Bitter Harvest: A Woman's Fury, a Mother's Sacrifice (39 page)

Ellen, the most patient and understanding of all, could see that something had to be done. There had to be some way of confronting Debora with the emerging truth. If they did that, she might go to prison for the rest of her life, but she wouldn’t go to the death chamber.

41

M
ike and Lissa were living together again, in an apartment instead of a huge house. They spent a lot of time together. When Kelly’s classmates dedicated “Kelly’s Corner” in their classroom, her father and sister were the special guests. The children had designed ceramic tiles with their drawings of all the things that Kelly had loved. There was Kelly swinging, Kelly with Boomer, Kelly with her friends, a tiny pair of pink ballerina shoes like the ones Kelly would have worn as an angel in
The Nutcracker Suite
, hearts, sunshine, clouds and stars. Her classmates could sit in that quiet corner of the classroom, among the memories of Kelly, and read. She had loved to read.

Mike and Lissa took a vacation trip to Mexico that March, just the two of them. One seriously ill man and one little girl. They were all that was left of the family that had been. Even if Debora were acquitted of the charges against her, she and Mike and Lissa would never again live together. Mike and Lissa could not help but think of other trips they had taken to Mexico, with Kelly and Tim along.

Lissa was still fiercely loyal to her mother—she had not told even her father that Debora had made forbidden phone calls to her from jail. Ellen had then explained to Lissa that she must never lie to her dad, and the girl had promised that she wouldn’t. But she still worried about her mother.

Slowly, tentatively, Lissa and Mike began to form a real father-and-daughter relationship—something they had never been able to enjoy before. Debora had always made Mike out to be a villain; the children believed what their mother told them. And it was true that he had been away at work from before breakfast until after supper. He
had
been uncomfortable in his own home, waiting for another storm to erupt.

And he
had
been unfaithful to Debora, although only after a dozen years of marriage had not brought them any closer together than they had been on their wedding night, when she chose to read a book rather than make love. Still, no reasonable wife and mother would have pitted her children against their father. But now, beginning to doubt her mother’s many horror stories about him, Lissa wanted to feel closer to her father and to trust him.

Lissa did not like Celeste Walker. That was predictable. The transition had been too fast, and Debora had called Celeste all manner of obscene names, blaming her for the breakup of their family. Mike’s mother didn’t care for Celeste either, something Lissa was aware of. So asking Celeste along on the trip to Mexico would have been a bad idea.

Celeste understood, just as she understood that Mike was having a rough time emotionally in late February and early March. He faced the prospect of another operation on his brain; he was having headaches and felt unwell. Neither of them had been anywhere near ready for a new relationship, and that became more apparent as the immediate stress of Debora’s preliminary hearing receded. The reality that Tim and Kelly were gone sank in. The horror of the past five months would not go away soon. It would never go away completely.

Celeste’s boys, too, had problems dealing with the upheaval in their family. Initially, Celeste and Mike had been drawn together to escape their unhappy marriages. But Mike, at least, realized that their attraction for each other might not survive all the tragedies that had scarred their lives. They shared many interests, but whether that would be enough to keep them together was questionable. There were so many ghosts that haunted them.

Celeste had begun to worry about their relationship in February after the hearing. “Mike had a lot of cards from people all the time. These were people from his past—some of them women friends,” she said, “and he called them back and I thought that was really weird. He even went out to lunch with one of them. He told me all this stuff about going to lunch with her. And some secretary of some department in Cincinnati. He called her after she sent him a sympathy card. And he told me all about her life and that she was attractive.”

Whether his response was “weird” or not, Mike wasn’t keeping secrets from Celeste. But she reacted to his conversations about women friends with suspicion and insecurity. Although he was still calling Celeste at least four times a day, she grew anxious. She felt he was using what she called “his doctorness” to attract other women. Perhaps she shouldn’t have felt inadequate—but she had been married to John all those years and been unable to make him happy. She needed a man who needed her, who loved her and made her feel attractive, and she cringed when she heard about any other woman in Mike’s life, even if their relationship was platonic.

The trip to Mexico had helped solidify Mike’s relationship with Lissa. She enjoyed living with her dad. She had friends who lived close by; she had her ballet lessons; and everyone in her extended family was prepared to help shield her from the scandal of the upcoming trial. She had no further personal contact with her mother, who was waiting in jail as her attorneys planned her defense. And Debora continued to see Marilyn Hutchinson, who was evaluating her competence to participate in her own defense at a trial.

In another hearing, on Thursday, March 7, 1996, Dennis Moore discussed one of his main concerns: the publicity fiesta he expected at any further pretrial hearings as well as at the trial itself. The amount of coverage the preliminary hearing drew left him troubled, he asserted. Even though Moore had given innumerable interviews to the press and television, he now said there could be no justice with cameras and microphones poking into every aspect of Debora Green’s legal proceedings. The defense asked that all cameras, still and videotape, be banned from the courtroom. They also wanted to limit public access to legal documents.

