luxurious feel. In the bathroom, police collected the three blue hand towels that Costa had seen the night before and then searched the walk-in closet for bloody shoes. None were found.
Across the hall from the master suite on the north side of the staircase, there was a second bedroom and bathroom used by Gabriel. Between the two bedrooms, there was a third door that led out to the covered carport where Gabriel had hidden the previous night while he called the police. That carport, used mostly by Susan, was reached from the higher of the two driveways and provided access to the uppermost living quarters. Susan’s silver Volvo station wagon was still there, along with two additional cars parked farther down the driveway—another Volvo and Eli’s Dodge Ram 1500 pick-up truck that Susan had driven to Montana. The guesthouse where police were collecting fingerprints was south of the main residence and west of the small structure that contained a bathroom and the family’s home gym.
At 5 PM on Tuesday, October 15, the coroner’s van made its way to the cottage to remove Felix’s dead body, clearing the way for additional examination of the immediate crime scene. The forensic team remained there for several more hours to gather fingerprints and collect other potential evidence.
It was after 9 PM when Detective Costa and the others wrapped up their work at the Polk house, now encircled in bright yellow police tape. They returned to the Main Detention Facility at 1000 Ward Street in Martinez, where Susan Polk had been transported during the early morning hours after her interrogation. After being processed at the jail, Susan had been booked for the murder of her husband, Felix Polk. She knew both the routine and the facility, since she was processed at the same location eighteen months earlier on charges of “battery” after an argument with her husband had turned physical.
Once she was secure at the jail, the investigators conducted a second interview with Susan during which they observed several injuries on her body, prompting officials to undertake a full forensic examination of Susan’s hands, face, and body. Among other things, the examination uncovered bruising and redness on her right eye, and small red cuts on her hands and upper arms. “The injuries were consistent with someone who was involved in a physical confrontation in the recent past,” one of the detectives jotted in his report. “I asked Susan if she would consent to providing hair samples and photos of her injuries. Susan permitted the hair samples, but denied consent to the photos due to modesty.”
Her refusal prompted police to obtain a search warrant.
Detective Costa was on hand that night to supervise the photographing of the slight reddish discolorations around Susan’s eyes and the small healing wounds on her hands. He also stood by as an officer plucked a dark brown hair sample from her scalp. He was certain it would be a positive match to the strands found clenched in Felix Polk’s bloody right fist.
Chapter Seven
THE DOCTOR’S DISEASE
Frank “Felix” Polk had been a well-respected therapist and esteemed member of the faculty at Argosy University, where he taught psychology for more than a decade. His faint accent and formal attire reflected his wealthy European upbringing. His intuitive approach ingratiated him to others, from his superiors right down to the Argosy librarian.
Born in Vienna, Austria, on June 30, 1932, Felix had enjoyed a privileged childhood. His father, Eric Ernst Polk, was a wealthy clothing manufacturer, who was born a Jew in Czechoslovakia and later emigrated to Austria, where he met and married Johanna Hahn. The couple’s daughter, Evelyn, was two years old when Felix and his fraternal twin, John, were born. The children were reared by a nanny and led a charmed life for several years, but all that came to a sudden end in 1938 when SS officers came for Felix’s father. Young Felix could do nothing but hide as the men dragged the elder Polk away. It was a terrifying scene; large men in uniforms and helmets brutalizing his father and carting him away as the boy stood by, unable to help.
He wanted to run after them, to save his father, but the little six-year-old could do nothing. Losing his father that way changed Felix forever. He would never be comfortable in the real world again.
With Eric Polk gone, the family was forced to flee the German invasion and abandon their majestic stone house in the country’s capital.
“We had to keep one step ahead of the Nazis,” Felix recalled many years later.
He claimed the family headed to the French countryside, where for nearly a year, they secretly lived in the attic of a farmhouse used regularly by German troops. It was a kind of Anne Frank existence in which no one dared speak for fear of being discovered, Felix said. To pass the time, he retreated to an imaginary world—a world in which he was able to save his father.
While Felix would later say the terrifying experience gave him a “built-in sense of survival,” this knowledge carried a high price. Children who are separated from their parents early in life often do not recover from the trauma. Six is a critical age for a developing boy to lose his father to what the family believed was certain death. For Felix, there was also a powerful belief that he had failed his dad. He had stood idle, his heart pounding in his chest, as the men with the big guns carted away his beloved father.
In his heart, Felix believed he should have done something. But what?
The act of hiding and the psychological impact of believing that people are out to get you—because they are—can leave profound and lifelong scars on a young mind. As an adult, Felix would suffer from bouts of severe depression, marked by dark moods, anxiety, and panic attacks.
At some point, Felix’s father escaped captivity at a concentration camp and rejoined the family for a time, but he soon left to fight alongside the British Expeditionary Forces. This voluntary departure was almost worse than the first. Good fathers weren’t supposed to leave their families, and without his dad, Felix felt lost and unprotected once again.
Years later, the family was reunited in Marseilles, thanks to an ad Felix’s father had run in a French newspaper seeking their whereabouts. For a brief time, Felix attended boarding school in France before crossing into Spain with his family, where they converted to Catholicism to gain entry. From Spain, they traveled to Portugal and eventually boarded a ship bound for the United States.
It’s not known what effect, if any, the involuntary change of religion had on young Felix. An autopsy revealed that, despite his Jewish heritage, he had never been circumcised, possibly to protect him from persecution in war- ravaged Europe. Years later, he would joke of his conversion with friends, who described the psychologist as “culturally Jewish.”
In 1941, the Polks landed in America and eventually settled in Harrison, New York, where Felix’s father set up a retail business that quickly succeeded. Throughout his life, Eric Polk exhibited a remarkable ability to rebound from tragedy, and America was the perfect venue for his resilience, as he quickly established two profitable five- and-dime stores in Rockland County.
Despite his father’s success, Felix, who was nine when the family made the transatlantic voyage, proved least able to adjust to life in the land of opportunity. He resented that his family no longer enjoyed the financial status they enjoyed in Austria. He had no time for play because his father expected Felix to work in the family business. His was a Victorian upbringing; crying was not allowed in the Polk home.
In 1949, at the age of seventeen, Felix left the comfort of his parents’ New York home for St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, where he had earned a scholarship. Even though Felix started high school late, he still managed to graduate with his class. Nevertheless his parents weren’t satisfied with his academic performance, and they constantly held up the achievements of his twin brother, John, as the example to follow. Felix resented the comparison and John’s ease in forming many friendships. Neither came naturally to Felix. He was plagued by a foreboding he couldn’t explain.
Once at college, Felix’s academic interests flourished. Philosophy became his passion, and he immersed himself in his studies to the point of obsession. While the work was invigorating, his constant self-analysis seemed to alienate his classmates, and Felix made few friends on campus. Similarly, family members reported that Felix’s dark letters home were filled with “marked preoccupations” and “esoteric discussions,” and that he exhibited “fluctuating moods of unhappiness” during his visits home.
Upon graduation from St. John’s with a bachelor of arts degree in 1953, Felix enlisted as an officer in the U.S. Navy to meet his military obligations. That summer, he was sent to Officer Candidate School (OCS) at the U.S.
