Final Analysis - Catherine Crier [45]
In the letter, Felix denied being judgmental of his daughter, yet went on to voice disapproval of Jennifer’s recent weight gain and assertive behavior, which he described as “lacking femininity.”
“It is a lie that I have not recognized your changes or that I haven’t liked them,” he wrote. “It is true that I haven’t liked some of them such as your putting on tons of weight, your increased rigidity and pseudo-feminism.”
Was he now projecting his negative feelings about his own mother, whom he once described as the “power” in the family, onto his daughter? Or did Jennifer represent someone else? Jennifer Polk had just turned sixteen when Felix and Sharon legally separated in October of 1978. Perhaps Felix was not leaving Sharon when he left the couple’s comfortable Berkeley home that year, but the temptation of his pretty teenage daughter.
Notably, it was around the time that Jennifer was maturing that Felix began his affair with young Susan.
“I have examined by looking inside myself and by talking with others what the basis may be for my reaction to your irresponsible and hurtful behavior,” Felix wrote in a second letter to Jennifer in March of 1988:
What I will take responsibility for is that I have a particularly strong sensitivity to loss, to having somebody I love dearly taken away from me….
You have ripped yourself away from me, and to me that feels like a deep and familiar loss…. I tried to meet your needs in growing up…while I well may have been overly protective of you at times (to balance out your attacking and critical mother)…. You need to work on the tendency to project and to have good and bad people in your life.
Mom [Sharon Mann] is in now, and I am out.
Interestingly, the theme of “good parent,” “bad parent” would reemerge in Felix’s second marriage to Susan Bolling.
Chapter Ten
THE MIDDLE CHILD
In the days following the discovery of Felix’s bloodied body, it became clear to investigators that the victim’s sons were divided. While Gabriel and Adam believed that their mother was “delusional” and capable of committing the murder, the Polk’s middle son, Eli, described Susan as a woman who tried to hold her family together while living with an “abusive” husband.
On October 15, 2002, the day after Gabriel Polk found his father’s body in the guesthouse, detectives from the Contra Costa Sheriff ’s department interviewed Eli at the Byron Boys’ Ranch. At over six feet tall, Eli towered over the officers as he followed the men to a small, private office to talk. It was unclear to the detectives whether family members had contacted Eli about his father, and Detective Steve Warne thought that he might be the first to deliver the sad news.
Taking a seat across from the strapping teen, Detective Warne motioned his colleague, Roxanne Gruenheid, to join him behind the desk. He observed that Eli’s physical stature and crew cut made him appear older than he really was. Warne was anxious to see the teen’s reaction to news of his father’s murder.
It was soon apparent that Eli had no idea what had transpired at the Miner Road compound that past weekend. He was “appropriately shocked” and “upset” as he struggled to come to grips with the news, Detective Warne wrote in his official report.
“It’s definitely not my mom,” Eli insisted. “She would just never do it. That’s not even a remote possibility. My mom did not do it. That’s a fact.”
Though Eli tried to answer the detectives’ questions, it was clear he was in shock.
His troubled world suddenly collapsed around him. Away from home for just two weeks, now his father was dead and his mother was in jail charged with Felix’s murder. It seemed his parents had gone berserk without him there to keep the peace.
After several minutes of conversation, Eli suddenly