Fatal Friends, Deadly Neighbors and Other True Cases

  And appalling. He was angry at the world that was closing in on him, humiliating him, and taking away his power and control. Maybe he was even angry at his sons for wanting to be with anyone but him.

  Chuck Cox was in church when he got word of the tragedy. His bishop drove him to the fire-gutted house.

  “That house burned completely,” he remembers. “He wanted the whole place to go. They’re gone [Charlie and Braden], and I said, ‘Okay, what do I do now?’ ”

  Chuck and Judy had always been aware that Josh was capable of doing something “drastic.”

  “I knew that it was possible,” Chuck continued. “I knew that he was capable of doing something if he was pressured and pushed. If he felt there was no hope, he was capable of ending their lives and his life. But to do it in such a manner—by burning your own children—I just couldn’t believe that would’ve happened.”

  In his jail cell, Steven Powell was notified of the deaths. He was stoic, but jail officials put him under suicide watch, just to be sure he wouldn’t do something drastic, too.

  Alina Powell, Josh’s younger sister, blamed law enforcement and their “malfeasance” for causing the fiery deaths of Josh, Charlie, and Braden. She was convinced that both the Utah and Washington investigators had hounded Josh until he could take no more.

  * * *

  After Braden and Charlie were laid to rest, the recriminations continued to abound. Chief Thayle “Buzz” Nielsen flew up from West Valley City to offer any help he could, and tears filled his eyes as he spoke of the boys. It was not clear if it had been Nielsen’s decision to delay in arresting Josh Powell for so long—or that of Salt Lake County district attorney Sim Gill.

  Too late. There was obviously nothing that could be done now that an entire family was either dead or missing. The consensus is that Susan is also dead. Her parents will probably never have the slight comfort of finding her body and giving her a proper burial.

  More information on the physical evidence found in Susan’s disappearance was finally released after Josh murdered his sons. The West Valley City investigators revealed that they had located a comforter with Susan’s blood on it in a storage locker. This shocked her parents.

  Chuck Cox decried the more-than-two-year wait for Utah authorities to arrest Josh. “If Josh had been in jail, the children would be safe.”

  No one disagreed with that.

  Pierce County sheriff Paul Pastor’s detectives had known about the macabre finds and details Chief Nielsen’s investigators discovered since December 2009, but there was nothing the Washington team could do. Susan’s disappearance wasn’t their case.

  “Obviously,” Ed Troyer said, “it was frustrating. We were always waiting for the phone call to go arrest him.”

  And that phone call never came. Buzz Nielsen’s detectives worked hard, sometimes around the clock, and they were frustrated, too. In a sense, from the beginning it was a game that no one could win. If any arrests were made too soon and there was no conviction, Josh Powell could have gone free, never again to be tried for Susan’s murder.

  If they waited too long . . .

  Well, of course, they did. And two innocent children died in a monstrous conflagration.

  In this case, the risk of an acquittal was far outweighed by the terrible danger that stalked Charlie and Braden Powell.

  What began with ice ended with fire. It didn’t have to be this way.

  Epilogue

  Steven Powell’s trial on voyeurism and pornography charges lay ahead. It had been postponed from November 2011 to March 2012, and actually began in Pierce County Superior Court judge Ronald E. Culpepper’s courtroom in May.

  On Monday, May 7, 2012, Steven Powell went on trial on fourteen counts of voyeurism. The single charge of possession of child pornography had been thrown out. Powell appeared calm, almost disconnected, from the legal process taking place.

  Alina Powell was there to support her father, and Susan Powell’s parents and family also attended the proceedings.

  It wouldn’t be easy to pick twelve jurors and two alternates from the seventy-person jury pool; the Powell saga had had a great deal of publicity, both locally and nationally. Six potential jurors said they didn’t think they could be fair, and several others had reasons not to serve. Even so, Pierce County deputy prosecutors Grant Blinn and Bryce Nelson and defense attorneys Mark Quigley and Travis Currie managed to winnow out seven men and seven women who felt they could judge the testimony and evidence from each side without undue influence from pretrial media coverage.

  Would Steven Powell’s explosive journals be allowed into evidence by Judge Culpepper? Having read some of his sexually obsessed entries about his daughter-in-law Susan, and other young women, I could understand why Blinn and Nelson wanted them in, but also doubted that Judge Culpepper would find them admissible. They had shocked and sickened me even after so many years working within the justice system wearing one hat or another, and surely their very vulgarity and depravity would strike many of the jurors as disgusting.

  In the end, Steven Powell’s journals were not permitted in this trial. Seeing the small man in his suit, shirt and tie, his hair now snow white, no one would suspect what went on in his head.

  Judge Culpepper went out of his way to keep Susan Powell’s “ghost” out of the courtroom. These legal proceedings did not involve her disappearance. He would allow very little—if any—testimony about Susan. And still, those in the gallery who knew her story felt her presence.

  Whether the jurors did, no one knows.

  In his opening statement, Deputy Prosecutor Nelson told jurors, “This case is about a secret. That secret is that Steven Powell is a voyeur.”

