Killer Dads

by Mary Papenfuss

  My work offered some spontaneous overtime, so I worked Friday 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. (decided to drive to work, not biking at 4 a.m.—5 a.m. is my earliest limit). Was so happy to come home and know that the weeds were gone. Did dinner and took the boys outside. I think Braden is really teething (I can see the teeth) and he’s drooling a lot with a runny but clear nose, and he was feverish and falling asleep in my arms. But when I took him inside to clean him up and gave him some baby Tylenol for fever, he seemed to get his second wind.

  Then I backed up the garbage disposal so Josh got annoyed with me (no shocker) but all gung-ho with snaking the kitchen and bathtub drains. He did mention his mom suggested he go “out with the boys for lunch on Fridays” to “fit in and be social,” and he’s already talking about using the little antenna balls from Jack in the Box to “decorate his cubicle.” He mentioned there are some “hard core rumors” about a guy with “12 kids” and his boss and another guy they often refer to as their “partner,” so I think he is in a very diversified environment. He says they have rubber-band gunfights and talk politics and they sound like a bunch of computer geeks. He continues to say he needs to “study more” and needs some project done by Monday to prove his worth. They gave him a work-issued laptop and an identity badge so I know he feels special. I pray and hope that his skills will keep his company satisfied and he can stay long term. He did concede, I guess, that he didn’t want to do anything final with alternative commuting purchases until he knows this job is permanent. He is still interested in an electric bike and car, but I told him we should seek out the car-pooling field first and do more research.

  I set my first shrink appointment—the earliest with my schedule and who I want is September 4, so I’m sad that I have to hold my peace for that long. Josh hasn’t made any appointments yet, although I’ve emailed him the info on how to get it all set up.

  That’s me in a nutshell. See you in church?

  Susan

  ———

  Hello Girlie!

  From: Susan Powell

  Sent: Mon. 7/28/08

  Yeah I think the Relief Society [Mormon charity and education auxiliary] policy is to only tell one of the partners. K always tells me they only contact me if they can’t get hold of her (rarely in the four years I’ve been here). They’ve released me from leading music, which was the only RS contact I had on a weekly basis (although they forgot to mention that, and that I’m now “nursery leader” in sacrament, but whatever). It was a good week because they were speaking about girls camp.

  Josh is with AD, “computer geek for trucking company,” contract to hire, which makes me nervous.

  His sis is working on the family pics and I want to print and display and post them online. Trust me, I’m excited, too! Funny, I never really thought about the “faith without works is dead” in that concept before. You amaze me sometimes. I know you and everyone else will support me in whatever decisions, even if it means I crash someone’s house in the middle of the night with my boys in tow (hope that never happens) or stay with him. But believe me, my bottom line is: he will do counseling at least. I expect by our anniversary next April (eight years) we will both be in counseling, and finally fixing the marriage, or somewhere in mediation/divorce court . . . sad but simple as that.

  I’m sure if he fixes himself, you and everyone else will see a much closer version of the guy I married. And it will be easy enough to forget the hell and turmoil he’s put me through (this is, of course, assuming things get better permanently). He used to buckle me in and give me a kiss, hold doors open, sincerely worry if I didn’t put on a coat, buy groceries and help me cook and clean, or cook and clean for himself—hang out and talk together, watch movies and relaxing TV just for entertainment, and make time for being with friends, group dates, etc., go to church, not be all radical about the latest huge world problems that all his ranting can’t fix (although he thinks it can). But when we moved to Utah, and more specifically he got interested in being self-employed, and then we had Charlie, his priorities seemed to change.

  I know you’ll be my friend no matter what. I just hope, obviously, that this counseling will help Josh, and everyone else can see the guy I fell in love with.

  Susan

  Josh didn’t get help, and his relationship with Susan over the next months continued to deteriorate. As her husband became even more domineering, Susan became more determined to fight his control and flee the marriage—but proceeded cautiously because she feared for her safety. Josh grew more physically violent with Susan, one time pushing her and vowing that she’d “never get out of their marriage alive,” she told a friend.

