“As far as the poisoning is concerned, I have to ask you to accept what I have to say. I’m afraid I was responsible for Tim’s hatred of you. Even so, I don’t believe he was really trying to kill you. I think he saw that as long as you were sick, you were still here. I told a lot of lies in the county jail about a lot of things and tried to influence Lissa, but one fact remains. Lissa told Ellen the day I decided to accept the plea bargain that she knew Tim had done the poisoning and was trying to kill you. I didn’t plant that specific idea!”
And now, Debora turned her back on Ellen Ryan. “She seems to have a need for me to be guilty. I discussed the possibility of an appeal with her and with Sean O’Brien and it’s clear to me they both think I’m completely guilty.”
She felt greater animosity toward Dennis Moore, whom she blamed for talking her into implicating Tim. “I am totally sorry and ashamed…. Please believe me. I am not just trying to exonerate myself—I have no plans or intentions of any further legal fal de ral [sic]. I wish I’d never met any of the attorneys who were involved in my case.”
Debora pleaded with Mike to write back and answer her question: “Do you really think I could have thought any such plans out—let alone carried them out?” She needed him to tell her that he did not believe she could have set the fire or have had any part in poisoning him.
The next day’s letter was filled with new revelations that Debora had finally remembered. “I accept the punishment which goes with my plea of ‘no contest.’ I pleaded that way out of fear of Paul Morrison and the death penalty, and to stop all the publicity and let Lissa (and you and my parents) settle back to a more normal life. I have no intention of re-opening that legal can of worms.
“Mike,” she nevertheless wrote, “I remember that night. (I think!) I did not set that fire! I could never have endangered the children’s lives like that and you know that is one fault I never had. I am trying to figure out for my own peace of mind what must have happened. Celeste is a very determined and self-directed woman and you were obviously her goal. Two major impediments to her having what she wanted—John and your family—were eliminated. Could she have been responsible?”
On Monday, September 9, Debora wrote to Mike once more, though she had told him she would not write him a letter a day, or call him as she had said she would. This third letter distanced her a bit further still from the crimes she had been convicted of.
“I would love to hear back from you concerning my questions—but that will have to be at your discretion. Please answer me if you feel you can…. I am totally ashamed of the month and half of wallowing in self-pity and I’ll never forgive myself for not saving my (our) children. As far as the poisoning is concerned, I bought Tim the seeds and if I hadn’t been so caught up in ME, I might have realized what was going on. Wittingly or not, I was an accessory to all that and words cannot adequately convey how sorry I am. I’m sure Tim loved you—he was just going through an adolescent hate phase…. I never believed Tim had anything to do with the fire and I’m ashamed that I let Dennis Moore talk me into implying that at the preliminary hearing. I’m equally sure that I could and would never have endangered the lives of my children in setting the fire. I had settled into a very passive relationship with life and booze—shameful, but not evil. I know equally well that you were in no way involved in the death of your children, Mike. I’m left with only one possibility. I know it would be way too late to try to investigate this, but for my peace of mind, would you tell me whether you think it’s remotely possible?”
Once more, Debora asked Mike to agree with her on a theory of the fire that would exclude her as the arsonist: “Celeste struck me as being pretty ruthless. And I was putting an obstacle in the way of her having what she wanted.”
As the months passed, she would cling to this theory and refine it. But as brilliant as she was, Debora did not see the tiny flaws and inconsistencies in her letters. The more desperately she tried to back away from the horror of what even her attorneys believed she had done, the more she boxed herself into another corner.
Ironically, Mike received all three of Debora’s letters on the one-year anniversary of his first ricin poisoning. The year of horror had come full circle, from the moment he bit into an innocuous-looking chicken salad sandwich, to the reading of these three letters from prison. He did not reply to Debora’s pleas to help her as she constructed a new rationale to explain why their children were dead and he was fighting to regain his health.
He could not do that.
EPILOGUE
Although I was in the courtroom with Dr. Debora Green during her preliminary hearing, I had never heard her voice except on the extraordinary videotape of her police interview on October 24, 1995. I had talked to Debora’s exhusband, to her attorney, to D.A. Paul Morrison, to the Prairie Village detectives, to her acquaintances, and to her mother, and I had read voluminous files, but I still did not know who she was.
Was Debora Green like Diane Downs, who shot her own children so that her married lover would return? Was she like Susan Smith, who drowned her baby sons so that her lover would return? Or was Debora more like Betty Broderick, who could not give up her marriage or her status and finally murdered, not her children, but her ex-husband and his new wife? The list of infamous homicidal wives and mothers is not long, but we tend to remember the women who violate the mother instinct that is bone-deep in most of us.
The only possible way I could draw an informed picture of Debora was to meet her. Would she talk to me? And, if she was willing, would I be permitted to visit her in prison? These questions were moot for the moment; Debora could have no visitors until she was out of orientation.
