by Ann Rule
Paul Morrison now changed gears. He produced several scale drawings of the house on Canterbury Court and asked Mike to describe it. Testimony about the progress of the fire through that house would be crucial to the case against Debora. Although the house no longer existed, Mike had a strong visual memory that allowed him to recall each room, each piece of furniture. The building had been L-shaped, with the four-car garage forming the short leg of the “L.”
Mike described the dining room table and the oriental rug that had once been beneath it, both incinerated now.
“What about the great room?” Morrison asked. “Did it have carpet or did it have a hardwood floor?”
“Carpet.”
“Okay. And what all did you have in there?”
“There was a couch along the north wall—a sleeper couch. There was an oak-and-glass coffee table in front of it. On each side of that there were oak-and-glass end tables with lamps on both of them. . . .”
Mike frequently closed his eyes as he re-created these rooms, gone forever. It was almost as if by bringing the house back, he could bring his children back, too.
Morrison pointed to the formal living room, and Mike said they had used it as a music room. “We had a baby grand in there, and a couple of chairs and a curio cabinet again, a small desk.”
“Whose piano was that?”
“Well, I think it was a piano for the entire family, but it was actually a Christmas gift to me one year. On Christmas morning, Debora told me to stay in bed and I heard a bunch of noise downstairs. Somebody was obviously delivering something, and it was a baby grand Steinert piano.” Arson investigators had seen that piano; so much accelerant had been poured around it that its legs had burned away. (If Debora was the arsonist, this was odd. It was she who played the piano; Mike played the clarinet, oboe, flute, and tuba—but not the piano.)
Together, Paul Morrison and Mike Farrar moved through each room of the lost home. Debora watched Mike, her eyes darting like birds’ eyes, as she was forced to remember every detail of the house that was supposed to save their marriage. The loss of such a house would have been sad under any circumstances, but in the end, it would have been nothing compared to suffering the ineffable grief of seeing one’s children die.
The unspoken question in this packed courtroom was, Who had set the flaming horror in motion? The prosecution contended that the culprit was the woman who sat almost motionless at the defense table. Her attorney suggested that her dead son had been responsible. Both possibilities seemed beyond belief.
32
Celeste Walker was not allowed in the courtroom: she was a potential witness. But unlike many other potential witnesses, who waited in the corridor outside the courtroom, she passed the hours, instead, in the lunchroom of the county office building across the quad, nursing cups of coffee. She didn’t want to be recognized and she certainly didn’t want to have her picture taken. She knew that her name was bound to come up in testimony. She didn’t know yet if she would be called to testify; she devoutly hoped not. But she wanted to be close by, to give Mike moral support.
On the witness stand, Mike continued the story of his sinking marriage and of Debora’s increasingly odd behavior. He told of the frantic calls he had received from his children, begging him to come home because their mother was so drunk she would not wake up. He recounted the occasion when Lissa called because her mother had passed out. He described that afternoon and night: how he had raced home, taken the girls to his sister Karen’s house, and come back to find that Debora had vanished; how he had spent hours searching for her, expecting to find her a suicide; how he finally concluded that she had left the house; and how, late that night, she phoned him repeatedly, arguing with him until he finally unplugged the phone and went to sleep. He did not know, he said, that Debora was still in the house, calling from the children’s phone. He did not know that she was moving through the house quietly as he slept. That might have annoyed him, but he would have had no fear. He had not yet become ill; he had no idea that someone might be trying to kill him. “She told me that all that time she had been hiding under the bed or behind the bed in the basement bedroom.”
The gallery murmured. If Mike’s testimony was to be believed, the woman in soft pink and white who sat at the defense table was strange indeed.
Paul Morrison knew that Mike’s affair with Celeste Walker would come up. He decided to meet it head-on rather than wait for the defense to bring it in.
“Now, you had developed a romantic relationship over this period of time, Doctor?”
“Yes, I did.”
“What is that person’s name?”
“Celeste Walker.”
“Was that a romantic physical relationship?”
“Yes, it was.”
Debora’s dark eyes were fastened on Mike’s face. Of all the testimony thus far, this clearly interested her most.
“And when was that begun?”
“Well, a strong friendship started on the Peru trip. But the romantic relationship started on July 8, after the Peru trip.”
Morrison had his direct examination perfectly choreographed. He wanted to be so familiar with the events of this case that he could arrange and present them in such a way that Judge Ruddick—and later, surely, a jury—could follow the course of Debora’s despondency and rage until she reached a flash point.
After the testimony about Mike’s affair with Celeste, Morrison moved forward on to Mike’s illness. Mike testified that he had first become ill on August 11. He was initially hospitalized on August 18, released on the twenty-fifth, hospitalized eight hours later, released on August 30, and hospitalized again on September 4. On September 11, Mike had been released once more from the hospital, with the understanding that his wife would oversee his intravenous feeding and try to build him up from the 125 pounds he then weighed. He testified that he had not had further episodes of vomiting, torrential diarrhea, fever, or stomach pain.
