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

by Gregg Olsen

  Susan was flirtatious, but that was different from what Steve and Josh were implying. She even questioned herself after a man at work “had grabbed her butt.” The man, interviewed by the police after Susan disappeared, said Susan asked him directly if she was sending out “wrong signals.” He told her yes, she was, that she shouldn’t tell him things only a wife should share with a husband. She had, for example, told him her “shaving schedule.” The man went on to say that Susan was a flirt, but she was incapable of cheating on Josh and would never leave her children.

  Steve and Josh next attacked Susan’s Mormon faith.

  Josh added a page titled Mormons Mobilize to his site of hate and misinformation. There, he criticized what he called “The Susan Cox Powell Movement” and said “the tone and rhetoric is led by Mormons … too many supporters are openly parroting the Mormons’ hostility toward Josh and his father Steve, because Steve is an ex-Mormon.”

  Most shocking to Susan’s friends, Josh claimed that just before she disappeared, Susan renounced the church by standing up in front of her Mormon ward and saying, “I cannot bring myself to believe in Mormonism, but I can lean on other people’s testimonies.”

  That had never happened.

  In fact, regular church attendees like JoVonna felt that the opposite was true.

  “I always was uplifted and strengthened by Susan’s testimony,” JoVonna said later. “She made sure to encourage and always testified to her understanding of Christ’s love. She never denied her faith.”

  Kiirsi said that it was Susan’s strong faith that kept her in a loveless marriage with Josh for years.

  “If Susan did not have this deep testimony she would have left him long ago and would most likely still be with us today.”

  * * *

  Among the tips that continued to pour into the West Valley City police about Josh’s whereabouts on December 6–7 was one from a strip club, Duces Wild, which calls itself “the best strip club in Salt Lake City.” Three people there—a bartender, a bouncer, and a customer—claimed they had seen Josh drinking and talking too much on Monday, the day he returned from the camping trip.

  “He just kept saying over and over, ‘I’ve had a really bad day, and I’ve got a story to tell,’” one reported to the police. They said they had never seen him before and that he was hard to forget because he was so annoying. The bartender, who later picked Josh out of a photo lineup for the West Valley City police, said that Josh was rude and vulgar to her when she refused to bend down so he could see her breasts. The tip was interesting, but like so many, it didn’t go anywhere. There was every chance that the bartender had seen Josh’s picture over and over in the newspapers and on TV.

  But the next time Chuck was in Utah, he drove by the club, just to see for himself. He didn’t go inside.

  Even Susan’s friends said that, as much as the annoying part sounded like Josh, they couldn’t imagine him visiting a strip club.

  And where would he have left the boys, anyway?

  A woman called the police just days after Susan disappeared to say that she had been having an affair with Josh. Several months passed before police could check out her story. Referred to as “Kourtney” by the police, she told them that she met Josh—who told her his name was “John Staley”—through an on-line dating service several months before Susan disappeared. He said his wife had died. They had sex five to six times in his van and he paid her $800 over the months. It wasn’t until she saw news coverage of the case that she knew his true identity.

  The police drove around with “Kourtney” to sites where she said she met with Josh, but concluded she was “not credible” and was “playing games.”

  A prison inmate contacted police to say that a woman he knew only by the name of “Summer” had been seen with Josh, drinking beer and kissing at a FatCats, one of a chain of bowling alleys in Utah. The inmate said “Summer” would tell the police where Susan’s body was in exchange for $500,000 and immunity. He added that he thought “Summer” had once worked at American Bush.

  Again, no credibility.

  But if Josh had been having an affair or meeting someone for sex, did Susan find out and plan to leave him? It would give Josh a motive to harm Susan. In the past he had threatened her when she talked about divorce.

  The police received hundreds of tips from Susan’s family and friends, work colleagues, store clerks, and from psychics from as far away as Connecticut. A man who described himself as an “audio analyst” claimed he detected Josh state “I lied” and “I buried her” in a video posted on YouTube. The same caller told a detective that he owned a cat that could talk.

