Susan’s hands-off parenting style had long been a point of contention with Felix. Whenever there was a problem with one of the boys, Felix was quick to blame Susan, charging either that she was too lenient or that the children were taking after her side of the family. After all, he said, she was the one who dropped out of school in the ninth grade, and it was her household that had been dysfunctional, a comparison that Susan deeply resented. She was upset that Felix would dredge up things she had confided during their therapy sessions at his Berkeley office.
In truth, Susan prided herself on giving the boys space and allowing them their independence. While other mothers were congratulating themselves on how “obedient” their children were, Susan was chuckling at her sons’ displays of strong will. She believed in free will and self-determination and hoped that by giving her children room, they would find that on their own. She wanted her boys to think things over for themselves, and unlike other mothers, she didn’t want to tell them what to do. To Susan, so much control could only lead to “a society of storm troopers or Spartans.” She was about self-expression. The idea of controlling her children went against all that she believed and all that she experienced under the tyrannical Felix Polk.
There was another reason, too. She didn’t want to be like Felix’s mother—completely controlling about everything. According to Susan, Johanna “Joan” Polk was a micromanager, and Susan resented her intrusiveness. Johanna’s approach was quite different from the hands-off style Susan had known with her mother. During her visits to Susan and Felix’s house, Johanna was compelled to comment on things big and small, even on the way Susan washed the dishes. Although he resented his mother’s overbearing nature as a child, now Felix saw no problem with her behavior, hoping that her presence would influence Susan’s parenting. He made no secret of his disapproval of Susan’s skills, constantly insisting that she needed “to train the kids.”
Susan never liked the sound of it. Training was something people did with animals, not people. Nevertheless, the lack of structure and rules in the household continued to be an issue for the family, and Felix was not the only family member to take issue with Susan’s parenting. Adam had problems with her child-rearing abilities as well, going so far as to accuse his mother of fostering a pattern of antisocial behavior by allowing his younger siblings to blame their troubles on others instead of demanding they take responsibility for their part. In a letter to the court dated September 10, 2004, Adam noted that, when called up to school to deal with misconduct on the part of Gabe or Eli, Susan defended her sons—pointing a finger at administrators for their failure to carry out their duties properly. When the boys were arrested for various infractions, she accused the other party or police of “inappropriate” treatment of her and her sons.
The letter went on to point out that, as far as Susan was concerned, it was not her children’s fault when things went awry. When Eli was caught with marijuana, it was only because he was “holding it” for someone else. When he struck a schoolmate with a flashlight, breaking his nose and causing a great deal of bleeding and facial cuts, Susan claimed Eli didn’t even have a flashlight in his possession that night.
The information in the letter was tough medicine, but it contained a number of legitimate complaints. Yet it failed to address other crucial problems, such as Susan’s distaste for authority. Indeed, her openly hostile treatment of authority complicated matters for her and her sons during difficult situations with the police or probation officers. Though she would later deny it, Felix claimed Susan cursed out the principal of Gabriel’s middle school, telling him to “go fuck himself.” She also penned an angry letter to the chief of the Moraga Police Department, complaining about officers who executed a search warrant in February 2002 to collect potential evidence in an assault case against Eli.
In that instance, Susan was furious that officers accused her of interfering. “Officer Harbison announced that I was obstructing the search, twisted my arm painfully behind my back, placed handcuffs on me,” she wrote. “Sergeant Price then led me downstairs and told me to sit down. I was not violent, threatening or getting in the way of the search.”
While Felix and Adam viewed Susan’s parenting and problems with authority as having a negative impact on the family, Susan had her own issues with Felix’s fatherly skills. She detested Felix’s need to single out one son as the “golden” boy, much like his own father had done with his twin brother, John. She observed that in his first marriage, Felix had lavished praise on his firstborn son, Andrew, while his daughter Jennifer received the criticism. Now in his second marriage, the pattern was repeating itself as Felix tended to favor their eldest son, Adam, while being outwardly critical of Eli and simply forgetting Gabriel. In many ways, Adam was more akin to Felix’s twin brother, John. He was smart and athletic, and things came naturally to him—qualities that Felix envied.
In a letter to Eli, Susan confided that Felix’s need to pick one of his children to be an example for the rest of the family members
is a way of maintaining control over the family members. When Dad went to graduate school in England, he studied under a psychiatrist, R. D. Laing, who wrote a book about how “crazy making” families do this: they pick one of their children to be an example for the rest of the family members, to express for the family what they are afraid of, what could happen to them…. The “example nigger” also expresses for the leader of the family…characteristics in his own nature that are not tolerable: for example violence, suicide, impulsivity, feelings of failure, craziness, homosexuality, whatever it is the leader is anxious about or driven by. In a sense, this child is selected as a sacrifice.
Of the three Polk boys, Susan viewed Eli as the most sensitive and emotional. In his teens, Eli displayed anxiety and separation issues similar to those Felix battled as a young man. In a diary, Susan noted that her middle son found it difficult to be apart from his dad. During grammar school, Eli had come home early from a hockey camp in Canada, and on a trip to Paris with Susan in 2001, he became so anxious he boarded a plane for home after just three days abroad. To Susan, it was clear that Eli’s issues were directly connected to his father’s poor treatment of him.
“You have systematically treated Eli as if he had something wrong with him, just as you did Jennifer in your first family,” Susan wrote of Felix in her computer diary. “You seem to have a need to scapegoat somebody.
“According to you, Sharon was to blame for Jennifer’s poor self-esteem. You forget that while Jennifer lived with us, I had time to observe how you treated her. Consistently, you behaved as if her intelligence was subnormal, when in fact it appeared to me there was nothing at all the matter with her except for her poor self-esteem…. I can’t pretend to understand this family dynamic: how a family selects a child for success (in your first family, it was Andy, in ours, Adam), and a sibling or siblings for failure…. It has broken my heart, and I can no longer live with your sadistic parenting.”
In addition to his favoritism toward Adam, Felix, like Susan, suffered from an inability to properly discipline and control the boys. Such was the case on the night of May 25, 2001, when police were called to investigate a “rowdy” party at the Miner Road compound where underage drinking was supposedly occurring. Responding officers found more than twenty-five underage partygoers around the pool, and Felix was the adult in charge. “Throughout the area, I saw empty cans of Budweiser and Coors Light, cans of Budweiser beer full or partially full and still cold, unopened cans of beer still cold, a glass filled with an alcoholic beverage resembling red wine, and a half-full bottle of Smirnoff Vodka,” Officer K. Mooney of the Orinda Police Department documented in the official report.
Officer Mooney was familiar with the location, having been summoned to the residence numerous times for loud, juvenile parties. “All of the alcoholic beverage containers were located in and around groups of persons who I separately identified as being in age from 16 to 18.”
Mooney noted that Frank [Felix] Polk, was in the kitchen, which overlooked the pool and the pool house, when he and his partner arrived at 10:20 that night. “Both the alcoholic beverages and the large group of juveniles were in plain view,” Mooney wrote. “Shortly after my arrival, Frank came outside, and asked what I was doing on his property. I told him that we had a complaint of a loud party. Frank said that it was just a graduation party and that it wasn’t loud.
“I told Frank that there were minors on his property while alcoholic beverages were being consumed and reminded him of my previous warning on 5/5/01. Frank replied that it was a graduation party.
“Frank’s son, Adam, approached as I was speaking with Frank. Adam told me that he was 18 years old and that it was his party and that he was responsible for the party.”
It was then that the officers placed Felix and his son under arrest and charged them with “contributing to the delinquency of a minor” and “un-lawful juvenile gathering on private property.” Though both men were later released at the scene and got off with mere citations, the episode was a disturbing example of Felix’s double standards. This hypocrisy would only worsen over the course of the next year; the Orinda police were regularly summoned to the Polk house in response to complaints of loud parties with underage drinking and fistfights. During one such call, in May of 2002, police arrived to find nearly one hundred teens, the majority of them minors, holding red plastic cups filled with beer. While there, a fight erupted in the crowd near the guesthouse and officers worked to break it up. Police found Felix Polk at home and admonished him for allowing alcohol to be served to minors.
Despite his claims of Susan’s negligence when it came to disciplining the boys, it became increasingly clear that Felix suffered from a similar inability to set boundaries for their teenage sons. While he would routinely belittle Susan’s ability to parent her children, his own attitudes proved just as dangerously nonchalant. Furthermore by allowing these unsupervised parties, he risked not just the well-being of his sons but of other teens as well.
In the days after Susan’s arrest, the questionable parenting of both Felix and Susan was examined as police reviewed their files and learned a lot more about this dysfunctional family. Officers were summoned to the Polk house frequently to deal with situations involving Adam, Eli, or Gabriel. Indeed, problems of one sort or another with the Polk family went way back—particularly with regard to Eli who had been in and out of trouble since 1998, when he and several friends allegedly entered another schoolmate’s house without permission and stole one hundred fifty dollars worth of alcohol. He was twelve at the time.
The following January, Eli was stopped for driving without a license. The officer who flashed him over intended to cite him for a broken headlight until he discovered the driver was just thirteen years old—far too young for even a learner’s permit.
Even worse, he had three female passengers in the car with him.
Susan and Felix took custody of Eli and his three young passengers, and Eli was fined one hundred twenty-five dollars for the violation.
In addition to his recklessness, Eli also displayed severe problems with aggression and harassment. It was no secret that he loved to fight, but he ran into problems when he brought this inclination to school with him. In April of 2000, he was expelled from Piedmont High School for harassing a classmate, calling the teen a “fucking fag,” and speaking derogatorily about homosexuals. He further inflamed the situation by yelling back “I say we kill all homosexuals” as he was ordered from his fourth-period classroom and directed to the principal’s office. Eli was ultimately suspended for his comments and for passing a note that read “u r gay” to the classmate. In addition, his teenage victim filed a police report alleging that Eli was so threatening, he “feared for his life.”
Unfortunately, Eli was not the only son with a tendency toward violence. In April of 1998, Adam was accused of battery for allegedly punching a classmate of Eli’s in the face at a middle-school dance. At the time, he was attending De La Salle High School, a Catholic all-boys school in Concord. Adam told officers who came to the family’s Piedmont home to investigate that he was simply “preventing Eli from getting a beating.” Adam claimed he went to the school that night to make sure Eli was “protected,” after hearing rumors that the kid had threatened to “jump” his brother and carried a knife. According to Adam, he approached the teen, who was standing with friends in the schoolyard, and asked if he was “talking” about Eli. Words were exchanged and, at one point, Adam hauled off and punched the kid in the nose, fleeing the school grounds in the aftermath.
Not surprisingly, the victim’s recollection of the night’s events differed significantly from Adam’s. In the ensuing police report, the boy said Adam punched him twice, once in the nose and once on the cheek, while he was outside on the street in front of the school waiting for his father to pick him up that night. He didn’t even know who Adam was when he walked up and announced that Eli said the kid had been “talking about him [Adam].”
“If I were to punch you, would you block it?” Adam reportedly asked the teen.
“No, I don’t want to start nothing,” the boy replied.
The victim claimed that Adam hit him in the face two times without provocation, and then walked away. When it was all over, Adam was issued a ticket and released to the custody of his mother. He was also ordered to receive counseling from a member of the Contra Costa Sheriff’s Office on the dangers of taking situations into his own hands, agreeing that in the future he would call police for help.
In the summer of 2002, people attending a party at a nearby home in Alamo charged that Adam stole silver dishes and a Sony Play Station, worth in excess of five hundred dollars. Officers were dispatched to the Miner Road house to interview Adam but learned that he had already left for UCLA. Gabriel answered the door that day and insisted the accusations were false. He said Adam told him that the girl who hosted the party “wanted to sleep with Adam” but Adam “didn’t want to sleep with her.” It was for this reason that she named him as the culprit, he said.
When police reached Adam by phone, he denied any involvement in the theft and pointed a finger at another area teen.
Despite being the youngest, Gabriel was not immune to the problems that his brothers faced. On March 24, 2000, Gabriel and five of his friends burglarized a neighbor’s home, stealing six speakers, DVDs, and one hundred dollars from the homeowner’s wallet, which they took from a pocketbook in the kitchen. Police found all six boys in the backyard of the Polk’s house in Piedmont. The homeowner declined to press charges, asking that the boys be counseled and released to the custody of their parents. A police report indicated that the stolen property was returned.
Also in 2000, Gabriel got into a fight with a fellow student in the hallway of Miramonte Middle School. He claimed the boy was a “snitch” and accused the kid of “acting gay.” Gabe claimed the boy got in his face, provoking a fight. There were indications that friction had existed between the two boys dating back to the sixth grade. At first, Gabriel sought to avoid a fight with the boy. But when the boy struck him in the back of the head with a set of keys, Gabriel turned to confront the youth. Gabe was later taken to the hospital, where he was treated for a gash that required staples to close it up. A subsequent investigation revealed that Gabe had been struck with a T-shaped weapon, a two-inch steel rod with a flat metal base, however this did little to quell the ongoing feud. School authorities accused Gabe of bringing “manufactured” weapons such as a roll of taped quarters, a brass card holder made into brass knuckles, and an eight-inch weighted blackjack to school to seek revenge. Police confiscated the materials and later learned the homemade weapons were brought to school by several of Gabe’s friends. The boys were arrested on charges of “possession of a deadly weapon” and ordered to attend an anger management course.
While the dangerous behavior of the three boys had been going on for years, in the summer of 2002 the situation went from bad to worse. On July 29, 2002, Adam was arrested for drunk driving. He was ordered to participate in a two-day, county-sponsored Alcohol Offense Program in Contra Costa County. The first session was set for October 12—the weekend of his father’s murder, which could explain why Adam was home in Orinda for the weekend.
Adam was already facing dismissal at UCLA. Authorities were poised to expel the teen because he hadn’t completed enough coursework in his freshman year. He had dropped several classes without authorization, intending to make up the work in his sophomore year. School officials advised him that they could only reverse their decision under “extraordinary” circumstances. In August, Felix wrote a letter of explanation to the vice provost of undergraduate education at UCLA on Adam’s behalf, blaming “problems at home” for his son’s decision to reduce his course load without first obtaining permission. Adam thought lightening his load would make the spring semester “manageable for him because of the stress he was experiencing in relation to his family situation.”
“During this past year, Adam’s family, as he has known it, has fallen apart,” Felix wrote in the letter dated August 17. “In the fall of 2001, my wife and I separated under extremely tense and difficult circumstances. The stable family and security he had known for most of his life was dramatically altered. It was under these difficult circumstances that Adam began his freshman year at UCLA.
“Adam has always been a winner academically, socially, and athletically,” Felix wrote. “At De La Salle High School in Northern California, he was class president for three years and graduated near the top of his class in grades. He was a starting footballer for two years for the highest ranked football team in the country. He received public recognition and honors for his athleticism. He has known only success and achievement. And at UCLA, he was the only freshman on the Varsity Rugby Team and became a starter. He is also now an enthusiastic member of a fraternity.”
Ultimately, Felix’s efforts on behalf of Adam proved successful, as UCLA officials agreed to allow Adam to return for his sophomore year, but just as soon as he’d extinguished one fire, another one spread, only this time Felix proved unable to help. The son in question this time was Eli, who violated the terms of his probation and was now trying to avoid juvenile hall.
In a letter to the court, Felix defended his middle son, pointing to his varied accomplishments in the sporting arena as proof of his potential.
“At De La Salle, he was the only freshman on the junior varsity team,” Felix wrote in the three-page letter. “At Miramonte High School, Eli was the only sophomore on the varsity football team. At the University of California basketball camp, [the coach] selected Eli out publicly as the kid who was ‘most likely to make it’ because of his skills and discipline. Currently, Eli is the youngest starting player on the Lamorinda rugby team.
“For many reasons, Eli has tremendous potential,” Felix stated. “I am deeply concerned that if Eli now becomes more involved in the correctional system that it will permanently deflect him away from leading the constructive and successful life which he is capable of doing…. In my view, my son Eli is very much a salvageable young man who can make it in the world. In my view, steering him away from the correctional, institutional system is imperative. In light of this, I respectfully and urgently request that the court consider…that he be placed in my custody in Berkeley, where I have secured a spacious two bedroom apartment…that he continue to receive psychological counseling in which I will participate with him, if he prefers that…and that he be involved immediately in a drug program.”
While Felix’s plea appeared heartfelt, it failed to convince the judge to ignore the recommendations of the confidential probation report to the Juvenile Court of Contra Costa County.
“It seems like the minor [Eli] could use a respite from his parents’ bitter dispute and conflicts so that he can separate himself and work on his own individual issues and make rehabilitation a true priority,” the confidential report cited.
Indeed, the May 22, 2002, report painted a disturbing picture of the Polk family dynamic. “The minor [Eli] is currently caught in the middle of a bitter custody dispute between the mother and the father, both who have heaved a barrage of insults and allegations against each other, even in an open court setting,” it stated. “The mother has been problematic with authority figures, including the arresting police officers, the probation department, home supervision staff, and was arrested in court for contempt and failure to follow court orders. When the judge ordered that the mother receive a psychological assessment, the mother flat-out refused and said she would remove herself from the case rather than to comply with those orders.
“The father who has housed this minor in the last few months has also had problems due to the fact that the minor has accused the father of child abuse resulting in a report to CPS [Child Protective Services] and the minor being put back in custody. It is unclear whether the minor really felt threatened by the father or was fabricating the abuse in hopes that he would get moved back with the mother, the minor was eventually released back to the father and has continued to attend Berkeley High.”
Included in the lengthy report was an evaluation from a deputy of the probation department who met with both parents regarding Eli’s situation. “The father denies all the allegations of abuse saying when the minor was younger and had hyperactivity from hypoglycemia, the father would ‘swat him’ but that was approximately eight years ago,” the deputy wrote. “The father says he’s a nonviolent person and believes the minor lives in a paranoid environment due to the intensive conflict between the mother and father and their impending divorce. The father said under the current conditions, he wasn’t sure if he wants to live with Eli because of his present hostility, paranoia, and aggressiveness….
“Mother felt Eli did something very wrong, but felt there was mitigating circumstances to cause him to do it,” the deputy continued, referring to an interview he had with Susan Polk. “The mother says the minor hadn’t been in a fight since reaching physical maturity and felt he wasn’t sure of his own strength. The mother’s concerns are that the minor grew up in a violent household and that he needs anger management. The mother felt Eli was the target of the father’s anger, and so is expressing his anger that he has kept inside. The mother felt the minor could benefit from drug and alcohol counseling, as well as family counseling.”
The deputy noted that during the interview with Susan, she contradicted Felix’s assertion that Eli had suffered from hypoglycemia as a youth, claiming her son had never been diagnosed with the illness. Also in the report were claims by members of the probation department that Eli had been self-medicating with drugs and alcohol in an attempt to deal with the turmoil at home. Eli told officers that he smoked marijuana on a daily basis and drank alcohol three to four times a month, occasionally experimenting with drugs such as Ecstasy and mushrooms. Denying suggestions that he might be “depressed,” Eli did admit that he suffered from chronic “stomach problems,” which officials attributed to stress.
During his visit to the probation department on May 22, Eli charged in private that his father was physically and emotionally abusive. Felix had accompanied his middle son to the evaluation that day, but when they arrived, Eli announced that he wanted to speak with a deputy alone. Only then did Eli present the officer with a four-page handwritten letter about “physical and mental abuse” he claimed Felix was inflicting upon him.
“The minor was periodically shaken and emotional as he talked about wanting to move back with his mother and how he felt he couldn’t live in such close confined space with his father,” the deputy wrote in his report to the court. “The minor described the father as having in the past ‘beaten the crap’ out of him and his brothers and been mentally abusive with continual putdowns, mental mind games, and intimidation.”
Attached to the report was a psychological evaluation of Eli conducted on May 13, “one where the parents present in a compelling, provocative manner,” the psychologist wrote in a three-page letter to the Court, also dated May 22, 2002. “The father is a mental health professional who appears depressed, ineffective, and passive. [The] mother is aggressive, emotionally labile, and often contradictory in her behaviors and statements,” the psychologist continued.
Both parents care for Eli but have not been able to address his psychological needs. The greatest “risk” for Eli lies not with each individual parent but within the dynamics of the family.
The family system is marked by conflict and turmoil. Role reversal is common with Eli, often given more power and recognition than is warranted for any child of his age. Authority issues are flagrant and pervasive for both parents. When one adult tries to be in charge, even in a healthy manner, the other sabotages the process by name calling and undermining. While his mother’s participation in this sabotage is obvious, the father also undermines the mother with his passivity and reluctance to be in charge.
Eli is very identified with his mother who is viewed by Eli as a victim in the dynamic. Part of this identification is based on the natural fact that his mother has been his primary caregiver with his father, by his admission, over involved at work. Part of this identification is also a defense against maternal anger and feared abandonment. It is not surprising that according to Eli and police records, his involvement in the crime was as a protector—looking out for his friend, the underdog in this case.
