Final Analysis (32 page)

Less than fifteen minutes later, Brady ended the cross-examination. She was angered by Susan’s flagrant disregard for her instructions to avoid questions about Adam’s alleged prior bad acts and Gabe’s relationship with the Briners.

“Okay, we’re done for the day,” Brady ordered, instructing court officers to remove jurors from the courtroom.

Rising to her feet, Susan shook her finger at the judge and shouted at her from the podium. “I move for a mistrial for judicial misconduct on your part! You’re putting time limits on me, you’re not allowing me to recall him [Adam]…”

“SIT DOWN MS. POLK!” Brady instructed, as jurors filing out of the courtroom looked on in stunned amazement. “Recess until 9
AM
Monday.”

Susan continued her ranting even as deputies rushed to the defense table and shut off her microphone.

O
n Monday, April 24, Susan arrived at court ready to begin her case. A blue, long-sleeved T-shirt and chinos replaced her drab prison attire. She looked very thin and bony; reports were circulating that Susan now weighed less than 110 pounds. It was not clear who delivered the clothing to her at the detention center, although her former case assistant, Valerie Harris, was amid the journalists and spectators cramming the gallery that morning.

Susan’s trial had already filled thirty-four days when she informed Judge Brady that she had subpoenaed more than one hundred witnesses and anticipated her case would take another three weeks to present. On Susan’s extensive list were both her mother, Helen, and her son, Eli, who was still being held at the West County Detention Facility in Richmond on charges of misdemeanor battery and violating a restraining order. These charges stemmed from the incident with his girlfriend, but Eli also faced a probation violation for the high-speed chase that resulted in charges of evading a peace officer. Authorities had agreed to push back his trial date from May 2 to May 16 so that he could testify in his mother’s case. Also on the list were the doctor who examined her in January of 2001 after her failed suicide attempt at Yosemite National Park, a high-tech crime investigator, a psychic, and a forensic pathologist who would
testify that Felix Polk died as a result of a heart attack—and not from the multiple stab wounds she had inflicted.

During her one-hour opening statement, Susan called Felix “Dr. Frankenstein” and told jurors that he drugged, molested, and manipulated her during their twenty-year marriage. She quoted from Thoreau and Dickens and referred to other literary works to illustrate that many narratives have surprise endings and that innocent people are sometimes wrongly accused of horrific acts.

In her speech, Susan maintained that she went to the guest cottage “just to talk” with her husband that fateful night and that Felix fell back and hit his head during the violent struggle.

“I was framed,” she said. “I did not stab my husband twenty-seven times, nor did I hit him. He fell.”

Susan promised a “nail biting, edge of your seat thriller” defense. “You may think you know all there is to know,” she told jurors. “But it’s my turn now.”

As her opening progressed, Susan insisted that she was a medium and claimed her husband had used her psychic talent to gain information that he reported back to his “handlers.” Though she warned Felix about her vision of the 9/11 terror attacks, he failed to report her prediction to authorities. Despite her unique abilities, Susan explained that hers was an ordinary situation, one that could have happened to anyone in an unhappy marriage.

“What happened to me could happen to any family,” Susan said. “The D.A. will have you believe that I was controlling…that I was a Lolita.”

This was a case of systematic spousal abuse that had gone on for far too long. To Susan, the events were clear: she had not killed Felix that night in the guest cottage; he had a heart attack. Further clouding his death was the conspiracy that she alluded to concerning her family members and law enforcement.

During the final minutes of her remarks, Susan revisited the parallels found in literature. Jurors had heard only one side of the story, but before they could truly pass judgment, before they could decide her fate, they had to hear her version of the twenty-four years. When that happens, “it will be up to you to write the ending.”

J
urors immediately took a liking to Susan’s mother, Helen Bolling. Petite and high-spirited, Helen had the panel in hysterics with her humorous responses to Susan’s questions. Barely five feet tall, she almost disappeared in the witness chair beneath the judge. Clutching her daughter’s childhood writings, school assignments, and photos, Helen adjusted herself in the seat and waited for Susan to begin.

“You’ve only been married once?” her daughter asked, referring to Helen’s marriage to her father, Theodore Bolling.

