Final Analysis - Catherine Crier [33]
Of regrets, I have few. It would be folly for anyone to assume the blame for something of which I myself and no one else is responsible. I say goodbye to a hateful world with a smile. In life, I hated pity and in death I want none. Had I not come this far in life my loss would perhaps have been easier. I have forgotten the world and now the world much [sic] forget me.
Rising from the desk, Felix grabbed the keys to the family car. Feeling stronger than he had in a long time, he took one last look around and headed for the garage. Sliding into the passenger seat, he put the key into the ignition and started the engine. The hum of the motor was comforting, and he felt great relief that he had the courage to do what he wanted to do so many times before.
Police records show that an anonymous call came into the Harrison Police Department sometime after 11 PM that Sunday night, October 16. The female caller did not give her name; she was just a concerned citizen who wanted to report a “possible suicide” at 308 Harrison Avenue, the home of Eric and Johanna Polk.
Officer Pat Pizarello responded to the “mysterious phone call” and “lights on” dispatch to the Polk residence. Armed with a flashlight, he began to examine the grounds. Hearing a noise coming from inside the garage, he flung open the door to find the space filled with carbon monoxide gas. There was a car parked inside with its motor running and Felix was on the floor adjacent to the car’s front right wheel. At one point, he had been in the passenger seat but had apparently slipped to the garage floor when he became unconscious.
“I had suicidal thoughts before but never thought I’d have nerve enough to try it,” Felix later told psychiatrists at the U.S. Naval Hospital at St. Albans, New York.
Ironically, Felix Polk would be murdered 46 years later, almost to the day.
Chapter Eight
A TRAGIC MIX
Three years after his suicide attempt, Felix met and married Sharon Mann, an attractive music student at the Julliard School in New York City, who was just eighteen when the couple was first introduced in 1956. At the time, Felix was on temporary leave from the U.S. Naval Reserve, and he was employed as a social worker at the Cedar Knolls School in Hawthorne, New York County, while studying for a master’s in social work at Manhattan’s Albert Einstein College. On weekends, he worked as a recreation therapist at the Linden Hill School for Disturbed Adolescents in Westchester to supplement the monthly disability payments of $231 he had begun receiving from the navy. He was also seeing a private psychiatrist three times a week, paying $15 a session.
Two years after his marriage, on September 26, 1960, Felix received an honorable discharge from the U.S. Naval Reserve for a “physical disability.” That same year, he and Sharon relocated to northern California. There, Felix enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, where he did additional undergraduate coursework. Deciding he wanted to help people like himself to get well, he applied and was admitted to the university’s PhD program.
While Felix earned his doctorate, Sharon supported the couple, and later, their small family. On October 2, 1962, she gave birth to a son, Andrew D. Polk, and three years later, on March 23, 1965, a daughter, Jennifer, was born. That same year, Felix was awarded both a PhD in clinical psychology and a second bachelor’s degree—a B.S. with honors—from Berkeley University.
The following summer, he traveled to England on a National Institute of Mental Health fellowship, where he remained for two years treating adolescents and families as a staff clinician at London’s Travistock Clinic and Institution. Though records are sketchy, it appears that Felix saw little of his wife and children during that time.
Returning to California in 1967, he landed