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

by Gregg Olsen

  When Pam flipped to a page showing an illustration of a woman, Braden pointed at the figure’s chest and looked up at her.

  “Mommy has an owie,” he said.

  Alarmed, Pam glanced over at the others, but no one else had heard him.

  Mommy has an owie?

  When it came time to leave, Braden grabbed his aunt’s arm and refused to let go. Charlie begged them to stay longer, but it was clear that Steve and Josh hadn’t intended a longer visit and they needed to leave.

  Charlie started to cry and ripped up his art project.

  It didn’t matter that he put his heart and his soul into that project; it was clear to the Coxes that he was hurting, and tearing that up was a way to deal with the pain.

  They left Country Hollow stunned by the bizarre household, the creepy vibe that Steve gave them, and Josh’s insistence that he’d been absolved of any suspicion by the West Valley City police. But more than anything, it was what Braden had said to Pam that had them reeling.

  When the trio told Chuck and Judy their story, Chuck went for his phone to notify the West Valley City police and emphasized the need for another interview with Charlie and Braden.

  “They know something about what happened to their mother,” Chuck said. “You need to talk to them.”

  * * *

  Interviewing children and keeping the interviews admissible to the courts is no easy endeavor. The annals of crime are littered with cases in which coaching young witnesses has been alleged, and proven. The West Valley City police knew all of that, and followed rigorous protocol when investigators interviewed the boys in Puyallup in early 2010. There was no leading, no pushing, just a gently probing conversation with Charlie and Braden while a child psychologist and investigators from Pierce County looked on.

  A conspiracy of silence appeared to be reigning over the Powell household.

  “Do you know what happened to Mommy?” an investigator asked.

  “It’s the big secret,” Charlie said.

  20

  Each day is kind of like a depression. But I choose to get up and think positive, and have hope and faith that she’ll be found alive.

  —JUDY COX ON DR. PHIL, FEBRUARY 16, 2010

  Josh’s sister, Jennifer, knew that she had to face her father. No matter that she’d had a zillion reasons to avoid him since she was a teenager. He had mistreated her mother, introduced her brothers to pornography, and she thought—as the police did—that he probably had a hand in her sister-in-law’s disappearance.

  It was an icy Friday night in January when Jennifer and Kirk Graves made the surprise visit to Country Hollow. It was a first for Kirk, too. In fact, in their sixteen years of marriage, Kirk had managed to avoid his father-in-law when they found themselves in the same state. Although the Graves had been friendly with Josh and Susan, Josh had distanced himself from Jennifer since Susan’s disappearance. But now she had driven 900 miles to ask Josh face-to-face the question she felt only he could answer: What had he done to Susan?

  According to a page Josh added to SusanPowell.org titled “Jennifer and Kirk Graves ousted from family because of her hysterical behavior,” Steve and Josh “tried to be hospitable,” even inviting Jennifer and Kirk to stay for dinner. Jennifer had arrived with “a preconceived notion of Josh’s guilt” and hid her “true reason” for visiting: she wanted to confront Josh. After dinner, Josh and Jennifer went into another room in the house to talk. While Mike lurked and listened in so that he could back up his older brother’s version of events, Jennifer asked Josh where he had hidden Susan’s body and if he had ever loved Susan.

  What no one knew except for her husband was that Jennifer was wearing a wire. She had gone to the police to offer to tape a conversation with Josh. The police got a court order allowing the secret taping. They called it “Operation Puyallup.” While Jennifer was in her father’s house, detectives in nearby unmarked police cars listened in.

  Jennifer was scared. She didn’t know what Josh and her father might do if they figured out she was wearing a wire. She told Josh that there were rumors that he was about to be arrested and encouraged him to turn himself in to the police.

  “I haven’t done anything and I don’t know what rumors you’re talking about,” Josh said. “I sat down with the cops and I told them everything.”

  “You didn’t tell me anything. I’ve asked but you haven’t said anything to me,” Jennifer said. “Why don’t you put my mind at ease and tell me what happened? I’m your sister. Think about your children. She’s your wife, for crying out loud. What happened?”

