Crime Immemorial

By 2009, the then-twenty-eight-year-old Susan was working for Wells Fargo Financial. She had previously obtained a stockbroker’s license after moving to Utah. Friends described her as hardworking and remarkably self-sufficient. She gardened, canned vegetables, and baked bread while working and raising her children.

From the outside, the Powells could appear to be an ordinary young family. Inside the marriage, however, Susan was increasingly unhappy. After Susan disappeared, friends provided police and reporters with emails she had written during 2008 and 2009. Those writings revealed a marriage considerably more troubled than casual acquaintances might have suspected.

Susan described Josh as controlling, particularly regarding money. According to friends and later police documents, he tightly monitored household spending and restricted Susan’s access to family finances. At different points, witnesses said, he discouraged or prevented her from using the family’s car, required her to bicycle considerable distances, and imposed unusually strict rules about grocery purchases and other everyday expenses.

Religion was another source of conflict. Susan remained active in the LDS Church while Josh had largely withdrawn from it. Arguments arose over Susan’s desire to tithe from her income and over how their children should be raised.

Most troubling were Susan’s fears about what might happen if she left. In emails to friends, she expressed concern that Josh might take the children, financially ruin her, or do something worse. She considered divorce and sought advice from friends and an attorney. She also established financial resources of her own and thought about where she could go with Charlie and Braden if she decided to leave.

In June 2008, after a particularly serious period of marital conflict, Susan created a written record of her fears. She placed documents in a safe-deposit box. Among them was a letter warning that if she died, her death might not be accidental. She also emphasized that she would never willingly abandon her children.

On July 29th, 2008, apparently following legal advice, Susan also videotaped the family’s possessions. She wanted a record of their property in case she and Josh separated and valuables disappeared.

At the end of 2008 and into 2009, Susan nevertheless continued trying to save the marriage. The couple returned to counseling. In emails written only months before her disappearance, Susan expressed cautious hope that things might improve. She still remembered the affectionate man she had originally married and wanted to believe that version of Josh could return.

Then came December 6th, 2009. Susan attended church that Sunday with Charlie and Braden. Later, a neighbor and friend, JoVanna Owings, visited the Powell home. The family ate a meal that included pancakes and eggs. Susan was tired and reportedly did not feel particularly well, and she lay down at approximately five p.m.

JoVanna left the house. She is generally regarded as the last person outside Susan’s immediate family known to have seen Susan alive.

Josh later said that he took Charlie and Braden sledding for a while, returning home during the evening.

What occurred in the Powell home over the next several hours has never been established. Josh claimed that sometime between midnight and twelve thirty a.m. on December 7th, he decided to take Charlie and Braden camping.

It was an extraordinary proposition. The children were only two and four years old. It was December. Temperatures were below freezing, and a winter storm was approaching. Josh said he drove the boys into the remote West Desert, toward the Simpson Springs area along the old Pony Express Trail. Susan, according to Josh, remained at home asleep.

He claimed the trip was spontaneous and that he wanted, among other things, to test a recently acquired generator.
Then he disappeared from contact for much of the following day.

On Monday morning, December 7th, the Powells’ daycare provider became concerned. Charlie and Braden had not arrived. Susan had not shown up for work, and neither Susan nor Josh could be reached.

Relatives were contacted, and police were eventually called. Officers entered the Powell residence because there initially remained the possibility that the family might be inside suffering from carbon-monoxide poisoning or another emergency.

No one was there. But several things attracted attention.

Susan’s purse remained in the house. Her wallet, cash, identification, and keys had apparently been left behind.
In the living room, officers noticed that part of the furniture and carpeting appeared freshly cleaned or damp. Two box fans had been positioned to blow across the area. Josh would later say that he had cleaned the sofa before leaving on the camping trip.

Hours passed. Finally, during the afternoon, people were able to make telephone contact with Josh.

Cellular records later became particularly significant. Investigators determined that there had been no activity on Josh’s phone from shortly after noon on December 6th until approximately three p.m. on December 7th. The latter call connected through a tower in the West Valley City area, despite Josh’s claim that he was returning from a remote desert camping trip.

He did not arrive at his house until that evening. Susan was not with him.

Detective Ellis Maxwell interviewed Josh Powell. Josh said he believed December 7th had been Sunday rather than Monday, explaining why he had not gone to work. He described the late-night camping trip with his sons and maintained that Susan had stayed home.

