If I Can't Have You: Susan Powell, Her Mysterious Disappearance, and the Murder of Her Children

by Gregg Olsen

  During one early visit with the boys, Josh kept telling them how much he missed them, thought about them, and was fighting for them—and then he badgered them with questions.

  “Do you remember how much fun we have?” he asked.

  The boys stared up at him, taking in every word.

  “Make sure you tell people how much fun we have every weekend.”

  A social worker had to interrupt Josh when his rants turned to the Coxes—“those people who want to take you away from me.”

  Chuck Cox is bad.

  The psychological exam didn’t pick up on Josh’s repeated lies. With a straight face, he told Manley that he was not aware of his father’s ongoing attraction to Susan. He denied sexually abusing Alina and attempting suicide when he was a teenager. At first, he said he had no arrest record—then finally, after some prodding, he admitted that he had spent five days in juvenile detention for theft. He said he didn’t know about his father’s trove of pornography.

  Josh even kept his cool when Dr. Manley said he had learned that five or six images of computer-generated incestuous child porn had been found on Josh’s computer in 2009. Josh said it was no big deal. Josh also said there had been no problems in his marriage. He claimed Susan had been suicidal and that he didn’t know what happened to her.

  He stuck by his story of December 6–7, 2009, the late-night camping trip and the return home to find Susan missing. He added that Susan “had been okay” with the trip.

  In the psychiatrist’s own words, Josh was defensive, evasive, and glossed over things. It was obvious that Charlie and Braden were beginning to mimic what they heard their father say. The boys had said that their mother “was hiding from her parents because her parents abuse her,” and that “the Mormons are trying to steal them.”

  “God is bad. The police are bad, but God is really bad,” Charlie had said.

  Josh would talk nonstop about the Coxes, the Mormon church, and the police, yet he would not admit to feeling any stress in his life. He portrayed himself in a positive light in his answers to all the questions, so much so that it threw off some of the testing results. On the measure that determines the potential of child abuse, the “abuse scales” were not elevated because he denied stress, unhappiness, depression, or any other problems.

  The conclusion? There were no concerns that he might abuse his children.

  Dr. Manley’s report indicated that Josh had “excellent parenting and interpersonal skills,” although he needed to learn to “consistently place his children’s need for an emotionally safe and stable environment ahead of his own [needs].”

  He also suggested that Josh seek therapy in order to have a place to vent other than to his children. Josh could continue his weekly visits with his sons—plus he was about to get a second supervised visit each week. State policy mandates that visitations be held in the least restrictive setting, with a caseworker present. Since Charlie and Braden couldn’t go near Steve’s house—even with Steve in jail—Josh had rented a house nearby. His visitations could be held there.

  DSHS never told the police in Pierce County or in Utah that the visits were being moved to Josh’s house. And, for their part, the West Valley City police were still silent about the fact that it was Susan’s blood that they’d recovered from her house, and that she had left a note saying she was afraid her husband might kill her.

  Whether it was policy or safeguarding their own turf, the agencies responsible for finding Susan and protecting her children didn’t say much to each other.

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  Charlie, I sure miss you. I was thinking of ways to stay close to you boys. You could tell me in your letters what you want me to bring to our next visit. Perhaps a toy or a certain kind of food. Everything I do is for you. I love you and I’m working hard to see you more. Love, Daddy.

  —JOSH TO CHARLIE IN A LETTER, FALL 2011

  Josh was in dad mode during a visitation observed by Dr. Manley. He was making lunch and giving Charlie and Braden a tutorial on the merits of cheese at the same time.

  “Cheese has protein,” he explained as he unwrapped presliced American cheese from its plastic wrapper and started building sandwiches.

  “Protein is a part of every cell in our bodies,” he said. “What other food is protein found in?”

  Charlie and Braden, six and four, didn’t know and were more interested in playing with their remote-controlled cars.

  “We also find protein in meat, chicken, and fish, like sushi. Also, milk and eggs,” Josh went on. He looked over and it was clear that he’d lost his audience. The boys couldn’t have cared less.