As local news channels were airing details of the gruesome Orinda murder, Detective Costa and his team were chasing down leads. Their first stop was Felix’s Berkeley office. It was late morning on October 16 when Costa and his colleague, Jeff Moule, climbed the steps to 3001 Dana Avenue. The two men looked almost like father and son as they strode into the office building. Costa was in his fifties, with jet-black hair parted to one side. His mustache was short and neatly trimmed, just like Moule’s.
Moule was fair-haired, twenty years younger and forty pounds thinner than his superior officer. But still, the two men were of similar height and possessed the authoritative demeanor of law enforcement officers. Once inside, they found the office door locked and an “out” sign posted on it. There was no receptionist; it wasn’t that kind of complex.
Costa knocked on the door of an adjacent office. A psychiatrist named Justin Simon poked his head out the door. He told the detectives he was the building’s owner and that he leased space to Felix Polk, but theirs was strictly a tenant/landlord relationship. Still, Dr. Simon indicated that he was aware of marital difficulties between Felix and his wife. Detective Costa elected not to inform Simon of Felix’s murder given the vague nature of his relationship with Felix. He was certain Susan had mentioned Dr. Simon during their interview at headquarters as the psychiatrist who supposedly prescribed medications for her husband. Costa would check into it.
Before leaving Berkeley, he and Moule conducted a sweep of area streets in search of Felix’s missing vehicle. The Saab was not there. Grabbing the radio, Costa contacted the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) police to request that they check their stations for the black Saab. A short time later, an officer radioed back to report that he had located the sedan at the Orinda station in the upper west lot, in space number 1268. Orinda police were directed to secure the vehicle and have it towed to an impound yard to be examined. The officer assigned to move the car told Costa there were no visible signs of blood, weapons, or other evidence that might link the vehicle to the crime. He noted there was a coat in the back seat, along with a collar and dog bed.
Their next lead took them back to Orinda not far from the BART station. Costa and Moule had heard that Susan’s mother, Helen Bolling, had once lived in the town. They wanted to check out the address. A call to headquarters yielded a listing for a Bolling at 52 Barbara Road.
The modest residence was across the train tracks from the ritzy country club section, where Susan and Felix lived. While the landscape was mainly farmland and orchards when Helen first purchased the house on Barbara Road in the 1970s, the city of Orinda had grown substantially over the years. The north end, where Susan and Felix bought their home two years earlier, was now sprinkled with million-dollar residences.
A dark-haired man in his late-forties answered the door. He was not very tall, about eye level with the detectives.
“Do you know a Susan Polk?” Detective Moule asked.
“She’s my sister,” the man answered, identifying himself as David Bolling. He told police that his mother still owned the property, and another in San Diego, where she was currently residing and that he and his mother had had little contact with Susan over the years.
It soon became clear to the officers that in spite of the strained relationship with his sister, David Bolling was aware of the “incident” and that she had been arrested on suspicion of killing her husband.
“I have a hard time believing that Susan could kill someone,” David told the officers. “But she does have an attitude towards authority.”
Detective Costa took notes. He told David about his interview with Susan at headquarters the day before. She claimed their father had abused her when she was a young girl. “Do you know anything about that?” Costa asked.
“I know she’s been telling people that,” David replied. “It’s just bullshit.”
David said that as far as he knew, his father had never done anything like that. He said he last spoke with his sister about two or three months earlier.
She had been avoiding family members lately, David told the detectives.
It was late in the afternoon of October 16 when Detective Moule went to the detention center in Martinez to interview Susan again. Detective Jeffrey Hebel would participate in the interrogation. The two had been paired up on Monday night when they questioned Susan’s son Gabe about the murder.
This would be the third time in thirty-six hours that Susan was interrogated by police. She was being held at the Contra Costa detention facility on suspicion of murder in lieu of one million dollars bail. Two days had passed since her incarceration and she continued to maintain her innocence. Hebel and Moule decided to take a forceful approach, in an attempt to scare her into admitting her role in the crime.
But the detectives’ efforts failed. Susan remained detached and composed during the lengthy interrogation. Even as the detectives worked to trip her up, she didn’t break a sweat. It was as if she was disconnected from the entire incident. In response to questions, she again recounted her movements during the past week. While some details differed slightly from her original version, her basic story remained the same. Susan claimed she didn’t see Felix’s Saab at the house that Monday morning when she returned from dropping Gabe at school. She spent much of the morning watering the small garden she tended in the terraced area near the home’s front entrance.
“I am clear about that time line,” Hebel said. “I want to go back and talk about some other stuff about your background. I understand several years ago you kind of had some recollection about some abuse from your childhood and that caused some tough times for you. Is that correct or am I getting bad info on you?”
“Well, you are hearing it from my children.”
“If you tell me something, I am not going to them and say this is what your mom said,” Hebel assured Susan.
“Partly, it’s a story that my husband cooked up for the kids as to what was happening,” Susan said. From there, she went on to recount how the story of uncovering past trauma was how Felix manipulated the truth in order to avoid informing the boys of Felix and Susan’s marital difficulties. As the detectives hung on her words, Susan once again offered her version of the last twenty years, explaining that she threatened a divorce several times over the course of their marriage. Sitting in the room, Susan coolly told the detectives how her threats to leave him were often met with death threats from Felix, who had even gone so far as telling Gabriel that he would kill Susan if she left. On another occasion, one that Susan later documented in their divorce papers, Felix made another threat on her life, this time in front of Adam and Eli. Coming in 2000, during a time when Eli’s allegiance was to his father, the threat was in response to an ongoing quarrel Susan and Felix were having over his office. Like so many of their fights, this one ended with Susan telling Felix that she wanted a divorce. His response was quick.
“He [Felix] backed me up all the way across my room,” Susan explained to the detectives, “and he said, ‘You make me so mad, I could kill you. I feel like punching you in the face or punching you.’”
But unlike past occasions where Felix had hit Susan, this time he did not get the chance. As he raised his fist to strike her, Eli stepped in first, punching his mother hard on her lip. The reaction was instantaneous as blood began to pour from Susan’s nose and mouth, dripping off of her face and onto the floor. Later, in addition to her eyes severely swelling and the side of her face bruising, Susan received several stitches on her lip that would leave a scar.
Having witnessed the entire drama unfold, Adam excitedly told his father and brother that this constituted abuse and called 911, a move that made Eli fearful of going to jail. Susan was also worried that Eli’s punch would land him in police custody, so in order to avoid seeing Eli in jail again, the family concocted a story in which Susan had hit her face on the bed. Like so many of their lies, this one covered up the painful realities of the family’s life, but still it worked. Eli was never reprimanded for the attack on his mother.
According to Susan, while her repeated attempts to exit the marriage were rebuffed, at one point, she even went so far as to try and obtain a restraining order against Felix. But her efforts stalled in March 2001 after Felix allegedly incited a physical altercation with her and later claimed, with Eli as a witness, that she kicked him in the back. Once again the police were summoned to the house on Miner Road and while there, Susan apparently attacked Felix again, this time in front of the officers. The incident landed her in handcuffs and promptly ended her attempts at getting a restraining order. Though Felix didn’t press charges, the damage had been done.
As Susan told her side of events, the detectives continued to remind her of the evidence that was rapidly mounting against her and the fact that she was their number one suspect.
“We were at your house all day today and the scientists, they’re still there,” Moule said. “They call themselves CSI, crime scene investigators…. We collected all of your shoes…and there’s a shoe present. It’s not the same shoe, I’m not going to say it’s the same shoe…but it’s the same size shoe, it’s your size in the blood, okay?”
“There is no way that I went in there,” Susan said, referring to the guest cottage where Felix’s body was found.
“I’m not saying you had some big grand plan and you thought about it for a year. Things happen for different reasons…you had a struggle with him. There’s DNA in his hand. You have injuries on your face consistent with injuries on his body. You were in a struggle with him.”
“No, I was not.”
Hebel jumped in. “Your DNA is in that room.”
“You’re done,” Moule announced. “Your footprint, your DNA. It’s not about an interest, it’s about what happened and about your future right now…. Be honest.”
“I was not in there,” Susan maintained.
“Susan, this isn’t going away, you’re not getting out of jail. You need to give your side of this so that we can tell the court. Our job is just fact finders.”
“Well, then find the facts. Find out who did it.”
“We found the facts,” Moule said.
“We’re done,” Hebel added.
“We have to know why,” Moule said.
The detectives kept after her, but even under the intense questioning, Susan maintained her innocence. When they brought up the possibility of using a polygraph test, Susan adamantly refused, claiming that if it’s not reliable in a courtroom, then it’s simply not reliable.
As Susan sat there denying any involvement, it was unclear what, if anything, was her strategy. Susan was a very intelligent woman, and as such, her continued profession of innocence in the face of the evidence against her was baffling. While Moule and Hebel were trying to elicit a confession, the other investigators were in the process of building a substantial case against her. Still, she maintained her innocence, almost as if, in her mind, she really had not been involved. As Susan had on so many occasions, she seemed to be shaping her own version of reality, a version that had removed her involvement in Felix’s death. It was a harmful proposition in any situation, but in Susan’s case it had a profoundly negative impact. Eventually investigators and prosecutors would use these denials and lies to demonstrate the cold-blooded nature of her killing, arguing that her attempt to cover up denoted premeditation, making this a case of first-degree murder.
Now apparent to Detective Hebel that his current strategy was ineffective, he changed tactics, insinuating that the scratches on her eyes were a result of the deadly fight she had with Felix in the guesthouse that night. Susan said she’d been roughhousing with the family dog when he bit her.
“I’ve been doing this a long time,” the detective smirked. “That’s not a dog bite.”
Detective Moule jumped in. “Susan, how did you sustain this mark right here on your right eye?” he asked, pulling at his moustache. “Do you want me to get a mirror and you can look at it yourself, and maybe it will jar your memory?”
Susan didn’t crack a smile. “I fool around with the dog all the time,” she insisted. “The dog jumped in my face.”
“Okay,” Moule grinned. “You have a little bit of darkness under your left eye, your left eye right here, a little bit of darkness. Did you also sustain that from the dog?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you mind putting your hands out again?” Detective Hebel instructed. “Can you stretch them all the way out.”
Susan complied.
“On your left hand there’s some scratches right in here and some redness right here,” Hebel noted, pointing a finger at Susan’s hand. “And on your right hand near your right index knuckle, there’s…it almost looks like bruising or redness. It’s light bruising.”
“Uh-huh,” Susan acknowledged.
“Can you roll them over,” Hebel directed. “You have some cuts on your left hand near the pad under your small finger.”
“Under the left thumb,” Moule added. “And then right here. Has that redness been there for a while?”
“There’s also, it looks like a scratch right there under her left arm, a little red mark,” Detective Hebel added.
“I was gardening barehanded and I played rough with the dog,” Susan persisted.
“Okay. Will you look at me and close your eyes, please,” Detective Moule commanded. “That’s quite a mark,” he said, referring to the scratch on her eyelid.
“He hit you,” Hebel announced, referring to Felix. “That’s why you got into this altercation with him.”
Moule jumped in, lunging forward at Susan’s face. “He was violent with you. He abused you and he had been doing it for a long time. Detective Hebel and I have been involved for years in domestic violence.”
“You know what…it didn’t happen,” Susan declared.
Later, looking back on the transcripts, it was hard to believe that a smart woman, who was so blatantly associated with a crime, would profess her innocence with so much passion. Most suspects, when faced with such insurmountable evidence would, at the very least, have come clean that they played a role in the crime. However, this was not the case with Susan, who continued to steadfastly maintain her innocence for more than a year after Felix’s body was discovered.
Back at headquarters, Detective Costa was juggling calls. Adam Polk phoned that morning. The eldest of the Polk boys wanted Costa to contact a man named Barry Morris, an attorney who represented the family in the past.
It was midafternoon when Costa got the lawyer on the line. During the call, Morris said he had known Felix and the Polk family for twelve years. Felix counseled his son in the past, and Barry, in turn, represented Adam, Eli, and Gabriel in different criminal cases. Morris was aware of the ongoing tension between Susan and Felix. After Susan’s March 2001 arrest ended her entreaties to get a restraining order, Morris had encouraged Felix to file charges against Susan. Despite Morris’s efforts, Felix declined.
Morris told Detective Costa there had been other instances in which Felix declined to involve the authorities. Just over a week earlier on Sunday, October 6, he received a call from Felix, alerting him that Susan had just phoned from Montana. During the conversation with Morris, Felix claimed that Susan had purchased a gun and intended to kill him with it. The information got Morris’s attention and he encouraged his friend to call police immediately to report the threat. But Felix didn’t want to, afraid that the move would further infuriate Susan.
A few days later, Felix called Morris back, informing his friend that he spoke to an Orinda police officer about Susan. Costa learned it was Chief Dan Lawrence who took the call. Lawrence confirmed that Felix phoned headquarters on October 10—just three days before his murder—seeking advice concerning Susan’s impending return from Montana. Felix was concerned because she told their son “she was going to blow his head off” with a gun she’d purchased in Montana, while threatening Felix that she would kill him if he went to the police.
Despite Felix’s terrified voice on the other end of the line, the call was nothing that Lawrence hadn’t heard before. He advised Felix to obtain a temporary restraining order, leave the house immediately, and avoid any contact with his wife. Costa noted that Felix did not heed the chief’s advice. It was as if he wanted people to know that he was in danger but was unwilling to protect himself.
It was almost noon when Costa received a call from Gabe Polk, who said he had just remembered something about the night he discovered his father in the guest cottage. After he found the guesthouse door locked, he returned to the house and asked Susan if she had seen his dad. She said she hadn’t—and then asked if Gabe wasn’t happy that his father was gone, to which Gabe responded that he wasn’t happy about the situation. But Susan then said that she was. Looking back, Gabe said he now believed that his mother was implying that she had done something to Felix.
Susan then said something else that struck Gabe as odd.
“I guess I didn’t have a shotgun, did I?” she told her son.
It would have been an odd statement at any time, but under the circumstances it was downright worrisome.
“Did you ever actually see her with one?” the detective asked.
“No,” Gabe said, although he felt that she had definitely researched some firearms. She was using terminology that indicated she had been shopping around for the right weapon. A subsequent check of the records revealed that Susan did, indeed, own a gun. She was the registered owner of a Smith and Wesson .38-caliber revolver. She told Costa about that gun during their interview at headquarters on Monday night and said that Felix had removed it from the house at her request. There was no indication that a shotgun had ever been purchased, and a search of the Miner Road residence yielded no firearms.
In addition to Gabriel and Morris, several more calls came in to Costa that afternoon. One was from Andrew Polk, Felix’s forty-year-old son from his first marriage, who was currently living in lower Manhattan and working as an actor. It was the first time that Andrew had spoken to Costa, and he reported a call he received from Felix that past weekend after Susan had threatened to shoot him with a shotgun. It was a call similar to the one Felix had placed to Morris and Chief Lawrence around the same time, with Felix expressing concern that Susan “was going to do something to him” upon her return from Montana.
That same afternoon, Felix’s daughter from his first marriage also contacted Costa. Jennifer Polk was also residing on the East Coast in a quiet suburb of Boston. Her father had left a voice mail on her cell phone that past Friday, stating that “things were getting critical” and “Susan had threatened to kill him.” He also stated that Gabe told him “Susan had a gun.” Jennifer said she never got back to her father; that was the last she ever heard from him.
In subsequent interviews, additional friends and patients of Felix reiterated Felix’s fears of Susan, adding that he had begun barricading himself into the bedroom at night. Upon closer inspection of the Miner Road guesthouse, investigators found no evidence of such barricades. It did not appear that new locks or safety latches had been installed on the three exterior doors, and there was no lumber or heavy furniture strategically placed as a makeshift obstacle.
To Costa, it seemed clear that Felix Polk had contacted a number of people to alert them to his wife’s threats, yet he did nothing to protect himself, ignoring everyone’s advice—including suggestions from the Orinda police. While his inability to take the precautions necessary to protect himself seemed strange to the investigating officers, it was quickly becoming clear that this inability was part of a larger, systemic problem that Felix had when it came to stemming Susan’s threat of physical violence. All he had to do was press charges against her on one of the numerous occasions that he dialed 911, or use past events to obtain a restraining order against her, and then avoid the house.
Instead he opted to stay in the guest cottage, just yards away from the main house, even as Susan allegedly issued her threats. It was a costly decision—one that Felix paid for with his life.
On the morning of October 16, Detective Roxanne Gruenheid was dispatched to the Central County Morgue to attend the autopsy of Felix Polk. Criminalist John Nelson, who photographed the body and collected physical evidence, was already at the Martinez facility when the young officer arrived that Tuesday morning.
The county had retained Brian Peterson, a private forensic pathologist to perform the autopsy. At the time, he had performed close to five thousand autopsies and testified as a forensic expert in hundreds of criminal cases. His resume spanned more than twenty years and included a forensic fellowship at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington, D.C., and work as a general medical officer with the U.S. Marines.
In the months following Felix’s death, Dr. Peterson would gain notoriety for his role in the case of missing Modesto housewife, Laci Peterson, who disappeared on Christmas Eve of 2002. Dr. Peterson conducted the autopsies on Laci and her unborn son, Connor, after their bodies washed up in San Francisco Bay. A California jury later found Scott guilty of the double homicide and sentenced him to death for the murders.
At 8 AM, Felix’s autopsy got underway. The body of the seventy-year-old was laying in an opened body bag on a gurney, clad only in the pair of black men’s briefs that Polk had been wearing when he was killed. Peterson began by washing off the dried blood that covered most of his torso and the bottoms of both feet. Once the corpse was clean, it was easier to locate the multiple red stab wounds and countless scratches on his arms, hands, and feet. Dr. Peterson observed that five of the wounds had pierced the victim’s lung, stomach, and kidney, while the remaining twenty-two slashes were determined to be “superficial” cut-type wounds or defensive wounds. One cut that actually penetrated the muscle and tendon of one finger indicated that Felix had tried to grab the blade of the knife.
From these details, the pathologist concluded that Felix’s death had been violent, with the stab wounds occurring in rapid succession. He determined the cause of death to be “a combination of the blunt force trauma injuries and the numerous knife wound injuries” Polk had sustained during the assault. “Probably the easiest way to think about them [the injuries] is that the victim is trying to protect himself, so he’s either trying to block the knife with his hands, with his forearms, [or] maybe he’s trying to grab the knife to prevent from being stabbed again,” Dr. Peterson later told a Grand Jury.
Dr. Peterson described five of the injuries as “significant stab wounds” that had penetrated deep, entering the body cavity. The first was five and half inches deep, located just beneath the collarbone. According to Peterson, the knife entered the chest wall and punctured the right upper lung lobe, causing it to collapse. There were several scratches around the wound, indicating the tip of the knife had slashed the skin. Beneath the first wound was a second major stab wound that measured one and half inches deep. Here the knife had penetrated the pericardial sac, the soft tissue sac surrounding the heart, and had stopped just short of puncturing the heart. A third stab wound was identified in the lower left abdomen, just below the rib cage, where the knife penetrated the abdominal wall and pierced the front of the stomach. Dr. Peterson was unable to determine how deep the injury was because of the partially digested food in Felix’s stomach, which Dr. Peterson hypothesized had prevented the knife from doing further damage to the stomach.
On the upper left side of Felix’s back, there was a fourth stab wound measuring three inches in depth that penetrated the chest wall into the diaphragm. The fifth injury had an odd pattern that Peterson identified as a “combination cut and stab.” The actual stab wound was five inches deep and surrounded by a jagged surface laceration. There was a bruise just above the stab wound that indicated the victim suffered a blunt force injury in that same location. Dr. Peterson concluded that the knife entered the fatty tissue but did not reach the kidney. “Either the knife was being moved vigorously up and down, or else the victim was moving so there was stabbing and cutting and a scratch of the tip where the tip came out,” he later explained.
Based on this evidence, Dr. Peterson surmised that the blade used in the attack was a single-edged knife, measuring at least five and a half inches long, but he was unable to determine in what order the injuries had occurred or a precise time of death.
After he analyzed each of the individual stab wounds, Dr. Peterson determined that the wound where the knife penetrated the right lung lobe and the one just below it where the knife entered the sac around the heart had caused the most internal bleeding and “could have been lethal.” He classified the remaining twenty-two stab wounds as “relatively superficial,” noting that they varied in severity.
In addition to the wounds from the knife, there were also three different “blunt force injuries” on Felix’s body. There was an abrasion on one knee and a bruise in the middle of his back, just below one of the five deep stab wounds. Peterson ruled that neither of those was particularly significant in terms of death. A third injury, however, located three inches above the right ear canal and measuring one and a half inches long by one-eighth inch wide, indicated a “relatively good impact” to the head. There was no associated brain injury, but it appeared the bruise was consistent with “being hit with something,” the pathologist said. Dr. Peterson theorized that the injury to the head might have incapacitated Polk and limited his ability to fight back.
“If the injury had occurred at the onset of the fight, it’s possible his struggles were less effective,” he theorized. “In other words, Felix could have been stunned, or partially stunned, by getting hit in the head and less able to defend himself in any effective way.” While Dr. Peterson could not determine what caused the three blunt force injuries, he believed it was “from a blow” rather than a fall. Nevertheless, he could not find any pattern on the skin, such as a shoe tread or hammer impression that could help police identify the instrument that was used.
