Killer Dads (19 page)

Figure 9.2. Susan and Josh stop for a snapshot on a hiking date.
Courtesy of Charles and Judy Cox.

Judy Cox never trusted Josh; he seemed rude and “off.” Chuck had misgivings, too. Josh first hit on their oldest daughter, Mary, whom he also met at the singles Mormon congregation in Washington. He showed up at the Cox's Puyallup house, uninvited, the night of Mary's senior prom. She was getting ready to go out with her boyfriend as Josh sat in the living room
talking to Judy. He was still there when a perturbed Mary returned home later that night, still with her date, and Chuck finally had to tell Josh to go.

“He was odd,” said Judy. “There was something off about him.” Unfazed that his attentions were rebuffed by Mary, he moved on a few years later to her younger sister, Susan. Judy didn't understand Susan's attraction to Josh. Both Judy and Chuck were troubled when a thrilled Susan accepted Josh's marriage proposal some five months after they began to date. “We weren't sure about this guy, but we believe in letting our kids live their own lives,” explained Chuck.

The union nearly fell apart within hours of the young couple's wedding at the LDS Mormon Temple in Portland, Oregon. Susan overheard her father-in-law tell Josh: “Well, she's not a lawyer or a doctor, but she'll do.” Josh just smiled. A stunned Susan, close to tears, rushed to tell her mother what she had overheard, and Judy seized a final opportunity to get Josh out of her daughter's life. Surrounded by the sound of wedding guests celebrating a marriage she felt sick about, Judy counseled: “Call it off right now. We'll make an announcement, apologize to people, return the gifts, and let them enjoy the rest of the reception.” But Susan stuck by her man.

Figure 9.3. Susan Cox cuddles up with beau Josh Powell at the wedding reception for her big sister Denise.
Courtesy of Charles and Judy Cox.

What seemed to be Josh's maturity and stability as he wooed Susan quickly dissolved over the following few years. He didn't finish his college degree and fell into a pattern of ditching or being fired from a series of jobs—sometimes as quickly as two weeks after starting—after he quit the contract work for the local schools. He jumped from work at a car dealership, Home Depot, an eldercare facility, Wells Fargo, and in real-estate sales. He was cantankerous about jobs he was able to find, inevitably complained about his bosses and colleagues, kvetched that the workers needed a union, and was often irritated that his work was “beneath” him. “He was Mr. Know Everything, and always had a complaint about where he worked,” recalls Chuck. “He would call me up to complain, and I would tell him, ‘Slow down, Josh, you don't want to lose this job, too.'” What the Coxes didn't know then about Josh—but would later learn from his parents' divorce documents—was that he had been a seriously troubled teen. The divorce proceedings years earlier revealed that Josh had tried to hang himself at the age of 13, killed his sister's pet gerbils, and once threatened his mother with a butcher knife. Steven Powell accused Josh's mom, Terrica, of practicing an ersatz Mormonism mixed with the occult that he described as “witchcraft and devil worship” that he said harmed their five children. Terrica accused Steven Powell in the same divorce proceedings of an obsession with pornography—material she said he shared with their three sons—and of mental and physical abuse. Terrica told the court she believed her husband needed “serious medical help” due to some mysterious “underlying problem.” He proclaimed he had a “right” to take another wife and had his eye on a married woman, detailing sexual fantasies about her in his journal, according to Terrica's legal filings. Her husband also turned on the children “far more violently than was necessary or fair,” including yelling, name-calling and spankings that were “too forceful or too long,” when he became upset about their behavior, she charged in the court documents. Josh was a particular target of abuse by his father. “For years, he pointedly attacked Josh very frequently, nearly every day for a time,” Terrica added. Steven admitted he found Josh difficult to discipline. “At times I have no idea how to handle Josh,” he noted in divorce documents. “He is very independent, and he is now a little taller than I, and may, with his regular weight-lifting,
be a little stronger and bulkier than I. I cannot spank him. Spanking didn't even help when he was younger.”

Josh became withdrawn as a teenager, “unwilling to interact, even to make eye contact for a year or two,” said Terrica in the divorce filings. “He seemed to have a soul-deep hurt because of his dad's erratic and explosive behavior.” According to Josh's older sister Jennifer Graves, who believed he and his dad developed a twisted special relationship, Josh's behavior soon morphed into aggression, and he began to emulate his father's cocky, demanding attitude, particularly toward women, she would testify years later in a court case against her father. The males in her family, especially Josh, frightened Terrica, Josh's mom argued in her divorce deposition. “There have been times when I have been afraid of Steve and/or the boys because of their extremely hateful behavior,” Terrica said. “They group together and stir each other up to almost a fever pitch at times. Their vehemence has often flashed in their eyes and body language, making me feel threatened.” When she once asked Josh to show her more respect, he responded: “You have to earn respect, Mom. What have you done to earn my respect?” But even worse, Terrica said, Josh and his brother, John, then 15, pushed and hit her. Once, when she tried to get Josh to wash the dinner dishes, he turned to her with a butcher knife in his hand, flashed it near her face and warned: “Don't push it, Mom.” Terrica recalled, “I felt extreme fear when Josh made a veiled threat at me with a butcher knife in his hand. His demeanor was menacing.”

