accidental fires, including electrical panels and furnaces. They determined that the basement level of the home, which contained the furnaces, had not been a point of origin, though two small orphan fires unconnected to the main burning had occurred in that area. Pour patterns were found on the ground and second floors, indicating that a flammable liquid had been poured there and covered many areas of the ground floor, blocked off the stairway from the second floor to the ground floor, and covered much of the hallway on the second floor. The pour patterns stopped at the door of the house's master bedroom, but had soaked into carpeting in the hallway leading to the children's bedrooms. Investigators could not determine the precise liquid used as an accelerant, though they proved that a can of gasoline the family kept in a shed had not been used. The amount of accelerant used was identified as between 3 and 10 US gallons (11 and 38 L). Concluding that the fire was a result of arson, the investigators on October 26 called in a second area task force, this one focused on homicide investigation. On October 27, the district attorney for Johnson County was informed that the investigation was now criminal.

Police investigations

Arson case

In seeking to find who had set fire to the Farrar–Green home, investigators looked first for physical evidence of fire-setting upon those who had been in the house. They suspected that because of the use of accelerant, the fire may have flashed over at the point of ignition and singed or burned the setter. Accordingly, they tested clothing worn by both Farrar and Green that night and took samples of the hair of both. Neither Green's nor Farrar's clothing showed evidence of having been in contact with accelerant; Farrar's hair showed no singeing, but Green's—which had been cut twice between the time of the fire and the time the police took hair samples from her—showed "significant singeing". Detectives recalled that Green had denied ever having been in close proximity to flames; she had reported leaving the house after seeing smoke and not coming into contact with the fire either on the deck outside her bedroom or in the process of coaxing Kate off the garage roof. Neighbors of the family reported that when Green had come to their door to ask them to call for help, her hair had been wet. Though their suspicions pointed to Debora Green, investigators continued to receive tips attributing the fire to any number of people and the investigation continued with no public statement about suspects.

Poisoning case

When alerted to the possibility of Michael Farrar having been poisoned in the months before the fire, detectives investigated the origin of the castor beans that had led to police investigating the September domestic dispute. The label on the seed packets identified them as a product of the Earl May chain of stores. An officer found contact information for the Olathe, Kansas Earl May store in Green's address book. The detectives contacted nearby Earl May stores to find if any employees remembered selling castor beans, which are out of season in the fall. A clerk in Missouri recalled that in September a woman had ordered ten packets of the out-of-season seeds and explained that she needed them for schoolwork. The clerk gave a description of the buyer that corresponded to Green, and tentatively identified her in a photo line-up as the buyer. Register tapes in the store's records showed that a purchase price corresponding to ten packets of castor beans had been rung up on either September 20 or 22. No records were found in any Earl May store of earlier such purchases that would have corresponded to Farrar first having become ill earlier in the year.

Farrar underwent surgery in November 1995 to treat an aneurism that his doctors believed had been caused by the poisoning. Before the surgery, he submitted blood samples to Johnson County's crime lab to be tested for ricin antibodies.

Arrest

Media reports in the first week of November 1995 suggested the investigation had narrowed the field of suspects, first to those intimately familiar with the house, and later to one person.  Based on the trajectory of the police investigation, news reports in the following days speculated that the apparent poisoning of Michael Farrar may have been linked to the case, but officials declined to name the person suspected in either the arson or the poisoning.

Green was arrested on November 22 in Kansas City, Missouri, shortly after dropping off her daughter for ballet practice. Though Green's attorneys had requested that if arrested, Green be allowed to turn herself in voluntarily, the police and district attorney felt that her behavior was too unpredictable, and chose to arrest her without warning. Green was charged with two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of attempted first-degree murder, and one count of aggravated arson. In a subsequent press conference, District Attorney Paul J. Morrison cited a "domestic situation" as the motive for Green's alleged crimes. Green was initially held in a Missouri jail, then extradited to Johnson County Adult Detention Center in Kansas, on $3,000,000 bond, the highest bail ever asked for in Johnson County.

Show cause hearing

A pretrial show cause hearing in the Green case began in January 1996, with Green represented by Dennis Moore and Kevin Moriarty. Green's defense claimed that the fire in the family home had been set not by Debora Green, but by her son, Tim Farrar, who had once been caught by local police setting off Molotov cocktails. The defense also attempted to attribute Farrar's poisoning to Tim, who did much of the cooking in the household.

