Ann Rule's NEW Crime Files Series Volume 14

Time for a change? Click Here

Bitter Harvest:
Debora Green (1998)

Ann Rule

Bitter Harvest is a true crime tale of Dr. Debora Green, a brilliant, wealthy physician and married mother of three who holds herself together well enough to put on a decent show for the outside world, but at heart is a baffling homicidal monster. She was convicted of repeatedly trying to poison her husband and of killing two of her children in a fire she deliberately set in the family home.

Debora Green was volatile by nature. She had always been that way. She was intelligent, aggressive, she knew what she wanted and went for it. An Engineering Degree was what she really wanted, but when she achieved it, she was told that engineering jobs were not abundant. She didn't bother to check this out for herself so she went into medicine and acquired a degree in Oncology.

Her first marriage to Duane Green ended in divorce. She partied heavily until she met and married Dr. Michael Farrar, who provided her with some stability. Debora's behavior was often argumentative and it escalated over time. When Mike was accepted to a practice and she wasn't, she blamed him instead of blaming the alcohol and drugs that she was abusing.

Their first child was Timothy, who in his pre-teen, would fight with his father which is not uncommon with all the hormones raging. What Mike didn't know at the time was that some of the trouble came from Debora continually pitting their son against him. He wasn't the only one of their children being manipulated. Their second child was Kate and their third was Kelly. They too came in for their share of vile stories about their father, and the manipulation by their mother.

Debora was a person who was used to getting her way at anything she desired. When she didn't, she was belligerent, violent and abusive. Mike Farrar found himself keeping the peace in any way he could but finally grew tired of living in a hostile atmosphere so he moved out with the intention of divorcing Debora.  Debora on the other hand wanted a reconciliation.

Suddenly, in May of 1994, their house burned down causing the family to move in with Mike at his apartment. Thus, Mike and Debora had a reconciliation of sorts. They purchased a home in an exclusive Kansas City suburb and moved their family in. But soon Debora was back to her old self....belligerent, violent and abusive.

Mike had previously become attracted to another woman, the beautiful wife of an unhappy doctor and an old friend of Debora's. They began having an affair; Debora found out. Debora learned from an Agatha Christie novel about a deadly poison, ricin, contained in castor beans, so on August 7, 1995, she went to a local garden store and purchased some castor beans, and started poisoning her long-suffering husband. Mike suddenly began to suffer debilitating stomach problems, causing him to be frequently hospitalized. Mike eventually discovered several packets of castor beans in Debora's handbag. Ricin was later discovered in Mike's bloodstream. As he began to recover, he moved out of the house and announced plans to divorce Debora. Debora resumed her prior married name of Green after the divorce.

Around 12:22, the morning of October 24, 1995, Debora Farrar poured several types of accelerant around the home and to the doors of the children's rooms. Standing where she could escape from her bedroom, she lit the match and tossed it into a pool of liquid accelerant on the floor. Before she could ran outside to safety, Timothy called his mother on the house intercom asking for help. She told him to wait until the rescue people come. Instead of climbing out his window as he had done before, he trusted his mother and waited and died.

The house was quickly engulfed by fire, but Kate had climbed out her window and crawled across the garage roof. She saw her mother standing there. Debora had seen her crawling but she didn't race to her, she stood there, waiting. Kate called to her mother and Debora finally acknowledged her and held out her arms and told Kate to jump. Kate trusted her mother to catch her. But Debora didn't. Kate fell to the ground. Luckily it was soft grass and she wasn't injured. She begged her mother to help her brother and sister but Debora did nothing except stare at the flames. Kate then begged a fireman to save them. But it was too late.

Mike was devastated at the loss of Timothy and Kelly, and Boomer their dog, who was always inseparable from little Kelly. Kelly died in her sleep. Boomer's body was found under the bed. Timothy suffered in the flames.

