Final Analysis

by Catherine Crier

  While questioning one prospective juror, a building inspector, Susan crafted an analogy, asking him how he would react if he went to someone’s house and found that the homeowner had fixed his own toilet and done his own construction and wiring, while following the appropriate rules.

  The man said that wouldn’t trouble him.

  “And so, here in the courtroom, if I follow the rules, although I sometimes might make mistakes, would it annoy you that I’m doing it myself?”

  “No. It wouldn’t annoy me,” he said.

  Despite his positive responses, Susan would later strike the building inspector from the jury because of his friendships with a local judge and members of law enforcement. She excused another potential juror after the woman told Judge Brady that she thought Susan “was a fool” for choosing to go pro per. And she let a third man go after he joked about her decision to represent herself.

  “It’s like a game of wrestling, where a flyweight is with a heavyweight,” the retired draftsman chuckled. “If I bet on it, I bet with the heavyweight.”

  While Susan took the courtroom proceedings seriously, she invoked a little humor when one prospective panelist raised concerns over how Susan intended to cross-examine her sons and take the stand on her own behalf. With a giggle, Susan recounted a scene from a Jim Carrey comedy in which the actor played a defendant who was representing himself, leaping from the podium to the stand as he conducted his cross-examination.

  “I’ll actually have notes and questions for myself and an outline leading me through what I need to tell you,” Susan told the woman, a registered nurse, who was later selected to serve on Polk’s jury.

  By late Monday, March 6, Susan and Paul Sequeria announced their agreement on a panel of six men and six women, among them a woman who had served in the U.S. military, a retired female U.S. Parcel Service worker, and a sales manager for the local plumber’s union who shared one attribute with Susan—a young son. The jury selection process had taken a full five days.

  Judge Brady could have started the case with opening remarks that same afternoon, but at the request of the prosecutor, she agreed to begin the following day, March 7.

  The case had drawn considerable attention from local and national media for a variety of reasons—the relationship between Susan and her therapist husband, the allegations of an abusive household, and the anticipated testimony from all three of the Polks sons—two were expected to testify against their mother and one was expected to take the stand on her behalf. The fact that Susan had fired four different defense attorneys and was now going to represent herself at trial made the case all the more interesting.

  With people routinely questioning her sanity and judgment, the trial offered her an opportunity to prove the naysayers wrong and show that she could handle the task. Building from the material that Horowitz had prepared, she would present a straight self-defense case, alleging that Felix attacked her with a knife that October night and that she had fought back before fatally stabbing him to save herself. Furthermore, she would present evidence that Felix died from a heart attack—not the multiple stab wounds she inflicted during their heated altercation—and would call an expert to support her claim.

  On Tuesday, members of the media, law enforcement, and curiosity seekers occupied most of the fifty seats in the gallery. Others sat on chairs that had been set up along the walls or stood in the rear of the courtroom, awaiting the opening remarks from Paul Sequeira and Susan Polk.

  Susan looked drawn and frail as she stood organizing her papers at the defense table. Dressed in a white sweater and khaki pants, Susan’s sporty attire contrasted sharply with the conservative dark suit and solid gray tie worn by her opponent, Paul Sequeira. The prosecutor looked to be about ten years Susan’s junior, with thick, layered hair and wire-rim glasses that tended to perch on the end of his nose. Obviously comfortable in the courtroom, Sequeira made a habit of strolling across the commercial-grade carpet and sometimes leaning on the railing of the jury box.

  Polk immediately surprised the crowd when she asked and was given permission to postpone her opening statement until she began her case-in-chief. It was just after 3 PM when the prosecutor rose to address the jury. He told Judge Brady that his remarks would take about fifty minutes to deliver, but in reality the remarks took a lot longer, as Sequeira was interrupted repeatedly by Susan’s objections.

  “You are about to embark on a journey through a dysfunctional relationship that ended in murder and destruction,” the prosecutor began. “Felix Polk was a Holocaust survivor. Susan was fifteen when she went to see him. They had a relationship that went wrong. The physical relationship began when she was seventeen or eighteen. They married when she was twenty-four and had their first son, Adam, in 1983. What was born out of dysfunction began to look like a normal, loving relationship.

  “The defendant worked in the home raising children, but there were always conflicts. Wherever Susan went, there was a trail of conflict and confrontation. If there were problems in school, it was the teacher’s fault. This also became the children’s reality because it was easier to go along than to take responsibility for their actions.

  “Susan also had a theory that Felix controlled the school. Gabe admits that he was sucked into this delusion. As time passed, Susan became more paranoid and began making things up. Then, five years before the murder, Susan’s mental instability intensified on a trip to Disneyland. She had a full-blown break and claimed to have repressed memories. She claimed she was raped as a child by her father and brother, and described in graphic detail the rape scenes to her children.”

  “I object, your honor!” Susan announced, rising to her feet. Judge Brady admonished Susan that she was not permitted to object during the State’s opening remarks. But her words fell on deaf ears. In fact, Susan began interrupting the prosecutor at almost every turn. These interruptions set the tone for the entire trial. Throughout the proceedings, Judge Brady would attempt, often unsuccessfully, to control Susan’s flare-ups and accusations, including allegations that she and the prosecutor were colluding against the defendant.