State testimony

Michael Farrar underwent surgery in December 1995 to treat an abscess in his brain caused by the poisoning. Fearful that Farrar would not survive the proceedings, and knowing that his testimony was key to their case, prosecutors videotaped his testimony beforehand. The surgery was successful,[33] and Farrar testified in person and recounted Green's problems with alcohol and the break-up of their marriage. Under cross-examination by Green's counsel, he admitted that both he and Green had contributed to the problems in the couple's marriage and that his relationship with his son had been so adversarial that they had sometimes come to blows.

Witnesses called by the State supported Farrar's and the prosecutors' earlier claims that police had been called to the home a month before the fire, that Green's behavior had been cause for concern at the time, and that Farrar had turned in to police at that time seed packets containing castor beans. The Earl May store clerk who had identified Green as the purchaser of multiple packets of castor bean seeds testified to that effect. Medical evidence was presented that Farrar's illness had not fit neatly within the parameters of any known disease, but that its presentation matched the symptoms of ricin poisoning. An FBI criminologist provided testimony that he had tested for ricin antibodies in Farrar's blood approximately two months after Farrar's last acute symptoms, and found antibodies there in such large amounts that he could confidently state that Farrar had been subjected to repeated exposures to ricin.

A police officer testified that as the first responder to the fire scene in the early morning of October 24, he had found Kate Farrar to be "very frantic" with worry over her siblings, but that Debora Green had showed little, if any, emotion or concern. The defense argued that the psychiatric medications Green had been taking since her September hospitalization could cause blunted affect, which could have led police and fire personnel to erroneously report that Green had been unemotional.

Arson investigators testified as to how they had located the origin and cause of the house fire, stressing that the multiple unconnected, small fires they had found in the home's basement were evidence of the fire having been set purposely and that char patterns on the house's floors were evidence of a liquid accelerant having been used to start the fire. The living room floor had contained the most significant amount of accelerant, and the trail of accelerant had ended at the door of the master bedroom, which had been open while the fire burned. The state of the bedroom door contradicted Green's prior testimony to investigators that her bedroom door had been closed and she had only opened it briefly to look into the hallway.

Detectives who had spoken to both Green and Farrar the night of the fire testified as to Green's unusual demeanor during their interview, and a videotape of the questioning was played, including Green's statements about having urged Tim Farrar to stay in the burning house and her references to her children in the past tense.

The State rested on January 31, 1996.

Defense testimony

Defense testimony focused on the theory that Tim Farrar, angry at his father, had set fire to the home. Friends of Tim's testified that Tim had had a fascination with fire and that he had told friends that he knew how to make bombs. A neighbor testified that he had once caught Tim burning some grass in the neighbor's yard. A former nanny testified that she had heard Tim speak about wanting his father dead and planning to burn down the family's house, and had caught him multiple times setting or with the implements to set fires. On cross-examination, she admitted that she had not seen Tim Farrar for years and agreed that she had not reported Tim's fascination with fire to his parents or the police when he had expressed it to her.

The defense rested on February 1. The presiding judge ruled that probable cause had been shown to hold Debora Green for trial and her arraignment date was set for February 8, with her trial being projected to start in the summer.

Post-hearing events

As the crime involved more than one victim, the prosecutors decided to request the death penalty when the case went to trial. When faced with this possibility, Green's defense team brought in Sean O'Brien, a representative of a Missouri anti-capital-punishment group.

A series of legal maneuverings involving both sides took place in the late winter and early spring of 1996. Defense attorneys requested that cameras be barred from Green's eventual trial, but the request was rejected. Green was judged by court-appointed psychologists to be competent to stand trial and denied a reduction in bail. The presiding judge ruled that she would stand trial once, for all of the charges against her, rather than be tried separately on each.

Her defense team undertook its own investigation, hoping to disprove state witnesses' testimony identifying the fire as arson. They found that accelerant had, indeed, been used to stoke the fire and that a robe belonging to Green had been on the floor of the master bathroom, burned in a manner that indicated it had been worn while one of the unconnected fires was set. According to Green's divorce lawyer Ellen Ryan, when confronted with this evidence, Green acknowledged having set the fire that destroyed her home, but denied any clear memory of the event. She continued to claim that Tim Farrar had been the one who poisoned his father. Green agreed to place an Alford plea of "no contest".

