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

by Gregg Olsen

  —SUSAN POWELL E-MAIL, JUNE 30, 2008

  At fifty-four, JoVonna Owings was two decades older than most of Susan’s friends. Mother of seven and stepmother to four, JoVonna had lived in Utah since 1979 but had moved recently to West Valley City to be closer to her daughter. JoVonna and Susan were sopranos and sat next to each other in the church choir. They became immediate friends.

  “She had a wonderful voice. Really angelic, just beautiful,” JoVonna said later. “So we were starting to find a lot of things we had in common. And I thought, ‘This is really cool! I’ve got a friend and she is right around the block from me. This is going to be so neat!’ I was looking forward to the future and doing stuff together.”

  A shared love of music, their faith, and Mary Higgins Clark novels cemented a deepening bond.

  JoVonna, in fact, had seen more of Susan during the previous two weeks than anyone else had. Susan and Josh seemed to have exhausted their other friends with their never-ending neediness—child care, rides, money, food. Emergencies created by Josh. Teenagers in the church who used to babysit complained that Josh was “creepy” and paid them a measly two dollars an hour.

  JoVonna didn’t meet Josh until the Tuesday of Thanksgiving week, thirteen days before Susan disappeared.

  “It was her day off, the boys were at a sitter, and Josh had the van,” she said later. “She was supposed to pick the boys up at six o’clock because her sitter [Debbie Caldwell] had a training class. He wasn’t home and she couldn’t get ahold of him. So she came to my house and I took her to pick her boys up. And then we came back and I stayed for a while.”

  JoVonna had heard that Josh was unpredictable and argumentative. She knew that Susan was alone in her semi-tolerance of her husband. Most of their friends rolled their eyes at Josh’s antics. JoVonna was curious about him.

  He didn’t disappoint. Immediately upon arrival at the house, he took over, bragging about his remote-controlled cars, his computers, his TV.

  “And he started in telling me all about one thing and the other and how he had this remote control and that remote control and he was showing me all this, and I was very nice. I said, ‘Cool, okay, thanks, Josh,’ but I was thinking: he’s just like a five-year-old. Does he ever run down? The Eveready Bunny! It was as if maybe nobody ever pays attention to him. How did I know? And he went on and on and on.”

  After his extended toy demonstration, Josh suddenly became argumentative with Susan about plans for Thanksgiving. They were going to spend the day with some of Josh’s relatives near Ogden, about an hour’s drive away. The hostess had asked Susan to bake six pumpkin pies.

  “I don’t know why you can’t just take one,” said Josh, a notorious penny-pincher.

  While JoVonna looked on, Susan shrugged it off a little. “Because that’s what I was assigned to take.”

  Josh’s winter pale complexion suddenly reddened.

  “There are only four of us, so you shouldn’t have to take six pies!” he shouted.

  Susan didn’t flinch. She simply pushed back. “Well, everybody else is taking enough of whatever they’re bringing for everyone so I’ll be making six pies.”

  JoVonna kept her mouth shut and took it all in. Every couple had disagreements, but Josh was acting like a big baby, as though making extra pies was somehow unfair.

  It didn’t take one of Mary Higgins Clark’s detectives to figure it out. JoVonna put two and two together. JoVonna had lived with controlling husbands, and she knew one when she saw one.

  Another time while visiting, JoVonna offered to give Susan a ride whenever she needed one and asked how to contact her. Sitting in view of the home telephone, JoVonna asked for the number.

  Susan stiffened and shook her head. “No, that goes directly to Josh’s business. You can’t use that phone,” she said, adding that it was something about charges on the line.

  Susan concluded the discussion of the “Josh rule” by giving out her cell number. JoVonna thought it was all weird, but wrote down the cell number, unaware that it was Susan’s father, Chuck, who had provided the phone—just in case Susan needed help, fast.

