If I Can't Have You: Susan Powell, Her Mysterious Disappearance, and the Murder of Her Children (2 page)

Terri conferred with Jennifer and they went over to the house. Finding it locked up tightly they tried both Josh’s and Susan’s cell phones, which went to voice mail. Then Terri phoned the West Valley City police to report the family missing.

*   *   *

The Powell residence looked like hundreds of others in West Valley City; maybe thousands. It was a white tract home with blue trim and blue shutters, and some stonework in the front. There was a tiny porch, a bay window, and a two-car garage. In the front yard was a wooden swing Josh had built for their two little boys. In back was playground equipment a neighbor had lent the family and a dormant vegetable garden. The garden wasn’t a mere hobby for Susan, it was a necessity. Occasionally its produce was the only thing Josh allowed his family to eat. Susan sometimes called friends to ask if she could borrow some hot dogs.

“The boys are hungry,” she’d say.

Within minutes of Debbie’s call of concern, Josh’s sister Jennifer met the police at the Powell house. The police logged it as a “welfare check” call. Jennifer, a soft-spoken woman with long, brown hair and her father’s blue eyes, was shaken. There was fresh snow on the driveway and the steps to the door. After accounting for Debbie’s tracks, it was clear that no one had been in or out of the house for at least several hours. When police knocked and got no answer, she gave them permission to break a window. They all braced themselves. Salt Lake City had just had several deaths attributed to carbon monoxide poisoning caused by faulty furnaces and that was on their minds as they entered the house. There was loud music blaring from a stereo and two box fans were angled to blow air on a damp spot on the carpet and a love seat near the front window.

At first there was a sense of relief: Josh and Susan and the boys were
not
dead in their beds. But something was wrong.

They weren’t home at all. Where were they?

Jennifer went into the master bedroom. Despite the clutter, she noticed Susan’s blue leather purse on a table by the foot of the bed. It contained her wallet, credit cards, and keys. There was no cell phone. The house was messy, but that was normal. There was no sign of forced entry or a robbery, home invasion, or struggle. Susan’s red nylon snow boots, which she wore whenever she left the house, were in the living room.

West Valley City police issued a statewide attempt-to-locate bulletin so that law enforcement in other jurisdictions would be on the lookout for the Powells’ 2005 light blue Chrysler Town & Country minivan. The police sent Jennifer home so they could search the house.

Jennifer called Susan’s father, Chuck Cox, in Puyallup, Washington, nine hundred miles to the northwest, to ask if he had heard from Susan or Josh. He hadn’t, but he wasn’t alarmed. Josh was known to make impulsive, last-minute decisions and the family liked to go rock hunting or camping. Yet, Chuck agreed it was odd that neither Susan nor Josh had called their places of employment or day-care provider to say that they’d be away.

Jennifer phoned her father’s house, also in Puyallup, and talked to her younger sister, Alina. Jennifer believed that Susan had moved to get away from her father, Steve, because Susan said he had made sexual advances toward her. In the background, Jennifer could hear her father talking while she asked Alina if they had heard from Josh and Susan. Alina asked everyone in the house, but no one had heard from Josh or Susan.

Jennifer called Kiirsi Hellewell, Susan’s best friend, who lived down the street from the Powells. Kiirsi hadn’t talked to Susan since Sunday, when they had walked home from church together.

“Susan didn’t say they were going anywhere,” Kiirsi told Jennifer.

Kiirsi then phoned the Relief Society president—the head of their ward’s women’s group—and the two of them joined Jennifer at the Powell house and talked to the police.

“I was still thinking at that time that maybe they went for a drive because Susan had posted on her Facebook page that they had gone to a work party on Saturday night and Josh had won a camera,” Kiirsi remembered some time later. “I thought, ‘Well, it would be just like them to drive up in the mountains and take pictures.’” Then she began to imagine a different kind of threat than the carbon monoxide poisoning Jennifer and the police had feared. “Maybe they slid off a cliff and they’re all dead at the bottom of it or stuck on some back road. Because knowing Josh, he’d drive on some back road in fresh snow.”