  He tried and he tried, but it wasn’t working.

  Manley’s psychological evaluation noted that Josh was rigid and overly controlling with the children. In a report, Dr. Manley wrote that in addition to talking to the boys about inappropriate topics, like Mormons and the Coxes, Josh “tends to offer a high degree of structure [to] his and his sons’ interactions. At times, his interaction style seems forced or staged. He seems to be trying too hard. Whether this is Mr. Powell’s baseline parenting style or is due to his present high degree of stress is unclear.”

  All visits were supervised by the fifty-nine-year-old Griffin-Hall, who was required to take detailed notes. She noticed right away that this was a man who never relaxed with his sons.

  He started many visits by saying, “Charlie and Braden, I have a surprise for you!”

  When he made the boys pancakes, he decorated them with faces, eyes and ears.

  When a recipe required flour, he went to his supply of 3,000 pounds of wheat—the only tenet of Mormonism he still practiced was food storage—and ground it himself. He explained to his sons that the nutritional value was greater than commercially processed flour because the fiber and oil were left in.

  Every visit included an elaborate exercise, proof of his prowess as a teacher, a father.

  He demonstrated magnetic force, using a science toy with flashing lights and bells and whistles.

  He explained gravity.

  He taught the boys the principle of vacuum pressure.

  He lectured on the properties of water.

  When he forgot the hammers for miniature tool kits he’d organized for each boy, he was distraught. They made do using a wrench to pound the nails with. When the boys lost interest, Josh would say their names loudly and they’d snap back to work—for a few minutes.

  Griffin-Hall was impressed with how Josh planned the visitations, which may have been the point. She felt that he was trying to impress her and the court through his interactions with her. That didn’t mean that being with his children was some charade. She thought the young father was sincerely interested in his boys.

  And yet, she couldn’t escape her thoughts on what had happened to Josh’s wife.

  She was skeptical, but on the “one in a million chance” that he had not killed Susan, Griffin-Hall did the best she could to keep his visits centered in the present and on activities with the boys.

  As the weeks passed, she was halfway expecting Josh to be arrested and Chuck and Judy to be given custody. That was, she thought, the best chance those little boys would have of a normal life.

  In addition to watching Josh prepare homemade banana cream pie and science experiments, she witnessed a visit when Josh led the boys out to the garage to show them the new camping equipment he had bought.

  In many ways, even in the controlled confines of a supervised visit or a psychological exam, Josh was the kind of parent he had always been. The rare occasions he made time for his sons when they were living in Utah often involved a lesson. Without a purpose or a lesson, Josh was awkward. It was as if he needed a script in order to connect with his sons.

  While the boys lived with his enemies, the Coxes, Josh wrote Charlie and Braden letters every day. That took some effort, too. Letters had to be sent first to his social worker, Forest Jacobson, who in turn sent them on to the boys. But when Josh asked his sons about the letters, neither
Charlie nor Braden seemed to remember getting them. Jacobson tried to explain to Josh that the boys might have read the letters but not paid as much attention to them as he wished. Josh wanted them to write him every day, too, and gave them paper, envelopes, and stamps.

  * * *

  Josh’s rental house was a gray-blue, three-bedroom rambler on 189th Street Court East in Puyallup, just a couple of miles from Steve’s house. Alina and Johnny stayed put at Steve’s. The rental was close to Emma Carson Elementary School, where Charlie was enrolled in first grade. Though there were neighbors all around, a stand of Lombardy poplars and several tall Douglas firs gave the house privacy. The place was sparsely furnished, but visitors said it was tidy. Josh had set up shelves in one of the bedrooms and unpacked toys for his sons—a playroom in unfamiliar surroundings, like most of the places they’d been since their mother’s disappearance.

  Between late September 2011, when Charlie and Braden went to live with Susan’s parents, and November, when Josh rented the house, his once-a-week visitations were held at the offices of the Foster Care Resource Network (FCRN), one of hundreds of businesses that contract with the State of Washington to provide social services. Griffin-Hall supervised, both there and later when the visitations were moved to the rental house.

