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on a windy october night in 1995 a mysterious house fire swept through the palatial home of a doctor and his family
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two of the family members made it out alive two of the children did not in the debris
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medical detectives discovered much more than simply how the fire started [Music]
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michael ferrara and deborah green first met in medical school in 1977 both were gifted students with near
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genius iqs there was an instant attraction and they married less than a year after they met
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over the next 16 years the couple raised three children jennifer timothy and kelly in an affluent suburb of kansas
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city kansas to outsiders their lives seemed perfect but the marriage was showing signs of
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stress at the north kansas city hospital dr michael farrar was a successful heart
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specialist who worked very long hours often at the expense of time with his children
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deborah quit her own medical practice when the children were born she battled depression weight gain
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and was rumored to have a drinking problem you got the impression that deborah wasn't
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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
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in an effort to rekindle their marriage the couple decided to go on a school trip to peru with their son tim
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while sightseeing along the amazon river and among the incan remains an attractive blonde nurse caught
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michael's attention she was the mother of one of the other students when they returned to kansas city
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michael continued to see his new friend which soon blossomed into a sexual affair it didn't take debra long to find
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out about her husband's affair she moved into a separate bedroom and her drinking
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increased her whole identity was her marriage and her family because she didn't
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she no longer had her own career i felt it you know maybe it was just really hard for her to let go of that
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maybe she felt like she could change or something could change and they could somehow stay
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together and michael had some serious problems of his own shortly after the peru trip michael
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developed diarrhea vomiting and chill so severe he was admitted to the local hospital
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he'd been in south america where he might have had access to a whole variety
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of things that that could make him very sick despite undergoing a full battery of
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tests doctors could not determine the cause of dr farrar's illness when i saw
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him it's like mike man you look bad i'm sorry but you don't look good and he
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said he'd been really really violently ill since he got back from peru he assumed that he got some
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tropical parasite from hell michael ferrar was rapidly losing weight dropping to just
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125 pounds whatever was causing this illness was a mystery [Music] for a cardiologist who seemingly had it
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all dr michael farrar's life in 1995 was one crisis after another when he was released from the hospital
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for the illness many believed he caught in peru michael took another step towards
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divorce by moving into his own apartment across town his wife deborah was angry depressed
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drinking heavily and would stay in her bedroom for days at a time [Music] michael was concerned for her welfare as
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well as the safety of their three children while visiting the house to pick up some
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of his things michael noticed something suspicious in his wife's purse a packet of castor beans
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on the label was a warning that the beans were poisonous with so many packets of castor beans in
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her purse michael suspected that his wife was planning to commit suicide so he was telling me that he was pretty
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sure she was going to try and kill herself with these poisons which really to me didn't make any sense because dr
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green is a bright woman i mean she's extremely bright woman and is an oncologist and if you're a doctor i mean
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doctors kill themselves all right i mean in professional people do commit suicide
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but fortunately we've got the best of drugs available to us i mean if you're
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going to go why would you go stooling yourself to death i mean you aren't going to want to die with
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bloody diarrhea i mean that is a very horrible bad way to die dr ferrard decided to do a little
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investigating of his own the castor beans were purchased from the earl may garden center
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a receipt from that store in deborah's purse indicated she purchased the beans
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just four days before michael first got sick while consulting his medical textbook
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farrar learned some terrible news that castor beans contain verizon a deadly toxin with no known antidote
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and the symptoms of ricin poisoning were vomiting nausea diarrhea and gastrointestinal bleeding
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symptoms which were identical to his own [Music] farrar quickly took a sample of his own
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blood for testing but ricin leaves the body quickly and the lab could find no trace of it in his
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system although he had no proof farrar was convinced that his wife had somehow poisoned him with ricin and this
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was the cause of his mysterious symptoms a few days later michael confronted debra during an angry telephone call
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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
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thought she needed uh serious psychiatric help i don't have to listen to this
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[Music] one hour later around midnight a fire broke out in the farrar family home