I wrote to Debora in September 1996, suggesting that we exchange letters or attempt to arrange a visit. (Mike had already explained to her that I was writing a book and urged her to speak with me.) Because I do not believe in flying under false colors, I told Debora in my first letter that I believed that she had set fire to her home, although I was not convinced that she remembered doing it. I wanted her to understand my feelings before we met in person; I was not offering to write a “Debora Green is innocent” book, and she needed to know that. If she still wanted to talk to me, given that knowledge, I thought we would have a more meaningful dialogue. I also asked her about her childhood. What did she remember from the early years in Havana and Metamora, Illinois?
Debora wrote back to me on September 23, saying that she preferred a face-to-face interview to letters. I did not know of her barrage of letters to Mike just two weeks earlier. She had already begun her search for the “real killer” and hoped to file an appeal.
“You asked me about my childhood until age 10,” she wrote in her first letter. “My childhood was extremely happy. I had one sister who was 19 months older than me and we were best friends. I excelled in school, athletics, and music. I really have no specific recollections to share with you, but my memories are all good. My parents have been very supportive of me throughout this entire ordeal and I have nothing but love and gratitude for them.”
How odd, I thought, that Debora had no specific memories of her childhood, and yet she was sure those memories were all good. In her first letter, I saw again the dichotomy of reason that seemed to mark all of Debora’s arguments.
My statement that I believed she was the arsonist had upset her. “I find it very distressing that you say you believe I set fire to my home,” she wrote. “While I was in the county jail I was so frightened I didn’t know what I remembered and what I didn’t. I pleaded ‘no contes’ to the various charges in order to stop the publicity and enable Lissa to get on with her life—not because I was guilty.”
With me, as with Mike and Lissa, Debora blamed her drinking for her inability to save her children. She would never forgive herself for that, she said. “I did not, however, have the wherewithal to set a fire with liquid accelerants which was started at four or five places at once. I also would never have done anything to put my beautiful children in harm’s
way. I loved those children more than life itself.”
Debora explained to me that she had “behaved badly” because of the divorce, but that she had never neglected her children. Here, again, was her inability to understand that a drunken mother, passed out in bed while her little girls sob and her son tries to empty her liquor bottles down the sink, is a neglectful mother.
Debora knew that I had interviewed Celeste Walker; now she set forth her scenario of what had really happened during August, September, and October 1995. “You’ve met and interviewed Celeste Walker. She is an extremely determined woman. In the summer of 1995, she set her cap for my husband. I feel there were two major impediments to her having what she wanted—her husband John and myself and my family. Within less than a two-month period, these impediments were removed. In August, Celeste had told me she wanted to he rid of John—presumably by divorce—but not of the lifestyle his salary afforded.”
Debora then explained the sequence of tragedies that began with John Walker’s suicide. She told me that the fire was the work of a “professional arsonist” (it was not), and “certainly beyond the scope of my knowledge. The magnitude of the fire would make one think Lissa and I were supposed to perish in the fire as well. The prosecutor and even my own attorneys declined to look into this set of circumstances any further.”
Debora wrote she also wished to discuss Mike’s poisoning with me when we met in person.
* * *
Obtaining a visitor’s pass to the Topeka Correctional Facility’s I-MAX unit is not an overnight process, but within two months, I received word that I would be allowed into the maximum-security visiting area. The circumstances would be far from ideal for a writer. I could not take a tape recorder, a camera (which I had not requested), a pen—or even a pencil—or paper. Once I was inside, I could not leave and come back the same day. Debora urged me to eat a big breakfast, because the only food available was from vending machines.
For a writer accustomed to both taping interviews and taking notes for backup, these restrictions were frustrating. I planned to leave my tape recorder in my car, parked outside I-MAX, and record my memories of each interview while they were still fresh as I drove back to my hotel, which was, coincidentally, down the street from the Menninger Clinic. Although I could have visited for six hours at a time, such long sessions would swamp me with a tremendous amount of information before I could get to my tape recorder. Two four-hour sessions seemed a better idea.
In the end, because of holidays and blizzards, it was March 14, 1997, before I flew into KCI, Kansas City International Airport. I planned to drive to Topeka early the next morning and meet with Debora from eleven to three.
March in Topeka is a brown month. The grass, bushes, trees, and even the constant wind seem to be the same shade of dull brown. The wind sings as it slides around buildings, a constant thrumming that I suspect natives no longer hear. It whipped my hair and caught my car door as I set out on Saturday, March 15, for the women’s prison on Southeast Rice Road.
I have been in innumerable jails and prisons for interviews. Sometimes I have talked to a prisoner on the phone through double glass panes; sometimes we had “contact visits” across a table, and, once, when I visited with Ted Bundy in the Utah State Prison, we sat on two wooden chairs in a cramped hallway between two electrically controlled barred doors. I should long since have become used to the feeling of being closed in and worse, the sense of not being trusted that is the lot of prison visitors.
I would have to pass the “Security Access Control” building and follow a rutted road off to the right, toward where the maximum-security prisoners were housed. The road between the redbrick medium-security buildings and the maximum-security pods was long and winding. The I-MAX grounds were surrounded by eighteen-foot-tall metal fences topped by three feet of razor wire.