But five months later, Mike was far from well. Even those who had not known him before they saw him on the witness stand could see that he was still a very sick man.
“Have you been hospitalized since then [September 11]?” Morrison asked.
“Correct.”
“And is that as a result of some further complications?”
“I’ve developed bacterial endocarditis, which is a serious heart valve infection,” Mike answered. “As a complication of that I developed a brain abscess which had to be surgically evacuated.”
“And do you face further medical procedures in the future?”
Although Moore objected to Mike’s “medical expert” testimony, it was difficult for him to ignore his medical education and even more years in practice as he described his condition. It was ironic that Debora, who stood accused of the series of poisonings that had allegedly necessitated the very serious operations her husband had faced and would face again was perhaps the only one in the courtroom who truly understood the medical terms Mike used.
The prosecutor was blunt. Asking about Mike’s thoughts as he lay weak and helpless in his own bed while his wife administered the multivitamin- and nutrition-packed intravenous feeding, Morrison said, “At that time, did you think your wife was poisoning you?”
“I had some concerns early on because every time I’d go home, I’d get sick,” Mike answered. “But I did not really believe she was poisoning me. I just couldn’t imagine she would do such a thing.”
Debora’s face was inscrutable, but her eyes never left her husband. Except for occasionally crossing and recrossing her legs, she did not change position.
“Had there been discussions with some of your co-workers and friends about that?” Morrison asked.
“Yes, I had discussed it with Carolyn Stafford and Celeste Walker who were both convinced she was poisoning me.”
“Objection! Hearsay, Your Honor.”
“Sustained.”
“Just so we’re clear,” Morrison continued. “You did not indicate that [the p
ossibility of poisoning] to your doctors?”
“Not at that point.”
But Mike testified that on September 25, he had been forced to have Debora committed because her behavior had become so bizarre. The day before, he had found the castor-bean packets and the empty potassium chloride vials in her purse. Only after his research into castor beans did he begin to wonder if Debora had been trying to kill him—or to commit suicide herself.
It had been a terribly hard decision, to have his own wife committed. But Mike said he had to force Debora to see a psychiatrist and get treatment. He described the scene at the KU hospital that night, and Debora’s eventual voluntary commitment to the Menninger Clinic.
“Did you move out of that house?” Morrison asked.
“Yes, I did.”
“After she got back?”
“Yes. About the first week of October . . . Initially, I stayed with my parents, for two or three nights. And then I moved ultimately on October fifth to the Georgetown Apartments.”
“Did the kids stay at the family home on Canterbury, or did they go with you?”
“No, they stayed at the family home.”
“Were you concerned about the kids?”
This was a very painful question for Mike. How many times had he berated himself for his belief that the children would be better off at home, that their mother would not harm them?
“I was concerned about their psychological well-being,” he said.
“Were you concerned about their physical safety?” Morrison pressed.
“Mildly. I did not think that there was a high likelihood that there would be any physical danger to them, because clearly Deb had improved after she came home from Menninger’s. Substantially improved.”
“Why did you move out?”
“I moved out, obviously, ultimately, because I wanted to be separated and divorced. But I felt that it was time to move out because whenever I was home, the situation was so volatile. Debora was saying horrible things to the kids in front of me, and I thought it would be better if I was out of the house. It was clearly better for the kids.”
“Was Debora still saying things to you that indicated her unhappiness with the divorce . . . ?” Morrison asked.
“She expressed feelings of unhappiness all along, yes.”
“Going into the future—did those activities with her continue?”
“They clearly improved for a period of time.”
“Did they get bad again?”
“They did toward the end. Just before the fire, her behavior started to deteriorate again—although I never saw her as drunk as she was before.”
Morrison then led Mike through the most difficult portion of his testimony; step by step through the weekend before the fire, and, finally, the events of Monday, October 23.
His last evening with Tim and Kelly had been a good one, Mike testified. The hockey game had been one of Tim’s best. “Tim was in a great mood,” he said. “He was very pumped up from the game. He played a great game. The coach came out and complimented him. He said, ‘He played out of his head. This is the greatest game I’ve seen this kid play!’ He was in a great mood on the way home—he was laughing and joking and he and I had a wonderful time.”
“How was Kelly acting that night?”
“Fine. She was in a good mood—like she always was.”
“Happy little girl?” Morrison asked. Few observers knew that Morrison was the father of three children exactly the same age as Tim, Lissa, and Kelly were—or would have been. He could not allow himself to make comparisons, but at this stage of his questioning, it was hard not to.
“Happy little girl,” Mike agreed.
“What time did you get home?”
“About eight-forty-five.”