  That week Susan had confided to JoVonna that she thought she had been pregnant and miscarried. She shared the news with Debbie, too. On November 24, Susan had received an angry e-mail from Debbie Caldwell, who was furious that Josh had made her miss her CPR class. After agreeing with Debbie that Josh had disrespected her, Susan responded in an e-mail:

  Sometimes I seriously hate him. This am I got my period, so I might have been pregnant, barely and miscarried like a normal period. The dr today said 1 in 5 pregnancies miscarry and look like a normal period. I think it was a message from God to go ahead and get drugs! [the antibiotics] I’ve got a couple of hot items to discuss for our next counseling session.

  Although Josh always discouraged Susan from visiting a physician or taking the children to one, she had made the decision herself to wait on getting antibiotics for an ear infection, believing she was pregnant. A blood test at the doctor’s office determined that she wasn’t. Susan told friends that she had felt ill for weeks.

  In the days after Thanksgiving, JoVonna would see Susan, Josh, and the boys more than a half dozen times. Each time, a small glimpse into their relationship emerged. It was like a dripping faucet in the middle of the night—faint and concerning.

  Something was off. JoVonna just couldn’t put her finger on it.

  * * *

  Josh did quite a bit of shopping Thanksgiving week. None of it was to get a jump on the Christmas season.

  On Wednesday, November 25, Josh visited Air Gas Company to ask about “steel-cutting equipment.” He bought an acetylene torch and other supplies for $383.89. The next evening, after Thanksgiving dinner and all those pies Susan had made against his will, he went to Lowe’s to ask about parts for the metal-cutting torch and a paint sprayer. He left without making a purchase.

  On Friday, he stopped by another store and bought a fifty-foot roll of white tree wrap, described as “breathable fabric.” He ignored an employee’s warning that it would not work to repair the broken tree branch that Josh described.

  He returned to Air Gas on November 30 and December 1 to pick up additional items. Employees described him as “annoying” and said he asked questions about “technical aspects” of the torch.

  * * *

  On Thursday, December 3, Susan talked to her father. It was the kind of phone conversation between parents and children that occurs as Christmas approaches—plans being made, gifts to be mailed, cards to be sent. Susan seemed excited about the holidays and the things she’d be doing with Josh and her boys. Braden, almost three, was more aware that something special was coming and Charlie, soon to turn five and very active, was ready to start ripping open packages.

  That evening, Susan put highlights in Debbie’s hair. Susan had been a hairdresser in Washington but she wasn’t licensed in Utah, so she often cut and colored the hair of friends for free. It was her way of thanking them for helping her. Josh wanted Susan to charge for her services, but she refused. Her friends usually reciprocated by bringing dinner for the Powells, often a pizza.

  That’s what Debbie did that Thursday. She knew to check to see what Josh wanted to eat. He alternated between passive and impulsive behavior. He had famously thrown a pot of spaghetti on the floor on an evening when he’d felt ignored.

  On Saturday, December 5, the Powells joined other ward members at a church Christmas breakfast. Josh took pictures and Susan dished up plates of food from a buffet for Charlie and Braden. Josh liked to be behind the scenes, observing life through the camera lens. It was as if he could be there, in the moment, but not really be a part of it.

  Susan wore a red satin blouse under a jean jacket and her favorite earrings, a dangly series of silver loops of different sizes that nearly reached her shoulders. Josh wore a black leather jacket, oatmeal-colored sweater, and jeans. Charlie gripped a candy cane. Braden rested in his mother’s arms. The Powells posed with Kiirsi
Hellewell’s family in what would be the final photograph of a family headed toward disaster. All were smiling, all were unaware.

  JoVonna and one of her sons spent the afternoon at the Powells while Susan was at work. Josh explained to police that he was showing the boy how to build things. But JoVonna knew exactly what was going on: Josh didn’t want to have to babysit his own children himself.

  That evening, Susan and Josh attended the trucking firm’s Christmas party. JoVonna’s teenage son babysat Charlie and Braden.

  Josh won the raffle prize, another camera.

  Everything seemed picture-perfect.

  * * *

  At 8:58 A.M., Sunday, December 6, Susan Cox Powell made her final Facebook posting:

  My husband won a digital video camera called a “Flip” at his work party last night … what the heck good will it do for us?

