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

by Gregg Olsen

  “What did he say?” Chuck asked.

  “He said, ‘With everything going on…’”

  “What kind of answer was that?”

  “Right. So, I said, ‘You know you have to work, you still have to make a living.’”

  Either Chuck or Judy could have said something about Josh not being used to working—something he usually left to Susan—but there was no need for that because Debbie knew Josh all too well.

  Plus Debbie was on a roll anyway.

  “And then he said, ‘Yeah, but we won’t have any money to pay you.’”

  Debbie continued. “I said, ‘There are programs, we could figure something out.’ And then Josh looked at me and, well, he said, ‘No, no, no, I’m just going to have my family take care of them.’”

  Chuck could tell that wasn’t the end of the story. Debbie Caldwell was on to something. Something big.

  “Josh stopped payment on a check I should have received on December eighth,” she said, leaving her words hanging in the air.

  That got Chuck’s attention. Judy’s, too.

  “Hold on, Debbie, say that again?” Susan’s father asked.

  “Right.” Debbie took a breath. “He knew the kids were not going to be in day care the following week. It means what you think it does.”

  Debbie went on to explain that all the other parents paid her on Monday mornings, so she deposited their checks on Monday afternoons. Because Josh’s check always arrived on Tuesday from a credit union in Spokane, Washington, she would hold on to it and deposit it the following Monday with the other checks. On Monday, December 7, after alerting Jennifer and Terri that she couldn’t reach Josh or Susan, Debbie went to her bank with that day’s checks, plus Josh’s from the week before, which she had received on Tuesday, December 1. When she didn’t receive a check on Tuesday, December 8, she talked to her bank about it.

  “The bank told me that Josh would have had to stop the check from being sent, by Thursday, December 3, at the latest and maybe earlier,” she said.

  Chuck’s pulse quickened. He looked over at Judy. He knew she was thinking the same thing.

  “He’d premeditated the whole thing,” he said. “This is hard evidence that proves premeditation.”

  Debbie nodded. “I think so, too.”

  None of them—Judy, Chuck, Debbie, Ken—felt happy in that sad, sick moment. There was no excited jumping up and down over the fact that they could now prove something that they’d already known. But there was some satisfaction in that moment. No denying that. Every one of them gathered in the Caldwells’ comfortable home loved Susan.

  Every one of them wanted Josh to answer for what he’d done.

  Chuck was convinced that the day-care check was evidence that Josh had arranged Susan’s disappearance. It was proof that she wasn’t injured in a scuffle with Josh, that she didn’t just hit her head and bleed, that Josh didn’t panic and dispose of her body.

  It was planned.

  The next day Debbie collected the bank statements from her day-care business that showed the Powells’ payment history and handed them over to the police.

  According to the code that the WVCPD and Chuck had between them, the police told him what category the evidence fell into: “They said it is part of the case,” Chuck said, hoping Josh would finally be arrested.

  And once more, the West Valley City police cautioned patience.

  “We’re working it, Chuck and Judy. Trust us.”

  * * *

  Chuck liked to drive out into the Utah desert. It made him feel closer to Susan. When he was in Utah meeting with the police, following up on leads or attending vigils, Susan’s father drove for hours, sometimes by himself and sometimes with Ken Caldwell. Both had licenses to carry a concealed weapon, and both were trained shooters. Chuck would take his Smith & Wesson M&P Compact .40 caliber pistol, and Ken his Springfield XD Sub-Compact .40 or his Dan Wesson .357 Magnum, and do a little target shooting while they looked for Susan. Chuck had a hunch about an area north of Salt Lake City with dozens of little-used farm roads.

  They drove every farm road off Interstate 84 from Tremonton north to a rest area in Idaho.

  “We thought that would be a good meeting place for Josh and Steve,” Chuck said. “And we wanted to check out the area because I’d always felt kind of weird about that area. So we drove every ranch road that would have been accessible to a minivan.” They stopped and got out and walked the fields. Chuck also searched areas to the south, including Simpson Springs, where Josh said he had been camping, and investigated how roads that barely appeared on a map met up.

