by Ann Rule
“The fitness room is below the living room on the main floor,” Morrison said. “Was the floor of the living room still intact or was it gone?”
“The floor in the living room—the subfloor—was burned away and all that was left of the floor and structure were the floor joists.”
“Now, my next question is, What room is above the living room?”
“It would be a bedroom that belonged to—to my understanding—to Tim.”
“Was there any floor left other than joists between the two rooms?”
“No, there was not.”
“In other words, Tim’s floor was gone. . . . Did you find some other things down there—either in the basement or on the joists in the living room that had fallen down from Tim’s bedroom?”
“Yes, we did. Bed parts and furniture debris. Clothing.”
One more slide appeared; this time, the gallery recognized what it depicted. Hudson explained to the judge: “This photograph was taken in the fitness room and it’s showing another human foot that was found in the debris in that fitness room.”
“So you found two feet?” Morrison asked.
“Yes.”
As the horrifying handful of slides showing the damage done to Tim’s body ended, Debora was escorted back into the room. She half-smiled at Moore as she took her seat.
The direct examination continued; Hudson explained how his origin and cause team had made its way through the house to determine the origin of the fire. On the screen, the foyer of the house appeared.
“What’s significant to you as a fire investigator about what you see in that picture?” Morrison asked.
“There were several significant things just inside the front door,” Hudson said. “First of all, the floor in the foyer had varying degrees of damage . . . You could see the floor had been subjected to some significant heat down very low. There was a pattern on that floor that told me it was subjected to different temperatures right next to each other. That’s an indicator of a liquid accelerant being poured on the floor. And that [pattern] ties into the wood that’s around the stairs and the baseboard to the right and left of those stairs.”
“Right here?” Morrison pointed to a portion of the slide.
“Yes,” Hudson said. “Very heavy char. A lot of fire damage down low . . . Going up the stairway, you can see the back portions of the stairs—the risers, if you will—were burned away on the back portions, indicating a significant amount of heat right in that area. That’s also consistent with low burn and a liquid accelerant being on that area.”
“So if we had a fire going up on that stairway, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to get out if you were upstairs?”
“Yes,” Hudson said quietly. “That’s correct.”
The slides clicked again and there was Kelly’s little-girl bedroom. Her body was not there, but the imprint left behind on the bedding was almost harder to contemplate. All eyes in the room gravitated automatically toward Debora. She seemed to have regained her composure.
Past the foyer and the stairs leading up to the children’s bedrooms, there was more liquid accelerant: “The pour pattern was continuous,” Hudson said. “The pour pattern extended around from the stairs, along the floor, into the room on the left where the piano is, and then right into the hallway. Again, we have a very low burning in this area.” The flames were most intense around the legs of the piano, which had collapsed.
“In a normal room fire,” Hudson continued, now discussing the formal dining room, “you would be able to reconstruct the room by placing the burned parts of the furniture back in place, but, in this case, that furniture was not there. This is indicative of a very hot, very rapidly moving fire. Something was put on that furniture or underneath that furniture to make it burn rapidly.” Hudson said a single cup of liquid accelerant tossed on the hard surface of even a large table would have sufficed.
By now, the lopsided pour patterns were clear even to neophytes. It was as if someone had taken a marker pencil and drawn a line around every spot where the arsonist had splashed accelerant on floors and furniture. For comparison, Hudson presented slides that showed even burning in the areas where the arson investigators had found no pour patterns. “This left part of this slide shows even burning across the floor. That’s what you would see when you have even heat placed across the surface, where you don’t have those splotchy patterns.”
Morrison returned to the living room, where furniture and clothing from Tim’s room clung to charred, half-gone joists. “Now I see over here some floor joists that appear to be cut,” he said. “Is that due to the fire?”
“No, it’s not. That’s something that was done by the engine crews that were there.”
“Why did they do that?”
“To remove a body that was located in that portion of the great room.”
“Whose body was that?”