Interestingly, the forensic examination revealed that Felix Polk had high blood pressure and suffered from coronary heart disease. The left main coronary artery and the left anterior descending artery that provides blood to the left chamber were both blocked; a condition that “causes a lot of problems, including sudden death,” Dr. Peterson noted in his testimony to the Grand Jury in August 2003. Meanwhile, Felix’s heart weighed twice that of a normal heart for someone of his size and age. “It was a significantly sick heart,” Dr. Peterson said. “It didn’t cause his death, but it’s likely a factor…. He had heart disease going into the attack, and as emotions ran high as [he was] being killed, it wouldn’t have been unusual for him to have heart symptoms,” he observed.
Later, when asked by a member of the Grand Jury why Felix Polk did not scream for help, Dr. Peterson pointed to three factors: Felix’s heart disease, the blunt force trauma to the head, and the two quick and deep chest wounds. “Faced with that kind of attack, I think, I personally would have spent more time trying to defend myself as opposed to calling out,” Dr. Peterson said. “Again, he was relatively stunned from the blow to the head… confused, and simply not able to.”
In the days following the Orinda murder, journalists reported that Felix Polk was brutally stabbed—conjuring up images of Anthony Perkins in the movie Psycho. At a press conference at Orinda police headquarters, Police Chief Dan Lawrence allayed fears that a killer was on the loose in the community. He assured residents of the quiet East Bay community that the homicide at the Polk residence was “not a random murder,” but a “domestic-violence issue.” In the weeks prior to the murder, officers were summoned to the Polk home in response to domestic disputes, he said. In addition, evidence found during a search of the residence indicated the victim’s wife played a role in the crime, he said.
“These things can happen time and time again anywhere,” Lawrence said.
Though there was an everyday nature to the situation, the public’s response to the savage death and bizarre history between Felix and Susan was far from average. Within days, Felix Polk’s death quickly became fodder for TV news shows such as Dateline, MSNBC’s Rita Cosby Live and Direct, Inside Edition, and Geraldo. Not long after the autopsy was complete, there were even reports that one of the newsstand tabloids offered as much as fifty thousand dollars to a source close to the case for autopsy photos.
While the Polk case was quickly turning into a media frenzy, it was by no means the first time Orinda had been privy to a high-profile murder investigation. At the press conference, Orinda’s chief of police was quick to point out that the last murder to occur in the sleepy hamlet was in June 1999. Ironically, that homicide also happened on Miner Road, about one-quarter mile from the Polk residence. In that case, the body of a fifty-six-year-old woman was discovered decomposing inside her ramshackle brown ranch house on seven wooded acres at 616 Miner Road. Police later identified the victim as Margaret Bodfish, a wealthy recluse who had reportedly undergone a sex change operation. Diary entries revealed that Bodfish led a double life and had been living for the past sixteen years as a man. Orinda residents knew her as a woman, while residents in Mill Valley, where she owned a second home, knew her as a man.
Bodfish wrote that she “hated her body” and wished to be “beaten to death.”
Investigators suspected that her only son was involved in her murder. Like his mother, Max Wills also kept a diary that contained a list of people he wanted dead; his mother was at the top of the list. But police never got a chance to interview Wills. The thirty-three-year-old took his life in the bathroom of a motel in Santa Monica the day after his mother’s body was found. A maid discovered Wills’ body in a bathtub; he had slit his throat and wrists with a razor blade. A suicide note indicated that he had long suffered from depression, but was reluctant to kill himself while his mother was still alive.
“It would devastate her,” Wills wrote in his diary.
The discovery of a floor safe in the closet of Bodfish’s home six months after the murder temporarily took the spotlight off of the victim’s son and suggested robbery as a possible motive for the murder. Inside the safe, police found sixty thousand dollars in gold and coins. A drill had been found in that same closet during an earlier search of the house, but there was no indication anyone had tried to remove the safe from the floor. With no fingerprints on the drill and the victim’s only relative dead, the case went cold.
While Bodfish’s murder remains a mystery, her memory lives on in Orinda. In her will, she bequeathed her sprawling oak-lined property to the City of Orinda to be used as a public park and recreation area. In July of 2003, the seven-acre parcel was transferred to the Muir Heritage Land Trust and is now an official wildlife sanctuary. Bodfish also left three hundred thousand dollars to the National Organization for Women (NOW), the largest organization of feminist activists in the United States.
Another celebrated murder in Orinda’s criminal history occurred eleven years earlier, in 1984, when Bernadette Protti stabbed fifteen-year old Miramonte High cheerleader and classmate Kirsten Costa to death with a kitchen knife.
Prosecutors argued that Protti was jealous of Kirsten’s popularity and angry that the cheerleader and her friends excluded her from their clique. Priotti denied involvement, but later confessed to the crime. She served less than eight of the nine years she received under the jurisdiction of the California Youth Authority for the murder and was released in 1993 over strong objections from Costa’s family.
The story later became a TV movie of the week that aired in 1994.
And yet despite the attention that both of those cases received, there seemed to be something different about the Polk case. There was no good explanation for the media free-for-all that captivated millions around the country, except that people seemed drawn to the bizarre details unfolding about Felix and Susan. From the relationship’s unhealthy origins to its dramatic conclusion, their story embodied psychological dysfunction in the truest sense. In their own way, each of these characters was haunted by their inescapable pasts—pasts that came to define their entire lives.
While the essential facts had been reported, the case was far from solved. Slowly, contradictory stories where hitting the airways as the Polk sons staked out opposing positions on their family history and their mother’s culpability. Friends began to describe the chaotic household in the press, but despite the reputation that the family was quickly earning, there was still one key player who had to be interviewed: Susan’s mother, Helen.
Helen Bolling was at home in San Diego when her son, David, telephoned on Wednesday, October 16, with the stunning news that Felix was dead and Susan was in jail, suspected of his murder. Though Susan had been incarcerated late Monday evening, no one had contacted remaining family members to alert them to the arrest. Even after police came knocking on David’s door on Tuesday afternoon, he waited to inform his mother of Susan’s arrest. During the phone call, David told Helen that he attended a press conference at police headquarters in Orinda where detectives shared limited details of Susan’s detention. News outlets were reporting that the autopsy revealed a very violent death.
Felix had been stabbed twenty-seven times, the headlines screamed.
Helen could barely comprehend what her son was telling her. “It’s just not possible,” she told him. Susan was a petite woman, she thought. How could her daughter overpower someone of Felix’s size? Besides, if Susan wanted to murder him, would she have planned such a violent and risky encounter? She would never have undertaken such an assault on her own, Helen thought.
Reeling from the news, Helen dialed the Contra Costa Sheriff’s headquarters. She wanted to speak with someone in charge. Detective Mike Costa took her call.
He told Helen that her daughter was refusing to speak with authorities.
“Well, it’s no wonder,” Helen replied. “To experience that kind of event, sometimes you almost can’t talk.”
The detective was silent.
Helen next inquired about the family car. David told her that transit officers had found Felix’s black Saab in the parking lot of the Orinda BART station.
“She just drove it there,” Costa replied flatly.
To Costa’s dismay, transit officers who interviewed taxi and bus drivers servicing the Orinda station failed to discern any evidence or witnesses tying Susan to the Saab. A search of the vehicle showed no signs of forced entry, and investigators had been unable to locate the car keys.
“That doesn’t sound reasonable. How did she get back?” Helen asked the detective. “You can’t walk back. Those roads are too dark and narrow.” The Polk’s home was quite a ways from both the train station and the downtown area. It would have taken at least three hours for Susan to walk from the BART station to her home, Helen told the detective. That just didn’t make sense, she said.
Costa was aware of the distance. His officers had mapped the roughly three-mile route from the Polk house to the station using both city streets and cross-country shortcuts. They determined the time needed to travel that distance on foot to be well under three hours. While he had no evidence to back up his assertion, Costa maintained that Susan had driven the Saab to the BART station immediately after dropping Gabriel at school that Monday morning, and then walked home to retrieve her Volvo wagon for the 12:30 PM pickup at Del Oro High.
Helen found Costa’s theory preposterous. She believed that if Susan had left Felix’s car at the BART station, she had to have had an accomplice—maybe Gabriel—to drive her home. Gabe had been home at the time and recently he had been extremely angry with his father. The teen was so angry that he had taken a sledgehammer to Felix’s Saab that past June, damaging the sporty sedan. Gabe later explained that his mother had provoked the incident, after angrily describing Felix as the “great and powerful destroyer.”
David Bolling was at the house the day a tow truck arrived to transport the Saab to an auto body shop for repair. He asked Gabe about the damage and was surprised by his nephew’s response.
“I never liked the guy,” the teen reportedly said, referring to his father.
While Helen was not one to start accusing her grandchildren, she was hard-pressed to believe that her daughter had masterminded and carried out such a brutal attack alone. The whole murder scenario seemed so out of character for Susan, who had never displayed such violent tendencies. If what police were saying was true, something must have triggered an uncontrollable rage. Or maybe, Helen thought, her daughter had no choice; Susan had to kill Felix or be killed herself.
As Helen spoke to Costa, she began to reveal the complicated relationship between Susan and Felix. She recounted the tumultuous years that followed her divorce from Theodore Bolling and the traumatic impact that the breakup had on Susan. The young girl had watched her once happy, loving mother slowly come apart when her husband left the family. To compound matters, Susan suffered again when her father divorced his second wife, Rita, for a third woman. People close to Theodore recalled a significant change in the youngster, who seemed to view the breakup with Rita as yet another betrayal by her father. Susan had accepted that perhaps Theodore and Helen were simply a mismatch and that Rita was a better fit for him. She even befriended Rita and, according to witness accounts, the two were close.
But news that her father was walking out on his second wife for yet another woman truly upset Susan. She could no longer excuse his inability to honor a commitment. He had rejected both Helen and Susan when he left the marriage in 1964. Now, he was rejecting Rita, as well. From a psychological perspective, all daughters want to believe they are second in line for their father’s affection, but suddenly, it seemed, there were lots of women who came before her.
Around this time Susan began suffering from the paralyzing anxiety that landed her in Felix’s office. Anxiety is often a symptom of buried emotion, and for Susan her father’s second divorce seemed to spark a rage within her. This volatile emotional state and her young age made her extremely susceptible to Felix’s advances. Felix was charismatic and magnetic—compelling to a girl who had long been seeking the approval of an older man. He had mastered the art of concealing his underlying objective: to control everything and everyone around him.
Helen believed this was how Felix lured Susan into his world. It pained her to think that she was partly responsible for failing to report the therapist to the authorities. If only she had gone to police when she first learned of Susan’s inappropriate relationship with Felix, her daughter might not be in jail on charges of murdering him. Instead Helen confronted Felix on her own, in the hope that he would do the right thing.
But Felix never let Susan go, and instead, things only got worse. Helen tried to intervene and take her daughter on a trip to Santa Barbara to meet boys her own age; Susan was not interested. She was completely entranced by Felix, or “glued in,” as Helen put it. The therapist had become a father figure, and this unhealthy relationship distorted Susan’s teenage years. She made few friends in high school and at college. Eventually, Felix was all she had.
Since Susan’s world was so narrow, Helen was not surprised to learn of the impending marriage. She never approved of the union and even called Felix’s first wife to apologize for her daughter’s involvement in the breakup of that relationship. Despite her sixty thousand dollar loan to the newlyweds, Helen soon found herself all but banned from their home.
When Helen finished telling Detective Costa her version of the Polk saga, she fell silent. She had provided a myriad of details that clarified some of the history behind Susan and Felix’s marriage, but her role in the case was only beginning. After hanging up the phone, she headed for her beat-up blue sedan as she prepared to make the drive to Orinda.
On Thursday, October 17, a day after Helen spoke to Detective Costa, Susan sat quietly in the holding cell of the Martinez jail, waiting for officers to escort her to the Walnut Creek Courthouse where she would be formally charged with Felix’s murder. She barely looked up when a uniformed guard unlocked the cell door and admitted a conservatively dressed man.
“I am Dr. Paul Berg,” the man smiled, extending a hand to Susan.
Dr. Berg had been sent to the jail by Contra Costa County prosecutors to form an opinion of Susan’s mental state before the scheduled 2 PM arraignment. At first Susan was compliant, listening intently as the Oakland psychologist explained the psychological evaluation. Even when he informed her that their conversation would not be confidential and his findings would be used in court, Susan agreed to cooperate. “However, she very quickly changed her mind, asking a number of relevant questions, before declining to speak further,” Dr. Berg reported without revealing her concerns.
Obviously, Susan had a firm grasp on the magnitude of her situation. Emerging from the room, the psychologist advised Detective Costa that Susan halted the interview. Still, Dr. Berg said he was able to form an opinion on the suspect. He believed Susan was “sane” and asked “appropriate questions” for a “person in her position”—a person under arrest for murder.
In a confidential letter to Assistant District Attorney (ADA) Tom O’Connor four days later, Dr. Berg reiterated his findings, writing “my observations…were that she was calm, composed, mildly withdrawn, and quite serious-minded. She did not show any obvious signs of mental disturbance, particularly none of any loss of contact with reality or other signs of a Thought Disorder.”
That afternoon, Susan was brought before a judge as scheduled. Handcuffs encircled her thin wrists as she was led to the defendant’s table flanked by armed court officers. She possessed an air of elegance, even when wearing the prison-issue gray sweatshirt and baggy blue slacks. Her short hair was neatly combed and a touch of lipstick defined her lips.
Susan’s voice was barely audible as she stood before Contra Costa County Superior Court Judge Bruce Mills and announced her need for a public defender. There was a sudden interruption from a well-dressed man standing in the gallery.
“Your honor,” the man addressed the judge.
Recognizing the voice immediately, Susan broke into sobs. It was her father, Theodore Bolling. He had come to court to request an adjournment. He had retained a prominent San Francisco attorney, William Osterhoudt, to defend his daughter and wanted the case postponed until the new lawyer could be present in court. Susan stood speechless, tears rolling down her cheeks, as her father addressed the court. Judge Mills agreed to adjourn the case until 1:30 the following afternoon.
Rising to his feet, the prosecutor in the case, ADA Tom O’Connor asked the judge to raise Susan’s bail from the standard $1,050,000 for murder defendants to upwards of $5 million.
“This was an extremely violent murder,” O’Connor said. “The defendant owns substantial property in Orinda as well as in Berkeley. We also know that prior to the homicide, Mrs. Polk had been living out of state.”
O’Connor argued that Susan had substantial financial assets at her disposal and was a flight risk, as well as a danger to the community—especially to her son, Gabriel, who discovered his father’s body in the guesthouse.
Turning to Theodore Bolling, Judge Mills inquired as to whether his daughter would be able to post bail in the next twenty-four hours.
“There is no chance, your honor,” Susan’s tall, dark-haired father replied.
Mills ordered that a bail hearing be scheduled along with the Friday afternoon arraignment.
The following afternoon, Susan was back in court with defense attorney William Osterhoudt by her side. Helen and David Bolling listened from the gallery as another judge, Merle Eaton, explained his decision to hold Susan without bail. He cited the letter Susan had written to juvenile judge, William Kolin, on behalf of her son Eli, noting that it contained threats to “sell her home” and “leave the state.”
Osterhoudt tried to argue that Felix’s death would make it difficult for his client to borrow money against their real estate holdings, but Judge Eaton was unmoved. He maintained that the letter introduced to the court by ADA O’Connor was convincing and set a hearing for 1:30 PM the following Wednesday to revisit the bail issue.
Ultimately, Susan chose not to keep Osterhoudt as her attorney, reportedly because of his association with her father. Though a public defender, Elizabeth Grossman, was later assigned to Susan’s case, she too would be dismissed by Susan. While Susan claimed that Grossman was not doing enough on her behalf, those close to the case suggested her dismissal occurred after Grossman pushed Susan to present an insanity defense at trial.
Regardless of who represented her, Susan faced twenty-five years to life in prison if convicted of Felix’s murder. Prosecutors would not seek the death penalty, but that decision did not make the defense any easier.
That afternoon, as Susan was being led from court in handcuffs, Detective Costa and his team were in Berkeley executing a search warrant at 3001 Dana Street, Felix Polk’s office. The building’s owner, Justin Simon, used a passkey to gain entry to the tastefully furnished space, complete with a working fireplace on one wall.
Mindful to avoid any patient mental health records, the investigators began their examination. They believed a review of Felix’s private records, documents, writings, and files pertaining to his treatment of his wife might reveal evidence of their marital problems, past abuse by either party, and any prior threats that might offer a motive in the case. Investigators noted a computer connection and computer mouse on the desk indicating that Dr. Polk used a laptop, but there was no machine in the office.
Leafing through a pile of papers on the desk, investigators came upon a fax copy of the court order granting Felix sole occupancy of the Miner Road residence and custody of Gabriel. There was also a copy of the minutes of the telephone conference that occurred on September 27, 2002, that resulted in the court order. Susan mentioned that call to Detective Costa at headquarters, claiming that during the conversation Felix informed her that he intended to hold a custody hearing in her absence.
Costa collected the documents, as well as other legal papers scattered on the desk. Among them was an unsigned contract granting a lien on the Miner Road residence in the sum of thirty thousand dollars from Felix’s portion of the proceeds to Felix’s divorce attorney, Steve Landes. There was also a letter from Landes asking that Felix bring his legal account current. Felix had not made a payment to his attorney in over eighteen months, and Landes was getting anxious. Costa, who had spoken to Landes on the phone earlier in the day, was familiar with the payment problems. According to Landes, Felix first retained him in April of 2001, but payments were always late for one reason or another. The Polks had just sold an apartment building in Piedmont and each had received $226,000 from the sale. While Dr. Polk had immediately invested his share in another property, the lawyer believed Susan still had her portion. Landes wasn’t aware of any physical violence between Felix and Susan. As far as he knew, Felix and Susan had been staying away from each other; although Felix had mentioned one incident that occurred before Landes came on board as counsel in which Susan kicked Felix in the back.
Landes last spoke to Felix by phone on October 11, the Friday before he was murdered. At the time, Felix was upset that Susan was refusing to vacate the Miner Road house. He claimed that police were unwilling to enforce the court order granting him sole occupancy of the residence and full custody of his teenage son. As with the other calls that Felix made in the days before his death, he expressed to Landes his fear that Susan might harm him. Landes advised Felix to “simply get away from there” because he was “so afraid of his wife,” Costa learned.
During the phone call with Costa, Landes made no mention of Felix’s grossly overdue legal bill or the lien he was proposing on the Miner Road residence. Police found two outstanding bills from Landes on Felix’s desk, along with a four-page letter dated September 23, 2002, outlining Landes’ work on the case and demanding payment:
In our last several conversations you have pointedly avoided the question I raised with you of fees. Last week you said something about a line of credit…and then nothing else. I simply can not run an account of this magnitude which, because of Susan’s unwillingness to settle on any issue, even the time of day, will probably become larger….
I will reiterate. You need to refresh your retainer immediately, within the week, by at least $10,000. This is a very reasonable request. You have not made a payment on your account for a year and a half. You have been billed. I know of no professional, whether therapist, attorney, dentist or doctor, who would run such a tab…. You made arrangements to refinance Miner Road without any consultation with me, paying off credit card bills for Susan without including my fees. I don’t feel that this is being unreasonable.
At Felix’s office, there were other indications that the Polks were in financial straits. Credit card statements found on the desk showed balances in excess of thirty-five thousand dollars. Landes’ letter to Felix indicated that Polk had used a portion of the money from a refinance of the Miner Road property to pay off those debts. However, there were no documents to substantiate that claim.
There was also a property assessment for the Arch Street apartment complex that the Polks co-owned with Susan’s mother, Helen Bolling, showing a value of $675,000 as of May 17, 1999. A typewritten letter found on the fireplace mantel from Susan to her mother, dated May 21, 2002, indicated that Helen had recently requested that Susan and Felix sign the property over to her:
Dear Mother,
…You seem to be claiming that your share has increased from 50% to 100% because you did not receive your share of the income for the last few years and proceeds from the refinance. In addition, you have written me out of your will.
It is not worth my while to waste any more time on this property when it does not benefit me….
Please have your attorney contact me…with a proposal for buying me out if you think that I am entitled to any share of the equity.
Sincerely,
Inside a yellow folder, marked “Divorce—Landes,” was a typewritten letter from Susan to Felix dated May 21, 2002. In the four-page, single-spaced document, Susan coherently made recommendations on what the divorcing couple should do with various properties, pets, and tax returns, as well as accounting and spousal support issues. Susan also used the letter to alert Felix that Gabriel’s “excessive absences” from Miramonte High School had resulted in his being “dropped from classes.”
“Miramonte has a unique policy of dropping students when their absences exceed fifteen…. In Gabe’s case, all of his absences were related to illness and were excused,” Susan wrote, claiming that the teen “appears to have mononucleosis.”
“As you well know, Gabe does not cut school or get into trouble… so all of Gabe’s excellent and hard work this semester has been un-credited [sic].”