  Although the police skipped over it the first time it was reported in 2009, they eventually took more seriously another tip from a waitress who had worked at a Comfort Inn in Sandy, Utah, south of West Valley City.

  At about 6:30 A.M. on Monday, December 7, Robin Leanne Snyder said she greeted a young man and two small boys in the hotel’s breakfast room.

  “Do you know what happened to my mom?” the older of the two boys asked her.

  “No, what happened to your mom?”

  The waitress said that before the boy answered, she was called away to pour coffee for other guests. When she turned around, the trio had vanished.

  “He didn’t even give the kids time to eat their sweet rolls. Each had a small bite on them,” Robin said.

  Such tips were interesting, and though they were sometimes the product of media coverage, they also showed the genuine desire people had to help find out what had happened to Susan.

  In time, Chuck Cox and the WVCPD created a kind of shorthand, a code for stories like Robin’s that were followed up and filed away.

  If the police told Susan’s father, “There’s nothing there,” it meant that they had checked out a lead and followed it to its “nothing there” conclusion. If they said, “We’re investigating,” it meant they were uncertain and looking at the lead.

  And, finally, the magic words, “It’s a part of our case.” That was the indicator to Chuck and Judy that the lead was credible and that an arrest was imminent.

  They got used to hearing “nothing there.”

  * * *

  Initially, Steve Powell had been suspicious of his son and his alibi. But, as he told police, he changed his mind. By March, his journals indicate he believed Josh was innocent of harming Susan.

  Her disappearance nearly killed me, because I thought she was dead … Susan Powell’s disappearance was quickly blamed on my son Josh. I even had my doubts. By the time 30 days had passed, and Josh had spent time at my house, I became 100% sure of his innocence.

  Curiously, the journal entries made after Susan’s disappearance read as if Steve expected them to be seized or published one day. He explains that Josh is his son, and Susan is referred to as Susan Powell.

  22

  It would be irrational to ignore the parallels between Susan Powell and Steven Koecher in time, place, and circumstance.

  —AUTHOR UNKNOWN, FROM THE SUSANPOWELL.ORG SITE

  Steve and Josh had only one tool in what had become a media onslaught: their Web site. When they went looking for a plausible reason why Susan might have disappeared, they linked her to a thirty-year-old Utah man who’d gone missing around the same time.

  Steven Koecher was living in St. George, in the farthest southwestern corner of Utah, about five hours from West Valley City. He vanished from Henderson, Nevada, on December 13, 2009—a week to the day after Susan disappeared.

  The Koecher and Powell disappearances were “cloaked in mystery,” Steve wrote on his Web site. He claimed that Susan had been living a double life, with “secret plans to divorce Josh.”

  Using the slimmest of coincidences, Steve laid out how much Susan and Koecher had in common. Both liked the out-of-doors, were Mormons, enjoyed music, and had worked in downtown Salt Lake City. He was an intern in the Utah governor’s office and Susan worked at Fidelity Investments.

  Father and son s
eized on the young man’s disappearance to account for Susan’s absence. They theorized that maybe the two of them went to Brazil, where Koecher had done his Mormon mission? Maybe they started a new life?

  Kiirsi found any connection between Susan and Koecher laughable. Susan would never, ever have had an affair, never have left her children, and as for keeping a secret—Susan never could. She blabbed everything to her friends.

  Relatives of Koecher’s said the theory that he and Susan had run off together was “nonsense” and that Steve Powell’s assertions had “opened up wounds that were healing.”

  Naturally, Steve was already contemplating how Susan’s possible return would affect him. He wrote:

  I am not really sure what position to take when she comes back … will she return and own up to her affair with Steven Koecher? Will she want to stay with him, or will she realize it was just a fling she needed to bring hope to what must have become, for her, a meaningless life? I still fantasize and masturbate about her nearly every day.