  Rumor and gossip and police investigations had it that Steve may have helped Josh cover up the crime. That’s why Josh had needed the rental car, and perhaps why Steve had taken off work December 8–9: there was some unfinished business. But Chuck thought that Steve might have done more than that. Maybe he had instigated it. There was a rumor that Steve had made a trip to Utah a couple of months before Susan disappeared. Was he along on the short camping trip that Josh, Charlie, and Braden had made in the minivan in September—cut short because the boys got cold and uncomfortable and wanted to go home?

  Chuck’s thoughts wandered to the possibilities.

  Maybe Steve and Josh had prepared a grave for Susan before December, in the fall when the ground was soft enough to dig? If Josh covered it with a piece of plywood, then he could return to the spot with her body, remove the plywood, place Susan’s body in the grave, and cover it up. Or maybe he went looking for a bottomless, abandoned mine so decrepit that it would be impossible to search?

  And if Josh was really lucky, the two boys in their car seats would be asleep during a midnight excursion to dump their mother’s body in such a desolate, sad place.

  Chuck’s mind also went right to Steve Powell. No one would know until much later that it was someone else who had come to his aid.

  * * *

  The body was a female, maybe as young as thirty. She had had light brown hair, had been five-two to five-four in height, and had been wearing pink underwear, a jeans jacket, and a pink tank top. Dead since late 2009 or early 2010, her mummified remains were found on a remote corner of a sheep ranch near Laramie, Wyoming, in September 2010. WVCPD sent Susan’s dental records. It was not Susan.

  The next month, a woman’s body was found near a highway in Los Lunas, New Mexico. She had reddish brown hair and was wearing a black sundress and a silver cross around her neck. The New Mexico police had a hunch it might be Susan. While sending Susan’s dental work to them, WVCPD detective Ellis Maxwell e-mailed: “You’re right, the similarities are so close it’s eerie! The eyes, lips, nose, cheeks, forehead and hair,” looked like Susan’s. He did point out, however, that members of LDS do not wear crosses.

  It was not Susan.

  A Cox family friend said, “Every time police let us know they’ve found a body, it’s a lurch in your throat. If it’s her we don’t want to know she’s dead, and if it’s not her, it means she is still missing and we don’t have closure.”

  27

  Someone needs to take the velvet gloves off and treat [the Coxes] like an investigative subject.

  —JOSH POWELL TO SALT LAKE TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 8, 2010

  Those who loved her had vowed they would never forget. They promised one another that whenever it made sense, they would band together to remind the world that Susan Powell was missing. On October 16, 2010, Susan’s twenty-ninth birthday, twenty-five friends from her Utah neighborhood and church met at West View Park to have cake and release 150 purple balloons, each carrying a photo of Susan. At the same time, purple balloons were released in Puyallup by friends and family led by Chuck and Judy Cox.

  While Susan was in everyone’s hearts at both venues, it was Steve and Josh Powell who were on their minds. Considerable discussion was made not only of their absence, but of any role either might have played in the scenario that played out on December 6–7 the preceding year.

  Over in Country Hollow, S
teve and Josh did the bare minimum on the occasion of Susan’s birthday. Steve admitted as much in his journal on October 18:

  I helped the boys get started on some drawings and Josh put their artwork on SusanPowell.org. It’s nothing more than a half-assed effort on our part, but the boys enjoyed doing it …

  Soon after, Josh and Steve announced that they were changing the “focus” of SusanPowell.org. Its new mission would be to respond to rumors and “correct the record.”

  … At this point, we recognize that we cannot remain silent forever in the face of rumors and lies being spread by individuals associated with the Cox “Friends and Family.”