There had been better evenings in the house on Canterbury Court, and there certainly had been worse. Mike testified that he had stayed only about five minutes—long enough to glance through his mail and talk to Lissa. Debora seemed uninterested and vaguely annoyed that he was there. But she wasn’t in a rage. There was no yelling or swearing. Mike had said good night to his children and walked out into the blustery, cold wind.
He had no warning that he would never see two of them again.
Mike identified pictures of Tim and Kelly as they had been in life, school photographs taken just two months before their deaths. He had fixed Kelly’s hair for her picture, and he blinked hard at the memory, managing to keep his composure. And now, for the first time, Debora wiped tears from her eyes.
33
After lunch that Monday, Dennis Moore rose to cross-examine Mike. He needed to rehabilitate his client and he had his work cut out for him. Moore wanted to show that Mike was less than a perfect husband.
“You said the marriage was not happy—there was no mutual respect? There was a lack of care and compassion? Is that right?”
“That’s correct.”
“You said basically that was one-sided on Debora Green’s part. Is that what you testified?”
“I said that most of it was on her part.”
“Are you perfect?”
“No, obviously, I’m not, counselor.”
“Did you contribute, do you think, in any way to the lack of care and compassion in the marriage and the lack of mutual respect?”
“I’m sure, as in any marriage, I did.”
Moore stressed how often Mike had been away from the house, working long hours; how, in the final three weeks, he had been completely absent. He was obviously going to paint Mike as a bad father, as well as a bad husband. He derided Mike’s decision not to tell Debora he wanted a divorce until after the Peru trip.
“So that trip was extremely important to you, wasn’t it?” Moore prodded.
“Well, I think to all three of us it was.”
“But you were willing to basically live a lie to keep the trip going, weren’t you?”
Mike would not back down. “I thought it was reasonable to postpone announcing the divorce.”
“You said Debora Green, on occasion, threw horrendous tantrums—she used foul and abusive language?”
“That is correct.”
“Did you ever use foul and abusive language?”
“Sure I did.”
“In your relationship with Debora Green?”
“Sure.”
“So it’s not, again, all one-sided, is it?”
“No. But I think hers was much more to the extreme.”
Moore elicited testimony from Mike that suggested that Debora’s physical attacks were directed against herself, not others. She had hit her head with a book and her thighs with her fists. No, she had not hit Mike with a book.
“Did she ever hit Tim or Lissa or Kelly with a book?”
“I don’t recall seeing her do that.”
Moore then moved on to Mike’s difficulties with his son. “You didn’t have a great relationship with Tim Farrar, did you?” he asked.
“Not recently—not the last few months.”
“The last few months before his death on October twenty-fourth?”
“Yes . . .”
“You testified he was angry and upset when you left in January of 1994—the first separation?”
“That is correct.”
“And presumably he became happier when you came home?”
“He did,” Mike answered. “And that initial anger was fairly short-lived.”
“And he was angry again at you for the last several months before his death. Isn’t that correct?”
“The last couple of months.”
“He was angry at you when you went to Peru, wasn’t he?”
“I don’t know that that is true.”
“Didn’t he tell you, in fact, that he didn’t like you going around with your dick hanging out after Celeste Walker?”
“After he heard it from Debora, yes.”
Mike could not deny that his son had been disappointed and angry when he asked Debora for a divorce the second time,
and he didn’t try. He braced for what he knew was coming.
“Were you ever violent in your relationship with him?” Moore asked.
“Unfortunately, yes. I was.”
“Tell me about that, sir.”
“One time,” Mike said, “when he was particularly obnoxious—it was a particularly awful evening—I grabbed him and pushed him to the floor and held him. And then he used very foul and abusive language and I hauled him into the other room. And as I was hauling him—it was pitch black in the room—he let out a punch and hit me in the nose.”
“Did you, in fact, push his head against the wallboard and knock a hole in the wall?”
“Not his head,” Mike Farrar said. “I held him up against the wallboard and knocked a hole in the wall.”
“Was that the same occasion when Tim hit you in the face?”
“No, that was a different occasion.”
Moore jumped on that, stressing that there had been violence between Mike and his son on at least three occasions.
“He broke your nose?” Moore asked.
“He did.”
Once that point was established, Moore began to ask questions about the activities that might have caused Mike’s puzzling illnesses.
“Did you, in fact, Dr. Farrar, swim in the Amazon?”
“I did swim in the Amazon.”
“And did you, in fact, eat meals and food prepared by local people in Peru?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Including fruits?”
“Yes, that’s probably how we got the traveler’s diarrhea.”
The defense was using a scattershot technique, switching from topic to topic, working deftly to hit Mike where he might be the weakest. “And you said she said horrible vile things to your children—such as ‘Your father is out fucking three women’. . . was it true what she said?”
Morrison objected that this was irrelevant to the case at hand.
“Overruled.”
“Was it true?” Mike repeated. “No, it wasn’t true.”