Under Kansas statute, Judge Ruddick was allowed wide discretion in deciding what he would permit to be photographed in his courtroom. As in the preliminary hearing, witnesses had the right to request that they not be photographed. Moore was worried that jurors—yet to be selected—might be exposed to further pretrial arguments. During the actual trial, jurors could be sequestered; their reading and television watching would be censored. But the chances were that they might not be sequestered. Hotel rooms and meals for a jury in a long trial can be a tremendous expense for a county. But, in the meantime, no one knew who the jurors might be. The pool would be drawn from registered voters in Johnson County, any of whom might be watching pretrial hearing coverage on the evening news.

Paul Morrison said that media coverage of future hearings would undoubtedly be heavy whether cameras were allowed or not. “I think the public has the right to know what’s going on in the courtroom,” he argued.

Moore and Moriarty also requested a face-to-face meeting with Lissa Farrar, without the prosecuting team being present. “We just want the same opportunity as the State,” Moore said. But Morrison said that he had not talked to Lissa either. The only interview the investigation team had had with Lissa was the one which took place on October 25, when she talked with several members of the task force. “Everyone has been careful to keep her out of this as much as possible,” Morrison said.

His real concern was that if the defense had a meeting with Lissa, Debora might be present. He did not want that kind of pressure put on a little girl. His motion objecting to the defense’s request included a letter from Dr. Weiss, who recommended against Lissa being interviewed by either the State or the Defense: “It would compromise her present condition and place her in the midst of becoming either the savior of her mother or an important witness to her demise.”

Under the law, the defense team could not compel any witness to speak with them before trial. Judge Ruddick denied Moore’s request.

Judge Ruddick, having read two confidential reports by psychologists, also ruled that Debora Green was competent to stand trial. Moore had requested the mental evaluations to be sure she comprehended the charges against her and would be able to participate in her own defense; he said that his defense team was untroubled by the judge’s decision.

Judge Ruddick postponed Debora’s arraignment until March 28 and denied the defense request to lower her bail from $3 million to $500,000. She would remain in jail where she had been for three and a half months. The judge let stand an order allowing television cameras in the courtroom and permitting the public to view legal documents. But he said he might approve a defense proposal to seal certain information in the case at some time in the future.

On March 13, Judge Ruddick handed down another decision. He refused the defense motion to try Debora separately on each set of charges. He said he did not see how the arson and murder cases could be presented to a jury without also presenting evidence concerning the alleged ricin poisoning of Michael Farrar. “It is clear, based on the evidence presented at preliminary examination, that evidence related to the various offenses will, at the very least, overlap,” Ruddick wrote. And that was true. Several dozen of the State’s witnesses were prepared to testify on both the arson and poisoning charges.

Judge Ruddick also said that there was a very “real possibility” that a jury would have to be sequestered. His jury trial docket was jammed, with thirty other cases that needed to be heard over the next three months. If Debora were to be granted two separate trials, justice in Johnson County would have to wait on her.

Mike’s health remained fragile in the spring of 1996. His most recent angiogram showed that the aneurysm in his brain was not improving. It could be likened to a bulging, worn spot on a tire, foreshadowing a blowout. The sepsis that had raced through his body after the repeated ricin poisonings had so weakened the blood vessels in the right frontal portion of his brain that he was a prime candidate for a stroke unless he had very delicate surgery. The weakened vessel could break at any moment and drown his brain with blood.

Dr. Reintges did extensive research into Mike’s chances of surviving brain aneurysm surgery. After looking all over America for the best neurosurgeon available and talking to neurosurgeons and neuroradiologists on both coasts and in the heartland, Reintges told Mike that he thought his best chance would be with Dr. Charles Wilson of the University of California Medical School in San Francisco.

Wilson, arguably the best brain surgeon in the country, was a man whose life revolved around the operating room and his solitary jogs through the hills of the Golden Gate city. Featured on a number of medical documentaries, “Charlie” Wilson was revered by fledgling neurosurgeons, whose dream was to study on his service. He could work inside the human brain with an incredibly deft touch. Coincidentally, the doctor who needed this risky surgery and the doctor who would perform it were both Missouri boys. “The first thing Dr. Wilson told me,” Mike recalled, “was he was from Neosho, Missouri.”

Arrangements were made for Mike to undergo brain surgery in San Francisco on April 12, 1996. Celeste would accompany him to California, and Stella and Mike Wilson, two of Mike’s closest friends, would come down from Portland, Oregon, to lend their support during this arduous time. If Mike didn’t make it, he didn’t want Celeste to be alone in a strange city. If he did survive, his recovery would take a while and friends would help.