As to Gabe’s custody, Susan wrote, “Judge Berkow, at your request, ordered me to undergo a psychological evaluation as a precondition.
“In your declaration filed in February, you described me as ‘healthy.’ Now, you are taking the position that I need to be evaluated. You are a psychologist. You have known me for some twenty-five years. Surely, no one would know better than you whether I am fit or not to parent my children…. It is clear that you are determined to punish me by taking the kids away from me. You have said repeatedly… that you will not let them go. It’s time to move on.”
Pulling open the desk drawer, Costa discovered more letters that were written and signed by Felix Polk. One was his appeal to the vice provost at UCLA to keep Adam from being dismissed. Another, dated Saturday, June 15, was addressed to Gabriel, and detailed Felix’s belief that his teenage son had vandalized his Saab several months earlier:
“I know that you are very, very mad at me and won’t talk on the phone,” the one-page single-spaced letter began. “I do want you to know that I think about you all the time and miss you terribly and have some deep concerns about what the future holds for us…in spite of the way you have rejected me and turned on me, I am not angry at you. Frustrated yes!
“Both you and Eli seem to have bought into mom’s horror stories about me. They are for the most part not true stories, but I don’t really have a chance to speak up for myself. I am faced with a closed system in which mom says what she says so hatefully about me, and I have no chance to point out what is true and what is not…. I have some real flaws and yet I am not the monster she portrays me to be.
“What you did to my car was uncalled for, destructive and senseless. You must really have been worked up into a lather to have done that. I am holding you responsible for the damage.”
There were also typewritten letters from Felix to Peter Weiss, an attorney, asking for a five thousand dollar disbursement from the “children’s trust” to cover legal fees in connection with Eli’s assault and subsequent probation violation, as well as several requests for monies for Adam’s UCLA tuition. During the course of the investigation, Costa learned that Weiss was Felix’s cousin and was serving as executor of a trust fund the Polks had set up for their children.
Detective Costa perched himself on the desktop and listened to the thirty voice mails on Felix Polk’s answering machine as investigators marked the mounds of paper into evidence. Most of the calls were from patients wanting to schedule appointments. Two were from a “Tom Pyne” also requesting an appointment.
“I recognize that name!” Detective Roxanne Gruenheid announced. Gruenheid was among those executing the search warrant that day. She explained that Eli Polk had offered his father’s patient, Tom Pyne, as a possible suspect during the interview that she and Detective Steve Warne had conducted at Byron Boys’ Ranch several days after Felix’s murder.
In another drawer, investigators found an envelope with Pyne’s return address in El Sobrante, a small East Bay city north of the Richmond Bridge. They would pay him a visit later that week.
Moving their search to the office closet, police discovered a manila envelope containing the blue .38-caliber revolver that Susan had mentioned in her first interview and a red plastic ammo container, along with the keys for the trigger lock. The gun was loaded with the trigger lock in place, and a quick check of the weapon confirmed that it was registered to Susan Polk. The detective noted it hadn’t been fired in some time. Unloading the weapon, Costa booked it into evidence for safekeeping.
Also in the closet was a rambling six-page letter Susan had faxed from the T-4 Bucks Motel on Highway 191 in Big Sky, Montana, on October 3, 2002. The letter appeared to be a portion of Susan’s personal diary. In it, she wrote about Felix being a member of the Israeli “Mossad” and knowing about the September 11 terrorist attacks, Costa noted.
“Susan mentions the recent divorce court rulings in which she claims that Felix got his spousal support reduced,” the detective wrote in his report. “Susan writes about being a medium and how Felix used to put her into trances. Most of the letter is talking about the Israeli army and the Mossad and how Susan believes they were involved in the 9/11 attacks.”
Several days after searching Felix’s office, Detective Costa received an interoffice envelope from a deputy sheriff employed at the county’s Court Services Division. It was addressed to a Judge Rivera at 725 Court Street in Martinez and had a return address of Jackson, Wyoming. The postmark indicated it had been mailed in 2002.
Costa immediately recognized the envelope’s contents as a duplicate of the six-page letter Susan had faxed to Felix from the T-4 Bucks Motel in Montana on October 3—only this copy was one paragraph longer than the faxed copy. It began, “thought you might be interested in the journal excerpt about a Mossad agent’s failure to provide a warning to U.S. Intel. Re. Terrorist attacks on U.S.” Looking over the letter, Costa speculated that Susan had mailed a portion of her private diary to Contra Costa Superior Court Judge Maria Rivera in hopes of proving that her husband was a double agent working for the Israeli government and that he had used his influence as a spy to derail her custody efforts. It is not clear why Susan chose to send the correspondence to Judge Rivera. Although she hoped the letter would strengthen her argument, after reading it, it was clear that this wouldn’t help at all. The letter was a shocking window into Susan’s confused world, one in which her paranoia and delusions were abundantly clear:
I called F last night and found out this piece of information straight from the horses [sic] mouth as it were. “Brace yourself, Susan,” he said. “You’re in for a shock.” Yes, I was shocked. I shocked him too, accusing him of misusing his position as a Mossad agent to influence the court. It doesn’t help that the judge is Jewish. At first he tried the “poor Susan you really do need help” routine. But when I persisted, objecting that I had no idea that I was marrying into a Mossad cell when I married him, that I never would have wanted to do that, that all of his friends and family members are Mossad like M. who is stationed in Germany and B the lawyer who trots off to Pakistan on field trips and that I would tell my story on the Internet, F responded “No one will ever believe you Susan.” I said, “The Arabs will.” And he said, “Are you going to go to the Arabs then, Susan?” And I said, “No, I don’t like them any better than the Jews.” I asked him, “How could he betray his own country?” Doesn’t he think of Americans as his countrymen? Or does he think of himself as part of the Greater Jewish Nations that exists without borders?
“You’d better think about your children,” he insinuated. “You better think about the consequences for your children.”
“What are you going to do that you haven’t already done?” I asked. Eli is in juvenile hall, and Gabe, well Gabe is in a continuation school. “Eli will get six months,” F said. “How’d you arrange that?” I asked. “Did you pay off the judge or did you just have something on him?” And F just grunted.
I don’t know how to get out of the dilemma I am in. Joining is impossible. I will not become an actress like the members of F’s disgusting family, pretending all the time, shaming kindness and humanity when underneath there is nothing but betrayal, sadism, and in the best of them, a kind of robotic obedience. F is evil and he is a traitor.
The letter then spoke about the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. Susan claimed to be a medium and that she had advised Felix on world events related to Israel through visions she experienced while in a trance:
I am not happy about being a medium,
the letter concluded:
First of all, I am only partly conscious of what is happening when I do what I do, and sometimes, I am not conscious at all until later when I get flashbacks. I don’t know whether this is because F hypnotized me so frequently when I saw him as a patient. (It was under hypnosis that this ability was discovered by F and instructed me not to remember, or whether it is a function of being a medium.)
Later that evening, a canine search and rescue unit was dispatched to the Miner Road crime scene. Investigators were hopeful that dog handler Eloise Andersen and her scent dog Trimble could sniff out some clues. It was after dark when Anderson and Trimble set off from the driveway at 728 Miner Road as investigators recorded the dog’s movements. But it was soon obvious that the direction the dog tracked “was consistent with the way any occupants of Miner Road would go if proceeding to the Lafayette area” and the search was called off.
Interviews with the Polks’ neighbors yielded no witnesses to the murder. Indeed, the neighbors knew very little about the Polk family. One Miner Road resident told police she had met Susan Polk twice since moving onto the block that past June. In response to questions, she said that both she and her husband were at home on October 14, but didn’t see or hear anything suspicious. In fact, she hadn’t seen Dr. Polk in months. Because of the age difference between Felix and Susan, she assumed that he was Susan’s father.
Another woman on the block recalled that the Polks moved onto the street about two years ago, but she thought that Felix Polk had moved out of the residence. Eli Polk had once backed his car into their retaining wall; Felix had paid for the repair.
The woman assured officers she never saw or heard any domestic abuse occurring at the Polk house, although on Monday, the fourteenth, at about 8:30 PM, she did hear “some yelling.” She described the yelling, “as not being out of anger but just in the background” and attributed it to the Giants baseball game on TV.
In the days after the murder, Susan steadfastly maintained her innocence, even as police accumulated evidence of her complicity. Detective Costa had no doubt about Susan’s guilt. All the elements were there: strands of her hair in Felix’s death grip, a bloody footprint on the floor of the guest cottage that matched Susan’s shoe size and panicked calls to 911 from Felix in the days before the murder.
Susan had the means, the opportunity—and the motive. Her alimony had just been reduced by nearly five thousand dollars a month, and Felix was awarded custody of their minor son and the Orinda residence. Costa had the right suspect in jail, and he was determined to build a solid case. This was not the first homicide he had handled in which a battle over family finances had spurred a spouse to murder.
As part of his investigation, the detective reached out to Janna Kuntz, the realtor that Susan hired to assist in her relocation to Montana. He found a business card for Kuntz during his search of the Miner Road house, and in a telephone interview, Kuntz confirmed that she had shown Susan a number of properties during her two visits to Montana.
According to Kuntz, she met Susan in the late summer of 2001, when Susan came to Bozeman to look at homes. Kuntz took an instant liking to the fortyish woman from San Francisco who was soft-spoken, intelligent, and interesting. The realtor was intrigued by this woman who was tired of city living and wanted to slow down. Susan loved nature and the idea of residing in the country where she could hike and spend lazy afternoons honing her skills as a writer. When they first met, Susan was living with her two sons in a small cabin she rented in Gallatin Gateway, a small farming community about twenty minutes outside Bozeman. Susan liked the country setting, but Eli and Gabe complained bitterly about being so far from town. For them, the location was too remote.
Kuntz had few details about Susan’s first stay in Montana. She and Susan got to know each other better when she returned the following September accompanied by her yellow Labrador puppy, Dusty. After years of abuse, Susan and her husband were splitting up, and she was eager to settle in Montana and “enjoy a quiet life,” the realtor told Detective Costa. Susan had just sold some apartments in California and had $225,000 to put down on a home in the Big Sky area. She wanted to stay in that price range.
While out viewing properties, Susan received a number of calls on her cell phone, mostly from her children. She was proud of her three sons and spoke of them often. In fact, she told Kuntz that she wanted to buy a condo near the ski slopes of Big Sky for them to enjoy. Susan envisioned taking the boys on lengthy treks and spending quiet days reading and discussing literature.
When Costa asked about Susan’s emotional state, Kuntz said she seemed to be taking the bad news in her divorce with a mix of disappointment and frustration. “Can you believe this?” Susan would say, as she related each new development about the couple’s finances and custody battles. Susan appeared calm, seeming more bewildered than angry, Kuntz recounted.
“Did she ever make any statements about wanting to hurt her husband?” Costa asked.
“No. Never, not even after the phone call from her lawyer informing her that she was ‘losing’ the divorce case,” she said. “Susan was upset, but not enraged by the news.”
Kuntz was referring to an in-chambers conference that took place in Contra Costa Superior Court on October 1. Neither party was present at the closed-door meeting that resulted in the temporary reduction of Susan’s support payments, pending a review of the couple’s finances by a court-appointed accountant. Attorneys for the couple appeared on their behalf.
As Costa spoke to Kuntz, it became clear that the timing of that decision couldn’t have been worse. Susan had just plunked down a one thousand dollar deposit on a small two-bedroom condo near Big Sky. Now, she was being forced to make a trip back to California to deal with the fallout. Had Felix left things alone, Susan might have signed the deal and quietly moved out of state, but faced with a reduction in spousal support, Susan would no longer be able to afford such a move. The realtor told Costa that she begged Susan not to return to the West Coast. While Susan never mentioned her husband by name, she had related enough horrific details of alleged abuse that Kuntz feared for her client’s safety. Susan was stoic, assuring the realtor that she intended to pack her belongings and return as soon as she could.
Once en route to Orinda, however, her plans seemed to have changed. Susan called Kuntz from the road. “She phoned to cancel the purchase of the property; a problem had arisen and she needed to take care of some business before she would be ready to buy something in Montana,” the realtor recalled.
Susan promised to call again when she was ready to return.
“Did Susan look at any sporting goods stores while she was there, specifically to purchase a shotgun?” Costa asked.
“I have no knowledge of that. Susan never mentioned wanting to buy a gun of any sort,” Kuntz said.
After speaking with Kuntz, Costa again contacted Justin Simon, Felix’s office landlord, and asked if he was treating Dr. Polk, as Susan alleged. “That is not true,” the psychiatrist replied. “Sometime ago I prescribed some medicine for him so he could sleep better. But as far as I know, Dr. Polk was not receiving any psychotherapy from anyone.”
Dr. Simon said that Felix had been a tenant in the building for about two years. “I would not even describe our relationship as friends, just colleagues,” he said.
Neil Kobrin, president of Argosy University’s Point Richmond campus, claimed to be one of Felix’s closest friends. He had known Felix and Susan for more than twenty years, first as Felix’s student and later as a colleague. A longtime member of the faculty at Argosy, Felix taught classes two days a week and was well regarded by students and faculty members, alike. A number of Polk’s students had acknowledged him in thesis papers and during graduation speeches.
After learning of Dr. Kobrin’s close relationship with Felix, Costa set out to interview him. The conversation provided several interesting bits of information. Dr. Kobrin, who was well into his seventies and still holding a full-time post at the university, told Costa that over the years Felix claimed that Susan “was becoming more and more erratic, paranoid and delusional,” Kobrin related. Kobrin said he knew about Susan’s belief that Felix had poisoned one of the family dogs.
Costa heard that allegation from Susan. Apparently, Susan believed that Felix fed their German Shepard, Tucky, a lethal dose of Ex-Lax. She claimed to have saved the animal by administering the antidote, Pepto Bismol. The incident did not seem likely, but Costa noted it for the record.
In response to questions, Kobrin said he last spoke to Felix on Thursday, October 10. Felix phoned his office to say he wouldn’t be able to make the afternoon faculty meeting or his teaching session later that day. Things with Susan were so bad that he was “barricading” himself in the bedroom at night to prevent her from gaining entry. He would be staying at a local hotel in Lafayette.
“Susan has a gun and is going to kill me,” Felix said during the call.
Korbrin acknowledged there were marital problems, but he had not seen or heard of any abuse, physical or emotional, during his decades-long friendship with the couple. In his opinion, Felix really didn’t want the divorce.
“He was trying to keep the marriage together, if for anything, for the boys,” he said.
As they spoke about the complicated relationship, Costa was surprised to discover that Korbrin, Felix’s close friend, had no idea how the couple met. He was unaware that Susan had been under Felix’s care as a teenager, and that their romance had stemmed from that unethical relationship. Apparently, there was truth to Susan’s claim that Felix hadn’t wanted people to know those details, Costa noted.
On Friday, October 25, detectives knocked on the door of Felix’s longtime patient, Thomas Pyne. Pyne was the name Eli Polk had thrown out as a possible suspect in his father’s murder.
It was just past noon when Detectives Costa and Moule pulled up to the sprawling house in the hills of El Sobrante. Over the past four decades, the small town had undergone a transformation similar to that of Orinda, evolving from a farming village to a busy suburban center. Pyne lived on a rambling property several miles from the commercial district. He was at home and quickly answered the detectives’ knock.
From behind dark sunglasses, Costa introduced himself to the sixty-something male who appeared in the doorway. Soft-spoken and friendly, the man introduced himself as Thomas Pyne.
Pyne was “devastated” by news of Dr. Polk’s death. He had been a patient for thirty-five years and was still seeing the psychologist on a regular basis, at least two times a week. His voice cracking, he affirmed that Felix was having marital problems, but he had no idea they were so serious. He first met Susan and the boys while a patient at Polk’s home/office in Piedmont. Susan was friendly and usually greeted him with a wave, Pyne recalled. Costa learned that Pyne had never been to the couple’s home in Orinda. As a patient, Pyne saw Felix at his office in Berkeley.
“Did you have an appointment with Dr. Polk on Monday the 14th?” Costa asked. “Because I’m trying to determine if he missed appointments that day.”
“No. But during the past couple of weeks he’s missed some appointments. Not shown up, you know.”
Pyne said he phoned the office on Tuesday, October 15, and left a message on Felix’s machine. When he received no response, he inquired about Felix at the office and the landlord, Justin Simon, informed him of the murder. Polk’s patient was surprised when told his name had been mentioned in connection with Felix’s death. “Did the person say that I was the one who killed Dr. Polk?” he asked.
“That was never said,” Costa replied. “It was more inferred. I have no reason to believe that you are involved, but anytime we have a name given to us under any circumstances, it is our job to talk to that person.”
Pyne was silent. “I’m at a loss,” he blurted out. “I will greatly miss having Dr. Polk as a therapist.”
A warm breeze blew through the house as the men discussed Pyne’s decades-long relationship with the slain psychologist. While Costa already had his primary suspect in custody, protocol required that he pursue all avenues of investigation. Pyne did not strike Costa as a threat, but he still needed to rule him out as a suspect.
“Did you ever have an argument with Dr. Polk or give the doctor a reason to be concerned about you hurting him?” he asked.
“No. Felix and I got along fine.” There was a long pause, as if Pyne was silently reliving his sessions with the doctor. His responses were slow and deliberate, his tone measured. “There were times over the years that during our sessions he might say something that angered me and I would simply tell him that and we would move on. And I guess there were times I would say something that would anger him and we would talk about it for a few minutes and move on with the session.”
In a subsequent interview, Pyne related that Felix was not himself during their last session together on Friday, October 11. While Felix never wore suits to work, he was always neatly put together in tennis shorts and a pullover or slacks and a sport jacket. That Friday, Felix looked a wreck, Pyne recalled. Polk was not only physically unkempt, he was also distant and remote. Felix had always been an active participant in the therapy sessions. In fact, the two often practiced role-playing to help Pyne work through his relationship with his stern, detached father.
Felix agreed to treat Pyne even though he often had no money to pay his fees. Tom was grateful, promising to make good on his debt when he inherited his parents’ estate. Pyne recalled that over the years Felix kept a running tab that he presented to him upon his father’s death. It was a sum that Tom happily paid.
The detectives questioned the man until they were satisfied with the responses. Listening to Pyne discuss the positive impact that Felix had on his life, it was obvious that this man had no motive or desire to see Felix dead. If anything, his death would have an adverse effect on the patient. As their conversation wrapped up, Costa had to wonder why Eli had mentioned Pyne’s name as a possible suspect. It seemed odd that the boy would suspect someone, who as far as Costa could tell, had no desire to see Felix dead.
When Detective Costa initially found Susan’s diary, he did not know its value. While many who had been working on the case were hoping that the document would provide enough information to convict her, others remained skeptical. Police believed the file might reveal Susan’s motive, personal thoughts—maybe even the planning of Felix’s murder. Meanwhile Susan had told Detective Costa that the diary contained both “real and imaginary events,” as she tried to downplay the significance of the text.
Despite her attempt to discredit the writings, all of the entries in the document were dated and easy to follow, and they depicted Susan’s thoughts, desires, and frustrations in startling detail during the seventeen months prior to Felix’s murder. Her notations portrayed two very different sides to this bright and complicated woman. On the one hand, some of Susan’s writings were articulate and thoughtful. She had a firm grasp on the couple’s financial picture as she managed the household budget and myriad investment properties they owned. She was well-read and spent a good deal of time perusing a mixed bag of literary works.
Yet sprinkled amid the coherent writings were the ramblings of a woman who regularly suffered from delusions. Susan was convinced that she was a medium, that Felix was a Mossad agent, and that he had been putting 40 percent of his money into an account in the Cayman Islands for the past twenty years.
Susan’s journal began in May 2001, just four months after she attempted suicide at Yellowstone National Park. At the time, she was residing in a rental cottage in Stinson Beach, just over the Golden Gate Bridge via a winding road from San Francisco. According to her writings, she had moved out of the Orinda house the previous month after yet another violent encounter with Felix.
Interestingly, Susan’s inspiration for the diary came from the book Bridget Jones’ Diary. She loved how the book’s protagonist used a journal to poke fun at her trials and tribulations and decided to adopt a similar sense of humor about her own situation. However, after reading a few pages, it quickly became clear that Susan’s diary was not funny. Instead, it represented a series of disjointed ramblings by a woman who clearly harbored deep-seated anger and perhaps hatred for her husband. At one point she even referred to Felix as Dr. Josef Mengele, the ruthless Nazi concentration camp doctor.
In addition to the diary, Costa and his team had also turned up several of Susan’s personal papers during their search of the office in the main house, including a number of letters written by her to various people involved with her divorce. One of the first letters went to Felix’s divorce attorney, Steve Landes, in which she offered to sign over custody of Eli and Gabe in exchange for a speedy resolution to the divorce. Her return address was listed as a post office in Stinson Beach.
“This is to confirm that I will not be pursuing physical custody of my children, Eli and Gabriel,” Susan wrote to Landes on May 12, 2001. “They wish to remain in Orinda, and I intend to relocate out of state…. I am not requesting regular visitation…. If you draw up the custody documents, I will sign them.”