Debora Green Farrah was arrested for the murder of Kelly and Timothy Farrar, aggravated arson, attempted first degree murder of her ex-husband, Dr. Mike Farrar, and attempted capital murder of Kate Farrar.

On February 12, 1996, Debora Green submitted to testing and interviews by psychiatrists and psychologists but did not meet the legal definition of insanity. She had known the difference between right and wrong both at the time of the event and in the months after. In April of 1996, at the advise of her lawyers, she pleaded no contest to the charges against her to avoid a trial and most probably a death sentence.

On June 6, 1996, Debora Green began serving her sentence of two concurrent 40 years prison terms without the possibility of parole. 

On June 1, 2000, Debora Green filed to rescind her plea agreement based on the fact that she was incompetent at the time of trial to make the decision to plea due to the combination of medications she had been administered at the time. Request for a new trial was DENIED.

On September 16, 2004, she filed a motion for a certificate ofappealability and to withdraw the no contest pleas on the grounds that they were based on faulty fire evidence, and several other grounds. The District court DENIED her application for certificate of appealability.

Debora continued to file appeals. The last two were May 15, 2008 when she filed a petition challenging her convictions and sentences which was DENIED and on June 30, 2008, the court DENIED her application for certificate of appealability.

Ann Rule's Full Length Bestsellers
with Case Background
 

• Too Late to Say Goodbye: A True Story of Murder and Betrayal(2007) - Tells the story of a Georgia dentist named Bart Corbin, and how two women, a beautiful dentistry student named Dolly Hearn, and Bart's wife, Jennifer Barber Corbin, found themselves fatally involved with Corbin over the course of two decades.

• Green River, Running Red: The Real Story of the Green River Killer-America's Deadliest Serial Murderer (2004) - This is the extraordinary true story of the most prolific serial killer the nation had ever seen -- a case involving more than forty-nine female victims, two decades of intense investigative work...and one unrelenting killer who not only attended Ann Rule's book signings but lived less than a mile away from her home.

• Heart Full of Lies: A True Story of Desire and Death (2003) - An idyllic Hawaiian wedding held the promise of a wonderful future for handsome, athletic Chris Northon, an airline pilot, a confirmed bachelor-turned-devoted family man; and Liysa, an acclaimed surf photographer, loving mother, and aspiring Hollywood screenwriter. But few, including Chris, had seen Liysa's other side -- her controlling behavior and dark moods, her insatiable hunger for money and property. And no one anticipated the fatal outcome of a family camping trip in an Oregon forest. Liysa soon revealed herself as a victim of domestic abuse that culminated at the campsite, where she shot Chris in self-defense. But crime scene evidence led detectives to wonder if Liysa was a killer, not a victim.

• Every Breath You Take: A True Story of Obsession, Revenge, and Murder (2001) - Although happily settled securely in a loving second marriage, and a new family of quadruplets, Sheila never truly escaped the vicious enslavement of her ex-husband, multi-millionaire Allen Blackthorne, a handsome charmer -- and a violent, controlling sociopath who subjected Sheila to unthinkable abuse in their marriage, and terrorized her for a decade after their divorce. When Sheila was slain in her home, in the presence of her four toddlers, authorities raced to link the crime to Blackthorne, the man who vowed to monitor Sheila's every move in his obsessive quest for power and revenge. Shelia had said, "If anything ever happens to me... find Ann Rule and ask her to write my story."

• And Never Let Her Go: Thomas Capano: The Deadly Seducer (1999) - On a June evening in 1996, 30-year-old Anne Marie Fahey, secretary to the governor of Delaware, vanished without a trace following a restaurant rendezvous with her secret lover of more than two years: Thomas Capano. One of Wilmington's most prominent and respected figures, a millionaire attorney and former state prosecutor, "Tommy" was a charming, soft spoken family man. But in the weeks and months that followed Fahey's disappearance, investigators would gradually uncover the shocking truth: Capano was a steely manipulator driven by power and greed -- and capable of brutal murder.

