degraded her husband, calling him “old” and “decrepit,” and making sexually explicit comments, including derogatory remarks about the size of his penis.
After Gabriel answered questions about the events of October 13 leading up to his gruesome discovery, the judge adjourned the proceedings for lunch and directed the defendant to begin her cross-examination when they returned. It had been a difficult morning for Susan, who spent much of Gabriel’s testimony quietly weeping in her seat. Listening to her son vilify her was hard, but she left the court vowing to return with renewed composure and determined to get Gabriel to admit that his father had been a tyrant.
Questioning Gabriel proved to be an arduous process, one that lasted for five grueling days. During that time, Susan challenged his recollections about his childhood, suggested he was hiding things when he couldn’t remember any abuse, and elicited facts about his early brushes with the law. She asked innumerable questions about the relationship between Felix and herself and probed her son’s affection for his brothers. She repeatedly broke down in tears when their memories differed and when he wouldn’t corroborate her claims of spousal abuse.
Early on, Susan questioned Gabe about the alleged ritualistic sexual abuse of Adam at the day care center in an attempt to demonstrate that the accusations came from Felix, not from her. Over Sequeira’s objections, Susan played a tape of Felix’s speech at the Berkeley Conference of the California Consortium of Child Abuse in 1988. It was at this event that he was introduced as a “parent of a ritualistically abused child.”
Gabe sat impassively as his dead father’s voice filled the courtroom. “The children were raped on stage, raped in every form imaginable,” Felix told conference participants. Meanwhile jurors were transfixed by the audio- taped lecture in which Felix claimed that his eldest son, Adam, had witnessed a baby being stuffed into a plastic bag and “hammered to death,” and that cult members ate flesh, vomit, and blood in front of his son and other children.
“My rage is omnipresent… my fantasy, of course, is to kill them,” Felix’s recorded voice resounded over speakers in the courtroom. “And I’m a rather moral person. I want to kill them.”
“Did you recognize your father’s voice?” Susan asked Gabe when the tape ended.
Gabriel responded affirmatively.
Afterward, Susan asked about allegations that he, too, had been sexually abused while in day care and that both his parents had gone to police to file a complaint. Still, he insisted that he and Adam had no recollection of being molested while in day care. He maintained that Susan was the one who had created the whole scenario and ultimately convinced Felix that it was real.
“Did it ever occur to you that he might be making it all up?” Susan asked.
“I don’t know,” Gabe replied.
While the questions were exhaustive, Susan never really probed Gabe’s recollection of the night he found his father’s body in the guesthouse. After three days of cross-examination, she asked the teen, “On the night you found your father’s body, were you scared?”
“I wasn’t scared, I was completely devastated,” Gabe replied. “But I wasn’t scared.”
Questions like this made it clear that Susan’s examination was going nowhere. She asked her son if he was “completely truthful” with police during his interrogation, and if he recalled how many times he told officers that his mother “had never been violent” with his dad. But she failed to delve further into the events of that day.
Instead, she pushed Gabe to portray his father in a negative light.
“You don’t recall your father poisoning Tuffy, the family dog?” she asked.
“No, I don’t.”
“Are you aware that your father woke up every day thinking about killing people?”
At times, Susan seemed determined to engage her son in a dialogue, invoking Judge Brady to issue a warning that cross-examination “is not a conversation.”
Even the prosecutor expressed frustration after it became clear that Susan intended to question his star witness until she was content with his responses—no matter the relevance to the case.
There was a break in the case during the second day of testimony when Susan arrived for court and told the judge that she had a bad sore throat, vowed that she “wasn’t making it up” and asked for a postponement. The judge acquiesced and instructed everyone to return to court the following Monday, March 13.
Still, Susan felt well enough to object to Marjorie Briner’s presence in the courtroom before the adjournment. She argued that Briner, her son’s guardian, was influencing Gabe’s testimony. She also insisted that Briner stood to profit from the outcome of the trial because she was entitled to Social Security benefits as his guardian.
In a telephone conversation early in the trial, Marjorie Briner expressed Gabriel’s concern over how he was being portrayed in the media. Some members of the press had been speculating over statements the teen had made during a telephone conversation with his brother Adam while at police headquarters that were being aired on Court TV. Briner explained that Gabe was anxious to clarify one remark in which he appeared to say “Dad left us a pile of ‘money,’ when in fact, Gabe claims that he told Adam, ‘Dad left us a pile of
“This young man is under a great deal of stress, and it’s not unreasonable to have a support person in the court,” Sequeria argued with regard to Briner’s presence in the courtroom, telling Susan that just because she thinks something is happening doesn’t make it so.
Judge Brady ruled that Briner could remain in the courtroom, except when Gabriel was responding to specific questions about financial matters.
“I am going to need a therapist when this is all over,” Sequeira told reporters outside court that Wednesday afternoon.
That following Monday, Susan confronted the judge over the recent arrest of her middle son, Eli, on charges he beat up his girlfriend. On March 9, police arrested Eli and charged him with misdemeanor battery based on claims that his then-girlfriend made to authorities at the Polks’ Miner Road home.
Eli had been released on bail and was standing in the doorway of the courtroom when his mother asked the judge to issue a restraining order against his girlfriend.
Brady refused and instructed Susan to get on with her cross-examination. “Mrs. Polk, your son is an adult, and if he feels a restraining order is necessary, there is an appropriate process for him to go through.”
“His life has been threatened,” Susan went on. “There are physical marks on his face. He called police for help.”
Susan claimed that it was Eli who had summoned police that past Thursday after his girlfriend entered the house without permission and assaulted him for not returning her phone calls. She then argued that Eli was entitled to an emergency restraining order from Brady because he was a witness in her case.
“I’m not going to issue a restraining order unless I hear from both parties,” the judge declared.
It was then that Susan spotted her son in the vestibule outside the courtroom. “This is my son,” she shouted, pointing to the courtroom door. “Look at his face!”
Susan directed her case manager, Valerie Harris, to retrieve Eli and bring him inside. But her son declined to enter, prompting Judge Brady to set a hearing date for March 16 to address the matter. She also ordered that Eli’s girlfriend be notified of the court date.
A second interruption occurred when Judge Brady advised Susan that she was not permitted to have witnesses in the courtroom after spotting her mother, Helen Bolling, in the third row of the gallery. Susan appeared surprised at the judge’s comment. Turning to look in the gallery, Susan smiled. “Oh, there she is! Hi Mom!” she shouted, waving at the gray-haired woman in the ankle-high cowboy boots. “I didn’t know she was here.”
Judge Brady instructed Susan’s mother to step out of the courtroom, explaining that she was a witness in the case and could not stay for testimony.
By the end of the day, Sequeira was throwing his hands up in exasperation. “I give up,” he said, after Susan repeatedly questioned Gabriel about a pair of brass knuckles that he supposedly kept in his car, despite the D.A.’s objections.
“She’s been cross-examining her son for three days and she’s been talking about Tuffy and Ruffy and whatever else she’s got going,” Sequeria complained. “She’s absolutely torturing that kid. And she’s abusing her cross-examination privileges. She’s abusing the process.”
Finding it pointless to continue objecting, the prosecutor stood silent as Gabe again explained that he carried the brass knuckles because he was scared of his mother and brother Eli. He said that Eli told him he would do
