Final Analysis (12 page)

S
usan’s hands-off parenting style had long been a point of contention with Felix. Whenever there was a problem with one of the boys, Felix was quick to blame Susan, charging either that she was too lenient or that the children were taking after her side of the family. After all, he said, she was the one who dropped out of school in the ninth grade, and it was her household that had been dysfunctional, a comparison that Susan deeply resented. She was upset that Felix would dredge up things she had confided during their therapy sessions at his Berkeley office.

In truth, Susan prided herself on giving the boys space and allowing them their independence. While other mothers were congratulating themselves on how “obedient” their children were, Susan was chuckling at her sons’ displays of strong will. She believed in free will and self-determination and hoped that by giving her children room, they would find that on their own. She wanted her boys to think things over for themselves, and unlike other mothers, she didn’t want to tell them what to do. To Susan, so much control could only lead to “a society of storm troopers or Spartans.” She was about self-expression. The idea of controlling her children went against all that she believed and all that she experienced under the tyrannical Felix Polk.

There was another reason, too. She didn’t want to be like Felix’s mother—completely controlling about everything. According to Susan, Johanna “Joan” Polk was a micromanager, and Susan resented her intrusiveness. Johanna’s approach was quite different from the hands-off style Susan had known with her mother. During her visits to Susan and Felix’s house, Johanna was compelled to comment on things big and small, even on the way Susan washed the dishes. Although he resented his mother’s overbearing nature as a child, now Felix saw no problem with her behavior, hoping that her presence would influence Susan’s parenting. He made no secret of his disapproval of Susan’s skills, constantly insisting that she needed “to train the kids.”

Susan never liked the sound of it. Training was something people did with animals, not people. Nevertheless, the lack of structure and rules in the household continued to be an issue for the family, and Felix was not the only family member to take issue with Susan’s parenting. Adam had problems with her child-rearing abilities as well, going so far as to accuse his mother of fostering a pattern of antisocial behavior by allowing his younger siblings to blame their troubles on others instead of demanding they take responsibility for their part. In a letter to the court dated September 10, 2004, Adam noted that, when called up to school to deal with misconduct on the part of Gabe or Eli, Susan defended her sons—pointing a finger at administrators for their failure to carry out their duties properly. When the boys were arrested for various infractions, she accused the other party or police of “inappropriate” treatment of her and her sons.

The letter went on to point out that, as far as Susan was concerned, it was not her children’s fault when things went awry. When Eli was caught with marijuana, it was only because he was “holding it” for someone else. When he struck a schoolmate with a flashlight, breaking his nose and causing a great deal of bleeding and facial cuts, Susan claimed Eli didn’t even have a flashlight in his possession that night.

The information in the letter was tough medicine, but it contained a number of legitimate complaints. Yet it failed to address other crucial problems, such as Susan’s distaste for authority. Indeed, her openly hostile treatment of authority complicated matters for her and her sons dur
ing difficult situations with the police or probation officers. Though she would later deny it, Felix claimed Susan cursed out the principal of Gabriel’s middle school, telling him to “go fuck himself.” She also penned an angry letter to the chief of the Moraga Police Department, complaining about officers who executed a search warrant in February 2002 to collect potential evidence in an assault case against Eli.

In that instance, Susan was furious that officers accused her of interfering. “Officer Harbison announced that I was obstructing the search, twisted my arm painfully behind my back, placed handcuffs on me,” she wrote. “Sergeant Price then led me downstairs and told me to sit down. I was not violent, threatening or getting in the way of the search.”

While Felix and Adam viewed Susan’s parenting and problems with authority as having a negative impact on the family, Susan had her own issues with Felix’s fatherly skills. She detested Felix’s need to single out one son as the “golden” boy, much like his own father had done with his twin brother, John. She observed that in his first marriage, Felix had lavished praise on his firstborn son, Andrew, while his daughter Jennifer received the criticism. Now in his second marriage, the pattern was repeating itself as Felix tended to favor their eldest son, Adam, while being outwardly critical of Eli and simply forgetting Gabriel. In many ways, Adam was more akin to Felix’s twin brother, John. He was smart and athletic, and things came naturally to him—qualities that Felix envied.

In a letter to Eli, Susan confided that Felix’s need to pick one of his children to be an example for the rest of the family members

Of the three Polk boys, Susan viewed Eli as the most sensitive and emotional. In his teens, Eli displayed anxiety and separation issues similar to those Felix battled as a young man. In a diary, Susan noted that her middle son found it difficult to be apart from his dad. During grammar school, Eli had come home early from a hockey camp in Canada, and on a trip to Paris with Susan in 2001, he became so anxious he boarded a plane for home after just three days abroad. To Susan, it was clear that Eli’s issues were directly connected to his father’s poor treatment of him.

“You have systematically treated Eli as if he had something wrong with him, just as you did Jennifer in your first family,” Susan wrote of Felix in her computer diary. “You seem to have a need to scapegoat somebody.

“According to you, Sharon was to blame for Jennifer’s poor self-esteem. You forget that while Jennifer lived with us, I had time to observe how you treated her. Consistently, you behaved as if her intelligence was subnormal, when in fact it appeared to me there was nothing at all the matter with her except for her poor self-esteem…. I can’t pretend to understand this family dynamic: how a family selects a child for success (in your first family, it was Andy, in ours, Adam), and a sibling or siblings for failure…. It has broken my heart, and I can no longer live with your sadistic parenting.”