Once I had found a spot in the I-MAX parking lot, I locked my purse in the trunk of my car, taking only my ID and keys. A solemn-faced guard checked through his list of approved visitors. Happily, my name was there. I surrendered my car keys and my drivers’ license, and was turned over to another guard, whose hair was cut as short as a Marine recruit’s and who wore mirrored sunglasses. He and I left the small I-MAX reception building and stepped into a cage—a literal cage—where we were surrounded by wire mesh on both sides and above our heads. I soon realized that small talk was discouraged; we walked in silence.
Even though I didn’t know how to negotiate the maze of passages to get out of this cage, my armed escort had me walk in front of him, instructing me to “Push,” “Pull,” and “Enter” a series of cage doors until we finally turned onto a walkway that led through the sweep of green lawn surrounding the I-MAX pod. The tower guard, armed with a shotgun, watched us until we went inside.
The I-MAX visiting area looked like a grade school dining room, minus the food line. There were eight tables with chairs, and two vending machines. A matronly female guard sat at a desk just inside the entrance to the I-MAX building; clearly, she was overseeing the visiting area, but she did so cheerfully and without appearing to be watching.
Two rooms opened off the large room. These, I found out later, were for parent prisoners and their children, places where they could play and talk away from the direct gaze of guards and other prisoners and their families. There was a single uni-sex restroom.
I waited for several minutes, wondering if Debora had changed her mind about talking to me. When she finally emerged from a corridor somewhere behind the female guard, I was not sure it was really she. She seemed much smaller than she had in the courtroom. She looked about five foot three or four, and probably weighed 130 to 140 pounds. Nearsighted, she wore thick glasses. Her hair was longer than when I last saw her, and quite curly. She was dressed in the prison uniform: blue jeans, a blue denim shirt, and athletic shoes.
When she held out her hand, it was damp and cold. She was nervous, but she looked me directly in the eye and was far more animated than I had ever seen her. I had inadvertently interrupted her lunch, but she hastened to tell me that she had taken time to gulp it down.
How do you ask someone if she has killed her children and poisoned her husband? You don’t. At least, I don’t. I had told Debora in my first letter what I believed to be true, and she had countered that she was innocent. Now, she seemed eager to talk, choosing those subjects she wanted to discuss. I let her lead the way.
The first thing Debora told me about was her terror the night she was arrested, and the inhumane conditions in the Jackson County, Missouri, jail. “We were packed into a cell meant for far fewer people,” she said. “They fed us when they felt like it, and gave us water and bologna sandwiches at three A.M. We had no mattresses on our bunks, only springs.”
She blamed Mike for “deliberately getting me arrested at the ballet. He wanted to embarrass me. He didn’t care about Lissa. He expected she would be there too—but he didn’t care.” Did she not know that Mike had been undergoing surgery that day? He had no connection at all to the time and place of her arrest.
Asked her criteria for being attracted to a man, Debora told me that she felt a great sense of humor was important. “Because you have to be really intelligent to have a sense of humor.” But Mike had “turned out to be no fun. He’s meticulous, and a nitpicker…. He plans everything too much.”
In spite of the conciliatory letters Debora had written Mike, asking his forgiveness, wishing him well, and promising to work together with him to help Lissa, she was obviously still very angry with him. “I think Lissa’s safe with him,” she said. “But he’s not fun. Lissa has no fun with him. And Lissa loves to have fun.”
Mike had been, Debora said, not just a bad father but no father at all. He left for work between six and six-thirty and didn’t come home until between eight and ten. She felt he had been thrilled when Tim was born, less thrilled at Lissa’s birth, and with Kelly, “an accident,” not interested at all. She, on the other hand, had always put her children first. “My childre
n are my life,” she said—a remark she was to repeat many times during the interview. “When I talked to Mike that last night,” she told me, “he threatened to take them away from me. That really scared me.”
I asked Debora why she had not simply let Mike go. “You could have started a new practice. You could have supported yourself and the children. Why didn’t you?”
“He was going to take our beautiful house for himself, and the children and I would have had to live in a smaller house. We had a place, a place in society…. I didn’t want to give that up. And the children wanted me to be home. Tim said to me, ‘Mom, we want you to be our mother and pick us up and go to our games and be there. We don’t want you to start your practice again.’”
Debora had written to me of her belief that Celeste was the arsonist. Now, six months later, she thought both Celeste and Mike had been involved.
“Are you saying that they actually set the fire?” I asked.
“No—no, they wouldn’t do that. I think they paid someone to set it. They never do anything themselves. They always hired people to do what they wanted. Celeste always gets what she wants. Things weren’t happening quick enough for her.”
Debora recalled John Walker from their days as anatomy partners in medical school in 1972. “He was very nice, very shy…. I knew he was depressed last year.”
“Do you still think Celeste killed him?”
Debora shook her head. “No. She didn’t murder him—but she drove him to suicide. He and I talked a lot around the pool after we came back from Peru.”