Final Analysis - Catherine Crier [148]
Susan’s testimony proved surreal. While she had long highlighted different aspects of that night, she had never fleshed out the full picture to the court, never provided any of the details that made her narrative seem human. Now, the court was transfixed by her story, picturing her huddled around the body and trying to make sense of her tenuous situation. It was a vivid image, one that displayed her many inner contradictions. Though she professed to have loathed her husband for years, she could never completely let go of him. In this ending, his death was too abrupt, their relationship too flawed to simply be over, but somehow it was.
Once she moved past the initial shock of her situation, her next thoughts were more practical. “I’m going to be in big trouble,” she realized. She didn’t call police. Instead, she left through the kitchen door and returned to the main house. Holding up a pair of black clogs, Susan identified them as the pair of shoes she was wearing that night. “I don’t wear athletic shoes,” she said plainly. “I have no idea whose shoes those are in the blood. They’re not my sons’.”
That night was sleepless for Susan, who said that she drove Felix’s car to the BART station so that her son wouldn’t see it in the driveway and go to the guesthouse in search of his dad. The following morning, Susan drove Gabe to school, took him out for lunch, ran some errands, and did some housekeeping. “I kept putting off calling the police. I wanted to have a nice day with Gabriel. I just didn’t want to tell him what happened.”
Later in the day, when Gabe asked about Felix, she claimed she had no idea where he might be. “It was like living in two worlds. My husband was dead in the cottage and I was acting and pretending like he hadn’t died,” Susan testified. “I wanted to hang on to some semblance of a normal life for a few more hours.”
She said her son knew better. “He knew. I knew he knew. I just wanted to deny. The look in his eyes,” Susan’s eyes filled with tears. “He thought I’d killed his father…. But Gabe knew there was something wrong. I just wasn’t the mom I always was,” Susan sniffed. “Gabe is so sensitive. We were all so close; we finished each other’s sentences.”
Addressing Gabriel’s earlier claim that Susan had asked Gabriel if he was happy that his dad was gone, Susan claimed that she never actually said those words, but in actuality said “‘He’s gone. You aren’t happy, are you?’” Susan recalled. “I was buying time to put off telling him he’s dead.”
According to Susan, it was this initial lie to Gabriel that enabled her to carry her story forward, even as officers presented her with evidence to the contrary.
“At some point, I decided to lie,” she said. “I thought my best shot at getting out of custody, to take care of my dogs and my son, was to lie. So I did. Once I denied, that was it. I just kept doing that.”
In spite of her lie, Susan admitted that she “would have confessed” if police indicated they were going to arrest Gabe for the crime. “I was relieved that Adam was coming for Gabe,” she said.
Susan went on to maintain, “I didn’t murder Felix, and I didn’t want the stigma of people thinking I murdered him. I just hoped I wouldn’t be charged, but I was.”
As the afternoon progressed, Susan presented jurors with “explanations” for the accusations made in court by prosecution witnesses, but the more she talked the more it appeared that she was fabricating stories. For example, she insisted that Gabe had misconstrued her discussion of purchasing a shotgun, saying that it had nothing to do with murder. In her version of the story, she was shopping for a weapon on the advice of huntsmen in Montana who told her a shotgun would provide good protection from bears during her frequent hikes in the woods. Similarly, she also challenged Gabe’s testimony that she threatened to drown Felix in the pool unless he wired millions of dollars into her bank account. Instead she claimed that she had simply expressed concern that his father would get too drunk one night