Plea bargain

On April 13, the defense team notified district attorney Paul Morrison that Green wished to plea bargain. On April 17 the plea was made public when Debora Green appeared in court to plead no contest to five charges—two counts of capital murder, one of arson, and two of attempted first-degree murder. In exchange for avoiding the death penalty, the no contest plea called for Green to accept a prison sentence of a minimum of forty years without the possibility of parole. Green denied being under the influence of any drug which would affect her judgment in making her plea or her ability to understand the proceedings in which she was participating.

The death of a child, any child, under any circumstances, is a terrible human tragedy. The death of these children under these circumstances is a tragedy almost too great to bear. It is nevertheless a tragedy that I must bear for the rest of my life, and one for which I also must bear responsibility. Nothing that I can do or that can be done to me can bring my children back. In accepting responsibility for this crime, I recognize that I must face and accept the punishment as judged by the court and must also face the sorrow of the loss of my children and the reality of my role in their deaths.—Excerpt from the sentencing statement of Debora Green, as quoted in Rule, p. 366

After listening to a reading of the prosecution's case against her, Green read a statement to the court in which she said that she understood that the state had "substantial evidence" that she had caused her children's deaths, and that though her attorneys were prepared to provide evidence that she had not been in control of herself at the time of the children's deaths, she was choosing not to contest the state's evidence in the hope that the end of the case would allow her family, especially her surviving daughter, to begin to heal. In a subsequent press conference, defense counsel Dennis Moore told reporters, "She is accepting responsibility for [the crimes]" but said that "I don't think she ever intended to kill her children."

Green was formally sentenced on May 30, 1996, following testimony by the psychologist who had adjudged her competency. According to Dr. Marilyn Hutchinson, Green was immature and lacked the adult-level ability to cope with emotion. Green read another statement to the court and was formally sentenced to two concurrent forty-year prison sentences, minus the one hundred and ninety-one days she had already served. Green is serving her sentence at the Topeka Correctional Facility. As of August 2012, Kansas Department of Corrections records show her earliest possible release date as November 21, 2035—when she will be 84 years old.

After conviction

After her sentencing Green continued to maintain that her recall of the night of the fire was limited. In the summer of 1996, she wrote to her daughter claiming that she had taken more than the recommended doses of her medications that night. Similar letters to Michael Farrar varied from claims that she had no recollection of the night to firmly stating that she was innocent of the arson. She theorized that Margaret Hacker had set fire to the family's house, and reiterated her claim from the show-cause hearing that Tim had been the one to poison his father. Green wrote to author Ann Rule in 1996 asserting that, due to alcohol abuse, she had not had the mental capacity to start a fire. In a later interview with Rule, she blamed her cloudy thinking during the court hearings on her Prozac prescription, and stated that once she was off the drug, her mind became much clearer.

In 2000, represented by a new legal team, Green filed a request for a new trial on the basis of having been rendered incompetent by the psychiatric medications she was taking at the time of her hearings. She alleged that her original attorneys had failed to represent her adequately, instead focusing on avoiding a trial and the death penalty. She withdrew the request when prosecutors determined that they would seek the death penalty if a new trial was awarded. When, in 2004, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled the state's death penalty unconstitutional, she filed a second request for a new trial based on a claim of "manifest injustice". Green's attorneys claimed that new scientific techniques invalidated the evidence that the fire had been caused by arson. The request was denied in February 2005.

Evaluations of psychological state and motivation

Though Green has granted no interviews regarding her mental state, a number of sources have attempted to classify her pathology, if any, and her motivation for committing the crimes of which she was convicted. During Green's sentencing hearing, Marilyn Hutchinson, a psychologist hired by the defense, testified about Green's mental state and capabilities. She characterized Green as cognitively competent and capable of controlling her emotion at a basic level, but noted that Green appeared to be lacking in emotion beyond the level of basic competence. Green was prone to monosyllabic answers during her interview with Hutchinson, and described herself as "tuning out" to avoid excessive emotion. Hutchinson described an affidavit from the doctor who had treated Green during her commitment to the Menninger Clinic, which reported that she had been admitted on the basis of having either major or bipolar depression. Evaluations at the Clinic showed Green to be minimally able to cope with the world, and her treating physician reported that Green had been found to have the emotional capabilities of "a very young child", pursuant to unspecified "life experiences" she had undergone as a preadolescent. Hutchinson's diagnosis for Green was schizoid personality disorder. Hutchinson's opinion was that Green's intelligence had generally allowed her to compensate for her limited emotional ability in day-to-day life, but that the external stressors of her impending divorce and the interpersonal conflict between Michael and Tim Farrar had overwhelmed her ability to compensate. She denied that Green was sociopathic.

