five of them deep stab wounds, and evidence of a hard blow to felix s head. that told you so much about what had happened that night. reporter: and then, the prosecutor asked, why did susan fail to call 911? why did she clean herself up, allow her son to find the body, and then lie to the police for two days? i would not kill my husband. i can t pay the bills. it s always tough to sell self-defense when the first time you re confronted by law enforcement you say i wasn t there and i had nothing to do with it and i don t know what you re talking about. disturbing evidence. but nothing compared to the testimony her sons were about to give in court. eli we ve already heard from. his story of father-dominated violence is what susan is counting on to win her freedom. but what would the others say about the embarrassing family secrets? what about the baby, about gabriel? who since his father was killed has refused even to see his
once musing aloud, whether to drug, drown or shoot felix. and friend barry morris says by now felix was genuinely worried, claiming susan was unhinged, dangerous. he told me she was walking around at night with a gun in the house and he was barricading himself in another room. so all the signs were there. reporter: police were called to intervene. on one occasion susan was arrested for hitting her husband in front of officers. felix calls me up to tell me what happened and wants to know if he should bail her out. i said, felix, this woman just hit you, do you think that s a good idea? i don t. then he calls me up a couple days later about not wanting to prosecute, and that was that. but that s a typical example of, you know, of sort of confusing his own self-interest with his clinical diagnosis of someone who is mentally unbalanced.
susan turned to her trial assistant and said, my life is over. i don t think susan polk is a violent, vicious person. but she murdered her husband. she s got to pay the price for it. reporter: but was she delusional? was she, as her eldest son called her, cuckoo for cocoa puffs? she has been telling us for 3 1/2 months that she is not delusional, and there was certainly no evidence that she s delusional. reporter: susan s three boys, once as close as brothers could be, now estranged opponents. at her sentencing eli, her troubled champion, again defended his mother. he begged the court for leniency, claiming his mother was the victim of his father s abuse. if released, she d come home and bake a batch of cookies, he said. susan s oldest son, adam, told
years together and the love that i d felt for him and our children, and i thought, when are the police coming? you know? you didn t sit there thinking, oh, my god, i just killed my husband? of course i did. reporter: over the next few days susan s story would come under intense and negative scrutiny. but right at that moment she picked herself up, went back to the house, cleaned off the blood, and went to bed. why didn t you call 911? i thought that if i did my life was over, they were not going to listen to me and they were not going to care. reporter: then, nearly 24 hours after felix s gruesome death, the couple s 15-year-old son, gabriel, who d been living with felix, discovered his father s lifeless body on the floor of the poolside cottage. so okay. maybe she was scared. maybe that s why she didn t call the police right away after it happened. but then she set it up so gabe would find the body? what kind of mother does that? why did you let gabriel find
we can t ask felix, of course. but susan, sitting here in prison, claimed that what happened was more than just inappropriate, it became the dark heart of her life. what i recall is that my husband asked me if i would consent to be hypnotized. i would walk in, he d give me a cup of tea. next thing i d know i d look at the clock and the hour was gone and i couldn t remember what had happened. and for many years i just didn t think about it. this happened for years? yeah. i started seeing him when i was 15. i never stopped. reporter: he was her first, she says, and her only, who all the while controlled her, led her to what felt to a girl like love. and ten years later, when susan was 25, felix 50, he left his wife and kids and the two got married. according to susan, felix dominated from the beginning.