“Oh yes, once was enough, it cured me,” Helen cracked, as the courtroom erupted into laughter. Susan’s seventy-three-year-old mother grinned as she told jurors that she was “almost a virgin” when she married Bolling. “You know what I mean,” she smiled.

During her testimony, Helen boasted of her daughter’s creativity and imagination. Her pale blue eyes sparkled with pride as she pulled out the awards, prize-winning writings, and photographs of Susan’s youth that she brought to court that day. Her props, and the homespun stories that accompanied them, provided jurors their first glimpse into the tender side of Susan Polk—a side that most had not witnessed in the courtroom.

“Did you see any signs that I was going to grow up like the D.A. says, a homicidal.”

Helen interrupted her daughter mid-sentence. “No.”

Helen did not hold back her dislike of her son-in-law, and in defense of Susan, told the story of her own life-and-death encounter. While she did not identify her attacker, who had throttled her violently, she described how she had to react in an instant to save her life. Helen “played dead” to thwart the attack, but her daughter had not been as fortunate. Susan had no choice but to resort to violence against Felix’s onslaught, she said.

“Boo-boo Susie” as she lovingly referred to her daughter, was not the violent type. Helen maintained that Susan didn’t have it in her to deliberately harm anyone. As far as she was concerned, it was her son-in-law who had provoked the assault.

She claimed Felix “had an exterior of being acceptable. Hidden under that, is all that shit. Excuse me, I beg the court’s forgiveness, that’s not proper language.”

Helen drew a deep breath before completing her thought. “Felix had a way of persuading you into thinking he was a good guy.”

She told jurors Susan had attempted suicide shortly after beginning therapy with Felix but provided few details.

When asked about the possibility that Susan could have been behind the allegations of the ritualistic sexual abuse of Adam and Gabriel, Helen balked. “That was from Felix. It didn’t come from my side of the family. When we hear about Satan, we run like hell.”

On cross-examination, Helen told Sequeira that her “falling out” with Susan happened over time. She denied accusations that she and her husband had abused their daughter during her childhood. “Absolutely not!” she replied. But Sequeira pressed the issue, wanting to know why Susan would make such claims during her police interrogation on the night of her arrest.

Helen sat poker-faced as the prosecutor played the videotape of that portion of the interrogation for jurors. “Maybe when she gets angry at people, she has a falling out with them, she makes up things about them. If she did it to you, she did it to Felix, too.”

Susan jumped up and objected. “Torture of my mom on the stand. It’s not right.” Her repeated protests were overruled by Brady.

Helen continued to defend her daughter, even after viewing the video clip in which Susan called her father a “pervert” and accused her mother of abusing her. She argued that Susan was a victim of Felix’s mind control and was just spitting back beliefs that he had drilled into her. Proof of this was the fact that now, almost four years after his death, Susan no longer believed her parents abused her during her childhood.

On redirect, Helen said she forgave Susan for “the lost years.”

“Of course, you’re my daughter. You’ll be my daughter until my last breath. Furthermore, I think people are placing too much blame on you.”

Susan’s mother expressed disappointment with her grandsons Adam and Gabriel, accusing the boys of being concerned only with themselves in the days and weeks after their father’s death. She described them with their “palms up,” implying that they were looking for money.

Outside court, Helen continued to defend her daughter. “All I have to say is you live practically as a hostage for forty-eight years, and then let’s see how you do.”

In retrospect, Helen would be seen as Susan’s best witness. Her testimony gave a fascinating look into the early years of Susan’s relationship with Felix. In order to win this case, Susan had to convince the jury of the profoundly disturbing psychological impact of Felix’s seduction. Since she was the only witness who could testify to Susan’s behavior before and after she met Felix, Helen was in a unique position to provide insight into the unhealthy relationship between the couple. Her charm and straightforward manner made her words convincing, but with so much of the trial remaining, it was unclear what impact this testimony would have on the verdict.

At 4:30
PM
, with Helen’s testimony concluded, Judge Brady suggested they adjourn for the day and put off Eli’s testimony until the next morning, but Susan insisted that her son had been waiting in a holding cell all day, and she wanted to use her remaining time to begin her direct testimony. Ten minutes later, a clean-shaven Eli strolled into the courtroom. Susan broke into tears immediately. Her son was wearing the county’s bright yellow jumpsuit, but his hands and feet were not shackled. Taller and broader than his two brothers, Eli also possessed his mother’s angular features and strong jaw.