  * * *

  There were two winters in Utah in 2009–2010. Southern Utah had storm after storm, creating twice the average snowpack. But only sporadic snow fell in northern Utah, including at the five-thousand-foot-elevation camping area known as Simpson Springs. By early April, the snow had melted where Josh Powell said he’d gone camping on December 6, 2009.

  The search for Susan in the desert began.

  23

  It’s kind of like looking for a needle in a haystack when you’re not sure if the needle is in this particular haystack.

  —SEARCHER MARIA DEDOMINICIS, TO KSL-TV, APRIL 10, 2010

  Finally, after months of waiting to reenact Josh’s midnight camping trip, Susan’s friends could finally search Simpson Springs for themselves, the spot where Josh had possibly done the unthinkable.

  It was a long drive out to the middle of nowhere, but that was of no consequence to Jennifer Graves and Kiirsi Hellewell, who wouldn’t have missed the opportunity to participate in a physical search for Susan. Susan’s sister-in-law and best friend rode together out to the desert, talking about Susan and how the ordeal had changed their lives. Just months prior neither would have thought it possible that they’d be out in the Utah desert looking for a trace of Susan. Kiirsi had been sure that whatever had happened to Susan they would have learned before springtime. But truth is funny that way. Sometimes it is exceedingly slow in coming.

  It was just after 8:00 A.M. when Kiirsi and Jennifer arrived to join the searchers. The air was bone chilling and the two of them huddled together. Kiirsi tugged at her coat, bracing herself against the elements. “You know she’s not going to be there,” she said.

  Jennifer kept her gaze on the landscape.

  Kiirsi thought the desert was lovely, possessing a kind of bleakness that she usually saw as quite beautiful. But not here and not now. Spring hadn’t yet awakened the desert. It looked cold, empty. Sad.

  “If Josh really left her here,” Kiirsi went on, “he’d never have told reporters this is where he went.”

  Jennifer nodded. Josh was devious, to be sure, but he wasn’t stupid.

  They watched as a group of about seventy trained searchers composed of former military, law enforcement, EMTs, and others strategized and prepared for canvassing the region where Josh had stated he and the boys had camped.

  “There are twenty thousand mines in Utah alone,” Kiirsi said, again thinking of the worst possible outcome. “More if you include abandoned mines in Nevada and Arizona. If he killed her, he’d have dumped her in one of those.”

  Jennifer looked at her. “Or somewhere else. Somewhere we haven’t even thought of.”

  The volunteers—many from the Bridgerland Fire Company in Logan, and Strategic Tactical Group—had formed their teams, divided up the area on a map, and began their work using dogs, one-man powered parachutes fitted with small engines and steered by the pilot’s feet, and ATVs. They explained to Kiirsi and Jennifer, who were there to lend moral support, that they would look for bunches of sagebrush or large rocks that might have been moved and used to hide a body.

  Just hearing those words was hard, but Kiirsi held it together.

  Tooele County sheriff Frank Park was present with a crime scene investigative unit, just in case.

  One person missing, who would have been there no matter the outcome, was Chuck Cox. After preventing Chuck and Judy from seeing their grandchildren for months, Josh had finally agreed that the Coxes could see the boys—but only on that day. They spent the afternoon with Braden and Charlie at Bradley Park, a wildlife preserve with a small lake. It’s behind a Walmart, but people who live in Puyallup and the South Hill area say it seems miles from civilization. A one-mile path winds around the lake, which is stocked with trout. There is a fishing area, but swimming is not allowed.

  Josh told Chuck and Judy to come alone, not to bring any other family members or grandchildren. They had a warm greeting from Charlie and Braden and then—surprise!—Steve and Mike arrived. They said that they just happened to be in the area and they had their cameras with them. Despite Josh’s restrictions, Chuck and Judy had a nice visit with Charlie and Braden, and the boys played on the swings.

  Years later, Mike would say that he heard Chuck Cox threaten Josh, saying, “I have every reason to kill you but I have decided not to because of my religion.”

