If I Can't Have You: Susan Powell, Her Mysterious Disappearance, and the Murder of Her Children (21 page)

It was not Susan.

A Cox family friend said, “Every time police let us know they’ve found a body, it’s a lurch in your throat. If it’s her we don’t want to know she’s dead, and if it’s not her, it means she is still missing and we don’t have closure.”

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Someone needs to take the velvet gloves off and treat [the Coxes] like an investigative subject.

—JOSH POWELL TO
SALT LAKE TRIBUNE,
NOVEMBER 8, 2010

Those who loved her had vowed they would never forget. They promised one another that whenever it made sense, they would band together to remind the world that Susan Powell was missing. On October 16, 2010, Susan’s twenty-ninth birthday, twenty-five friends from her Utah neighborhood and church met at West View Park to have cake and release 150 purple balloons, each carrying a photo of Susan. At the same time, purple balloons were released in Puyallup by friends and family led by Chuck and Judy Cox.

While Susan was in everyone’s hearts at both venues, it was Steve and Josh Powell who were on their minds. Considerable discussion was made not only of their absence, but of any role either might have played in the scenario that played out on December 6–7 the preceding year.

Over in Country Hollow, Steve and Josh did the bare minimum on the occasion of Susan’s birthday. Steve admitted as much in his journal on October 18:

I helped the boys get started on some drawings and Josh put their artwork on
SusanPowell.org
. It’s nothing more than a half-assed effort on our part, but the boys enjoyed doing it …

Soon after, Josh and Steve announced that they were changing the “focus” of
SusanPowell.org
. Its new mission would be to respond to rumors and “correct the record.”

… At this point, we recognize that we cannot remain silent forever in the face of rumors and lies being spread by individuals associated with the Cox “Friends and Family.”

One step Josh took to correct the record was to “break his silence” and agree to an interview with a reporter from the
Salt Lake Tribune.
In the interview, which took place at Steve’s house, Josh described Susan as “extremely unstable” and said that mental illness drove her to leave her family. It was another round in Josh and Steve’s crusade to blame Susan’s disappearance on
Susan.
They claimed she was sexually motivated, that she abandoned her husband and sons and ran off with a boyfriend and that maybe she had embezzled from her job. Josh blamed the Coxes, wondering out loud if Susan had inherited her mother’s tendency to emotional outbursts; he called Chuck controlling and manipulative and implied that the Coxes should be investigated, too.

Jennifer Graves told the same reporter that her brother and father were accusing Susan of “being a slut,” and that it was offensive to her. “She was not,” Jennifer said. “She was frustrated with her marriage.”

By then, Jennifer was openly saying that she thought her brother and father had conjured up a tale of Susan’s mental imbalance to cover up their role in her disappearance. And she pointed out that, ironically, it was
her
side of the family that had the history of psychological problems, not the Coxes.

*   *   *

Steve Powell’s purported proof that Susan was unstable came from her diary. In her diaries, written when she was a teenager in Puyallup, Susan agonized over her love life—much as Steve did over Susan in his own journals. At age fifteen, Susan wrote about being with a boy and worried if the relationship had gone too far. She promised to pray on it, to steady herself, to ensure that whatever troubles had befallen other young women
wouldn’t
happen to her. She also wrote about a time when she accidently took an overdose of an over-the-counter pain reliever. It was not, she insisted to family and friends, a suicide attempt. A physician agreed. It was just a mistake, nothing more.

Steve, however, twisted Susan’s words and claimed it was more proof of her propensity for erratic behavior. He wanted the world to believe that there was something dark and dangerous lurking in her past. She was not the pretty woman in the photos they’d seen on TV.

Neither Susan nor her friends nor her parents had ever said she was perfect. She was a complex woman, a mother, a devoted wife and friend. Susan became those things by living life, which included making her share of mistakes along the way.

The Coxes shrugged off most of their daughter’s diary entries as a teenage girl’s ramblings. Susan was never some out-of-control teenager. When they thought about it, they could come up with only one time that Susan had semirebelled, and then just a little bit. She snuck out of the house to talk to a boyfriend in the front yard late one night. Later, she confessed the forty-five-minute adventure to her parents.