“On the whole, did you have a happy childhood?” Susan asked him when he took the stand.

“For the most part, yes.” Eli pulled out a letter he had written to his mother in November 2002 and read it aloud:

Jurors looked on as Eli’s eyes welled with tears and he began to cry. “I pray that one day I will have control over my life,” he read between sobs.
“I want so badly to tell you not to change…but jail changes a lot of people.”

The following morning, Eli was back on the stand describing the time he “split his mother’s lip,” testifying that he “threw a punch” at his mom after he found her crying in her bedroom, with his dad by her side.

“I’ll kill you, I could just kill you, Susan,” Eli claimed he heard Felix threaten. “It just popped into my head. Next thing I knew, I was throwing a punch.”

Eli claimed the incident followed a violent display by his father, who, he said, had dragged his mother up the stairs to the bedroom by her hair. Later, Felix rewarded Eli for punching his mother by taking him out to dinner at a Japanese restaurant. “It’s not your fault, it’s her fault,” Eli claimed his father told him after the incident, which sent Susan to the emergency room for stitches.

On Tuesday, because of scheduling conflicts, the remainder of Eli’s testimony had to be postponed, and instead, the jury heard testimony from the psychiatrist who examined Susan after her 2001 suicide attempt at Yosemite National Park. Dr. Alan Peters told jurors that he assessed Susan after she was transported by ambulance to Columbia General Hospital in Sonora on January 20 and transferred to the psychiatric unit where he was on duty. She had overdosed on aspirin, Vicodin, and Scotch, he said.

At the time, Dr. Peters said he diagnosed Susan with “post-traumatic stress disorder.” He believed her state of mind was a result of her failing marriage to Felix and Eli’s punch. Referring to his case notes, Dr. Peters related that during his one-hour examination, Susan was articulate, cooperative, and aware of what was real and what was fantasy.

“Your manner was quite proper and composed, there was no delusional thinking,” he said in response to her questions. “You were overwhelmed and increasingly despairing over how you were going to manage.”

Referring to Susan’s description of the “power struggle” she was facing with her husband, Dr. Peters said that she was “constantly on the losing end. You were isolated off within your family as being the quote-unquote ‘crazy one,’” the psychiatrist told Susan in court.

On cross-examination, the witness admitted that Susan was also recalling sexual and physical abuse, supposedly inflicted by her parents, and that Felix Polk expressed concern for his wife and was anxious to take her home. He also testified to a notation in Susan’s record that Felix had requested Susan be committed to the psychiatric hospital for observation. Dr. Peters said that Felix had made no such request to him.

In addition, Sequeira pointed out that it was Felix who called the ambulance that day, arguably saving Susan’s life.

“One could say that, yes,” Dr. Peters replied.

On Tuesday, after calling Eli’s former rugby coach to testify about her son’s character, Susan then called David Townsend, a forensic computer expert, originally hired by Dan Horowitz, to discuss the tests he performed on Susan’s home computer. Townsend, a former police officer, claimed that someone had twice accessed the files containing Susan’s two-hundred-page diary before officers had obtained a search warrant. This contradicted Detective Mike Costa, who, under oath, denied reading the diary, but it remained unclear who might have done so. While this accusation suggested a violation of police protocol, his tests showed that, though the diary was accessed, it did not appear to have been altered. Townsend’s examination also revealed that law enforcement did not document the required chain of custody for the computer.

The court adjourned for lunch but when the session resumed, it was Eli who returned to the stand. He testified that his father was a violent and controlling man who regularly tried to convince his children that their mother was crazy. Wearing a pained looked, he sat hunched in the witness box, listening to an audiotape of himself reacting to news of his father’s death the day after Felix’s body was found.

Eli’s sad demeanor on the stand did not match his commanding figure. Broad shouldered, at just over six feet tall, nevertheless, Eli appeared vulnerable and in need of emotional support. Unlike his two brothers who seemed defiant and expressed a loathing for their mother, it was clear that Eli had a special connection to Susan. Eli’s subdued appearance also stood in stark contrast to his lengthy juvenile rap sheet that included various assaults and encounters with the police.