Word spread among friends and church members that the Powell family was missing. In the early afternoon Kiirsi sent a text message to JoVonna Owings, who knew Susan from the church choir.

Susan, Josh and the boys are missing. We don’t know where they are. They haven’t been seen since church.

*   *   *

But JoVonna Owings
had
seen the family. She’d been with them Sunday afternoon and would be critical to piecing together Susan’s last hours.

If our lives can be read in our faces, JoVonna’s said she had lived a tough life. Although she was about the same age as Susan’s mother, JoVonna was thin and wizened and appeared older. She had a huge heart and wore big glasses that nearly gobbled her face. After church on Sunday she had helped Susan with some crocheting and had supper with the family. Josh had even cooked—an unheard-of event. JoVonna was the last person to have contact with Josh and Susan on Sunday—and would be the first to have contact with Josh on Monday.

At about 3:00
P.M.
on Monday JoVonna phoned Josh. There was no answer. Her son Alex, who occasionally babysat for Charlie and Braden, punched in Josh’s number on his phone. Josh answered, but Alex panicked and hung up without speaking. JoVonna grabbed her son’s phone and redialed. He answered again.

“Josh, where are you?” JoVonna asked. “What are you doing? The police are looking for you.”

Josh, who could be an absolute motor mouth, was silent for a moment.

“We’re driving around.”

JoVonna felt her heart race. “Where’s Susan?”

Josh paused a beat. “She’s at work.” He went on to stammer out that he and the boys had gone camping overnight without Susan.

JoVonna was frustrated. “No, she’s not at work. We’re really worried, Josh. You didn’t go to work.”

“I got confused,” he said. “I thought it was Sunday.”

JoVonna felt he was lying and pressed him.

“No, you didn’t,” she said. “You knew it was Monday. Don’t you tell me that. You need to get home, Josh, right now.”

Immediately after getting off the phone with JoVonna, Josh checked his voice mail. Two minutes later he left Susan a message on her phone, which was on the seat beside him.

For the next two hours he answered no calls and drove nearly twenty miles around West Valley City, stalling. He washed his van at a do-it-yourself place where he could soap and scrub the car over and over, far more thoroughly than a drive-through car wash would.

At 5:27
P.M.
Jennifer tried to call Josh but got no answer.

At 5:36
P.M.
Josh left Susan a message on her phone—still on the seat beside him.

At 5:43
P.M.
Josh called Susan’s phone again to say he was in the parking lot of the Wells Fargo building where she worked and asked if she needed a ride home.

At 5:48
P.M.
Jennifer finally heard from her brother. She was home, talking to Chuck Cox at the moment, and she told him to listen in and stay quiet while she put the call on speaker.

“Where are you, Josh?” she asked.

“I’m at work,” he said.

“You’re lying,” she said, knowing he hadn’t gone to work. “Where are the boys?”

“They’re safe,” he said.

“Where’s Susan?” Jennifer continued.

“I don’t know. Work, I guess.”

“No, Josh,” Jennifer said. “We know that’s not true.”

“How much do you know?” Josh asked.

Now she felt real fear.

“Why would you ask that? Josh, what have you done? What did you do to her?” Jennifer asked.

Josh hung up.

Just then Chuck, whose job with the FAA had taught him to question much of what he saw and heard, went into full-on investigative mode.

“Write down whatever you heard,” he said to Jennifer. “I’ll write down what I heard, and we’ll have our notes because we have to document this.”

Jennifer drove back to Josh’s house in West Valley City, hoping to confront him as soon as he arrived.

Chuck immediately started to log notes about what he had overheard. He thought Josh’s end of the conversation was peculiar.

The boys were safe? What kind of answer was that to where he’d been?

Chuck and Judy Cox, parents of four daughters, grandparents of nine children, married thirty-five years and no fans of Josh or his father Steve, were alarmed. Something bad had happened.

Maybe Josh and Susan had a fight, he hurt her accidentally,
Chuck thought.
Maybe he stashed her somewhere and someone is going to find her. She’ll come home and we’ll deal with it then.