  One step Josh took to correct the record was to “break his silence” and agree to an interview with a reporter from the Salt Lake Tribune. In the interview, which took place at Steve’s house, Josh described Susan as “extremely unstable” and said that mental illness drove her to leave her family. It was another round in Josh and Steve’s crusade to blame Susan’s disappearance on Susan. They claimed she was sexually motivated, that she abandoned her husband and sons and ran off with a boyfriend and that maybe she had embezzled from her job. Josh blamed the Coxes, wondering out loud if Susan had inherited her mother’s tendency to emotional outbursts; he called Chuck controlling and manipulative and implied that the Coxes should be investigated, too.

  Jennifer Graves told the same reporter that her brother and father were accusing Susan of “being a slut,” and that it was offensive to her. “She was not,” Jennifer said. “She was frustrated with her marriage.”

  By then, Jennifer was openly saying that she thought her brother and father had conjured up a tale of Susan’s mental imbalance to cover up their role in her disappearance. And she pointed out that, ironically, it was her side of the family that had the history of psychological problems, not the Coxes.

  * * *

  Steve Powell’s purported proof that Susan was unstable came from her diary. In her diaries, written when she was a teenager in Puyallup, Susan agonized over her love life—much as Steve did over Susan in his own journals. At age fifteen, Susan wrote about being with a boy and worried if the relationship had gone too far. She promised to pray on it, to steady herself, to ensure that whatever troubles had befallen other young women wouldn’t happen to her. She also wrote about a time when she accidently took an overdose of an over-the-counter pain reliever. It was not, she insisted to family and friends, a suicide attempt. A physician agreed. It was just a mistake, nothing more.

  Steve, however, twisted Susan’s words and claimed it was more proof of her propensity for erratic behavior. He wanted the world to believe that there was something dark and dangerous lurking in her past. She was not the pretty woman in the photos they’d seen on TV.

  Neither Susan nor her friends nor her parents had ever said she was perfect. She was a complex woman, a mother, a devoted wife and friend. Susan became those things by living life, which included making her share of mistakes along the way.

  The Coxes shrugged off most of their daughter’s diary entries as a teenage girl’s ramblings. Susan was never some out-of-control teenager. When they thought about it, they could come up with only one time that Susan had semirebelled, and then just a little bit. She snuck out of the house to talk to a boyfriend in the front yard late one night. Later, she confessed the forty-five-minute adventure to her parents.

  And yet the Powells seemed to wallow in the mud they slung at Susan’s reputation.

  Even Josh’s sister Alina got in on the act. She and Susan had never been close, even when Alina lived for a few months with her sister Jennifer in West Jordan, Utah, not far from Josh and Susan. In addition to calling her a “player,” Alina told her father that she thought Susan was “a bitch and not very pretty or smart, and with a poor personality.” After Susan disappeared, Alina said she had “walked in on intimate moments between Steve and Susan,” including when Susan waxed her legs, then asked Steve to feel how smooth they were. Alina said that it was Susan who made the sexual advances to her father. Steve just “went along.”

  For her part, Susan had always told friends that she felt sorry for Alina, and hoped Josh’s little sister would be able to extract herself from her dad’s toxic household.

  Steve’s possession of Susan’s diaries ratcheted up the growing bitterness between the two families. He had “borrowed” the diaries from Josh and Susan’s storage unit in 2003. Chuck and Judy wanted to keep the diaries and give them to Susan’s sons one day. Steve insisted that they remain with her husband and sons “until she returns.” Of course, that way he could continue to read them and fantasize about Susan.

  That fall, Steve told people that federal agents had been at his house in an attempt to get Susan’s diaries. He sent an e-mail to the Salt Lake Tribune.

  Of course, we are happy to cooperate with law enforcement in any way we can.

  He added that he had made a copy of the diary entries for federal investigators and was waiting to hear back from them before he dispatched it to them.

  He never did. In the meantime, he decided to talk about the diaries on television and publish them online. They would help convince people that Susan had run away and that Josh was a lonely, abandoned husband and father.

  * * *

  On the first anniversary of Susan’s disappearance, December 6, 2010, Susan’s family and friends decided to volunteer their time instead of holding another vigil. About thirty-five people gathered at a car dealership in Puyallup to wrap Christmas presents for Santa Cops, a nonprofit that delivers toys and food to needy families. Chuck saw it as a kind of distraction, in addition to something to help those who needed it. Susan had always joined in such activities—it was the mom in her.

