Final Analysis - Catherine Crier [97]
“Listen, I tried to turn it over to every single attorney I had from day one,” she said. “As soon as I found myself charged with murder I was like ‘oh my God.’ So I told them what happened. Nobody wanted to hear, nobody wanted to handle it.
“Seven months later, I was offered a deal—I said, ‘No, I’m innocent.’”
Finally, in April 2005, while out on bail, Susan said she went back to the house with Peter Coleridge, who at that point was still her defense attorney. While there, she pulled out the knife and told him that she wanted to place it into evidence.
“And he’s like, ‘oh, you shouldn’t have done that,’ and I’m like, ‘why not?’ and he was like, ‘well now I’ve got to turn it in.’”
Despite this dramatic recounting replete with extraordinary detail, elements of Susan’s version of events that night would later prove doubtful—particularly those pertaining to the ottoman. Because Susan had waited until late 2004 to inform the authorities about the pepper spray, there was no longer sufficient evidence to verify her claim that any chemical residue should be on the ottoman. According to an official lab report, tests for traces of mace or pepper spray performed on the ottoman in March 2005 proved inconclusive. “Due to the length of time elapsed before sampling, it cannot be determined if they were ever present or if they have changed to become undetectable.” In addition, “the ottoman was not packaged in an airtight container” and “some experimentation in the laboratory suggested it was unlikely to be able to recover spray residues after long-term storage.”
Susan’s tale of that night was not the only thing that she had in store for me that afternoon. With help from Dan Horowitz and Ivan Golde, Susan had obtained a startling medical report from the U.S. Navy that detailed the psychological evaluations of Felix in the days after his suicide attempt in 1955. Sitting across from me and staring through an inch and a half of Plexiglas, I asked her: “Why was Felix hospitalized for a whole year after his suicide attempt?”
Susan paused, and looked directly at me before answering. Breathing in deeply, she began to explain how the naval records revealed that Felix had received treatment for a “schizophrenic reaction,” following his suicide attempt in the fall of 1955. This psychologist who had been treating patients over the course of more than twenty years had, in fact, been hospitalized himself for serious emotional troubles. Felix, who had accused Susan of being crazy for years, had his own set of psychological problems, problems that he never attempted to address.
“Well, what the naval records say is that he was unable to give a rational explanation for what he’d done.” She grew animated as she recounted her findings. First, she pointed to her own suicide attempt in January 2001. “I was asked by the psychiatrist, ‘Why’d you do it?’ And I said, ‘Well, in this moment of despair, I thought my husband would do the things he was saying he was going to do: destroy my life, take my children away, all these things. And I just had this moment of complete despair, and I’m very glad I’m alive and realize that I have options.
“My husband was very different. The records show he was unable to give a rational explanation for what he did. He talked about supernatural forces having been at work. He talked about hearing an echo when he spoke. He couldn’t remember what had happened. He had amnesia. And his suicide note made it sound like he had other periods of amnesia.”
Susan said that Felix mentioned his suicide attempt during their early therapy sessions in Berkeley but claimed that he was in despair over the breakup of a relationship when he tried to take his life. As far as Susan knew, this was the reason that Felix was overly sensitive to being abandoned. At least, that is what she says he told her each time she threatened to leave the marriage.