True Crime Campfire - A Mother's Hate: The Crimes of Debora Green, Pt 2

Episode Date: May 5, 2023

In March of 1996, a cat named Scarlett made national news when she ran into a burning building five separate times to rescue her kittens. She sustained severe burns to her paws, she was blinded by the heat and smoke, and her whiskers had burned, but that didn’t stop her. Again and again, she faced danger to save her babies and after her task was completed, she touched each kitten with her nose, counting them all, making sure they were all safe. Scarlett is probably the platonic ideal of motherhood. Despite immense pain and immense danger, she sacrificed herself to save her babies. Last week, we began to tell you the story of a mother who was not so ideal. Who at the same time that Scarlett was saving her kittens, would be under investigation for arson and the murder of her children. Join us for part 2 of the chilling story of Dr. Debora Green, a brilliant but troubled doctor who ultimately chose her own desire for revenge over the lives of her family. Sources:Bitter Harvest by Ann RuleMurderpedia, various articles: https://murderpedia.org/female.G/g/green-debora.htmForensic Files, episode "Tennis and Madness" Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.com/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. In March of 1996, a cat named Scarlett made national news when she ran into a burning building five separate times to rescue her kittens. She sustained severe burns to her paws, she was blinded by the heat and smoke, and her whiskers had burned, but that didn't stop her. Again and again, she faced danger to save her babies, and after her task was completed, she touched each kitten

with her nose, counting them all, making sure they were all safe. Scarlett is probably the platonic ideal of motherhood. Despite immense pain and immense danger, she sacrificed herself to save her babies. Last week, we began to tell you the story of a mother who was not so ideal, who at the same time that Scarlett was saving her kittens would be under investigation for arson and the murder of her children. Join us now for part two of A Mother's Hate, the Crimes of Dr. Deborah Green. Please note that this episode contains discussion of the death of animals and children. Listen at your discretion. So, campers, when we left you at the end of part one, Mike Ferrar was searching through his soon-to-be ex-wife Deborah's stuff,

looking for anything she might use to hurt herself. In her purse, he found a dozen packets of castor beans. A caster plants aren't uncommon in Kansas. They grow fast, they have very leafy foliage, and they're perfect, for the region. The seeds are poisonous and contain a compound called ricin, which is so gnarly that in some countries it's listed as a weapon of mass destruction. When consumed, ricin can cause stomach pain, dizziness, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle weakness, and seizures, not to mention grim and very unpleasant death. Some of these symptoms probably sound unfamiliar right about now, right?

Like exactly what Mike Ferrar had just gone through months before? Yeah. So Mike wasn't sure what to make of this discovery, but his inner alarm bells were clanging. He also found a receipt for the castor beans from August 7th, a few empty vials of potassium chloride, along with some syringes, and a handwritten note. Now, I know some of y'all's eyebrows hit the ceiling at potassium chloride. This stuff is often used to help patients suffering from dehydration to balance out their electrolytes, but if you give it in excess, it can cause what essentially amounts to a heart attack. This was notable because Deborah had been in charge of administering the nutrients to Mike's

pick line when he got home from the hospital. If she wanted him dead, it would be as simple as injecting him with that potassium chloride along with the rest of the nutrients. Maybe she had been. The pick line wasn't doing its job and wasn't flowing, so he had the doctor take it out after a few days. Maybe it wasn't flowing right because somebody had been injecting potassium chloride into it. We don't know. Anyway, as for the note he found, it was a carbon copy of one that he'd found in his mailbox earlier that summer. The note, which was clearly supposed to look like it was written by another parent from Tim and Kate's school, wanted Mike to know that divorcing Deborah would ruin the kids' social lives.

They wouldn't be invited to parties, and worst of all, the girls wouldn't be eligible to be Botars. Oh, Lord. Okay, quick sidebar discussion. I know what you're thinking, but no, Botar isn't some kind of Pokemon that eventually evolves into a Botox. Botar stands for the Bells of the American Royal, which is the Kansas City version of like a debutante ball. Yeah, only 20 girls from Kansas City get picked each year, and Deborah had been obsessed about both Kelly and Kate, breathing the rarefied air of the Kansas City elite as bells. From what I can tell, it's like a club where the smartest, prettiest, richest, richest, whitest girls can be smart, pretty rich and white altogether. In other words, the Botars are the children of the Botox.