“That was Tim’s body. . . . Tim’s body was supported by those two floor joists. They had to remove the joists to remove the body.”
Debora made no move to leave the courtroom this time. Ellen’s head bent near hers, obviously whispering words of comfort.
Hudson continued to describe the huge “pool” of accelerant that had stoked the blaze so the living room floor burned through. How long, one wondered, had the arsonist moved through the house, sprinkling, dumping, pouring accelerant? What kind of rage or hysteria could have compelled someone to do this, knowing that three children slept above?
Jeff Hudson had wondered about those questions too, but now he was the complete professional as he described the accelerant-saturated rooms along the hallway that led from the living room. And then, finally, he reached the end of the “trailer.” The long “wick” of accelerant had led to the door of the master bedroom, the room where Debora said she had been sleeping. A new slide showed that door.
“What does that depict?” Morrison asked.
“. . . the door to the master bedroom. This is prior to debris removal. You can see the debris covering the bottom part of that door, just as it was found.”
“What’s that tell you?”
“That tells me the position of that door during the fire.” The door had, according to Hudson, been open. Yet Debora had said that when the alarm woke her up, she had opened the bedroom door and then immediately slammed it shut because there was so much smoke.
Three things convinced Hudson that the door had been open and that the fire had led right up to it. The debris, first; and second, the fire pattern. “It shows . . . the fire right there at floor level in that door, and you can see the pattern starting at the lower right portion of the door. It goes up and out in that ‘V’ or arrow, showing that the heat came up and out from that hall area and it was moving through that doorway.”
But there was a third factor, one perhaps easier for a layperson to understand. When the debris was cleared, and the origin and cause investigators were able to open the door a little wider, they found a clean area on the carpet—a clean area the size and shape of the bottom of the door. In that thin bright strip of carpet was the proof that Debora’s door had been open during the fire.
Hudson testified that all the pour patterns were connected, from the kitchen to the dining room to the entryway; to the stairs up to the children’s bedrooms; to the living room; to the hallway, music room, den, and finally the master bedroom. The slide on the screen now showed charring in one single drawer of the vanity in the master bath. “That is a separate distinct fire of its own,” Hudson explained. “That’s a good photograph of how a fire starts and burns up and out. You can see the vanity to the left and to the right is undamaged by fire.”
“Mr. Hudson,” Morrison asked, “did you form an opinion as to whether or not this fire was intentionally set?”
“Yes.”
“What is that opinion?”
“That it was intentionally set . . . that there were liquid accelerants used to accelerate this fire.”
At the end of his long direct testimony, Hudso
n summed up: there had been “two big fires” and “two small fires.” The big fires had been set by someone in the doorway of the master bedroom who lit the trailer’s wick.
In cross-examining Hudson, Kevin Moriarty obviously intended to suggest that he had been influenced by conversations with other firefighters and with policemen, which might have tended to prejudice him toward an arson verdict. Hudson’s bearing and obvious expertise quickly closed off that avenue. Moriarty then offered other scenarios that might have been responsible for the tell-tale patterns Hudson found. Perhaps cleaning solvent had been left after the carpets were professionally cleaned? Perhaps some portion of the house that was already on fire had fallen on the carpet and created the appearance that liquids had pooled there? Perhaps the “chimney effect” had caused the rapid burning Hudson had observed?
Arson investigation has its rules and its proven theories; none of Moriarty’s diversionary tactics impressed Hudson. But most of all, Moriarty wanted to sway Hudson from his position that the door to the master bedroom had been open when the fire started.
It was a valiant effort, but Hudson knew fire and he knew arson, and this cross-examination was akin to attempting to sway Einstein from his belief in the theory of relativity. Unfailingly attentive and pleasant, sometimes baffled by the defense questions, Hudson was unmovable. He knew exactly how the fire on Canterbury Court had been started. He cited even more evidence that proved that the door to Debora’s bedroom had been open during the fire. He pointed out that the top of the door would not have been charred had the door been closed. He showed the pattern of a fire traveling into the bedroom through a doorway, not across a closed door.
