Final Analysis (15 page)

H
elen 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
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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.

O
n 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
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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
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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.

T
hat 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:

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:

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.