  Turning his attention back to the jury, Sequeria took a deep breath and once again tried to complete his opening remarks. The prosecutor described how Susan’s delusional behavior soon focused on Felix. She believed her husband was in the CIA, the FBI, and the Mossad. She believed he had offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands. Susan told her three sons that Felix “was a monster,” the prosecutor charged, triggering yet another objection from Susan.

  “Felix was a therapist who couldn’t help his own wife with her paranoid delusions,” Sequeira continued amid more objections and yet another stern warning from Judge Brady.

  “Until the murder, there was no extreme violence in the house,” the prosecutor went on. Citing the accounts of two of the Polk sons, the prosecutor argued that Felix was not the abuser and that both Felix and Susan provoked repeated confrontations in the household.

  “Objection,” Susan yelled yet again.

  “Mrs. Polk, I will not admonish you again,” Judge Brady warned angrily. The judge threatened to remove Susan from the courtroom if she interrupted one more time.

  Jurors exchanged silent glances as the prosecutor continued.

  “There was lots of grabbing and bumping but not extreme violence,” Sequeira said. “One time, Susan slapped Felix in front of a police officer. The boys will say that dad was an older guy and worked long hours. He came home late and tired and Susan would often verbally abuse Felix throughout dinner. Susan would challenge his manhood and poke fun at the size of his penis in front of the boys.”

  “Objection!” Susan barked, seething with anger.

  “I will remove you from this courtroom!” Judge Brady fumed, glaring at Susan.

  For a moment, it appeared as though Susan would be barred from the proceeding. From Brady’s tone, it was clear that this would be her final warning—and Susan seemed to understand the gravity of the judge’s words.

&nbs
p; From there, Sequeira continued his opening statement without interruption, weaving the complicated tale of the turbulent times in the Polk household. Painting a picture of dysfunction and psychological disturbance, the prosecutor detailed how Susan routinely belittled and emasculated the aging Felix. He walked jurors through Felix’s final days, detailing the brutal battle for custody of Gabriel and the fight over Susan’s alimony payments. To Sequeira, the Susan Polk who killed her husband was a cold, callous woman, not the victim she made herself out to be. She lied to the police about her involvement from the beginning, and she was still lying about her involvement as they sat there in the court.

  “Susan then lies over and over and over and over at the police station,” he told the jurors as the defendant watched his every move. “Does Susan say ‘he came at me with a knife and I attacked him in self defense?’ No, she says she didn’t do it. But then forensic science kicks in and her lies are not permitted.

  “She destroys evidence. Bloody clothes. Gone! Knife. Gone! Car—moved! Lies and a cover up!”

  Jurors listened intently to the prosecutor’s theory. Sequeira detailed Felix’s injuries, informing them of the savage nature of his wounds and showing the jurors dramatic crime scene photos. Despite the graphic pictures, no one flinched.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, the evidence will show the defendant was upset. This festered until she made good on a repeated threat” to kill Felix Polk, the prosecutor charged. “Dr. Polk, abuser or victim of the ultimate attack of murder?”

  Following Sequeira’s opening remarks, jurors were dismissed for the night, but Susan wouldn’t leave without one parting shot at the court.

  “I want a mistrial!” Susan demanded as the last juror stepped out of the courtroom. “It’s all lies,” she shouted furiously, ticking off each of the prosecutor’s statements. “Anyone who knows me knows I wouldn’t talk about my husband’s penis in front of the boys. It’s laughable.”

  Judge Brady angrily directed Susan to move on to evidentiary issues that needed addressing, but Susan wouldn’t let things rest. She complained that her case assistant, Valerie Harris, was not being permitted to visit with her in jail and that she had still not received all of the case documents from Dan Horowitz.

  Ignoring Susan, the judge turned to the prosecutor and instructed that he discuss the evidence with the defendant.

  “Liar!” she shouted at the prosecutor.

  “Lady, I know your act, and if you try to draw me in, and try to control me like you’re trying to control the court, then I’ll deal with Mrs. Harris,” Sequeira shot back.

  “Then, I’ll fire Ms. Harris,” Susan said as she promptly terminated her only assistant.

  When court recessed for the night, Susan rehired Harris; she was back at Susan’s side the following morning, watching intently as Susan interrogated her youngest son.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  THE CHIEF WITNESS

  Susan’s attention was trained on the witness stand, where Gabriel Polk sat in a suit and tie, ready to testify for the prosecution. Now nineteen years old, the teen appeared composed and in control that Wednesday morning. It had been three years since Susan last saw her youngest son. Susan’s cross-examination of Gabe would mark the first time the two had spoken since Felix’s death. A restraining order had barred any contact between the mother and son during the intervening period, and Gabe had refused repeatedly to read any of Susan’s written correspondence.

  Gabriel was the State’s strongest and most sympathetic witness. That Susan had allowed the then-fifteen-year-old youth to find his father’s dead body in the family’s guest cottage would be a major obstacle for jurors to overcome as they considered her explanation of self-defense. Sitting before the jury, Gabe’s once slender frame had filled out and what had been gaunt, sullen cheeks were now bright and healthy. He had grown into a handsome young man, with his mother’s strong jaw and deep-set eyes framed by thick, dark lashes.