  * * *

  The searchers couldn’t go into the abandoned mines because of the danger of poisonous gases and drop-offs. The only item discovered during the search in the desert was a pair of women’s underwear found by a search dog. It was bagged for the crime lab. Kiirsi and Jennifer thanked the searchers for their help.

  Two weeks later, a motorist near Idaho Falls got his truck stuck in the mud. As he walked uphill in search of a better cell phone signal he stumbled on the remains of a woman.

  Once more Susan’s friends and family felt that sickening pang of fear, an emotion that stabbed at their hearts. They knew that other families felt the same way. Since Susan’s disappearance they had followed the cases of several women missing from Utah and Idaho.

  The media was quick to speculate Susan might finally have been found.

  Eventually, dental records ruled out the possibility that the remains might be Susan’s.

  * * *

  Although they lived three miles apart near Puyallup’s main drag, the Coxes and the Powells were bound to run into one another once in a while.

  Chuck made sure of it.

  He wanted to know what Steve and Josh were up to and, most important, how his grandsons were coping. And he knew that the West Valley City police needed help to keep the pressure on Josh.

  On a Saturday in late May, Chuck and Judy stopped at the Lowe’s not far from their home—and not far from Steve’s—on a hunt for strawberry plants. The store was so noisy that Chuck missed a text from friends alerting him that they had spotted Josh and his sons in the store. He knew that Josh liked to take the boys to Lowe’s on Saturday mornings when the home improvement chain had its “Build and Grow Clinics.” The free classes were designed to teach kids how to build a wooden toy, birdhouse, picture frame, or other small item.

  Chuck turned a corner and there he was about thirty feet from Josh. Braden was in a shopping cart and Charlie was at his father’s side.

  The boys spotted Judy first and Charlie ran excitedly over to her.

  “Charlie! Charlie! Charlie!” Josh yelled. “Get back here!”

  Chuck watched Josh as he dealt with the dilemma. How to regain control of the situation? To do that Josh had to keep Braden in the cart, push it the other way from Judy, and still get Charlie to obey him.

  “Charlie!” he shouted. “Get over here right now!”

  Charlie walked slowly back to his father and as the cart passed just inches from Chuck, the grandfather reached out and patted Braden. Josh’s head snapped toward Chuck. The Coxes watched as their son-in-law hurriedly picked up the unfinished project he and the boys had been working on
and left the store like he was exiting a burning building.

  Chuck and Judy decided that they would drop in to Lowe’s every once in a while, just coincidentally on a Saturday morning.

  “We thought about showing up every Saturday,” Chuck said later.

  “But we decided not to push things. We didn’t want Josh to feel we were stalking him,” Judy said.

  * * *

  About a month after that encounter, Chuck and Judy happened to be at Lowe’s on another Saturday morning getting more plants for their garden. They heard an announcement over the intercom that it was time for the crafts clinic.

  “Heck, it worked last time,” Chuck said, looking at Judy. “Maybe we will see them again.”

  Suddenly Chuck realized that he was about a foot behind Josh, practically breathing down his neck. Chuck immediately backed away. Judy regretted not giving Charlie a hug the last time they had seen him, and she wanted to now.

  “Ask him if I can hug Charlie and Braden,” Judy said.

  So that he didn’t startle Josh, Chuck said Josh’s name and he turned around. His eyes were filled with suspicion.

  “Hi, Josh,” Chuck said. “Is it okay if Judy gives the boys a hug?”

  Josh paused and looked around. “No,” he finally answered.

  “Why not?” Chuck asked.

  Josh shook his head. “Just no,” he said.

  Chuck wanted an answer. “What can it hurt?”

  “I have made my decision and now you need to go,” Josh said.

  Chuck was hurt, but he was angry, too. Josh was acting like a control freak, a selfish jerk. Those boys were his and Judy’s link to their missing daughter. Where in the world could he get off with shutting down an offer of affection by their grandmother?