• Bitter Harvest: A Woman's Fury, A Mother's Sacrifice (1998) - Rule probes the case of Debora Green, a doctor and a loving mother. A small-town girl with a genius IQ, she achieved an enviable life: her own medical practice, a handsome physician husband, three perfect children, and an opulent home in an exclusive Kansas City suburb. But when a raging fire destroyed that home and took two lives, the trail of clues led investigators to a stunning conclusion.

• Dead By Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? (1995) - When attorney Cheryl Keeton's brutally bludgeoned body was found in her van in the fast lane of an Oregon freeway, her husband, Brad Cunningham, was the likely suspect. But there was no solid evidence linking him to the crime. He married again, for the fifth time, and his stunning new wife, a physician named Sara, adopted his three sons. They all settled down to family life on a luxurious estate. But gradually, their marriage became a nightmare....

• Everything She Ever Wanted: A True Story of Obsessive Love, Murder, and Betrayal (1992) - For their wedding portrait, petite Pat Taylor and handsome Tom Allanson posed as Rhett and Scarlett.  Less than two months later, their dream exploded in terror and murder: their beautiful home mysteriously burned to the ground and Tom was convicted of the brutal slaying of his mother and father. Pat's only brother had died in a puzzling suicide, her grandparents-in-law were poisoned with arsenic, and no one -- from her wealthy employers to her own children -- was safe when Pat Allanson didn't get her way. It took Georgia lawmen more than two decades to stop her for good -- if indeed they have.

• If You Really Loved Me: A True Story of Desire and Murder (1991) - David Brown was a computer wizard and millionaire by age thirty-two. When his beautiful young wife was shot to death as she slept, Brown's fourteen-year-old daughter, Cinnamon, confessed to killing her stepmother. The California courts sentenced her harshly: twenty-four years to life. But thanks in part to two determined lawmen, the twisted private world of David Brown unfolded revealing a trail of perverse love, twisted secrets, and evil mind games. Did David Brown convince his own daughter to prove her love by killing for him?

• Small Sacrifices: A True Story of Passion and Murder (1987) - A shocking and powerful account of the destructive forces that drove Diane Downs, a beautiful young mother, to shoot her three young children in cold blood.

• The Want-Ad Killer - Written as Andy Stack (1983) - After his first grisly crime, Harvey Louis Carignan beat a death sentence and continued to manipulate, rape, and bludgeon women to death--using want ads to lure his young female victims.

• The I-5 Killer - Written as Andy Stack (1984) - As a young man, Randall Woodfield had it all--a star athlete, good looks, and an award-winning student. Working in the swinging West Coast bar scene, he had more than his share of women. But he wanted more than just sex. An appetite for unspeakable violent acts led him to cruise the I-5 highway through California to Washington, leaving a trail of victims along the way. As the list of the dead grew, the police mobilized to stop a twisted killer who had 44 known deaths to his name.

• Possession - A Novel (1983) - Joanne Lindstrom's camping trip to Washington's Cascade mountains goes terribly awry, leaving her husband dead and Joanne's only hope for survival in the hands of a twisted stranger. (This is Ann Rule's only novel. Based on a real Northwest Case.)  

• Lust Killer - Written as Andy Stack (1983) - To his neighbors, Jerry Brudos was a gentle man whose mild manner contrasted with his awesome physical strength. To his employers, Jerry was a fine worker. To his wife, he was a good husband. And to the Oregon police, Jerry Brudos was the most hideously twisted killer they had ever unmasked.

• The Stranger Beside Me - Ted Bundy: The Classic Story of Seduction & Murder (1980) - Ann Rule was a writer working on the biggest story of her life, tracking down a brutal mass-murderer. Little did she know that Ted Bundy, her close friend, was the savage slayer she was hunting.

Back to Ann Rule from Bitter Harvest

Back to Mystery Crime Books

---

© 2007 MysteryCrimeScene.com  All rights reserved

Background design and logo courtesy of 
 DigitalDesigns Designer Elliott Houston