God, the things people fixate on in this life, I just cannot. So, anywho, the letter made Mike suspicious right out the gate. It was typed, and the font looked an awful lot like the one from their home computer. Yes, kids, this was the 90s. Before computers came with a billion fonts. So Mike figured Deborah wrote the dumb-ass thing. This handwritten copy he found in her purse was probably a first draft. really carefully crafting her argument there, you know. Join me in an eye roll, won't you?

Now, at this point, Mike didn't realize that Deborah suspected his affair with Margaret from the Peru trip. If he had, he might have had more of a sense of urgency about all this stuff, but as we've seen before, it can take people a long time to face the truth about the danger they're in from their partners, even in the face of terrifying evidence like this. But Mike did know that Deborah was coming apart at the seams pretty good. One afternoon, Kate called him at work in a panic. She told him that her mom had the flu again. Which is what Deborah would always tell her kids when she was sloshed.

Brew flu, more like. Anyway, poor little Kate couldn't wake her mama up and she was terrified. Mike rushed home to find Deborah passed out next to an empty handle of gin. He took the kids over to a sister's house for the night and then went back to the house to tend to Deborah. Except she was nowhere to be found. He looked everywhere. Her car was still there, so thank God she wasn't driving. But he was still troubled that he couldn't find her.

Deborah had no real friends. She didn't have family in town. She had nowhere to go. Mike tried to get some sleep, but couldn't. Eventually, Margaret called him. They talked about his marriage and their affair, and then they said good night. Soon after that, the phone rang again.

It was Deborah. Despite being blackout drunk, couple hours before, she sounded stone, cold, sober now. He said, where are you? As if you cared, Deborah said, it doesn't matter. Somewhere I can think. And then she hung up again. She called about ten more times, each call more enigmatic and taunting than the last. On her final call, she said, Mike, you think you have secrets, but you don't have any secrets. You're so stupid and transparent. I know everything about you. Before she could go on, Mike hung up again. Good for him. Should have ripped the damn phone out of the wall after call number two.

Yeah, well, get this creepy shit. Later, Deborah admitted that she'd been hiding in the house that whole time, under a bed in the guest room in the basement, calling from the kid's phone line. She'd been there the whole time, listening as Mike frantically searched for her, listening as he spoke with his mistress. And maybe, as she sat in the dark, dialing her home phone number over and over again, Deborah's thought started taking shape. Maybe she already had an inkling.

After all, the true crime book she'd been reading all summer were full of blood and guts. Deborah had failed at being a doctor. She failed at her duties as a housewife. She would not let her marriage be another failure. Deborah knew for sure about the affair now, and needless to say, she was supremely unhappy. So after Mike found the castor beans,

he asked Deborah what they were for. She told him that she was going to plant them. Yeah. Right. This woman had never planted a single flower in her life, and now she had a dozen packets of castor beans and only castor beans. And caster plants are usually planted in the spring, not the end of summer. Mike called her out, and then she said, oh, well, fine.

I was going to use them to kill myself. This, along with her continuous erratic behavior, freaked Mike right out. He called a Ritzie Mental Health Hospital and took her. Pika to see what he needed to do to get her committed. Mike had seen what suicide can do to a family. That summer, Margaret's husband David had taken his own life after she asked for a divorce. His death had devastated her. It had devastated their sons. And Mike was going to do everything in his power to make sure his kids didn't lose their mom. The day of the confrontation, Deb drank herself sloppy. She screamed at Mike and her behavior was scaring the kids. So Mike called 911 and the

dispatcher sent over a patrol car. When the officers got there, they found Mike outside with Tim, Kelly, and Kate, all four of them in tears, which is just heartbreaking. Mike told the officers that his wife had been binge drinking for days and was threatening suicide. He told them that he had found the potassium chloride and castra beans and believed that Deborah planned to use them on herself. Just Mike, she's using them on you, my man. When the officers went to the main bedroom to talk to Deborah, the smell of booze hit him like a semi-exam. truck, and when they told her that her husband had called for them, she absolutely lost it. She called Mike an asshole and a fuckhole. Wow. And she was screaming so loud that they were sure

the kids could hear every word. They talked to her for like an hour and eventually decided she needed to be brought in. Deborah, of course, tried to argue. She was drunk, sure, but that's not illegal, and why on earth would she kill herself? She told them, I have three beautiful children here, and I don't want to do anything to leave them. Eventually, they can her to comply and allowed her to say goodbye to the kids. Before she left, Kelly, sweet, sweet little Kelly was trying to comb her mama's hair so she'd look presentable. Mama's youngest little soldier. And this whole time, instead of reassuring the kids, Deborah was just telling him that this was all Mike's fault. This was all because of him. She is the worst. When they got to the hospital,

Deborah was evaluated by an old colleague of hers, Dr. Pamela McCoy. McCoy's perspective on Deborah is fascinating because it really shows Deborah's ability to project different personalities to different people. McCoy was obviously surprised to see somebody she knew and promised to use discretion. None of Deborah's former colleagues would have to know anything about this. She thought Deborah seemed sober, and when she was asked why she was brought in, Deborah told her that she'd had half a bottle of wine and her husband accused her being drunk and out of control.