In addition to his favoritism toward Adam, Felix, like Susan, suffered from an inability to properly discipline and control the boys. Such was the case on the night of May 25, 2001, when police were called to investigate a “rowdy” party at the Miner Road compound where underage drinking was supposedly occurring. Responding officers found more than twenty-five underage partygoers around the pool, and Felix was the adult in charge. “Throughout the area, I saw empty cans of Budweiser and Coors Light, cans of Budweiser beer full or partially full and still cold, unopened cans of beer still cold, a glass filled with an alcoholic beverage resembling red wine, and a half-full bottle of Smirnoff Vodka,” Officer K. Mooney of the Orinda Police Department documented in the official report.

Officer Mooney was familiar with the location, having been summoned to the residence numerous times for loud, juvenile parties. “All of
the alcoholic beverage containers were located in and around groups of persons who I separately identified as being in age from 16 to 18.”

Mooney noted that Frank [Felix] Polk, was in the kitchen, which overlooked the pool and the pool house, when he and his partner arrived at 10:20 that night. “Both the alcoholic beverages and the large group of juveniles were in plain view,” Mooney wrote. “Shortly after my arrival, Frank came outside, and asked what I was doing on his property. I told him that we had a complaint of a loud party. Frank said that it was just a graduation party and that it wasn’t loud.

“I told Frank that there were minors on his property while alcoholic beverages were being consumed and reminded him of my previous warning on 5/5/01. Frank replied that it was a graduation party.

“Frank’s son, Adam, approached as I was speaking with Frank. Adam told me that he was 18 years old and that it was his party and that he was responsible for the party.”

It was then that the officers placed Felix and his son under arrest and charged them with “contributing to the delinquency of a minor” and “un-lawful juvenile gathering on private property.” Though both men were later released at the scene and got off with mere citations, the episode was a disturbing example of Felix’s double standards. This hypocrisy would only worsen over the course of the next year; the Orinda police were regularly summoned to the Polk house in response to complaints of loud parties with underage drinking and fistfights. During one such call, in May of 2002, police arrived to find nearly one hundred teens, the majority of them minors, holding red plastic cups filled with beer. While there, a fight erupted in the crowd near the guesthouse and officers worked to break it up. Police found Felix Polk at home and admonished him for allowing alcohol to be served to minors.

Despite his claims of Susan’s negligence when it came to disciplining the boys, it became increasingly clear that Felix suffered from a similar inability to set boundaries for their teenage sons. While he would routinely belittle Susan’s ability to parent her children, his own attitudes proved just as dangerously nonchalant. Furthermore by allowing these unsupervised parties, he risked not just the well-being of his sons but of other teens as well.

In the days after Susan’s arrest, the questionable parenting of both Felix and Susan was examined as police reviewed their files and learned a lot more about this dysfunctional family. Officers were summoned to the Polk house frequently to deal with situations involving Adam, Eli, or Gabriel. Indeed, problems of one sort or another with the Polk family went way back—particularly with regard to Eli who had been in and out of trouble since 1998, when he and several friends allegedly entered another schoolmate’s house without permission and stole one hundred fifty dollars worth of alcohol. He was twelve at the time.

The following January, Eli was stopped for driving without a license. The officer who flashed him over intended to cite him for a broken headlight until he discovered the driver was just thirteen years old—far too young for even a learner’s permit.

Even worse, he had three female passengers in the car with him.

Susan and Felix took custody of Eli and his three young passengers, and Eli was fined one hundred twenty-five dollars for the violation.

In addition to his recklessness, Eli also displayed severe problems with aggression and harassment. It was no secret that he loved to fight, but he ran into problems when he brought this inclination to school with him. In April of 2000, he was expelled from Piedmont High School for harassing a classmate, calling the teen a “fucking fag,” and speaking derogatorily about homosexuals. He further inflamed the situation by yelling back “I say we kill all homosexuals” as he was ordered from his fourth-period classroom and directed to the principal’s office. Eli was ultimately suspended for his comments and for passing a note that read “u r gay” to the classmate. In addition, his teenage victim filed a police report alleging that Eli was so threatening, he “feared for his life.”

Unfortunately, Eli was not the only son with a tendency toward violence. In April of 1998, Adam was accused of battery for allegedly punching a classmate of Eli’s in the face at a middle-school dance. At the time, he was attending De La Salle High School, a Catholic all-boys school in Concord. Adam told officers who came to the family’s Piedmont home to investigate that he was simply “preventing Eli from getting a beating.” Adam claimed he went to the school that night to make sure Eli was “protected,” after hearing rumors that the kid had threatened to “jump” his
brother and carried a knife. According to Adam, he approached the teen, who was standing with friends in the schoolyard, and asked if he was “talking” about Eli. Words were exchanged and, at one point, Adam hauled off and punched the kid in the nose, fleeing the school grounds in the aftermath.

Not surprisingly, the victim’s recollection of the night’s events differed significantly from Adam’s. In the ensuing police report, the boy said Adam punched him twice, once in the nose and once on the cheek, while he was outside on the street in front of the school waiting for his father to pick him up that night. He didn’t even know who Adam was when he walked up and announced that Eli said the kid had been “talking about him [Adam].”

“If I were to punch you, would you block it?” Adam reportedly asked the teen.

“No, I don’t want to start nothing,” the boy replied.

The victim claimed that Adam hit him in the face two times without provocation, and then walked away. When it was all over, Adam was issued a ticket and released to the custody of his mother. He was also ordered to receive counseling from a member of the Contra Costa Sheriff ’s Office on the dangers of taking situations into his own hands, agreeing that in the future he would call police for help.

In the summer of 2002, people attending a party at a nearby home in Alamo charged that Adam stole silver dishes and a Sony Play Station, worth in excess of five hundred dollars. Officers were dispatched to the Miner Road house to interview Adam but learned that he had already left for UCLA. Gabriel answered the door that day and insisted the accusations were false. He said Adam told him that the girl who hosted the party “wanted to sleep with Adam” but Adam “didn’t want to sleep with her.” It was for this reason that she named him as the culprit, he said.