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

by Gregg Olsen

  Chuck Cox was a quick study. He’d picked up on the media’s fascination with a missing girl, a news hook that even had a name: “missing white woman syndrome.” Television in particular devoted a disproportionate amount of air time to crimes involving a young, attractive, white, middle-class woman or girl. Susan’s father took advantage of this to give the media everything they wanted, all in an effort to find his daughter. By the end of the first week, Chuck had given at least forty interviews, including to Larry King Live, Good Morning America, The Today Show, and Geraldo.

  Susan’s friends—and most of Josh’s friends—began to suspect Josh. Although their marriage had been sealed for eternity in the temple, Susan had contemplated divorce. She had started to stand up for herself. Friends said she would never, ever have walked away from her boys and that she would not have permitted the midnight camping trip. Some knew that she had found a way to set some money aside, just in case.

  They reflected on Josh’s odd personality and offbeat sense of humor and were reminded of bizarre comments he had made, which took on a sinister light in retrospect.

  They remembered how Josh, in casual conversations, seemed obsessed with how one could get away with murder. He talked about the mistakes Mark Hacking had made when the Salt Lake City man reported his wife, twenty-seven-year-old Lori, missing July 19, 2004. According to family members, Lori Hacking was five weeks’ pregnant at the time. Mark Hacking eventually confessed to shooting his wife and disposing of her body in a Dumpster. Josh said Hacking “screwed up disposing of his wife’s body” and that it was best to “stick close to the truth” when talking to the police and “don’t tell too many lies.”

  The husband of a coworker remembered a Christmas party in 2008 when Josh talked about his fascination with TV crime investigation shows. He discussed “how to kill someone, dispose of the body, and not get caught,” and told the partygoer that Utah’s thousands of mine shafts and tunnels were the perfect place to “dispose of someone and no one would ever search for the body.”

  14

  My friend came over b/c he was at her house getting help from her hubby for his business and my friend knows short hand so she wrote down the crazy stuff he said so I’ll let you see it once she gets it to me via e-mail. I’ve also written a sort of will in my desk b/c at this point, I don’t know what to think anymore.

  —SUSAN POWELL E-MAIL, JUNE 30, 2008

  Susan told a surprisingly wide circle of friends that she had an escape plan. When she got a raise at Wells Fargo, her mother urged her to put some money in a separate account. Judy said that Josh would never know the difference. So Susan did it. Josh found out and was upset about her having money that he didn’t have access to, so it was one more thing they argued about. She had started the process of finding an attorney and had sent an e-mail to a friend saying she and the boys might need a temporary place to stay. Even her father told her to get out if she had to, even if she had to leave the boys. They’d hire an attorney and get custody.

  Susan had written a journal since childhood and she kept the most recent one at work. Up to her last entry written a few weeks before she vanished, she wrote about the issues in her marriage. On June 28, 2008, Susan even wrote out an informal will stating:

  I want it documented somewhere that there is extreme turmoil in our marriage.

  If something happens to me, please talk to my sister in law Jenny Graves, my friend Kiirsi Hellewell, check my blogs on MySpace, check my work desk, talk to my friends, co-workers, and family.

  If I die, it may not be an accident, even if it looks like one. Take care of my boys.

  I want my parents Judy and Chuck Cox very involved and in charge of [Charlie and Braden]. I love you Charlie and Braden and I’m sorry you’ve seen how wrong/messed up our marriage is. I would never leave you!

  She also wrote that the night before, Josh had threatened her, saying he would “destroy” her and her life “would be over” if she filed for divorce. She put the will in her safe deposit box.

  * * *

  More than once Susan had used her wedding anniversary in April as a goal and as an ultimatum to Josh—if things weren’t better by April 6, she would leave him. Whenever she and Josh talked about divorce he threatened to take the boys and leave her with nothing, as his father had done to his mother. As the fall of 2009 approached, Susan seemed to have made a decision. She lost some weight, maybe to prepare herself for her new life apart from Josh, maybe over stress, maybe just losing the weight she had gained during her last pregnancy.

