MARTINEZ, Calif. — Jurors in the Susan Polk murder trial have not had the opportunity to tour the $1.85 million home and poolside cottage where Polk is accused of stabbing her 70-year-old psychologist husband Felix Polk to death nearly three years ago.

But on Wednesday evening, Polk's case manager Valerie Harris offered an impromptu viewing of the Polk residence to a group of trial watchers and a film crew from NBC's Today show.

"It kind of just happened at the end of the day," Harris told Courttv.com when reached by phone Thursday. "I did tell the Today show and a friend from the trial and it just spiraled after that."

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Several trial watchers who discussed with Courttv.com their experience visiting the Polk home said that Today show producers learned about their devotion to the Polk trial after a San Francisco Chronicle article http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/05/21/BAGGUIVIRE1.DTL    reported on "gavel groupies" who attend court during the day, discuss evidence over lunch, and spend time chatting on Court TV's message boards in the evenings.

Harris and a few gavel groupies were interviewed by the Today show over lunch Wednesday at a diner near the courthouse. Harris says she invited the crew to conduct another interview at Polk's home.

Polk once referred to the trial watchers as the "peanut gallery," when their sighs and chuckles distracted her. More recently she praised them for attending her trial out of what she believed was a sense of civic duty.

Harris said Polk was unaware that these individuals had been invited into her home, and she planned to tell her about it soon.

Harris said she supervised the evening and limited her invitations to people she knew.

"I thought, 'Well, you know, it's okay, you might as well see the property,'" Harris said. "My whole approach to this is if people saw the grounds, maybe they would get a better understanding of Susan and what her life was about."

Harris, her attorney Gary Wesley (whom Polk dismissed as advisory counsel Wednesday), a courtroom sketch artist who was working for Today, and about seven trial watchers drove up the winding road to Polk's Craftsman-style Orinda home.

Some went upstairs to see the couple's bedroom. Others peered into the windows of the cottage where Felix was stabbed. Many toured the grounds while enjoying wine and hors' d'oeuvres. One of them made a joke about a large knife in the kitchen.

Kathy Lucia is a petite woman with a gentle demeanor who has been attending trial sporadically since she was a witness for the defense on May 9.

Felix was Lucia's therapist in the late 1970s and she first met Susan during their group therapy sessions. Lucia testified that she lost touch with Polk over the years, but remembered the defendant confiding about her troubled relationship with their therapist http://www.courttv.com/trials/polk/051206_ctv.html.

Lucia told Courttv.com that Harris invited her to Polk's home after court on Wednesday.

"I was curious to see the house, so I said, 'Okay, I'll go with you,'" Lucia said. They made a stop at the grocery store first to pick up wine, beer, meat, cheese and crackers.

When they got to the Orinda home, the film crew was setting up and several trial watchers had arrived, Lucia said.

"I was shocked they were already there," Lucia said, adding that she stayed until about 10:30 p.m., never feeling quite comfortable with the fact that people were walking through Polk's home and talking about her on a taped show for national television.

"I didn't like it," Lucia said. "I thought it was weird, especially in light of the fact that there were court watchers there who I knew weren't on her side."

Alison Shurtleff is a freelance editor who had a passing acquaintance with Felix when she worked in the library at Argosy University where he was a psychology professor.

Shurtleff is an affable blonde with a witty sense of humor who sits with her mother in the courtroom and offers wry comments on the Court TV message boards about the day's testimony.

Like many of the trial watchers who stifle their laughter during Polk's courtroom antics, it's fair to say that Shurtleff is no fan of Polk's lengthy narratives on the stand and accusations of misconduct at the judge, prosecutor and courtroom personnel.

But Shurtleff said she felt empathy for Polk after seeing her home, which seemed almost frozen in time — the kitchen utensils, pots and pans, sitting cold and unused.

"I felt sorry for her, because she ended this nice way of life. You just give this up and just go live in a jail. But everything is still there," Shurtleff said. "It's kind of sad to think that she's not there to enjoy it, and other people you don't even know are. And I was one of them!"

Shurtleff was also among those who were invited to peek through a window into the cottage, where in October 2002, Polk's son Gabriel discovered his father's partially nude, bloody body, some 24 hours after his father was stabbed by his mother.

Polk says she acted in self-defense after Felix attacked her first with the blade, and that he died of a heart attack during the altercation. She is representing herself against a first -degree murder charge.

Tenants live in the cottage now and the place is off-limits to visitors.

"The pool house was so small," Shurtleff said, "it kind of removed some of the mystery to go see it."

Emily Larson is a mother of five with a warm smile who says she met Harris when they were both trial watchers at the Scott Peterson trial in Redwood City.

"I felt kind of bad sitting there," Larson said of her visit. "Because here she's sitting in jail and she'd probably give anything to be here right now, and to pet her own dog."

Larson says that she offered to foster Dusty, Polk's yellow Labrador retriever, who has been in the care of a series of friends and strangers since Polk's son Eli was arrested on a battery charge in March http://www.courttv.com/trials/polk/031606_ctv.html and recently sentenced to nine months in prison.

"I have a good-sized yard and a nice dog already," Larson said, adding that she is waiting for Harris to get Polk's approval.