  Josh brought toys and projects, and lunch, including sushi—which the boys devoured—and pizza and sandwiches. On the very first visit Josh brought his pet bird. While Griffin-Hall tried to explain that the bird wasn’t allowed in the offices, the boys had a tantrum. She relented but wrote in her report, “The bird will not attend future visits.” She also wrote that at one point Charlie asked Josh “if he was going to get lost, too.”

  Like their mother.

  On that visit—timed so that no other families would be at FCRN at the time—Josh brought a portable campfire and set it up in an outside play area so they could roast marshmallows and hot dogs. As Josh unpacked the van, Griffin-Hall saw a hatchet in the back of the vehicle.

  Griffin-Hall, herself the mother of four boys—now grown—and foster and adoptive mother to ten other children over the years, loved Charlie and Braden and they treated her like a grandmother. She had a hearty laugh and the three of them shared stories and told knock-knock jokes in the car as she drove them from the Coxes to Josh’s rental house and back. Charlie and Braden loved Griffin-Hall’s Prius, and liked to watch the gas and electrical gauges.

  “This car’s good for the environment,” Charlie said.

  * * *

  On the Sunday after Thanksgiving, the boys and Griffin-Hall arrived at the rental house to find that Josh had cooked an entire turkey dinner, with two kinds of pie for dessert. Josh joked that he had been watching Paula Deen and Rachael Ray shows on television.

  One of Griffin-Hall’s responsibilities was to supervise Josh and make sure he didn’t talk about certain topics around his sons—especially the Coxes, religion, and the custody case. But Josh couldn’t contain himself. He was so curious about the boys’ Thanksgiving that he couldn’t put into practice a skill Griffin-Hall had been trying to teach him: to stop and take a few deep breaths and reconsider what he was about to say.

  “Did you have any special meals on Thanksgiving?” Josh asked his boys.

  Griffin-Hall knew he wasn’t asking if Judy had served turkey or ham, white potatoes or yams. Josh was asking who had been at the Coxes for the holiday and what they had talked about.

  “No,” one of the boys said, clueless as to what their dad was fishing for.

  “Did you see any special people?” Josh asked.

  Griffin-Hall shot him a look. “Josh, that’s enough,” she said.

  Josh ignored her. “Did you pray?” he asked.

  Griffin-Hall was on the edge of exasperation, but held it in.

  “Josh let’s turn this around and talk about what activity you have planned for today,” she said.

  Finally, Charlie spoke up. “There was a lot of family there, and Thanksgiving is for family.”

  Josh couldn’t help himself. The door was open for a dig at the Coxes and he pushed it wider.

  “You were with the wrong family,” Josh said.

  Griffin-Hall cut him off. “Josh, you can’t tell them they were with the wrong family. Can we get started on their activity?”

  What he was desperate to tell his sons was that the day would come when they would never see “the Coxes”—which is what Josh wanted the four- and six-year-old to call their grandparents—ever again.

  Josh specifically chose Sunday as his visitation day so Chuck and Judy couldn’t take the boys to church. Josh had spoken with Pastor Tim Atkins and his wife Brenda about being an alternative to the Coxes; maybe the boys could live with them. DSHS, however, said it wasn’t about to move the boys again but okayed a second weekly visit. So for eleven or twelve weeks, after being fingerprinted and cleared by DSHS, Tim picked up the boys on Wednesday afternoons from school or from the Coxes. They would attend his children’s Christian group, the Good News Club, and meet up with their dad at the Atkinses’. On Sundays Griffin-Hall brought the boys to Josh’s rental house.

  Tim and Brenda had given Josh a Bible, and he often attended the Sunday evening service at Tim’s church, Faith Bible Church. They saw Josh laugh, they saw him cry, and they saw him worried and despondent.

  The Atkinses asked Josh a lot of questions about the night Susan disappeared and the aspects of his story that didn’t add up. They advised him not to attack Chuck and Judy, to work toward reconciliation, and to talk with the police.