Sometimes Celeste felt as if Mike kept her around because she was a nurse and he was so ill. But those thoughts only taunted her during those periods when she was filled with doubt about their relationship. They still saw each other often and talked on the phone several times a day. They both dreaded Debora’s trial. Until that was over, no one connected to this case could breathe easy.

42

T
here wasn’t much news in the papers about Debora Green anymore. Everyone who would be involved in her trial was gearing up, but quietly. Paul Morrison contracted to have a computerized multidimensional model constructed of the house on Canterbury Court. The model could be turned and opened up onscreen so that a jury could truly “see” the house. This up-to-the-minute exhibit of trial technology would even “catch fire” so that the jurors could follow the precise progression from the first match struck, to the inferno the death scene had become. Morrison had his witnesses ready. To say he was looking forward to the trial would probably be an exaggeration; it would mean weeks, perhaps months, of intense courtroom work. And yet the case was so convoluted and challenging that he prepared for it eagerly, as an athlete would prepare for a marathon. He suspected that the Debora Green case would be remembered in Kansas just as the Grissom trial was, and long before that, the Clutter family massacre in Garden City, which Truman Capote had turned into the classic
In Cold Blood
.

*  *  *

Dennis Moore, Kevin Moriarty, and Sean O’Brien worked feverishly to save Debora from the death penalty. This would be a go-for-broke trial for the defendant. If she was convicted, there was every indication that one day in the next few years, Debora would be executed. They might proceed with the “Tim did it” defense, but the trial balloon they had sent up at the preliminary hearing had brought the defense team more disapproval than anything else. Johnson County citizens interviewed by the press had been frank in saying they found that line of defense distasteful—it wasn’t fair to blame everything on a kid who could no longer speak for himself. Moreover, they criticized even the tremendously popular former D.A. Dennis Moore for doing so. If the man on the street felt uneasy about blaming a fire on a boy who had died in the flames, what would a jury think?

More than anything else, the defense team wanted to hear the true story of the night of October 23—24 from Debora herself. Reassured now that she was competent and rational, Moore and Moriarty pushed harder to get her to talk to them. Although Debora seemed cowed by Moriarty, his steady, pounding questions elicited some information from her. He made it difficult for her to draw into herself and shut her attorneys out.

Debora was emotionally dependent on Ellen Ryan. Ellen had a compassionate heart and she felt sorry for Debora, but she still wanted to know the facts. Whether she meant it or not, Debora had asked Ellen over and over again to find out the truth. Now, with each new piece of information the defense attorneys uncovered either through discovery or through their own investigators, Ellen sensed trouble. There was a tornado brewing and Debora was caught in its eye. The intelligence coming in did nothing to draw guilt away from her, and much to incriminate her further.

“I think it was on a Thursday when our arson expert’s report came in,” Ellen recalled. “Sean called me and said, ‘Our expert says there was not as much accelerant used as they said—but there was
some
accelerant used.”

That was not good news.

A short while later, Sean O’Brien called Ellen again and asked her to go with him to the jail. “I think you’d better come out. The guys are there now.” “The guys” were Denhis Moore and Kevin Moriarty.

O’Brien picked Ellen up. On the drive south to Olathe, he told her about the damning evidence found on Debora’s robe. She had been wearing only a nightgown when she escaped through the master bedroom door, but the arson team had found her robe, with a semicircular hole burned in it, on the floor of the master bathroom. It lay in a jumble in front of the vanity sink where there had been a fire in one drawer. The hole in the robe could not have been made by flaming objects falling from the ceiling in the bathroom, because the fabric was folded over, the exposed fabric was not burned, and the scorched half-moon was
inside
the crumpled robe. The fire in the bathroom drawer had been one of the “unconnected” fires the arson investigators for the State had located in the house.

“Okay, it’s time,” Ellen said to O’Brien. “I know what happened now.”

When they arrived at the Johnson County Adult Detention Center, they found Debora in an interview room with Moore and Moriarty. In their discussions of Debora’s defense, the thought had gradually emerged that going to trial might not be a good idea. Now, given the newest incriminating physical evidence, her attorneys were urging her to plead no contest instead of risking a conviction at trial and a sentence of death. A plea bargain might save her life.

“Kevin was hammering on her hard,” Ellen remembered. “He can be like a harsh Hallmark card when he needs to be.”

Debora sat there, silent; she was the frightened Deb—not the witty, charming Deb, not the in-charge physician Deb, and not the raging harridan Deb. Some corner had been turned, but she was not yet ready to commit to a plan.

Now, Ellen saw that Debora was listening intently to Moriarty’s argument that she had to tell them the truth. “She was listening but she wasn’t saying anything.” Ellen moved close to Debora. “I touched her arm, and I said, ‘Deb, you always asked me to find out what happened to your children. You told me that you wanted me to tell you if I thought you did it. Today,’”—Ellen paused before she said the words—“‘today, I believe that
you
did that. I believe that
you
set the fire, Deb.’