The doctor said that Deborah looked unkempt and that she was possibly depressed, but she really wasn't sure if she was suicidal or endangered anybody else. Deborah kept insisting that Mike was just railroading her. McCoy had started to empathize with Deborah, and it pretty much decided that she wasn't actually eligible for an involuntary hold when suddenly

Mike Ferrar walked into the hospital, and Deborah, who had up to this point, seemed completely calm and rational, just did a complete 180. She spat at him, called him a fuckhole repeatedly, and started lunging toward her husband. Dr. McCoy had to physically hold her back. As Deborah was struggling to get it, Mike, she snarled, You're going to get these kids over our dead bodies.

You're going to get these kids over our dead bodies. Wow. So McCoy took Mike in for an interview and left Deborah in the hospital room. In her interview with crime writer Anne Rule, who's book, was one of our main sources for this case. Dr. McCoy said she didn't want to humiliate Deborah by having the hospital police officer watch her while she interviewed Mike, which bad idea, but okay. Also, can we just talk for a second about fuckhole? I can't let it pass. I'm sorry. Now, don't get me wrong, y'all. Y'all know I like filth in its place. I'm actually a bit

of a connoisseur. I know some of y'all love it about me and some of y'all hate it, but it's part of my charm, okay? But fuckhole was a new one on me, and my verdict is, ew, no. I'm just, I'm going to pass way too visually evocative. Yeah. It's not one of my favorites. But our girl Deborah freaking loved it. It was like her favorite thing to call Mike. Oh my God.

Yeah. It's just yucky. It's like she just dragged the bottom of the barrel and found the yuckiest possible word. Yes. Now, for some reason, Dr. McCoy was pretty skeptical of Mike's story about his wife hiding in the house and making menacing phone calls and stowing away packets of poisonous seeds and vials of potassium chloride. In fact, she was like, well, I mean, Deborah's an oncologist, so that's something she would use. Oh, my God. I know.

This woman is so fucking oblivious. Deborah isn't a working oncologist anymore. You would know this if you didn't keep treating her with kid gloves. Oh, my God. Finally, Dr. McCoy called Tim and asked him about his mother's demeanor. He told her, she's been very sad and very upset lately. She hadn't got out of bed in several days, just been lying around. He told her he'd been hiding her bottles of liquor from her so she couldn't keep drinking.

Dr. McCoy was a little confused. Deborah had seemed so normal, so rational, but there were now two witnesses, one pretty unbiased in Tim, telling her that Deborah was showing signs of depression and would likely need to be committed. This is something we hear over and over again in this case. Deborah's ability to manipulate others' perceptions of her is up there with Ted Bundy's, and that's not an exaggeration. No, absolutely. Yeah, there are people in this story who would say Deborah was a helpless baby

while she was actively terrorizing her family. No. Her child was hiding liquor from her. Her child was brushing her hair. Meanwhile, she made ricin as methodically poisoning her husband. Deborah is many things, but she's not a fucking victim. hell no and i will die on that hill i don't feel a bit sorry for this woman and i've seen like the odd you know review of anne rule's book where people are like well i'm like oh no just mm-mm

don't try it on me i don't care what she's going through she flippant set her kids on fire that is absolutely not okay evil yeah she's the worst now were you clutching your pearls when whitney said that mccoy didn't think deborah needed a babysitter because you should have been yeah because when McCoy went to go find her, Deborah had flown the coop. Eventually, the police were able to locate Deborah several miles away from the hospital. She told the police that she wanted to be home. As she was driven back to the hospital, Deborah's calm demeanor cracked and she started melting down. She told the officer that he was making her suicidal because it was taking her so long to get committed.

When it was all said and done, Mike had given the police Deborah's suicide kit and returned, and returned home to his children. With Deborah gone being diagnosed with bipolar depression, Mike told Anne Rule that he and the kids got along swimmingly. He bought a book on a hairstyle so he could do Kate and Kelly's hair, and even his strained relationship with Tim improved immensely without Deborah playing Iago. Wow, a Shakespeare reference. I'm impressed. What? I'm not allowed to make dick jokes and Shakespeare references?