  Josh stuck to his story. He didn’t know what had happened to Susan. Jennifer continued to press him.

  “Really? Really?” she asked. “Can you look me in the eye, and tell me you really did not have anything to do with it?”

  Josh’s denials continued.

  “You haven’t put any effort into helping find her,” Jennifer said.

  “That’s not true,” Josh said.

  Josh was late picking up a birthday cake for a party for Charlie and Braden the next day and was trying to leave the house. Jennifer persisted with her questioning.

  “Where did you put her?”

  Josh was incredulous. “I can’t believe you’re saying that.”

  “I was there the day after, when you were cleaning up the house. What the heck is that about? Who does that right after their wife goes missing? Why weren’t you out looking? Why were you going around the house cleaning? I don’t get it. Were you trying to cover it up? Where is she, Josh? Where is Susan? Where’s the body? Did you dump it somewhere?”

  Amazingly, Josh didn’t lose his temper, and invited Jennifer and Kirk to hang out, and even return the next day for a birthday party for Charlie and Braden. But like a lot of family arguments, it got ugly when old family history was replayed. Alina and Jennifer began to argue about who was at fault in their parents’ divorce, taking the same sides they took when they were young. Kirk and Steve argued about Steve’s treatment of Jennifer. Jennifer and Steve fought over Jennifer’s accusations that Josh had done something to Susan.

  “I don’t think he’s going to be able to escape this,” Jennifer said.

  “Escape what?” Steve asked.

  Jennifer put it as plainly as she could. “Let’s see. Joshua’s camping in the middle of the night and Susan’s gone now. It’s pretty obvious.”

  “Excuse me?” Steve said. “It’s not obvious to me.”

  Her father told her she had worn out her welcome, and his next words were the cruelest he had ever said to her. They were also the last words he would ever say to her. “You are a goddamn fucking bitch is what you are, to talk about your brother and my son that way and make things up.”

  And that wasn’t all. “Get off my porch, just get off my porch!” he yelled at his firstborn. “I’m ejecting you out of my family. I’ve just given up on you, Jenny.”

  “That’s fine,” Jennifer said.

  “So, please don’t even bother coming back,” Steve said.

  And she never did.

  After that night, Alina, who continued to circle the wagons with her father and Josh, began to refer to Jennifer as her “former” sister. So did Josh. Mike would describe her as biologically his sister.

  * * *

  Like a novel with its most crucial pages ripped out, the most dramatic moments in Steve Powell’s life are missing from his journals. In his last entry for 2009 he relates a dream that woke him early on November 10. In the dream, he was at an LDS church attending a party with one of his children. A woman, apparently a teacher, slaps the child. Steve goes to a phone to call the police. A man stops him by placing a hand under Steve’s shirt. When Steve tells him to take his hand away, the man says, “I just wanted to see if you had a heart.” Steve wrote that he woke “humiliated” but didn’t explain whether he was embarrassed over the crack about having no heart, or not defending his child, or something else altogether. There is nothing about Susan’s disappearance.
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  * * *

  Back in Utah, Kiirsi staged her three-day social media blitz to keep the focus on finding Susan. By the end of the blitz, the Friends and Family of Susan Powell Facebook page had grown to 43,000 members.

  With no searches to take part in, the campaign gave Susan’s friends something to do. It also gave Kiirsi and the other administrators of the Facebook page more than a few headaches. A few postings veered toward the negative when it came to Josh Powell, outright blaming him for Susan’s disappearance. Someone posted sexually explicit comments about Susan and pornographic pictures on the site. Some posters claimed to be Susan.

  As Susan’s best friend—and because Josh refused to—Kiirsi gave a lot of newspaper and television interviews. She tried to keep it positive, refusing to call out Josh as Susan’s suspected killer.

  Soon, Steve and all his other children, except Jennifer, would create or contribute to Web sites that defended Josh and blamed the Mormon church, the Coxes, Kiirsi, Jennifer, Debbie, and the police for harassing Josh. They would claim that Susan was emotionally abused as a child and mentally unbalanced, had come on to Steve sexually, had renounced her Mormon faith, and had run away with another man.