“She looked at me, and, finally, she said, ‘Yes, Ellen—I set the fire.’”

“And I said, ‘Tell me what happened. Tell me what you did.’”

But Debora insisted she had no clear memories. “She said, ‘I don’t know why I did that. You know I never meant to hurt my
children
. I was drinking and I can’t remember anything. I was lying down on the bed and I went back to get the kids and there was a fire everywhere. I did not use accelerant. I didn’t do it.’”

Debora was admitting that she had set the fire, but denying that she used accelerants. And they knew that she had used some flammable liquid to speed the flames along. But, again, she sought refuge in her insistence that she was extremely intoxicated and not responsible for her actions.

Still, she was talking, so Ellen asked her about the poisoning. “Deb,” she said, “I’ve also suspected for a long time that you and Tim were involved together in this poisoning. What happened?” And she said, ‘You’re right. Tim did it. Tim poisoned his dad…. Do we have to get that out? Do we have to let people know that happened?’”

Ellen had no problem with keeping that part of Debora’s confession secret. It would make no difference in her sentence if she decided to plead guilty or take an
Alford
(no contest) plea. Of course, the suggestion that Tim was interested in fire and bombs and poison had already been raised in the preliminary hearing, so Debora’s sudden protectiveness came rather late.

“Deb,” Ellen said, “before you are a human, you are a mother. I’ve always believed you were a good mother. You have to try to survive now as a way to protect your daughter. And you have to try to survive to help Lissa put together—when she’s an adult—what happened in this family. There may be nobody else who will help her put that all together as much as you will.”

“Okay,” Debora said. “I’m going to do it [plead no contest].”

Caught in what were either her lies, or her delusions, or her deliberate plans to kill, depending on who was evaluating her, Debora began to list aloud the things that she could never again do if she went to prison. They were all about milestones in Lissa’s life. It was as if she now existed only through the little girl she had almost killed.

“She was very sad,” Ellen remembered. “She said, ‘If I could just one time before I die be able to watch my daughter dance again. Or be able to be there at her wedding. If I could just be there for that …’”

Ellen left the room and found a quiet spot in the courthouse square. Quite possibly, she had become far too emotionally involved in this case; hearing what she had just heard was very painful to her. She wanted to be alone and to think about what had just happened. If anyone had wished for Debora to somehow be proved innocent, it was Ellen. Her whole career has been dedicated to helping families and children. “This was such a horrible tragedy for that whole family,” she would say later. “And it reflected the cultural expectations that we have about relationships that don’t make sense. I was so angry and frustrated that we have all these mechanisms in place to help families in trouble and they didn’t get used.”

Unaware that Debora had admitted to her attorneys that she had set the fire that destroyed their home and killed two of their children, Mike, accompanied by Celeste, flew to San Francisco for his brain surgery. They went a few days early, and to judge by the snapshots they took, they might have been any couple on a romantic vacation. With Mike’s friends from Oregon, they visited Fisherman’s Wharf, took the cable cars, and explored Golden Gate Park.

It was a bittersweet time. They could not be sure that Mike would survive the surgery. If the aneurysm burst before it was sealed off, Mike might die on the operating table. And he was going into surgery in a weakened condition. Although he had put on some weight, he still carried the afteraffects of the ricin poisonings within his body. Mike would need heart surgery too. But the damage to his heart was not as immediate a threat as the aneurysm.

Mike was pragmatic about his marathon surgeries. He had studied up on all the procedures and chosen the surgeons he trusted most; he evinced little anxiety. It was harder for Celeste. She didn’t want to lose him. And by the time they were in San Prancisco, she felt that she might lose Mike in either of two ways. As a nurse, she knew the odds of surviving brain surgery for an aneurysm; they weren’t great. As a woman, she still sensed that he was pulling back. But the second fear was somewhat assuaged by their carefree days in California before the surgery. She liked Mike’s friends from Portland; the four of them had a good time together. And she began to feel that once they weathered Mike’s surgeries, once the trial was behind them, she and Mike really would get married.

She tried to ignore the warning signs. She knew Lissa didn’t like her and neither did Velma Farrar. Her own sons were angry and depressed; their father had been dead less than eight months. Celeste wanted so much to be happy, and she loved Mike; she remembered his telling her she was “the love of his life.” She didn’t believe that kind of love could ever disappear. And in San Francisco, in the spring of 1996, it seemed that she had been right.

But Mike had yet to realize that promises are not to be made lightly. Living with Debora, he had often been coerced into making promises to keep the peace. He had promised his children that he would stay with their mother always, and that the reconciliation after the first fire would last. He had promised Celeste that theirs was more than a transient affair, that he would always love her. He may well have meant it at the time, unaware of what wildly seesawing emotions could follow the numbness of almost unbearable tragedy.