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by the time firemen arrived the home was totally engulfed in flames i've never
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seen a fire spread as fast throughout the house as i have on this one the heat was tremendous there was no way that
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anyone can even get close to the house of course the flames were roaring out probably 20 to 30 feet
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deborah and her ten-year-old daughter jennifer both escaped during questioning on the night of the
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fire debra learned the tragic news that her other two children had been trapped and died in the fire oh god
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beautiful family beautiful joy are both dead jesus christ did they make any attempt
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at all to save her six-year-old kelly died of smoke inhalation in her own bed thirteen-year-old tim
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burned to death christ i saved one of the kids and i could have gotten the second one out and
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didn't will never forgive myself for that investigators immediately suspected
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arson it's fair to say that deborah greene was a suspect early on it's fair to say that
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mike farrar was a suspect early on both had motive both had opportunity if the fire had been deliberately set
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the charge would be more than arson it would be murder [Music] while investigating the suspicious house
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fire that killed tim and kelly farrar police looked a little deeper into the relationship between michael and his
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estranged wife deborah a few weeks before the fire the couple had a fight at the house
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michael said his wife was intoxicated angry and threatening to kill herself the police were called and took deborah
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to the hospital for psychiatric evaluation dr pamela mccoy was the physician on duty
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pam mccoy indicated that at first she was somewhat skeptical about whether or not debra green was really that mentally
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ill and is sitting there in the uh in the waiting room of the ku medical center emergency room talking to debra
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greene about these issues asking her if she's okay if there's anything she can
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do to help her and trying to get a read on her mental state when in my in walks michael ferrara when they met in our
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kind of entryway there she just like turns on him like she's i mean for a minute i kind of hold her
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like i think she's going to physically attack him and she spits at him and calls him a cult and then she says
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you're going to get these kids over their dead bodies deborah said she made the statement in
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anger and denied having anything to do with the fire [Music] she said she was asleep when the fire
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alarm sounded she said she opened the bedroom door saw flames and smoke closed the door and ran
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outside through a door in the bedroom [Music] deborah said she told her son tim to
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stay inside until firemen arrived and ran to the next door neighbor's house for help
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to find out whether an accelerant or flammable liquid was used in starting the fire
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arson investigators used specially trained dogs that can identify vapors which remain after the fire this is a
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dog that has been through several weeks of training on how to how to detect different types
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of liquid accelerants like diesel fuel or kerosene or gasoline or charcoal lighter
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fluid the dogs identified a number of suspicious areas investigators found melted plastic
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containers on the floor possibly used to carry flammable liquids throughout the house
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next to dr farrar's desk investigators found another clue that the fire had been intentionally set
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we found an empty liquor bottle laying on the floor right behind this desk again this it's possible
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that the contents of this bottle were poured out and ignited on the desk a section of the basement floor had what
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appeared to be a poor pattern where an accelerant was ignited as a test the accelerants also gave investigators
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a clear path of the fire the path led directly to deborah green's bedroom door
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that fire was set at that bedroom door with the intent of doing a tremendous amount of damage
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to that house and cutting off the escape route of those children upstairs and the analysis of the burn patterns on
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the bedroom door contradicted debra greene's story debra said her bedroom door was closed
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when the fire alarm sounded and that she closed the door before running outside for help
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but the carpet underneath the door revealed the door had been open the door jamb revealed the same thing
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if the door had been closed the door jamb would have been protected from the fire instead
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it was completely covered with soot in the bathroom was debra's bathrobe wrapped in a ball
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on the floor on the underside of the robe were burn marks at some point the person wearing the
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robe had been very close to the flames the neighbors said deborah's hair was
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wet when she ran over asking for help this did not come as a surprise to arson investigators
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when dr greene actually ignited that accelerant outside of her bedroom door and in the hallway that
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there was enough vapors present that there was there was quite a flash more of a flash than she probably was
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prepared for when she did that i believe that is when she got the hair singed on the right side of her head
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with a search warrant detectives took a sample of deborah's hair microscopic analysis revealed the
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deborah's hair showed signs of heat damage consistent with singing from a high intensity flame