While the Coxes knew nothing at the time about the disturbing descriptions of Josh in the divorce proceedings, they continued to be troubled by Josh's behavior and found him curiously disconnected. He expected strict organization from Susan, but was distracted and disorganized himself. He had a habit of showing up to appointments hours late. The Coxes found one visit from Susan and the family after the couple had moved from Washington to Utah particularly worrisome, they recounted to me in their Puyallup home. Josh, running some errands, was to show up at their house to collect Susan and the boys for a ferry outing. Susan dressed the boys warmly to be ready to go at the appointed time because she knew Josh would be irritated if he had to wait for them when he arrived. But he showed up nearly four hours later. Susan seemed largely unconcerned about Josh's behavior, perhaps
because of her lack of experience in relationships or an instinctive loyalty to her husband—or her enduring optimistic personality, her parents thought.

More troubling was Josh's behavior during the birth of Charlie. The Coxes traveled to the couple's home in Utah to help before Susan's expected due date. As she went into labor at home, Josh remained stationed were he often was: in front of his computer screen. It was Chuck Cox who had to tell Josh to shut down the computer and take his wife to the hospital. Josh ended up following Susan and her parents in a separate car two hours later because he said he needed time to back up his computer files. He took his laptop along and immediately set it up in the hospital room as Susan's parents ministered to their daughter. Finally, his father-in-law had to grasp him by the shoulders, take the laptop from his hands, and tell him, “Josh, Susan needs you
now
.” Charlie was born in minutes. As Chuck Cox held Susan's hand after her first baby was born, her dad recalled, “She looked at me, and said, ‘Dad, did you see how Josh helped me? He really cares. Did you see that?'”

The storm warnings then were developing into a full-blown hurricane in Susan's life in Utah by the time her firstborn boy was three years old. The winning suitor with the big ideas who had wooed Susan had profoundly changed by 2008 to become a nervous, bitter control freak who dominated every aspect of her life in West Valley City. She was expected to run the household with a budget so pared by Josh that it threatened adequate nutrition for her and the boys, who picked at surrounding fruit trees and their own vegetable garden to supplement their diet. Josh had commanded Susan not to buy any meat other than hotdogs and to fill in the amount of each grocery-store purchase she made on an Excel spreadsheet at Josh's basement desk. Josh also ordered Susan not to waste funds on her favorite small treats like makeup and yarn for crocheting, or that “other crap you buy.” Nor was he willing to spend the $20 copay required by Susan's health insurance for the psychological counseling his wife so desperately craved to help repair the couple's marriage. From remaining funds Josh allowed Susan, she had to eke out daycare payments so their boys could be looked after while she went to her office because Josh often claimed to be too busy at his basement “work station” in front of his computer—where Susan suspected he actually spent much of his time surfing Internet porn sites. Despite Josh's insistence
on total oversight of the family funds, it was Susan who was usually the family's sole breadwinner. She dutifully deposited her paychecks in their joint bank account, and he decided how the funds would be dispensed. For much of their time in Utah, Josh was only sporadically employed and cooking up costly entrepreneurial schemes while staring at his computer screen.

Figure 9.4. Up a tree: A happy Josh Powell mugs with his sons, Charlie
(left)
and Braden, and Susan.
Courtesy of Charles and Judy Cox.

Still, Susan made the best of it. She was an optimist and had faith that she could fix her marriage. She decorated the Utah home to make a cozy nest for Josh and the boys. She arranged favorite “family day” outings, and quickly made friends with her neighbors, co-workers, and Josh's sister Jennifer, who lived nearby in South Jordan. The high-school grad with a beauty-school degree even studied for and passed a broker's license test to win a
promotion as an investment counselor at a local Fidelity Investments, and later moved into a similar post at Wells Fargo. Though Susan might have been young when she fell in love and married Josh, may have been raised to be a good Mormon wife and to believe that marriage lasts forever, she wasn't a pushover. She wasn't happy about what had happened to her marriage, and she was determined to fix it. She was an articulate, insightful young woman who reflected intently on her life in years of journals she kept from the time she was eight years old. She was grappling with her current crisis with her husband in her journal, and making decisions that would forever change her life and her boys' futures.

Those who knew Susan casually in West Valley City that summer were unaware of the pain she was hiding, or that her increasingly fraught relationship with Josh had taken a dark turn. She feared that Josh was spinning dangerously out of control. The conflicts and verbal fights became infused with the threat of violence, and actual physical abuse, Susan confided to her friends, and she hinted that she was afraid for her life and the life of her sons—so frightened that she worried that leaving him could be the death of her. In an e-mail to a friend, Susan wrote about the trip to Washington with Josh and the boys that had so disturbed her parents, and revealed her husband had behaved as he usually did, being “rude, yelling and barking commands at me.” When the family returned to their West Valley home, Susan revealed in another e-mail the year before she vanished that Josh's behavior became so disturbing as they argued about the trip, that she considered calling the police:

We had a huge, hour-long fight (amazed that my voice still works). I even had to threaten calling the police because he was being so irrational and unpredictable. I told him he needs to change, counseling or something. And he said he didn't need counseling because he knows what they'll say, and what to do, and I said, “Do it then.”

My friend came over later because Josh was at her house getting help from her hubby for his business, and my friend knows shorthand so she wrote down the crazy stuff he said. I've also written a sort of will in my desk because at this point, I don't know what to think anymore.