was proposing on the Miner Road residence. Police found two outstanding bills from Landes on Felix’s desk, along with a four-page letter dated September 23, 2002, outlining Landes’ work on the case and demanding payment:
In our last several conversations you have pointedly avoided the question I raised with you of fees. Last week you said something about a line of credit…and then nothing else. I simply can not run an account of this magnitude which, because of Susan’s unwillingness to settle on any issue, even the time of day, will probably become larger….
I will reiterate. You need to refresh your retainer immediately, within the week, by at least $10,000. This is a very reasonable request. You have not made a payment on your account for a year and a half. You have been billed. I know of no professional, whether therapist, attorney, dentist or doctor, who would run such a tab…. You made arrangements to refinance Miner Road without any consultation with me, paying off credit card bills for Susan without including my fees. I don’t feel that this is being unreasonable.
At Felix’s office, there were other indications that the Polks were in financial straits. Credit card statements found on the desk showed balances in excess of thirty-five thousand dollars. Landes’ letter to Felix indicated that Polk had used a portion of the money from a refinance of the Miner Road property to pay off those debts. However, there were no documents to substantiate that claim.
There was also a property assessment for the Arch Street apartment complex that the Polks co-owned with Susan’s mother, Helen Bolling, showing a value of $675,000 as of May 17, 1999. A typewritten letter found on the fireplace mantel from Susan to her mother, dated May 21, 2002, indicated that Helen had recently requested that Susan and Felix sign the property over to her:
Dear Mother,
…You seem to be claiming that your share has increased from 50% to 100% because you did not receive your share of the income for the last few years and proceeds from the refinance. In addition, you have written me out of your will.
It is not worth my while to waste any more time on this property when it does not benefit me….
Please have your attorney contact me…with a proposal for buying me out if you think that I am entitled to any share of the equity.
Sincerely,
Inside a yellow folder, marked “Divorce—Landes,” was a typewritten letter from Susan to Felix dated May 21, 2002. In the four-page, single-spaced document, Susan coherently made recommendations on what the divorcing couple should do with various properties, pets, and tax returns, as well as accounting and spousal support issues. Susan also used the letter to alert Felix that Gabriel’s “excessive absences” from Miramonte High School had resulted in his being “dropped from classes.”
“Miramonte has a unique policy of dropping students when their absences exceed fifteen…. In Gabe’s case, all of his absences were related to illness and were excused,” Susan wrote, claiming that the teen “appears to have mononucleosis.”
“As you well know, Gabe does not cut school or get into trouble… so all of Gabe’s excellent and hard work this semester has been un-credited [sic].”
As to Gabe’s custody, Susan wrote, “Judge Berkow, at your request, ordered me to undergo a psychological evaluation as a precondition.
“In your declaration filed in February, you described me as ‘healthy.’ Now, you are taking the position that I need to be evaluated. You are a psychologist. You have known me for some twenty-five years. Surely, no one would know better than you whether I am fit or not to parent my children…. It is clear that you are determined to punish me by taking the kids away from me. You have said repeatedly… that you will not let them go. It’s time to move on.”
Pulling open the desk drawer, Costa discovered more letters that were written and signed by Felix Polk. One was his appeal to the vice provost at UCLA to keep Adam from being dismissed. Another, dated Saturday, June 15, was addressed to Gabriel, and detailed Felix’s belief that his teenage son had vandalized his Saab several months earlier:
“I know that you are very, very mad at me and won’t talk on the phone,” the one-page single-spaced letter began. “I do want you to know that I think about you all the time and miss you terribly and have some deep concerns about what the future holds for us…in spite of the way you have rejected me and turned on me, I am not angry at you. Frustrated yes!
“Both you and Eli seem to have bought into mom’s horror stories about me. They are for the most part not true stories, but I don’t really have a chance to speak up for myself. I am faced with a closed system in which mom says what she says so hatefully about me, and I have no chance to point out what is true and what is not…. I have some real flaws and yet I am not the monster she portrays me to be.
“What you did to my car was uncalled for, destructive and senseless. You must really have been worked up into a lather to have done that. I am holding you responsible for the damage.”
There were also typewritten letters from Felix to Peter Weiss, an attorney, asking for a five thousand dollar disbursement from the “children’s trust” to cover legal fees in connection with Eli’s assault and subsequent probation violation, as well as several requests for monies for Adam’s UCLA tuition. During the course of the investigation, Costa learned that Weiss was Felix’s cousin and was serving as executor of a trust fund the Polks had set up for their children.
Detective Costa perched himself on the desktop and listened to the thirty voice mails on Felix Polk’s answering machine as investigators marked the mounds of paper into evidence. Most of the calls were from patients wanting to schedule appointments. Two were from a “Tom Pyne” also requesting an appointment.
“I recognize that name!” Detective Roxanne Gruenheid announced. Gruenheid was among those executing the search warrant that day. She explained that Eli Polk had offered his father’s patient, Tom Pyne, as a possible suspect during the interview that she and Detective Steve Warne had conducted at Byron Boys’ Ranch several days after Felix’s murder.
In another drawer, investigators found an envelope with Pyne’s return address in El Sobrante, a small East Bay city north of the Richmond Bridge. They would pay him a visit later that week.
Moving their search to the office closet, police discovered a manila envelope containing the blue .38-caliber revolver that Susan had mentioned in her first interview and a red plastic ammo container, along with the keys for the trigger lock. The gun was loaded with the trigger lock in place, and a quick check of the weapon confirmed that it was registered to Susan Polk. The detective noted it hadn’t been fired in some time. Unloading the weapon, Costa booked it into evidence for safekeeping.
Also in the closet was a rambling six-page letter Susan had faxed from the T-4 Bucks Motel on Highway 191 in Big Sky, Montana, on October 3, 2002. The letter appeared to be a portion of Susan’s personal diary. In it, she wrote about Felix being a member of the Israeli “Mossad” and knowing about the September 11 terrorist attacks, Costa noted.
“Susan mentions the recent divorce court rulings in which she claims that Felix got his spousal support reduced,” the detective wrote in his report. “Susan writes about being a medium and how Felix used to put her into trances. Most of the letter is talking about the Israeli army and the Mossad and how Susan believes they were involved in the 9/11 attacks.”
Several days after searching Felix’s office, Detective Costa received an interoffice envelope from a deputy sheriff employed at the county’s Court Services Division. It was addressed to a Judge Rivera at 725 Court Street in Martinez and had a return address of Jackson, Wyoming. The postmark indicated it had been mailed in 2002.
Costa immediately recognized the envelope’s contents as a duplicate of the six-page letter Susan had faxed to Felix from the T-4 Bucks Motel in Montana on October 3—only this copy was one paragraph longer than the faxed copy. It began, “thought you might be interested in the journal excerpt about a Mossad agent’s failure to provide a