  Update on “That Husband”

  From: Susan Powell

  Sent: Fri. 10/31/08

  Sorry for the mass email, but I need all the help I can get.

  So about two months back, I told Josh that I’m paying tithing on my income or divorce (I later admitted poor choice of words) and he got angry, and later compromised and said as long as my paycheck goes into the joint account and I pay the tithe out of the joint account it would be OK. I paid it twice, and then, just a few days ago, it comes out that he “never really agreed to pay tithing,” and said that it was the only contention in our marriage. He said he would compromise and actually spend money on dates and family fun (like zoos/circus, etc., which has yet to happen) as long as I don’t pay tithing in order to “heal our marriage” . . . until we “are millionaires” (yes, you read that right, millionaires). I realize he’s once again manipulating me to get what he wants.

  So, fast for me this Sunday. I’ve got family and friends doing that for me. My parents are ready to help pay any lawyer or mediation fees, and if I am supposed to divorce him, I will know with assurance, and somehow the divorce won’t be as ugly as I fear (like him kidnapping the kids and taking me for broke). I am planning to go to the temple soon and not leaving until I have my answer. Others fasting for me will help strengthen me to get the answer I need. I’m asking the Lord if it’s worth it to stay in this marriage and tolerate his constant manipulation.

  Thanks in advance for all your support!

  Susan

  Late in 2009, on a cold day in December, Josh appeared to have a brief, temporary change of heart, and he seemed more like the man Susan had fallen in love with. He agreed to host a meal with a friend in their home, something Susan cherished, and he even offered to make the food.1 Josh called his dad early Sunday December 6 to “ask for a pancake recipe,” Steven Powell later told police. Susan’s friend Jovanna Owings came over that afternoon well before the early meal to chat and help Susan untangle yarn for a crochet project the women were working on. Josh cooked and served his pancakes and eggs—and even washed the dishes, something he hadn’t done “in years,” said Chuck Cox. But shortly after dinner, Susan complained of being tired and not feeling well, and sat, quiet, and unresponsive on the living-room couch. Josh told Owings he was taking his sons out sledding that night, and she left for home.

  Susan failed to show up for work the next day, and the boys weren’t dropped off at daycare. Neither Susan nor Josh called the child center to say the boys wouldn’t be coming, or checked in with their offices. Concerned daycare workers called both parents, but couldn’t reach either one. They next reached out to relatives and talked to Josh’s sister Jennifer and his mom, who called police when they were unable to reach the couple. By midmorning Monday, police broke into the Powell home. There were no apparent signs of forced entry nor any indication that the home had been ransacked during a robbery or burglary. Later, they would notice two fans plugged in and running next to the sofa and a large wet spot on the living-room carpet. The rug would later be found to contain “stain patterns” of Susan’s blood. “Someone was injured and lost blood while on the sofa inside the residence,” stated a police affidavit seeking a warrant to collect samples of the carpet and couch. Investigators later also found Susan’s purse containing all of her credit cards, cash, ID, and keys in the couple’s bed
room “undisturbed.”

  Owings was the first to eventually reach Josh on his cell phone that afternoon. He told her he was driving around the West Valley City area with the boys and wasn’t unaware Susan hadn’t shown up for work—which was strange because he drove her to and from work each day; they shared a single car. According to cell-phone tracking later by police, Josh then drove 20 miles south of the city and called Susan’s cell phone to leave a message saying that he had just returned with the boys from a camping trip, and asked her if she needed a ride home from work. Jennifer was the next person to reach her brother:

  “Where are you?” she demanded.

  “I’m at work,” he responded.

  “You’re lying. What have you done?”

  “How much do you know?” he asked before the phone suddenly went dead.

