Catherine Crier - Final Analysis

“I’ve already tried it once,” he announced. Felix said he had actually turned on the gas burners in his house, but while waiting for death, “had grown bored with the whole thing.”

Unsure how to respond, Fannie grabbed his hand to comfort him and recounted the story of her brother’s suicide several months earlier while he was on active duty in the army. As Fannie told the sad tale, she found Felix’s response worrisome. Suddenly, he was listening very intently, inquiring about every detail, particularly regarding the method her brother had employed.

After the theater, Felix and Fannie returned to her place where they spent the night together. The following afternoon, they attended a matinee featuring Marcel Marceau, but once the film ended, Felix became frighteningly sullen and announced that he wanted to go home.

“Call me the minute you get to Harrison,” Fannie begged when he dropped her off around 5:30 that Sunday evening. She knew that his parents, Eric and Johanna Polk, had traveled to Rochester for the weekend to visit their daughter, Evelyn. With Felix’s brother, John, stationed overseas, there would be no one at home to look after him.

Felix sounded increasingly dejected when he telephoned from Harrison just after 7 PM. Worried, Fannie phoned him again later that evening. She was relieved when he picked up the line just after 10 PM, but became distraught as she listened.

“It’s too late for the world,” Felix repeated over and over into the receiver. “Too late, too late.”

Fannie tried to console Felix, but he soon admonished “don’t call back anymore” and hung up the phone.

Frantic, and convinced that Felix was in trouble, Fannie begged her mother to phone the police.

It was nearing 10:30 PM when Felix sat down at the typewriter. He felt compelled to release his emotions on paper:

I have done what for a long time, I know I must do. When a rock is thrown into water it sinks. It must sink, as now must I. My minds (sic) is so heavy with wretchedness, with utter loneliness, with an unknown past, a frightening future and an intolerable past present that no choice remains. I don’t fear death at all. What it is, but non-life. And what is life but a continuous torture? This final act is not sudden or impetuous. I have known that someday it would take place. The question has only been, where, when, and how. Until a few weeks ago, there has always been some spark, some hope, which prevented me from the obvious. This night there is no hope. There is nothing; and tomorrow and tomorrow.

Of regrets, I have few. It would be folly for anyone to assume the blame for something of which I myself and no one else is responsible. I say goodbye to a hateful world with a smile. In life, I hated pity and in death I want none. Had I not come this far in life my loss would perhaps have been easier. I have forgotten the world and now the world much [sic] forget me.

Rising from the desk, Felix grabbed the keys to the family car. Feeling stronger than he had in a long time, he took one last look around and headed for the garage. Sliding into the passenger seat, he put the key into the ignition and started the engine. The hum of the motor was comforting, and he felt great relief that he had the courage to do what he wanted to do so many times before.

Police records show that an anonymous call came into the Harrison Police Department sometime after 11 PM that Sunday night, October 16. The female caller did not give her name; she was just a concerned citizen who wanted to report a “possible suicide” at 308 Harrison Avenue, the home of Eric and Johanna Polk.

Officer Pat Pizarello responded to the “mysterious phone call” and “lights on” dispatch to the Polk residence. Armed with a flashlight, he began to examine the grounds. Hearing a noise coming from inside the garage, he flung open the door to find the space filled with carbon monoxide gas. There was a car parked inside with its motor running and Felix was on the floor adjacent to the car’s front right wheel. At one point, he had been in the passenger seat but had apparently slipped to the garage floor when he became unconscious.

“I had suicidal thoughts before but never thought I’d have nerve enough to try it,” Felix later told psychiatrists at the U.S. Naval Hospital at St. Albans, New York.

Ironically, Felix Polk would be murdered 46 years later, almost to the day.

Three years after his suicide attempt, Felix met and married Sharon Mann, an attractive music student at the Julliard School in New York City, who was just eighteen when the couple was first introduced in 1956. At the time, Felix was on temporary leave from the U.S. Naval Reserve, and he was employed as a social worker at the Cedar Knolls School in Hawthorne, New York County, while studying for a master’s in social work at Manhattan’s Albert Einstein College. On weekends, he worked as a recreation therapist at the Linden Hill School for Disturbed Adolescents in Westchester to supplement the monthly disability payments of $231 he had begun receiving from the navy. He was also seeing a private psychiatrist three times a week, paying $15 a session.

Two years after his marriage, on September 26, 1960, Felix received an honorable discharge from the U.S. Naval Reserve for a “physical disability.” That same year, he and Sharon relocated to northern California. There, Felix enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, where he did additional undergraduate coursework. Deciding he wanted to help people like himself to get well, he applied and was admitted to the university’s PhD program.

While Felix earned his doctorate, Sharon supported the couple, and later, their small family. On October 2, 1962, she gave birth to a son, Andrew D. Polk, and three years later, on March 23, 1965, a daughter, Jennifer, was born. That same year, Felix was awarded both a PhD in clinical psychology and a second bachelor’s degree—a B.S. with honors—from Berkeley University.

The following summer, he traveled to England on a National Institute of Mental Health fellowship, where he remained for two years treating adolescents and families as a staff clinician at London’s Travistock Clinic and Institution. Though records are sketchy, it appears that Felix saw little of his wife and children during that time.

Returning to California in 1967, he landed a plum post as chief psychologist at the Alameda County Mental Health Services in Oakland where he was responsible for overseeing the psychological services for all the clinics and hospitals in the county. In addition, he was an instructor at both Hayward State University in Hayward and at Holy Names College in Oakland. While Felix was beginning to experience success, Sharon, was also excelling in her career, quickly gaining acclaim as a pianist and piano teacher.

By all accounts, the couple seemed happy. Felix and Sharon shared a love of classical music, and for one birthday, Sharon gave her husband a cello. Nancy Lemmon, a teenage babysitter who lived across Cragmont Street from the family in Berkeley, recalled in a telephone interview Sharon’s excitement the evening she presented the expensive instrument to her husband, saying that Felix was overjoyed by the gift and was anxious to learn to play. He had long dreamed of owning a cello and was overwhelmed by his wife’s thoughtfulness.

Nancy was a young teen when she began caring for the Polk children and recalled the couple vividly, stating that they were respectful of each other’s interests and seemed a good match. Felix was always welcoming when Nancy came over, making her feel at ease in his lovely home. While Nancy admitted that she never really knew what type of work Felix did, she assumed he was a college professor because of his intelligence and attire—often a tweed jacket and slacks. Sharon, too, was smart and always attractive in feminine outfits and little makeup.