the court. He also said that Felix told him that Susan had a gun.
Susan responded by raising allegations that ranged from Felix’s supposed affair with his patient turned colleague, to cocaine abuse. She pushed Kobrin to acknowledge that he was aware of Felix’s many indiscretions. Unfortunately for Susan, Kobrin could not substantiate the claims.
Once Kobrin’s testimony had concluded, only one witness remained before the prosecution would rest its case. On Tuesday, April 17, Adam Polk took the stand, ready to face his mother for the first time in several years.
Sitting on the witness stand with thick curly brown hair and a soft, cherubic face, Adam told the court that his father did not abuse his mother, while also shooting down Susan’s claim that Felix had threatened to kill her during their marriage.
Adam’s testimony for the prosecution lasted just thirty minutes.
But the well-spoken college senior would be on the stand for three days responding to questions from his mother, and it did not take long for the twenty-three-year-old’s testimony to degenerate into a family therapy session gone haywire.
“Do you recall saying that you would come into court and say the worst possible things about me unless I give you irrevocable power of attorney?”
Adam told his mother, “You’re a cruel, heartless person and you should be ashamed of yourself.”
Susan presented her son with the letter he wrote for her bail hearing in which he called his mother “a gentle and intellectual mother who enjoyed movies, cooking, and baking cookies.”
Adam testified that he wrote the letter to win her favor and gain the use of Susan’s car. He also claimed that the letter was “intended to manipulate Eli into giving me access to you.”
“I was in a precarious position for mediating for my two minor brothers’ financial future,” Adam continued.
Susan’s eldest son admitted that he had promised his mother he would testify at her trial “if she called him.” But Adam claimed that he never agreed to take sides. He would simply tell the truth, which Susan assumed would be in her favor.
Like Gabriel, Adam denied his mother’s claims of spousal abuse, calling Susan “bonkers” and “cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs” during her questioning of him. Judge Brady, usually reserved, covered her mouth and fought back a smile during the bruising exchange.
Later, he recalled that Susan broke down in tears when he first went to visit her in jail two days after her arrest. “What happened?” he asked his mother. To which she replied, “Things just got out of control.” Adam testified that Susan then said, “you can have everything, I’m just going to plead guilty.”
He said his mother had a change of heart after she learned that she was being charged with first-degree murder after stabbing Felix twenty-seven times. Adam claimed that his mother said that she had not stabbed her husband that many times and was convinced she was being set up.
“They might as well execute me because I’m being framed for murder,” Susan allegedly told Adam at the jail that day.
During the heated cross-examination, Susan repeatedly brought up unfavorable incidents from Adam’s past in an attempt to discredit his testimony, at one point calling him “a bar room brawler.” Adam sat twirling a marker and staring at the ceiling as Susan once again played the fifteen-minute audiotape of his father telling an audience about his alleged sexual abuse by a satanic cult while a toddler in day care.
Pressing the stop button on the tape recorder, Susan asked her son if he thought that she “put those ideas in his father’s head.”
“I don’t think it’s a huge leap, that it’s outside the realm of possibility.”
On Thursday, after three days of questioning, Susan was informed that this would be her last day of cross- examination. Frustrated, Susan resumed her questioning of Adam over his father’s daily treatment of her, but as the day wore on, Susan’s time was running out, and she angrily complained about the “unfair” constraints. Still, she continued to ask him about topics that Brady had ruled inadmissible or irrelevant.
At 4:15 that afternoon, the prosecutor requested an adjournment. “Your honor, I’m feeling quite faint, can we take a break for the day?” It was not clear if Sequeira was ill or if he had just had enough of Susan’s courtroom antics.
“I think we can get a little more out of this witness,” the judge replied, signaling Susan to proceed.
Less than fifteen minutes later, Brady ended the cross-examination. She was angered by Susan’s flagrant disregard for her instructions to avoid questions about Adam’s alleged prior bad acts and Gabe’s relationship with the Briners.
“Okay, we’re done for the day,” Brady ordered, instructing court officers to remove jurors from the courtroom.
Rising to her feet, Susan shook her finger at the judge and shouted at her from the podium. “I move for a mistrial for judicial misconduct on your part! You’re putting time limits on me, you’re not allowing me to recall him [Adam]…”
“SIT DOWN MS. POLK!” Brady instructed, as jurors filing out of the courtroom looked on in stunned amazement. “Recess until 9 AM Monday.”
Susan continued her ranting even as deputies rushed to the defense table and shut off her microphone.
Chapter Twenty-six
DEFENDING HER LIFE
On Monday, April 24, Susan arrived at court ready to begin her case. A blue, long- sleeved T-shirt and chinos replaced her drab prison attire. She looked very thin and bony; reports were circulating that Susan now weighed less than 110 pounds. It was not clear who delivered the clothing to her at the detention center, although her former case assistant, Valerie Harris, was amid the journalists and spectators cramming the gallery that morning.
Susan’s trial had already filled thirty-four days when she informed Judge Brady that she had subpoenaed more than one hundred witnesses and anticipated her case would take another three weeks to present. On Susan’s extensive list were both her mother, Helen, and her son, Eli, who was still being held at the West County Detention Facility in Richmond on charges of misdemeanor battery and violating a restraining order. These charges stemmed from the incident with his girlfriend, but Eli also faced a probation violation for the high-speed chase that resulted in charges of evading a peace officer. Authorities had agreed to push back his trial date from May 2 to May 16 so that he could testify in his mother’s case. Also on the list were the doctor who examined her in January of 2001 after her failed suicide attempt at Yosemite National Park, a high-tech crime investigator, a psychic, and a forensic pathologist who would testify that Felix Polk died as a result of a heart attack—and not from the multiple stab wounds she had inflicted.
During her one-hour opening statement, Susan called Felix “Dr. Frankenstein” and told jurors that he drugged, molested, and manipulated her during their twenty-year marriage. She quoted from Thoreau and Dickens and referred to other literary works to illustrate that many narratives have surprise endings and that innocent people are sometimes wrongly accused of horrific acts.
In her speech, Susan maintained that she went to the guest cottage “just to talk” with her husband that fateful night and that Felix fell back and hit his head during the violent struggle.
“I was framed,” she said. “I did not stab my husband twenty-seven times, nor did I hit him. He fell.”
Susan promised a “nail biting, edge of your seat thriller” defense. “You may think you know all there is to know,” she told jurors. “But it’s my turn now.”
As her opening progressed, Susan insisted that she was a medium and claimed her husband had used her psychic talent to gain information that he reported back to his “handlers.” Though she warned Felix about her vision of the 9/11 terror attacks, he failed to report her prediction to authorities. Despite her unique abilities, Susan explained that hers was an ordinary situation, one that could have happened to anyone in an unhappy marriage.
“What happened to me could happen to any family,” Susan said. “The D.A. will have you believe that I was
