Final Analysis - Catherine Crier [0]
THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE
SUSAN POLK MURDER CASE
CATHERINE CRIER with Cole Thompson
For my family, especially my parents, Ann and Bill.
Our first, best teachers.
CONTENTS
FOREWORD BY KEITH ABLOW
PROLOGUE
Part I: A DEATH ON MINER ROAD
1 UNETHICAL BEGINNINGS
2 MORTAL COMBAT
3 THE MORNING AFTER
4 “SHE’S CRAZY”
5 SUSAN’S DENIAL
6 A GRISLY SCENE
7 THE DOCTOR’S DISEASE
8 A TRAGIC MIX
9 THE HONEYMOON ENDS
10 THE MIDDLE CHILD
Part II: THE INVESTIGATION BEGINS
11 THE CHILDREN UNRAVEL
12 CHASING DOWN LEADS
13 DISSECTING THE TRUTH
14 HISTORY REPEATS
15 INCITING EVENTS
16 PIECING IT ALL TOGETHER
17 IN HER OWN WORDS
18 THE REAL FELIX?
PHOTOGRAPHIC INSERT
19 BROKEN BONDS
20 BUCKING AUTHORITY
21 SUSAN’S STORY
PART III: THE TRIAL
22 A MACABRE TWIST
23 GOING IT ALONE
24 THE CHIEF WITNESS
25 FORENSIC FACTS
26 DEFENDING HER LIFE
27 NO MURDER AT ALL
28 SUSAN’S SOLILOQUY
29 THE JURY’S VERDICT
EPILOGUE
APPENDIX
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
SEARCHABLE TERMS
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
OTHER BOOKS BY CATHERINE CRIER
CREDITS
COPYRIGHT
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
FOREWORD
With all the talk about living in the moment and the power of now, how easy it is for some to pretend that complicated, stressful, or traumatic events we live through as children and adolescents have little to do with the way we come to live as adults—that early chapters in our life stories don’t really influence the chapters we are writing today, much less those we will pen tomorrow. We are, the most zealous behaviorists would argue, masters of our own destinies, with only bad habits to break, unfettered by unconscious psychological conflicts and dynamics.
Yet the story of every individual I have evaluated in fifteen years as a psychiatrist, several of them while specializing in forensic psychiatry, belies that sort of pure here-and-now reasoning. In every instance, from cases of major depression and panic disorder to those involving seemingly inexplicable and horrifying violence, I have been able to “connect the dots” back to complicated, stressful, traumatic, or catastrophic events in a person’s recent or much more distant past.
When I offered my views on Scott Peterson’s psychological makeup on Catherine Crier Live, for example, I didn’t limit my exploration of Peterson’s psyche to the events of December 24, 2002, the day he killed his wife Laci and her unborn son Conner. I didn’t restrict it to the five years he and Laci had been married. I looked all the way back to the barren psychological landscape of his childhood, a childhood that included severe emotional deprivation that rendered him unable to form genuine human connections or feel real empathy for anyone. Making sense of Scott Peterson’s monstrous deeds required unearthing the ways in which he, himself, was psychologically murdered.
It is no different, in the final analysis (to borrow Catherine’s apt title), in the case of Susan Polk, who murdered her husband Dr. Felix Polk. Because, as Catherine makes so clear and compelling in the pages that follow, the story of that murder has roots not only in the couple’s tumultuous marriage and impending divorce, but deep in their pasts as well.
Susan Polk was only fifteen years old when her mother took her to Felix, a psychologist, for treatment, but already she bore the psychological scars of being abandoned by her father and alleged abuse as a child.
Felix Polk had traveled his own rocky psychological terrain. He bore scars, including debilitating anxiety and depression. He had tried to take his own life.
How did Felix Polk—who many describe as a very intelligent and insightful man—miss the way in which his desire to be safe from critical and controlling women led him to romance his vulnerable, teenage patient? How could he not see the perfect storm gathering from the day he first met her and imagined her as his lover? Didn’t he wonder whether prior trauma, not genuine affection, was the reason she didn’t object to his request that she sit on his lap in later sessions? Did he really believe that, as a slight,