The police watched as Felix tried to enter the residence only to find that Susan had changed the locks, leading them to advise Felix to follow up with his attorney in the morning. In the meantime, Felix returned to the Lafayette Park where he spent the remainder of the night.
While he should have remained at the hotel until things with Susan were resolved, he opted for the cottage. Despite his fears and the repeated advice of his attorney, Felix moved back into the pool house that Friday morning. Meanwhile Adam and Gabriel stayed in the main house with their mother. Though it was a risk that could lead to confrontation, Felix felt it was necessary so that he could spend time with Adam who was home from UCLA for the weekend.
It was yet another decision he would regret. In fact, in a letter dated September 23, 2002, his attorney, Steve Landes, had expressed frustration with Felix’s inability to protect himself. For more than a year, he fought to get Felix to proceed with the divorce. “Getting actual financial information out of you is like pulling teeth,” Landes wrote in the letter. “I don’t know why you call me and tell me you need to be protected and yet you ignore the most basic stuff I need to give you this protection.
“You give me the impression that you feel I’m harassing you when I ask for this stuff, but I can’t really proceed without it. How well we do in this case depends on both our efforts. I won’t even raise the issue of how often you have ignored my advice.”
On the evening of Saturday October 12, Felix took his sons to a horror film,
Felix and Gabe stayed to watch the Sunday afternoon Oakland Raiders football game on TV before beginning the four-hundred-mile drive back to Orinda sometime after 3 PM. During the trip, Gabriel sensed his dad was worried about his mother’s repeated threats, but these concerns were not strong enough to entice Felix to find alternate accommodations. Distracting each other with idle talk about sports, they decided to attend the Giants’ playoff game the following night.
It was almost 8 PM on Monday, October 14, and still, there had been no word from his dad. As Gabriel climbed the steps to the guesthouse, the darkness enveloped him. There were three entrances to the cottage, but he was hesitant to go in, scared of what he might find. The door he tried—the one everyone used —was locked, and he didn’t check the other doors. Besides, there were too many light switches and he could never figure out which switch worked which light. He returned to the main house and went back upstairs to his room where he stayed for about an hour, trying to figure out what to do; he was beginning to think that he would need the police if his dad didn’t turn up in the next hour.
It was exactly 9 PM when Gabriel dialed 911 to get the number of the Orinda police department’s nonemergency line. Even though his gut told him something was wrong, he didn’t want to make a fool of himself by calling authorities if there was nothing to report. He would try to locate the officer who had come to the house several days earlier to see if he’d heard anything. Perhaps his dad had been in a car crash, he thought.
“Nine-one-one,” said the female dispatcher who answered the call.
“Hi, can I get the nonemergency number for the police department?”
“What is it that you’re reporting?”
“Um, I just need to talk to an officer there,” Gabe said.
“Okay, about what, sir,” the dispatcher asked.
“Do I need to tell you?”
“Yes, you do. You called me on 911. We don’t give out numbers on 911. It’s for emergencies only, and I can maybe help you on this line depending on what you need to report.”
“Fine, I’ll just call the police department,” Gabe said.
“Okay, thank you.”
Grabbing a flashlight, the teen went back downstairs with the phone number for the Orinda police department tucked in his dark-colored shorts. On his way out the door, his mother stopped him.
“Why did you call the police?” she asked.
“I didn’t call the police!” Gabriel snapped, and continued outside to the upper carport where his mom kept her car. The house had two driveways; Susan preferred the one at the top of the property that was reached by a neighboring street, while Eli and Felix used the lower one that was accessible from Miner Road. Gabe wanted to check Susan’s Volvo wagon for any traces of his father. A grisly thought had crossed his mind: maybe his mother had used the car to transport his dad’s dead body somewhere. But upon inspection, the car yielded nothing out of the ordinary.
“What are you doing?” his mother yelled out to him.
“Nothing,” he called back. Gabriel was barefoot and shirtless as he walked down the steps to the cottage in an attempt to hide from his mother. With the main door locked, he went to another door that faced the house, entering through the galley kitchen and proceeding down the narrow darkened hallway to the balcony area that overlooked the living room. Shining his flashlight into the blackened space, he saw his father lying on the ground with blood covering his near naked body.
The sight was too much for the fifteen-year-old boy, who quickly left the cottage and shut the door behind him.
Gabriel’s heart raced as he returned to the main house. Without saying a word to his mother, he rushed to the bedroom, grabbed the cordless phone and ran back outside, sprinting up the path that led to a hidden area of the property where the family kept the trashcans. He could hear his mother calling as he ducked behind the wooden carport that housed her Volvo. He dialed 911.
Barely seven minutes had passed since he first called that number. He recognized the female dispatcher’s voice when she answered.
“Uh, murder,” he blurted out.
There was a moment’s hesitation, as if the dispatcher was processing the declaration. “Where at?”
“At 728 Miner Road.”
“Okay, what happened?” she asked, switching on the police radio to alert units in the field. Orinda is one of five unincorporated cities in the county that contracts patrol services from the Contra Costa Sheriff’s Department.
“Um, I think my mom… my mom shot my dad.”
“You think your mom shot your dad?” the dispatcher repeated.
“Yeah.”
“Okay, stay on the phone, I’m going to connect you to the fire department. Do not hang up,” the officer instructed.
There were several beeps, and then ringing, as the call was transferred to the fire department’s emergency line.
“It’s a possible shooting,” the sheriff’s dispatcher said, briefing her counterpart at the Contra Costa Fire Department.
“Okay, what’s your name, sir?” the fire dispatcher asked Gabe.
The teen spelled it twice.
“Where’s your mom at now?”
“She’s still in the house,” the teen responded breathlessly.
“Does she still have the gun?”
“I believe so.”
“Where is your dad at?”
“He’s dead,” Gabe shot back.
“Where is he at, do you know?”
“He’s in my cottage.”
“In your cottage?”
“Yeah.”
“Does your mom still have the gun?”
“I believe so.”
“Do you know when this happened?”
