Final Analysis - Catherine Crier [56]
But the detectives’ efforts failed. Susan remained detached and composed during the lengthy interrogation. Even as the detectives worked to trip her up, she didn’t break a sweat. It was as if she was disconnected from the entire incident. In response to questions, she again recounted her movements during the past week. While some details differed slightly from her original version, her basic story remained the same. Susan claimed she didn’t see Felix’s Saab at the house that Monday morning when she returned from dropping Gabe at school. She spent much of the morning watering the small garden she tended in the terraced area near the home’s front entrance.
“I am clear about that time line,” Hebel said. “I want to go back and talk about some other stuff about your background. I understand several years ago you kind of had some recollection about some abuse from your childhood and that caused some tough times for you. Is that correct or am I getting bad info on you?”
“Well, you are hearing it from my children.”
“If you tell me something, I am not going to them and say this is what your mom said,” Hebel assured Susan.
“Partly, it’s a story that my husband cooked up for the kids as to what was happening,” Susan said. From there, she went on to recount how the story of uncovering past trauma was how Felix manipulated the truth in order to avoid informing the boys of Felix and Susan’s marital difficulties. As the detectives hung on her words, Susan once again offered her version of the last twenty years, explaining that she threatened a divorce several times over the course of their marriage. Sitting in the room, Susan coolly told the detectives how her threats to leave him were often met with death threats from Felix, who had even gone so far as telling Gabriel that he would kill Susan if she left. On another occasion, one that Susan later documented in their divorce papers, Felix made another threat on her life, this time in front of Adam and Eli. Coming in 2000, during a time when Eli’s allegiance was to his father, the threat was in response to an ongoing quarrel Susan and Felix were having over his office. Like so many of their fights, this one ended with Susan telling Felix that she wanted a divorce. His response was quick.
“He [Felix] backed me up all the way across my room,” Susan explained to the detectives, “and he said, ‘You make me so mad, I could kill you. I feel like punching you in the face or punching you.’”
But unlike past occasions where Felix had hit Susan, this time he did not get the chance. As he raised his fist to strike her, Eli stepped in first, punching his mother hard on her lip. The reaction was instantaneous as blood began to pour from Susan’s nose and mouth, dripping off of her face and onto the floor. Later, in addition to her eyes severely swelling and the side of her face bruising, Susan received several stitches on her lip that would leave a scar.
Having witnessed the entire drama unfold, Adam excitedly told his father and brother that this constituted abuse and called 911, a move that made Eli fearful of going to jail. Susan was also worried that Eli’s punch would land him in police custody, so in order to avoid seeing Eli in jail again, the family concocted a story in which Susan had hit her face on the bed. Like so many of their lies, this one covered up the painful realities of the family’s life, but still it worked. Eli was never reprimanded for the attack on his mother.
According to Susan, while her repeated attempts to exit the marriage were rebuffed, at one point, she even went so far as to try and obtain a restraining order against Felix. But her efforts stalled in March 2001 after Felix allegedly incited a physical altercation with her and later claimed, with