  At about the same time that the Powells began to turn on Susan, Chuck Cox went to his home computer to update followers on the Friends and Family Facebook page. He wrote that the West Valley City police had received results of some of the forensic evidence in the case. Police wouldn’t comment, because it could impact the ongoing investigation. They wouldn’t even tell the Coxes what they had found. Chuck asked people to continue to pray for his daughter.

  We are still confident that Susan will be found, and very hopeful that she will be found alive. Make sure that people know she is still missing and make sure no one gives up hope.

  * * *

  The war between the Coxes and the Powells raged on. The Powells had only the Internet in their arsenal. The Coxes had that and much more. They had national television, “honk and waves,” vigils, purple ribbons, and photographs of a young, pretty mother and her two little boys. Most of all, they had America’s interest in missing women.

  In mid-February, Chuck and Judy Cox, Jennifer and Kirk Graves, and Cox family friend Shelby Gifford went on TV’s Dr. Phil. The entire hour was dedicated to families coping with missing relatives. In addition to Susan’s family, John Green and Ed Smart, both fathers of young women who were abducted, appeared.

  Jennifer criticized Josh for not providing information to police or family members.

  “I’m kind of caught in the middle. My brother is a person of interest, but my sister-in-law, my good friend, is missing,” she said.

  She also indicated that Josh completely avoided any questions about Susan’s disappearance.

  “I asked him if he was involved and he wouldn’t respond … he literally doesn’t say anything, or he says his attorney told him not to talk to anyone,” she said.

  On television, Chuck and Judy Cox looked stunned and somber. They were not glamorous people, only parents trying desperately to understand why their daughter had disappeared. They never tried to be anything but who they were.

  Host Phil McGraw joined them by wearing a purple ribbon in remembrance of Susan. His grief barely contained, Chuck spoke quietly about how he had been supportive of Josh in the beginning, believing that there must have been a reasonable explanation for Susan’s disappearance.

  “It’s frustrating, he won’t cooperate with the police and that’s impeding the investigation and it’s stopping us from finding my daughter,” Chuck said.

  The TV host seemed to speak for many when he asked Chuck rhetorically, “How have you kept from grabbing him by the shoulders and saying, ‘Tell me what you know about my daughter’?”

  Chuck nodded in silence. He knew that feeling, that need, to shake the truth out of Josh all too well.

  * * *

  After the Coxes appeared on Dr. Phil, a Country Hollow neighbor went door to door, asking if she could tie purple ribbons to trees in their yards in honor of the missing mother Susan Powell, whose children lived down the block. The neighbor with the ribbons didn’t think Josh should be able to move to a different state and just forget about his wife. Nearly everybody on the street agreed to the purple ribbons wrapped around their slender-trunked trees.

  It might have been an act of remembrance for Susan, or a big F-U to Josh and Steve Powell. In any case the ribbons could not be missed by anyone—especially the Powells. Several posters with Susan’s photograph were placed at the gated entrance, and purple streamers and ribbons hung from signs, light poles, and trees.

  Tim Atkins, the pastor who was Josh’s friend and neighbor, tried to reason with the purple ribbon brigade. He knew another side of Josh and he wanted truth to prevail. A bunch of ribbons hung in an attempt to hurt and shame him was cruel, Tim thought.

  “We’re not going to let him forget,” a neighbor said.

  “You haven’t talked to him,” Tim said. “He’s not trying to forget anything. He’s trying to survive.”

  The residents who put up the remembrances of Susan didn’t have the permission of the Homeowners Association, and Tim helped the HOA president take the ribbons and posters off light poles. The ones on private property, however, remained for weeks, outlining a path straight to Steve’s door.

  Steve complained that his grandsons, who had turned five and three years old a few weeks after their mother disappeared, were confused by the photos of Susan in the neighborhood and indicated that he would continue to try to shield the children from emotional trauma. Toward that end, Steve constructed a veritable fortress. He had a tall fence built to enclose the backyard and installed more than a half dozen video cameras, pointed in every direction.