  Prosecuting attorney Mark Lindquist’s team made every effort to spare the unknowing targets of Powell’s intrusive cameras from being upset. Pierce County Detective Gary Sanders narrated the series of photos that had been taken from a window in the defendant’s house, explaining that the angles, distances, and point of view could only have come from Steven Powell’s bedroom window. Sanders and other police personnel executing the search warrant had found a box in Steven’s bedroom with a CD containing the surreptitiously taken intimate pictures.

  The gallery could not see the pictures of two young girls in their bathroom, and that was as it should be. They had been photographed taking a bath, undressing, using the toilet, and the powerful telescopic camera lens had often been focused tightly on their private parts.

  Gary Sanders told jurors about tracking down the families who had lived in the Powell’s neighborhood in 2006 and 2007 until they located the little girls’ mother, and of how she reacted when she found out that someone had watched them stealthily.

  Cross-examined by defense attorney Mark Quigley—who clearly wanted to suggest that there were three or four males living in the Powell house at the time who might have taken the photos—Sanders said whoever held the camera had to have been standing at the window of Steven’s bedroom on the second floor. And, of course, the pictures were found hidden in Steven Powell’s bedroom.

  The woman whom I have called “Sally Mahoney” for her privacy’s sake and her two daughters, now in their teens, testified. “Sally,” “Lily,” and “Robyn” were identified by their initials, per Lindquist’s office’s attempt to preserve their identity.

  Sally told jurors that she had never given any permission for her daughters to be photographed, and the girls testified that they didn’t know someone was watching and filming them.

  Grant Blinn asked “Robyn Mahoney” if she ever felt afraid when she lived in the rental house near the Powell residence.

  She shook her head. “I felt safe.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “I was in my house,” she explained.

  If ever children should feel safe, it is in their houses with loving parents close by.

  Mark Quigley wisely declined to cross-examine either girl.

  Jennifer Powell Graves, Josh’s sister who had long since si
ded with the Cox family, testified for the state about the males who had lived in Steven’s house in the middle years of the first decade of the twenty-first century. Her recollection was that two of her grown brothers were not living there at the time.

  She also testified that she had seen a journal entry, written in what she recognized as her father’s hand, that noted that the author enjoyed taking pictures of girls and women wearing skirts and shorts.

  Steven Powell did not take the witness stand. That probably was a relief for his attorneys; he had blurted out so many odd statements over the past few years when he was interviewed by radio and television reporters, particularly about his belief that he and Susan Powell had had a special and secret sexual relationship.

  Nor did Mark Quigley and Travis Currie mount a defense. They called no witnesses.

  Suddenly, the trial was over.

  * * *

  The jury quickly found Steven Craig Powell guilty on all fourteen counts of voyeurism. His sentencing was set for June 15.

  The public believed that Powell could get as little as four years in prison or as much as ninety years if the sentences ran consecutively.

  Prosecutor Lindquist said that his office would seek a ten-year sentence. That seemed very short to most people, but there were statutes in place at the time of the crimes against the Mahoney girls that might impact the sentencing. Powell’s defense attorneys announced that they were asking that their client serve only a year in prison.

  Many people who had followed Susan’s case since 2009 hoped that there might be some kind of plea bargain. If Steven Powell would tell where Susan was, maybe he would get a shorter sentence.

  “They didn’t offer,” deputy prosecutor Grant Blinn commented about such a possibility. “And we didn’t ask.”

  It probably would have been fruitless anyway. Steven Powell had been a sphinx when it came to any questions about Susan’s fate. Investigators doubted he would suddenly open up now, particularly if he had any guilty knowledge of her disappearance.

  June 15 arrived, and Judge Culpepper had to cope with a difficult legal decision. Were the fourteen instances of voyeurism involving the Mahoney girls a series of separate offenses? Or should they be viewed by the Court as a continuing single act?

  Quigley and Currie cited several voyeurism cases in Pierce County. One convicted man had had sixteen convictions of voyeurism, and his sentence was only nine months!

  Quigley argued that his client should be dealt with the same way. To be fair.

  Blinn pointed out that Steven Powell had shown no remorse at all for his crimes, and that he had never even admitted his behavior was wrong.

  For those who wanted to see Steven Powell go to prison for the rest of his life—and many did—Judge Culpepper’s ruling was astounding. And yet his choices were limited under the law.

  Culpepper termed Powell “the ultimate creep of a neighbor,” as he pronounced sentence. “I think it’s appropriate for him to be punished for what he did. Not for what somebody suspects. Mr. Powell obviously has a longstanding sexual deviance. There’s something seriously wrong with Mr. Powell’s view of women in the world.”

  And then, to everyone’s shock, he sentenced Steven Powell to only two and a half years in prison! With credit for time already served, and time off for good behavior, Powell will probably be in prison for less than a year. He will remain in isolation while he is evaluated at an interim facility, and likely will remain isolated in his final prison. If he is out in the general prisoner population, his chances of survival could be slim.

  On the day her father’s case went to the jury, Alina Powell began a website castigating law enforcement. Alina believes her father and her brother are innocent of any criminal acts, and are merely victims of public opinion and devious investigators.