  They might have been the only people in his life who urged him to talk to the authorities. His father hadn’t, nor had his brothers, Johnny and Mike, or his sister Alina. They supported his stalemate with the police and often led the attack against both the police and the Coxes through their Web sites, the release of Susan’s diaries, and media interviews.

  One Wednesday afternoon, Josh and Tim sat at the Atkinses’ dining room table as their combined six children played and came and went.

  “Josh, what are Chuck and Judy always saying?” Tim asked. “What is everybody saying?”

  Josh didn’t answer, and just looked at the glass of soda in his hand.

  Tim wanted an answer so he prodded Josh. “What are the people at the Bible church saying? What are our neighbors saying? They’re saying why don’t you just sit down and talk with the police?”

  Josh thought for a moment. “I understand that,” he said. “But I’m not going to do that because of what happened when I did talk to them.”

  Tim wanted to hear it once more. “Tell me again. What happened when you talked to the police?”

  Josh looked at the pastor. “They tried to twist my words.”

  “I understand that, Josh. I’m just saying that if you are sincere about reconciling with the Cox family, you have to demonstrate that you want to be reconciled. And one of the ways you demonstrate that is by sitting down and talking with the police.”

  Tim never learned anything by chance about the night Susan vanished. Josh never slipped up or said anything incriminating. Tim had an understanding with CPS that, as a pastor, if he believed a crime had been committed, he would be obligated to report it. There was a lot Josh kept to himself, but over the two years he knew Josh, Tim never felt that the boys were in any danger.

  The most uncomfortable moment occurred during the last visitation at the Atkinses’ home. Their three-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, was absent, visiting with her grandparents. They were sitting around a table having a snack. Tim thought he would lighten things up a bit. He looked around at the group gathered at the dining table.

  “Charlie and Braden, who is missing?” Tim asked.

  Braden spoke right up. “Mommy is missing.”

  Tim looked at Josh, and Josh looked at Tim. The air was sucked out of the room.

  * * *

  Chuck Cox was curious and a little concerned. He and Judy wondered just where it was that Josh was living, and where Charlie and Braden were
spending their time with their father for those three or four hours once a week. Often, before a visit, Charlie and Braden said they didn’t want to go see their dad.

  Where did they go on Sundays? What was the place like? Were they safe there?

  One time when Griffin-Hall arrived to pick up the boys, Chuck the investigator became Chuck the surveillance guy. He tailed her. He stayed a couple of blocks behind and when he sensed that she was about to turn into a cul-de-sac, he cut down a side street. It turned out that it ran behind Josh’s rental. Chuck sat and waited. At one point Josh and the boys came out to the backyard for several minutes, without Griffin-Hall.

  Josh was never supposed to be alone with his sons, not even for a minute. Josh walked the boys around the yard, where it appeared that he was building an outdoor fire pit.

  After the boys came home later that day, Chuck asked them if they had been alone with their dad, and they said yes. In fact, the boys had spied Chuck’s truck. He called DSHS and complained. He knew that whatever was said in Griffin-Hall’s presence made it into her notes. But if she was out of earshot—and she had been when the boys were in the backyard—then she wouldn’t be able to report what garbage, what lies, he might be telling them.

  A little while later, a supervisor from DSHS told Chuck that they had talked with Griffin-Hall and that she was always with Josh and the boys, unless she was in the bathroom.

  “Don’t worry about it,” the supervisor said. “The boys are being adequately supervised.”

  Chuck highly doubted it and said so.

  * * *

  In some ways, Josh had more custodial rights than the Coxes did. He prevented them from taking Charlie and Braden to their ward, and because of the Boy Scouts’ long history with the Mormon church, he was able to prevent the boys from participating—just as Steve had stopped his own sons from being Scouts. Josh was also able to mandate that the Coxes couldn’t take their grandsons to the YMCA, Lowe’s, Home Depot, or to any event having to do with astronomy or rocks and gems “as these are all things he did/does with his boys.”