Moriarty asked Hudson what had become of the containers that would have held the liquid accelerant. It was difficult to say, Hudson replied. He had found what might have been a melted container in the breakfast area of the kitchen.
On redirect, Morrison asked Hudson about that object. A white circle less than a foot across, it could well have been the white plastic of a milk bottle or some similar container, Hudson said; no one could tell for sure. All they could do was speculate that someone had emptied a white plastic container of some liquid and set it on the floor of the breakfast room. Hudson could not say definitely what had been in that container—if, indeed, it had been a container.
Some containers would have virtually dissolved in the inferno; others—a liquor bottle, a perfume bottle—might have remained intact. The arsonist could even have removed the containers from the house before lighting the trailer. This was a puzzle, one that would never be solved.
“Even with all your experience, education, and training,” Morrison said, ending his intense questioning of Hudson, “you cannot tell us who started the fire, other than you believe the fire was started. Is that correct?”
“That’s correct.”
No, Jeff Hudson could not prove who had started the horrific fire. But he had followed the trailer of that fire to the open door of the master bedroom, and he had a private opinion concerning who had lit the match that started fire racing up the hall, into the rooms beside it, into the entryway and dining room, and finally up the stairs to block the children’s escape. “I didn’t look at Ms. Green while I was testifying,” he would recall months later. “But when I was done and leaving the courtroom, I looked right at her. I wanted her to know that I knew exactly what had happened. And no matter what she said to anybody else, she and I knew exactly what happened.”
Debora must have been aware of Hudson’s penetrating blue eyes staring at her. She moved her head slightly and looked directly at him as he stepped down from the witness chair and walked to the door. It was over in mere moments, but Hudson felt he had gotten his silent message across.
38
There was a good chance that the State would finish presenting its witnesses and evidence by the end of this frigid Wednesday in Olathe. Now, the Prairie Village detectives and the criminalists would follow each other to the witness chair.
Gary Baker was first. He had accompanied Mike to the lab at the Shawnee Mission Medical center, and kept the blood sample obtained there until he gave it to Lieutenant Gary Dirks. But Baker’s testimony chiefly concerned his assignment to go to the site of a burning house on Canterbury Court. When he got there, it was about 2:30; the fire was out, the chill air was full of smoke and steam. Sergeant Steve Hunter had briefed Baker and told him they had found two fatalities.
“Did you have occasion to view the bodies of the two child fatalities of that fire?” Morrison asked.
“Yes, sir,” Baker said.
Again, Debora was on her feet, asking to be excused. The proceedings paused while once again Ellen led her from the courtroom.
“Where were the two bodies located?” Morrison asked as the door clicked shut behind the defendant.
“The first body was located about fifteen to twenty feet directly inside the front door. The second body was located in a northeast bedroom on the upper level.”
A slide, “State’s Exhibit 15–5,” lit the screen.
“Can you identify that for us?”
“Yes, sir,” Baker said. “As you can see in the middle there, you’ll see a large iron daybed-type frame there. And then, just to the left of that, this is the body of Tim Farrar. . . . As you can see, there’s no floor underneath. It’s completely burnt out except for the joists, and Tim’s body was resting on the floor joists there.”
Another slide, so upsetting that most of the gallery looked away, showed Tim from the weight room below the floor beams where his body was caught.
It was so senseless. In all likelihood, Tim could easily have leaped onto the roof outside his bedroom window and dropped to the backyard. Why had his mother told him to stay inside? Had he tried to find his little sister, as she instructed, and never made it back to that window? It was hard to cope with the thought that this was the boy who, only hours before his fiery death, had been so gleeful about his hockey game.
Slide 15–7 was a picture of Kelly. She lay in her bed as if only asleep, on her back, her knees slightly drawn up. The covers were still tucked around her. She had gone to bed and never awakened.