  No one coming to the door would arrive unseen.

  21

  It was ridiculous. How would HE know? He never went to church! I knew it wasn’t true. I’d been going to church with her every week.

  —JOVONNA OWINGS, ON JOSH’S CLAIM SUSAN HAD RENOUNCED HER FAITH, MARCH 21, 2012

  Fifty-three days after Susan disappeared, Josh returned to W. Sarah Circle to get the house ready to rent. He would have preferred to sell it and pocket the money, of course, but couldn’t with Susan missing. Instead, from his new home base in Puyallup, he had found some neighbors in Utah whose lease was ending and he struck a deal with them. They planned to make some repairs before moving in, and wanted to work on the basement space where Susan had dreamed of having her hair salon.

  If Josh had expected to slip in and out with little fanfare or, even worse, media attention, he was mistaken. Much like in his dad’s neighborhood in Puyallup, he faced another sea of purple. Kiirsi, Jennifer, and other friends had decided that if Josh was going to act as though Susan’s disappearance was only an inconvenient occurrence, they were going to show him that he stood alone in that regard. Purple ribbons hung everywhere. The front door. The trees. The shrubbery under the windows. Everywhere anyone looked, all they could see was the gentle blowing of streamers made of Susan’s favorite color.

  Signs were hung outside that literally spelled out what Susan’s friends were praying for—and served to send a reminder to Josh.

  WE WILL FIND YOU!

  WE WILL BRING YOU HOME.

  Josh said that he appreciated the decorations. But late one night he snuck out and took everything down, telling Kiirsi that he didn’t want the renters to have to do it.

  The next day, Josh spent four hours at Kiirsi and John Hellewell’s house, using a computer to prepare a lease agreement. He was worried about the media, so he parked his minivan at a Walgreens a few blocks away and John gave him a ride to their house. Later, when John drove him back to the van, the police and FBI were there. They had recognized the vehicle and waited for him to return so that they could serve him with a search warrant and tow it away.

  A little while later, Kiirsi met Josh and John at the door.

  “What are you guys doing back?” she asked.r />
  Josh stood there, looking pale and shaking. For the first time, Kiirsi detected fear in his eyes.

  “Josh was as white as a sheet. I’ve never seen him look so pale and terrified,” Kiirsi later said.

  John filled his wife in on what had happened and Josh excused himself. He needed a moment alone. Kiirsi watched as he embarked on a long walk to calm himself.

  Three hours later, the West Valley City police returned the van.

  Josh didn’t know it at the time, but the FBI and West Valley City police had two court orders allowing them to secretly attach a GPS tracking device to the van.

  Josh Powell had slipped away more than once. They didn’t want him to again.

  * * *

  Josh saw as few people as possible during that visit. He picked up his beloved bird, which had been with Susan’s friend Barbara Anderson since before Christmas. Josh had visited the bird when he was back to pack up the house, but now it would travel home to Washington with him.

  Josh quit trusting the Hellewells after the trip. Not because Kiirsi had decorated the house, but because a friend of Josh’s from his computer club told him that Kiirsi and John were not his friends, often called the police to share information about him, and liked the media attention too much.

  Josh didn’t say good-bye when he left. In fact, he never spoke to either of them again.

  * * *

  In mid-February, Chuck and Judy Cox started the Susan Cox Powell Foundation, a nonprofit registered in Washington State to help families of missing people and raise awareness of domestic violence. Josh was furious that Susan’s maiden name was in the title, and called it a “pseudonym.”

  Josh also took issue with the implication that Susan was the victim of abuse.

  “They are trying to solicit donations on the bullshit idea I am an abuser,” he said.

  Steve and Josh began a campaign to discredit Susan. It got ugly. Very ugly. They cast her as a harlot who’d leave her husband and children for a casual fling with a stranger. They made it sound like she’d hit on every man she ever met—and had been doing so for a long, long time.