  For years Susan had begged Josh to have individual counseling and to go with her to marital counseling. He’d go once and stop.

  “She tried to get him to see a psychiatrist, because she thought maybe he was bipolar, but he refused,” Kiirsi recalled. “He’d say, ‘No, my real estate clients might find out I was on medication.’ He’d say, ‘You’re probably the crazy one, you need to go get checked out.’ She did see a psychiatrist and asked him if she was crazy. He told her, ‘No, you’re fine.’”

  Susan also knew that prayer, like counseling, wasn’t going to save her marriage, either. She wrote to a friend:

  I recognize now that me praying or reading scripture and hoping is not going to cut it anymore. I need help and so does he. I’m thinking he will be a lot more receptive to my suggestions of counseling for himself once he sees my own improvements.

  Susan had even gone to talk to her ward’s lay bishop. In an e-mail she wrote:

  The bishop talked with me for an hour, opened with a prayer, and I was already almost in tears. Managed to ramble out my story, he agreed with me on all points (josh has mental issues and/or has lost touch with reality = I’m a stressed, overworked, neglected/abused single mother down to her last straw) he repeatedly asked “what can I do to help?”

  The Powells’ LDS marriage counselor had suggested they read the book Bonds That Make Us Free: Healing Our Relationships, Coming to Ourselves, by C. Terry Warner, the same book Ken and Debbie Caldwell had read when they went to counseling. A professor of philosophy at Brigham Young University, Warner based his approach on what he called “the problem of self-deception,” or how we create and perpetuate problems, blame others, and resist solutions.

  Since Josh stopped going to counseling and refused to read the book, Susan would read occasional pages to him. She seemed to be applying what she was reading, writing to a friend in the weeks before she went missing:

  I’m only on chapter 2 of bonds that make us free, and I’m already realizing that I view him as the “enemy” often. Counseling should be interesting, I’ve got to keep my mouth shut and let his side come out. It’s a female [counselor] so I don’t know how he’ll handle that.

  15

  Spoke with RS president @ friend Kiirsi’s house and they both have experiences with mental illness/bi polar family members. It seems that overall, if someone is bi polar, you don’t want them to feel boxed into a corner or threatened or stressed (or else they’ll “swing manic” etc)

  —SUSAN POWELL E-MAIL, JULY 18, 2008

  In early 2009 Susan, Josh, and the boys made the trek from Utah to Washington to visit with their families. The drive was a long one, with Susan gamely trying to hold the marriage together for the sake of Charlie and Braden, and Josh oblivious to his role in its meltdown. Shortly after they arrived, Josh told Susan that he wanted to take her on a special overnight camping trip. He wanted to leave their sons with his father, instead of her parents.

  Susan talked it over with her folks.

  “I don’t feel comfortable about this,” she said.

  Chuck didn’t either. “It’s suspicious.”

  “He wants us to leave the boys with Steve,” Susan said.

  Chuck, who could be the calmest person in the midst of a crisis, bristled at that suggestion. “No. Don’t do that. Possession is nine-tenths of the law. If anything happened to you and Josh, Steve would have the boys,” he said.

  She had asked Josh why they didn’t make it
a family trip and take Charlie and Braden. Josh, who had never cared about “alone time” with Susan, was adamant that it be just them.

  When Susan finally told Josh she’d go, but only if Charlie and Braden stayed with the Coxes, Josh told her to forget it.

  By then the distrust between father and son-in-law was insurmountable. Later, long after she went missing, Chuck Cox wondered if the “alone time” camping trip had been a foiled plan to get rid of Susan in some kind of accident.

  “I think he was planning to get rid of her then and it didn’t work out because she wouldn’t let the kids stay with Steve. She dodged the bullet then,” Chuck said later.