  Each milestone—holiday, birthday, anniversary of her disappearance—served only to remind Chuck and Judy and their other daughters of all that they were missing. Susan had been gone for a full year. Christmas was approaching, and Chuck and Judy had been kept from their grandsons for eight long months.

  28

  Chuck: The police were very confident that Josh was going to be arrested. We thought he’d be arrested within three months at the most.

  Judy: And then we thought six months.

  Chuck: And then we were told “not today.” What about next week? “Well, no.”

  —CHUCK AND JUDY COX, AUGUST 27, 2012

  The giant billboard with Susan’s face on it beamed over the roadway. Under her photo, the sign said MISSING in huge letters, the date she had disappeared, a phone number to call with information, the Web address of the Susan Cox Powell Foundation, and at the bottom, three words:

  HOPE, PRAY, HELP.

  Chuck and Judy Cox had passed that sign a dozen times. So had half the people in Puyallup. The sign above Meridian Avenue, Route 161, looking down on one of the state’s busiest roads, was just a half mile from Steve Powell’s house in Country Hollow. It reminded thousands of motorists that Susan was still missing. It would help Charlie and Braden remember their mother’s face. Most of all, it sent a message to the inhabitants of Fort Powell that there would be justice.

  Fort Powell.

  That’s what Chuck called Steve Powell’s house. Josh’s father and siblings—except for Jennifer, who was convinced that her brother was responsible for Susan’s disappearance—were all living at Steve’s, along with Charlie and Braden. West Valley City police and the Pierce County sheriff’s department wanted to step up the pressure on Josh and thought that getting in his face with billboards and having run-ins with the Coxes would help.

  The advertising was as much about making Steve and Josh squirm as it was about the expectation someone might have new information.

  Chuck and Judy Cox didn’t need any reminders, but when they passed by the enormous billboard it always renewed their discussions of what might have really happened. Chuck couldn’t stop himself, and no one would blame him. Judy was his best ear. Over and over, in front of his wife he’d play out those theories of what happened to his
daughter that frigid night in December.

  Judy agreed, but mostly kept it all inside. She busied herself with her other grandchildren and friends from church, and she supported Chuck every step of the way. Her heart was broken and only very occasionally did she allow herself to consider the very real possibility that Susan was never coming home.

  “Maybe they had a fight,” Chuck said to Judy.

  She nodded. “I can see that happening.”

  “Yes, and he hurt Susan accidentally. He stashed her someplace.”

  “And she’s hidden somewhere?” Judy asked.

  “Maybe Josh didn’t kill her. He’s a wimp, I don’t think he could have killed her.”

  “Yes, he is a wimp,” Judy said. “Always has been.”

  Chuck took a breath. “You know, Judy, if it was a reasonable, fair fight he would have lost. Susan’s stronger than Josh any day of the week.”

  When that theory ran its course, Susan’s parents would edge toward a darker scenario.

  “Maybe Steve really did have a hand in this?” Chuck asked.

  Judy knew what her husband was getting at, but she waffled a little. “You mean, hiding Susan?”

  “Worse,” he said.

  Judy swallowed hard. “Maybe killing her.” Those last words barely came from her lips. Each syllable hurt.

  Chuck again went over the evidence as he saw it. Thinking about all the years Josh’s twisted father had loved and lusted after his daughter-in-law and all that pornography made Chuck sick. Added to that was the fact that Josh apparently wanted to be free of his wife.

  “Josh needed a nudge from someone,” Chuck said.

  “I can see that, yes.”

  Chuck went on, recounting how Josh had probably phoned someone for advice on poisoning or sedating Susan.

  Jennifer Graves had questions as well. “I don’t think he ever made dinner when Susan was around; he simply wasn’t that considerate of her,” she told the police. “Why would he suddenly do it that night? And why would she then go to bed ill after? It seems fishy to me.”