Susan had requested the legal papers be drawn up prior to the couple’s court hearing on June 6. Yet Detective Costa found no such agreement among the written materials he confiscated.
In a second letter written that same month, Susan informed Felix of her intent to leave the Bay Area following the sale of the Orinda residence. She cited “cost of living” and “the damage” he had done to her reputation by “maligning me publicly as ‘psychotic’ and ‘delusional,’” as reasons for moving out of state. She also related her displeasure with Felix’s decision to use monies from their rental income to pay his personal expenses and suggested he refinance the Orinda property to cover real estate taxes until the residence was sold.
Susan also blasted Felix’s request that she undergo a psychological evaluation before gaining custody of their minor children. In her recent letter to Steve Landes, she stated that she was not interested in custody of her children, apparently giving up on the idea of custody because of the court’s continued reliance on his psychological opinion.
“As the court already has demonstrated that it has been and, in all liklihood [sic], will continue to be influenced or swayed by your opinions or recommendations, it seems likely that any professional you hire to do the evaluation will also be swayed. It is clear that you are determined to punish me by taking the kids away from me. You have said repeatedly to me, and them, that you will not let them go. It’s time to move on.”
Susan closed by reiterating her willingness to forgo physical custody of them, but demanded prompt payment of her monthly support checks—$6,500 in spousal support and $2,853 for her share of Social Security. She suggested Felix set up automatic payments directly from his checking account.
While she was writing letters, Susan continued to fill her diary with entries that shed light on events and her mental state in the days leading up to her suicide attempt on January 16, 2001. “Felix had thrown all of my clothes on the floor and gone on one of his tirades, and I got very upset and left and went to Yosemite. It just seemed hopeless. I love my children so much and it felt like he was changing the character of my children and that he was turning them into people like himself. I had this moment of despair and I took a bottle of aspirin and Scotch. And then I realized I had made a mistake. I didn’t want to die.”
Susan wrote that she phoned Felix for help and was admitted to a local hospital where a doctor found her to be depressed but sane. When the psychiatrist asked her what was going on, Susan was momentarily silent. Oddly enough, she was concerned about Felix’s reputation and wanted to protect him. What she didn’t know was that Felix was in an adjoining room insisting that she be committed for treatment.
“Here he is saying these stupid things about me, and I’ve got his power of attorney,” Susan noted. “It was bizarre. Here I am managing all of our assets and Felix was trying to insinuate that I was crazy.”
In late May 2001, Susan and Eli boarded a plane for Paris. Her diary entries made it clear that Susan had high hopes for the European jaunt. She planned to use the vacation as an opportunity to “bond with her middle son” and to show Eli the proper way to treat a woman. She felt her teenage sons were becoming abusive just like their father and wanted to intervene before it was too late. It did not take long for reality to hit home, and it was on the plane to Paris that her fragile psychological state became apparent.
“Half way through [the flight], I started feeling sick to my stomach… and go to the bathroom…. One of the stewardesses was coming down the aisle… and told me that I was going to get ‘trapped in the bathroom by the carts.’ …Went ahead to the bathroom and was inside… for at least twenty minutes. Came out, and was jumped on by her partner for not wearing shoes on the plane….
“Ordered by rude fellow to put shoes on immediately and go back to my seat. Told him he was very rude. Started up aisle only to run into (rude attendant with cart)…. Told me to get out of her way…. I couldn’t because other attendant was blocking me….
“She ordered me to go back to my seat, raising her voice, and grabbing my arm several times. I told her not to touch me and to stop shouting.”
Upon arrival, her hopes for the trip quickly receded as Eli quickly lost interest in the European holiday. On the second day after their arrival, Eli slept a lot, and Susan speculated he was getting sick. The following day proved no better as Eli informed her that he missed his friends and wanted to go home. The conflict climaxed while Eli and Susan were on their way to eat dinner.
“Taxi driver does not seem to know where restaurant is. Drops us off on street corner in Montparnasse…. Eli launches into diatribe about how stupid I am. Don’t know where I’m going. Don’t do anything right. Certainly not knowledgeable like Dad…. Mean while, I am trying to consult map but having considerable difficulty as am being bombarded by Eli in an all too familiar way about my numerous inadequacies.”
Susan described in some detail the foods she and Eli enjoyed during their two-hour meal, and the “delicious bottle of wine” the two “polished off.” Despite these indulgences, the meal did little to quell the rising fury between them.
“We stagger into a cab, stagger home, and Eli promptly gets on the phone and dutifully tells dad he’s coming home,” Susan recorded. “I don’t get it…. Asks dad to get him on flight ASAP…. Have uncomfortable feeling that Felix is somehow behind all this…. It is strange to hear Elisay now that the thought of my returning home is intolerable because nothing has changed. ‘Be nice to Dad,’ he says, ‘you have to be nice to Dad.’ He says that I have spent Dad’s money today and now I must be nice to him. He doesn’t seem to understand that it is also my money. ‘Dad’s worked for that money, you don’t work,’ Eli says. ‘Dad works every day of his life.’ Whatever I’ve done is completely unacknowledged…. Now, feel like failure.”
On May 27, Susan dropped Eli at the airport and stayed in Paris to complete her holiday. The goodbye was hard on both mother and son, as the expectations for the trip crumbled before their eyes. “Hugged him goodbye, and hurried away to hide my tears…. Eli in obvious guilt conflict…. Seems to feel he is betraying dad with me…. What has Felix done to him?…If it’s like what he did with me, Eli has a tremendous amount of suffering ahead of him…. Felix has all of the children brainwashed into believing that they have to stay with him.
“Eli has always had panic attacks when away from home…. Re-minds me of me when I was too anxious to leave my room as a teenager. Couldn’t imagine living without Felix…. Felix has a way of instilling these feelings—it’s part of his controlling persona…. None of us will have any peace of mind as long as Felix is living with us.”
Once Eli left, things improved for Susan, who wrote enthusiastically about her Parisian museum romp on May 28. Susan’s entries remained upbeat and positive for the remainder of the vacation. “Tomorrow, leave for home, which am not looking forward to at all,” she wrote on her final night in Paris. “Must still find resolution. Cannot live with crazy, immoral, morally sick man. Also, destructive, sadistic, cruel, twisted, profligate, disturbed, criminal. Need I continue?”
Susan arrived back at the house in Orinda on June 3. By June 7, she had had enough. “How can I describe how horrible it is? No, Felix doesn’t hit me anymore. Nor does Eli. So far, no more violent scenes. But I detest every minute in his presence. All day long, all I do is clean up after Felix, the children, the dogs, and the bird….
“I hate being in this country. I hate the smug, indifferent faces of Americans. They have turned something off inside. Maybe it is their humanity. They pretend to care about the poor, about children, about the environment, about violence, when inside they are indifferent. They are obedient. They are good Germans….
“I don’t see how I can stay here until Gabe graduates. Friday, he is having a Toga Party to celebrate his graduation from eighth grade. Gabriel is flunking math. He is not allowed to participate in his graduation ceremony. He has invited an unknown number of children to his party…. It is going to be another mess to handle.”
On June 13, after detailing an entry about a “very strange dream” involving Felix and the boys, Susan wrote the letter she would send to Felix’s first wife, Sharon Mann, if she had the courage:
I am so sorry for any pain I ever caused you. But really, you should be grateful to me for having spared you the last twenty years with this monster. I wish he would let me go as readily as he let you. I want to thank you for having warned me…. How I wish that I had listened to you….
All these years, I have heard from him how terrible you were, how crazy, bitchy…. I know you must have been a very good mother to have offset Felix’s deadly parenting…. I hope that life has compensated you in some way for what you must have suffered living with such a malevolent person.
In mid-June 2001, Susan signed a Power of Attorney granting Felix permission to refinance the Miner Road house. She was departing in two days for Thailand with Gabriel and was determined to pursue a divorce upon her return on July 6.
Before her departure, Susan penned a letter to Felix: “I have resolved to proceed with the divorce despite your objections that you don’t want a divorce. [The children] have reported to me the belief that they cannot survive without you because you make all of the money…. Should you persist in claiming custody of the children, I will not deplete our financial resources in fruitlessly contesting your claim….”
According to the diary, Susan’s trip was filled with confusion over accommodations and confrontations with Gabriel. While her trip to Paris was salvaged once Eli flew back home, the Thailand vacation offered no such relief.
Asked Felix to book reservations at Club Med… on Phuket…. After hour long drive to Club Med, informed by management no record of reservation. Club Med full of overweight Americans hanging out in packs at the bar and doing calisthenics together in the pool. Finally offered single room with one bed. Declined. Offered two rooms next to each other. Declined. Reservation was for adjoining rooms. Argued with concierge who had adjoining rooms available but refused to give them to me at same price. Departed Club Med in a huff and returned to Bangkok….
June 24, 2001…. So here we are at the Kiahuna and having a horrible time. Gabe is convinced I am a misanthrope. He makes one remark after another about how I hate everybody. Why is it so difficult to explain that I don’t hate everybody? I’m selective.
On June 26, 2001, Eli arrived in Hawaii, where Susan and Gabe eventually ended up after their situation in Thailand continued to sour. Upon Eli’s arrival, he claimed that he “came on a mission to save our vacation.” Much to everyone’s surprise, he actually did help quite a bit. Susan recalled that they “had a lovely day…. The only thing to mar it was to discover that I was over my limit on my credit card, and to hear from Felix. He said he needed certain documents to obtain the loan, which as far as I knew had already been approved…. When I objected to his bothering me when I’m on vacation, he sounded amused. Felix has so much fun disturbing others. How disturbed he must be.”
While the trio appeared to avoid major confrontation for the remainder of the journey, returning home proved no easy task. “Came home to tension and messes left by Felix for me to clean up,” Susan’s entry of July 9 began. “The man seems to thrive on it. Have resolved to go through with divorce. Can’t stand lifestyle with him. Too depressing. F. oozes depression out of every pore. Adam’s comment: ‘Dad is depressed. He’s always been depressed.’ Little by little, it eats away at us all.”
On July 12, Susan recorded the details of her meeting with a divorce attorney, Dan Ryan, whom she described as “a self styled ‘tough Irishman.’” She had been without legal representation since May 1, 2001, when she fired her divorce lawyer because she was dissatisfied with his representation. At the meeting, Ryan informed Susan that she would have to go through a custody evaluation if she intended to fight for the kids.
In addition to meeting with Ryan, Susan also met with a therapist named Heidi Leslie on that July day. “I had lots to talk about by the time I got inside…. The therapist was kept very busy ahhhing, yesssssing, andmmmmming, by the virtually incessant stream of descriptive prose, which issued from me as if the plug had been pulled…. Why is it that at the oddest moments, the phrase ‘butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth,’ just seems to pop into my head? Well, butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. How is it that human beings become so inhuman?”
Moving on, Susan wrote, “Last night, Felix was in fine fettle. How did he put it? ‘Someone should do you a favor and just kill you.’ And Leslie [the therapist] wanted to know if I was afraid; if I believed I was in danger.”
One week later, on July 18, Susan informed Felix of her intention to take the children to live out of state. “F. went crazy…. Yelled at G. and E. that if they chose to live with me, they were not his sons. Threatened he wouldn’t support me, and then that he wouldn’t support them.” Susan explained that she wanted to get away from the congestion in the Bay Area and purchase or rent a ski house in Wyoming or Idaho “in order to live a more relaxed peaceful lifestyle, ski, hike, and just enjoy the outdoors.”
Later on, she discussed the issue of physical custody of the children. She was sure Felix would insist on joint custody whether the boys wanted to live with him or not. It would be his way of preventing her from moving the boys out of state.
“F. yelled I had brainwashed the boys, and that if we left, we would get no support from him.” She described how Felix tried to divide the boys, first attacking Eli, telling his middle son that he didn’t care what he thought, was more interested in Gabriel’s feelings, and was not convinced that Gabe was really all that enthused about moving to Montana.
Susan pointed out that Felix had allowed his first wife to take their daughter, Jennifer, to live in Illinois when she was sixteen. “He said that was different because I’m crazy and Sharon wasn’t. The boys then pointed out that F. had told them that Sharon was crazy many times….
“F. finally blew his stack and threw things at me and Gabe (a bowl of maccaroni [sic] and cheese, spoons, cups), then walked over and kicked the big screen T.V. which cost $5,000 after overturning an antique mission oak chair valued at over $2,500….
“Adam came home and suggested F. go out for a drink. Said it was time for our marriage to end as some marriages do…. Asked me if he could visit me in Wyoming or Idaho. I said of course. F. accused Adam of making fun of him and stormed off. Sounded very paranoid himself after having accused Eli of being delusional and paranoid earlier.
“Adam said he was worried about me and Gabe, felt we were not safe with F. while he was so angry.”
The incidents on July 18 set off a chain reaction in Susan as she began researching life in Wyoming and Montana and becoming increasingly serious about leaving the marriage and the state. On July 31 she wrote that it was “as if I had been hypnotized into seeing in F. my ideal man. Now that I have awakened from the hypnotic state, which lasted most of our twenty eight year relationship, have stripped off the suave, urbane image of a gentleman pasted onto Felix, can see him as the crude, weak, mean spirited little bastard that he is…obsessed with power and control and proving his potency.”
As the fall approached, Susan’s diary entries reflected a growing debate between Susan and Felix about her plan to take Eli and Gabe out of state. They argued repeatedly over schools for the boys and the practical aspects of Susan raising Eli and Gabe in Montana. During this time, Susan often wrote about Felix’s verbal and physical abuse, saying that he “seems to still have a lot of angry feelings about my moving him out of the bedroom. Said he felt like slugging me in the face. Called me a criminal and a swine for the umpteenth time.
“My criminality, according to F., lies in my having turned him out of my room and brainwashed the children against him…. He lost control of himself again and struck me in the face with a roll of papers. I suggested he get some help. Chased me out of his room. Then kicked the T.V. screen, much to Eli’s dismay who was watching it.”
On September 1, Susan informed Felix that she was leaving California on September 7, and revoked “any powers of attorney” she had given him. “If you get a court order, as you have threatened to do, forbidding me from taking Eli and Gabe out of California, I will not take them with me,” she wrote in a letter.
Still she persisted with the idea that they would accompany her, outlining a plan for Eli to enroll in a public school in Bozeman until the spring term. “The move would benefit Gabriel, as well,” Susan insisted. He failed several of his eighth grade classes at Orinda Intermediate and was beginning to “hate” school. “A change of scene will do him good,” Susan noted.
“I don’t want the children to lose you…,” Susan noted at the end of the letter. “I do want the children to have a father as a resource: a reasonable, mature, unselfish father who is primarily concerned with his children’s best interests rather than with using his children as leverage.
“You have stated that you will obtain a court order restricting me from removing the children from California. You have also threatened to kill me, to stop working to support the family, and to kill yourself. I don’t take any one of these threats more seriously than the other, and intend to proceed with planning as if you will come to your senses.”
While Susan made much of Felix’s determination to thwart her move with the two boys, it appears he did nothing to stop her when she actually departed. On Friday, September 7, the three set off for Montana without incident in Susan’s Volvo wagon, which was packed with personal belongings and pieces of furniture “important to the boys.”
Several days later, she sent Felix an update.
“We all miss our home in California,” she wrote in a letter dated September 13. “Montana will take some getting used to. It gets very cold here in the winter. Main Street in Bozeman is like stepping back in time…. The good news: the drug scene is very small here; the kids are focussing [sic] on their home work; both are eligible for their driver’s licenses…. Best regards.”
After nearly a month of living in a cabin outside of Bozeman, Susan wrote this entry in her diary: “I feel incredibly sad about Adam, who is gone in more ways than one. He has started school at UCLA. Just before we left, he threatened to kill me, provoked by Felix to a great extent. But I am still stunned by it. Not even Eli ever threatened to kill me. Adam hates me.”
Though Adam and Susan remained at odds, by late November 2001, it was clear that the change of venue did nothing to help Eli. Once again, he was involved with drugs. By month’s end, the teen was on his way back to Orinda. “After talking to us both, he [Eli] got into his car and drove to California,” Susan wrote in a letter to Felix on November 26. “On the way, he received a speeding ticket for going over 90 mph. This is the second speeding ticket he has gotten in the two months since I purchased his car….
“His decision to leave was based on the restrictions I placed on his truancy and marijuana usage… limiting his access to money: I purchased a safe to keep my wallet in, and refused to provide him with his usual allowance while he was binging on marijuana and until the stolen money was paid back.”
Susan demanded the keys to Eli’s car until he got clean. “Eli decided, against my wishes, to drop out of school and return to California.”
Once home, Eli was continuing with his “out of control drug binging.” Susan noted that her son had a car accident during the Thanksgiving holiday.
“I suggest that his car not be returned to him until he has completed a drug treatment program and either enrolls in school or gets a job,” she advised Felix in the letter. “I also do not believe that he should have access to large sums of cash on weekends for the time being.”
Susan, too, would return to the East Bay by month’s end, and she alerted Felix of her plan. Pointing to their “difficulty agreeing on disciplinary measures” Susan instructed Felix to find a home “elsewhere.” “Eli… is living unsupervised in the cottage in Orinda… which he uses as a ‘party pad’… a gathering place for teenagers to drink and drug,” she wrote. “It seems to me that you attempt to garner sympathy with the children by reversing my decisions. For example, when Adam ran up a $2,000 phone bill in June, and then followed with a $250 phone bill for his cell phone in September, disciplining him was left to me. When he ran up a $540 phone bill for his cell phone for the past month, I finally said enough and confiscated his cell phone OVER YOUR OBJECTIONS.
“You demanded repeatedly that I return it to him. You felt I was being too hard on the boy, which made you very popular with Adam and made me look very bitchy…. When Adam stole $100 out of my wallet… then lied and said Eli or Gabe took it, adding that I was ‘paranoid,’ a term for me he got from you, you supported Adam. You did ask me to tell my side of the story as if I were one of the kids as you have been used to doing….
“You are going to have to set selfish concerns aside and do what is best for the boys.”
On November 27, Gabriel was on a flight for San Francisco and Susan followed by car the next day. Susan was returning to Orinda and to Felix, the man she held responsible for her lifelong misery. Diary entries revealed that the fighting between the couple escalated once she returned to California, and by the end of 2001, Felix had moved out of the house and into a one bedroom apartment.
Nevertheless, the two continued to squabble over money and the payments he owed her. “Meetings with you tend to end badly with threats from you,” she wrote on February 18, 2002. “Your attorney has my phone number. We can communicate through attorneys…. With respect to financial support: your continued support of this family is not contingent upon my persuading the children to see you, my talking to you, or being ‘nice’ to you, or the children’s being ‘nice’ to you.
“You are responsible for supporting the children through college…. I am reducing expenses as much as possible. I have let my cleaning lady go. The boys and I are taking care of the home together. I cannot afford to give Adam an allowance of $100 per week, which I have been doing while he is at college. Adam has gotten a job, as you know. You are legally and ethically responsible for this payment…. Should you continue to shirk your responsibilities, I intend to take legal action against you.”
The scenario was familiar. Felix’s first wife, Sharon Mann, had written similar letters during their divorce, especially in regard to his supposed inability to pay tuition for their son, Andrew, then a freshman at Tufts University. It is interesting that, like his first divorce, Felix’s marriage to Susan was ending after exactly twenty years of marriage, the very year his eldest child, Adam, was a freshman at UCLA.
On February 26, Susan typed what appeared to be a suicide note to her sons that seemed more an introductory lesson in how to invest in real estate—counseling them to consult an attorney before taking any major steps and urging them not to have any rental properties in low-income areas:
Dear Boys
I want to leave you with an explanation for my actions so that you do not make the mistake of blaming yourselves for what has happened.
In the letter, Susan reiterated the abuse she suffered as a child and the abuse she suffered by their father when she was a girl:
I married your father believing that I was in love with him. From time to time, it seemed as if I had forgotten something, and I would begin to remember what he had done, as well as the horror of my childhood that I had put away….
After years of being blamed for every mishap in our lives, after threats to take you away from me and have me confined to a mental hospital, I attempted suicide last year believing that perhaps your dad could do what he threatened to do….
Susan reassured her sons that she loved and admired them, noting their many talents and attributes:
The series of misfortunes that have dogged our lives just leaves me tired…. It is through no fault of yours that I have decided to give up. I just need to rest.
In wanting to leave her children with some guidance after her death, Susan outlined some advice they could follow:
Marry wisely.
Don’t spend all the money I leave you. Money is freedom to a certain degree although it also brings responsibilities.
Never relax your guard.
If anyone offers to include you in any get rich quick or quicker schemes, say NO….
Do not invest in real estate partnerships…
…but choose carefully. Avoid low-income areas for rental property.
Hold onto the rental properties, which you have.
Consult an attorney about rent laws….
Be extra careful in Berkeley….
Forsake violence.
Do not follow your father’s example, or anyone else’s for that matter.
Drugs and alcohol cloud your good judgment.
So do your emotions. Make your decisions when you have calmed down, but be flexible….