And yet the Powells seemed to wallow in the mud they slung at Susan’s reputation.

Even Josh’s sister Alina got in on the act. She and Susan had never been close, even when Alina lived for a few months with her sister Jennifer in West Jordan, Utah, not far from Josh and Susan. In addition to calling her a “player,” Alina told her father that she thought Susan was “a bitch and not very pretty or smart, and with a poor personality.” After Susan disappeared, Alina said she had “walked in on intimate moments between Steve and Susan,” including when Susan waxed her legs, then asked Steve to feel how smooth they were. Alina said that it was Susan who made the sexual advances to her father. Steve just “went along.”

For her part, Susan had always told friends that she felt sorry for Alina, and hoped Josh’s little sister would be able to extract herself from her dad’s toxic household.

Steve’s possession of Susan’s diaries ratcheted up the growing bitterness between the two families. He had “borrowed” the diaries from Josh and Susan’s storage unit in 2003. Chuck and Judy wanted to keep the diaries and give them to Susan’s sons one day. Steve insisted that they remain with her husband and sons “until she returns.” Of course, that way he could continue to read them and fantasize about Susan.

That fall, Steve told people that federal agents had been at his house in an attempt to get Susan’s diaries. He sent an e-mail to the
Salt Lake Tribune.

Of course, we are happy to cooperate with law enforcement in any way we can.

He added that he had made a copy of the diary entries for federal investigators and was waiting to hear back from them before he dispatched it to them.

He never did. In the meantime, he decided to talk about the diaries on television and publish them online. They would help convince people that Susan had run away and that Josh was a lonely, abandoned husband and father.

*   *   *

On the first anniversary of Susan’s disappearance, December 6, 2010, Susan’s family and friends decided to volunteer their time instead of holding another vigil. About thirty-five people gathered at a car dealership in Puyallup to wrap Christmas presents for Santa Cops, a nonprofit that delivers toys and food to needy families. Chuck saw it as a kind of distraction, in addition to something to help those who needed it. Susan had always joined in such activities—it was the mom in her.

Each milestone—holiday, birthday, anniversary of her disappearance—served only to remind Chuck and Judy and their other daughters of all that they were missing. Susan had been gone for a full year. Christmas was approaching, and Chuck and Judy had been kept from their grandsons for eight long months.

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Chuck:
The police were very confident that Josh was going to be arrested. We thought he’d be arrested within three months at the most.

Judy:
And then we thought six months.

Chuck:
And then we were told “not today.” What about next week? “Well, no.”

—CHUCK AND JUDY COX, AUGUST 27, 2012

The giant billboard with Susan’s face on it beamed over the roadway. Under her photo, the sign said
MISSING
in huge letters, the date she had disappeared, a phone number to call with information, the Web address of the Susan Cox Powell Foundation, and at the bottom, three words:

HOPE, PRAY, HELP.

Chuck and Judy Cox had passed that sign a dozen times. So had half the people in Puyallup. The sign above Meridian Avenue, Route 161, looking down on one of the state’s busiest roads, was just a half mile from Steve Powell’s house in Country Hollow. It reminded thousands of motorists that Susan was still missing. It would help Charlie and Braden remember their mother’s face. Most of all, it sent a message to the inhabitants of Fort Powell that there would be justice.

Fort Powell.

That’s what Chuck called Steve Powell’s house. Josh’s father and siblings—except for Jennifer, who was convinced that her brother was responsible for Susan’s disappearance—were all living at Steve’s, along with Charlie and Braden. West Valley City police and the Pierce County sheriff’s department wanted to step up the pressure on Josh and thought that getting in his face with billboards and having run-ins with the Coxes would help.

The advertising was as much about making Steve and Josh squirm as it was about the expectation someone might have new information.

Chuck and Judy Cox didn’t need any reminders, but when they passed by the enormous billboard it always renewed their discussions of what might have really happened. Chuck couldn’t stop himself, and no one would blame him. Judy was his best ear. Over and over, in front of his wife he’d play out those theories of what happened to his daughter that frigid night in December.