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the damage to deborah's hair was extensive since the sample wasn't collected until after she had her hair
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cut for her children's funeral bill chapin is a forensic chemist whose job was to analyze the fire debris
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evidence from the farrar home fire debris is stored in metal canisters which preserve any vapors which may
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still be present the canisters are heated to between 80 and 90 degrees centigrade
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and the air inside removed if the vapors contain accelerants or hydrocarbons they're trapped in charcoal
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filters the filters are then rinsed with the neutral solvent carbon disulfide and the
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mixture is placed into a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer for analysis after two days of testing
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bill chapin found what he was looking for in this particular case the accelerant
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that i found was an accelerant called isoparaffin isoparaffins are often used in odorless
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charcoal lighter fluids there was an empty container of charcoal lighter fluid on the floor of the
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farar's garage investigators were now convinced that deborah green set the fire that killed
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two of her children the only question that remained had she also tried to kill her husband with castor beans
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when dr michael ferrar told police he was sure his wife had been poisoning him with castor beans investigators were
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unsure of where to start since the local laboratory could find no evidence of ricin and michael ferrara
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system his blood was sent to the fbi to dr drew richardson an expert in chemical
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and biological research at the naval medical research institute in washington dc people in the intelligence community
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are quite familiar with ricin based on a handful of cases that most everybody would know about very few people in the
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late public and even highly trained professionals such as medical doctors would be quite unlikely to know much
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about rice and if anything ricin is an antigen that causes a breakdown of red blood cells at the
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tissue level in large enough doses it can be fatal when an antigen enters the body the
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immune system's response is to produce antibodies which fight the invading organism
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to find out whether rice and antibodies were in michael ferrara's system dr richardson used a technique called elisa
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which stands for enzyme-linked immunoabsorbent assay a 96-well plastic plate is coated with
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the solution containing ricin in theory any rice and antibodies in dr farrar's
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blood would bind to the ricin coated on the plate which is exactly what happened
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next dr richardson analyzed the blood of goats that had been exposed to small amounts of ricin it appeared that the
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goats and michael ferrar both had similar antibodies in their systems antibodies designed and structured to
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recognize and seek out the target invader ricin dr richardson discovered something else
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the number of rice and antibodies in farrar's system was staggering in the case of dr michael ferrar it's
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thought that perhaps he was exposed three times a certain immune response would have been produced the first time
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a response would have lasted a few weeks on second and third and perhaps other exposures a separate immune response
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would have been produced for each one of those exposures and the latter exposures would have
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produced a response and antibodies that would be present in the blood for again many months to perhaps a few years debra
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greene was charged with two counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder prosecutors believe that when deborah's
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attempts to kill her husband failed she feared losing custody of her children in the impending divorce
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i don't have to listen to this after the argument on the telephone prosecutors believe that deborah poured
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accelerants throughout the house with special attention to michael's possessions and making sure to cut off
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the children's escape route the path of the accelerants led directly to the door of debra green's bedroom
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[Music] but she used too much accelerant the vapors ignited causing a mini explosion
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that singed her hair while dousing her head with water she saw that her bathrobe had also caught
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fire and discarded it ten-year-old jennifer survived by crawling out her bedroom window and
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jumping to the ground deborah told tim to stay inside with the six-year-old sister until firemen
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arrived sadly tim did what his mother had told him to do he and kelly both died before firemen
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could reach them deborah green's trial was scheduled to begin one week after michael's brain
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operation to repair damage caused by the rice and poisoning but the trial never took place
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deborah greene pleaded no contest to the charges avoiding a possible death sentence
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my attorneys are ready willing and able to present evidence that i was not in control of myself when tim and kelly
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died however true that may be defending myself at trial on these charges would only compound the suffering of my family
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and my daughter she was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole
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for 40 years well i think these kids in this case were sort of the ultimate pawn
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the ultimate weapon that deborah green used in this fight with michael ferrar she in some ways probably loved those
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kids in other ways viewed them as an expendable resource to be used in this war [Music]
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[Music] so [Applause] [Music] you