“He’s my sole source of income…. There is no life insurance. He makes—he grosses about $18,000 a month from his practice—and his teaching. I would not kill my husband. I can’t pay the bills.”
Costa wasn’t convinced, and the detective pressed the idea that Susan was the only person other than Gabriel who had the opportunity to kill Felix. Stepping back, he tried a different tactic.
“It only takes a split moment to get angry enough to do something like that. It happens all the time.”
“That’s why I don’t own firearms,” Susan replied coolly.
“Maybe, you know, like I said, maybe there’s a self-defense issue here. We’re not gonna know about it.”
“I didn’t do it,” Susan insisted. “I did not kill my husband!”
Despite her remonstrations, Costa remained skeptical. It wasn’t just her words that didn’t ring true, it was her unflinchingly stoic reaction. Only once, when the detective said definitively that the body in the cottage was that of her husband, did she display any emotion.
Detective Costa sighed aloud. “I got to tell you, the other thing, you’re sitting here, you know, we’ve been together for an hour now or so, and you don’t seem really choked up. You don’t seem really upset that he’s gone. I find that kind of, I mean granted…”
Susan interjected. “I’m very, very, very upset.”
“You do well at not showing it.”
“Well, you know, I can’t defend myself against an accusation like that,” she huffed.
“Well,” the detective shrugged, “It’s an observation that I’m making.”
“I’m not in love with my husband anymore,” Susan offered. “But I’m horrified. Particularly for my son that he found his body…but as for tears, you know.”
Detective Costa decided to take the questioning in another direction. “Was Felix under any professional care himself?”
“Yes,” Susan said.
“Was he seeing anybody?”
“He was seeing Justin Simon,” she said, referring to the psychiatrist who owned the Berkeley complex where Felix leased office space. According to Susan, Simon also prescribed Felix with antianxiety drugs. Though she was uncertain of the precise name, she indicated that it was a “valium derivative.” Susan was quick to point out the hypocrisy of it all—that Felix pointed the finger at her for being crazy, while never considering his own pharmaceutical dependency.
As the detective looked over his notes, he restated his theory yet again. “I’ve got to tell you, you know, something happened between you and Felix today that got out of hand.”
“No way!” Susan insisted.
“Well, that’s my feeling.”
“Did not!” Susan sniped back like a child in a tiff with a fellow classmate.
“I guess we just have to disagree, because something happened obviously. And I think it was between you and him. And you’re sitting over there, and you’re probably just dying to spill out what happened. And you can’t, for whatever reason. I don’t know, afraid of going to jail or…”
Susan jumped in. “No!”
“You know, we’ve had quite a few of these in this county recently, where wives have killed their husbands. One got off with manslaughter because of his past.”
“I did not kill my husband. I’m not that kind of person…. I don’t know what kind of a crime it was. You know, I wasn’t there. I don’t know what happened.”
“Well, they call it murder,” the detective replied before rising to his feet. He informed Susan that he needed to check on the status of the crime scene investigation and exited the room, returning a few minutes later with a second detective in tow. “This is Detective Jeff Moule, my partner.”
“How are you doing?” the second investigator said, nodding at Susan.
Outside the interrogation room, Detective Moule had updated Costa on the crime scene findings and the information gathered from Susan’s youngest son. Moule had been on the force for eight years, and during that time, he had worked ten homicides, four of them as lead investigator.
Susan looked up at the other detective, but before she could reply to his question, Detective Costa jumped in. “What’s this about you believed your husband was with the Mossad, he had like millions stashed in a Cayman Islands account somewhere? Why would your son think that?”
As with many of her previous responses, Susan’s explanation was long-winded and contradictory. It appeared she truly believed her husband was an Israeli agent, and she explained how this belief was based on the fact that Felix had insisted she sign a prenuptial agreement when they married in 1972.
“And usually when people sign a prenup it’s because there’s something to protect, right?” she insisted. “And over the years, I mean he sort of had a way of talking about things that was kind of like, not straight out, but it was kind of like hinting around and under the surface and, you know, a lot of just, it was double talk. And he sort of would talk about having assets, it seemed like to me, that I would always be provided for and the kids would. But now that we’re getting divorced, I’ve asked him, you know, about that. He’s like, ‘no.’”
Susan spoke in circles for nearly twenty minutes, citing various reasons why she believed her husband was a member of the Israeli Intelligence Agency. Another central component to her theory were statements allegedly made by Felix at the time of his ex-wife’s wedding that raised suspicions in Susan that Sharon’s new husband was a Mossad agent, too. Though Susan repeated them on many occasions, these allegations are unfounded.
“We like to keep it in the family,” Felix had allegedly joked to her.
Susan claimed that her husband’s offhanded comments were meant to telegraph certain information that he could not divulge for security reasons. Another clue was that Felix had treated CIA, ATF, and IRS agents in his practice, as well as several judges. She argued that he had to have some sort of high-level security clearance in order to care for such individuals, claiming he had hinted his affiliation with the Mossad enabled him to be “connected,” she said.
“And I went and told someone, and he was like, ‘Oh, my God,’ that I had a ‘big mouth.’ And so I just speculated that his real loyalties, even if he is, or was, a government employee, are really with Israel because of statements that he’s made. So yeah, I did think…”
Detective Costa pointed out that Felix had no family in Israel. “Has he ever traveled there?” he asked.
“No, but his cousin who’s older goes back and forth quite a bit. And a lot of his, you know, clients do, and close family, friends type of thing.”
At some point, Susan did an about face. She explained that while she once believed her husband’s connections to be real, her pronouncements of late had been more a tool to enrage him. Felix, she said, hated it when she accused him of such an association.
Regardless, it was becoming clear that Susan’s diatribe was not advancing the investigation.
“This is your time to tell us what happened and why,” Detective Costa directed.
“But I didn’t see him today. I’ve told you what I know.”
“Mrs. Polk, we know otherwise,” Detective Moule jumped in, and with an air of annoyance, he laid out the facts, as he saw them. “I’ve been talking to your son, Gabe, for a long time. And I know about the background and some problems that started about five years ago with memories about your father and all that. I know it’s personal. I’m not trying to embarrass you, but I know about that, know problems with, you know, keeping the boys out of school and taking the anklet off your son, he had to go to Byron and all that.
“You know, you’ve had some problems around the house. We know about that. You probably saw all the people standing around, there’s a whole bunch of detectives with Detective Costa and I. And there’s other detectives, and we all have little jobs. And one of our jobs here is to interview you and interview Gabe. There’s other people processing the scene. There’s judges that are being contacted. And there’s scientists that are arriving at your house right now and they’re gonna go through that entire house. They vacuum every little particle.”
“Well, that’s good,” Susan agreed.
“Yeah. And there’s some evidence found that you’re probably aware of, there’s evidence that’s already been found that is putting you right up there,” Detective Moule offered.
“Susan, your boys know that you did it,” he continued. “There’s not a doubt in their minds. They know. They go, ‘My mom did this, I know she did it.’”
“I love my children,” Susan insisted.