Judy agreed, but mostly kept it all inside. She busied herself with her other grandchildren and friends from church, and she supported Chuck every step of the way. Her heart was broken and only very occasionally did she allow herself to consider the very real possibility that Susan was never coming home.

“Maybe they had a fight,” Chuck said to Judy.

She nodded. “I can see that happening.”

“Yes, and he hurt Susan accidentally. He stashed her someplace.”

“And she’s hidden somewhere?” Judy asked.

“Maybe Josh didn’t kill her. He’s a wimp, I don’t think he could have killed her.”

“Yes, he is a wimp,” Judy said. “Always has been.”

Chuck took a breath. “You know, Judy, if it was a reasonable, fair fight he would have lost. Susan’s stronger than Josh any day of the week.”

When that theory ran its course, Susan’s parents would edge toward a darker scenario.

“Maybe Steve really did have a hand in this?” Chuck asked.

Judy knew what her husband was getting at, but she waffled a little. “You mean, hiding Susan?”

“Worse,” he said.

Judy swallowed hard. “Maybe killing her.” Those last words barely came from her lips. Each syllable hurt.

Chuck again went over the evidence as he saw it. Thinking about all the years Josh’s twisted father had loved and lusted after his daughter-in-law and all that pornography made Chuck sick. Added to that was the fact that Josh apparently wanted to be free of his wife.

“Josh needed a nudge from someone,” Chuck said.

“I can see that, yes.”

Chuck went on, recounting how Josh had probably phoned someone for advice on poisoning or sedating Susan.

Jennifer Graves had questions as well. “I don’t think he ever made dinner when Susan was around; he simply wasn’t that considerate of her,” she told the police. “Why would he suddenly do it that night? And why would she then go to bed ill after? It seems fishy to me.”

Chuck said, “If she had been poisoned or sedated, it wouldn’t be a fair fight.”

Judy knew that her husband was right—Susan
was
a fighter. “Right, that’s how Josh was able to put her in the back of the minivan.”

And then, as if it was too much to bear, too hard to believe that Josh purposely killed Susan, Judy gave him an out.

“Or maybe Josh accidentally killed Susan, put her in the back of the van, strapped the boys into their car seats, and went looking for a place to leave her body?”

Chuck wasn’t sure, but there was a piece of the puzzle that always pointed to the possibility that he didn’t act alone.

The 800 miles. Chuck had a theory about that.

“When Josh rented the car and disappeared, he was running home to Puyallup but turned around and returned to West Valley City when his dad reminded him the boys were with Jennifer Graves and Josh would lose custody,” he said.

Judy could see that. Steve had always been a big stickler for the importance the law placed in “possession” of something, even children.

Susan’s parents went over every possible scenario. It was almost as if talking about the worst possible outcomes made them get used to the darkest ideas—like dipping one’s toes into the hottest bathwater.

“Or Josh drugged Susan,” Chuck said, “but she was alive and he kept her hidden.”

That was what Chuck had wondered when they saw Josh in January 2010, crying uncontrollably. Josh had arrived at the Coxes to drop off the boys for a visit. He couldn’t stop sobbing. Relations weren’t good enough—they’d never been good enough—for Chuck or Judy to reach out to Josh and to ask what was wrong. Later, they could come up with only one reason:
What if Susan had been hidden, and Josh had been told that she had died?

It must have been something big to trigger Josh’s sudden emotional breakdown.

The Coxes had begged the police to arrest their son-in-law, even if it was on a lesser charge than murder.

“I told them the only way to break Josh is to put him in jail because he is weak. We were afraid of what he might do to the kids. But the world did not listen to what we said about Josh,” Chuck said years later.

The police had an idea about how to keep the pressure on Josh. It was something Chuck and Judy had never heard of before, but is known to many who search for missing loved ones—a “honk and wave.”

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Putting this in my neighborhood is not appropriate. They’re trying to push an agenda.