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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
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family. Two of the family members made it out alive. Two of the children did not.
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In the debris, medical detectives discovered much more than simply how the fire started.
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[Music] Michael Ferrar and Deborah Green first met in medical school in 1977. Both were gifted students with near
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genius IQ's. There was an instant attraction and they married less than a year after they met. Over the next 16
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years, the couple raised three children, Jennifer, Timothy, and Kelly, in an affluent suburb of Kansas City, Kansas.
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To outsiders, their lives seemed perfect. But the marriage was showing signs of stress.
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At the North Kansas City Hospital, Dr. Michael Ferrar was a successful heart specialist who worked very long hours,
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often at the expense of time with his children. Deborah quit her own medical practice
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when the children were born. She battled depression, weight gain, and was rumored
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to have a drinking problem. >> You got the impression that Deborah wasn't the easiest person in the world
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to live with. Um, she was uh 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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[Music] While sightseeing along the Amazon River and among the Incan remains, an
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attractive blonde nurse caught Michael's attention. She was the mother of one of
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the other students. When they returned to Kansas City, Michael continued to see his new friend, which soon blossomed
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into a sexual affair. It didn't take Deborah long to find out about her husband's affair. She moved into a
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separate bedroom and her drinking increased. >> Her whole identity was her marriage and
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her family because she didn't uh she no longer had her own career. Um I I felt
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that, you know, maybe it was just really hard for her to let go of that. maybe she felt like um
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she could change or something could change and they could somehow stay together.
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>> And Michael had some serious problems of his own. Shortly after the Peru trip,
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Michael developed diarrhea, vomiting, and chills so severe he was admitted to the local hospital. he'd been in South
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America where he might have had access to a whole variety of things that that could make him very sick.
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>> Despite undergoing a full battery of tests, doctors could not determine the
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cause of Dr. Ferrar's illness. >> When I saw him, it's like, Mike, man,
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you look bad. I'm sorry, but you don't look good. And he said he'd been really,
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really violently ill since he had gotten back from Peru. He assumed that he had gotten some tropical parasite from hell.
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Michael Ferrar was rapidly losing weight, dropping to just 125 lbs. Whatever was causing this illness was a
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mystery. For a cardiologist who seemingly had it all, Dr. Michael Ferrar's life in 1995
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was one crisis after another. When he was released from the hospital for the illness many believed he caught in Peru,
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Michael took another step towards divorce by moving into his own apartment across town.
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His wife Deborah was angry, depressed, drinking heavily, and would stay in her bedroom for days at a time.
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Michael was concerned for her welfare as well as the safety of their three children.
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While visiting the house to pick up some of his things, Michael noticed something
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suspicious in his wife's purse. A packet of caster beans. On the label was a warning that the beans were
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poisonous. With so many packets of castor beans in her purse, Michael suspected that his
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wife was planning to commit suicide. So he was telling me that he was pretty sure she was going to try and kill
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herself with these poisons, which really to me didn't make any sense because Dr.
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Green is a a bright woman. I mean, she's extremely bright woman and is an oncologist. And if you're a doctor, I
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mean, doctors kill themselves, all right? I mean, in professional people do commit suicide, but fortunately, we've
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got the best of drugs available to us. I mean, if you're going to go, why would
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you go stooling yourself to death? I mean, you aren't going to want to die with bloody diarrhea. I mean, that is a
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very horrible, bad way to die. >> Dr. Ferrar decided to do a little investigating of his own.
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The caster beans were purchased from the Earl May Garden Center. A receipt from that store in Deborah's purse indicated
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she purchased the beans just 4 days before Michael first got sick. While consulting his medical textbook,
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Farrar learned some terrible news that castor beans contain Ryson, a deadly toxin with no known antidote.
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And the symptoms of Ryson poisoning were vomiting, nausea, diarrhea, and gastrointestinal bleeding. Symptoms
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which were identical to his own. Farrar quickly took a sample of his own blood for testing, but Ryson leaves the
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body quickly and the lab could find no trace of it in his system. Although he had no proof, Farrar was
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convinced that his wife had somehow poisoned him with Ryson and this was the cause of his mysterious symptoms.