  Police eventually reached Josh, still tooling around town with his boys, by calling from Jennifer’s phone, and he agreed to meet investigators at his West Valley home. Josh explained when he arrived that he hadn’t responded to earlier calls from his family and police because he had to preserve his cell-phone battery, which couldn’t be recharged in his car. A detective pointed at a cell phone on Josh’s console, plugged in to the cigarette lighter, charging. The phone belonged to Susan. Josh “appeared nervous and could not account for the phone being in the vehicle,” according to the police report. He was questioned on the scene, then escorted later to the local police station. Josh told investigators that he had decided at the last minute to take the boys camping in Tooele County, a two-hour drive from home, sometime after midnight following dinner, and he had left Susan, safe, sleeping in their bed. Though temperatures were below freezing, and a snowstorm was forecast, he told police he bundled up his young sons for the trip because he wanted to try out his new generator. Pressed about why he would take such a trip just hours before he was due at work, he told investigators he mistakenly believed it was a day earlier instead of early Monday morning when he went camping—and then didn’t bother contacting work when he realized his mistake because he assumed he’d been fired for blowing off the day. As for Susan, Josh “didn’t know where his wife was, and didn’t appear to be concerned about her welfare,” noted West Valley police detective David Greco in his report of his encounter with Josh. Police spotted Josh’s new generator in his minivan, as well as blankets, a gas can, tarps, a circular saw, a utility knife, latex gloves, a rake, sleds, and a shovel, but no tent or sleeping bags—“not exactly camping equipment,” Susan’s dad would later remark.

  Figure 11.1. A handbill seeks the public’s help in locating Susan Cox Powell after she vanished from her home in West Valley City, Utah, before Christmas in 2009. Courtesy of Charles and Judy Cox.

  The following day, Josh showed up for a second police interview four hours late. He offered the same account of events, and he didn’t bother asking if police had made any progress in the search for Susan. He abruptly ended the interview and announced that he planned to speak to an attorney. That evening, Josh drove to the Salt Lake City International Airport to rent a car and made an 800-mile mystery trip over the next two days. His cooperation with police was over.

  Charlie, then four years old, told detectives that “his mother went camping” with the family, but “for some reason she stayed at the campsite and didn’t come back home with them,” according to the police report. A waitress told police that when the family came into her West Valley diner the night Susan went missing, Charlie asked her if she knew where his mom was. Weeks later, he would tell a daycare worker “with no emotion and with no hesitation, ‘My mom is dead,’” after the worker threatened to contact his parents because he was misbehaving, Chuck Cox told me. Charlie also explained at one point that “mommy was in the trunk” in a picture of a car he had drawn, a teacher told his grandparents.

  Investigators quickly learned about the couple’s marital problems. Three co-workers told police that Susan had told them that “if anything were to happen to her, they were to give police a file that she had hidden from her husband.” Detectives also found a safe-deposit key in Susan’s purse that led them to a letter in a lock box addressed to her family and friends, titled the “Last Will and Testament for Susan Powell,” dated in 2008. She asked that whoever opened the note not show it to her husband because she didn’t trust him, and that “he has threatened to destroy her if they get divorced and her children will not have a mother and father,” said the police case report. She added: “If I die, it may not be an accident, even if it looks like one.”

  Police quickly suspected Susan’s disappearance was a kidnapping and homicide, and Josh looked like their man—but investigators didn’t have a body. Josh told a co-worker at a company Christmas party the previous year “that in order to get away with murder, he would hide a body in a mineshaft in the west desert of Utah,” stated a search-warrant affidavit. “He believed he could hide this from law enforcement as they would never search an unstable mine.” Within days, Josh was making arrangements to pack up his home and get out of Utah. A week after Susan vanished, Josh contacted the head of Charlie and Braden’s daycare center to say that the “children would not be coming back,” and that the teacher “probably will not ever see them again,” according to a police report. The following day, Powell canceled all of his wife’s chiropractor appointments. Two days later, he drained Susan’s IRA. Police discovered that in the months leading to Susan’s disappearance, Josh had taken out a $1 million life-insurance policy on his wife and $250,000 each on Charlie and Braden. Just weeks after his wife’s disappearance, before Christmas, Josh Powell and the boys moved back in with his dad and adult siblings Alina, John, and Michael in Puyallup.

