Final Analysis - Catherine Crier [113]
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.
Early on, Susan questioned Gabe about the alleged ritualistic sexual abuse of Adam at the