DO NOT BE SUGGESTIBLE….
You are inheriting enough to last you the rest of your lives if you don’t spend it all when you get it…. Don’t touch your investments….
I leave you all of my love. Find good homes for the dogs. You can’t take them with you, and they won’t want to go where I’m going.
Despite the letter’s pessimistic tone, Susan was aggressively pursuing the divorce. She contacted Felix’s lawyer with solutions to their divorce settlement. While there is no indication that Felix agreed to her terms, Susan’s entries remained upbeat as she wrote of the vast improvements to their lives since they returned from Montana and Felix moved out of the house.
“So much has changed in the last few months… we returned to Orinda, booted Felix out, and began having the time of our lives. Eli got off of drugs. Gabe worked hard in school. And we all had fun together. Then Dad happened. He filed for custody.”
Detailing the unfortunate turn of events, Susan discussed Eli’s arrest in late February for hitting a boy, an action which landed him in juvenile hall. “He [Eli] was placed under a program called ‘home supervision.’ He wears an electronic monitoring device on his ankle. He has to get permission from ‘peace officers’ at juvenile hall to leave his dad’s cottage.”
Susan noted that Eli was sleeping on the couch of Felix’s one-bedroom apartment in downtown Berkeley. But the arrangement was not working out.
Susan acknowledged that she was accused of being in contempt of court with regard to Eli’s court case, and, sentenced to five days in jail, “The judge gave me a few days to think about it. I did, and still I refused. Eli continued to come over, and finally just began to live at home again.”
Her diary continued, “When Eli was arrested, I made an offer to F’s attorney to settle our differences by leaving the country and relinquishing custody of the children…. I would not return or have any contact with the children until after F’s death. In exchange, he would not bother me. I would inherit my share of the property at his death, the kids would inherit their share, F’s kids would not inherit from what we had acquired during the course of our marriage. F has salted away millions. They could inherit from that.”
When Felix declined, Susan said she offered to compromise. She would still move away. “They just ignored my offer. F. expects me to struggle…to negotiate over the children…. F. expects the children to accept his version of reality: mom is sick, mom is crazy…. He has offered to live in our cottage so that I can see Eli….
“At first, I pretended I would trade places with them and live in their cottage. But…I can’t live there…. Berkeley is such a cynical community of smug, self-satisfied university people. I would suffocate…. It was a mecca for people like F. who saw themselves as the cleverest, lightest, fittest in the fifties and the sixties….”
Susan noted that in the same week Eli was sentenced, she learned that her mother had cut her out of the will. “I lost my home, my children. I am looking forward to never setting foot in this country again.”
In addition to her diary, Susan’s writings included a number of postcards and letters that she mailed to Eli at Juvenile Hall while en route to Montana in the fall of 2002. These would be her last correspondences until after Felix’s death.
“Sun Valley is pristine (undeveloped) and like a Hollywood set—picture perfect,” Susan wrote in a postcard dated September 22 from Salmon, Idaho. “But there are too many Hollywood people there. Am moving on.”
Another postcard to Eli read: “I hope to find a place I feel comfortable in. I can see it in my imagination. No crowds. Lots of trees. Animals. Empty roads. Rivers. Clear skys [sic]. Privacy. You will come to see me there when you are free to do so.”
Susan wrote to her divorce attorney, Dan Ryan, as well. In the letter, she reacted to news of the September 27 telephone conference in which the Contra Costa Superior Court judge awarded Felix “legal and physical custody of Gabriel” and “exclusive use and occupancy of the family residence located at 728 Minor Road.”
“I object to holding the hearing scheduled for Wednesday in my absence,” Susan said of the judge’s decision to schedule a follow-up hearing for October 3. “Please request that the hearing be postponed until I can return. The issues to be addressed might reasonably be resolved outside of court, those issues being spousal support, custody, and family support…. I left Gabe with Felix while I was looking for a home.
“Meanwhile, it is impossible for me to bid on a family residence when I have lost physical custody of Gabe and when my support award is subject to Felix’s whimsy. Whether or not I have physical custody of Gabe will determine whether or not I buy a residence. The amount of support I can expect to receive reliably will have bearing on where I choose to settle as well as what kind of home I will buy.”
Susan asked that the attorney make a motion on her behalf to have the physical custody order rendered that Friday vacated.
“I have not abandoned Gabe,” she noted.
Susan went on to explain that she had identified several affordable properties and was arranging to have Gabe fly out to Montana to see them. She noted that it would be impossible for her to proceed with negotiations for the purchase of a home until she learned for certain that she could have her children with her.
In a follow-up letter dated October 3, Susan fired Dan Ryan and then set off for California. Angry that the scheduled hearing occurred despite her objections, Susan blamed Ryan for his role in the events.
In subsequent entries made upon her return to Orinda, Susan claimed that she and Felix had reached “some verbal agreements”; they were $170,000 in debt and couldn’t afford to have one of them occupying the apartment in Berkeley, as that would be a loss of $2,400 a month in rental income, she wrote. They agreed that one of them should stay in the guesthouse, but the question remained: which one? Susan felt that it should be Felix, while her husband felt he had won the right to reside in the sprawling estate and was unwilling to compromise.
These discussions of their tentative oral agreement proved to be the last of the rambling, often confused entries in Susan Polk’s diary. While Susan’s writings chronicled events as she viewed them, as well as her growing dislike of her husband, they contained no evidence that she was plotting his murder. The diary merely revealed page after page of motive, providing insight into Susan in the months and years predating Felix’s murder. The lengthy memoir failed to provide the “smoking gun” police had anticipated when they listed it as part of the October 15 search warrant of the Miner Road residence.
Despite the inherent bias in the pages, the reality that they detailed was unsettling. The years of abuse and emotional scarring were apparent on both sides, and regardless of their history, it was clear that both Felix and Susan were growing tired of the status quo. And yet, Susan did not seem like a person on the edge of murder—particularly in her last entries where there is little to suggest that she was a woman who was about to be pushed too far. In the end, the diary created more questions than answers, and chief among them was—why had all this happened now? While Susan was still irate over the actions that took place in her absence, her final entries show a woman whose divorce was on the path to settlement. Her pragmatic, conciliatory tone when discussing Felix’s financial situation didn’t show a woman who was sharpening her knives; they showed a woman who had finally come to the table.
But in spite of their progress, many sticking points remained, including the role that the cottage would play in their lives. One of them had to give up claim to the main home and move to the guesthouse. It was a dispute that would last until the very end.
“Dear Mom, I’m going to Dad’s funeral this Saturday,” Eli wrote to Susan from juvenile hall on November 5, 2002. “I don’t think I am going to say anything. What would I possibly have to say about him? Nothing good.”
Eli made good on his word. He was granted permission from juvenile officials to attend the November 9 memorial service for his father at Christ the King Parish in Pleasant Hill. With his close-cropped hair and broad shoulders, the teen was easily identifiable in the sanctuary’s front pew, where he sat shoulder to shoulder with his siblings, Adam and Gabriel.
Although Felix was Jewish, his funeral could not be held immediately after his death as is the Jewish custom; police insisted on an autopsy as part of the murder investigation. Once the autopsy was performed, it would be another three weeks before the memorial service was held. Felix was not a practicing Jew and had even gone so far as to tell Adam that he was an agnostic. Still, Susan had felt it was important for her sons to know about their father’s heritage and orchestrated the Jewish holidays at their home in an attempt to honor both her faith and that of her husband’s family. Sometimes the Polks celebrated Christmas and other times they celebrated Hanukah—with no discernible pattern.
After some discussion, it was decided that the funeral would be held at Christ the King Parish, a small Catholic house of worship in San Francisco’s East Bay, and funded, at least in part by Argosy University where Felix taught. Mourners arriving at the church on Brandon Road that autumn day were momentarily taken aback by the psychedelic rock and roll music that filled the sanctuary. Adam had chosen the song, “Wish You Were Here,” the 1975 hit from the British rock band, Pink Floyd, to kick off the service, although it was not clear why Adam selected that track to memorialize his father; perhaps it was because Pink Floyd was a group that Felix counted among his favorites.
As the words of the song droned from overhead speakers, old family photos of Felix flashed onto two large screens set up on either side of the altar: a young Felix embracing his infant son from his first marriage, playing cello accompaniment to his first wife, Sharon Mann, and another of Felix trekking outdoors and carrying a child on his back. The pictures elicited smiles and laughter from those who came to pay their final respects to the slain therapist. There was silent anticipation that one of the photos would contain an image of Felix’s spouse and alleged killer, but the photomontage had been edited to exclude any photos of Susan Polk.
Like the slide presentation, the tender eulogies that followed also failed to mention Felix’s second wife. Instead, friends and colleagues publicly remembered a warm, caring man who loved his work and his children. One of the speakers was Ernst Vaulfer, a fellow Holocaust survivor who had known Felix for more than forty years. Another person who took the pulpit that afternoon was Felix’s former patient, Sheila Burns, the psychologist who Susan suspected of having an affair with her husband.
Susan made no request to attend Felix’s funeral, and his children from his first marriage, Andrew and Jennifer Polk, decided not to fly in for the ceremony, electing instead to hold their own private memorial on the East Coast some days later. Adam and Gabriel told Court TV’s Lisa Sweetingham that Jennifer and Andrew were rarely a presence in their lives. Andrew, who was already in college when Felix left Sharon, did not stay in close contact with his father. Their relationship worsened after Felix declined to pay for his college tuition. Jennifer was in and out of the picture over the years. She had lived with Felix and Susan for a brief time after their marriage but as time passed her visits became infrequent. Nevertheless Adam and Gabriel elected to fly east to share their father’s loss with their half siblings. Eli, still in custody in the juvenile facility, was not permitted to make the cross-country trek.
It is not known if Felix’s first wife, Sharon Mann, attended that service. She was not among the mourners at the November 9 ceremony in California. Sharon had reacted with a mix of surprise and sadness when she learned of Felix’s death from police the day after his body was found in the guest cottage.
“I feel so sorry for him,” she tearfully told a reporter who reached her for a reaction. “It’s such a horrible tragedy.” Though polite, Sharon declined to comment publicly about her relationship with Felix or the circumstances surrounding his death. While many of his friends and colleagues expressed similar remorse over Felix’s death, they also refused to discuss Felix’s relationship with his second wife openly. In addition to their disapproval of his dual relationship with Susan, there was also quiet talk during the subsequent coffee hour in the church meeting room of Felix’s propensity for inappropriate relationships with other patients outside the confines of his office. Felix thought nothing of socializing with them and even soliciting their professional services—be they piano lessons from his music teacher patient or legal advice from an attorney he was counseling.
Several of his colleagues even suggested they knew of his affair with Susan around the time it began and quietly denounced his involvement with the fragile teen. While it is true that in the late 1960s there was no California law against a therapist having intercourse with a patient, most viewed it as an ethical violation of patient/doctor privilege. In Susan’s case, the violation was even more serious because she was allegedly underage when the sexual relationship began.
Sexual contact between a patient and therapist is now a crime in California that is punishable by six months in jail. The law, however, permits sexual relations between therapist and patient two years after the termination of therapy. The stipulation stems from the theory that transference will have worn off after two years, however, many in the field assert that transference is everlasting. Experts have even suggested that Felix’s inappropriate sexual relationship with his teenage patient might have caused him to misdiagnose Susan. It’s possible that he failed to recognize that she might very well have been a borderline personality, a diagnosis that brings with it lifelong symptoms of depression, rage, and hostility.
And while there were no other accusations of inappropriate sexual relationships with patients over the years, Felix had a widespread reputation for regularly violating protocol. One such incident occurred in October 1997, when Felix was accused of providing insufficient care for a child because of his close relationship to the boy and his father.
During the ongoing investigation into Felix’s murder, we obtained access to the family court file that involved the custody of this ten-year-old boy who was in therapy with Felix. In a five-page letter to the judge presiding over the case, the family, and the child counselor asked to render an evaluation, accused Dr. Polk of “limiting the effectiveness of his therapy because of his dual and inappropriate social relationships with the boy and his father.” The counselor wrote: “These dual relationships have resulted in unorthodox treatment protocols (doing treatment at the father’s home, picking the boy up from school, and taking him home after the therapy, not attending treatment on his mother’s custodial time) that can make it difficult for the child to experience the treatment as emotionally safe and neutral.
“Additionally, Dr. Polk has involved himself in the current litigation between the parents by speaking to the father’s attorney about the boy’s treatment and relationships with his parents without notice or consent from the mother. These behaviors on the part of Dr. Polk are in contrast to current ethical standards and practices.”
Psychotherapist Karen Saeger, a colleague of Dr. Polk’s at the California Graduate School of Professional Psychology in Berkeley from 1979 to 1986, claimed that Felix had a “widespread reputation” on the campus for his twofold relationship with Susan. Saeger portrayed his actions as “disturbing and improper.”
“There were two Felixes,” she said of Polk. “One was tightly coiled like he could spring at you; the other was charming and charismatic.”
Kathy Lucia, a former patient of Polk’s, had a similar reaction. Lucia, who, along with Susan, had participated in the group sessions that Felix led during the 1970s, said that she recalled Felix “was trying to control” Susan during the meetings.
Susan was “dependent on him [Felix] in a lot of ways,” Lucia said.
It is not uncommon for at-risk patients such as Susan to form attachments to their therapists. Professionals are trained to anticipate these feelings of transference and take steps to avoid vulnerability on the part of patients, as well as themselves. In Felix’s case, it seems he threw caution to the wind in acting out his own personal fantasy with his teenage patient.
Despite his professional recklessness, he had to have known the emotional danger that existed when a therapist disappointed or violated his patient in some way. According to the famous 1966 study conducted by William Masters and Virginia Johnson, the damage a woman can suffer as a result of a sexual relationship with her therapist is tantamount to rape. (Not surprisingly, Susan often described her sexual relationship with Felix as “rape.”)
Nevertheless Felix ignored all of the studies, judgment, and professional common sense when he crossed the line from therapist to lover with Susan, and in the end the realities of her psychological state overwhelmed him. Indeed to become someone’s doctor and husband is always too much, but in Felix’s case the combination proved deadly. Instead of improving, her problems seemed to worsen over the years and Felix couldn’t possibly absorb all of her love, trust, and paranoia.
Long before his murder, Felix had become the ultimate authority figure in Susan’s life, the embodiment of her years spent listening to others. While once she obeyed his every word, during the final years of their marriage it was clear that her subservience was a thing of the past, and there was nothing he could do to regain his lost ground. Unlike the police or a judge, he could not hold her in contempt or arrest her; he had no rebuttal for the fear she instilled. He was incapable of taking the steps necessary to protect himself—not because he didn’t know what was right—but because the very fact that he needed help was an outward sign of his failure.
It shouldn’t have been this way. In his mind, he believed he had “fixed” her at age sixteen and to think that her persistent problems stemmed from those residual issues was to admit his failings. For Felix to obtain a restraining order against his wife, for him to abandon his home for a hotel, would have been to admit the truth: Dr. Polk had lost his patient long ago. He’d lost her back in his office on Ashby Avenue. He’d lost her when he should have been helping her the most. He’d lost her the moment he laid a hand on her.
It was a reality too intimidating to confront, a failure too grand to realize. And so when all of his friends insisted that he move out, when all of his logic told him to leave the house, he could not, choosing instead to remain in the confines of the guest cottage with the door unlocked, waiting—perhaps even hoping—to find a way that he could heal Susan before it was too late.
On October 23, 2002, Contra Costa County Superior Court Judge Merle Eaton honored the prosecutor’s no-bail request and ordered Susan remanded to the West County Detention Facility in Richmond. In court, Judge Eaton agreed with Contra Costa County Assistant District Attorney Tom O’Connor’s claim that Susan was a flight risk. He pointed to statements she had made in the letter she wrote to Superior Court Judge William Kolin in September 2002, regarding Eli’s probation violation.
“In one part of the letter, the defendant clearly indicates she would sell her home and leave the area,” Judge Eaton stated in his ruling. “It was those statements that caused Eaton ‘great concern’ and prompted him to make the no-bail ruling,” he wrote.
Susan’s no-bail status meant that Gabriel would need to find another place to live. He was released to the custody of his eldest brother, Adam, after spending the night of October 14 speaking with detectives at the Martinez headquarters. While Adam was technically old enough to care for his minor sibling, he wanted to complete his college education. There was brief talk of Gabriel joining Adam at the frat house at UCLA in Los Angeles, but the authorities immediately rejected that plan.
Since leaving police headquarters, Gabriel had been staying at the home of a Lafayette couple, Marjorie and Dan Briner, who were the parents of Adam Polk’s close friend, Andy. When the couple learned of Gabriel’s situation, they immediately opened their home to the teen. The Briners had never actually met Gabriel or his parents, but they thought highly of Adam and wanted to help. Marjorie was a middle-school teacher and Dan worked in commercial real estate, and the pair lived in nearby Lafayette.
Gabriel’s stay was intended to be temporary, but as time passed, the Briners invited him to remain on a permanent basis. He fit in well with the family and was flourishing in their care. When he arrived, Marjorie noted that he was “the most angry boy I’ve ever met.” He wanted nothing to do with his mother, tearing up some of her letters and leaving them in shreds in the trash. At first, Marjorie taped them back together. But after Gabe threatened to leave if she continued to repair them, she just left the remaining letters in a pile unopened for him to read when he was ready.
Despite the initial setbacks, Gabriel was soon able to form a bond with the family, and the Briners were among the few family friends invited a few days after the funeral to accompany Gabe and his siblings—Adam, Eli, Andrew, and Jennifer—to their father’s cremation and the somber hike that followed. Felix once told Adam that he wanted to be cremated, like his father. Eric and the other children intended to honor that wish, deciding to pay homage to Felix’s love of the outdoors by releasing his ashes at the end of a lengthy trek to the top of Mount Tamalpais. Located just north of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, it was one of Felix’s favorite hiking spots with more than fifty miles of trails, towering redwoods and oaks, and a serpentine road to the top of the park’s summit. After the long walk, the siblings and the Briners released his ashes into the breeze as the dust of Felix hovered in the air, drifting down on the San Francisco Bay.
Initially, Susan had no objections to her son’s placement with the Briners and even seemed to be fairing well in jail. She sent out homemade holiday cards at Christmas time 2002, and in the months after her incarceration, she wrote furiously to her sons, receiving responses from Eli and Adam, but not from Gabriel. Instead, she learned how he was doing through letters from Dan and Marjorie.
In one letter, dated March 12, 2003, Dan praised Gabriel’s progress. “His studies are really quite good,” Dan wrote. “He is improving on his study skills, reluctantly, like most teenagers that I know and he is beginning to be willing to recognize those areas that he needs to work on.”
Keeping the imprisoned mother apprised of every detail, Dan informed Susan that her son was now a member of the De La Salle rugby team and the junior varsity football team and that he “was getting along well with our family.”
“We have had no problem with him breaking primary rules such as smoking, drinking, or significant defiance,” Dan noted. “And we communicate openly and frankly so that he knows he has both commitment and support. He continues to work with his counselor twice a week…. He is still not reading your letters. We always tell him when they arrive and we keep them unopened for him for a later time. We recognize that they are very important to him…. Gabe sees more and more that he has a lot of opportunity and a lot of potential and Marjorie and I think he will excel.”
These letters to Susan continued until July or August of 2003, when Susan and Marjorie Briner had a verbal confrontation over the telephone. The altercation, which came after months of angry letters and phone calls from Susan, prompted Marjorie to cut off all communication with Gabe’s mother. At first, the couple obliged Susan’s myriad requests, including shopping for Christmas and birthday gifts for her sons for which she promised to reimburse the couple. However, this arrangement soured after Susan raged at Marjorie for refusing to buy Adam a DVD that he insisted he didn’t want.
Susan’s pattern was to blow up, rant and rave, and then follow up with a kind letter as if the angry incident never took place. It was a difficult routine for a family that was just trying to help a young teenager get back on his feet, and by August of 2003, Marjorie Briner could not bear any more confrontations. In addition to her verbal abuse, Susan was now claiming the Briners were conspiring with others to rob the Polk estate, accusing the family of brainwashing her sons against her in order to get their hands on the family money.
This conspiracy theory was further complicated by the fact that Susan was convinced the Briners were in cahoots with Felix’s twin brother, John, and John’s attorney, Bud Mackenzie, who was representing John in the Polk estate proceedings. She even went so far as to blame the couple for pocketing Gabriel’s monthly social security check of twelve hundred dollars to spend on personal indulgences, a check that Gabe’s half sister, Jennifer, had arranged for him to receive after their father’s death.
In reality, Gabriel was turning over his check each month to help offset the couple’s expenses. Although they both held good jobs, the Briners were not rich. Dan Briner was hoping to teach Gabriel how to manage his finances, and in the early days, he was giving the teen a four hundred dollar monthly allowance, which he increased as the boy showed he could handle his own financial affairs.
The success that the family experienced with Gabriel eventually led them to take responsibility for Eli after he was released from Byron Boys’ Ranch in the summer of 2003. The arrangement did not last long, and Eli stayed just two weeks, claiming the couple tried to sour him on his mother.