*   *   *

As soon as Jennifer arrived at the house and told West Valley City Police Department Detective Ellis Maxwell of her conversation with Josh, he borrowed her phone and called Josh, and when Josh answered, Maxwell told him to come home. Josh said that he needed to stop and get his children something to eat first.

At 6:40
P.M.
Josh finally pulled his minivan into the driveway. The police kept father and sons in the vehicle while they questioned him. Josh said he and Charlie and Braden had left just after midnight to go camping and Susan was in bed. He had no idea where she might be now. He repeated that he had been confused and thought it was Sunday. Once he realized it was Monday, he hadn’t called his employer because he was afraid he would lose his job if he admitted he had mixed up the days.

When asked why he hadn’t answered his cell phone during the day, Josh said he had kept it off to preserve the battery. He said he didn’t have a cell charger. Plus they were out in the desert where there was no service. Detective Maxwell, a solidly built man with a dark crew cut, mustache, and ruddy complexion, had fifteen years on the force but this would be the most complicated and trying case of his career. Maxwell leaned through the window of the minivan and saw one phone on the center consul plugged into a charger. He also noted a second cell phone—later determined to be Susan’s—in the van. Josh didn’t have an answer as to why his wife’s phone was in the car.

Jennifer called Chuck to tell him that Josh and the boys had returned from a “late night camping trip.” And, Jennifer told Chuck, Josh didn’t know where Susan was.

*   *   *

After being trapped by the police in his driveway, Josh followed Detective Maxwell to the West Valley City Police Department to tell his story once more. The police wanted Charlie and Braden to come to the station, too.

The recorded interview began at 7:15
P.M.
with Detective Maxwell, Josh, Charlie, and Braden in a room. During the two-hour interview, Braden and Charlie can be heard in the background wanting a soda, which Josh forbids. Finally, a victim advocate takes the boys out of the room to watch them and keep them occupied.

Asked to relate the events of Sunday, a nervous Josh couldn’t remember what Susan was wearing, and explained again how she had been tired and had laid down. Later she had gotten out of bed and they had hot dogs and watched
The Santa Clause 2.
Or maybe it was
The Santa Clause 3.
Braden had fallen asleep, so Josh took just Charlie sledding at a park near Whittier Elementary School, although in one version of his story both boys went sledding. When they got home, Susan was watching TV. Josh read the boys a story, then he began to clean the couch with his new Rug Doctor, a vacuum cleaning system he had spent several hundred dollars on a couple of weeks before.

Then Josh had decided to take the boys camping. Susan didn’t want to go. He’d “gotten a late start” and left after midnight. Despite the warnings of cold, snow, and ice, Josh said he, Charlie, and Braden had gone to Simpson Springs, about two hours southwest of Salt Lake City, elevation 5,100 feet. They had slept in the car, tried out a new electric generator for heat, and taken firewood with them so they could make s’mores. They made them, but without the chocolate. He’d forgotten that ingredient.

Ellis Maxwell:
So where do you think she’s at?

Josh Powell:
I don’t know.

EM:
Has she ever done anything like this before?

JP:
No, not missing work.

EM:
Has she ever left like this, left you and abandoned the kids?

JP:
I mean, you know for, for the day but not, not when it’s a work day.

EM:
Um, huh, okay … why would you, why did you miss work?

JP:
Um … Somehow I was thinking I didn’t go to church therefore tomorrow would be Sunday and therefore I didn’t find at that time I realized it, I was already stuck in a snowstorm so …

Detective Maxwell is alternatingly friendly and incredulous of Josh’s story.

EM:
Did you guys have any arguments, any fighting the day before, the night before?

JP:
No …

EM:
Explain your relationship to me, then?

JP:
Really, um …

EM:
Explain to me how … what about your guys’ relationship … what it consists of and stuff like that.

JP:
I mean, you know it’s pretty good. I mean, we sometimes have disagreements but …

EM:
Yeah, everybody has disagreements, right?

JP:
I think so.

EM:
So nothing.

JP:
It’s not like, it’s not like we get into screaming fights or anything.

EM:
Yeah.

JP:
Well, not usually … it’s happened a couple of times.

EM:
Yeah.

JP:
But you know it’s very, very rare.…