Catherine Crier: Final Analysis

It was then that Costa returned his attention to Susan’s actions after Gabriel found the body, asking Susan to recount the sequence of events once Gabriel made his gruesome discovery. Telling the detective of Gabriel’s assertion that she had murdered his father, Susan did not appear the least bit distraught that her son would make such a painful accusation. As she walked him through her activities leading up to the police officers’ arrival, Susan finished by telling him about how the officer that handcuffed her was the one to tell her that it appeared her husband had been killed.

“And what did you say to that?”

“I don’t remember exactly.”

“Okay, I mean if somebody gets told her husband was killed, I would expect some reaction, some sort of response.”

For nearly an hour, he had listened as the forty-four-year-old housewife rambled on about her life, her financial arrangements, and the details of her crumbling marriage. Her husband was dead, and yet she had not exhibited one iota of grief. How could she remain so stoic, or was she just cold? The detective was incredulous.

Trying to better understand the situation, Costa dug into Felix’s personal life, soliciting answers about whether Felix engaged in extra marital affairs or gambling that might generate enemies. While she said that Felix had had affairs in the past, he was not a man to owe money to loan sharks, and both of these questions led nowhere.

Costa began to explore the nature of the family dynamic, questioning Susan about Felix’s deceased parents and the whereabouts of Felix’s twin brother and his sister who both lived on the East Coast. Probing the relationship with her own parents, Costa found Susan unhelpful as she repeatedly described her father as a “pedophile” and her mother as “perverted,” while informing Costa that neither had any contact with the family in years.

As the questioning continued, it became apparent to Costa that Susan was the only immediate person with motive and opportunity, and he tried to convince her that the evidence was mounting against her.

“You have the motive, you know, the marital problems going on,” he said. “I’m sure tempers are not good between you, you know, as in any divorce.”

“He’s my sole source of income…. There is no life insurance. He makes—he grosses about $18,000 a month from his practice—and his teaching. I would not kill my husband. I can’t pay the bills.”

Costa wasn’t convinced, and the detective pressed the idea that Susan was the only person other than Gabriel who had the opportunity to kill Felix. Stepping back, he tried a different tactic.

“It only takes a split moment to get angry enough to do something like that. It happens all the time.”

“That’s why I don’t own firearms,” Susan replied coolly.

“Maybe, you know, like I said, maybe there’s a self-defense issue here. We’re not gonna know about it.”

“I didn’t do it,” Susan insisted. “I did not kill my husband!”

Despite her remonstrations, Costa remained skeptical. It wasn’t just her words that didn’t ring true, it was her unflinchingly stoic reaction. Only once, when the detective said definitively that the body in the cottage was that of her husband, did she display any emotion.

Detective Costa sighed aloud. “I got to tell you, the other thing, you’re sitting here, you know, we’ve been together for an hour now or so, and you don’t seem really choked up. You don’t seem really upset that he’s gone. I find that kind of, I mean granted…”

Susan interjected. “I’m very, very, very upset.”

“You do well at not showing it.”

“Well, you know, I can’t defend myself against an accusation like that,” she huffed.

“Well,” the detective shrugged, “It’s an observation that I’m making.”

“I’m not in love with my husband anymore,” Susan offered. “But I’m horrified. Particularly for my son that he found his body…but as for tears, you know.”

Detective Costa decided to take the questioning in another direction. “Was Felix under any professional care himself?”

“Yes,” Susan said.

“Was he seeing anybody?”

“He was seeing Justin Simon,” she said, referring to the psychiatrist who owned the Berkeley complex where Felix leased office space. According to Susan, Simon also prescribed Felix with antianxiety drugs. Though she was uncertain of the precise name, she indicated that it was a “valium derivative.” Susan was quick to point out the hypocrisy of it all—that Felix pointed the finger at her for being crazy, while never considering his own pharmaceutical dependency.

As the detective looked over his notes, he restated his theory yet again. “I’ve got to tell you, you know, something happened between you and Felix today that got out of hand.”

“No way!” Susan insisted.

“Well, that’s my feeling.”

“Did not!” Susan sniped back like a child in a tiff with a fellow classmate.

“I guess we just have to disagree, because something happened obviously. And I think it was between you and him. And you’re sitting over there, and you’re probably just dying to spill out what happened. And you can’t, for whatever reason. I don’t know, afraid of going to jail or…”

Susan jumped in. “No!”

“You know, we’ve had quite a few of these in this county recently, where wives have killed their husbands. One got off with manslaughter because of his past.”

“I did not kill my husband. I’m not that kind of person…. I don’t know what kind of a crime it was. You know, I wasn’t there. I don’t know what happened.”

“Well, they call it murder,” the detective replied before rising to his feet. He informed Susan that he needed to check on the status of the crime scene investigation and exited the room, returning a few minutes later with a second detective in tow. “This is Detective Jeff Moule, my partner.”

“How are you doing?” the second investigator said, nodding at Susan.

Outside the interrogation room, Detective Moule had updated Costa on the crime scene findings and the information gathered from Susan’s youngest son. Moule had been on the force for eight years, and during that time, he had worked ten homicides, four of them as lead investigator.

Susan looked up at the other detective, but before she could reply to his question, Detective Costa jumped in. “What’s this about you believed your husband was with the Mossad, he had like millions stashed in a Cayman Islands account somewhere? Why would your son think that?”

As with many of her previous responses, Susan’s explanation was long-winded and contradictory. It appeared she truly believed her husband was an Israeli agent, and she explained how this belief was based on the fact that Felix had insisted she sign a prenuptial agreement when they married in 1972.

“And usually when people sign a prenup it’s because there’s something to protect, right?” she insisted. “And over the years, I mean he sort of had a way of talking about things that was kind of like, not straight out, but it was kind of like hinting around and under the surface and, you know, a lot of just, it was double talk. And he sort of would talk about having assets, it seemed like to me, that I would always be provided for and the kids would. But now that we’re getting divorced, I’ve asked him, you know, about that. He’s like, ‘no.’”

Susan spoke in circles for nearly twenty minutes, citing various reasons why she believed her husband was a member of the Israeli Intelligence Agency. Another central component to her theory were statements allegedly made by Felix at the time of his ex-wife’s wedding that raised suspicions in Susan that Sharon’s new husband was a Mossad agent, too. Though Susan repeated them on many occasions, these allegations are unfounded.