Dennis Moore’s cross-examination dealt with when Baker had first heard Debora Green named as a suspect.
“The day after the fire,” Baker answered. “I heard Dr. Farrar, Debora Green—and Tim Farrar’s name also came up.”
Yes, Baker agreed that the Metro Squad met each morning to discuss the case, but he was not familiar with all the tips and theories that had come in. “The tips that came in were assigned to the lead officer, and the lead officer assigned the tips out to various detectives who were assigned to the squad.”
Lieutenant Gary Dirks of the Johnson County Criminalistics Laboratory testified to the intact chain of evidence—the evidence being the exemplars of Mike’s blood and the single packet of castor beans—that had been sent to Drew Richardson at the FBI lab.
Detective Rod Smith was next. He had spent the critical hours after the fire interviewing Debora. She had seemed to like him at first; in the end, he had been the target of her wrath. Blond and affable, Smith was about to introduce the most startling evidence of this preliminary hearing: the videotape of his and Detective Greg Burnetta’s interview with Debora, which took place about three and a half hours after she had rung her neighbors’ doorbell and told them to call “111.”
“Was Debora Green in custody at that time?” Morrison asked.
“No.”
“And was she informed that she was not under arrest?”
“Yes.”
“Was she informed whether or not she had the right to leave or not? In other words, that she was free to go at any time? Did she understand or at least relate to you that she understood what you were telling her?”
“Yes.”
“What about her coherence? Did she appear to be under the influence of alcohol or drugs at that time?”
“To me—no.”
“And how long d
id the interview last?”
“The first part of it lasted approximately fifty minutes, and then there was a short break and about ten more minutes after that.”
Morrison prepared to show the videotape of the interview but, as he’d expected, Moore objected—first on the ground that it was not relevant and second because, after this preliminary hearing, the defense intended to file a motion to suppress the tape. The attorneys moved forward to hold a sidebar discussion with Judge Ruddick. From their gestures and the intensity on their faces, it was clear that this was, perhaps, the most important argument of the hearing.
Moore noted that Judge Ruddick had already seen the tape, and he did not want to risk its being seen by the public for fear they would never get an unprejudiced jury. That was problematic. There were reporters in the courtroom, and there were reporters one floor down who could view the tape on closed-circuit TV. In the end, Judge Ruddick ruled that the videotape was relevant; it would be shown in the courtroom, but could not be broadcast through the news media. “The fact of the matter is—if we do it my way,” the judge explained, “somebody that is clever enough can recite the whole thing in the paper if they want, but it would shield the public from an electronic broadcast of this tape. The text of what is said is going to be available. I just won’t let it be broadcast.”
The camera in the media room downstairs was pointed away from the television screens there. The camera in the courtroom was turned off. Those fortunate enough to be in the courtroom already, and the reporters watching on the closed-circuit television sets downstairs were about to hear and see Debora’s interview with detectives. To retain as much of it as possible would not really be a matter of being “clever”; it would depend on who could write fast enough to capture Debora’s words in scrawled sentence fragments on yellow legal pads. And that, of course, meant that they would be unable to watch the screen to study her body language and facial expressions as she talked to detectives. Quick trade-off arrangements were made among reporters. Some agreed to compare notes; others did not. About to embark on a peculiar kind of race, they sat, pens poised, as the tape began. For over an hour, there was no sound in the courtroom but the voices of Rod Smith and Debora Green, with an occasional word or two from Greg Burnetta and Lieutenant Terry Young. It was as bizarre an interview as any reporter there had seen. Those assigned to capture the “text” listened and wrote, with only brief opportunities to look at the woman on the screen as she twisted and turned in her chair, tucking her bare feet beneath her. She laughed and chatted easily with Rod Smith, the sound of her merry voice in stark contrast to the proceedings. Occasionally, with their curiosity overwhelming them, the reporters glanced quickly at Debora, the three-dimensional woman in the courtroom, to check her reaction to the shadow Debora on the television screen.
