Bitter Harvest: A Woman's Fury, a Mother's Sacrifice

On August 25, Mike had spent only eight hours at home before he had to return to the hospital, suffering the same symptoms he’d had after eating the chicken sandwich.

  “You testified you were served a spaghetti dinner by Debora Green,” Moore said.

  “That is correct.”

  “Who prepared that spaghetti dinner? Do you know?”

  “Timothy did.”

  “You also testified on a third occasion that you were down in the basement watching the Chiefs and that Debora Green brought down ham and beans and cornbread?”

  “That is correct.”

  “Do you know who prepared that?”

  “Debora did.”

  “Did you see her prepare it?”

  “I did.”

  “Okay. Where was Tim?”

  “I don’t know where Tim was.”

  Although Moore peppered Mike with questions about where Tim might have been, he could not remember. “He was not sitting there watching the ball game with me…. I don’t know where he was.”

  “You don’t know that he wasn’t up there in the kitchen with Debora Green, do you?”

  “He may have been in the kitchen some.”

  Moore had already suggested in his opening statement that Tim might have set fire to his house; he had characterized Tim as “a very disturbed young man.” Might a very disturbed young man who hated his father, who had broken his father’s nose in a fistfight, who had, perhaps, been whipped into a frenzy of anxiety about the need to protect his mother—might such a young man set out to poison that father? That was the question Moore seemed about to ask.

  Mike was coldly angry. He had lost his son and his daughter. Sadly, he had just begun to repair his relationship with Tim when the boy died. He could not bear the thought that Kansas City and the world might believe that his own son had deliberately tried to kill him with slow, agonizing poison. It wasn’t true. Mike knew it wasn’t true. Debora had had castor beans in her purse. Not Tim.

  Moore asked Mike about tropical sprue. Although he had objected earlier when Paul Morrison sought Mike’s testimony as an expert medical witness on his own illness, now, during cross-examination, he had no objection to Mike’s use of medical terms. Moore wanted to emphasize that Mike’s symptoms were quite similar to those of tropical sprue. The fact that he had so recently returned from Peru, the defense hoped, made a good argument for a benign cause of his illness.

  “What is tropical sprue,” Moore asked, “as you understand it?”

  “Tropical sprue is a malabsorption syndrome that’s thought to be caused by an infectious agent, although the precise cause is often uncertain,” Mike explained. “It occurs generally in parts of Central America, sporadic parts of northern South America, and it also occurs in Asia. It’s generally characterized by an onset of an acute diarrheal illness followed by a chronic diarrheal illness.”

  Moore had managed a coup: he was eliciting the information he wanted Judge Ruddick to hear from an expert witness—and the expert witness was the victim.

  “Is it bacteriological in nature?”

  “It’s unclear, unclear,” Mike said. “Probably is, but it’s unclear.”

  “When did you first think that she might be poisoning you?”

  “I first thought about the possibility early on—during August or September. I’m not exact; I’m not exactly sure where in the entire scenario, but sometime during those three hospitalizations I wondered if Deb might not be poisoning me.”

  “Did you wonder about what she might be using … ?”

  “Sure I did.”

  “Did you wonder enough to go down and get a blood test to see if you could locate any kind of poison in your system?”

  “No, it would be useless,” Mike answered.

  “Dr. Farrar, you testified that on the twenty-fourth of September, you decided to secretly get into Deb Green’s purse. Is that correct?”

  “That is correct.”

  “Did you ask her if you could do that?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Did you search anyplace besides her purse for whatever you were looking for?”

  “Yes,” Mike answered. “I looked in the bottom drawer of the bedside stand next to the bed in the basement.”

  “What were you looking for when you went into her purse?”

  “I was looking for anything that she might use to kill herself.”

  Moore returned again to the affair between Mike and Celeste Walker. “During this trip to Peru, Dr. Farrar, when you struck up this close friendship with Celeste Walker, her husband wasn’t along, was he?”

  “No, he was not.”

  “Her husband’s name was John Walker?”

  “That is correct.”

  “John Walker is now deceased. Is that correct?”

  “That is correct.”

  “In fact, he was found dead on September 5, 1995.”

  “That’s my understanding.”

  “It was your testimony that after you got back [from Peru], that Deb began to drink and act crazy?”

  “After I told her that I wanted a divorce, yes.”

  “You testified you could listen to her voice and tell that sometimes when her words were slurred that she had been drinking or on medication?”

  “Yes, that’s correct.”

  “Do you know what kind of effect Klonopin would have on a person?”

  Once more, Moore was treating Mike like a doctor, urging him to give medical opinions when it suited the defense. Morrison noted this, but said nothing.

  “If someone takes too much Klonopin,” Mike answered, “it can have that sort of effect.”

  Moore especially wanted to end his cross-examination with the suggestion that Mike had been living a life of subterfuge and clandestine meetings. “Do you recall telling Detective Burnetta that you had a romantic involvement with Celeste Walker but it began after her husband’s death?”

  “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. Moor
e 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

  Monday, 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.”