  Several friends, knowing how tightly Josh controlled their spending, suggested that she regift it or, better yet, sell it on Craigslist or eBay.

  After posting, Susan, Charlie, and Braden left for church at their neighborhood ward. Kiirsi, Susan, and their friends belonged to the Hunter 36th Ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Josh had pulled away from the church, but had recently attended once or twice. But that day was a stake conference and Josh decided to skip the meeting. Susan and her sons walked past streets with names that evoked a blissful 1950s version of family life: Patti Drive, S. Jodie Lane, and streets named Deann, Dixie, and Marsha.

  After the service, Kiirsi joined Susan and her sons bound for home. Although she considered Susan to be her best friend, they hadn’t had a long talk in a while. Kiirsi, a mother of three, had been contending with the drama of a sick mother and problems with her husband’s employment. A resourceful woman, Kiirsi was up to the task of dealing with all that, but it left little time for her closest girlfriend.

  Later, Kiirsi would get emotional, thinking of the lost connection with Susan.

  “I was so caught up in the problems in my life. I’d ask her every couple of months, ‘How are things going with Josh?’ ‘Oh, they’re a little better,’ she’d say, ‘Maybe he’s trying a little bit more.’ She seemed pretty happy and her posts on Facebook seemed pretty upbeat so I didn’t think things were bad.”

  On the walk home, Susan told Kiirsi how glad she was that the boys were well-behaved so that she could listen to the sermon at church.

  Everything—and everyone—seemed to be in a good place. Kiirsi, like JoVonna and the others in Susan’s circle of friends, had no idea that in less than twelve hours Susan would vanish from the face of the earth.

  Josh phoned his father, Steve, at 12:14 P.M., before Susan got home from church. Steve later told investigators that his son had asked for a pancake recipe, which he’d gladly provided.

  It was the last call Josh would make for more than twenty-four hours.

  4

  I just hope obviously that this counseling will help Josh and everyone else can see the guy I fell in love with.

  —SUSAN POWELL E-MAIL, JULY 29, 2008

  At 2:29 P.M. on Sunday, Susan called JoVonna. She had finished crocheting a blanket for Charlie and was partway through one for Braden, when she found herself in a literal web of yarn.

  “I’ve got the yarn horribly tangled up,” she said. “Can you come and help me?”

  JoVonna, who had a bit of a reputation for sorting out the most hopeless yarn tangles, happily agreed.

  Before hanging up, JoVonna heard Josh in the background saying he would cook something and she could stay and eat with them.

  “But I’m not making much,” he added, which JoVonna took to be his way of his saying, “She can come over but her kids can’t.”

  Fifteen minutes later, JoVonna arrived at the Powells’. Susan met her at the door, then the two women planted themselves on the love seat by the front window and proceeded to tackle the knotted yarn for more than two hours. JoVonna’s goal was to unknot the orange, yellow, and turquoise strands without cutting a single piece of it.

  She remarked on the color combination—not something she would select.

  “Braden’s favorite colors,” Susan said.

  JoVonna smiled at Braden; he and his brother were taking turns playing in the living room and going in and out of the kitchen, “helping” Josh make dinner—a meal of cream cheese pancakes and scrambled eggs.

  There was an artificial Christmas tree in a corner, half decorated. Susan had asked Josh again and again to get the rest of the ornaments down from a high shelf in the garage. He hadn’t done it yet and Susan would probably end up doing it herself. The presents her parents had mailed for Charlie and Braden were under the tree.

  In a voice loud enough for her husband to hear over the din of his dinner preparation, Susan told JoVonna that she had recently been able to return to the temple. Josh was opposed to tithing, but Susan had started to keep some of the money she earned, and had resumed the practice, a requirement to enter the temple. She also said that she and Josh were having marriage counseling with an LDS Family Services counselor and had an appointment scheduled for the coming week. She was hopeful, but a little skeptical at the same time. Josh had stopped attending the sessions and wasn’t reading their homework, a book on marriage by a Mormon author.

