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

by Gregg Olsen

  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.…

  EM: Do you think she’s in danger right now, do you think she’s hurt?

  JP: Don’t know … I don’t think she would do that.

  EM: You don’t think she’d do what?

  JP: I don’t think she would miss work.<
br />
  Maxwell, who more than once mistakenly refers to Susan as “Sarah,” tries to get Josh to tell him who Susan’s friends are. But Josh can’t seem to think of anybody.

  EM: Let me tell ya something. You’re, I mean, you’re kind of being helpful but you’re not helpful, ’cause I mean I’ve been married and I know who … I can tell you who my wife’s closest friends are.

  JP: Ah, she talked to …

  EM: You know what I’m saying? And I actually know who her closest friends are and you’re telling me that you can’t tell me.

  JP: Okay, she talks to [redacted] a lot.

  Maxwell asks Josh more pointedly if he is worried about Susan. For years to come, the West Valley City police would say that Josh never acted concerned about Susan, didn’t ask about the investigation into her disappearance, and never helped look for her.

  EM:… If you last seen her at midnight that’s the last time you’ve seen her, um, nobody else has seen her or talked to her since, so she’s basically been missing for about twenty hours.

  JP: Okay.

  EM: So where would you think she would be at? Does that concern you at all? I mean, just ’cause …

  JP: It, it does.

  EM: It does concern you?

  JP: Yes.

  EM: Okay, so help me try to figure out. I don’t live with you. I don’t live with her, okay. You guys have been together for what, seven years?

  JP: Um … it seems like maybe eight.

  EM: Okay, eight years. You know her a hell of a lot better than I do. First we’re taking a report at ten o’clock [in the morning].

  JP: Well, I think she would go to work.

  EM: All right, but she didn’t go to work, dude!

  Josh was like a broken record. No doubt he’d been taken by surprise that he, Charlie, Braden, and Susan were discovered to be missing early that morning by Debbie Caldwell. He probably planned to arrive home before anyone knew he was gone, maybe dispose of Susan’s purse to make it look like she had left voluntarily, and later he would report her missing. He would have time to come up with a story. He’d lost that advantage.

  EM: What do you think? I mean we’ve talked quite a bit. What are you thinking? You thinking, where do you think she’s … you think she’s at a friend’s house, think she’s okay?

  JP: I don’t even know what to think …

  EM: Hum, I don’t know either … you didn’t take her out to Pony Express with you guys?

  JP: No.

  Josh finally signed a consent form authorizing a search of his van. In the vehicle they found the electric generator, blankets, a gas can, tarps, and a shovel. They also recovered a circular saw, a humidifier, at least two knives, a tripod, a newly opened box of latex gloves, and a rake, but did not disclose the existence of those items for more than three years.

  Except for the generator, there was no camping equipment. No sleeping bags, no provisions such as diapers or food—except for a few snacks—for a father taking his two young sons camping in a snowstorm.

  At 9:00 P.M. on December 7, twenty-eight hours after JoVonna Owings last saw Susan, the police let Josh and the boys leave the police department, take the minivan, and return to the house on W. Sarah Circle. When he arrived home Josh backed the van up to the garage door. Neighbors reported that he spent all night and early the next morning cleaning the vehicle and made dozens of trips from the van to the garage.

  * * *

  Down the street from the Powells’, Kiirsi Hellewell sat at her computer in a downstairs playroom filled with crafts and toys that shouted to the world she was a mother—and a busy one at that. Surrounded by her children’s photos, she went onto Facebook to see what, if anything, anyone had reported about the Powells.

  Nothing.

  Something did come, however, a little later that evening in the form of a phone call. It made her heart beat faster, her stomach turn somersaults.

  “Josh is back,” a neighbor said.

  “Are they okay? Are they okay?”

  There was an uneasy pause.

  “Susan is not with them,” the neighbor said.

  Kiirsi felt a horrible, heart-sinking dread take over.

  “Oh no,” she said, her voice shaking. “What has he done?”

  It was a question that would be asked over and over for years.

  * * *

  Far away in Puyallup, Washington, framed photographs of Salt Lake City’s Temple Square adorned the Coxes’ split-level house, panoramic reminders of their faith. On Monday night, Susan’s parents, in addition to keeping in touch with Jennifer Graves, were also working the phones and the Internet. They knew that Josh had returned home with the boys, but had no idea of Susan’s whereabouts. The police told Chuck that they weren’t sure if a crime had been committed. If he thought the worst, even in that moment, Chuck didn’t tell Judy.

