Fatal Friends, Deadly Neighbors (19 page)

Braden and Charlie all dressed up for Halloween 2011. They were growing more secure with Judy and Chuck Cox all the time. Behind them is Susan’s large photo, which the Coxes keep in front of their fireplace. (
Cox family
)

The Powell house, on fire.

The aftermath of the terrible fire that destroyed three lives.

Josh Powell at a court hearing. He was ordered to get a psychosexual evaluation. This was something he refused to face. (
KOMO-TV, ABC Seattle
)

Behind Josh are his missing wife’s parents and friends. Far left is Judy Cox, then Chuck Cox. (
KOMO-TV ABC Seattle
)

Steven Craig Powell, sixty-two, just arrested for fourteen charges of voyeurism and one charge of child pornography, September 2011. No one knew the strange secrets he hid inside. Was he part of a grotesque, cruel plot—or only obsessed with his son’s wife?

Detective Gary Sanders of the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department was the lead investigator into the Washington State portion of some very puzzling and macabre cases. He and his team located the spot where a stalker viewed his victims through a camera lens. Sanders worked closely with detective Ellis Maxwell of the West Valley City, Utah, police department.

Pierce County Sheriff’s Department public information officer Ed Troyer had to keep explaining to the public why his department could not move forward on an arrest. He was as frustrated as all law enforcement personnel in his county. The problem? Susan Powell disappeared in Utah—not Washington State.

Pierce County sheriff Paul Pastor’s investigators, along with prosecuting attorney Mark Lindquist, kept waiting for a “go-ahead“ to serve an arrest warrant on Josh Powell. Tragically, it never happened.

Prosecuting attorney Mark Lindquist, along with the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department, wanted to arrest members of the Steven Powell family—but they were not the primary investigators in the beginning. It was supremely frustrating for the Washington detectives, sheriff, and prosecutors. (
Mark Lindquist
)

Anne Bremner, nationally acclaimed attorney, volunteered her expertise pro bono to Chuck and Judy Cox as they sought first to find their daughter Susan, and later to gain custody of their grandsons.
(Anne Bremner)

TWO STRANGE DEATHS IN CORONADO

Chapter One

In the wee hours of July 13, 2011, the only sounds at the Spreckels Mansion on Ocean Boulevard were the engines of the few cars that passed by, and the soft lapping of the Pacific Ocean as waves washed over the massive beach rocks that spell out
CORONADO.

The dark-haired woman was beautiful even in death, and the moonlight dappled her naked body, but it is impossible—even now—to determine just where she was when it was first discovered. She could have been moving slightly in a mild breeze beneath one of the bedrooms’ balconies, a shiny thick orange-red rope around her ankles, securing her wrists behind her back, with her lower legs several feet off the ground.

There is also the possibility that she rested on the grass and never came off the balcony above her at all. The red rope might have crushed her neck in another kind of strangling. Or someone’s strong hands could have choked the life out of her. There is even a chance that she was killed someplace else and carried to the place where she was found.