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A few days later, Michael confronted Deborah during an angry telephone call. I told her that I was uh very angry with
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her. Uh that I thought she was crazy. That I thought she had been poisoning me. That I thought she needed serious
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psychiatric help. >> I don't have to listen to this. [Music] >> 1 hour later around midnight, a fire
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broke out in the Ferrar family home. By the time firemen arrived, the home was totally engulfed in flames.
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>> I've never seen a fire spread as fast throughout the house as I have on this
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one. The heat was tremendous. Uh there was no way that uh anyone could get even get close to the house. Of course, the
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flames were were roaring out u probably 20 to 30 ft. Deborah and her 10-year-old daughter,
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Jennifer, both escaped. During questioning on the night of the fire, Deborah learned the tragic news
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that her other two children had been trapped and died in the fire. >> Oh, God. Beautiful family, beautiful Joy
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are both dead. Jesus Christ, did they make any attempt at all to save them? 6-year-old Kelly died of smoke
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inhilation in her own bed. 13-year-old Tim burned to death. >> Christ, I saved one of the kids and I
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could have gotten the second one out and didn't. I'll never forgive myself for
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that. >> Investigators immediately suspected arson. >> It's fair to say that Deborah Green was
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a suspect early on. It's fair to say that Mike Ferrar was a suspect early on.
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>> 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 Ferrar, police looked a little deeper into the relationship between Michael and his
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aranged wife Deborah. A few weeks before the fire, the couple had a fight at the
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house. Michael said his wife was intoxicated, angry, and threatening to kill herself. The police were called and
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took Deborah 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
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not Deborah Green was really that mentally ill and is sitting there in the u in the waiting room of the KU medical
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center emergency room talking to Deborah Green 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 walks Michael Ferrar
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>> when they met in our kind of entryway there, she just like turns on him like
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she's I mean for a minute I kind of hold her like I think she's going to
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physically attack him and she spits at him and calls him a cold and then she says, "You're going to get these kids
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over their dead bodies." >> Deborah said she made the statement in anger and denied having anything to do
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with the fire. [Music] She said she was asleep when the fire alarm sounded. She said she opened the bedroom door,
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saw flames and smoke, closed the door, and ran outside through a door in the bedroom.
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>> Tim, can you hear me? Deborah said she told her son Tim to stay inside until
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firemen arrived and ran to the next door neighbor's house for help to find out
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whether an accelerant or flammable liquid was used in starting the fire. Arson investigators used specially
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trained dogs that can identify vapors which remain after the fire. This is a dog that has been through several weeks
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of training on how to how to detect different types of liquid accelerants like diesel fuel or kerosene or gasoline
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or charcoal lighter fluid. >> The dogs identified a number of suspicious areas.
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Investigators found melted plastic containers on the floor, possibly used to carry flammable liquids throughout
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the house. Next to Dr. Ferrar'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.
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Again, this it's possible that uh the contents of this bottle were poured out
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and and ignited on the desk. A section of the basement floor had what appeared to be a poor pattern where an
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accelerant was ignited as a test. The accelerants also gave investigators a clear path of the fire. The path led
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directly to Deborah Green's bedroom door. That fire was set at that bedroom door
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with the intent of doing a tremendous amount of damage to that house and cutting off the escape route of those
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children upstairs. >> And the analysis of the burn patterns on the bedroom door contradicted Deborah
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Green's story. Deborah said her bedroom door was closed when the fire alarm sounded and that she
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closed the door before running outside for help. But the carpet underneath the door
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revealed the door had been opened. The door jamb revealed the same thing. If the door had been closed, the door jamb
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would have been protected from the fire. Instead, it was completely covered with
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soot. In the bathroom was Deborah's bathrobe wrapped in a ball on the floor. On the
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underside of the robe were burn marks. At some point, the person wearing the robe had been very close to the flames.
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The neighbors said Deborah's hair was wet when she ran over asking for help.
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This did not come as a surprise to arson investigators. >> When Dr. Green actually
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ignited that accelerant outside of her bedroom door and in the hallway that there was enough vapors present that
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there was there was quite a flash uh more of a flash than she probably was prepared for. Uh when she did that, uh I
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believe that is when she got the hair singed on the right side of her head. >> With a search warrant, detectives took a
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sample of Deborah's hair. Microscopic analysis revealed that Deborah's hair
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showed signs of heat damage consistent with singing from a highintensity flame. The damage to Deborah's hair was
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extensive since the sample wasn't collected until after she had her hair cut for her children's funeral.