I have layers, okay? Plus, as we always say, we're English major. If we don't get one Shakespeare reference in per year, we both get our licenses revoked. Anyway, it was around this time that Mike finally started piecing together the evidence of his poisoning. Perhaps it was the distance away from his abuser, but the cold realization hit him that his illness could have been ricin. Like any doctor, he dove into research, and by the time he presented the evidence to his medical team, he was sure. Deborah had poisoned him. He requested a test, and his doctors told him. him that while he may be right about the poisoning, rice and antibodies don't form right

away. It was only a few weeks from his last illness, so they would have to wait to run the tests on his blood. This was the final straw for Mike. When Deborah got back from the hospital in the first week of October, he packed his bags and left. It wasn't safe for him to be in the house anymore, not if his wife was poisoning him. Plus, he thought that if he was away, Deborah would have a harder time railing up the kids and alienating them from him. Deborah seemed to love the kids so much. It never even occurred to him that she might hurt them. He genuinely believed that her four days at the hospital had changed her attitude. He hadn't seen her drinking, and she was downright polite to him. She was, however, still drinking and taking every chance she could to put

the kids in the middle of their arguments. Deborah had even gone as far as getting a lawyer for the divorce, a woman named Ellen Ryan, who, like Dr. McCoy, seems to have severely infantilized Deborah for some reason. She thought Deborah was a helpless little baby who didn't even understand money, just I'd like to remind y'all that Deborah was a doctor, okay, who went to school to become a doctor who previously wanted to be an engineer, both careers that require a pretty good understanding of math. And I'm not saying you can't be bad with money and be a doctor. I'm saying Deborah wasn't. Okay, Deborah is a certified genius with a resume to prove it. Yeah, I get the impression that Deborah went out of her way to give other women the sense that she was just this weak little woman being victimized by an evil. controlling husband. Ellen told Anne Rule, I think I really thought of her as a child as a little baby who needed to be held and comforted. She seemed so lost and so confused. Meanwhile, like the men

she got close to were almost always like, yo, this bitch is crazy. But like, I guess I get where the women were coming from to an extent, because you do see bad men invalidating women like that all the time, like saying she's crazy. Like, you know, I would actually say when a guy, talks about all his ex-girlfriends, oh, they're all crazy. That's a red flag. Because a lot of very non-crazy women get labeled like that by the asshole men who treated them like garbage. But the problem is, you can't think of this shit in black and white terms because sometimes, even if it's only once in a while, the bitch really do be crazy. Okay? Sometimes it's just the truth. I hate to say it. Deborah Green was certainly not a powerless

housewife here. And it's not like she was going to come out of this divorce with Nesson either. There's a very good chance that as a stay-at-home mom, she'd be getting alimony, she'd be getting child support, and she was a trained doctor for God's sake. She could go back to work and make good money any time she wanted. On October 21st, Tim had a soccer game. Mike went, and while he was on the sidelines, Deborah walked up to him and trying to hand him a thermos. She said, here, Tim made this cappuccino for you, be a good father, and drink it. Uh, okay, what? Something about her tone just hit Mike's ears.

wrong and he was like no that's okay you you have it but debor insisted she said nah nah I've already had one but Mike was already pretty much convinced by this point that she poisoned him so the chances of him taking any food and drink from her was precisely zero she seemed annoyed by that and walked back to her car with the drink in her hand and Mike kicked himself later for not taking it and getting a test and oh that is like the one thing that I just that is the one detail in this case I think that makes me the most upset that that opportunity got missed Because I bet you if he had done that, there it would have been, the ricin, and that would have been that.

Oh, totally. And I think in his mind, he was so scared of her that he was like, get it away from me, get it away from me, get it away from him. So I don't blame him. But it was one of those things that I think later he was like, yo, I should have. But like, I'm sure he was like, oh, fuck. No, no, no, no. Like a minute later. I think he realized it as soon as he saw her walking away with it.