  But Josh wasn’t safe from the investigation, as West Valley police continued to search for Susan and investigate his activities. In May, Utah detectives and police from Pierce County in Washington carried out a search of Steven Powell’s home, where Josh was still living with the kids, and discovered a stunning, kinky twist in the case. Investigators discovered a cache of “multiple images” of Susan Powell, including several of her in her underwear, which appeared to have been snapped surreptitiously while she was in the bathroom during the time Susan and Josh lived in the home with Josh’s dad to save money early in their marriage. Police also found images of nude women with Susan’s face pasted over their heads, and photos of Steven Powell masturbating in front of images of Susan projected onto a television screen. Powell admitted to investigators that he took the photos himself or took copies of photographs from Josh’s computer without his son’s knowledge.

  Steven told police that he and his daughter-in-law were in love, and that she was “very sexual” toward him—but that she had emphasized to him that their “flirtatious relationship could never be in the open due to her Mormon religion,” investigators revealed. He had urged his son and daughter-in-law to move back in with him in Washington, where Susan could serve as a wife to both men. “My biggest problem as well as my greatest pleasure lies in the fact that for over a year I have been madly in love with my daughter-in-law, Susan,” Steven Powell wrote in some 2,000 pages of personal journals Washington police would later recover in his Puyallup home in a second search. “What has driven me is primarily lust. I have never lusted for a woman as I have for Susan,” he noted. “I take chances sometimes to take video clips of her, which I watch regularly. She is an amazing woman. I hope I am right, that she is in love with me, but of course there is the problem of her being married to my son.” He wrote of taking photos of his daughter-in-law using mirrors to see her in the bathroom, and admitted many would find such behavior “sick.” It’s “what might be considered sociopathic. I mean, who looks under the bathroom door with a mirror?” he wondered in his journals. He raged when the couple moved from Washington to Utah. “I am now going crazy with desire for her, but I do not regret any of it,” he wrote. He referred often to his son’s deteriorating marriage, and how poorly Josh treated Susan. “Theirs is truly a marriage made in
hell,” he wrote. “It’s hard to believe that two people could be so nasty to each other.” He didn’t believe, however, that they would ever break up because Josh was financially dependent on Susan, and she desperately wanted to save the marriage.

  Figure 11.2. Charlie poses for the last school photo of his life. He would later die in a home explosion and fire set off by his dad, Josh Powell. Courtesy of Charles and Judy Cox.

  Still, he fantasized he had a chance with Susan. “I wasn’t going to turn down an opportunity with this beautiful woman, even though she was my son’s wife,” Powell said in a televised interview.2 Detectives discovered in pages from Susan’s journal that she kept stashed at her Wells Fargo office that she was, in fact, disgusted by Steven Powell. She described him as a “negative influence” on Josh, and a “pedophile,” and talked of “how hard it is for her to forgive Steven Powell for what he has said,” recounted the police report. “Susan states she does not want Steve Powell involved in her life, her children’s life, and how she wishes Josh Powell would eliminate Steven Powell from his life. There were no positive writings about Steven Powell in Susan Powell’s journal.” Friends said the couple’s move to Utah was triggered by Susan’s disgust with her father-in-law and her desperation to flee his attention.

  As troubling as Susan’s photos found in Steven Powell’s bedroom were, police also found images of popular cartoon characters having incestuous sex with adults on a laptop belonging to Josh. Despite concerns by social workers, Charlie and Brandon remained in the sole custody of Josh. He zealously guarded the boys from Susan’s parents and didn’t allow them to visit their grandsons.

  As the investigation into Susan’s disappearance continued, Steven and Josh forged an ugly new narrative of Susan. It was a skewed, paranoid perspective of his wife that Josh had nurtured in his mind over the years of a flirty, mentally unstable, over-sexed woman with a wandering eye who had “utter contempt” for him. Josh and his dad told reporters that Susan likely ran away with a man from West Valley who had vanished two months before she did and that they married in Brazil. In media interviews, Josh appeared angry and disdainful of his wife. “She’s a very sexual person,” he said in one TV appearance. He and his dad claimed to have Susan’s teenage journals proving she was preoccupied with sex, and they threatened to print them.