entries in Susan Polk’s diary. While Susan’s writings chronicled events as she viewed them, as well as her growing dislike of her husband, they contained no evidence that she was plotting his murder. The diary merely revealed page after page of motive, providing insight into Susan in the months and years predating Felix’s murder. The lengthy memoir failed to provide the “smoking gun” police had anticipated when they listed it as part of the October 15 search warrant of the Miner Road residence.
Despite the inherent bias in the pages, the reality that they detailed was unsettling. The years of abuse and emotional scarring were apparent on both sides, and regardless of their history, it was clear that both Felix and Susan were growing tired of the status quo. And yet, Susan did not seem like a person on the edge of murder— particularly in her last entries where there is little to suggest that she was a woman who was about to be pushed too far. In the end, the diary created more questions than answers, and chief among them was—why had all this happened now? While Susan was still irate over the actions that took place in her absence, her final entries show a woman whose divorce was on the path to settlement. Her pragmatic, conciliatory tone when discussing Felix’s financial situation didn’t show a woman who was sharpening her knives; they showed a woman who had finally come to the table.
But in spite of their progress, many sticking points remained, including the role that the cottage would play in their lives. One of them had to give up claim to the main home and move to the guesthouse. It was a dispute that would last until the very end.
Chapter Eighteen
THE REAL FELIX?
“Dear Mom, I’m going to Dad’s funeral this Saturday,” Eli wrote to Susan from juvenile hall on November 5, 2002. “I don’t think I am going to say anything. What would I possibly have to say about him? Nothing good.”
Eli made good on his word. He was granted permission from juvenile officials to attend the November 9 memorial service for his father at Christ the King Parish in Pleasant Hill. With his close-cropped hair and broad shoulders, the teen was easily identifiable in the sanctuary’s front pew, where he sat shoulder to shoulder with his siblings, Adam and Gabriel.
Although Felix was Jewish, his funeral could not be held immediately after his death as is the Jewish custom; police insisted on an autopsy as part of the murder investigation. Once the autopsy was performed, it would be another three weeks before the memorial service was held. Felix was not a practicing Jew and had even gone so far as to tell Adam that he was an agnostic. Still, Susan had felt it was important for her sons to know about their father’s heritage and orchestrated the Jewish holidays at their home in an attempt to honor both her faith and that of her husband’s family. Sometimes the Polks celebrated Christmas and other times they celebrated Hanukah—with no discernible pattern.
After some discussion, it was decided that the funeral would be held at Christ the King Parish, a small Catholic house of worship in San Francisco’s East Bay, and funded, at least in part by Argosy University where Felix taught. Mourners arriving at the church on Brandon Road that autumn day were momentarily taken aback by the psychedelic rock and roll music that filled the sanctuary. Adam had chosen the song, “Wish You Were Here,” the 1975 hit from the British rock band, Pink Floyd, to kick off the service, although it was not clear why Adam selected that track to memorialize his father; perhaps it was because Pink Floyd was a group that Felix counted among his favorites.
As the words of the song droned from overhead speakers, old family photos of Felix flashed onto two large screens set up on either side of the altar: a young Felix embracing his infant son from his first marriage, playing cello accompaniment to his first wife, Sharon Mann, and another of Felix trekking outdoors and carrying a child on his back. The pictures elicited smiles and laughter from those who came to pay their final respects to the slain therapist. There was silent anticipation that one of the photos would contain an image of Felix’s spouse and alleged killer, but the photomontage had been edited to exclude any photos of Susan Polk.
Like the slide presentation, the tender eulogies that followed also failed to mention Felix’s second wife. Instead, friends and colleagues publicly remembered a warm, caring man who loved his work and his children. One of the speakers was Ernst Vaulfer, a fellow Holocaust survivor who had known Felix for more than forty years. Another person who took the pulpit that afternoon was Felix’s former patient, Sheila Burns, the psychologist who Susan suspected of having an affair with her husband.
Susan made no request to attend Felix’s funeral, and his children from his first marriage, Andrew and Jennifer Polk, decided not to fly in for the ceremony, electing instead to hold their own private memorial on the East Coast some days later. Adam and Gabriel told Court TV’s Lisa Sweetingham that Jennifer and Andrew were rarely a presence in their lives. Andrew, who was already in college when Felix left Sharon, did not stay in close contact with his father. Their relationship worsened after Felix declined to pay for his college tuition. Jennifer was in and out of the picture over the years. She had lived with Felix and Susan for a brief time after their marriage but as time passed her visits became infrequent. Nevertheless Adam and Gabriel elected to fly east to share their father’s loss with their half siblings. Eli, still in custody in the juvenile facility, was not permitted to make the cross-country trek.
It is not known if Felix’s first wife, Sharon Mann, attended that service. She was not among the mourners at the November 9 ceremony in California. Sharon had reacted with a mix of surprise and sadness when she learned of Felix’s death from police the day after his body was found in the guest cottage.
“I feel so sorry for him,” she tearfully told a reporter who reached her for a reaction. “It’s such a horrible tragedy.” Though polite, Sharon declined to comment publicly about her relationship with Felix or the circumstances surrounding his death. While many of his friends and colleagues expressed similar remorse over Felix’s death, they also refused to discuss Felix’s relationship with his second wife openly. In addition to their disapproval of his dual relationship with Susan, there was also quiet talk during the subsequent coffee hour in the church meeting room of Felix’s propensity for inappropriate relationships with other patients outside the confines of his office. Felix thought nothing of socializing with them and even soliciting their professional services—be they piano lessons from his music teacher patient or legal advice from an attorney he was counseling.
Several of his colleagues even suggested they knew of his affair with Susan around the time it began and quietly denounced his involvement with the fragile teen. While it is true that in the late 1960s there was no California law against a therapist having intercourse with a patient, most viewed it as an ethical violation of patient/doctor privilege. In Susan’s case, the violation was even more serious because she was allegedly underage when the sexual relationship began.
Sexual contact between a patient and therapist is now a crime in California that is punishable by six months in jail. The law, however, permits sexual relations between therapist and patient two years after the termination of therapy. The stipulation stems from the theory that transference will have worn off after two years, however, many in the field assert that transference is everlasting. Experts have even suggested that Felix’s inappropriate sexual relationship with his teenage patient might have caused him to misdiagnose Susan. It’s possible that he failed to recognize that she might very well have been a borderline personality, a diagnosis that brings with it lifelong symptoms of depression, rage, and hostility.
And while there were no other accusations of inappropriate sexual relationships with patients over the years, Felix had a widespread reputation for regularly violating protocol. One such incident occurred in October 1997, when Felix was accused of providing insufficient care for a child because of his close relationship to the boy and his father.
During the ongoing investigation into Felix’s murder, we obtained access to the family court file that involved the custody of this ten-year-old boy who was in therapy with Felix. In a five-page letter to the judge presiding over the case, the family, and the child counselor asked to render an evaluation, accused Dr. Polk of “limiting the effectiveness of his therapy because of his dual and inappropriate social relationships with the boy and his father.” The counselor wrote: “These dual relationships have resulted in unorthodox treatment protocols (doing treatment at the father’s home, picking the boy up from school, and taking him home after the therapy, not attending treatment on his mother’s custodial time) that can make it difficult for the child to experience the treatment as emotionally safe and neutral.