And she probably poured it out right next to her car and everything. But yeah, it's a horrible missed opportunity. So anyway, that brings us to where we're going to where we started this story, which is the night of the fire. On Monday, October 23rd, Mike picked Tim and Kelly up from the family home at around 6.30 because Tim had a hockey game. Kate was at ballet practice,

rehearsing for the role of Clara in the Nutcracker, and Deborah was at therapy, so Mike was looking forward to spending time with at least two of his kids without any interference. Tim played an incredible game that night. By the time they were driving home at around 8.30, Tim, Mike, and Kelly were all laughing

and just having a great time. He walked both of his kids into the house, house where Deborah was reheating some fried chicken for the kids' dinner. Mike grabbed some of his mail, just chatted back and forth with his kids for a while, and then left for the evening. Such a mundane thing, you know, just a night full of laughter and love and Tim playing that rock star game. And that would be the last time he would see two of his kids alive. Mike drove to Margaret's house and had dinner with her and her sons and watched football. At around 10.30 p.m., his pager went off and showed the family home number. When he called, though, Deborah told him she didn't page him, but maybe one of the kids did,

but even if they did, they're asleep, so you should probably forget about it unless you want to wake, you know, our little sleeping angels up. Mike was like, uh, okay, no, it's fine, and hung up. He thought that maybe she was just trying to figure out where he was. Five minutes later, another page came in from Deborah. He called, and she gave him some mundane news about the divorce lawyers they wanted to use. Mike was like, did you? you really need to page to tell me that at 11 p.m. She wanted to know where he was, and he told her that he was at dinner with some friends. At 1115, Mike left to go to his apartment, and while he was driving, Deborah paged him again. When he called from his home phone about 20 minutes later,

he noticed that she was slurring her words. Deborah was drinking again. This infuriated Mike. She was on meds for her bipolar disorder that would react badly with alcohol, and she was responsible for his kids. And something in Mike finally snapped. For years and years, he'd taken what Deborah had dish, her tantrums, her rage, her constant name-calling and degradation. On the phone that night, he unleashed what he'd been holding in all along. Later, he told Anne Rule, I told her I was angry with her, that she needed to buckle down and take care of the kids. I told her that there were some parents at the school who had noticed her behavior in poor parenting and were considering calling social services. I told her that she needed to get her act in gear to get all this taken care

of. Once he started, he couldn't stop. I told her I thought she was crazy. I told her I thought she needed continued psychiatric care. I told her I knew she was poisoning me and I told her I was going to try to take the kids away from her. Later, after one of them, hung up in rage, Mike remembered the silence of the empty apartment. He could only hear his own heartbeat, the cadence of the his breath. Five minutes later, Deborah called him again. She said, oh, I didn't know your home. I thought you were still out driving around. I really did not want to talk to you. I just wanted to leave a message on the machine. And since you're home, I'm not going to say anything. And she hung up. Less than an hour later, Mike's neighbor, Dr. Mary Foreman, would call to tell him that there was a

fire at his house. She would scream into the receiver. Your wife is a fucking arsonist. What could she have possibly wanted to say to him on voicemail? Knowing how the evening ended, I can't help but wonder if she was going to taunt him with what she was about to do. First responders arrived fast, and they did their very best to get Tim and Kelly out of the house, but the fire was too hot and moving too fast for them to save anyone. Even the family dogs, Boomer and Russell, were trapped. The police brought Mike, Deborah, and Kate in for questioning that same night. detectives Greg Burnetta and Rod Smith decided to interview Deborah first and she was in the house when the fire started.

What followed is possibly the most chilling, bizarre interview that I've ever read. There are clips of it on forensic files if you want to catch how weird it is. And Anne Rule's book, Bitter Harvest, covers it almost entirely. It's truly something else. Deborah was barefoot and still wearing that sheep nightgown. Her demeanor was calm, even lighthearted when they started the interview at four. 4 a.m. The detectives immediately noticed the smell of alcohol on her, but she seemed sober. She was immediately chatty. She asked if the fire was out and if she was talking to the police or the

fire department. And notably, she did not ask if Tim and Kelly were okay. Deborah told them that she woke up to the fire alarm, and when she opened her bedroom door, she found the hallway full of smoke. She immediately went out onto the balcony to get help. She told them, as I went around the corner to inform the neighbor, to call 911, that's when I heard Tim on the intercom by the pool deck. He used to be my 13-year-old. Oh.

Yeah, the first time I heard that, my stomach just clenched. Like, remember, at this point in the interview, her kids haven't been found yet. The house is just still on fire, and here she is referring to Tim in the past tense, and almost as if he's an object rather than a person.

