After that, things get complicated. Nearly four years after the Oct. 13, 2002 killing, the hows and whys remain a Chandleresque mystery. Susan says Felix abused and threatened her for years—starting in 1972, when she was his 15-year-old patient and he was her 40-year-old psychologist. Yet they married 10 years later and stayed married for 20 years. His supporters say that she was the dangerous partner, and point out that, just days before his death, Felix called police to accuse his wife of threatening him with a gun. At her murder trial, which is now under way, one of her three sons plans to testify for her, and one will testify, just as vehemently, against her. (The third could be a witness for both the defense and prosecution.) In a final eye-popping twist, Susan has elected to act as her own lawyer—meaning that she will, in the course of the trial, have to cross-examine her own sons. "This will seem more like a therapy session than a trial," says Loyola law professor Laurie Levenson, who has been following the case. "It's like a bad reality courtroom show where you have the ultimate dysfunctional family on trial." (In yet another bizarre turn of events, Susan also stood trial on murder charges last fall, when the wife of her high-profile attorney, Daniel Horowitz, was killed on Oct. 15; the judge declared a mistrial.)
Susan's case rests on the premise that Felix was an evil Svengali who controlled her nearly from the minute they met. One of two children, Susan began rebelling and skipping class in high school, around the time her parents were going through a divorce. A school psychologist recommended she see Frank "Felix" Polk, then a married father of two. "She took to him instantly," says Susan's mother, Helen Bolling, 71, a retired transport manager. "I thought, 'He will be like a second father to her.'" Susan remembers it differently: "He was intimidating," she says in a soft voice from the Richmond, Calif., detention facility where she awaits trial. "He made me very uncomfortable. My first thought was, 'I want to get out of here.'"
Their weekly sessions, claims Susan, quickly took a sinister turn. "He put me in a hypnotic state, destroying my self-esteem, destroying my relationship with my mother and creating false memories," she says, admitting that she was only able to recall what happened during their early sessions many years later. "When I was 17 or 18 he kissed me and hugged me, and it became kind of an affair. He said he loved me because I was so like him." Bolling recalls her daughter telling her that Felix was her boyfriend, and that she sat on his lap during sessions. "I knew it was wrong, and that I should report him, but I didn't take that avenue because of Susan," says Bolling. "I didn't want to put her on the stand."
According to Susan, she and Felix first had sex when she was 17. "He kept saying he couldn't let me go because of what I might say about him," she says. Susan did stop seeing him but eventually came back because "I felt so sad for him," she says. "He'd say, 'You can't leave me.' He'd burst into tears. I felt obligated to continue the relationship." They were married in 1982, when she was 24.
By all accounts, their marriage was troubled; in Susan's telling, it was a nightmare. "He stopped being flattering and was suddenly calling me a pig and a slob," she says. "He beat the crap out of me, and he told me if I left him he'd kill me. I spent many, many years being careful around him, not to make him mad and set him off." Their middle son, Eli, now 20, supports his mother's assertion that Felix was controlling and abusive. "We all asked my dad to leave," says Eli. "We said, 'Mom, Dad's nuts, we've got to get him out of the house.'"
Yet Barry Morris, an Oakland defense attorney who was friends with Felix and will testify for the prosecution, says Felix "was a very warm, generous, caring man. When his sons had problems in school it was he and not Susan who was involved in straightening things out. He was constantly talking and bragging about his kids." The strife in their marriage, believes Morris, was caused by Susan. He recalls that Felix told him several times that Susan threatened to kill him. "He would describe her doing crazy stuff," he says. "She's not insane, she's delusional. She has a very skewed world view."
Things came to a head in 2001. "My husband's behavior became extremely threatening toward the boys," says Susan. "They were terrified and wanted to leave." Susan fled their $2 million home in Orinda, Calif., and took Eli and Gabriel to Montana. But after a fight, Eli returned to live with his father; Susan and Gabriel, her youngest son, now 19, soon followed. "At first Felix was quieter," Susan says. "It was a honeymoon phase." Then, she says, the abuse began again. Finally, in December 2001, Susan changed the locks on their home, and Felix moved to a nearby apartment.
The new arrangement hardly brought peace. In 2002 police picked up Eli for assaulting an 18-year-old boy and placed him under house arrest with his father. But Eli returned to his mother's home and allowed her to cut off his ankle monitor. "I said, 'I'll hide you over the summer, and maybe Dad will come to his senses,'" Susan says. "I kept thinking he [was] going to modify his behavior." Police rearrested Eli and sent him to a juvenile detention facility; by then, Susan had decided to leave the state and let Felix raise both boys. Felix settled into the guest cottage of their Orinda home; Susan lived in the main house while looking for a place in Montana.
In the week before his death, Felix called 911 and said Susan had threatened to kill him with a gun. On the night of Oct. 13, around 11:30 p.m., Susan went to see Felix in the guest cottage. "The lights were on, and I knocked on the door," she says. "We were sitting, discussing situations like custody that needed to be resolved. And at a certain point, I think I really pushed his button."
According to Susan, Felix, who was 5′9″ and weighed 175 lbs., slapped her across the face. She sprayed him with pepper spray, she says, but he knocked her down, got on top of her and, she claims, pulled out a knife. Sure she was about to be killed, Susan kicked her husband in the groin and snatched the knife away. "I said, 'Stop, I have the knife,' but he just went for it," she says. "So I stabbed him in the side, then I reached around and stabbed him in the back. Then I thought, 'Oh my God, I just stabbed my husband.'"
In the first trial, prosecutors noted that Felix had, in fact, been stabbed or cut 27 times—and that the many cuts on his arms and legs suggest he "was a man fighting for his life." Also, Susan never called the police; her son Gabriel found his father's body the following day. Says Eli: "My mom's innocent. I'm positive this was self-defense." Eli has his own legal problems: Since his father's death he has been arrested three times—on charges of assault, battery and evading arrest.
Susan faces 25 years to life in prison if convicted of first-degree murder. Speaking through a Plexiglas window at West County Detention Facility, she says her worst moments come when she thinks about Gabriel, who has not spoken to her since her arrest and testified at the grand jury trial that he often heard her threaten to kill his father. "I dream about him all the time," she says. "It continues to be very, very painful." She doesn't know what she will do if she is cleared of her husband's murder, but the time she has spent reflecting on her life has led her to one conclusion about her future: No matter what, she says with a thin smile, "I'm never going to get married again."
- Contributors:
- Vickie Bane/Oakland,
- Calif..
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