Detectives immediately found parts of his behavior and explanation puzzling. When asked why he had not been answering his cellphone, Josh reportedly said he had kept it switched off to conserve its battery because he did not have a charger. A detective then noticed a cellphone charger plugged into the cigarette lighter of the minivan.

Far more important was another phone: Susan’s cellphone was discovered inside Josh’s minivan. It was turned off, and its SIM card was missing.

Susan’s purse and other essential belongings had been left at home, while the one item that might have allowed investigators to reconstruct her communications or movements had somehow ended up in the vehicle Josh had taken into the desert. Josh said he had accidentally brought it with him.

Police also saw a variety of equipment in the minivan, including tools, a shovel, a generator, blankets, and camping supplies.

The camping story became the center of the investigation. Officers searched the Simpson Springs region and other areas of Utah’s western desert. Snow and the enormous search area complicated their work. Nothing belonging to Susan was found.

The Powells’ four-year-old son Charlie was also interviewed. Statements attributed to such a young child naturally required caution, but investigators found what he said disturbing.

According to search-warrant documents later made public, Charlie indicated that his mother had gone camping with the family but had not returned home with them. In another account documented by investigators, Charlie said Susan had remained somewhere associated with “crystals.” Josh denied that Susan had accompanied them.

Because of Charlie’s age, his comments could never establish what happened by themselves. But combined with the other inconsistencies, they deepened detectives’ suspicions.

Further forensic examination of the Powell residence produced another troubling discovery. Investigators found Susan’s blood near the recently cleaned sofa, including blood evidence on nearby flooring and carpeting.

A detective wrote in a search-warrant affidavit that he believed somebody had been injured and bled while on or near the sofa. Laboratory testing confirmed that the blood belonged to Susan.

The evidence was not conclusive. Police later acknowledged that the quantity and circumstances of the blood could not by themselves prove a violent assault had occurred. There was no body, no definitive murder weapon and no forensic finding that established how Susan had died. But the blood was one more element of an increasingly troubling picture.

On December 8th, police temporarily took possession of the family’s minivan. Josh rented a Ford Focus from Salt Lake City International Airport. When the rental car was returned, he had driven roughly 800 miles. Investigators never established where he had gone during all of that driving.

On December 9th, Josh activated a new cellphone in Tremonton, Utah, near the Idaho border. The unexplained journey became one of the case’s enduring mysteries.

Later analysis of GPS information from Josh’s own minivan also identified movements that generated additional questions about whether he might have disposed of evidence at multiple locations after Susan’s disappearance. None produced Susan’s remains.

Detectives discovered another strange piece of physical evidence on December 8th. Inside a hidden floor compartment of Josh’s minivan was a garbage bag containing burned drywall, pieces of charred wiring, small hardware, and a severely heat-damaged metal object. The object had been melted so badly that investigators could not identify it. Police eventually submitted it to the FBI, but forensic examination was unable to establish exactly what it had once been.

The evidence became more intriguing because Josh had purchased an oxyacetylene torch shortly before Susan disappeared. Computer records showed that in the days before December 6th, he had researched the heat output of acetylene and created a file titled “Welding Instructions,” later moving that document into an encrypted section of his computer.

Police photographs indicated that the cutting torch was in the garage during the purported camping trip and appeared to have been used afterward.

In 2024, journalists from KSL’s COLD podcast conducted an experiment suggesting that the mysterious melted object strongly resembled the remains of a Ridgid impact driver subjected to an oxyacetylene torch and fire.

It is an intriguing theory rather than an official forensic identification, and it does not establish what, if anything, such a tool had to do with Susan’s disappearance. But fifteen years after she vanished, it demonstrated how unanswered questions surrounding the evidence continue to generate new investigation.

As investigators dug deeper into the Powell marriage, they discovered the documents Susan had deliberately preserved. The most chilling was her warning concerning her own death.

Susan had written that if she died, investigators should not automatically accept an accidental explanation. She had also made clear that she would not voluntarily leave Charlie and Braden.

The significance of the document was difficult to ignore. Susan had written it roughly eighteen months before she vanished; not after an argument that weekend, not as part of the public investigation, but privately, at a time when she was documenting her fears in case something happened to her.

Investigators also discovered that Josh was the beneficiary of substantial life-insurance coverage on Susan. Search-warrant records referenced policies totaling approximately $1.5 million.