  Although Judge Culpepper did his best to see that Steven Powell was not convicted because of suspicion that he might have had something to do with Susan’s death, questions remain. Steven asked for time off from his job within days of Susan’s disappearance in Utah. Many believe he went to Utah. During that time, Josh rented a vehicle and put eight hundred miles on the odometer. Is it possible that Steven was part of a plot to kill Susan? Perhaps he was like Josh was with his sons. Rather than give them up to Susan’s parents, Josh killed them. If Steven could not have Susan, then perhaps he didn’t want Josh to have her, either. Maybe he manipulated his weak son into destroying her. Possibly he went to Utah to help Josh hide Susan’s body where no one could ever find it?

  An investigation into that possibility is ongoing.

  * * *

  It’s sad to visit at Chuck and Judy’s home, to sit in the room that was once meant for Charlie and Braden, and to look at the island in the duck pond, an island where the little boys said the ducks would be safe. Their photos are there in their grandparents’ house, along with a giant picture of Susan. It seems as if the front door will suddenly open and all three of them will come running up the stairs.

  But, of course, they won’t.

  Judy longs to have Susan’s scrapbook—the one she kept from the time she was a little girl. But Steven has refused to give it to her.

  Chuck thinks he burned it.

  Steven Craig Powell is far from out of the woods legally. On the day he was sentenced to prison, Anne Bremner served him with papers as she filed a civil suit against him on Chuck and Judy’s behalf alleging “general outrage” for his criminal acts.

  * * *

  In the third week of August 2012, Anne Bremner flew to Utah to present a request to the city council of West Valley City. On behalf of Chuck and Judy Cox, she asked that the West Valley City Police Department release their investigative files on the disappearance of their daughter, Susan Cox Powell.

  Susan’s case had stalled and been virtually dead in the water for many months. Her parents had been allowed only glimpses of any discoveries the Utah police investigators had found over the almost two years since Susan vanished. And what they had learned was excruciatingly painful—details on Susan’s note, obviously written as she feared she might be murdered, and descriptions of the amount of her blood found in the home she shared with Josh.

  It was like pulling adhesive tape slowly from a wound, and it hurt far more than if the Coxes could know it all in a complete reveal.

  “It’s been horrible for Chuck and Judy,” Bremner told the city council. “They just want to see it all at once, especially if there is something more upsetting coming out.”

  The Seattle attorney pointed out that Susan’s case wasn’t moving forward. “Who are they investigating?” she asked. “And for what?”

  She asked the council members to look at what chief Buzz Nielsen’s department was doing on the probe and to find out for themselves if the investigation was dormant or not, reminding them that it seemed to be going nowhere. Under Utah’s victims’ rights laws, she felt the Coxes had every right to read the files on their missing daughter and her now-dead husband, the prime suspect.

  West Valley City police advisor Clint Gilmore insisted that the council didn’t have the authority to release the Powell records. “The case is still active,” he said. “This is an ongoing investigation. We want to solve this case, and to disclose anything would jeopardize it.”

  Whether he was being actively investigated in Utah for any part he might have played in Susan’s disappearance—and, perhaps, murder—Steven Powell was the target of great interest for the Pierce County sheriff’s detectives and prosecutor Mark Lindquist’s office.

  “We have to wonder,” Bremner said, “if there is information on his [Steve Powell] being there at the time of Susan’s disappearance, about phone calls he made to Josh, his calling in sick after she disappeared, and about his criminal obsession with her. What did the West Valley City Police know about that?”

  Steven Powell had called in sick on December 8 and 9, 2009. Although he kept in touch with coworkers via the Internet, no one had actually seen him during that time. One cowork
er recalled that he had told her around Thanksgiving that he planned a camping trip in Utah with his son Josh in the near future.

  There were other issues. The Cox family was in a legal tussle with the Powells over millions of dollars in insurance money. The money didn’t matter to them, but it would be a bitter pill to see members of Josh’s family profit from the loss of their daughter and their grandsons. They needed to know what had taken place in a missing person’s probe that had lasted for almost three years.

  But Anne Bremner’s plea to the West Valley City council members didn’t convince them. They debated over what she had said, but came back with their refusal to release the city’s police records on Susan Powell.

  And so the saga continues, still full of secrets and lies. There will never be full closure for the Cox family that has lost so much, but it is desperately important that what is hidden from them will one day be revealed.

  They deserve that.

  * * *

  FIRE AND ICE

  * * *

  Susan Cox Powell was a happy, loving young woman. She disappeared one night in December, leaving behind her beloved little boys, Charlie and Braden. Her husband, Josh, said that she had run off with another man. (Cox family)

  Susan and Josh as an engaged couple in January 2001. They would be married in three months. He was seven years older than she was, and yet he looked as young—or younger. (Cox family)

  In 2001, Susan worked as the co-manager of the Orchard Park Retirement Residence, a job she shared with her bridegroom, Josh Powell, shortly after they were married. She thought it was a great opportunity for advancement, but Josh criticized his bosses and was let go. (Cox family)