Susan Marie Powell was a woman who disappeared from her home in Utah, along with her husband and two young sons. The latter three later returned, and Susan's husband is suspected of her murder.
Case[]
One of Susan's friends visited her at her house the day before her disappearance. She reported that she behaved normally and only said she felt tired and wanted to nap before dinner. However, the next day, neither Susan nor her husband, Josh, went to work, called in sick or dropped their two sons, four-year-old Charlie and two-year-old Braden, off at daycare.
The family was reported missing by relatives, but Josh and the children returned home at around 5 PM without Susan. Josh was then taken to the police station for questioning. According to him, he and the boys had gone camping in a desert the previous night, and he last saw Susan, who didn't go with them because she felt sick, at home that night before they left. He also claimed he didn't go to work that day because he thought it was Sunday. Susan had over one million dollars in life insurance, and shortly after her disappearance, Josh began drawing on her retirement account and cancelled all of her chiropractic appointments, which occurred regularly.
Susan's family claimed that she was a devoted mother who wouldn't have abandoned her children, so authorities quickly classified her disappearance as suspicious and obtained a search warrant for the Powell home. They noticed a large wet spot in the home with fans blowing on it to dry it and stated that they didn't know why Josh would take two toddlers camping when temperatures were below freezing with mixed rain and snow. When police searched the campsite, they couldn't determine whether anyone had camped there recently, although Braden stated that they had, and Charlie told the police that Susan did go with them, but she didn't come back, and he didn't know why. He later told a teacher that his mother was dead, and according to Susan's parents, Judy and Chuck Cox, months after Susan disappeared, Braden drew a picture while at daycare of a van with three people in it and told staff that “Mommy was in the trunk.”
Josh was named a person of interest in the case, and authorities stated that he hadn't cooperated with the investigation. He hired an attorney on December 14, and authorities briefly impounded the Powells' Chrysler Town & Country to search it. During this time, Josh rented a car, and it was later determined that he drove it hundreds of miles, although the car had no GPS data stored to indicate where he drove it. According to a neighbor who saw Josh after he got the Town & Country back, he behaved oddly and kept putting lotion on his badly windburned hands.
The next month, Josh packed his family's belongings, put the home up for rent and moved in with his father, Steven Powell, in Puyallup, Washington. Josh and Steven then cut off access to Charlie and Braden from Susan's family, including her parents.
Josh stated in an interview almost a year after Susan's disappearance that she was mentally unstable and may have left to be with another man, possibly Steven Koecher, who also disappeared from Utah almost a week after Susan. However, authorities found no connection between the disappearances nor any evidence that Susan and Koecher knew each other. Josh also suggested that Susan was now afraid to return to Utah because of the media attention surrounding her disappearance. Susan's family and even her sister-in-law disputed this description of Susan. However, Steven agreed and planned with Josh to publish excerpts from Susan's diary from when she was a teenager on their website, which Susan's family got an injunction to stop.
Some of Susan's neighbors stated that she'd been unhappy in her marriage and wanted a divorce, which one of her acquaintances stated that she'd been saving money for. It was reportedly claimed that Josh was controlling, that they frequently argued, that he alienated the children against her and that although she was the primary earner for the family, he limited her access to the family bank account so much that she couldn't afford food for herself and the children, and had to start a vegetable garden as a result. The couple attended marriage counseling through their church for a few months, and this ended when Susan disappeared. Josh later claimed that church members tried to alienate her against him solely because he stopped attending church services.
Steven Powell, Josh's father, was charged on September 22, 2011, with voyeurism and possession of child pornography when authorities searched his home for evidence in Susan's case and found over one thousand videos of women and young girls being filmed using the toilet and bathing without their knowledge. One of the women in the tapes was Susan, and Steven also had photos of nude women with their faces replaced with Susan's, as well as photos of himself masturbating to a video of her. They found over 4,000 photos of her, including close-ups of specific body parts. He was convicted of 15 charges related to child pornography in May 2012 and sentenced to two and a half years in prison. Susan once told one of her friends that Steven had spied on her while she was dressing and that after she and Josh moved to Utah, she told him that she never wanted to allow Steven into their home.
After Steven was arrested, Charlie and Braden were taken into foster care before the Coxes were awarded temporary custody of them. Josh was allowed supervised visitation with them twice a week and, after renting a new home, agreed to a psychological evaluation in his bid to regain custody.
The psychologist who evaluated Josh diagnosed him with a narcissistic personality disorder, and he'd shown signs of dysfunctional behavior since childhood, including attempting suicide as a teenager, killing his sister's pet gerbils, shoving his mother and threatening her with a butcher knife. He also told Braden and Charlie inappropriate things about Susan's family despite being told not to, that a “militant faction” of Susan's church wanted to kidnap them and that “Mormon police” framed Steven and wanted to do the same to him.
A judge ordered Josh to undergo a psychosexual evaluation and polygraph test in 2012 and told him that until this was done, he couldn't regain custody of his sons. On February 5, during his visit with Charlie and Braden, then seven and five years old, respectively, at his home, he locked the supervisor out of the house, attacked the boys with a hatchet and killed himself and them by setting the house on fire. He left messages for his family and lawyer apologizing for this and saying that he couldn't live without his sons, although none of the messages mentioned Susan.
In March 2012, newly unsealed documents revealed that Susan's blood had been found on the tile floor in the family's home (one sample was matched with her and another from an “unknown male contributor”) and that her cellular phone was in Josh's car, turned off and missing its SIM card. When Josh turned his phone over to the police, it was also missing its SIM card. Susan had left a will in a safe deposit box registered in only her name as well as a letter to her family and friends, stating that Josh had threatened to “destroy” her and that their sons “would not have a mother and father” if she divorced him. It also stated that if she died, her death “may not be an accident, even if it looked like one.”
On February 11, 2013, Josh's brother Michael committed suicide by jumping off the roof of a parking garage in Minneapolis. After this, authorities announced that they believed Josh was involved in Susan's disappearance and that Michael, who had strongly supported Josh and Steven and believed that the police planned to frame them both, was an accomplice. Authorities also learned two years after Susan's disappearance that Michael had sold his Ford Taurus for salvage value at a junkyard in Oregon two weeks after she disappeared, without explaining why he did this or how he used the car beforehand. Police later found the vehicle, and a sniffer dog indicated that decomposing human remains had been inside the trunk, but DNA results were inconclusive. The brothers communicated in a computer code that police have mostly been unable to crack.
Steven was released from prison on July 11, 2017, and died of natural causes in a Tacoma, Washington, hospital on July 23, 2018, at the age of 68.
Susan's family stated that authorities had more than enough evidence to move forward with charges against Josh and that this could have prevented the murder-suicide. They also sued the DSHS of Washington, claiming that they prioritized Joshua's parental rights over the boys' safety and facilitated their deaths.
West Valley City authorities announced that they'd closed the investigation into Susan's disappearance on May 21, 2013. She remains missing and is presumed deceased.
Characteristics[]
- Medium-length brown hair, sometimes highlighted.
- Blue eyes.
Clothing and accessories[]
- Black dress pants.
- Black shirt.
Exclusions[]
- Harris County Jane Doe (2009)
Sources[]
- Susan Powell at NamUs
- Susan Powell at the Charley Project
- Susan Powell on Wikipedia
- Susan Powell at Find a Grave