  During that trip Susan’s parents overheard a yelling match between Josh and Susan. The couple and their two boys were staying downstairs at the Coxes. The fight had to do with Susan not wanting to go to Steve’s house. Chuck heard Josh call Susan a bitch and a Goody Two-shoes, and heard her respond that she might be a bitch, but at least she wasn’t a child molester. There was some kind of scuffle, as if Josh was trying to get the kids out of bed, but Susan stopped him. Josh screamed and slammed the door on his way out. It seemed that Susan had held her own, so Chuck didn’t interfere.

  It was Susan’s last visit home.

  * * *

  In October 2009, Susan’s friend Amber Hardman spent the day taking photographs of Susan, Josh, Charlie, and Braden at the International Peace Gardens, a botanical garden in Salt Lake City. She posed Charlie and Braden in the trunk of a tree and their parents beside them. The family looked incredibly happy. But she remembers some awkward moments when she attempted to take pictures of Josh and Susan alone near a gate. She suggested the couple pose with their arms around each other and even asked Josh to kiss Susan. That’s when things turned weird. Josh was stilted, uncomfortable, and didn’t want to kiss his wife, Amber said. He looked far more comfortable and was more animated when he didn’t have to pretend an intimacy with Susan.

  Amber and Susan had been friends since 2004, when they had worked together at Fidelity Investments. Now they worked together at Wells Fargo. Amber was no longer attending the Mormon church, but the women were close. Several weeks after the photo shoot, Susan told Amber that she thought she was pregnant. The women bought several home pregnancy tests for Susan to take into the bathroom at work. The results were always negative. But Susan continued to feel nauseous. “She went and got a blood test at the doctor’s office, and it was negative, too. But she still thought she was pregnant,” Amber said. Susan told her that Josh was hoping she wasn’t pregnant, but that after a while he had softened his stance a little.

  Amber, like others, now wonders if Josh was poisoning Susan. “He made a lot of organic products for her to drink, a lot of thick yogurt stuff and fermented drinks with kefir.”

  At about that time, Josh was “leading her on, making her think that their marriage was better,” Amber said. Until a huge fight in November. It was a Sunday, the family was home, and Susan overheard Josh telling Charlie and Braden that “Mommy is evil” and “church is evil.” Susan didn’t hold back and told him she didn’t want him saying those things to her sons.

  She was furious, and phoned and asked Amber what she would do. Amber suggested she go for a drive with the boys, but Susan said Josh would call the police and accuse her of kidnapping.

  16

  I just miss her and … I love her, my boys love her, I mean a lot of people love her. And she is just … just wonderful. And all I ask is that anyone who can just help us try to find her.

  —JOSH POWELL TO KTVX-TV, DECEMBER 14, 2009

  It was the week before Christmas, but the ringing of the doorbell at the Powell residence in Puyallup was not the UPS man or FedEx lady with a package. Far from it. In fact, the sound at the door, and the ringing of the phone, were becoming a major irritant to Steve Powell. Steve liked control. He didn’t like to be questioned about anything.

  He opened the front door, but only a sliver. So much for living in a gated community. Steve’s face reddened. Outside was yet another reporter. If Josh had believed that leaving Utah would mean ending the questions about Susan, he was dead wrong. Steve told the reporter that his son was being “vilified” and made a scapegoat over Susan’s disappearance.

  Then he shut the door.

  Josh’s father would be his best, and nearly only, defender, leading the charge against Susan’s friends, her parents, the Mormon church, the West Valley City Police Department and, sadly, Susan.

  Josh was in Puyallup to spend Christmas and celebrate Steve’s sixtieth birthday, but he almost certainly needed help with Charlie and Braden. After all, Josh didn’t cook, clean, grocery shop, change diapers, or have any patience with his sons. While home he told his father and sister Alina that Susan might have been having an affair and might be pregnant.

  * * *

  Back in Utah, Kiirsi and John Hellewell were getting their children ready for church the next day when the phone rang. It was Josh.

  “John, I need a phone number for Barbara,” Josh said. “I need for her to get the bird and take care of it.”

