MARTINEZ, Calif. — Murder defendant Susan Polk sat in the dark courtroom Tuesday and broke down in tears as she watched herself on a videotape, sitting alone in a cold police interrogation room, waiting for detectives to question her about the dead body they had just discovered in her guest house.

"Do you want to talk about what happened?" Sheriff's Detective Michael Costa asks Polk on the video, which was shown to jurors in Polk's first-degree murder trial.

"What did happen?" Polk says in a timid, emotionless voice. (VIDEO)

"That's what I'm hoping you can tell me," Costa says softly.

Story continues

advertisement

"I did not hear any gunshots. I don't own a firearm ... I haven't seen him all day," Polk says of the victim, her 70-year-old psychologist husband, Dr. Felix Polk.

Polk now admits that she stabbed her husband to death with a paring knife on Oct. 13, 2002.

But jurors at her trial Tuesday watched her repeatedly deny any knowledge of her husband's death during the two-hour long police interview. She calmly and repeatedly says: "I didn't do it."

"He is my sole source of income. There is no life insurance," Polk tells detectives. "I would not kill my husband."

Polk later claimed she acted in self-defense and that she lied to investigators at first because she feared and was untrusting of police.

At the same time she was being interrogated, her 15-year-old son, Gabriel, was in another room, telling officers that his mother had delusions that Felix Polk was an agent in the Israeli Mossad, and that she threatened to buy a shotgun and blow Felix's head off.

"All is know, is I was lying in my bed reading and I heard Gabe get on the phone and ask to speak to a police officer, so I got out of bed and asked him 'What's wrong?'" Polk says. "He accused me of having done something to his dad, of having killed his dad."

The interview was surreptitiously recorded on Oct. 15, 2002, at around 12:30 a.m. on a camera that appeared to have been mounted in an upper corner of the white interrogation room.

It was the same night Gabriel Polk called 911, after finding his father's bloody body in the guest cottage at the couple's $1.85 million Orinda, Calif., home.

Gabriel testified previously that he was worried about his father that night — they were supposed to go to a Giants baseball game — but he had not seen him all day. Gabriel suspected his mother had done something terrible, he said.

The Polks were in a contentious divorce battle and Felix had recently moved into the guest house. Gabriel took a flashlight and went outside to look around. He found his father's body, lying face-up in a puddle of dried blood, on the red-tiled floor of the cottage.

"You don't know what happened?" Detective Costa asks Polk again on the tape after nearly an hour of hearing about the couple's marital problems and Polk's seemingly mundane activities that day — including searching for her lost Labrador retriever, Dusty; picking Gabriel up from school; a trip to the pharmacy for toiletries; and renting "Scooby-Doo" from the video store — but no information about her husband.

"Something happened," Costa insists.

"I don't have enough information to speculate about what happened," Polk says, adding that she didn't even know if her husband was really dead. "I mean, who has identified him? Did my son find his body?"

"Yes," Costa says.

"Oh my God," Polk says, later adding, "I did not kill my husband. I'm not that kind of person."

But prosecutors contend she willfully killed Felix amid their painful divorce proceedings.

"Why would I kill my source of income?" Polk tells police on the tape. "That would be stupid."

Fight over evidence

The videotape came in through the testimony of Detective Costa, who took the stand Tuesday and testified that he also seized Polk's computer, which contained diaries that Polk intends to share with jurors when she begins her case, and a wood-handled kitchen knife from the dishwasher that was tinged with "red dried stuff."

Prosecutors claim criminologists have examined several knives from the Polk residence, but they have been unable to positively identify which, if any, inflicted the multiple stab wounds found all over Felix Polk's body.

Polk tried to suppress the videotape from evidence during a sidebar Tuesday morning, complaining that it violated her Miranda rights. But Costa can be heard early in the tape explaining to Polk that she had the right to remain silent.

Polk argued to the judge that when she told the officer she was "very, very tired" and "cold," and that she "showed obvious signs of shock," he had a duty to end the interrogation.

The judge disagreed.

"There was a clear understanding of the rights and a clear waiver," Judge Laurel Brady said, noting "it was the gentlest interview I've seen in a homicide case in years."

In fact, Polk was friendly and open for most of the taped interview.

She even offered details about her allegedly dire financial situation, which were later used against her.

She and her husband had roughly $70,000 in debts, she told Costa, and two mortgages on the Orinda home that drained them of about $3,600 a month.

She said she had moved to Montana for a few months to get away from her husband, but returned in the days before his death to take care of financial matters and fire her divorce attorney after an alarming phone call she received from him.

"While I'm in Montana, I get this phone call — 'Guess what? You've just lost custody of your son, your husband has exclusive possession of the house and your spousal support has been reduced,' — and I said, 'Are you kidding?'" Polk told the detective.

Polk said her $7,500-a-month spousal support had been reduced to $1,700, which she claimed barely covered her insurance, let alone other expenses.

Prosecutors allege it was the phone call that sent her over the edge, and that she came home with the express purpose of killing her husband.

"You don't seem really upset," Costa tells Polk at one point.

"I'm very, very upset," Polk tells him.

"You're not showing it," Costa says.

"I'm not in love with my husband anymore," Polk admits, "but I'm horrified, particularly for my son that he found his body."

Polk told the detective that her husband did not lead "an impeccable life," and that a previous patient many years ago had threatened him with a knife. He also allegedly threatened to kill himself, she said, and had been on anti-anxiety medication.

A detective also asked Polk about whether she believed her husband was an agent in the Israeli Mossad and had money hidden in offshore accounts on the Cayman Islands.

Gabriel has cited both these beliefs as evidence of his mother's delusions.

"Over the years he would talk about having assets," Polk said gingerly, adding that she didn't think it was an unreasonable assumption that he hid money from her.

Polk also speculated that her Jewish husband had friends in high places, some of whom she believed were Israeli agents.

He could be in the Mossad, she said, but it was mostly a joke in the home that she would use to upset him.

The detectives became increasingly agitated with Polk during the interview, almost playing good cop, bad cop, as one would raise his voice and accuse her of hiding information, while the other would tell her it was in her family's best interests to "come clean."

"You're living in some kind of dream world right now," Costa tells Polk on the video.

"I didn't kill him," Polk says softly.

"Yes, you did," Costa says.

"No, I didn't."

"This is how you want to leave it?" Costa says. "Deny, deny, lie, lie, lie and live in your little fantasy world?"

"I didn't do it," Polk says.

She faces 25 years to life in prison if convicted of murder.