“He was essentially living out of his car, but sleeping at the house,” Dan Briner said of Eli’s brief stay. “He had his girlfriend downstairs. We were trying to help him. The plan was to send him out to a school in Colorado that would take him. He liked rugby and we thought that the estate would cover the tickets.
“His Aunt Evelyn helped with the planning,” Dan said of Felix’s older sister, who had gone on to become a concert pianist. She was also one of Eli’s biggest supporters, offering to help in any way she could, but there didn’t seem to be anything that Evelyn could do.
“It was all set up and then Susan called [Eli] and said ‘It’s a trap, they’re manipulating you.’ Then, just like that, it stopped,” Dan Briner said. “Then there was this falling out with Marjorie and I asked him [Eli] to leave because he wasn’t following directions. Once you put any pressure on Eli, Susan just goes off.”
After the situation at the Briners eroded, Eli moved to Los Angeles to live in the university frat house with Adam, but that arrangement, too, quickly turned unmanageable. Susan grew furious when she learned that Eli was burning through his trust fund, spending in excess of twenty thousand dollars in just a few months on food and entertainment. Eli explained that he had no choice: he had to eat out because the frat house had no kitchen.
Eventually, Eli ended up back at the Orinda house. He was living there only a short time when he was arrested and charged with reckless driving after leading police on a high-speed chase, reaching speeds as high as 130 mph on Interstate 680.
It was around midnight on October 14, 2003—the one-year anniversary of Felix’s death—that a sheriff’s deputy from the City of San Ramon Police Department initially spotted Eli’s Camaro passing by with expired registration tags. After radioing his dispatcher, Sheriff’s Deputy Mark Johnson flicked on his red and blue police lights to make a traffic stop, causing the Camaro to accelerate to speeds of between 40 to 50 mph in the 35 mph zone. Johnson turned on his siren and sped after the Camaro.
As the car approached I-680, Johnson watched it fishtail before entering the highway. Flooring his accelerator, the trooper muttered under his breath as the Camaro pulled away. At one point, he glanced down at his odometer and noted that he was traveling at 130 mph—twice the legal limit—and quickly terminated the pursuit because of the danger to himself and other motorists.
He watched in frustration as the Camaro sped off, weaving through traffic before exiting the Interstate on Bollinger Canyon Road, where a second trooper, Deputy Sheriff Jeffrey Schraeder, picked up the chase. Shraeder observed the Camaro skid sideways with tires screeching across three lanes of traffic before its driver regained control of the vehicle. Seconds later, he saw the car turn off the road into an empty parking lot and come to a stop, its engine smoking and right front tire flat. Shraeder followed the Camaro into the darkened lot, with Trooper Johnson pulling in a short time later to make the arrest.
Striding to the car, Johnson observed that the driver had “red eyes” and “smelled strongly of marijuana.” He demanded that Eli open his mouth and stick out his tongue. Using a flashlight, Johnson observed that the back of Eli’s mouth was “green,” suggesting he had swallowed some marijuana. Eli was arrested and charged with reckless evasion of a police officer and several other traffic infractions. During cross-examination at his trial, he later admitted that he had a bag of marijuana in his possession and had smoked marijuana earlier that day.
In the end, Eli was found guilty of reckless endangerment of a police officer and in February of 2005 was placed on three years probation, conditioned on ninety days in the county jail or electronic home monitoring.
Susan, meanwhile, was behind bars in August of 2003 when a Grand Jury was convened to determine whether to indict her on charges of first-degree murder. Panelists heard from police officers, investigators, and forensic experts during three closed-door sessions. One criminalist testified that hairs found in Felix’s clenched fist were “consistent” with those of his wife, Susan, and that several of the hairs had roots, indicating they had been ripped from her scalp, probably during a violent struggle. Meanwhile, another forensic expert presented evidence that a bloody footprint found near the body was a match to Susan’s right foot.
“I think there seems to be a reasonable conference [agreement] here that the crime was committed, that there was some clean-up within the pool house bathroom, and that for whatever reason, Susan Polk came around the back side of the crime scene, perhaps Felix was still struggling, and then exits the house,” the expert told the Grand Jurors. “I make that argument because of the evidence at the scene, as well as that pool house bathroom, the towels on the ground that are bloody, the blood on the counter, and for the simple fact, no bloody shoes are found, no bloody female clothing is recovered.”
With regard to the lack of injuries found on Susan’s body, ADA Tom O’Connor pointed to the testimony of Brian Peterson, the medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Felix Polk.
“It wouldn’t be unusual that the attacker in this situation wouldn’t have significant injuries,” Dr. Peterson told jurors.
In late August, the panel indicted Susan Polk on charges of first-degree murder in the stabbing death of her husband.
Eli was furious when he learned that the judge presiding over the case of the People v. Susan Mae Polk continued his mother’s no bail status, and in January 2004 he sent a letter to the court objecting to the ruling.
“What has happened to my mom is unbelievable,” the teen wrote in a letter, dated January 27, to the judge presiding over his mother’s case:
My mom has been charged with a crime she didn’t commit. And now she has been unjustly incarcerated for over 15 months with no sign of the court’s undoing the injustice that has been done.
From what I see, the prosecutor’s theory of what occurred is impossible. I know without question that if there were a physical struggle between my mom and dad, my father would be the instigator, as he always was….
As I began to grow in my mind and body, I consciously and unconsciously searched for ways to figure out who was telling the truth and who was telling lies…. I studied everything about both my mom and my dad… to seek what a normal kid my age could never even begin to imagine…. My father’s façade was well created… and if you’re around it long enough… you start to break through it as you mature. So when I was roughly around the age of 15, I finally began to no longer see the poor, weak, aging man who was losing his family to a crazy, troubled wife.
If there was one thing my dad had never acted like, it was weak. My father definitely wasn’t weak when he was beating me up or slapping my mom. He never acted powerless when he used to take my two brothers and I into the office, one at a time, and hypnotize us.
One of the few documents to provide a window into Eli’s thoughts, the letter demonstrated the close connection between Eli and his mother. In the months ahead, Eli remained the only son to defend her account of his father’s death. To many, his vows of support bordered on obsessive, and there was speculation that Eli and Susan’s relationship was odd. Not only was Eli taking her side, but often he even used the same language that she did, and his letters to her were filled with professions of undying love—even expressing his willingness to take his own life for her. “I love you enough to burn all I am and meet you in the after life,” he wrote to Susan while she was incarcerated at the West County Detention Facility. There was also speculation among members of the media that Eli and Susan could have entered into a suicide pact—in the event that Susan was sentenced to life in prison for Felix’s murder, the two would kill themselves.
“You are everything to me,” Eli wrote in one letter to his mother. “I will be there for you for the rest of your life. You are the strongest, smartest and most loving person I know. I will always be proud to have you as my mom. Most importantly, don’t ever forget, or force out, the perfect person you are. Never again will I be as happy as I could with you in jail…. You dying is a part of me dead as well.”
Since her arrest on that October night, Susan was convinced that authorities had targeted her unfairly because of actions she took during her divorce proceedings with Felix. In her mind, the judges were part of a conspiracy and did not want to help her in any way.
“I believe the reason for this animosity is political,” Susan wrote in a letter she later sent to the court:
In October 2002, shortly before my husband’s death, I sent a letter containing an excerpt from my diary to 7 (seven) judges in Contra Costa County accusing Judge Kolin of taking a bribe in a juvenile case involving one of my sons. There were other political statements in my diary, excerpts, which may have given rise to prejudice. I believe Judge [Laurel] Brady received a copy of this letter.
Judge Kolin was called as a prosecution witness at a bail hearing in 2004. He is a friend of Bud McKenzie, my brother-in-law’s attorney, and so testified. Mr. McKenzie, according to Judge Kolin, asked him to help prevent me from getting bail. Judge Dan O’Malley essentially recused himself in October of 2004, stating he had been contacted by a number of De la Salle parents. The Briners, friends of Bud McKenzie with whom my son Gabriel lives, are De la Salle parents. Mr. McKenzie was a De la Salle parent. The O’Malleys are Carondolet parents, the sister school of De la Salle.
It seems apparent that there has been a great amount of discussion and influence among these parties, which has also prejudiced the bench. It should also be noted that De la Salle raised money for my sons following their father’s death. The Psychology teacher at De la Salle, Mr. Otterstadt, was a former patient and trainee of my husband. I am informed and believe it to be true that Mr. Otterstadt organized the De la Salle community in relation to my husband’s death and the case against me.
Susan went on to describe being “attacked” by an officer of the court in August 2003, the day she attempted to file a Faretta motion—a preliminary step to representing herself. The motion is based on a 1975 decision that permitted a defendant to represent himself in a California murder case.
“I was attacked by Deputy Carin, and my arm was broken by him. He hit my elbow with a ‘blackjack,’ a metal rod,” Susan wrote.
Susan went on to claim that the officer assigned to investigate the incident “appears to be related to Judge [Laurel] Brady’s clerk.”
“He refused to take my statement, angrily declaring: ‘I’m not taking anything from you,’ betraying prejudice and animosity,” Susan wrote.
“This beating is relevant to the homicide case in that I intend to show that the investigation was tainted, exculpatory evidence including my diary was destroyed by law enforcement officers. Other examples of tampering with evidence exist. The beating was an attempt to silence me. In fact, Deputy Carin said just before he broke my arm, ‘I told you not to speak in court,’ a major obstacle to a pro per defendant.”
Regardless of Susan’s conspiracy theories, these early bail hearings made it clear that her contempt for authority in the court of law was a much larger problem, one that would prove highly ineffective if carried into the trial. Any progress she made would be reduced when she lashed out at the judges and their subordinates. Her paranoia became increasingly harmful to her case when coupled with her adamant refusal to obey the will of the court. When faced with the choice between controlling herself and lashing out at the bench, she always chose the latter, ensuring that she received no respect from the judges that controlled her fate.
It was a risky path for anyone to take, but for a woman accused of first-degree murder, it appeared almost suicidal.
More than two years of arguing over Susan’s bail status (or lack thereof) did little to improve her situation. Finally, in the fall of 2004, Judge Mary Ann O’Malley conducted a review of Susan’s no-bail status. Prosecutor Tom O’Connor called Adam to the stand on September 10 to clarify a letter he wrote to the court with regard to bail for his mother, a letter which had ended with Adam saying that it was right for the court to release Susan.
“You know, I love my mom. She’s always known that,” Adam said to O’Connor. “I don’t think that she’s a person who belongs in prison. I don’t think she fits into the general public of a prison. However, that being said, I don’t think she belongs in the general public right now either.”
“And why is that, sir?”
“I think that my mom has psychological issues that need to be dealt with that could be detrimental to other people around her…and herself,” Adam said.
“Was it your opinion that prior to what occurred with your father that your mother was delusional?”
“A hundred percent, yeah. I told her every day.”
“Did those delusions focus on one individual?”
“No, I guess the focal point of her delusions was obviously my father. But there’s always something she’s been delusional about for as long as I can remember [that] my father was a double agent for the Israeli intelligence.”
This idea of Susan’s delusions was the focal point of O’Connor’s argument that she should not be allowed out on bail. Focusing on her delusions about Felix’s involvement with Israeli intelligence, her belief that the Briners were embezzling her money, and statements she made about the “Jewish Network,” O’Connor sought to portray Susan as a woman whose mental state was a risk to those around her.
On cross-examination, Susan’s public defender, Jack Funk, an associate of Peter Coleridge, designed his questioning of Adam to convey that Susan’s delusions had a singular focus on Felix. Susan’s delusional behavior did not make her a threat to the public at large, it made her a threat to Felix. Since he was no longer alive, Susan no longer posed a risk to the public.
“During your lifetime… do you know of any other time in which your mother has attacked or threatened any other person?”
“No.”
“And do you have any reason to believe that if your mother were released, upon whatever appropriate security, that she would threaten or attack any other person?”
“I believe the only answer I can give to that question is, I don’t know. I don’t think it’s a fair question to ask me because I don’t know what happened in the cottage that night…. My honest opinion on my mom is that she is an 80 percent sane and rational person and she’s 20 percent delusional, and that 20 percent is completely unpredictable. There’s no way for anybody to know what’s going to happen next, and that’s why I think she needs to be getting help somewhere…. She should not be in prison. She should be getting help somewhere so she can come out and be a fully functional member of society.”
Shortly after the hearing in September 2004, Judge O’Malley set bail for Susan at $1,050,000, but Susan’s time on the outside was brief. Within seven months of posting the monies, she was back behind bars at the West County Detention Facility for violating the terms of her release.
On October 6, 2004, Adam filed a “wrongful death civil suit” against Susan seeking $1 million dollars in damages in addition to other declaratory relief. Eli Polk and Felix’s twin brother, John, who was executor of the Polk estate, were named as codefendants in the suit. Andrew and Jennifer Polk declined to participate in the legal action, according to the court papers.
“As a result of the intentional wrongful death of their father, Plaintiffs Adam and Gabriel suffer damages by way of lost love, care, comfort, and support of their father, in an amount no less than $1 million, to be proven at trial,” the suit read.
In addition to monetary compensation, Gabe and Adam were seeking declarations from the court that John Polk be named proper trustee of the Trust and that Susan have “no right, title, or interest in Trust, which may be funded by assets having a net total value of $1 million dollars.” Furthermore “‘upon conviction of murder or finding of felonious and intentional killing’ that Susan have no property right or interest in the Estate of Felix Polk or in any asset enumerated in the 1996 Polk Trust, and that she have no right or interest in Felix’s share of any community property asset, including Felix’s pension plan and the Orinda residence at 728 Miner Road.”
As a condition of her bail, Judge O’Malley set a no contact order forbidding Susan from having any contact with her son Gabriel, Dan and Marjorie Briner, Felix’s friend Barry Morris, and family lawyer Bud McKenzie. Despite harsh warnings about the repercussions of contacting any of these individuals, upon learning of the filing, Susan sent a flurry of letters to her sons. Although Gabriel refused to respond to her, Susan sent him twenty-four e-mails during this time. Her actions landed her back in jail at the West County Detention Facility in April 2005 with $5 million bail.
Susan told the court that she was simply responding to the civil suit when she contacted her youngest son via e-mail. In a letter to the court, she railed at Judge O’Malley’s April 19 decision to revoke her bail, claiming she had written to Gabriel only after her lawyers, Peter Coleridge and Jack Funk, advised her that the no contact order did not apply to legal correspondence.
“However, I was charged with 24 counts of contempt of court for 24 e-mails to Gabriel and reincarcerated and placed on a no bail hold by Judge Mary Ann O’Malley,” Susan complained in the letter.
Susan subsequently fired Peter Coleridge in May 2005, and announced her intent to act as her own counsel. Since her arrest, she had fired all three of her criminal attorneys—William Ousterhadt, Elizabeth Grossman, and now Peter Coleridge—supposedly because of disagreements over the handling of her defense. She had repeatedly refused to entertain an “insanity” defense or one using “battered woman syndrome.” She had spent much of her life running from a diagnosis of mental illness and she wasn’t about to hide behind such a claim now.
Susan would represent herself pro per. In an interview with the Contra Costa Times in the summer of 2005, she told the newspaper that she was convinced she was not going to get the defense she wanted unless she represented herself. “If I’m going to lose when represented by counsel, I might as well represent myself,” she was quoted as saying. “At least I’ll give them a fight.”
While self-representation is not a good idea for any defendant, in Susan’s case it was a particularly bad choice. In Contra Costa County, women who choose to represent themselves are at a severe disadvantage in comparison to their male counterparts. The women who are housed in the West County Detention Facility are not permitted to use the jail’s “Male Only” law library, despite many administrative complaints from defendants facing felony charges. This restriction greatly limits the amount of research that they can undertake on their own.
This fact may have played a role in the abrupt change Susan announced in late July 2005 when she asked a judge to appoint Oakland defense attorney, Daniel Horowitz, to her case. Horowitz had gained notoriety as a TV legal analyst during the Scott Peterson murder trial by stationing himself at the courthouse to offer legal commentary to cable stations in need of a sound bite. He soon became a regular on Court TV, providing analysis for the Peterson case and later in the Michael Jackson molestation trial.
Representing Susan Polk at her upcoming murder trial would be another opportunity for the lawyer to grab the media spotlight. While Horowitz had represented more than one dozen defendants in capital murder cases during his two decades as an attorney, the majority of his practice was at the Federal level, involving white-collar crimes such as money laundering and embezzlement.
According to his attorney profile, Horowitz was “a defense attorney with an extensive computer and business background” and 90 percent of his practice was devoted to litigation. Nevertheless, he was anxious to take Susan’s case to trial. In August, he asked Judge Thomas Maddock to allow him to bring his cocounsel, Ivan W. Golde, on board for the case. Judge Maddock agreed, under the condition that the county pay only Horowitz’s fee.
While Horowitz was lead counsel on the case, it was Ivan who actually persuaded Susan to meet with them. He made the initial contact while visiting a client at the West County Detention Facility where Susan was being held. During their brief conversation, Ivan convinced Susan to sit down with him and his partner, Dan, to discuss her case.
Born and raised in San Francisco’s East Bay, Golde followed in his father’s footsteps by attending law school and becoming an attorney. Unlike his dad, prominent Alameda County Superior Court Judge Stanley P. Golde, Ivan was not interested in a career on the bench. Instead, he had carved out a niche in the world of professional sports, providing legal counsel to members of the Oakland Raiders Football Club and to baseball great Ricky Henderson. Like Horowitz, Golde enjoyed the media spotlight. According to his web page, he had “done battle with Nancy Grace on Court TV…and has commentated on the Scott Peterson and Michael Jackson high profile cases.”
Susan liked Golde. He was easygoing and down-to-earth, and the two shared a common background; both had grown up in Oakland and attended the same high school (although Susan’s time there was far more limited than Golde’s). During Golde’s initial meeting with Susan, however, she had made it clear that she was not interested in being represented by counsel. She reiterated that position during the subsequent meeting with Golde and Horowitz, informing the lawyers she was not likely to change her mind.
Still, she listened intently to their advice during a series of additional meetings.
It is not known what finally led Susan to allow the lawyers to take over her case. Perhaps she was growing concerned about her ability to manage her own defense or maybe she sensed that Horowitz and Golde truly believed in her and were willing to do the work necessary to present the case she desired. Media reports claimed that Susan settled on the Horowitz/Golde team after they agreed to present a straight self-defense case and go easy during their questioning of Susan’s youngest son, Gabriel.
Once on board, it was Golde who visited Susan in jail and responded to her countless phone calls. Golde quickly developed a friendship with Susan, but over time even he grew weary of her constant needs. At one point, her demands became so great that Horowitz assigned an office assistant named Valerie Harris, whom he had met at the Scott Peterson trial, to handle Susan’s calls. At the Peterson trial, Harris had earned a reputation as something of a trial groupie because of her constant presence in the courtroom. Dan admired her interest in the case and asked her to join the firm.
When Adam Polk learned that his mother had asked Horowitz and Golde to take her case, he admonished the lawyers to be careful.
“The first time I met Dan and Ivan, I told them, ‘Listen, in two months, you guys are going to be unemployed,’” Adam later explained. “My mother has, throughout her life, for as long I have known her, exhibited a pattern of warming up to outsiders and then completely turning on them.
“I have experienced it my whole life. She is a lady who values control and when somebody else maintains control over her life, I believe she contrives fantasies. Rather than use the word ‘delusion,’ I like to use ‘contrives fantasies’ to gain control of the other people [outsiders].”
In spite of Adam’s warning, the two attorneys forged ahead with their defense of Susan. In September 2005, Dan Horowitz and Ivan Golde filed a motion on her behalf, claiming Susan was the victim of legal maneuvering that was tantamount to bribery and extortion in connection with the civil suit. Horowitz claimed that Bud Mackenzie, the lawyer representing the Polk estate, was trying to put a “squeeze play” on Susan—raising the possibility that the Orinda house would go into foreclosure if she didn’t act. However, when Golde went back to the attorney and offered to put up his own money to halt the pending foreclosure proceeding, Mackenzie reportedly said the house was not in danger.
The motion alleged that Adam Polk was aware that the Miner Road house was not at risk but wanted his mother to believe it was in order to push her to settle. It also claimed that Susan had received veiled threats from an unnamed party that Adam and Gabriel would “testify with great anger and fear about the financial ‘situation’” if she did not agree to settle the suit.
While that motion as well as several others that the Horowitz/Golde team filed were denied, the civil suit was settled shortly thereafter, presumably in hopes that Adam and Gabe would be more friendly to the defense on the witness stand during the criminal case.
With the civil trial moving along, Horowitz and Golde began to hone their strategy for the murder trial. They publicly declared they could win Susan an acquittal at trial. Horowitz told ABC’s Good Morning America that he had no intention of presenting an insanity defense or a battered woman/burning bed syndrome. Susan was a woman who was abused regularly by her therapist husband, and she truly believed Felix intended to kill her the night the two argued in the couple’s guest cottage, the lawyer maintained. Dan Horowitz would argue a straight self-defense case on Susan’s behalf—or at least that’s what he intended to do.
