courtroom we did all that the system allowed us to do to her. but she richly deserves to be on death row and she richly deserves to be executed one day. on a windy october night in 1995, a mysterious house fire swept through the palatial home of a doctor and his family. two of the family members made it out alive. two of the children did not. in the debris, medical detectives discovered much more than simply how the fire started. michael farrar and debora green first met in medical school in 1977. both were gifted students with near-genius i.q.s. there was an instant attraction,

and they married less than a year after they met. over the next 16 years, the couple raised three children, jennifer, timothy and kelly, in an affluent suburb of kansas city, kansas. to outsiders, their lives seemed perfect, but the marriage was showing signs of stress. at the north kansas city hospital, dr. michael farrar was a successful heart specialist who worked very long hours, often at the expense of time with his children. debora quit her own medical practice when the children were born. she battled depression, weight gain, and was rumored to have a drinking problem. >> you got the impression that debora wasn't the easiest person in the world to live with. she was -- i don't want to say -- well, let's just leave it at that. >> in an effort to rekindle

their marriage, the couple decided to go on a school trip to peru with their son, tim. while sightseeing along the amazon river and among the inca remains, an attractive blond nurse caught michael's attention. she was the mother of one of the other students. when they returned to kansas city, michael continued to see his new friend, which soon blossomed into a sexual affair. it didn't take debora long to find out about her husband's affair. she moved into a separate bedroom, and her drinking increased. >> her whole identity was her marriage and her family, because she didn't -- she no longer had her own career. i felt that maybe it was just really hard for her to let go of that. maybe she felt like she could change or something could change and they could somehow stay together. >> and michael had some serious problems of his own.

shortly after the peru trip, michael developed diarrhea, vomiting, and chills so severe he was admitted to the local hospital. >> he had been in south america, where he might have had access to a whole variety of things that could make him very sick. >> despite undergoing a full battery of tests, doctors could not determine the cause of dr. farrar's illness. >> when i saw him, i was like, mike, man, you look bad. i'm sorry. but you don't look good. he had been really violently ill since he got back from peru. he assumed that he got some tropical parasite from hell. >> michael farrar was rapidly losing weight, dropping to just 125 pounds. whatever was causing this illness was a mystery. a lot of peoplei didn't believe in me.

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for a cardiologist who seemingly had it all, dr. michael farrar's life in 1995 was one crisis after another. when he was released from the hospital for the illness many

believed he caught in peru, michael took another step towards divorce by moving into his own apartment across town. his wife, debora, was angry, depressed, drinking heavily, and would stay in her bedroom for days at a time. michael was concerned for her welfare, as well as the safety of their three children. while visiting the house to pick up some of his things, michael noticed something suspicious in his wife's purse, a packet of castor beans. on the label was a warning that the beans were poisonous. with so many packets of castor beans in her purse, michael suspected that his wife was planning to commit suicide. >> which, really, to me, didn't make sense because dr. green is a bright woman. she was an extremely bright woman. and she's an oncologist.

if you're a doctor, doctors kill themselves, all right. professional people do commit suicide. but fortunately, we have the best of drugs available to us. i mean, if you're going to go, why would you go stooling yourself to death? i mean, you aren't going to want to die with bloody diarrhea. i mean, that is a very horrible, bad way to die. >> dr. farrar decided to do a little investigating of his own. the castor beans were purchased from the earl may garden center. a receipt from the store in debora's purse indicated she purchased the beans just four days before michael first got sick. while consulting his medical textbook, farrar learned some terrible news. that castor beans contain ricin, a deadly toxin with no known antidote and the symptoms of ricin poisoning were vomiting, nausea, diarrhea, and

gastrointestinal bleeding. symptoms which were identical to his own. he took a sample of his blood for testing. but ricin leaves the body quickly and the lab could find no trace of it in his system. although he had no proof, farrar was convinced that his wife had somehow poisoned him with ricin and this was the cause of his mysterious symptoms. a few days later, michael confronted debora during an angry telephone call. >> i told her that i was very angry with her, that i thought she was crazy, that i thought she had been poisoning me, that i thought she needed serious psychiatric help. >> i don't have to listen to this. >> one hour later, around midnight, a fire broke out in the farrar family home.