  “Why can’t you take her the bird?” John asked.

  “I’m in Washington. The boys and I are here for Christmas,” Josh said.

  “What?” John was flabbergasted. He had assumed that Josh was staying in the area for the holidays—and for the hunt for Susan. “Why didn’t you tell us you were gone?”

  Josh skirted the question a little.

  “I was fired from my job and I need to get away from the media,” he said. Josh hadn’t contacted his manager at Aspen Distribution about missing work. Steve Powell had called the company soon after Susan disappeared to find out if they’d heard from Josh. But, as usual, Josh avoided taking responsibility and received a termination letter in the mail.

  The two men talked a little longer, Josh telling John that he was unsure if he’d be able to keep the house.

  John was disappointed and angry, but he provided the phone number for the bird sitter, Susan’s friend Barbara. He hung up and told Kiirsi that Josh and the boys were in Washington.

  Kiirsi was stunned. She felt that the circling of the Powell siblings had been a purposeful distraction to allow Josh to sneak away. A man who loved his wife, even just a little bit, would never have left town.

  “Let’s call the police,” she said.

  The West Valley City police didn’t hide their feelings. The officer on the phone sounded surprised that Josh had left town. It was true that Josh was free to come and go, but they still wanted to talk to him about exactly where he had gone camping the night of December 6 and where he had driven when he rented the car two days later. They were also waiting for results from the state crime lab, which was testing DNA evidence collected from the couple’s home.

  They were busy getting warrants, which allowed them to track Josh’s van for a few days and eventually monitor the phone calls of Josh, his father, and his sister Alina, and the Internet use by Josh and his brother Mike.

  Josh would return twice in January and February, to pack up the house and then to get it ready to be rented. But before he left for Christmas—in fact, just ten days after his wife’s disappearance—he cancelled Susan’s upcoming appointments, including one with her chiropractor. With his power of attorney, he withdrew all the money in Susan’s IRA account, about ten thousand dollars.

  Although many would later question what the West Valley City police were doing to put pressure on the case, investigators were going where their gut instincts and evidence took them.

  It took them to Puyallup, Washington, to see Steve Powell.

  Detectives from West Valley City, Utah, and the Pierce County, Washington, sheriff’s departments all wanted to meet with Steve. Finally, he agreed to an interview at a neutral place, a library branch in South Hill, near Puyallup, on December 17. The two-hour interview was conducted by Detective Gavin Cook of West Valley City, and two detectives from the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office. Steve arrived with his own t
ape recorder.

  The police expected to hear a routine expression of worry and dismay over a missing daughter-in-law. What they heard instead, they wrote later, was “disturbing.”

  From the beginning, Steve made it clear that he and Susan had had a special relationship.

  SP: I mean, she talked to me about her problems and even a little bit about their sex life … I mean, she tended to be a little bit open about stuff like that, you know.

  Steve said he hadn’t seen Susan since February of 2009.

  SP: When she and Josh and I were together with the boys it was perfect … She was always nice to me, she, she seemed to like me a lot.

  He explained, however, that he wasn’t welcome at the Coxes, where Susan and the boys spent most of the last visit to Puyallup.

  SP: These people are, are very good Latter-day Saints and I’m not.

  GC: Okay.

  SP: I’m a dropout.

  GC: Okay.

  SP: I’m, I’m, I’m a bad influence on Josh. I could be a bad influence on their kids.

  The conversation quickly went to Steve’s favorite topic: his sexual obsession with Susan.

  SP: When she was living with me she was very open sexually … and she liked to, um, she, she liked to do things.

  GC: Okay.

  SP: Let’s just put it that way.

  GC: And, and that would be or what? What did you pick up on or notice in that, that way?

  SP: You couldn’t possibly miss it. I mean, she, she would, ah, she would, ah, wax her legs and, ah, you know, take a shower and then she would come into my office and say you know, “Feel how smooth they are.” You know what I’m saying?