The temperature had already reached seventy degrees when I arrived at the West County Detention Facility on October 1, 2005, nearly three years to the day after Felix Polk’s murder. I had come to the modern, tidy jail in Richmond, California, at Susan’s invitation for the first in a series of jailhouse interviews for my show, Catherine Crier Live.
Much had happened since Susan’s arrest in the fall of 2002. The most significant was Susan’s about face. For more than two years after Felix’s death, she had publicly maintained her innocence—although she claimed she told her mother and her attorney of her involvement five days after Felix’s death. As the investigation progressed over the years, she eventually changed her story from innocence to self-defense. No one has been able to pinpoint exactly when the change occurred, but Detective Mike Costa later told Court TV’s Lisa Sweetingham that he believed it was sometime in 2003 that he first heard Susan’s new claim.
While Susan had privately detailed the events in the guest cottage to her mother and her then-attorney soon after her arrest in October 2002, the first time she publicly uttered the self-defense argument was in an April 2005 article in the Contra Costa Times. In the article, written by reporter Bruce Gertzman during a time when Susan was not represented by counsel, she insisted that she and her husband were arguing on the night of October 13, 2002, when an enraged Felix came after her with a knife. She fought back vigorously, ultimately killing him in an attempt to save her own life.
A uniformed jail official escorted me to the small interview room where I would meet Susan for the first time. The jangling of keys alerted me to her entrance into the small room on the opposite side of a Plexiglas partition. Her well-groomed appearance surprised me. After nearly three years in jail, she was slender and graceful, even in the baggy prison outfit that hung from her gangly 5′6″ frame. Her once long dark hair was now streaked with gray and cut in a stylish bob. She wore little makeup, just lipstick and white eye-pencil, artfully applied to enhance her beautiful, unblemished skin.
I watched as she slid into a sturdy, metal-framed chair on her side of the cubicle, placing her neatly manicured hands atop the small table we shared. Looking up at me through the divider, she flashed a half smile and then glanced around nervously. Susan and I were about the same age, and during the interview we found several commonalities. Like Susan, I too, had married young. And while I had long since divorced my first husband, Susan had stayed married and raised three children with Felix. She claimed it wasn’t until her fortieth birthday that she realized she could no longer remain in the relationship. Felix was abusive and she wanted out.
I asked Susan what happened that night in the guest cottage. At times, her voice was so soft that I found myself leaning forward to hear her responses through the mesh opening just above the table.
“Well, we had things to talk about, um, and had arranged to meet later that night to have a talk,” Susan began in a quiet monotone. “I got to the door. I knocked. The lights were on, um, around eleven, and it looked like he might have been reading because…he had a book.”
Susan explained that she had a can of pepper spray in her back pocket, which she had purchased at a convenience store in Montana. The clerk told her that one pump would stop a grizzly bear in its tracks, and she was confident the spray would protect her.
I asked Susan about her conversation with Felix. Were they trying to figure out where the two would live? Whether she would stay in the house or return to Montana?
“It was practical,” Susan said. “He [Felix] offered to pay around three thousand dollars a month in spousal support and I wanted to discuss Gabriel, the kids, selling the house or not selling it. I wanted the kids to stay in the house. I didn’t want to spend a lot of money in a battle. I didn’t think it was worth it because I had been offering for months to just sign papers. It degenerated into an argument. He wasn’t being practical and it just became one of those arguments.”
“How did he get the knife?” I asked.
There was a long pause, as if Susan was searching for an answer. “I really don’t know,” she finally said. “What happened is he came over and backhanded me in the face as he’d done before. I pulled out the pepper spray. Sprayed him. He picked up the ottoman and charged at me with it, then grabbed me by the hair, threw me on the floor, punched me in the face again, and smeared pepper spray into my eyes.
“The next thing I knew, I looked up, and I saw a knife coming down, and I saw it go into my leg. I thought the reason I wasn’t feeling it was because, sometimes, I’ve read, people don’t feel it initially when they’ve been stabbed.
“It was like I flashed on ‘I am going to die. He is going to kill me. If I don’t do something right now, I will be dead.’
“I just thought of the one thing I could do and that was to kick him as hard as I could in the groin and hope at the same time I could get the knife from his hand. I kicked, pulled my leg back as far as a I could and kicked with as much force as I could into his groin, and went for the knife at the very same time, and his hand loosened just enough where I could grab the knife. And, um, I grabbed it, and I felt like I had to say something, and I said, ‘Stop, I have a knife.’
“And then, um, he was going after the knife and I stabbed him in the side, and then he was leaning over, and I think at that point he punched me in the face again, and I reached around and I stabbed him in the back, and then he bit into my hand and bit down as hard as he could. There’s actually teeth, tooth marks on both sides [of my hand] and then he went for the knife at the same time.
“And I thought, well, he was doing what I did and if I loosen up now, he’s going to get it and kill me. And so then I stabbed him again.”
At one point, Susan remembered clenching the knife in both hands and repeatedly slashing at her husband. “Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop!” she screamed, waving the blade from side to side to keep him at bay before driving it into his torso. “Get off! Get off! Get off! Get off!”
“I opened my eyes, and I saw blood, and I thought that I had torn open his chest, but I think I would have seen some blood from the previous stabbing.”
Susan described watching as Felix staggered to his feet and mumbled his final words. “I stood up and dropped the knife, and Felix just said, ‘Oh my God. I think I’m dead.’ And he wobbled back and forth like this,” Susan said, rocking back and forth to mimic Felix’s movements. “Like swayed, and then he just fell back and hit his head on the floor.”
Continuing, Susan described how the pounding of her temples was deafening as she worked to catch her breath. She needed to sit down. Striding to the short flight of stairs leading to the single bedroom, she perched on a step near to where Felix lay on the floor. The room was in a shambles. Blood was everywhere. Staring down at her husband, Susan said that scenes of their life together came rushing back. For one brief moment, she remembered the good times and the love they once shared. But those thoughts quickly disappeared.
It is not clear if Felix was dead at that moment. Susan admitted that she did not check for a pulse. Prosecutors would later insist that Felix was, in fact, alive and still breathing for nearly thirty minutes after the attack. They even suggested that Susan left her husband of twenty years to die alone when she returned to the main house some time later that evening.
Susan described how she crossed the room to the bathroom at the top of the landing to wash up. Her hands were covered with blood and she wanted to wash the pepper spray out of her eyes. The pool house had not been updated since it was first built in the 1960s. The tiny bathroom, reminiscent of a ship’s head in size and shape, still had the original wood paneling and pull chain toilet. Turning on the faucet, Susan watched as rivulets of red streamed into the sink. It was clear she was not thinking of the consequences when she pulled the pair of blue towels from the towel bar, dried off her hands, and dropped the towels in a heap on the floor in front of the stall shower.
“When I came back, he was dead,” Susan related.
“Do you remember what you thought at that point?” I asked.
“Yes, I thought a number of things. I thought I should call the police. I thought that I had just written this letter accusing the juvenile judge of taking a bribe and I sent it on the way back from Montana to six or seven judges in our county, and I thought, I’m in big trouble.
“Because even if they believed me, which Felix had said nobody will ever believe me about anything, even if they did, they’re not gonna maybe care. And I’d just seen what had happened to Eli in the juvenile justice system, and I thought, ‘Who’s going to take care of Gabriel? Who’s going to get him to school? Who’s going to pay the mortgage? Oh my God!’
“And I waited, thinking the police would magically appear, that they’d heard me scream, they’d know, they’d come, and then it just became easier to just wait. And I just thought, ‘I need time. I need time to tell Gabriel what happened. I need time to make some financial arrangements for the kids. I should call a lawyer.’
“Just, you know, I just put it off. So I went to the [main] house, and I just took about ten showers and took Gabriel to school in the morning and um, was just too tired to do anything. You know, too tired to make any financial arrangements, any plans, and then just tried to get up enough nerve to tell Gabriel and hinted around and…”
“Do you remember what you said as a hint?” I asked.
“Well, he was asking me, and I was just trying to tell him. I don’t remember exactly. I said he [Felix] was gone. I mean we were always so connected. And then he accused me. Straight up. And um, then it was just, um, he could call the police, and um, the police came and that was that.”
“Was your mind working at the time? Were you thinking about denying? Is that a function of buying time?”
“I’d just been accused by Gabriel, it was just, um, I wanted to tell him what had happened, you know, and then all of a sudden he’s accusing me, you know, he’s jumping ahead. He’s making these accusations. And I just didn’t want to be seen in his eyes that way, and I just began to lie, and then there was the whole thing, seeing him, I still wasn’t sure that I was going to lie until I was in the car, and I saw him in custody—he was in the car behind me, and I was told he was being detained.
“I had this thought that I had to do everything I could to keep him and me out of custody so I could protect him. And then I thought, well if they accused him, then I’d have to step forward immediately and say I did it, and so I had to keep track of what’s going on here, and I mean, I think a person who is that fatigued and in shock and that terrified is just not logical.”
It was then that Susan went on to describe how she first admitted her role in Felix’s death five days after the struggle in the guest cottage to the lawyer who came to see her at the West County Detention Facility. She also insisted that in the months after Felix’s death, she repeatedly tried to turn over the knife used in the attack to her defense lawyers but they had declined to give it to police.
“Listen, I tried to turn it over to every single attorney I had from day one,” she said. “As soon as I found myself charged with murder I was like ‘oh my God.’ So I told them what happened. Nobody wanted to hear, nobody wanted to handle it.
“Seven months later, I was offered a deal—I said, ‘No, I’m innocent.’”
Finally, in April 2005, while out on bail, Susan said she went back to the house with Peter Coleridge, who at that point was still her defense attorney. While there, she pulled out the knife and told him that she wanted to place it into evidence.
“And he’s like, ‘oh, you shouldn’t have done that,’ and I’m like, ‘why not?’ and he was like, ‘well now I’ve got to turn it in.’”
Despite this dramatic recounting replete with extraordinary detail, elements of Susan’s version of events that night would later prove doubtful—particularly those pertaining to the ottoman. Because Susan had waited until late 2004 to inform the authorities about the pepper spray, there was no longer sufficient evidence to verify her claim that any chemical residue should be on the ottoman. According to an official lab report, tests for traces of mace or pepper spray performed on the ottoman in March 2005 proved inconclusive. “Due to the length of time elapsed before sampling, it cannot be determined if they were ever present or if they have changed to become undetectable.” In addition, “the ottoman was not packaged in an airtight container” and “some experimentation in the laboratory suggested it was unlikely to be able to recover spray residues after long-term storage.”
Susan’s tale of that night was not the only thing that she had in store for me that afternoon. With help from Dan Horowitz and Ivan Golde, Susan had obtained a startling medical report from the U.S. Navy that detailed the psychological evaluations of Felix in the days after his suicide attempt in 1955. Sitting across from me and staring through an inch and a half of Plexiglas, I asked her: “Why was Felix hospitalized for a whole year after his suicide attempt?”
Susan paused, and looked directly at me before answering. Breathing in deeply, she began to explain how the naval records revealed that Felix had received treatment for a “schizophrenic reaction,” following his suicide attempt in the fall of 1955. This psychologist who had been treating patients over the course of more than twenty years had, in fact, been hospitalized himself for serious emotional troubles. Felix, who had accused Susan of being crazy for years, had his own set of psychological problems, problems that he never attempted to address.
“Well, what the naval records say is that he was unable to give a rational explanation for what he’d done.” She grew animated as she recounted her findings. First, she pointed to her own suicide attempt in January 2001. “I was asked by the psychiatrist, ‘Why’d you do it?’ And I said, ‘Well, in this moment of despair, I thought my husband would do the things he was saying he was going to do: destroy my life, take my children away, all these things. And I just had this moment of complete despair, and I’m very glad I’m alive and realize that I have options.
“My husband was very different. The records show he was unable to give a rational explanation for what he did. He talked about supernatural forces having been at work. He talked about hearing an echo when he spoke. He couldn’t remember what had happened. He had amnesia. And his suicide note made it sound like he had other periods of amnesia.”
Susan said that Felix mentioned his suicide attempt during their early therapy sessions in Berkeley but claimed that he was in despair over the breakup of a relationship when he tried to take his life. As far as Susan knew, this was the reason that Felix was overly sensitive to being abandoned. At least, that is what she says he told her each time she threatened to leave the marriage.
However, after closer inspection of his suicide attempt, Susan learned that Felix’s claim was untrue. Horowitz had located Felix’s old girlfriend and gleaned from their conversation that there had been no break up. Felix, it seemed, had lied to his wife about the circumstances surrounding his suicide attempt. Worse, he had failed to mention his serious medical diagnosis or that this suicide attempt was the result of a “schizophrenic reaction.”
“Psych records describe him as being hostile, as being in the lock-down ward.” Susan explained. “They describe when he got transported to the hospital he got bruises along the way because apparently he got restrained. That’s a picture of someone who was extremely disturbed, who was apparently almost mute. He didn’t talk, you know.”
Susan told me of the journals that Felix kept. And for a moment, she considered my request to turn them over to Court TV. But in the end, she shared little of their content. “He [Felix] described himself in words that he used to describe me and projected all of it because I wasn’t really like that. I didn’t feel that way.”
After our interview, I reviewed the naval records carefully. According to the reports, Felix was taken to a military hospital after his suicide attempt. He was “confused” and “depressed” and claimed “amnesia” for the events prior to his arrival, medical records stated. He grew “excited” upon awakening. In response to questions, he told doctors he had no recollection of his suicide attempt, or of writing the note that police found in a typewriter inside the family home.
Felix was transferred to the U.S. Naval Hospital at St. Alban’s, New York. Records show that he had to be restrained during the transport. Doctors at St. Albans diagnosed Felix’s condition as “Psychotic Depressive Reaction with Suicidal Tendencies.” Further studies revealed evidence of “a schizophrenic process with much philosophical, abstract preoccupation with his lack of accomplishment, his emotional distance from people, and some concomitant disturbance in the psycho-sexual area.”
Under observation at the hospital, Felix talked of feeling apart in “all relationships with others” and having the sensation that he was “standing apart listening to an echo” when he spoke. “His speech was at all times coherent and relevant, and no actual delusions or hallucinations were elicited during his hospitalization at the naval hospital,” the records stated.
By all indications from the doctors there, Felix showed little sign of change or improvement during his lengthy stay at St. Alban’s, where he was confined to a locked ward because of his “depression” and “hostility.” In fact, he remained depressed and talked of his confusion for much of the time he was confined. While doctors noted that Felix was not experiencing hallucinations or delusions during his hospitalization, Felix described his thoughts as “abstract” and spoke of “dreams of glory.” He complained that he felt in a “daze” and did things “mechanically.”
On January 18, 1956, Felix was transferred to an open ward of the hospital on “restricted” status, the records stated. The change had no appreciable effect on his condition. Three months later, he was placed on the Temporary Disability Retired list by reason of “schizophrenic reaction,” and later released from the hospital with a diagnosis of “in remission.”
According to the naval records, Felix reported to the Naval Command at St. Alban’s Hospital on July 25, 1957 for a “trial visit” from the Montrose Veteran’s Administration Hospital. Based on the visit, a three-man counsel listed its findings as a schizophrenic reaction. “In remission.” The Clinical Board’s findings noted that Felix was “unfit to perform the duties of his rank—schizophrenic reaction.”
It was decided that the physical disability “was not due to misconduct or willful neglect,” and that it was the proximate result of “dementia, mixed type, in partial remission, slight impairment of social and industrial adaptability.”
At my request, several well-known psychiatrists reviewed the U.S. Naval records and medical reports on Felix Polk. They reported back that if Felix had presented with the symptoms described in the reports today he would not be considered schizophrenic, but more likely a man who suffered from severe depression.
Nevertheless, this intimate look at his fragile emotional state was a key revelation, one that, if true, had dramatic implications—as a judge and a jury would eventually be examining his psychological state as well as Susan’s. For years, Felix had openly questioned his wife’s mental status, while shying away from his own problems. This report was yet another example of the psychological double standard that he employed. To Felix, his own mental issues were never significant enough to interfere with his ability to parent his sons; only Susan’s problems were severe enough for that. In truth his psychological conflicts ran as deep as hers, and yet he refused to take the steps necessary to heal his wounds.
During another interview with Susan, she described for me the sexual abuse she allegedly suffered as Felix’s teenage patient. “What I remember is that he became extremely interested in me.”
Susan claimed that Felix made it clear right from the start that he was “violating some sort of protocol” by seeing her as a patient. “I think he was referring to a sexual interest in me and I think I was just blocking out as much of that as I could.
“What happened was he started giving me a cup of tea when I came in. I’m sure there was a drug in it because what I recall next is counting backward and then no memory of what took place, but just looking at the clock, and the times, and saying ‘What happened? What did we talk about?’
“And this feeling, this sense of loss. This gap. It was a very, very disturbing experience, to not be able to recall what had happened.”
I asked Susan if she’d ever raised the issue with Felix.
“I brought it up, and he looked nervous,” she said.
Susan’s recollections of her early sessions with Dr. Polk seemed fuzzy at best; her words often became twisted when I asked her to clarify the abuse she allegedly suffered as a patient, and she failed to answer my question as to whether there was physical evidence to confirm her fears. After all, if she were a virgin when she first went to see Felix, then she would have most likely noticed some blood in her undergarments that first time.
“I recall the content of some of those hypnotic sessions, bits and pieces,” Susan answered in a soft voice. “And I recall being told not to look.
“I guess at that time I didn’t really think it was great that he basically had sex with me. And put me down…it just made me, you know, I was doing what I was told, but he was so overwhelming. So just, physical. It was just awful. And I really didn’t remember that for years.”
Susan claimed that she completely blocked out the sessions in which she was “raped” by Felix until she was in her forties. She described their sexual relationship as husband and wife as “unpleasant” and alluded to years of “rough” sex during their marriage. She said Felix enjoyed physically restraining her during intercourse, even as she lay crying.
“So what happened?” I asked.
“He essentially, what he told me was that if I ever left him he would kill himself, or he would kill me.”
“So even when you were seventeen he was telling you this?”
Susan could not really answer my question. In many ways, her responses were childlike, and she appeared at times to be no more than a teenage girl trapped in a woman’s body.
“Felix wanted someone to dominate,” Susan maintained. “He wanted a doll. There was no individuality left, there was none of me.”
From all the evidence that I had seen and what she told me in this conversation, I had little doubt that Susan was abused during the marriage, at least emotionally. Felix had misused his power and position as a therapist to wield control over his vulnerable patient. His selfish decision to begin a relationship with the teen had probably prevented Susan from getting the help she so desperately needed.
“My husband was a professional,” Susan explained. “He was, I think, careful about what he did.…I think it is hard for someone who hasn’t been in a coercive relationship to understand how it is that a person stays in it.
“Because I kept hoping that it wasn’t as bad as I thought. That he wasn’t really as crazy as maybe he seemed to be. That when he said, ‘I’ll kill you’ with a smile, he didn’t really mean it. And that’s a huge hurdle to overcome…explaining to the jury that even though he didn’t beat me with a crowbar, it was enough to scare me to death, that I was afraid for my life, but I was also afraid to leave.”
Going on to explain how she managed the finances for both the family and Felix’s practice, Susan brought up Felix’s questionable relationships. She tried to ignore her husband’s inappropriate friendships with female patients over the years, but she detailed one incident specifically. “I just chose to interpret them as not affairs, but as just friendships…. But, in time, I guess the veil kind of fell from my eyes around when I turned forty, which is kind of a seminal period in a woman’s life, anyway, right?
“It’s like all of a sudden I’m like, ‘Whoa, this is what’s really going on, you know, I really actually turned forty and I said to myself, ‘Now, I should be prepared to face reality.’” Susan laughed aloud. “I just started to not lie to myself about certain things, including the relationship with one of his clients, another psychologist,” Susan said in reference to the woman whom Susan had seen her husband romantically embrace five years before his death.
Talking to her about Felix’s alleged indiscretions, I couldn’t help but wonder if this could have been the motive when she killed him. Whether or not Felix actually did cheat, it was clear that he had maintained relationships with some of his patients that were eerily reminiscent of his inappropriate relationship with Susan. In Susan’s situation, a revelation of infidelity might have pushed her over the edge, as this replayed her father’s betrayal of her mother. This possible motive deserved some serious attention, as adultery touched at the very root of Susan’s psychological issues.
Susan claimed that once she announced her intention to leave the marriage, Felix made all sorts of threats.
“‘I’ll drive you crazy.’ ‘I’ll kill you if you leave me.’ ‘I’ll destroy you.’ ‘I’ll throttle you.’ ‘Pull you down the drain.’ ‘You’ll wind up in an institution.’ ‘You are a bad mother.’ ‘You are so ugly.’…
“I think he was very crazy, a little more than I realized…. He was very, very split, you know, it was like night and day, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. There were two sides to his personality. And he was extremely impulsive and malicious….
“It takes a certain kind of person to kill somebody’s dogs or to threaten their children… he would sabotage their progress in school. He was just a very dangerous, damaged person.”