by the time firemen arrived, the home was totally engulfed in flames. >> i've never seen a fire spread as fast throughout the house as i have in this one. the heat was tremendous. there was no way that anyone could even get close to the house. of course, the flames were roaring out, probably 20 to 30 feet. >> debora and her 10-year-old daughter, jennifer, both escaped. during questioning on the night of the fire, debora learned the tragic news, that her other two children had been trapped and died in the fire. >> oh, god. they're both dead. jesus christ. did they make any attempt at all to save them? >> 6-year-old kelly died of smoke inhalation in her own bed. 13-year-old tim burned to death.

>> christ. i saved one of the kids. the second one, i'll never forgive myself for that. >> investigators immediately suspected arson. >> it's fair to say that debora green was a suspect early on. it's fair to say that mike farrar was a suspect early on. >> both had motive. both had opportunity. if the fire had been deliberately set, the charge would be more than arson. it would be murder.

while investigating the suspicious house fire that killed tim and kelly farrar, police looked a little deeper into the relationship between michael and his estranged wife, debora. a few weeks before the fire, the couple had a fight at the house. michael said his wife was intoxicated, angry, and threatening to kill herself. the police were called and took debora to the hospital for psychiatric evaluation. dr. pamela mccoy was the physician on duty. >> pam mccoy indicated that, at first, she was somewhat skeptical about whether or not debora green was really that mentally ill.

sitting there in the waiting room of the ku medical center emergency room talking to debora green about these issues, asking her if she's okay, if there's anything she can do to help her, trying to get a read on her mental state when in walks michael farrar. >> when they met in our kind of entryway there, she just turns on him. like she -- for a minute i kind of hold her because i think that she is going to physically attacks him. she spits at him. and then she says, you're going to get these kids over their dead bodies. >> debora said she made the statement in anger, and denied having anything to do with the fire. she said she was asleep when the fire alarm sounded. she said she opened the bedroom door, saw flames and smoke, closed the door, and ran outside through a door in the bedroom. >> can you hear me? >> debora said she told her son tim to stay inside until firemen arrived and ran to the next door neighbor's house for help. to find out whether an

accelerant or flammable liquid was used in starting the fire, arson investigators used specially trained dogs which can identify vapors which remain after the fire. the dogs identified a number of suspicious areas. investigators found melted plastic containers on the floor, possibly used to carry flammable liquids throughout the house. next to dr. farrar's desk, investigators found another clue that the fire had been intentionally set. >> we found an empty liquor bottle laying on the floor right behind this desk. it's possible that the contents of this bottle were poured out and ignited on the desk. >> a section of the basement floor had what appeared to be a pour pattern, where an accelerant was ignited as a test.

the accelerants also gave investigators a clear path of the fire. the path led directly to debora green's bedroom door. >> that fire was set at that bedroom door with the intent of doing a tremendous amount of damage to that house and cutting off the escape route of those children upstairs. >> and the analysis of the burn patterns on the bedroom door contradicted debora green's story. debora said her bedroom door was closed when the fire alarm sounded and that she closed the door before running outside for help. but the carpet underneath the door revealed the door had been open. the door jamb revealed the same thing. if the door had been closed, the door jamb would have been protected from the fire. instead, it was completely covered with soot.

in the bathroom was debora's bathrobe, wrapped in a ball on the floor. on the underside of the robe were burn marks. at some point, the person wearing the robe had been very close to the flames. the neighbor said debora's hair was wet when she ran over asking for help. this did not come as a surprise to arson investigators. >> when dr. green actually ignited that accelerant outside of her bedroom door and in the hallway, that there was enough vapors present that there was quite a flash, more of a flash than she probably was prepared for. when she did that, i believe that's when she got the hair singed on the right side of her head. >> with a search warrant, detectives took a sample of debora's hair.

