Bitter Harvest Read online

  Outstanding Acclaim for Ann Rule’s

  Brilliant New York Times Bestseller

  BITTER HARVEST

  “True-crime queen Rule continues her reign at the top of the genre with another tension-filled, page-turning chronology and analysis of a psychopath in action. . . . It is Rule’s expert attention to detail that makes this Medea-incarnate story so compelling. . . . Through exhaustive research, Rule slowly reveals the widening chinks in Green’s psychic armor as she fails in her first marriage, then in various attempts to become a practicing physician, and then in her emotionless marriage with her second husband. By the time readers reach the end of Rule’s gripping saga of sin and murder most foul, they will understand at least partly the roots of Green’s madness.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “An unnerving book . . . Rule offers some interesting theories.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “The case of Debora Green—a woman whose promise seemed boundless—is intriguing.”

  —The Washington Post

  “An outstanding chronicle of a crime investigation as well as a riveting profile of a brilliant mind and empty soul.”

  —Library Journal

  “Peeling back the layers of lies and chicanery, Rule takes us inside Debora Green’s mind. The result is both horrible and fascinating.”

  —Kansas City Star

  “No true-crime fan should miss this one.”

  —Minneapolis Star-Tribune

  “Rule’s book reveals as much about America as anything by the Great American Writers. . . . Her America is in the sociopathic fringes, the places where people who are barely human anymore try to appear human.”

  —Stranger Books

  “[A] tragic true-life story . . . A vivid account of . . . a wonderland marriage gone sour.”

  —Naples News (FL)

  “This is vintage Rule: a sad, grisly and cynical tale, rampant with questions about what causes seemingly normal people to commit horrendous acts.”

  —Seattlemag.com

  “With wealth, adultery, poisoning, arson, and murder among its ingredients, Rule’s compelling examination . . . seems readymade for true-crime aficionados. . . . In lush detail, Rule traces this brutal crime masterminded by a brilliant doctor.”

  —Booklist

  “Startling . . . will be enough to send a shiver of anger through anyone, most particularly those of us who are parents. . . . Rule is in her element.”

  —The Pilot (Southern Pines, NC)

  “Rule is a superb storyteller. . . . BITTER HARVEST becomes a page-turner with real force.”

  —Flint Journal (MI)

  “In the tradition of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, Rule gives just a hint of the diabolic nature of the evil to come before she dives head first into the psyche of the evil-doer. . . . While Rule is patiently and vividly recounting events, the reader is barreling through the book, gasping in disbelief as each bizarre twist draws a map to the inevitable end. . . . A nonfiction mystery with all the best elements of spine-tingling fiction—a great plot, full-bodied characters, and an ending to die for.”

  —The Virginian-Pilot

  “What makes BITTER HARVEST a mind-boggling tale is that it is a true story. . . . Fans of Rule and true crime will be enthralled by this portrait of a family’s disintegration at the hands of a madwoman.”

  —Internet Reviews

  “Chilling . . . a page-turner . . . both fascinating and frightening, but well worth the read.”

  —The Camera (Boulder, CO)

  “This is, thanks to the vivid, fascinating portrait of Debora and of the slow unraveling of her homicidal schemes, one of Rule’s best.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “This horrifying middle-American saga is both painstaking and painful. . . . BITTER HARVEST reminds us how easy it is to misinterpret danger signs in relationships, both intimate and social.”

  —The Post (Covington, KY)

  Books by Ann Rule

  Bitter Harvest

  Dead by Sunset

  Everything She Ever Wanted

  If You Really Loved Me

  The Stranger Beside Me

  Possession

  Small Sacrifices

  In the Name of Love and Other True Cases

  Ann Rule’s Crime Files: Vol. 4

  A Fever in the Heart and Other True Cases

  Ann Rule’s Crime Files: Vol. 3

  You Belong to Me and Other True Cases

  Ann Rule’s Crime Files: Vol. 2

  A Rose for Her Grave and Other True Cases

  Ann Rule’s Crime Files: Vol. 1

  The I-5 Killer

  The Want-Ad Killer

  Lust Killer

  Thank you for purchasing this Pocket Star Books eBook.

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  Contents

  Prologue

  Part 1

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Part 2

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Part 3

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  to Bonnie Allen of Roslyn, Washington

  Teacher, artist, and my friend for three decades

  you have overcome tragedy and adversity and

  remained the embodiment of what

  a mother and a grandmother can and should be

  God Bless

  PROLOGUE

  Sometimes the places where searing tragedies have happened are marked with visible scars. More often, when normalcy returns, only the most discerning eye or the most sensitive mind will know. This is the way the world is and must be; we cannot forever grieve over old wounds and ancient sorrows. New grass covers bare ground, and flowers come back in the springtime, no matter what has happened on the earth that nurtures them.