  Susan’s father had faith that things would be all right. His daughter would be found safe and sound. He promised Judy. He believed it. He prayed for it.

  Three miles southeast of the Coxes’ home, in Steve Powell’s two-story house in a modest, gated community called Country Hollow, Josh’s father, his youngest sister Alina, middle brother Johnny, and youngest brother Mike, must have heard about the call that morning from their oldest sibling, Jennifer. How they reacted is unknown. Maybe they weren’t concerned at all? Josh, it was true, could be impulsive and disorganized. It was part of who he was. He’d always been the kind of person who would come up with some grand scheme and then try to conjure a way to make it work—even though his track record was less than stellar.

  Upstairs in thirty-year-old Johnny Powell’s bedroom, a carefully coiled rope noose hung on the wall along with disturbing renderings of a woman with a knife running through her vagina and exiting her stomach. Johnny, whom his father and sister Alina considered an artist, had a history of mental troubles.

  That wasn’t all that was upstairs. In Steve’s bedroom down the hall from Johnny’s was part of a cache of more than a dozen computers. Inside those computers, and also in scores of notebooks and stacks of homemade music CDs, was incontrovertible documentation of an obsession the likes of which had seldom been seen by even the most experienced police investigator. In image after image, in song after song, diary entries that went on for reams of pages at a time, was the object of Steve’s obsession: a blue-eyed beauty, now the missing mother of two, Susan Cox Powell.

  * * *

  Moments after logging Josh’s and Susan’s cell phones into evidence, investigators discovered that both phones were missing the SIM cards—the data recorder of calls made and received.

  If Josh Powell had thought he could thwart the detectives and the investigation with this obvious deception, he was wrong. It would take some effort to gather billing records from the service providers, but it could be done.

  Evasive?

  Lying?

  Unconcerned about his wife’s fate?

  Josh Powell didn’t know it, but he’d just nailed the trifecta, the traits of those who kill their spouses. It was so obvious.

  But apparently it was not obvious to the West Valley City police.

  * * *

  That night, Jennifer Graves woke up in a panic. The phone was ringing. She knew it was Susan. Jennifer groped wildly for the phone by the bed, struggling to get to it in time to talk to Susan, find out where she was, and get her home. As she became more awake, Jennifer realized that the phone hadn’t rung. It was a dream.

  She stayed up for hours, reliving the vivid scene over and over and wondering what her brother had done to his wife.

  2

  He will go to counseling for himself and/or meds to deal with his mental issues and if he refuses I will not ruin mine and my boys’ lives further and we will divorce and I hope it’s not as ugly as he claims it will be when we’ve talked about it in the past.

  —SUSAN POWELL IN E-MAIL, JULY 11, 2008

  Life in any home is a crazy quilt and sometimes the edges are frayed. The Coxes had experien
ced their ups and downs like any family. Long before husbands and children, the Cox girls tried their parents’ patience as teens often do. There was some sneaking around. There were alliances and feuds. There were the cover stories that sisters sometimes tell for one another. Susan and her sister Denise were especially tight. Susan, though younger, stuck up for Denise, who was the “wild” one of the Cox girls. When Denise found herself unmarried and pregnant at eighteen, her parents and her other sisters were anything but happy about it. Susan took a different tack.

  “I’m going to be an aunt!” she said. “I’m so happy and excited, Denise!”

  Susan’s move to Utah and the troubles in her own life had put distance between the once very, very close sisters. But still, when Denise heard that Susan was missing, she felt a surge of uneasiness. Susan was fun, but responsible. She would never run off and leave her kids. Denise recalled her last conversation with Susan the month before. It was small talk mostly. Later Denise would sit in a chair in her Bonney Lake, Washington, home and try to piece together all that had been said. Try as she might, she came up with nothing, except regrets.

  She wished that she’d called her sister more often, that she had probed deeper into what was going on. Denise herself had been in an abusive relationship. She knew that it took a great deal of strength—and often the helping hand of another—to get out.

  But by the time Susan and Josh had settled into married life in Utah, the pattern had been established. Talking on the phone with Susan often felt empty, one-sided. It wasn’t that Susan wasn’t an outgoing person with lots of news to share, but she didn’t. It was all surface conversation.

  Denise knew the reason. Josh was always hovering nearby, listening to every word, making sure that his wife painted the picture of their lives that he wanted to believe was true.

  That they were normal, happy, and safe.

  When Denise heard that Josh and the boys had gone camping in the middle of the night, she gave her head a quick shake.

  Who does that? Where is my sister?

  She remembered a letter Susan had written to her in 2007, saying that she was afraid Josh would kill her before he agreed to a divorce.