microscopic analysis revealed that debora's hair showed heat damage consistent with singe from a high intensity flame. the damage to debora's hair was extensive since she didn't have her hair cut taken until after she had her haircut for the children's funeral. bill chapin is a forensic scientist. the canisters are heated to between 80 to 90 degrees centigrade and the air inside removed. if the vapors contain accelerants or hydrocarbons, they're trapped in charcoal filters. the filters are mixed with a neutral solvent, carbon disulfide, and the mixture is placed into a gas chromatograph spectrometer for analysis.

after two days of testing, bill chapin found what he was looking for. >> in this particular case, the accelerant i found was called isoparaffin. isoparaffins are used in charcoal lighter fluids. >> there was an empty container of charcoal lighter fluid on the floor of the farrar's garage. investigators were now convinced that debora green set the fire that killed two of her children. the only question that remained was had she also tried to kill her husband with castor beans. my cut hurt. mine hurt more. mine stopped hurting faster! neosporin plus pain relief starts relieving pain faster and kills more types of infectious bacteria. neosporin plus pain relief kills the germs. fights the pain. available at walmart. [p[man] hello,totten designs. sales department? yes...i can put you right through.

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when dr. michael farrar told police he was sure his wife had been poisoning him with castor beans, investigators were unsure of where to start. since the local laboratory could find no evidence of ricin in michael farrar's system, his blood was sent to the fbi, to dr. drew richardson, an expert in chemical and biological research at the naval medical research institute in washington, d.c. >> people in the intelligence community are quite familiar with ricin, based on a handful of cases that most everybody would know about. very few people in the lay public and highly trained

professionals such as medical doctors would be quite unlikely to know just about anything. >> ricin is an antigen. a breakdown of red blood cells. in large enough doses, it can be fatal. when an antigen enters the body, the immune system's response is to produce antibodies to fight the invading organism. to find out whether rice and antibodies were in dr. farrar's's system doctors used a technique. in theory, any ricin antibodies in dr. farrar's blood wound bind to the ricin coached on the plate, which is exactly what happened. next, dr. richardson analyzed blood of goats that had been exposed to small amounts of ricin. it appeared that the goats and

michael farrar both had similar antibodies in their systems. antibodies designed and structured to recognize and seek out the target invader, ricin. dr. richardson discovered something else. the number of ricin antibodies in farrar's system was staggering. >> in the case of dr. michael farrar, it's not that perhaps he was exposed three times. a certain immune response would have been produced the first time, a response that would have lasted a few weeks. on second and third and perhaps other exposures, a separate immune response would have been produced. for each one of those exposures and the latter exposures would have produced a response in antibodies that would be present in the blood for, again, many months to perhaps a few years. >> debora green was charged with two counts of murder and two

counts of attempted murder. prosecutors believe that when debora's attempts to kill her husband failed, she feared losing custody of her children in the impending divorce. after the argument on the telephone, prosecutors believe that debora poured accelerants throughout the house, with special attention to michael's possessions and making sure to cut off the children's escape route. the path of the accelerants led directly to the door of debora green's bedroom, but she used too much accelerant. the vapors ignited, causing a mini-explosion that singed her hair. while dousing her head with water, she saw that her bathrobe had also caught fire and discarded it. 10-year-old jennifer survived by crawling out her bedroom window and jumping to the ground. debora told tim to stay inside with his six-year-old sister until firemen arrived.

sadly, tim did what his mother had told him to do. he and kelly both died before firemen could reach them. debora green's trial was scheduled to begin one week after michael's brain operation to repair damage caused by the ricin poisoning, but the trial never took place. debora green pleaded no contest to the charges, avoiding a possible death sentence. >> my attorneys are ready, willing, and able to present evidence that i was not totally myself when tim and kelly died. however true that may be, defending myself at trial on these charges would only compound the suffering of my family and my daughter. >> she was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole for 40 years. >> well, i think these kids in this case were sort of the ultimate pawn, the ultimate weapon that debora green used in

this fight with michael farrar. she in some ways probably loved those kids. in other ways viewed them as an expendable resource to be used in this war. tourists are fleeing tunisia after a single gunman killed 38 people, sending shock waves through a country that many had seen as stabin