None of these facts proved murder. Together, however, they made the possibility that Susan had simply walked away increasingly difficult to reconcile with the evidence.

By mid-December 2009, police publicly identified Josh Powell as a person of interest. He retained an attorney and became increasingly reluctant to participate in interviews with investigators. Police repeatedly searched areas of the Utah and Nevada deserts, including abandoned mines, hoping to locate Susan. No body was found.

In January 2010, Josh packed up the West Valley City home and moved with Charlie and Braden to Washington state, where he lived with his father, Steven Powell. Susan’s parents, Chuck and Judy Cox, continued to campaign for their daughter.

Meanwhile, the investigation began revealing increasingly disturbing information about the Powell family. Josh’s father, Steven Powell, had developed an obsession with Susan years earlier.

Evidence later showed that Steven had secretly photographed and recorded women without their knowledge. Investigators searching his Washington home in connection with Susan’s disappearance uncovered material that resulted in criminal charges unrelated to Susan’s case.

His arrest in September 2011 dramatically changed circumstances for Charlie and Braden. The boys were removed from the Powell household and eventually placed with their maternal grandparents, Chuck and Judy Cox. Josh was allowed supervised visitation while a Washington court evaluated whether the children could safely be returned to him.

Josh fought to regain custody. Then, in February 2012, a judge ordered him to undergo a psychosexual evaluation before custody arrangements would be reconsidered.

Four days later, another catastrophe occurred. On February 5th, 2012, seven-year-old Charlie and five-year-old Braden were taken to Josh’s rented home in Graham, Washington, for a supervised visit.

A social worker accompanied them. The boys ran ahead of her toward the house. Josh allowed Charlie and Braden inside, then shut and locked the door before the social worker could follow. She smelled gasoline and called 911.

Inside the house, Josh attacked his sons with a hatchet. Investigators later determined that Charlie suffered an injury to his neck and Braden suffered injuries to his head and neck. Josh had also spread gasoline through the house.

Minutes after the boys entered, the residence exploded into flames. Josh, Charlie, and Braden all died from carbon-monoxide poisoning and smoke inhalation. The medical examiner classified the boys’ deaths as homicides and Josh’s as suicide.

The killings were unmistakably planned. Josh had purchased gasoline, arranged his finances and belongings, donated some of the children’s possessions, and sent goodbye messages shortly before their deaths.

Whatever doubts remained about his capacity for violence were transformed by what he did to his sons. But Josh died without explaining what happened to Susan.

The murders of Charlie and Braden inevitably generated questions about whether authorities in Utah could have arrested Josh for Susan’s presumed murder before February 2012.

Investigators possessed significant circumstantial evidence. But West Valley City Police Chief Thayle “Buzz” Nielsen later acknowledged that investigators had what he regarded as probable cause but said prosecutors and police did not believe the evidence was strong enough to obtain and sustain a murder conviction. There was no body, no established cause of death and no definitive crime scene.

A premature prosecution carried its own danger: if Josh had been acquitted, double-jeopardy protections could have prevented another murder trial if Susan’s body or stronger evidence were later discovered.

Police had continued building their case, but before that process could reach a conclusion, Josh killed himself and the only two children who might eventually have been able to provide further information about the night their mother vanished.

After Josh’s death, investigators increasingly focused on his brother Michael. Police came to believe Michael may have helped Josh after Susan disappeared.

One reason for their suspicion was Michael’s 1997 Ford Taurus. Approximately two weeks after Susan vanished, Michael was traveling from Utah toward Washington when he abandoned the car at a salvage yard near Pendleton, Oregon, selling it for only $100. Police did not learn about the vehicle until 2011.

A cadaver dog later alerted to the trunk, although DNA recovered from it did not match Susan. Investigators also said Michael had been evasive and dishonest when questioned about the car.

Police discovered extensive encrypted communications between Josh and Michael that they were unable to decipher.

Michael died by suicide in Minneapolis on February 11th, 2013. With both brothers dead, investigators believed potentially crucial answers had disappeared with them.

In May 2013, police formally ended the active phase of the investigation after concluding that there were no remaining leads capable of being immediately developed. They emphasized that credible new information would still be investigated.

More than sixteen years after Susan was last seen on December 6th, 2009, her disappearance and presumed murder is officially unresolved.