He used to be my 13-year-old. This woman deserves to be tossed in a volcano. Just, ewes. but Deborah didn't seem to notice the slip-up. Tim had asked her what he should do, she said, and she told him to wait for help to arrive. When he asked if he should find Kelly and Kate and bring them out, she said no,

and then conversationally told the detectives, I'm sure that was the kiss of death. She commented on her separation from Mike in a very blaze tone, but as she kept talking, it was clear to the detectives that she was trying to dirty Mike up. She kept talking about how unfair it was

and he was leaving her and how angry the children were. She seemed to take great pleasure, recounting that Tim and Kate had both started to say, fuck you to their father. Nice, Deb, some top-tier parental alienation you got going on there, bionch. When asked why she didn't call 911 herself, she told investigators that it never occurred to her.

The smoke in the hallway made her panic. She didn't even think of finding her children. All she could do was get out. When asked about the dogs, she told detectives that they usually slept with her, but they'd both gotten into a package of coffee beans, and since she decided they weren't going to sleep, she'd put them in with the kids.

Boomer, the lab, slept with Kelly, and Kate slept with Russell, the Greyhound. It's just another example of how selfish this hosebag is. It did not ever occur to her that a parent shouldn't jeopardize their children's sleep, so it made sense in her story that the dogs wouldn't stay with her. Like, a parent would likely either put up with the dogs being awake or crate them for the night or put them outside for the night if they were bouncing off the walls.

Like I said, this interview is just bizarre. And meanwhile, the firefighters were finally in control of the flames. As they went into the house, they immediately found the burned remains of a bed frame that had fallen through the floor above. Lying next to it was the body of a teenage boy, Tim Ferrar. An autopsy would confirm that he'd most likely died of heat and smoke inhalation. In one of the bedrooms, still lying in the bed she fell asleep in,

was Little Kelly. The body of a big black lab, Boomer, was curled up underneath the bed. It didn't look like either of them had even woken up. They died of carbon monoxide poisoning, most likely, in their sleep. Small mercies, right? So sad. Meanwhile, when the detectives told Deborah that Tim and Kelly had made it out of the home, Deborah showed a strong emotion for the first time that night. She dropped her head onto the interview table and cried, oh God, beautiful Tim and beautiful Kelly are both dead. And then, like a switch flipped, she started raging. Jesus Christ, did they make any attempt at all to save them?

I saved one of the kids. I could have gotten the second one out and didn't. I'll never forgive myself for that. Which is a normal enough statement, but the tone was just all wrong. It didn't have the right tone to it, and it seemed like she was almost reading it. It also, like, reads like what a character would say. in a book, not like a real human response. Yeah, definitely.

Then Deborah made a strange request. I would love to see my husband, she said. Even though we're getting a divorce because he and I will be the only ones who can share in this mammoth grief. Her tone was a semblance of sad and desperate, but then when she was told that she couldn't see him, she vacillated again into rage. Jesus Christ, there are two people here that care about what happened. So why can't we be together?

But apparently you don't have compassion for anyone else. I want to tell him. I want to tell my husband that our babies are dead. I want to tell my husband that our babies are dead. Wow. Just wow. Yeah, she wanted to see the look on his face. That would have been her payoff.

It's the same reason why you said she probably wanted to leave a voicemail on his answering machine that night. It's part of why I get so frustrated with him. people acting like she's this helpless little baby. She wanted to taunt her husband with the lives of the children that she had just killed. Ugh. Sick freak. Yeah. By contrast, Mike's interview with the detectives was clearly very painful. He cried a lot and asked a lot of questions about how his children were found, what might have happened to them, when he might be able to collect the remains. He was visibly emotional talking about his children and his wife. He also told them about the first fire. He explained

about his mysterious illness and his suspicions about its origins, about that final terrible phone call. Later, Deborah would assume that Mike would let her stay with him. That is, after all, what happened after the first fire. Yeah, good fucking luck with that. Mike was

done with a capital D. He gave her about $300 in cash, let her use his phone, and loaned her his car. And after she left, he called his lawyer to officially file for divorce and request full custody of Kate, who was staying with his parents for now. Deborah stayed in a hotel. She'd later get supervised visits with Kate. Arson investigations are often slow and complicated, because obviously a lot of the evidence gets destroyed or damaged. This case was no exception. The investigators brought in an arson

investigator who brought in her sniffer doc, Avon, who was a very good girl, to look for accelerants. and find them she did, in several places around the house. Important because accidental fires usually have just one point of origin, where arsons usually have a few. Right. They found poor patterns in several unconnected rooms throughout the house, meaning that somebody had gone from room to room pouring some kind of accelerant and setting each fire individually.

