Final Analysis - Catherine Crier [85]
Eli relaxing on the deck during happier times
Susan’s dogs were of particular importance to her and the subject of contention between her and Felix.
Though Susan’s relationship with Felix could at times seem normal, the years of conflict eventually became too much.
One of the controversial bloody footprints found at the crime scene
While at first she would claim that her injuries were the result of her dog’s overaggressive behavior, Susan later revealed that the bruising around her eye and the small cuts to her fingers stemmed from her struggle with Felix.
A police department sketch of the Polk’s Miner Road estate
My 2005 interview with Susan on Catherine Crier Live. It was during this discussion that she revealed Felix’s naval records and told her side of that fateful evening.
Taken in the Polk’s pool house, this sequence of photos shows Susan’s attorneys, Dan Horowitz (with glasses) and Ivan Golde, reenacting the struggle between Felix and Susan on the night of Felix’s death.
Helen Bolling speaking with reporters outside the courthouse
Prosecutor Paul Sequeira preparing to address the media
Valerie Harris making a statement to reporters in front of the courthouse. While her professional relationship with Susan was strained by Susan’s erratic behavior, ultimately Valerie’s presence was a big help to Susan as she maneuvered through one legal minefield after another.
Adam and Gabriel on the set of Catherine Crier Live
Eli after learning of his mother’s verdict
After the verdict: (From left to right) Prosecutor Sequeira, Gabriel Polk, Majorie Briner, Adam Polk, Dan Briner
Susan was “dependent on him [Felix] in a lot of ways,” Lucia said.
It is not uncommon for at-risk patients such as Susan to form attachments to their therapists. Professionals are trained to anticipate these feelings of transference and take steps to avoid vulnerability on the part of patients, as well as themselves. In Felix’s case, it seems he threw caution to the wind in acting out his own personal fantasy with his teenage patient.
Despite his professional recklessness, he had to have known the emotional danger that existed when a therapist disappointed or violated his patient in some way. According to the famous 1966 study conducted by William Masters and Virginia Johnson, the damage a woman can suffer as a result of a sexual relationship with her therapist is tantamount to rape. (Not surprisingly, Susan often described her sexual relationship with Felix as “rape.”)
Nevertheless Felix ignored all of the studies, judgment, and professional common sense when he crossed the line from therapist to lover with Susan, and in the end the realities of her psychological state overwhelmed him. Indeed to become someone’s doctor and husband is always too much, but in Felix’s case the combination proved deadly. Instead of improving, her problems seemed to worsen over the years and Felix couldn’t possibly absorb all of her love, trust, and paranoia.
Long before his murder, Felix had become the ultimate authority figure in Susan’s life, the embodiment of her years spent listening to others. While once she obeyed his every word, during the final years of their marriage it was clear that her subservience was a thing of the past, and there was nothing he could do to regain his lost ground. Unlike the police or a judge, he could not hold her in contempt or arrest her; he had no rebuttal for the fear she instilled. He was incapable of taking the steps necessary to protect himself—not because he didn’t know what was right—but because the very fact that he needed help was an outward sign of his failure.
It shouldn’t have been this way. In his mind, he believed he had “fixed” her at age sixteen and to think that her persistent problems stemmed from those residual issues was to admit his failings. For Felix to obtain a restraining order against his wife, for him to abandon his home for a hotel, would have been to admit the truth: Dr. Polk had lost his patient long ago.