  Prairie Village, Kansas, became one of those places where an unbearable, irredeemable tragedy occurred. Something terrible happened there on a windy October night in 1995, a catastrophe of such magnitude that it seemed that the street where it happened—Canterbury Court—could never recover, that no one living there could ever laugh again. And yet, when I walked along Canterbury Court long after the wildfire that had erupted there, I saw no sign that anything unusual had taken place on that quiet suburban street.

  People who liv
e in other parts of America often don’t realize that there are two Kansas Citys, one on the easternmost border of Kansas and the other on the western edge of Missouri. If they were sisters and not cities, the former would be an independent cowgirl, and the latter a graceful patron of the arts. Natives of each state seem to differentiate between the two with no difficulty whatsoever; they call one KCK and one KCMO. However, two cities with the same name create much confusion for visitors. Kansas City, Missouri, with a population of 450,000, is three times as big as its Kansas counterpart. Ward Parkway, in Kansas City, Missouri, is lined with beautifully landscaped homes and estates and has a proliferation of statues and fountains. Kansas City, Missouri, has opera and ballet companies, and quaintly restored shopping areas whose original glory days were sixty or seventy years ago. At Thanksgiving, thousands flock to the Country Club Plaza to see the tiny lights that outline the old stucco buildings turned on. Instantly, the picturesque plaza becomes a holiday wonderland. Residents in “KCMO” live “north of the river” or “south of the river”—meaning the mighty Missouri.

  The Missouri-Kansas border—State Line Road—runs south from the confluence of the Kansas and the Missouri rivers where they become one: the Missouri. Indeed, in some areas the state line is the center of the Missouri River. Thousands of families live in the Johnson County, Kansas, suburbs of the metropolitan Kansas City area and commute to Missouri. Visitors to both cities fly into KCI, a shared airport on the Missouri side. The gift shops sell souvenirs of Kansas’s most famous—if fictional—characters: Dorothy, Toto, the Cowardly Lion, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Man, all the beloved players in The Wizard of Oz.

  Johnson County is in Kansas; Jackson County is in Missouri. Johnson County has 430,000 residents and is one of the most sought-after areas for upwardly mobile families. The Shawnee Mission Parkway rolls west from Kansas City, Missouri, and intersects with I-35, which turns south—a feeder freeway to myriad communities with tree-lined streets and homes built for pocketbooks ranging from modest to sumptuous: Roeland Park, Leawood, Mission, Fairway, Mission Hills, Merriam, Shawnee, Prairie Village, Overland Park, and, some thirty miles down the line, Olathe, the Johnson County seat. Many of these towns actually straddle the state line; homes just across the street from each other are in different states. Police jurisdictions intermingle, as do fire departments’ perimeters. More than in most areas, cooperation between agencies is essential.

  Of all these suburbs, Prairie Village is probably one of the most desirable (second only to posh Mission Hills), although its name scarcely describes its appearance. There is no prairie, and this is not a village but an upscale haven for professionals, with more doctors, lawyers, CEOs, and others with incomes well over $100,000 a year than almost any town in Kansas. Many of the houses in Prairie Village are “old money” classics of brick, built in the thirties or earlier. One small development, Canterbury, with its Canterbury Court and Canterbury Cul de Sac et al., is clearly “new money,” its mansions expensive imitations of English Norman, baronial Georgian, and Frank Lloyd Wright modern. Canterbury Court opens, somewhat incongruously, onto busy West Seventy-fifth, with its smaller homes and apartment houses.

  It is an orchid dropped among dandelions and daisies—exquisite but out of place. Few of Canterbury’s privileged children go to public school; rather, they are driven to private schools like Pembroke Hill, whose tuition is prohibitive for the average working family. Schoolchildren who live one block on either side of Canterbury sometimes tease the “rich kids.”

  In the mid-nineties, every other house in the first block of Canterbury Court seemed to house a doctor—or two. Mom-and-pop docs, as it were. And for someone who had grown up in a working-class family in a rural town, one mansion on Canterbury Court marked the pinnacle of achievement. A three-floor, 5,000-square-foot house with a swimming pool, it was meant to be a house to mend a marriage, a perfect home to solidify a family torn apart—a place to begin anew. But as a dread scenario unfolded, it became a house of horror.

  When I first stood in front of what once had been 7517 Canterbury Court (the numerals still visible on an elm tree), it was January and desperately cold. I found it almost impossible to imagine that sheets of fire had consumed the house, flames fanned by autumn winds until they were higher than the treetops. In deepest winter, the ground was frozen solid; the huge maples and elms were bare. Even the blue spruce trees drew into themselves against the cold. Only a copse of seven or eight fragile white birches seemed alive. Incredibly, they had survived despite the heat that caught them in a deadly embrace, searing their bark and curling their leaves. The spring rains might revive them.