  This was a pattern of Josh and Susan’s that longtime friends knew well. JoVonna was just beginning to see it. Josh would publicly berate Susan and sometimes she would respond by being quiet or by standing up to him, as she had about the six Thanksgiving pies. She could get in her digs at Josh by making sure he overheard her complaining to friends.

  “How are you feeling?” JoVonna asked. Susan had endured an ear infection for nearly three weeks, but there was something else there, too. Susan lowered her voice and talked about a miscarriage—but not so low that Josh couldn’t hear her. It was also possible that Susan didn’t want the children to overhear. JoVonna, who had suffered her own miscarriages, knew she would see Susan on Tuesday at a Relief Society dinner.

  “I didn’t want to go into it that night because I felt that this should be a private conversation where I could talk with her and not have him butt in,” she recalled later. “He had a tendency to butt in.”

  At one point, Susan indicated that she was chilly. Josh stopped what he was doing and brought her a blanket.

  No matter what she’d heard—from Susan or Susan’s friends—JoVonna was charmed by the gesture.

  Oh, how sweet that he would do that, she thought at the time.

  * * *

  Josh took forever making his special version of “breakfast for dinner”—a hit among kids in every American home, especially when a dad dons the cook’s apron. It was true he had two little boys underfoot and little claim to knowing his way around a kitchen. The kitchen was small and tidy. The refrigerator was bare except for a couple of drawings Charlie had made for his mother and promotional magnets left over from Josh’s brief career in real estate. Susan loved wolves, and frequently wore an old wolf T-shirt, and a wolf plaque hung on a wall. There was plenty of stopping and starting, the sound of the mixer interrupting the conversation across the living room on the floral printed love seat that Susan had saved her money to purchase. Susan let Josh struggle in the kitchen, something that JoVonna admired. A husband didn’t need to cook every night, but he should be able to fill in when his wife was ill or too tired to make a meal. First the blanket, then the meal … Josh was really on his best behavior.

  After a couple of hours of banging around in the kitchen, Josh served dinner. He put two pancakes on each plate and smothered them with canned apple pie filling. A spatula of scrambled eggs nested on top … and dinner was served. The women remained on the love seat to eat. Josh prepared the plates separately. He fixed one and took it to JoVonna, then returned to the kitchen to prepare Susan’s. He and the boys took the three chairs at the table.

  “It was nice because the last time I had been there he had to dominate the conversation. He had to be the cent
er of everything,” JoVonna said later. “When he came into a room it was all about Josh, what Josh had to say. This time it wasn’t like that, and I thought, ‘That’s really nice.’”

  Between 4:30 and 5:00 P.M. Susan said she was tired and retreated to the bedroom. JoVonna attributed Susan’s fatigue to the miscarriage and recent ear infection. She stayed until about 5:30 P.M. working on the yarn. Josh busied himself cleaning the kitchen and washing the dishes. He instructed Charlie and Braden to go to the bathroom and get dressed for sledding in the freezing December air. When it became obvious that Josh and the boys were going outside, JoVonna knew it was her signal to leave.

  When JoVonna left that evening the house was pristine.

  * * *

  Around 8:30 P.M. a neighbor saw Josh return home and pull into the garage. Three hours later, Marco Bastidas, who lived one house away from Josh and Susan’s, was locking up his car when he heard an alarm sounding inside the closed garage at the Powell home. He couldn’t see any lights on in the house. After listening to the alarm for at least two minutes, Marco’s sister suggested he alert the neighbors. He was reluctant to bother Josh or Susan, and eventually the alarm stopped.

  Another neighbor, ill in bed, later heard what sounded like a man and a woman arguing. She told the police her story, and regretted not getting up and looking out her window at the time to see who was yelling.

  Was it Josh and Susan?

  Sometime later, the Powells’ garage door opened and the family’s light blue minivan pulled out. There were no neighbors awake to see it.

  5

  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/clean and/or cook/clean for himself. Hang out and talk together, watch movies and relaxing tv just for entertainment. Care 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 rantings can’t fix, (although he thinks it can) But when we moved to Utah … and then we had Charlie, his priorities seemed to have changed.