Final Analysis - Catherine Crier [1]
And how did Susan Polk, with all her intellect and familiarity with psychological lingo, miss the fact that the murderous intent building inside her was not only meant for Felix, but for her father and her brother and for God knows who else? How did she not realize that the stabbing of her husband was the culmination of her fury at those forces she believed had deprived her of personal freedom? How did she not see it would lead to the ultimate surrender of her liberty—to life in prison? How did she miss the fact that her three sons would be effectively orphaned, left without a father (as she had been), abandoned by their mother (as, in many ways, she was).
How did Felix and Susan Polk not see all of this?
The answer is that they were lost in a drama neither really understood nor controlled. It was a drama that, like so many, was built on powerful and painful events and themes from the past, about to seep into and commandeer the present. It was bigger than either of them, a juggernaut.
So it takes Catherine Crier, possessed of fierce intellect and unbridled curiosity about human emotion and behavior, to reconstruct and tell the tale for us, to take us into a murder investigation and find a story not only of violence, but of desperation, passion, and betrayal. How lucky that the work should fall to her. For no viewer of Court TV could hope for a better host, and no reader of true crime could hope for a better guide.
Final Analysis is Catherine Crier at her best. In these pages, she delivers what I and so many others have come to rely on her for: her trademark legal and psychological insight into the human condition, and how it can turn deadly in an instant.
—KEITH ABLOW, MD
PROLOGUE
“Mom fuckin’ shot dad with a shotgun!” fifteen-year-old Gabriel Polk shouted into the receiver. His older brother, Adam, was on the other end of the phone line. “Yeah, fucking crazy bitch! We still have an apartment house. We still have an apartment. We get income. We are [inaudible]. We can keep it, I think. Dad left us a pile of [inaudible]. That’s for sure.”
Gabriel had been up all night, speaking with police after finding his seventy-year-old father dead, bathed in blood on the floor of the family’s pool house, about 50 feet from their home in Orinda, California. It was 10:15 AM on October 15, 2002, and the teen had just completed a lengthy interview with detectives from the Contra Costa Sheriff ’s Office when he was told that Adam was on the phone.
“Yeah. Fuckin’ crazy bitch! I stumbled in on dad,” he explained. “No, no. She just shot him in the fuckin’ chest. Fucking crazy bitch. I had to call 911 and shit. They have like our whole house under police inspection or something.
“What the hell is wrong with her? I hope they give her the fucking death penalty…[inaudible].”
The sound of footsteps prompted the boy to end his conversation abruptly.
Peering into the cramped interrogation room, an investigator asked, “Are you still on the phone?”
“No,” Gabriel shot back. He was naked from the waist up. He had been so upset at the sight of his dead father in the pool house that he had left the residence barefoot, wearing only a pair of shorts. His usually bright brown eyes were bloodshot and framed by dark circles.
“Did the trauma guy say what we are going to do?” the officer asked.
“Just bring a sleeping bag,” Gabriel shrugged.
“Yeah, for right now…. We are going to have to get you a sleeping bag and a pillow. And we will resolve this as soon as we can.”
“I would like to know what is going to happen to us financially,” Gabriel said.
“Financially?” the officer