  Blizzards had come and gone, leaving a light dusting of snow over the brown grass and ice-hardened ridges made by some heavy vehicle driving through mud. I had to look closely to see that the small rocks at my feet were not rocks at all, but cinders, charred fragments plowed into the earth. That was all. There was no “For Sale” sign on the vacant lot, no yawning burned-out foundation, no blackened boards, no reminder of what had once been there. It was all gone—along with the hopes and dreams of the five human beings who had lived in the house that stood on this lonely place.

  The neighbors’ leaded windows and heavy doors were shut tightly against anyone with questions. They were as impenetrable as the houses’ stone and brick façades. No one wanted to remember that windswept October night when there were screams and sirens and, finally, only the muted voices of firefighters moving with a kind of organized desperation.

  By that time, there was no longer any need for haste.

  When I revisited Prairie Village and Canterbury Court six months later—in July—the vacant spot between the two closest houses looked like a park. The grass was bright green and the trees made a canopy of leaves that cast long shadows on the lawn. There was nothing alive there, and that haunted me because, in the interval between visits, I had learned the details of what had happened nine months before. The adjacent houses seemed to have edged stealthily together as if to pretend that no structure ever stood between them—certainly nothing as massive as a stucco and fieldstone mansion with a four-car garage.

  The children who lived in the neighboring houses woke less frequently from their fiery, wild-eyed nightmares now that summer had come. Their parents turned away from reporters and gawkers; they had told what they had to tell in a court of law. They wanted only to regain the safe feeling Canterbury Court once offered. They wanted to forget.

  But, of course, none of them can really forget. Not ever.

  Part 1

  Degenerate Sons and Daughters,

  Life is too strong for you—

  It takes life to love life.

  —EDGAR LEE MASTERS

  Spoon River Anthology

  1

  The wind had blown constantly that fall, but that wasn’t unusual for Kansas. Most Kansans scarcely acknowledge the wind; however, on October 23, 1995, gusts were strong enough to scatter carefully piled mounds of leaves and make lights flicker on and off. Housewives set out candles and flashlights—just in case.

  In Prairie Village, Dr. Debora Green went about all her usual errands. With three children to take care of, she practically needed a timetable to coordinate their activities. She would have welcomed a power outage so they could stay home, light faintly scented candles, and just talk to each other. Later that day, they were all back together in their beautiful new house on Canterbury Court: Debora; her son, Tim; and her daughters, Lissa1 and Kelly. After supper they all went to bed in their separate rooms. Debora thought she had turned on the burglar alarm, and the smoke alarm was always set on “Ready.”

  Fire can erupt with a raucous explosion or be as furtive as a mouse skittering silently along a wall. It was after midnight when the wind coaxed out the first tongues of fire and blew them into billows of orange before all the sleeping neighbors on Canterbury Court even knew they were in danger. The magnificent homes were so close together that squirrels could leap from one yard’s trees
to those next door.

  And the roofs were made of picturesque wooden shakes, dry as bone from the long midwestern summer.

  Debora Green was barely able to escape the flames that engulfed her house. She rushed to her neighbors’ house and pounded on the door, pleading for someone to help her save her children. Then she looked back at the fire and her heart convulsed at what she saw. Silhouetted against the glow in the sky, the small figure of a child scampered ahead of flames that were already eating away at the beams of the garage. As the child moved north, the roof just behind her began to give way and cave in. The child—it was Lissa—miraculously made her way up over the peak of the garage roof and down the other side, where she perched precariously on the edge of the disintegrating roof. In moments, she would surely fall into the fire below and perish.

  “Help me!” Lissa screamed. Even through the thick black smoke, she had seen her mother standing by their neighbors’ house. The little girl called again and again, her small voice lost in the roar of the flames. Finally—as if Debora was moving through quicksand—Lissa saw her mother head toward her. She saw her! She was coming!

  Lissa knew she would be all right now; her mother would save her. Debora stood beneath the edge of the roof, her legs spread wide and her feet planted firmly so that she would not slip. She held her arms open and beckoned to Lissa to jump down to her. But it was such a long way to the ground. For a moment, Lissa hesitated—and then she looked over her shoulder and saw that the garage roof was almost gone.

  “Jump!” Debora ordered. “Jump! I’ll catch you.”

  “I’m afraid. . . .”

  “Jump! Now!” There was urgency in her mother’s voice, and something else, something that frightened Lissa more than the fire.

  Lissa obeyed. With her arms above her head and the heat licking at her back, she leaped from the garage roof. But Debora didn’t catch her; her arms were not spread wide enough, or maybe she was standing too far back from the garage. Lissa crumpled to the ground at Debora’s feet. But the lawn was carpeted with a cushion of leaves and she was not hurt.