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Bill Chapen is a forensic chemist whose job was to analyze the fire debris evidence from the Ferrar home. Fire
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debris is stored in metal canisters which preserve any vapors which may still be present. The canisters are
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heated to between 80 and 90° centigrade and the air inside removed. If the vapors contain accelerants or
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hydrocarbons, they're trapped in charcoal filters. The filters are then rinsed with a neutral solvent carbon
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dulfide and the mixture is placed into a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer for
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analysis. After 2 days of testing, Bill Chapen found what he was looking for. >> In this particular case, the accelerant
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that I found was an accelerant called isoparafin. Isoparafins are often used in odorless uh charcoal lighter fluids.
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There was an empty container of charcoal lighter fluid on the floor of the Ferrar's garage.
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Investigators were now convinced that Deborah Green set the fire that killed two of her children. The only question
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that remained, had she also tried to kill her husband with caster beans? When Dr. Michael Ferrar told police he
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was sure his wife had been poisoning him with caster beans. Investigators were unsure of where to start. Since the
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local laboratory could find no evidence of Ryson in Michael Ferrar's system, his
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blood was sent to the FBI to Dr. Drew Richardson, an expert in chemical and biological research at the Naval Medical
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Research Institute in Washington DC. People in the intelligence community are quite familiar with Ryson based on a
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handful of cases that most everybody would know about. Very few people in the lay public and and even highly trained
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professionals such as medical doctors would be quite unlikely to know much about Ryson, if anything. Ryson is an
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antigen that causes a breakdown of red blood cells at the tissue level. In large enough doses, it can be fatal.
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When an antigen enters the body, the immune system's response is to produce antibodies which fight the invading
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organism. To find out whether rice and antibodies were in Michael Ferrar's system, Dr. Richardson used a technique
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called alysa, which stands for enzyme linked imunosorbent essay. A 96 well plastic plate is coated with the
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solution containing Ryson. In theory, any Ryson antibodies in Dr. Ferrar's blood would bind to the Ryson coated on
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the plate, which is exactly what happened. Next, Dr. Richardson analyzed the blood of goats that had been exposed
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to small amounts of Ryson. It appeared that the goats and Michael Ferrar both had similar antibodies in their systems.
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Antibodies designed and structured to recognize and seek out the target invader, Ryson. Dr. Richardson
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discovered something else. The number of Ryson antibodies in Ferrar's system was
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staggering. >> In the case of Dr. Michael Ferrar, it's thought that perhaps he was exposed
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three times. A certain immune response would have been produced the first time, a response that would have lasted a few
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weeks. on second and third and perhaps other exposures. A separate immune response would have been produced for
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each one of those exposures and the latter exposures would have produced a response and antibodies that would be
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present in the blood for again many months to perhaps a few years. >> Deborah Green was charged with two
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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
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the impending divorce. >> I don't have to listen to this. After the argument on the telephone,
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prosecutors believe that Deborah poured accelerants throughout the house with special attention to Michael's
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possessions and making sure to cut off the children's escape route. The path of the accelerance led directly
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to the door of Deborah Green's bedroom. [Music] But she used too much accelerant. The
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vapors ignited, causing a mini explosion that singed her hair. While dousing her head with water, she
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saw that her bathrobe had also caught fire and discarded it. 10-year-old Jennifer survived by
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crawling out her bedroom window and jumping to the ground. Deborah told Tim to stay inside with his six-year-old
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sister until firemen arrived. Sadly, Tim did what his mother had told him to do. He and Kelly both died before
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firemen 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 Ryson poisoning, but the trial never took place. Deborah Green pleaded no
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contest to the charges, avoiding a possible death sentence. >> My attorneys are ready, willing, and
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able to present evidence that I was not in control of myself when Tim and Kelly died. However true that may be,
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defending myself at trial on these charges would only compound the suffering of my family and my daughter.
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>> She was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole for 40
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years. >> Well, I think uh these kids in this case were sort of the ultimate pawn, the
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ultimate weapon that Deborah Green used in this fight with Michael Ferrar. She in some ways probably loved those kids,
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in other ways viewed them as an expendable resource to be used in this war. [Music]
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Heat. Heat. [Music]