  Susan, dressed in black slacks and a blouse, appeared unsettled as she sat at the defense table. She blotted away tears with a tissue and sipped on a glass of water she poured from the gold and black carafe on the table. Saying that she felt ill, she took two Tylenol after getting permission from Sheriff’s deputies.

  When asked by Sequeira to identify his mother, Gabe Polk looked in Susan’s direction and pointed. The two seemed to avoid direct eye contact. In response to questions from the prosecutor, Gabe described how he stopped attending school as a youth because his mother insisted that administrators were “out to get him” and were purposely giving him bad grades. Susan believed that his father was behind a conspiracy being perpetrated by members of the school faculty, that Felix had designated Adam for success and Gabe and his middle brother, Eli, for failure.

  Jurors scribbled in notebooks as the teen responded to questions about Susan’s breakdown during the family’s visit to Disneyland. Gabe said he was nine or ten when the family made the trip and recalled his mother crying “uncontrollably.” Later he was told that while on the trip she had remembered being abused by her father, mother, and brother as a child, and that she believed her parents had murdered a police officer and buried his body in the basement of her childhood home. On the stand, Gabe recounted his mother’s recollections of the alleged abuse, which included “very disturbing details,” information he was ill-equipped to handle at the time.

  Recalling Felix and Susan’s dramatic accusations of molestation against their sons’ day care providers, Gabe claimed that it was Susan who had convinced his father and brothers that he and Adam were victims of a satanic sex cult. Gabe went on to say that he now believed that his mother had “brainwashed” him against his father and described her as “full-blown delusional.” During his testimony, he recalled how she would sit at the breakfast table, scanning the newspaper for hidden codes and messages sent to her husband from the Mossad. She later elaborated on this, saying that this was how Felix communicated with undercover operatives. Gabe had no reason to doubt his mother’s claims; he simply went along with what she was saying. It was easier to agree than to debate what she was telling him.

  During the courtroom proceedings, Gabe seemed distant, wearing an inscrutable stare as he sat in the witness chair or raised his eyes to the ceiling when contemplating answers to the prosecutor’s questions. Throughout the morning, Gabe used the word “delusion” countless times to describe his mother’s behavior. He recalled a car ride with Susan six months prior to the homicide during which she began speaking of ways to kill Felix. “She talked about drugging him and drowning him in the pool, hitting him over the head and drowning him in the pool, running him over with the car, or tampering with his car.”

  Mentioning that she had been making threats for almost five years, Gabriel was accustomed to Susan’s emotional outbursts and, at some point, stopped taking her seriously. “She talked about killing him every day,” he said.

  Still, Gabe said he was alarmed when she announced in September 2002 that she intended to leave him with Felix while she traveled to Montana to look for a place to live. He told the court that he found it odd that she would leave him with the man she deemed a monster, but after spending several days with Felix, Gabriel began rethinking his feelings about his dad. He was both surprised and pleased to find that Felix wasn’t the ogre that Susan had portrayed.

  “Dad’s not such a bad guy,” Gabe told Susan during one call, recalling that his mother was “furious” about the divorce proceedings.

  One week before the murder, Gabe said he warned his father that “he feared for his [dad’s] life” because of “all the things that his mother was saying.”

  In response to questions from the prosecutor, Gabe said that he never witnessed any physical abuse in the home. “The most I’ve ever seen my dad do to my mother was slap her once,” he said. “About six months before the murder, I saw my mom slap my dad and police came out to arrest her.”

  “Objection!” Susan bellowed, voicing opposition to her son’s
use of the word “murder.”

  Judge Brady sustained that objection, as well as Susan’s second protest over the word “killing.” Susan argued that Felix’s death should be referred to as “the incident.” But the judge disagreed, and substituted “homicide” as an acceptable alternative.

  When Sequeira continued his direct examination, Gabe was asked to speak about his parents’ relationship. Here, Gabriel’s testimony corroborated Sequeira’s opening statements, portraying Felix as the dutiful working husband and Susan as the aggressor who would get in his face within minutes of his return home. Susan often degraded her husband, calling him “old” and “decrepit,” and making sexually explicit comments, including derogatory remarks about the size of his penis.

  After Gabriel answered questions about the events of October 13 leading up to his gruesome discovery, the judge adjourned the proceedings for lunch and directed the defendant to begin her cross-examination when they returned. It had been a difficult morning for Susan, who spent much of Gabriel’s testimony quietly weeping in her seat. Listening to her son vilify her was hard, but she left the court vowing to return with renewed composure and determined to get Gabriel to admit that his father had been a tyrant.

  Questioning Gabriel proved to be an arduous process, one that lasted for five grueling days. During that time, Susan challenged his recollections about his childhood, suggested he was hiding things when he couldn’t remember any abuse, and elicited facts about his early brushes with the law. She asked innumerable questions about the relationship between Felix and herself and probed her son’s affection for his brothers. She repeatedly broke down in tears when their memories differed and when he wouldn’t corroborate her claims of spousal abuse.