And this is the worst part. They discovered that whoever set this fire had purposely blocked every escape route from the children's rooms. And on the floor of the main bathroom, Deborah's bathroom, they discovered a woman's bathrobe with a little burnhole in it. Huh. Drop a match on your bathrobe, did you? The investigators now had proof that this fire was a double murder

and they could get started on a formal investigation. A lot of police work is monotonous. For example, remember how Deborah's neighbors noticed her wet hair on the night of the murders? What was up with that? Well, arsonists often experience what's called a flash fire, which is what happens when an accelerant is ignited and burns really quickly. Did she accidentally set herself on fire and then dunk her head underwater to put it out? More often than not, arsonists do burn themselves.

So detectives usually look for singed hair and eyebrows during the arson investigation. In this case, detectives got a search warrant for a sample of Deborah's hair. Her lawyers were furious that they didn't let them know that they wanted her hair before they gave her the warrant. and said Deborah wanted to cooperate. These detectives were just too aggressive. But like, were they, though? Because investigators found out that before the kid's funeral, Debrot had not one, but two haircuts.

She insisted that the first one just looked really bad and she had to go get it fixed, but despite her best efforts and the efforts of some poor Kansas City hairstylists that had to deal with Deborah, forensic scientists found that the hair at the front of Deborah's head showed signs of significant singeing. At no point in Deborah's interview did she ever say she'd been close enough to a fire to be burned.

But we have a bathrobe and her hair that prove that's not true. This wasn't quite enough for the habeas grab-us yet, so detectives kept digging. Then they decided to follow up on Dr. Ferrar's poisoning to see if they could find proof that she bought the castor beans in the first place. This is a weird little investigative fun fact, but when officers reported to the house on the night Deborah got committed, they noticed Debra's open address book on her nightstand, and in it was an address for a garden store in Olathe, Kansas, which is about 30 minutes away from the house. And one of the cops somehow remembered this weird little detail

and told the detectives about it, who called a store. This is just incredible. It's fascinating. Now, unfortunately, I know, like, how do you remember a little detail like that? But, you know, stuff does stick in your head like that, right? Now, unfortunately, nobody at that location remembered selling that many castor beans to anybody. because most detective work is not nearly so sexy as Law & Order SVU would have us believe

the detectives proceeded to call every location of that store in Kansas City and eventually they struck gold. An employee at one of the locations remembered special ordering a big old order of castor beans to a woman in September. And when asked, she identified a photo of Deborah Green as the buyer out of a lineup of photos.

And this purchase can't have been her first one because days later, Mike would find the seed packets in her purse, but it was a pretty good piece of circumstantial evidence. They also sent some of Mike's blood to be tested for ricin antibodies. It would be a long time before they got that back, but they felt confident that the results would come back positive. The DA felt good about the evidence they'd found. The hair, the bathrobe, the signs of arson,

Deborah's increasingly weird behavior leading up to the fire, Mike's poisoning, the seed packets. The picture was pretty clear. Deborah Green had tried to kill her husband and had succeeded in killing two of her children. So the DA issued a warrant for the Gravus on November 22nd, 1995. Deborah had brought Kate to dress rehearsal for the Nutcracker that night, and the detectives wanted to be sure that Kate was safely in the theater when they arrested her mother.

Deborah was calm when they slapped the cuffs on her. Ellen Ryan once again failed to beat the ride or die allegations when she got big mad at the cops for arresting her instead of allowing Deborah the dignity of turning herself in. for Pete's sake. I don't know, Ellen. She's already getting arrested for killing two of her children, and she's got a documented history of threatening to kill herself. So maybe the cops were just ensuring that Debra didn't hurt herself for anybody else before they arrested her.

I think they should have frog marched her up and down in front of the media cameras. Make sure she gets good and humiliated, but that's just me. Yeah, I'm not, I'm no expert. I'm mad at her. I'm no expert, but God. The case went to a preliminary hearing in January of 1996. kind of like a mini trial? The prosecutor, Paul Morrison, laid out his case clearly. Deborah Green, desperate to keep her family together, had set a fire in their first house and was

pleased to find that it actually worked. Her husband stayed. But then, when Mike asked for a divorce again and Deborah found out about his affair, she poisoned him, whether in an attempt to kill him or to make him so reliant on her that he couldn't leave. When that didn't work, and after Mike snapped at her on the phone, calling her a failure of a mother in telling her that he wanted to take the kids away from her and letting it slip that he suspected she'd poisoned him, she set fire to their house. And she did it in a way that prevented two of her children from escaping. He let out the evidence. The singed hair, the burned bathrobe, the bizarre behavior leading up to the fire, the castor beans, Mike's illness. It was a damn good case. Those in the courtroom wondered how the defense would

