Final Analysis - Catherine Crier [89]
With regard to the lack of injuries found on Susan’s body, ADA Tom O’Connor pointed to the testimony of Brian Peterson, the medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Felix Polk.
“It wouldn’t be unusual that the attacker in this situation wouldn’t have significant injuries,” Dr. Peterson told jurors.
In late August, the panel indicted Susan Polk on charges of first-degree murder in the stabbing death of her husband.
Eli was furious when he learned that the judge presiding over the case of the People v. Susan Mae Polk continued his mother’s no bail status, and in January 2004 he sent a letter to the court objecting to the ruling.
“What has happened to my mom is unbelievable,” the teen wrote in a letter, dated January 27, to the judge presiding over his mother’s case:
My mom has been charged with a crime she didn’t commit. And now she has been unjustly incarcerated for over 15 months with no sign of the court’s undoing the injustice that has been done.
From what I see, the prosecutor’s theory of what occurred is impossible. I know without question that if there were a physical struggle between my mom and dad, my father would be the instigator, as he always was….
As I began to grow in my mind and body, I consciously and unconsciously searched for ways to figure out who was telling the truth and who was telling lies…. I studied everything about both my mom and my dad…to seek what a normal kid my age could never even begin to imagine…. My father’s façade was well created…and if you’re around it long enough…you start to break through it as you mature. So when I was roughly around the age of 15, I finally began to no longer see the poor, weak, aging man who was losing his family to a crazy, troubled wife.
If there was one thing my dad had never acted like, it was weak. My father definitely wasn’t weak when he was beating me up or slapping my mom. He never acted powerless when he used to take my two brothers and I into the office, one at a time, and hypnotize us.
One of the few documents to provide a window into Eli’s thoughts, the letter demonstrated the close connection between Eli and his mother. In the months ahead, Eli remained the only son to defend her account of his father’s death. To many, his vows of support bordered on obsessive, and there was speculation that Eli and Susan’s relationship was odd. Not only was Eli taking her side, but often he even used the same language that she did, and his letters to her were filled with professions of undying love—even expressing his willingness to take his own life for her. “I love you enough to burn all I am and meet you in the after life,” he wrote to Susan while she was incarcerated at the West County Detention Facility. There was also speculation among members of the media that Eli and Susan could have entered into a suicide pact—in the event that Susan was sentenced to life in prison for Felix’s murder, the two would kill themselves.
“You are everything to me,” Eli wrote in one letter to his mother. “I will be there for you for the rest of your life. You are the strongest, smartest and most loving person I know. I will always be proud to have you as my mom. Most importantly, don’t ever forget, or force out, the perfect person you are. Never again will I be as happy as I could with you in jail…. You dying is a part of me dead as well.”
Chapter Twenty
BUCKING AUTHORITY
Since her arrest on that October night, Susan was convinced that authorities had targeted her unfairly because of actions she took during her divorce proceedings with Felix. In her mind, the judges were part of a conspiracy and did not want to