Ann Rule began corresponding with Green in 1996, and interviewed her in person in 1997. Rule recalls in her book on the case that Green's letters denied any unhappy childhood memories. Green claimed that though her behavior in the summer and fall of 1995 had been neglectful, she had neither the desire nor the wherewithal to set fire to her house or harm her children or her husband. Rule—who was neither a doctor nor a psychologist, but had a background in criminology and law enforcement—believed that even Green does not understand what caused her to attempt to murder Michael Farrar beyond the fact that she had come to hate him. Rule's theory was that in destroying Farrar, Green would have been able to preserve her own ego, in that Farrar would not have been able to leave her for another woman. Psychiatrist Michael H. Stone, using Rule's book as a source of information about Green, identifies Green as showing characteristics of psychopathy, borderline personality disorder, and narcissistic personality disorder.

Authors Cheryl Meyer, Michelle Oberman, and Michelle Rone, discussing the Green case in their book Mothers Who Kill Their Children: Understanding the Acts of Moms from Susan Smith to the "Prom Mom", point out that Green was adjudged psychologically competent at what would be commonly considered the least-controlled point of any mental illness from which she was suffering: she was on a cocktail of drugs which could treat the symptoms of mental illness but not the illness itself, she had been drinking alcohol in amounts which she had been warned could interfere with her medications, and she was coping with the loss of her children. Nevertheless, she spoke for her own mental competence at the time, a judgment which was echoed by the court. Meyer, Oberman, and Rone speculate that Green could meet the diagnostic criteria for several mental illnesses, including antisocial personality disorder, but add that the fact that her crimes were a combination of impulsive—arson and the murder of her children—and premeditated—the poisoning of Michael Farrar—makes any mental illness extremely difficult to diagnose.

In media

A May 1996 issue of Redbook featured an essay by Ann Slegman, a friend of Green's who lived in the same neighborhood as the Farrar family. The article covered the author's personal history with Green, the fire, and the subsequent investigation and ended with the author's statement that "It is also possible that an entirely different personality—disassociated from the Debora I knew—committed this crime.[...] The Debora I knew would not have killed her children."

Crime author Ann Rule covered the case in her book Bitter Harvest: A Woman's Fury, a Mother's Sacrifice, which provided extensive detail on both the case's development and Green's personal biography. The book was a New York Times Bestseller, though one reviewer felt that Rule failed to address Green's motivation for her crimes and that she had treated Green unsympathetically and Farrar over-sympathetically.

Green's murders and poisoning cases formed the basis for an episode of the forensic science documentary series Forensic Files, episode; "Ultimate Betrayal", originally aired; October 1999.

The case was discussed in the forensic science documentary series The New Detectives in the episode “Flames of Justice” with two other arson investigations, aired in April 2000.

Deadly Women, a true-crime documentary program that focuses on crimes committed by women, featured Green's case in a 2010 episode about women who kill their children.

A 2002 working paper on bioterrorism, intended to "enable policymakers concerned with bioterrorism to make more informed decisions", included the Green case in a survey of illegal uses of biological agents. The paper noted that Green had refused to provide any detail on the manner in which she extracted and administered the ricin she used against her husband.

Green's case is also forming the basis of a 2020 stage adaptation of Euripides's Medea, starring Rose Byrne and Bobby Cannavale at Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). https://broadwaydirect.com/rose-byrne-and-bobby-cannavale-buckle-up-for-medea/

Debora Geen was portrayed by Stephanie March in the 2021 Lifetime movie A House on Fire.

Notes

 Green attended Metamora Township High School in Metamora, Illinois, for the first two years of her high school career; the family then moved to Peoria, Illinois, and Green attended Peoria (Central) High School.

 Dates for this are uncertain; The Kansas City Star cites "the day after" their purchase of the Prairie Village home was cancelled, while Ann Rule's Bitter Harvest cites "two or three days".

 "Can the person manage their behavior during the trial? Are they likely to get up and scream or are they going to be unable to stop crying[?] ... The other one that I see as purely emotional is: Is the person motivated toward self-defense? And I found that in both of those purely emotional ones and in the ones that were purely cognitive, she was competent."

 Though published after Green's plea bargain in 1996, the essay's coverage ended with Christmas 1995 and was likely submitted for publication some months before May, to accommodate magazines' typical editorial lead time.