respond. Now, here at TCC, we typically don't dunk on defense attorneys for just doing their jobs. So we're going to try and be fair in our assessment of the defense. But our assessment is that it sucked ass. Just straight up, sucked ass. Deborah's lawyer, that's a technical legal term is that it sucked ass. Like, I have no other words. And we're laughing, not because it's funny, but like, because it's so fucking horrific. Yeah. Deborah's lawyer, Dennis Moore, started by dirtying up Mike, pointing out his affair and that he planned to leave Deborah long before he told her about it. He also insinuated that Mike's illness was from some kind of virus he caught on the trip to Peru, not from poisoning. Finally, he did one of the

most disgusting things that I've ever heard a defense attorney do. He said, there's going to be evidence presented that Tim Ferrar had an unnatural fascination with fire. He also insinuated that 13-year-old Tim was, quote, a very disturbed young man. Yes, that's right. Deborah's defense was, it wasn't me. It was my child, who is dead. Yeah, like many family annihilators before and after, it's what they always do. Mm-hmm.

Ugh. He did bring in classmates of Tim's to testify that he did occasionally set things on fire and had allegedly had some kind of an anarchist cookbook style document, but genuinely, Have you met a 13-year-old boy? Of course he liked setting things on fire. But there was no proof whatsoever that he'd set anything aside from maybe a pile of leaves on fire, nor was there forensic proof indicating that he was responsible for this. Look, I was not that much older than Tim when this happened.

I had the anarchist cookbook in the 90s, okay? Every self-respecting weird kid had it in those days. You would lose your weird kid card if you didn't. They sold a flipping thing at Walden Books. Yeah. Come on. According to Deb's lawyer, Tim was a juvenile delinquent, capable of a monstrous act of violence. But that's not who Tim was. Tim was a sweetheart.

He defended kids at school from bullies. He was funny. He was strong. He loved sports. And his coaches all said that they expected great things from him. He was a good brother. When his mother was on drinking binges, he hid or threw away her liquor. He had a complicated relationship with his father, of course.

But what teenager doesn't? Mike, fortunately, remembers the last night he spent with his son as a good one. They were laughing together, celebrating his great game. Tim was not a monster, he was a child being manipulated by one. And in his death, he was being sacrificed by one as well. Gross. Fortunately, the judge sided with the prosecution. Deborah Green would be going to trial,

and the prosecution announced that they'd be pursuing the death penalty. As both sides prepared for trial, it was becoming critical. crystal clear to the defense that their client was going to be found guilty or not buttered shit. Deborah was uncooperative with her male attorneys and needy with Ellen Ryan, who by this point had started allowing her children to speak to Deborah on the phone. Just, Ellen! Really? Dang, girl, Ellen, I don't understand Ellen at all. Ellen decided to try and convince Deborah to take a deal. She laid out the fact as the

prosecution would present them, and eventually Deborah agreed. But not before confiding in Ellen, that it was Tim and Deborah who actually poisoned Mike. Together. Probably, almost certainly a lie, of course. Tim couldn't make ricin. His doctor, genius engineer mother could. One last indignity for the boy who so passionately defended his mom. She pleaded no contest, and on April 17, 1996, Dr. Deborah Green was sentenced to 40 years in prison without the possibility of parole. If she gets out, she'll be. be 85 upon her release. Now this is one of those cases that sticks with you.

I read this book probably 20 years ago. And I mean, I still think about this case regularly, like long before we decided to cover it on this show. It's just one of those that's going to live in your brain for the rest of your life. Tim and Kelly had loved their mother so much, only to be betrayed by her in the worst way, the most cruel way you could possibly imagine. innocent lives used to further the agenda of a woman who claimed to love them more than anything else. But the problem is, for somebody like Debra, somebody who's narcissistic to the core,

losing those kids for her would have been ego death. She had built her entire identity around being a great mom. And she was afraid, I think, that she was about to lose that. And for a narcissist, ego death is death, period. There's no difference. So that night, I just think she had nothing to lose. And those kids were tools to her and absolutely nothing else. They were just a way for her to get it, Mike.

And the ripples of those actions are going to be felt for years to come. We hope Mike and Kate have found some peace in the intervening years, but I mean, I'm sure it has to haunt them. Of course. So, yeah, we wish them nothing but the best. So that was one hell of a wild one, right? Campers, you know, we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire.

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